The Jordan Harbinger Show - 277: Neil Pasricha | You Are Awesome

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

Neil Pasricha (@neilpasricha) is a New York Times bestselling author of five books including The Book of Awesome, The Happiness Equation, and his latest, You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life. What We Discuss with Neil Pasricha: Why anxiety is at an all-time high when we live in an age of relative ease compared to what our ancestors (and even recent generations) endured.  Why you need to be prepared — and willing — to lose more if you want to win more from what life has to offer. How to set up incredibly productive untouchable days where you're basically unplugged and unreachable — even when you have bosses and significant others who may be resistant to the idea. How to use the Saturday morning test to brainstorm new skills, adventures, and personal improvements you'd like to implement. A failure budget you can use to try new things, fail, and rejoin the fray — enhanced by the experience, but with relatively few scrapes and bruises. And much more… Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/277 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. I want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. And, well, I want you to become a better thinker as well. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for negotiation, public speaking, body language, persuasion, et cetera. So if you're smart and you like to learn and improve, well, you'll be right here at home with us. Today's show isn't just about resilience. Yes, we're feeling the sting of a new wave of social media induced anxiety, but that's not all we're

dealing with. It's not just that we need to reduce our exposure to perceived failure. It's that we need to increase our exposure to actual failure. What? Well, yeah, I was a little a little confused too, but today on the show, bestselling author and buddy of mind, Neil Pazerica, explains why we need to lose more to win more or why we need to dramatically increase our lose rate. We'll also discuss how to set up incredibly productive, untouchable days where we're basically unplugged and unreachable and how to negotiate doing this with our boss or in many cases our significant others. We'll also touch on something called the failure budget and how it can help us make big strides in our ability to try new things, fail, and then get back up again.

Last but not least, we'll throw in a nice heaping of cognitive bias, something we're all guilty of. Well, not guilty of. It's something we all do. This one will make you feel better about your situation in life, no matter where you stand. Oh, and I trick Neil into admitting he only has one testicle. You're welcome. If you're wondering how I managed to get all these great guests and spill their beans, well, I've got a great network and I'm teaching you how to do the same.

Well, not with the one testicle thing, but how to make a great network and get them to actually care about what you're doing and help you along in your career and in your life. I want to teach you how to do that for free in my course six minute networking, which you can find at Jordanharbinger.com slash course. All right, here's Neil Pasricha. Resilience. This is what we were talking about pre-show a little bit. I mean, we talked about a lot of things pre-show, but one of the things that you mentioned was that people have lots of anxiety, depression, suicide, even though we're living in an era with massive abundance of things that would increase longevity, wealth, education. so far.

The best time ever to be alive. I mean, you look around. I mean, we have, we got clean water coming out of our taps. Unless you live in Flint, Michigan. Yes, you do. We feel safe when we walk out the front door. People can marry who they want. They can live where they want.

This is, you know, by definition, the best time ever to be alive. You got access to the best technology. You can go anywhere. It's amazing. But at the same time, yeah, what you're saying, Jordan, is true. Anxiety is up. Depression's up. Loneliness is up.

What's behind this sort of like paradox that in the era of the best time ever, We feel the worse. Instagram. Well, that's a big part of them. Yeah. No, I'm joking, but I'm also not joking. I was sort of hinting at this when we were walking upstairs here. I said something along the lines of, you know, my show would be a lot more popular if I was

obsessed with being popular and famous. And I was half joking, but also not, because now there's this era of sort of manufactured celebrity. I just got on Instagram probably October 2017, and I didn't really mess with it until, like, mid-2018. What do you even mess with it? I didn't log in and do anything. So now... Use it.

Yes, use it is what the technical term here. Jeez, can I get all jargony on me? So I found that I have to block certain people that are marketers. And at first I was like, oh, look at me. I'm such a wimp. I can't even look at other people's stuff without feeling bad. And then I realized, wait a minute, this is literally designed to make me feel bad because they want me to buy into their lifestyle

so that I purchase things from them. Oh my gosh. There's a difference between my friends who are always on vacation because they have this cool optimized lifestyle, but they're still selling that to other people. Yeah, and I mean, it's just what they take pictures of. It is.

Like my friends, Alex and Mimi Icon, do you know them? Yeah. They're awesome. And their photos make me go like, oh my gosh, look, they travel with their kid, I want to do that, it's amazing. When I look at that stuff, I don't feel bad. But then when I look at some of these other things

where people have things that I actually don't aspire to be or have, I actually do feel bad. And I don't really understand why. I've had to do a lot of introspection. Like, do I really want a Lambo? No, I really don't. So why is that making me feel less than? And this other stuff is making me feel more empowered or optimistic.

Three gigantic problems with cell phones. You just nailed the first one, which is psychological. They all start with P, by the way. So the first P is psychological. You're comparing your director's cut life, right? Your current clothes, your current, like, the way your skin looks today, the way your hair looks today. with everyone else's greatest hits.

You wouldn't put a picture of the way you look right now on Instagram, but everyone else hits. So there's a psychological deficiency. It can't be the best basketball player in your high school anymore because you're competing with the world. You just are never the best. Second one is physical. We don't talk about this one enough, Jordan, but there's a physical problem with cell phones. We're developing into a nation of hunchbacks.

When you look down on your phone, you're putting 60 pounds of pressure on your spine. I went to the physiotherapist last year. That's how much your headways, 60 pounds? Well, the pressure when you got the angle of some sort of physics involved. And I go to the physiotherapist last year. I'm like, I got texting thumb. I'm not joking. My thumb stopped working.

You know what she says to me? All we do is thumbs now. Do you remember casts? When you were a kid, didn't kids have like broken arms, broken legs? Oh, all they treat our thumbs now? Yeah. Get out. Yeah, also I'm saying it's like we all know we got just black bags into her eyes and broken thumbs.

So how do you break your thumb texting? How do you injure your? Well, you can see my hand because I'm right beside you. Right. This muscle right here. Like, got like, when you stick your thumb up, there's a thing that sort of sticks out on your, towards your wrist, that thing? Yeah, it became, I had to do like these, I'm holding my fists and I'm pointing them, I had to do

these daily exercises. Oh, you're like stretching that thing. Yeah. Oh, that hurts when I do that. There's a, because why is it hurt? You know why? Because you're texting, you got texting thumb. You got texting thumb.

Damn. And it's not just that, like, it's also the bags under your eyes. It's, what's happening to your eyes. I came equipped with these bags. It's your eyes. We're getting, you're focusing, you're straining your eyes. So there's a physical problem. And the third one is physiological.

You know, when you look at a bright screen, an hour before bedtime, your brain doesn't produce as much melatonin, you're not sleeping as well. So you wake up in the morning, you got lower resilience because you didn't have a good night sleep. So what do you do? You check Twitter because you're in a low resilient state. It's like you know me. You see me, Neil. Psychological, physical and physiological. Cell phones are a huge scourge right now. We're using them over five hours a day. Five hours a day. We touch them over 2,500 times a day. It's like a constant fondle. Oh, imagine setting up that experiment. That's impressive that they could even do that.

Yeah, the market research firm in the States, but that includes. all the times you touch letters for all your texting and stuff. Oh, yeah, okay. That makes more sense. You're touching it all the time. And sometimes I say this to an audience, and I look around the room and, like, sure enough, everyone's like, it's literally the ultimate fidget spinner.

Right. You know, like your cell phone. That's true. That's true. It's a reason. It's smooth. It feels nice. Fidget spinners never caught on with adults because we have phones.

