The Psychology of your 20s - 368. How to find your dream career in your 20s ft. George Appling

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Find your dream job in your 20s is no easy feat, in fact your dream job probably doesn't exist, but you CAN determine what kind of career path is best for you based on your personality. Today we have on George Appling whose research on the 5 career paths can help us determine where to next! Our discussion includes:  The five main career paths and what they entail When should you pursue your passion & when should you pursue financial stability? Why money doesn’t always make us happier The necessary role of failure and experimentation when finding purpose How to become a “passionpreneur” What Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran & Matthew McConaughey have in common that makes them successful? Plus so much more, listen now!  Find George's quiz HERE  ORDER MY BOOK Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody. I'm Jemisbeke and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back for another episode of the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another guest episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s. One of my favorite things about running a podcast is that I get to just like have these hour long conversations with people who have just done really cool, really unexpected things with their life, things that I can honestly say I don't think anybody else has ever done. and today we have one of those people.

George Appling has a Harvard MBA. He was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and he now runs one of the world's largest Renaissance fairs. He runs a beer business. He owns a ranch in Austin. Between those two timelines, he has also done a dozen of other really cool, interesting things, all because he understands this theory of matching your,

career path to your personality and your identity. In fact, through his own work and his own research, he's actually identified the five types of careers people are drawn to and how we can use this theory to identify what we should be doing with our lives at this very moment. I am so excited for you guys to hear our conversation. I'm so excited to have him on the show. Without further ado, George Appling, welcome to the psychology of your 20s. Thank you so much. much for coming on. Thank you, Gemma, for having me. Yeah. I'm super excited about this one as we were talking about before we started recording. I've spoken to you for a little bit here, but can you tell the listeners about yourself and about what you do, what you like, who you are? Sure.

My name's George. I'm originally from a small town in Texas. I had a, you know, a kind of a regular career in business. So I did, you know, I did strategy consulting for a long time at firms. like McKinsey and Booz, and then I did cell phone distribution for a long time. I ended up being the CEO of a billion dollar company. But then that kind of enabled me to do something completely different. So I threw all that stuff away and decided to be a passionpreneur. And so I've got a bunch of companies that I'm deeply, deeply in love with. The core of that is Sherwood Forest Fair. You had mentioned a medieval thing that you guys do. So I run a medieval theme park. And so we run for Saturdays and Sundays in March and April, and we have 177,000 guests in 17 days, over 10,000 people a day.

And we're all Robin Hood all the time, jousting and falconry and drinking meat and eating turkey late. So that's the core. And then I've got a Robin Hood summer camp and a mead business, which is fermented honey, an audio software company, an executive coaching business. And then I wrote a book that hit Amazon number one. It's about choosing the relationship between your passion and your work, which is different than saying your work and your passion have to be the same thing. I've got five different choices in the book, and it lays out a framework for you to pick the one that's right for you. And I'm just kind of running around the country talking mostly to university students about the book. So I know that's like the most complicated intro, anyone's probably ever done, because I just do a lot of stuff.

I've got three kids and nine horses and, you know, I'm living my best life. Okay, but I love that story because it shows that you can kind of do it all and have all these different areas of you, like, being fulfilled. As soon as you said me to business, I was like, okay, this guy is, well, actually, as soon as you said Robin Hood and Renaissance Fair, I was like, this guy is so cool. And I love having guests on who have like a change in their life and go. from doing like the corporate thing to the passion thing, especially when they did that, obviously not in their 20s and did it later in life and have become fulfilled through that. This is what really drew me into your book and into what you have to say. You have this really cool story.