Exactly. Yeah, the reason 13 and below like it is because they don't have phones. That's all it was. It was just like a soother for people that didn't have cell phone. Oh, it's a pacifier. Yeah, it's a pacifier for, I don't know, adolescence. So going back to the resilience idea,

you mentioned, look, we need to have and develop more resilience to ultimately become our strongest selves. This helps us handle failure, but also perceived failure. And I think that's an important distinction because we were just talking about this. I don't feel like a failure,

but there are many areas of my life where I'm like, ooh, I don't want to dive into that area because that's more work and it might not do well. Like, we didn't touch on this, but everyone goes, You were just saying, why don't you write a book? And I had all these reasons.

But one of them that we didn't get to was, what happens if I don't sell enough copies, a.k.a. fail, I let down my agent. Don't internet your advance. I look stupid. I feel bad about myself. Then other people can go, ooh, I sold more books in Jordan Harbinger. That would grind my gears. But why? I didn't care about any of that crap before. You and me are the exact same age.

We grew up in a culture with the idea that less failure equaled more success. Yes, that sounds right still. was the idea, right? Yeah. But the principle that I want to lay out for your listeners today is actually, no, no, no, it is more failure equals more success. And the examples I want to give to you are, like, look at baseball, for example, okay? So I had this old baseball statistics book when I was a little kid.

I'd look around and it's like, okay, the guy with the most wins is Sa Young, right? Still to the state, 512 wins. Guy with the most losses is Sa Young. Guy with the most strikeouts is Nolan Ryan. Guy with the most walks is also Nolan Ryan. I mean, literally the people that fail the most are also the people. that succeed the most. Look at wedding photographers.

It's one of my favorite little sub-industries, wedding photographers. I'm always like, how did you guys get so many good pictures of the wedding? How did you get 50 awesome shots?

And they all answer the same way, Jordan. They say, well, I took 2,000 photos. The failure rate on my pictures is way higher than yours, but because my frequency is so much higher, I get more success. We have to start thinking of failure as the pathway to success.

It is the thing you need to exponentially increase in order to build up that thick skin, to get that resilience going, and ultimately to win more in the long run. Okay, I understand that, but the photography analogy, maybe I'm just getting lost in the metaphor here, doesn't that cheapen the skill of a photographer? Surveillance cameras take probably 10,000 photos an hour or something, right? Nobody's putting those up in the MoMA. Oh, man, that's hilarious.

What I'm trying to say is that the average person who takes three pictures at the corner, of course their photos aren't going to look as good. But the thing you're missing in the wedding photographer is they're doing wedding, also every weekend. Right, right. Right. They're doing the frequency that they're doing it is great. I'm going to say the surveillance camera analogy doesn't count because it's like, it's not even a person. Right, right. Right. Right. There's no one's like, it's not moving around. There's no, there's no one's aiming for like the golden hour of that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Although, yeah, I bet they do look nice during the golden hour. You look, last time you had me on the show,

we were talking about like my old stuff, right? I wrote this blog 1000 Awesome Things.com. That thing got viral, went popular, got big. But the thing I never told you, Jordan, and I didn't even write about that until you are awesome is in this book I lay out all the other blogs I tried along the way, and they were endless messups. Yeah. Like I had so many horrible concepts on the weight of that one good one. So what I would say to you about your book is, you know what? Your first book might stink, but your fourth book might be awesome, and you won't know

that until you get the first one out. That's true. I mean, I look at the first 10 years of this show, and I go, ooh, yeah. Could have put a little bit of grease into that one. Or tried harder, or like prepared more, or just been who I am now, which is impossible, while conducting that interview. And I would argue that all those years, however you call them,

maybe you look at them as failures. I hope you don't. I don't really, no. But that 10 years created this year. What you're doing now couldn't happen without that. Right. No, of course I know that, right? But I think your point may be better illustrate,

well, a point that might be your point or maybe I'm making a different one, might be better illustrated by this. Have you seen this? It's like a pottery experiment, right? Where they, what is this? All right, so hold on. Let me remember this.

There was an experiment in which they said, hey, your grade is based on, do they say this to a class or a sample group of people? People doing pottery. Right, making pottery. Your grade's based on, you have to make one perfect amazing pot. Your 100% of your grade is based on this. Then they did a control group, whatever that might have looked like.

And then they did another group where they said, your grade is based on how many pots you can make, no matter how crappy they are. Oh, I have heard about this, right? Yeah, lay it out there. So the group that had the best pottery at the end was not the group where they needed to make one really awesome one. It was the quantity group because you can't not get better over time, I think, is the reason.

That phrase is so powerful you just said. You can't not get better over time. When you do things over and over again, you're more likely to win. And like, this is what I always find when I'm watching football on TV. But watch NFL, they always say at the bottom of the screen, like, Drew Bree's most passing years ever, or Tom Brady most touchings. I'm like, those are the two oldest dudes. Yeah. Those are goals of the guys just played the longest.

That's funny. They had so many missed passes to get to the most passes. So we can essentially increase quality by increasing quantity to an extent. Obviously there are exceptions to this. I mean, if I put out a show every day, quality would go down. Well, here's the thing, though. Long term it would go up, right? Yes.

And what I'm trying to also inject here, because we're talking about anxiety, I'm talking about resilience. What I'm really focused on now is we are trying to be too perfect. If you give the people the option of which pottery class you want to go to, just metaphorically, people are choosing that first one. Like, we want the picture

to be perfect before we post it on Instagram. We have to have the right lighting, the right filter. How many times you edit the comment in your little notes file on your iPhone seven times before you pitch your post it?

Is that what you do on? That drives me crazy on Instagram. I write the caption in the app and I just prove free to for spelling errors and fire it off because I don't like doing it. You're living a more authentic life. Is that really it?

Well, I just think that we are trying to be precious with our output right now. I agree. The world is so visible. So we're thinking that if we look bad, then we are bad. But the only way to get better is to look bad. I have to say, and this is not speaking of looking bad, but it does come across that way.

When I go on shows like Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew, I am so envious because they will, it's not that they haven't put in any work. Of course they have. But when I look at the amount and the notes they have for that show, they are not sitting there going, oh, we can't release this. Oh, edit that out. I shouldn't have said that. They're not doing any of that. And it's because they come from radio where you couldn't really edit anyway, and they've just kind of got it down. This will get edited and scrubbed and reedited. Now, I'm not going to move things around. Producer Jason is not going to do that, rather, but they're going to cut out all the noise.

If I go, they're going to cut that, well, they're going to leave that one in. But they would normally cut that out, right? And if there's weird mouth noise, because when you, you know, you listen to, Sorry, Tim, but you listen to Tim Ferriss, and then somebody, not him, but one of his guests would be like, and it's like, okay, I'm not here for the ASMR. They'll remove that, and I like that, but I'm so envied. Oh, you never heard of ASMR? No.

This is, hold on, let's Google what this means, because this is this whole YouTube thing. It is called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Now, that doesn't mean anything, but what this concept is, there are all these videos on YouTube where there will be usually a girl or maybe it's a guy, but all the popular ones are women.

And they'll do something like, they'll whisper, and they're going, I'm just going to scratch a Kleenex box. And they'll scratch this, like, Kleenex box with their nails, and it goes, it makes this, like, little sound. I can picture that sound. And are you getting like a weird cringe tingle? It's like a blackboard shot. It's like nails on a blackboard.

Right, so I don't like it. I find it extremely irritating, which is why I'm not going to do any more of that. So if you're listening right now, don't worry, you're off the hook. But why are people doing videos like that? So apparently this is massively popular. I guarantee you that if we look,

in fact, we're going to edit out the pause, I'm going to look for a popular ASMR video. So here's one. 2.1 million subscribers. I'm failing to understand the purpose, though. 1.75 million views on this video from last month, okay? People watch this for what reason?

I think they watch it when they, if you watch ASMR, can you email me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com? I don't get it. Does it help you fall asleep? What is it? You lost me. I've got no idea

why anyone would watch this type of stuff. Yeah. Interesting sound effects. At the end of the day, my point was before getting massively derailed is they're not worried about that stuff. Some people will say, oh, they're older,

they don't care, they're mailing it in. I don't really know if that's true. I think back then, they weren't listening to 7,000 other radio shows and going, ooh, was mine as good as that one? I don't know. They were doing whatever they thought was good. they put it out there.

A lot of people liked it, and other people who did it and didn't get a following, they were less popular, and that was it. But it's still me coming up in this time in radio and audio. It's a different story, man. All these marketers will be like,

you have to be in every platform. And I think that's dangerous because I think people who are starting, imagine being a 20-something-year-old kid and finding out that you have to crush it on social media and you have to have a personal brand. I mean, no, you have to get through college. Well, it also might be...

It also might be the argument saying, And I don't know the guys you're referencing like super well, but they are older. You implied that you implied that they're from radio. So that to me tells me that they had something that you and I don't necessarily have naturally, which is thicker skin. Maybe. Okay.

They have thicker skin. These days when kids grow up and I'm including me in the subset, part of the reason stress is going up, anxiety is going up, these things are growing up is because when we get a nasty email from our boss, we go home crying. You know, you trip on the sidewalk, you lie,

they're screaming. Like, we don't have the thick enough skin to recover and navigate through the difficulties and challenges of life. We've had it relatively easy. We've been taught that less failure equals more success. So we've become fragile, and we aren't testing it. We aren't testing losses and failures enough.

Okay, I buy that, but I want to go back to your point about the athletes. You said, okay, this might mean they had more playtime in general. In fact, you did make that point. But could that be because they were already good and that's why they got more playtime, not because of their rate of failure? Or I feel like you might have to sell me a little bit more on this one, because maybe they lasted so long in the league because they were good. My point here, so I have one chapter.

Am I overthinking it? No, no, no, no. And there's a nuance here, but the chapter in you are awesome called lose more to win more. Okay. That's the thesis. It is, yes, I use the example of the baseball players. Saoyang has the most losses and the most wins. Nolan Ryan has the most strikers and the most walks.

But I'm also saying, hey, look at me. And you said your first 10 years, I'm saying my first 10 blogs, you have to lose more to win more. You have to keep trying, trying, trying, trying, if I told you, if someone's listening and is like, oh, I really want to have a big YouTube channel, and I was like, oh, yeah, you got to make a thousand terrible videos. Most people will tap out what I was with the first five. You can't handle the type of loss. You have to continue to navigate through failure in order to learn from it.

The point you made is super valid. You're like, you can't not get better. That's what you said. That's beautiful. You cannot get better. You just have to keep punishing yourself and getting trying over and over again. Everyone who's successful would say, actually, you know what I have piles of losses. here's all the things I screwed up on.

Here's the massive amount of failures I have. Navigating through that's the best part. The metaphor I like to use is like the T-1000, Terminator 2. Take a bullet to the shoulder, take a bullet to the leg, patch it over, tighten your menacing, smile and keep going.

Just watch out for vats of molten lava in the factory. That's the only thing that can kill you. This leads to one of your other points, which is, look, the commencement speech industry, not that that's really a thing here, but I call it that because it leads to garbage advice, like follow your passion, this is one of my favorite things to skewer on the show. And I'm not going to beat it to death because the audience has heard it a million times. But people are saying things like

do what you love. That's not bad advice. It's just not good advice either because it doesn't really lead you to an actionable place. The advice should not be do what you love. It should actually be a different question, Jordan. I would reframe it this way. I'd say, do you love it so much that you can take the pain and punishment to. You and I have a mutual friend, Mark Manson, he's really subtle or not giving a fuck. He famously has said many times, I actually wanted to be a rock star.

Like, that's what I was trying to do. I wanted to be a musician. But the pain and punishment of practicing the same core progression over and over again lugging an amp to a concert in the back of a van, I could not take that pain. Whereas writing, that pain,

I'd love to get into Facebook wars with people in the comment thread. That was my love. So I was good with that. Look, someone's listening. They want to apply to a new job. I'd say to that person, hey, do you love it so much that you'd write 100 cover letters, get 12 interviews, and be rejected from 11 of them to get one new job?

That's the pain on the path to finding a new career. 100 cover letters, 12 interviews, 11 rejections. That's part of the path to getting it. You want to find a great perfect partner. How many bad dates you got to go on, right? How many kind of tries you have to have in a long-term relationship? These are the things that are on the way. The question isn't do what you love.

It is, do you love it so much that you can take the pain and punishment that goes with it? If the answer is yes, you can navigate through that knowing that, hey, the high-level goal will take me forward. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Neil Pasricha. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Neil Pazerica.

That link is in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordanharbinger. com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Neil Pizzricha. Here's the problem that I have with that, though.

Everyone thinks the answer is yes because everyone secretly thinks they're exceptional. Or is that just me? Right? I'll be candid here because, of course. Tell me more. I'm not just saying I'm the only one that thinks that I'm exceptional. I've tried to stab that delusion as often as I can in my life. But here's a podcasting example.

I just came from podcast movement. It's a fun event. Everyone who's new there will say, I know it's hard work, but I think I got a really good idea. What I hear a lot in my inbox are people going, I know it's a lot of work. This is like a Gary V. problem, right? I know it's a lot of work, but I don't think. it's going to be as hard for me because, and they'll have a reason, but the real reason is because they're them, and they think they're going to be good at it. That happens with podcasting. It happens

with YouTube or any sort of creative process. It happens with writing. It happens with books. It happens with blogging. It happens with everything. People go, yeah, I know this is going to be a lot of work, but in the back of their mind, they're thinking, but I'll be fine. And the truth is, you probably won't. You're literally a statistic of someone starting something and thinking that you're going to be fine. So yes, maybe I will start something and go, well, I know I got to be able to take the pain and the punishment too, but nobody goes, yeah, it takes a lot, well, maybe not nobody. It takes a lot of emotional maturity that most of us, including myself, probably do not have where we go, yeah, I don't really know if I want to go through and do all of that work. I don't really want to

do that. I'm actually envious of you, honestly, Jordan, that you think that because my natural M.O. when I'm approaching something is I'm going to suck at it. I don't think it's going to be easy. I'll probably figure this out. I actually think, oh, like, so I started a podcast where I run my podcast three books. I honestly thought about that podcast for like three years before I had the courage to put the trigger on that. That's not me at all. I'm like too nervous to start. I'm like, what if it's, I overthought different angles, different names.

I scratched out different, like, logos a hundred times. Like, I feel like I needed to get it perfect before I launch. Oh, yeah. So I'm speaking to myself when I say lose more to win for. I'm speaking to myself to say fail fast and go quicker. I'm speaking to myself because I hesitation is I think I live in the world of like, You called it Instagram world, but I live in the world where it's got to be good when you launch it because otherwise you might miss your chance and then you fall out of the, if your first book sucks, I think, well, you're dead. You're not going to be having another, you're not going to get another chance to do it. Take another shot. That's funny. You're talking to me. This is August, September 2019. As of right now, my show art is a photo someone else took of me speaking on a stage and some generic font. And we put it right on there. And I named the show to the Jordan Harbinger show. That is the least creative branding. and show name and art that probably I could have possibly done.