You were a strategy consultant. You were the CEO of a billion dollar company. Now you have like what seems like the coolest profession ever. Part of that change, I'm sure, for you was also discovering these five. five career paths and probably doing a lot of deep work within yourself to figure this out. Can you tell people what these are, these five career paths you describe? Sure. And these are, I thought about these paths for years and years and years before putting them down into the book. So, you know, I had that little, you know, that little app called

Microsoft Note. Yeah. And I would like type in notes for decades, you know, I mean, probably like two decades, not three or four, but trying to kind of really congeal into what these paths are. So there are five paths, and the paths are different ways that passion and work can relate to each other. One is, of course, passion. And that's where your passion and your work are the same thing now. And I am typically talking to, you know, people in their 20s. And so that, you know, path makes sense if you have the capability and the desire to monetize a passion and your need for, you know,

financial security is relatively low. If all those things are true, then the passion now path makes sense for you. There's the independent path where your passion and your work don't have anything to do with one another. I think that tends to be the default path of humans where like the world will do that to you. But in my framework, there's a certain set of conditions where that's the right thing for you. And my belief is that if you choose the independent path and you say to yourself, my passion and my work are not going to be the same thing, then you're going to be more productive and content and fulfilled because you decided, as opposed to letting the world decide that for you.

There's the experiment path, which is typically for people who don't know what their passion is. Experiment just means open yourself up to things, try a bunch of stuff. It could be trying things in different geographies. I spent most of a year in Melbourne, by the way. It could be trying different functions and we're going to be. It could be trying business versus government versus non-profit. It could be learning a new language. It's whatever.

It's kind of exposing yourself to as much as possible to look for that spark. That's the experiment path. There's the money path, which, you know, we all know the, well, you did strategy consulting. So you knew the friends who went to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Like they had to have tons of money and they just weren't going to be able to calm down until that happened. And so if your need for financial security is that high, it may be. be the right thing for you to do to go on the money path. And then the last one is the balanced path, and that's what I did. And the balanced path is you go through a regular career, hopefully you love it,

and it's about building capabilities and wealth and reputation and network so that 5, 10, 15, 20 years later, you switch to the passion path and your probability of success is higher. So that's what I did. I did all my strategy consulting and running cell phone distribution companies. And so then when I turned over to the passion path 16 years ago, I had savings and I had capabilities and I had reputation and network and it made my chances of success higher. So I love this framework because I think everyone kind of fits somewhere. Do you think that like with the passion path as well, that could be like the volunteer path, I guess, like people who sacrifice, like. their whole mission in life is to do good for others. Is that like where that one kind of fits in?

Well, I think it's a lot of different things. So first off, I'll back up and say, I've got a pretty decent data set on people going through their framework and choosing the five paths. So I think I'm at like over 3,000 people have taken my little online tool. It takes like five minutes. And they choose. And what's beautiful about the result is that the top one is balanced. and it's at like 26%.

And the bottom one is Passion now, but it's at like 16. And so, you know, there's five paths. If the world were distributed equally, they would be 20% each. But they're like 16 to 26 or something. Like each of the five paths really has an audience. So I feel really good about the definitions.

To your question, though, about the Passion Pass, yeah, there's a lot going on there. So there are, you know, a lot of artists want to do that path where you know, I've got a friend named Roxanne, and she just wasn't going to be satisfied with the universe if she wasn't making music. Like, that was it. She's going to make music.

And she realized the probability of financial success is very low. And so she structured her life to be able to live frugally. But she lives this brilliant life. Like she will, she lives in America. And she will fly to Spain for, you know, a summer and put a hat in the street and play music and make 300 Euro on day one and day two she's a tourist and day three she puts a hat down and plays music and makes 200 euro and day four she's a tourist and she's done that over and over and over again but you know she's she's staying in a youth hostel for 20 euro a night not 200 or or more right

so you know if you're going to follow an arts path at a young age you might make it big financially but you probably won't and so you got to get your head around being fulfilled you know, without being rich. But there's all sorts of things on the path. When I talk to these university students all the time, and I'll find people who, they're just completely in love with cars. And if they get to sell cars for a living,

they're just over the moon. That's it. All they want to do is just sell cars and drive cars and play with cars and talk about cars. Like, okay. You know, there's a lot of jobs, you know, where you can think about cars all day. Yeah.