So I use 99 designs for three books, and I rejected like 50 different things. I tried that, and they were worse than nothing. It was like, hey, designer from Uzbekistan made this thing that looks like his national flag, but like in a blender. No thanks. Well, if you have someone that works,

I mean, that's what everybody wants. You're saying what you got is simple and was easy to do and didn't take much thought, but it works, right? So that's fine too. I mean, I do get occasional feedback that's like, hey, you are big enough to hire a real designer.

And then I hire a real designer for $5,000 and I go, this sucks. And I use my original crap. I hate it. There's something to that, too, is that, you know what? I have a tendency to overthink, overanalyze, analysis, paralysis. For the most of us, we grew up in an age where we think that we have to get it right in our heads first before we do something.

I call that motivation lead into action. But the truth matter is I use the example of me learning how to swim. I'm in my mid-30s, after my divorce, living alone, downtown Toronto, It takes me a full year to start dating again, another year until I meet someone who we both like each other, names Leslie. And I never learned how to swim my whole life. I was horribly afraid of water. I had ear infections. I had tubes in my ears. I never learned to swim. Second date we go on. Leslie says to me, so did you like swimming? I'm like, not really. And she's like, well, swimming is my favorite thing to do in the world. My family's got a lake house on an island. We've had it for generations. And I signed up for swimming lessons Jordan that night. I bet you did. I signed up $40, eight weeks. I was like, bye, bye, by, guess what I learned. not motivation leading to action, it is action leading to motivation. How do you get over that hurdle then? Because for a lot of us, we just start doing stuff and then we quit early when it's hard.

Other people like you, apparently, never start doing anything. And then eventually something pushes you over the edge and you do it. Like, how did you eventually start your podcast, for example, or start writing books? So someone listening to say wants to run a marathon, you think, I got to have the right shoes, I need a running buddy, I got to have a perfect playlist. They'll spend more time on the playlist. Actually, what I'd say is, one to the stop sign at lunchtime on your break in your dress shoes, the next day you'll think you can do and you'll run a little bit more. I say someone wants to write a novel. Forget the idea that you need a perfect mole skin. Okay, you need a cool coffee shop with dim lighting and techno. You need to have like the great idea. No, just write down a

sentence on your bedside table before bet. Khalid Hussaini, who wrote the kite runner was famous for saying, hey, I wrote a little bit after work. I'm a doctor. You know, like he wrote a little bit after work. You write a little bit more. You write a little bit more. And then it starts. The hard part is getting started. So you said, hey, how'd you do it with the pocket? Eventually, you just got to pull the trigger. This time, if you can get out of your head, if you stop thinking, it's better. Look, another way to say this is, it's easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than think yourself into a new way of acting. Yeah, that's definitely the case. This is the whole, I need to go running. So instead of saying I'm going to go to run five miles, all I have to do is put my shoes on in the morning and

then I can go back to bed. Sleep in your gym clothes. Right. Leave them on the floor. Make it harder to not do it. Yeah, this is like a habit thing. This is like a James Clear habit change type scenario. And I like this because it does work. Look, you're a very productive guy. One of the concepts that you had before that I think is fascinating and I aspire to this. You have an untouchable day. Yes. Tell me what this is because this sounds, this for anybody who's constantly interrupted by stuff, this is heaven on ice. So last time I was on the show was, I think, 2016, the happiness equation had just come out. I don't know if I told you this at the time, but I was still working at Walmart. So I'm working at Walmart through a book of awesome, through the sequels, through

five books. What did you do at Walmart? I was director of leadership development. Okay, because I think people are imagining you standing in the front of the store with a vest and being like, welcome to Walmart. I worked many different jobs. I was learning manager. I was project manager to her CEO and eventually I was in leadership development. So all HR jobs. And then I quit, Jordan. Here's the problem. I quit to make more room for my writing. Three months in, six months in a year. And people are like, so how's the new books come on? And I was like, oh, now that I quit my full time job? Horrible. It's like all my space that I was expecting to have. I got completely full of like meetings about building a website and like, you know,

a pre-pall before a speech and like all this stuff. So I was like, I desperately need something to carve out the time that I was putting in the evenings a week as before. That's funny. So I made a day. I called it an untouchable day. I spell it all caps. Untouchable. Oh, I thought that was in a mistake.

No, I think it's the only thing in my iPhone calendar that's actually in all caps. It screams at me. 16 months out, I plan one of these days. days per week. What is an untouchable day? It's a day where I'm literally unreachable, untouchable, incommunicado to everyone in the entire world, including my wife, my phone is off, I have no contact, and it is a blissful day where my productivity honestly 10x is. On an average day, I'll write 500 words. On an untouchable day, it's not unusual for me to write like 5,000 words. Wow. And I am doing one of those days per week because they're my

most productive and creative times. I have to protect that time, so I carve them out. So if You do it 16 weeks in advance. That's why I do. So it's like four months in advance I planned them. It's after any super long-range you're going to a conference. In my case, I might be giving a speech. That stuff's already planned out. But all your short-term stuff, you're like meeting.

None of that's planned out. You can plant these flags in your calendar. Then if it gets closer and you have to move it, I give myself a couple rules. I can't bump it. I can only shift it during in the middle of a week. The weekend acts as like the bowling lane bumpers on this thing. Sorry, you can't bump it like, I'll skip this one. I can't.

Yeah. So like, say you call me up and you're like, hey, Neil, let's do the show. on Wednesday, and that was my untouchable day, I'd say, great, Jordan, I'll do it, but then I have to move my intouchable day to Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Thursday, or Friday. I can move it, but I can't delete it, and I can't move it to another week. Because it's the highest value day in your week. Exactly, exactly. So I have it scheduled like that.

And people always say, oh, what about emergencies? What if somebody needs you? And I always say, you know, none of us used to have cell phones, right? Like, you know, we all operated for 200,000 years of our history to, like 20 years ago, without cell phones. We're fine. But my wife didn't like that, of course. So she was like, well, I got to get a hold of you at lunch if I need you.

So why you check your email at lunch? So I started doing that, Jordan, and it was a recipe for disaster. Oh, no. Well, of course you got like 14 text messages waiting for you, urgent-sounding emails, and you can't get back in the groove in the afternoon. Right, so you spend two hours clearing out emails and phone, and then you just go home. That defeats the whole purpose. Right.

So now all I do is I tell her where I'll be. So I was like, if you really need me, I'll be at that coffee shop. You know what I mean? So, you can, like, walk over there. Send, walk in, bleeding, or whatever is going on and tell me. Truth of the matter is emergencies pretty much never happened. Never. But if they do, you know where I am for peace of mind.

Yeah. So in touchable days have two components. Number one is deep work, right? It's a Cal Newport term. But like I'm saying, you go deep into the thing you're doing. You got nothing else to do. You got no one else to contact. You're offline on your, on your laptop.

There's nothing else to do except your work, okay? The number two thing is nitros. Nitros. Nitros are when you find your productivity slowing down. You have to have little tips or things that help you get back into the group. Going for a little walk, doing a little meditation, hitting the gym for 20 minutes, ways that you can get yourself back into a productive state of

mind. After doing untouchable days for a year, that's probably how I launched my podcast. That's how I wrote my next book. That's how I wrote my new keynote speech. And now I schedule two of them a week. I now have two days from 100% off the grad. Wow. In exchange for three other full days. And it's 40% of my time. It's how I get everything I do done. That's impressive. I think if I had one of those, I would end up using it for email because that's the one thing that piles up that otherwise I just, most of my job is reading. And then I answer a bunch of email from you, dear listener. So do I need something like this? I think there's a lot of people that go, oh, that's cool, but I'm not writing a book, so I don't need that. Well, here's what I would ask you is, do you have

space in your life right now to do the biggest thinking on not doing things right, but making sure you're doing the right things? And I find that these days also provide for me space and air to constantly restear my little ship, which is my life. But I'm like, do I really want to be doing this podcast? Do I really want to be doing this. And I come up with these little breakthroughs for me. I'm like, literally Leslie and I, my wife, have a contract in the number of nights away I'm allowed per month. It's four nights per month. We've signed it in ink, right? That came from an untouchable day where I was like, nothing's more important than my family. I got to be at home more. Like, this is like, we came up with the contractual thing from an untouchable day. The title of my podcast three books

came from an untouchable day. The content of my new book, you were awesome, came from untouchable day. Like everything I'm doing of high value in my life, if I look back, came from a day where I was doing nothing else except just thinking, being totally unplugged from the world. Plugging into the world is bad. The world will eat you up and chew you up and spit you out in two seconds. It is a suffocating giant cesspool

of toilet bowl flushing that's just going to take your brain, mind your attention, sell you ads, and send you away. Get out of it. It is flotsam. It's garbage. You have to unplug and be on your own with your own thoughts

to actually know what you should be doing. I mean, I can't argue with that. I think any time you turn on any sort of computer, something's going to hit you in the face with shopping or, you know, some sort of distraction, text, whatever it is. You can put that there if you want. I was setting my water near yourself and I moved it because I thought I was going to

These are waterproof, remember? They're supposed to be waterproof. Plus, this is not exactly new. No, go ahead, because it makes less noise when you put it here anyway. Your attentions for sale, Jordan, right? Like every single news site, every single TV channel, every single Netflix show, everything will Spotify.

Everything is designed to hook your attention, sell to you. In order to pull back, I recommend an untouchable day. I wrote a whole chapter about it in the new book, how to do it, how to design. I wrote this article. It originally came from an article I wrote for Harvard Business Review. He came in the most popular article on their website. It's published in some HBO books. I'm like, this has got to be a chapter in the book because it is an ingredient

to curing some of the anxiety that we're suffering. Part of that anxiety is driven by this endless sea of comparison. When you unplug from the world for a day per week, you release a lot of that. impossible to after an hour of feeling anxious that you're missing stuff, then you start focusing on the stuff that matters. You mentioned increasing your failure rate, and one of the ideas that you have, one of the drills you have, I don't know if we can call that exercise perhaps, is having a failure budget. I'd like to go over that because I think this is a great idea. The problem with any sort of budget is people go, well, what should my budget be? Well, I don't know how much. Well, I got to think

about that. That's the end of the exercise. So you've got a way to decide what it should be. Well, here's the thing, Jordan, like a long time ago, when I started my blog 1,000 Awesome Things.com, I didn't have money. I couldn't afford, like, fancy advertising or a fancy logo like we were talking about before. So if I had a two-figure expense, like buying a domain name, that was two-figure. Like, that was approved, but nothing else was. As I got older and I started to make money in my career, I was like, oh, three-figure. That's what game I'm in. I can spend up to three figures, right? And it applies to business. This also applies to your personal life.

Taking a kickboxing class, going to a far flow music festival, right? The way I think about it is you take your salary and you move the decimal place over three digits. It's really simple. So it puts the amount you're spending on your failures in the tenths of a percentage point range, which makes it so small that you shouldn't care about it. What I mean is if you've got like a six-figure salary, you're in the three-figure game, right? You're like, I make $150,000 a year. I can afford to spend like $500 to go on a bike trip or take this online marketing course I'm interested in.

If you got like a five-figure salary, you're in the 10. two-figure game. Two figures is what you spend your failures on. So you're like, oh, I can spend $75 on a cooking class or a softball league. It's a small enough percentage of your total income that you shouldn't overthink it, but yet you're making yourself open to, you could call them Black Swan opportunities here, you're betting chips, small chips, on a lot of different hands. This makes sense. I know a lot of people that make five figures and a lot of people that make seven figures and their sort of level of impulse, if you will, or let's not think about it to, maybe not impulse, but let's not think about it too much spending is about that.

Yeah, and it's a general rule of thumb, right? Somebody might, you know, you're a tech billionaire. You can, you can spend for the experiment with a million dollars here and there. Yeah, you literally see that. I see that with like, I mean, that's what these angel investors and VCs are doing. They're going, those kids seem smart and they only want a couple hundred grand. And you're just like, wow, you just threw three houses that I grew up in at these kids based on an idea. And it seems overwhelming to you because they're in a number of figures game on their failure budget. That's totally different than yours. But it gives you a rule of thumb.

And if you want to say, well, okay, Neil, how do you figure out, like, what to try? Yeah, what do you want to do? Exactly. Well, then I have a test that I used in the happiness equation. I always call the Saturday morning test, which means when you wake up on a Saturday morning with nothing to do, what do you do? Brainstorm wildly from that. If you're like, oh, well, I always get up and play guitar.

Well, what could you do in the music industry? Could you teach guitar lessons online? Could you become a ukulean porter? You know what I mean? There's so many things you can brainstorm wildly off the thing you're passionate about. It doesn't have to be a business, though, right? Or is that the idea? Well, I just went businessy kind of guy in show, right?

Aren't you? I guess. Yeah. Sometimes. I just thought maybe this is like, this could be anything that improves you as a human, right? Well, like, follow your heart. Like, this is like, do you want to go to Coachella and you've never been? How much is it a cost?

A lot, probably. Make that, make that. Bend your failure budget on that. There you go. Right? Spends it on things that you don't know if we'll succeed or not, but you've wanted to do. And if you can't think of what those things are, try, try, try, Try, try again.

Go to meetup.com. See what's going on in the community. Say yes to those far-flung invitations you get that you typically say no to. You want to go to this fundraising dinner. You want to go to this. You just say yes to a bunch of stuff until you find out what you want to do.

It's a failure expense, which means you aren't expecting anything to come from it. Right, I like that. And if anything comes from it, great. That's wise because otherwise people go, ooh, that's expensive. It's $175. I don't know if I'll get ROI from it.

And you're saying, literally don't worry about getting any ROI from it. Just do it and try it. that's what this budget is for. So I actually even saying you were awesome that my whole podcast, my podcast is a lot smaller than your podcast,

but my whole podcast three books is my failure allowance. It's a four-figure failure allowance. My thing doesn't have ads going in or I just literally fly around, talk to guests, that's it. That's my whole show. And I pay a producer $500 a month to produce the show.

And so that adds up to my whole thing, but it's a way for me to have conversations I wouldn't have otherwise had. Lead dominoes on like interesting ideas that turned into book chapters later. It's a failure allowance. that I love. My podcast is permanently in the red. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's just a loss, but it's a lost leader because it's a total failure for me that is hopefully going to result in

other interesting growth. It has it? I'd say absolutely. I mean, I just spent, I just got to hang out in Malcolm Glowell's living room for an hour. Ridiculous. That's awesome. I mean, was he there? Does he know about this? I spent two hours in the back of a limo with David Sederis, talking about the three books that shaped his life. David Sederis is like my, I've been reading his comedy writing since I was a little kid. He's like an icon to me. I'm super nervous. The only reason I got permission to do that is because he's on his book tour for his book. So like, you know, you kind of slip into like the publicist agenda and they all say, oh, what, he's doing these morning shows, he's doing this book reading. I'm like, I'll go at 1 p.m.