So it's a broader path than people would think. In the nonprofit, you hit that. There's a lot of people that do that. There's a lot of people drawn to public service that would be on the passion path. A lot of people in teaching are drawn to it by a genuine passion. So it could be a lot of things. Yeah. See, this is the thing about the passion path that I always say to people because I did the independent path for a long time

where I was like balancing this podcast and I worked as a consultant and I definitely burnt out. The thing with the passion path is, yeah, you're right. You have to be okay to make no money for probably a long time slash ever. And I've also found, and I don't know if you found this as well, do people who monetize their passion fall out of love with it for a little bit? Or do you think that this path is really the one that you just fall back in love with it time and time again? I remember when the podcast became my full-time job, you immediately love it less because there's all this stuff wrapped up in financial security.

Have you found that in some of the interviews? some of the people you've spoken to, yeah? Yes. This is something I talk about in my university talks and in the book that it's not unusual for a passion to dim when it becomes your livelihood. That being said, I think there are variations in there. And so the one I talk about a lot is painting. It seems to happen a lot that when your passion is painting and you've, you're bringing a vision of something beautiful to your mind to canvas with oil and then showing it to the world,

you're just completely and utterly in love with it. But when you're bringing someone else's vision to life on canvas with oil and you're getting paid for it and it has a deadline and they have critiques, it just sucks, right? It's just complete shit that you have to say to hate it. So painters moving from doing it for love to doing it for money, I think has a pretty bad success rate. And so, like, that's the trick about the passion path is you got to, you know, two different thoughts. One, you've got to dig deep on the question of, do I really, really want to do this for a living? You've got to dig deep on that.

And the second thing to think about is the passion is something that typically lasts forever or decades. And it animates you. It's kind of your reason for being. I talk a lot about Iki-Gai, which is a Japanese framework in the book. And it's something that really gives you energy all the time. And it can be distinguished from something that you really enjoy. It can be distinguished from something that is pleasurable. It can be distinguished for something you love, right?

It's something that is giving you energy and a driving force for hopefully ever. So you've got to dig deep on whether that's true. I personally really relate to that. People are always like, how can your passion be podcasting? And I'm like, no, because since I was a kid, like, this is the medium that I loved. Like, I have these visceral memories, like, these very intense memories of listening to podcasts with my mom, like, listening to this American life when I was like a child and being like, this is amazing. Like, I love what they do with this. And, yeah, it feels great that I found it so early.

what would you say to people who, because this is my thought on this. I feel like I have all these conversations obviously with people in their 20s. A lot of people want to find their passion and their purpose as a means to fulfill them. What would you say to people who are looking at their life and being like, wait, I just don't have that. I don't have it now. Maybe I've never had anything like that. Yeah, I'd say three things. If I can, say, I've got to take notes now, so I can remember all of my three things.

but I'm probably going to talk about digging, breadth, and work. Okay. So first, one of my favorite books in the last 10 years is Grit by Angela Duckworth. And one of the things she talked about in there is that passion is rarely, if ever, something you discover because you're sitting down and asking yourself the question, what am I passionate about? It just doesn't really work that way. It tends to be a spark of something that gets you excited. and then you start digging into it and you're like, oh, that's really interesting.

Oh, and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. So creating a passion in something tends to be a lot of work. It tends to be digging and going deeper and putting time into it, put an energy into it, getting to know people into it, reading about it. So passion is rarely a thunderstrike moment. It's usually a process to figure that out. So the first thing is,

that's my first suggestion. is don't expect to find the passion by sitting there asking yourself, looking at the blue sky, going, what am I passionate about? You can do that. And I've got a passion tree in my book to help you think about that. But just bear in mind, it's probably going to take some work. The second is breadth. And it's this idea that there's an incredible breadth of things that a human being can be passionate about. Podcast, Renaissance festivals. Like, this is going to be the weirdest thing you've ever heard. I think I've just fell in love. I think I'm passionate about analytical insight, meaning using math to solve a problem and coming up with something that no one else had come up with

or that's hard to come up with. That, I just love that. And here's the example that's just the most boring thing you can imagine. A long time ago, I built a supply curve, a demand curve for paraffin wax. I had a Harvard MBA and I'm making a lot of money and I was just jazzed by analytical insight. So Brett, you could be passionate about so many things. And I mentioned cars and music. I mean, it's really. It's okay. Like you can be passionate about a lot of stuff. So open yourself, open your mind. And then the third thing, you know, work. Yeah, you might have to work at it to figure it out. Yeah. Which is, you know, I love that book, Grit as well. And a study that I always tell people about is that more than intelligence, pure intelligence, more than emotional intelligence,