I'll go on the time of the day when like no one's doing. I'll carve my whole day around his schedule. I'll hang out with him naturally. And I get to do that. And my David Sedaris episode is my number one episode ever. Because I've been reading this guy's books for like 20 years. So I have a lot of stuff to ask him. Was he impressed by some of that stuff? I mean, you had some deep cuts in there, I would imagine. Well, I think at that point, you kind of, like, I was quote, so the old way I opened that episode was, I was like, here's 10 things you've said about books over the last 20 years. I'm like pulling stuff from all over that I've heard him say, and he riffs on itself. I mean, part of what I'm trying to do is what you're always trying to do is like, how do you develop

chemistry quickly? If I've only got an hour with someone, well, in life in general, you're not going to have chemistry with that person in one hour, but that's your job. You have to have chemistry with them in five minutes, so that the show is interesting. That's true. So I'm, I'm, I'm like far away from where you are. I'm like, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm trying. But you ask me, does it pay off? And I'm like, hell, yeah, it's paying off because I'm learning new things. There are other chapters in my book that are ideas that came from conversations that I had through the podcast.

Well, yeah, that story in my life. I met my wife through the shows. I can't really, can't really say the ROI has been that bad for me, especially recently. You had a concept that I really am interested in here, why you shouldn't buy the $5 million dollar Manhattan condo. Now it sounds ridiculous because most of us, including me, are not on the market for a $5 million Manhattan condo. So I'd love for you to expand on this because this positive academic self-concept was brand new for me, this big fish in a small pond theory. We started this conversation by talking about how the world today has suffering from a ton of

anxiety and stress, even though we live in this great time to be alive. Right. And all of us, myself included, yourself included, will occasionally throughout our lives suffer from I'm feeling like imposter syndrome, not good enough syndrome. I can't compete at this level. What am I doing here? We all have that. When that happens to, and it will, and you might be in there now, your goal then is to find a small pond where you can be a bigger fish.

I got this advice from Dean John MacArthur, who's the Dean at Harvard Business School. When I was going to Harvard Business School, I got a scholarship from this guy, so I met him for lunch, and he asked me how the job search is going. I said, terrible. Terrible, you know, Dean MacArthur. I'm trying to get a job at all the, you know, Google and McKinsey and Boston. But so is everybody else. He said, you're like a horny guy outside of a beach looking in at like the 10 bathing beauties.

Call them whatever gender you want. You want to run in with a thousand other people and try to get together with one of them. Your odds are super low. And if you actually get together with them, you're going to be looking over your shoulder the whole time. You got to get off the beach. Go to the library. Find a nerd.

Find the broken company, the banker company, the places that aren't flying to Harvard recruiting sessions. I never went to another recruiting session again. I cold called 100 companies that have. have fallen in hard times. 50% of them let me have a little conversation. Ten of them ended up in an interview. Five of them turned into offers. That's how I ended up going to Walmart in the first place. Really? I went way off the beach. I tried to find a place where you could be a bigger fish. His argument was, if you go into one of those companies, guess what? They're going to take what

you say seriously. They're going to give you a bigger job. They're going to actually need your help. You know what I mean? You'll be unconventional there. So why shouldn't you buy the $5 million condo? Because when you open up the New York Times Magazine and it says condos on Hudson River starting at 5 million, you would be the smallest fish in that pond. You would have literally a condo on the second floor with no view into the courtyard. Everyone else is looking at the river with no amenities at all. You'd constantly be feeling lesser than. Instead, what you should buy is a better apartment at another place. Right.

Right? And you can apply this principle anywhere. It's based on, as you said, academic self-concept. research from 1984, it sounds like a long time ago, but it has shown that when you put yourself in a smaller pond, you think you're a big fish for up to 10 years after you leave the pond. If you want to start playing golf, golf from the front teas, the ones that are closer to the pin.

You want to run a marathon? Start in the slowest category. Put yourself in a game where you can win. When I first started my speaking career, they said, oh, Neil, we want to put you in this like budget range. I was like, that sounds high. Who's in there? They're like, oh, New York Times bestseller,

Olympic athletes, blah, blah. I was like, what about the lowest range? they're like, oh, here's a bunch of people in that. And I was like, I never heard of those people. Put me in that. Yeah, put me in that. I'm going to get a speaking gig every two days. Instead of speaking for a thousand people in Vegas, I was speaking to like 25 people in a boardroom.

Guess what? Now I think I can do it. My self-concept goes up and it stays up as I move to larger and larger stages or venues. Find small ponds where you can be a big fish. You will help cure your anxiety. The goal is into like, I'm not taking like brandish your ego and be like, you know, hot potato. Like the goal is not to spike volleyball into like kindergarten foreheads here. The goal is to help you convince yourself that you're good enough.

How do you improve your confidence? Don't buy the $5 million condo that the thing in Manhattan starts at. Buy a penthouse suite somewhere where you can be in Nezzo, Arizona. Well, exactly. Here's the question for your listeners. Would you rather be a nine in a group of nines, a five in a group of nines, or a nine in a group of fives? The research says that you should be a nine in a group of fives. you will think better of yourself, and your confidence will stay up as you keep ratcheting up

into interesting newer and higher level. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Neil Pezzerica. We'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode.

That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger. slash podcast. If you're listening to us on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Neil Pazerichia. So I remember reading about this because because I live in the most, and I'm not bragging by any means. I'm an idiot if nothing else. I live in this area because my wife, her family lives very close. People always go, oh yeah, well, you must be doing so well with the show. I mean, you live in the Bay Area. Silicon Valley. Look at you own a house in Silicon Valley. It's unbelievable. I could live anywhere in America.

and I would have a house five times this size, maybe more. I try not to think about it because I look at the house I grew up in in Michigan, and just to punish myself, last time I went home, I looked on Zillow at the fancy house that everyone was like, wow, who lives there? My whole life growing up. You couldn't buy my garage here for that price. Granted, Michigan's not doing super hot outside Detroit these days. That's part of it.

But the other reason is you can't get a freaking, stinker garage in Silicon Valley, for the price of a literal mansion in the suburb outside Detroit. So when and if your confidence crashes and you feel like you need to kind of get back up, I'm saying, hey, Jordan, go buy that house, be the top dog in that neighborhood, get yourself together. Yeah. Let yourself feel like you're enough. Right.

Because the point, the reason the book's called you were awesome, by the way, is because I'm trying to tell people around them. You really are. And we are looking at Instagram too much is what you started us on. That's right. We're thinking we're lesser than. We're looking at everyone else's greatest hits. We think we stink.

And I want to rid people of that thinking. It's probably why I'm saying, get offline so much. Tell me about the end of history illusion. I like this concept. I've heard of, I don't know what it is. I've heard this so much recently. It's like, you know, when you hear a new concept and you've never heard of it before

and now you hear it 10 times, it's that sort of reticular activation system where you get a blue car, and now you see the blue car everywhere. I've been hearing this everywhere. I love these little, is it a cognitive bias? Is that what this one is?