more than anything, grit is the biggest predictor of success in passion, in intellectual pursuit, in money, in improving your skill. They have done this huge study that looks at this and they are like, what makes the best people the best? Because, you know, Taylor Swift isn't the best vocalist. And, like, there are certain athletes who don't actually have the best physique for their sport, and yet they become incredibly successful because they just want to work for it. So I love that you mention that book. It's, like, definitely required reading, if you like, if you like the podcast.

Yeah, I love that book. Also, I love your Taylor Swift example because the one I use is Ed Sheeran. If you listen to his music at 16, it's kind of awful. And he just worked and worked and worked. And now he's one of the biggest stars in the world. Yeah. And he's written so many songs. And also, I feel like he talks a lot about how he doesn't have this face for like commercial music. And he kind of like makes fun of himself. And it's like, yeah, but the work and the care and the love for it definitely comes through and makes people believe in what you're doing as well.

I want to shift gears. We've talked about passion a lot because I think that's often the path that a lot of people in their 20s care about. But the one I'm particularly drawn to talking about here is the experiment path. Now, am I correct in saying this is the least popular in your research? I think that is right. I mean, I could pull it up. Yeah, I think that is in last place, but, you know, like I said, each of these paths really has an audience. Yeah.

And so the experiment path, it's basically to kind of paraphrase what you said before, this is like for people who are keen to just try different things and to, you know, be a woodworker one day, a tax accountant the next maybe, Birdwatcher, I'm thinking about my uncle who definitely like loves the experiment path. Why do you think, firstly, do you think this is an important path for people to be on their 20s and why do you think maybe people shy away from it? Yeah, one thing you said was, you know, felt drawn to experiment. I think in my mind, the experiment path is it's a choice you make and it typically is a choice you make because you don't know what your passion is. And so what, and you're going to go find it. And while you're going to find it, you're going to build skills,

you're going to meet new people, you're going to see new places, you're going to under understand new industries, right? And you're just going to go try stuff. And I think it's a beautiful thing to do for people in their 20s. And I'll tell you, my favorite example, Matthew Beconaghey, who roughly everyone in the world loves. He's here in Austin, where I am. He did, this is a really neat segue for me and you. So Matthew Beconaghani is from Austin, and he did his experiment path in Australia.

So when he was very young, like 18 years old, he went and spent a year in Australia. It's in his biography called Greenlights. Yeah. And he did like six fundamentally different jobs in Australia, just completely different stuff. Like, you know, law clerk and engine mechanic and lifeguard and I'm just making these things up. I don't remember what it were. And probably like fruit picking. Yeah.

He just did these completely different jobs. And the point was to just sort of. open your mind to all of the things that exist in this world. And that's, you know, something I, I'd like to, I'll plant this seat and maybe we'll have a separate conversation. I need to write an article about this. And this is something I feel really strongly about now because I have a 17-year-old daughter and she's applying to college nowish in the next, you know, one, two, three months. And what the universities are telling her is convince us that you know what you're passionate about and that you're going to major in it and that you're going to graduate

and that you're going to get a job in that field. And I just think that's such a disservice. How the hell is a 17-year-old supposed to know that? Some of them do, but I think most of them don't. And so now there's this industry of consultants who are teaching 17-year-olds how to pretend to universities that they know what they're passionate about. It's awful. And so I think what, because You know, by definition, at that age, you haven't seen all that. You don't know what strategy consulting is, right? Yeah, I mean, there's so many things in the world. Like, I like to look around me and think, you know, somebody specializes in how to make monitors or ice machines.

I mean, like, all these things. And you don't know that yet. You've got to go into the world and see all these things that are being done to find that spark of something you might love. And so, like, insisting that at 17, you're supposed to know. that I think is a real disservice to young people. It's something I hear about all the time where it's like what you're meant to decide. Like your brain is still a decade away from maturation. You haven't had any kind of really truly independent experiences.

You've probably only seen at 0.002% of the world. And they're like, cool, lock yourself into this path, strap yourself in. And if you're not happy, well, quitting that, that's a sign of failure. that's a sign that you don't have a willingness or you don't have grit or you don't have discipline. And my sister is also 17 and I was talking to her about it. And I was like, my best advice is to just choose whatever you care about the most right now. And then just take as many electives as possible, travel as much as possible. Like I went to university.

I did economics and politics. I really do not talk about that now. But it was just the experience of being around like-minded people who cared about things that also. really like push me to that point. This kind of segues into my next question, which is, why do you think people feel such a pressure, again, to choose something, to say this is who I am, and to maybe never walk away from it?

Is that something that you've seen a lot of people do maybe in later decades of their life? Sure. So just to wrap on that last question of the experiment path, I think it's much better advice to do what Matthew McConaughey did. Go to Australia and do six jobs for a year. Or like people who's called a gap year. Like go expose yourself to the world because you might find something else that you can be passionate about. You might find your passion.

You might just fall in love. I mean, whatever. You got to get out there, right? Yeah. So I'm a big fan of exposing yourself to the world, doing a gap year, all that kind of thing, as opposed to pretending that you know what you're passionate about. So why do people feel pressured to declare their passion early on? So from a university point of view, there is this really understandable but ultimately sad rationale.

So the universities in the United States, and it's probably not different in Australia, but I don't know. I know it's true here. They're very focused on rising up in the rankings. You know, like Forbes and U.S. New World Report, these magazines will rank universities. And those rankings are based on metrics. And the metrics include things like graduation rate or like percentage of people, I don't want to say kids, people who graduate in four or five years, percentage of people who have a job within three months after graduation, average starting salary. And it turns out for at least the best universities, if you pick up. those people who are 17 years old and they do know what they're passionate about they do

better on those metrics right they're more likely to graduate because they're studying something they like they're more likely to get a job because they're passionate about it and they're more likely to get paid well down the line because they're doing something you're passionate about so from a good university point of view you're creating this incentive for people to lie to you because what you really want those people, right? You want those 17-year-olds who know exactly what they want. That's who you want because they're going to drive your numbers up. So it's this really sort of perverse incentive that that's become the predominant message to very young people. Like you got to do what you're passionate about. And you don't. Like I think telling someone that their work and their passion

has to be the same thing is a mistake because it's not true. Right. Like for me, you know, I'm running a bunch of businesses. I would. probably be failing if I tried to do that at 20 years old. I had to do 20 years of, and it wasn't paying dues. I loved what I was doing. But I learned so much and I got financial security so that, you know, I started to follow my passion. I had a much higher probability of success because I had on these capabilities and I had the ability to fund scaling up some of my companies. So I think telling 20 somethings, you should work at what you're doing. you're passionate about now, I think it's a mistake. I think that's true for 20% of them.

I'm looking at it now. Literally you have the data. I'm looking at it right here. Yeah. And additionally, I just think that it's like, I always say this to people. Firstly, I loved what you just told me about the universities. I had no idea that that was the case. But anytime someone says you should be doing this, know that the should benefits them. Like, if someone is so hell bent on getting you to do something a certain way, there's an ulterior motive, always. And secondly, like, I get all of these questions from people being like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. You have so much time to figure it out. Like, you genuinely do. I love surrounding myself with examples of people who just pivot and shift later in life and who just do really cool things.

And it's like all it, it's this hindsight, right? All of these little, all these little things like actually contribute to this final goal. So we are going to take a short break here. But when we return, I do want to talk about what occurs when people are pursuing their ideal career path and how you can determine it. And why, again, people feel so much pressure to have it all figured out. So stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the third.

stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong, many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-Persent on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84's big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack.

So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person.

Join me, Keir Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way. Open your free Our Heart Radio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd

found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.

Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my next big line of questioning for you. So just as a little revision. for people who we did talk about it right at the top of the episode. The five career paths are independent, money, passion, experiment, and balanced.