Well, here's the problem. So one of my jobs at Walmart, you asked what I did there and you asked if I was greeting and stuff, and I said, no, I'm in HR. Obviously kidding. No, no, no. And there's no judgment on that.

And I think reading is, by the way, a phenomenal role. I like that. You talk to people as they come in. What a cool job. But I'm saying part of my job in HR, one of the worst jobs I had is for a period of time, like about a year, I was responsible for being in the room while people got fired. Oh, yeah. That's got to be horrible.

So I was with the executive and coaching, guiding them through that process. And then after the termination conversation happened, I was with the person who got terminated. And I was like helping them kind of move their stuff into the trunk of their car and like, giving them Kleenex and talking to them. So awkward. It was the worst job. But at the same time, also, it had a ton of opportunity for empathy, compassion, understanding. And what I heard from those people every single time there was a termination conversation

was, I'll never find another job. This is the end of my career. It's all over from me. The End of History Illusion, which is based on a 2013 study by Daniel Gilbert, called the End of History Illusion, says that we confuse the improbability of changing in the future with change itself. what's the point? Whenever I'd meet the people that were terminated

from Walmart years later you bump in, it's a small world, you bump in, then I'm at a conference, see them in the street. Guess what they always said to me? Best thing that ever happened to me.

Oh, that's funny. Best thing that I would never have got this job of the smaller company and been vice president. I would never have spent time with my daughter after a miscarriage. I would never have decided to start that business that I was been putting off. Every single time,

people confuse the fact that they couldn't picture the change with the fact that they wouldn't change. The end of history illusion. Listen to those words directly. You think history is over. So the study, what it did, and Daniel Gilbert's study in Science Magazine, said, how have the last 10 years of your life been?

And everyone said, oh, it's been crazy. Everything's changed. I moved. I got a new job. I made a new relationship. And they said, oh, what about the next 10 years? What's that going to be like? And everyone said, well, I think I'm good.

Like, I think I'm settled. I totally feel you there. Like what I'm now, that's the way it's going to be. Sure. But I'll just be older. And no matter what age people, they ask people, whether they're 20, 30, 40, 40, 50, they said the last 10 years were totally tumultuous and unpredictable.

but for sure the next 10 years would be even Stephen. Oh, yeah. We think that history is over today where we are now. And when things change in your life, like you lose a relationship or you lose a job, we catastrophize and we think I'll never get a relationship again. I'll never get a job again. I'll be surfing temp ads on my parents' basement forever. The end of history illusion is, yes, it's a cognitive bias,

but because you're aware of it, because you're listening to this show of the Jordan Harbinger show, you now know to be aware of that. So when you lose that job, when you lose a relationship, don't confuse. the improbability of change with change itself. You will find something else. You will, but you just don't know what it is yet. You can't see the future. The staircase upwards is invisible. So is this something that happens to us when a negative occurrence goes in our lives? Because otherwise, it seems like, look, if I'm flying high, that's great. So I mentioned Daniel Gilbert a few times, right? This guy's super famous. He's written Stumbling on Happen. He's a Harvard professor,

Harvard psychologist. I actually listened to an interview with him about why he even did this study. I mean, they interviewed 19,000 people, okay? It's a huge study. And he said, it's because he went through one of those really bad years. He himself, this prominent pause of psychology research, he went through, he lost a relationship and some negative stuff happened. And he thought, oh, wonder if my life's going to stop forever. A year later, it didn't.

He was okay. And he did a study then to show we all catastrophes. We think history is over when we have something negative happened to us. Part of the reason anxiety and stress is so high is because we think, whoa, no, I'm 20 years old and I can't get a job, and I'm just finishing college, and I'll never get a job. Right. And that last sentence is the mistake.

We think history is over today. It's not. You got to keep going. And when you keep going, inevitably, you look at the past 10 years your life, and you think, oh, yeah, all that stuff happened. That was good. Okay. So we think just because we don't know what's going to happen in the future,

that nothing is going to happen in the future. Because we can't see it, we think it won't. Because we can't see it, we think it won't. How does this play with that kind of optimism bias that we see in economics, for example. We see this in elections, right? This type of optimism bias where a lot of times people who are on the lowest part or the lower part of the socioeconomic scale, they'll vote for economic policy that doesn't serve them. And it's not because they're stupid or some other reason. I've seen this data and maybe this is not true. So let me know what you think. That people assume, well, in the

future, I will be rich. So I want this policy. In the future, I will want this positive tax cut to the people who have $5 million plus estates because I'm gonna be in that group and it's like, whoa, no you won't, you're a burrito roller at Chipotle, you have no education, you only work part time and why would you be in that group? Like, look, if you're 24 and you're rolling burritos, I feel you.

But if you're, let's say you're 40 and you're doing that and you've been doing it for 20 years, you're not going to be in that group unless something crazy happens, like you win the lottery, and yet we see that people often believe that they will because they believe they might win the lottery.

for example. So how does that play with somebody who thinks history is over? It seems like the opposite. It's like an opposite bias. Yeah, you're asking the Canadian to venture into U.S. politics here. I am like very afraid of talking about it

because I don't know anything about U.S. politics. Here's what I say. You don't have to get political. Let's talk about the burrito roller, right? And he's going to say, I don't need to save money now because in the future I'm going to start a business

and I'm going to be loaded. In fact, I used to work with, we can use a real example. I used to work with guys at an old company invested, never saved any money, spent everything they had because they thought, well, it doesn't matter, our business is going to go up so much in the future. I won't have to worry about that. Meanwhile, me with the dad who freaking started an IRA when I was like old enough to spit out

at the pacifier, I've been saving like crazy. And luckily business for me has gone up. Their business, however, is not done that. And that's a problem for them now, right? They can't catch up. Yeah. And they still, to this day, from what I hear secondhand, believe that it's not a big deal in the future they're going to be rich because they've had some luck in the past. Why is that? Why do you think people think that way? I think it's the only choice you have because otherwise you go, gee, I'm pretty stupid spending money at $100 a night at a bar when I really should be saving money. I'd rather have that instant gratification. And then when people go, wow, that's a dumb decision. You go, no, no, hold on, smart part of my brain. I'm going to be rich in the future because my business is going to

take off. I think that's a rationalization. I don't know if people really believe it. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know that most people I know that are sort of in it, and sort of not a destitute position or in, you know, living in poverty or sort of struggling to make ends meet. When you talk to them, it's like, yes, I hear what you're saying. They have a plan or they want to get out of that situation. But, you know, it's hard.

It's hard to move up the rungs of sort of socioeconomic status in society. It's hard to move forward. I think I tend to believe what you're saying more than what I have read. The burrito roller friends. The burrito roll of friends. Yeah. Like maybe my stuff is anecdotal. It's not just me, though.

I mean, I've read about this before. Yeah. I've seen this phenomena and people talked about it a lot during the last election. It sounds kind of like a little bit like the wantrepreneur phenomenon. Yes, it is. And I'm getting a lot of that from there. That's why that research interested me because people are going, why are these people who are in this area, who are totally going to get screwed by voting for this person, voting for this person,

what's going on? Oh, they must really believe these other values are more important. Like maybe they're really anti-whatever and this person is also that. And it turned out that wasn't the case, right? thinking, oh, if someone in X state is voting for this candidate, they must be really anti-immigrant, for example. So they're like, well, that must be more important to them than economic success. It actually turned out that they just assumed in the future they would have economic success. Yeah. So when I'm rich, I don't want to pay taxes. Right. That's exactly what it kind of was.

What you're saying, look, we can't really solve this problem right now. I just, I find these two things are contrasted. Well, they sound very opposed. The other thing, though, I kind of sprung into this conversation is that like, you know, it seems like so much of how people vote these days is based on false algorithms and news and they don't understand what services you might get and you understand what the tradeups are and it's super complicated and, you know, even from a distance, like I know I'm looking down from Toronto, right? Because that's where I live. It's like, I don't even know what. I don't mean looking down the roof of the, that weird geographically looking down. Towers and Tower or whatever like that's tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere. Is it really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

was the tallest freest free standing structure in the world until they built a bigger one in Dubai. I did not know that. The goddamn burge. Oh yeah, it's tall, man. Have you been up it? No.

Oh yeah, Drake, you know the front of the Drake album. I'd have to go to Toronto to do that, right? Please come visit. From the view from Toronto, I look in geographically southward. I'm looking at that.

I'm just like, I don't even understand how the thing works. It's so complex. And like this study, I'm quoting the end of history illusion, which is in Science Magazine, 19,000 people, Daniel Gilbert,

prominent Harvard psychologist. It says, no, no, no. When you ask people what the last 10 years look like, they can paint a tumultuous picture how everything changed. When you ask them how the future is going to look like, they think it's the same. And that is the problem when you're going through something hard.

I think stress anxiety is partly up there because if you lose your job, if you lose your relationship, if you go through something hard, you think I'm screwed forever. People in the trunk and stuff in their trunk with their picture frames in the parking lot at Walmart, what they would tell me is I'll never find a job again? What am I going to do now? Like those were the phrases they said. They never said, oh, now I get to spend time with my daughter. Oh, now I can start a company ever sort of had a positive attitude at all.

Pretty much never in any of these religions had someone be like, woohoo. I'm surprised nobody was like, you know what? Screw you guys. I hated working here. Nothing like that? Well, those people probably would have quit, don't you think? Not necessarily. No.

Also doesn't mean that's when they say it that they mean that. Yeah. You know, I feel like if I never had those like sort of like really fiery kind of conversation. Probably because that was my role to be like, let's have, you know, as human a connection as possible here, into some humanity and empathy. These are the things people are going to remember, how they were treated. when they were terminated, right? Like, if it's a very, very supportive atmosphere

with a lot of compassion, it can feel a lot different for people. Yeah, I just, I can imagine just be like, look, I want to humanely make you feel supported while you take all of your stuff out of here with security. Right? Well, you don't do it that way. You don't do it that way?

Well, you don't walk people out in front of a bunch of people looking with security. No, no, no. It's much... Oh, people do that at other companies, man. Yeah, no, no. Everyone's different on how they structure stuff like that, but you try to figure out the most respectful

way possible. Well, good for you. You're a good human. All right, before we cut, I want to find out this ridiculous story of how you made a discovery in ninth grade gym class. So before you come on the Jordan Harbourner show, it's like jeopardy. Jordan, one of the things he asked you is like, okay, tell me some weird story you never talked to before. I was like, well, I got a few of them. Like, I guess here's a coming. You jumped on this one like a hot potato. Oh, yeah, I was on it. Yeah, so here's the story. Okay, real quick. I'm a baby. 1979. I'm constantly crying. My parents take me to the doctor over and over again, two week old, four week old, six week old. The doctor says the same thing as the 70s. They're like, that's what babies do. Take him home. That's what babies do.

My parents kept thinking something was wrong. So when I'm six weeks old, okay, the doctor finally realizes, oh, I've got a painful hernia and an undescented testicle. I'm taking in for emergency surgery, and all I'm left on my body is a huge scar and one ball, okay? I didn't know this growing up. They took the ball out? Well, the ball wasn't working properly, and I got one there somewhere. I got maybe. I got one of them, okay? So I didn't know this because you grow up and you're a kid in the 1980s. There's no internet. Like, I'm like, this is normal. You got one, you got a one digit streak running down the middle. You got one nose. You got one mouth. You got one mouth. You got one heart. You got one belly button. It made sense to me. Right. Like, why do we have two eyes. Why do we have? Oh, yeah, yeah. You're going to need two kidneys or two lungs. But yeah, yeah, you're going to need two kidneys or two lungs. But yeah, yeah, one heart. That's fine. One stomach. Sure. Like, like, it's random. Like, I don't know why we have two of some stuff on one of the others. But my point is, I didn't know it was different. And then. And then. And then. And then. And then, And in grade nine gym class, we're at, like, grade nine gym class. You can picture grade nine gym class. Like the teacher's like a big brute, you know, and he's like lecturing us about AIDS and

about menstruation and, you know, herpes. And he's always wistfully telling these stories about how he was like a wrestling champion in Eastern Europe. And one day he tells us a story because the whole class laughing, he's like, yeah, one day I was like pinning a guy and I actually like popped his testicle. Oh, God. The whole class groaned. Oh, yeah, that's horrible.

Like you just dead. And then he says, yeah, after that, we all called him half. a man. And the class like starts screaming and laughing, pounding their desk. Everyone's like, tears are sprinklering off people's faces and it hit me. I'm like, oh shit, like I, I never knew other people had too. Like I never was aware of that. But didn't people say like, oh, right, and they got him in the balls? Well, I thought that was a figure speech. Like the breadbasket and wrestling or, you know, I'm so hungry I can eat a horse. Like, I never processed that as a sort of thing. And so I then felt shame. Okay. It's a story I write about in, and you are awesome. I felt

total shame and I look into the research now on shame as I'm an older person now and I'm like, you know what? So much of the shame I attached myself for years. And by the way, it was like, I'm never going to mate. I'm never going to have children. I'm horribly disfigured. Like the stories I told myself were horrible, self-stabbing stories. Our minds are so sharp, we can shadow ourselves.

I now look back at that time of my life and I look at that story and I look at through a new lens now and I realize that so much of what our shame is is a story we're telling ourselves. Okay? What I'm saying to you and your listeners is, I feel my biology exam is a lot different than I feel my parents. I'm an alcoholic is a lot different than no one will ever trust me. I had one ball. I have one ball. But I attached all kinds of stress on top of that that for years made me horribly shy and introverted. I had all this like disgusting shame inside myself because it was a story I was telling myself. One of the things I'm trying to do with this book is to help people rid themselves of the stories they are layering on top of the facts. Okay. Don't beat yourself up.

You can be the most critical person to you. Your self-talk in your head is often what kills you. Okay? Don't talk so negatively to yourself. Just tell yourself a different story. Neil, thank you very much, man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Big thank you to Neil for coming in. The book title is You Are Awesome. He's got multiple books. So look for You Are Awesome, How to Navigate Change. wrestle with failure, and live an intentional life. He's a funny dude, as you can tell. Links to his stuff will be in the show notes, and of course there are also worksheets for each episode

so you can review what you've learned here from Neil. That'll be at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. We also now have transcripts for each episode, and those can be found in the show notes as well. We're teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits. That's over at six-minute networking. That's our course.

It's free. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The problem with kicking the can down the road, you know, doing it later, you got to dig the well before you're thirsty. All my relationships that have panned out for me, I've had them for years, I didn't ask them for anything. I'm showing you how to do this in a way that's systematic. It doesn't require a ton of time. It's really, really easy to do. It will change the way you think and behave.

And that's the idea. The drills take a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago, seriously. You can find it all for free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us, and you'll be in smart company. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out and follow me on social. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

And this show, it's created in association with Podcast One. This episode is produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFilippo, and edited by Jace Sanderson. Show Notes and Worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others.

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