How do people identify which one of these is right for them right now? Is there like a feeling? Is there a state of mind, a state of flow that they can kind of look out for? Well, I think choosing one of the five paths is about this framework that I have in my book. It sounds complicated, but it's a four by three matrix. But just to explore those two axes for a second, the y-axis is, can I monetize a passion? And I've got four answers to that. Yes now.

Yes, later. I don't know, which typically means I don't know if a passion is. And no, I cannot monetize the passion. And I like to joke that if your only passion is smoking pot and playing video games, the answer might be no. And then I've got this professor, friend of mine who says you can monetize both smoking pot and playing video games. I was going to say, uh, I know it's crazy these things. Being in the pot business and being in a video game business, but smoke and pot and

playing video games, that's really hard to monetize it. Yeah. And then that's one. And then the X axis is need for financial security, high, medium low. And I've got in the tool and in the book, there's like these 10, uh, questions and you score them one to 10 and you add it up. And it, it tells you whether you're high or medium or low. And so then the five paths are plotted on that matrix. So you figure out which square you're in, and it will say, this is the right path for you. And for most of them, there's a choice of one or two. And then it really narrows it down.

A couple of easy examples. If the answer to the question, can I monetize a passion? If the answer is yes now and your need for financial security is low, well, then the answer is the passion path. Right, why would you not, right? If you have the capability and the desire to monetize a passion now and you're not worried about money, go for it. Conversely, if your need for financial security is high and like you're just, you're not going to be comfortable until you got a financial cushion, that is going to push you toward the money path. If you don't know what your passion is, that's going to push you to the experiment path. And so you just you go through the framework and it'll help you, you know, pick one of the five. See, I like this.

This is the kind of stuff that my mind really enjoys is frameworks, data, and the evidence. And I feel like that's what a lot of people are looking for is like, I don't need to know exactly what I'm going to do, but I do want to know what kind of general steps I should take. I do have a question about the people who are really focused on the money path. Have you, is there some maybe personality aspect or maybe cultural things? that you've noticed for the people who are quite focused on gaining financial security or finding a lot of financial success in their work? Yeah, I think it's not a personality type from a psychology point of view. It's not like a Big Five thing or an MBTI thing.

I think it tends to be a, I think it's a family history thing. So I'll tell you the exemplar I use, who's a guy I respect a lot. He's a podcaster now. His name is Scott Galloway. Have you heard of Scott Galloway? You know what? I feel like I have. He's a big influencer and, you know, as a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, very, very popular.

And he's my exemplar for the money path. And I'll tell you how he got there. How he got there's three things. One is he grew up very poor. And he had this experience, and he was in the northern part of the U.S. I don't remember it's Wisconsin or Michigan or whatever. One of those places where it gets cold. It doesn't really get cold here in Texas.

And he lost his coat. And he was afraid to tell his mother that he lost his coat because he knew that the $30 to replace it would be really painful. She didn't tell her. So then he came home from school one day and it's 20 degrees outside. And he's shivering and red. And his mother's like, where's your coat, man? And he had to say that he lost it. And that kind of scarred him a little bit.

And then fast forward, you know, 15 years. He was in his 20s. And he was doing well, but his mother got cancer. And there were some treatments that they could have tried if they had money. And they didn't. And that scarred him again. And so he decided he had to be a rich. And so he went into investment banking.

and he went to Morgan Stanley and he did to get rich thing. And I, you know, one could argue, see, he wasn't on the balanced path because in the balanced path, you may be building wealth, but it's with an eye towards switching to the passion path later.

What he did, though, is he got so wealthy that he got off of the money path, and now I think he's on the passion path. He's a podcaster and an influencer, and he's trying to do some good for the world. but he was on the money path because that was not the goal. He kind of figured that out later. And I thought it's really important for people on the money path

is, in my opinion, there's two different views on high wealth. One view is more is better. And the other view is enough is enough. And I'm very convinced, and I should do this survey somehow, that the more is better people are much less happy. than the enough is enough people. Because the more is better people, they never stop from the money path.

They keep going. They're like hamsters on a wheel. They just can't get off. The enough is enough people, they can get off of the money path. Yeah. And they can switch to the passion path when they think, okay,

I mean, like Scott Galloway's net worth is over $100 million. You can't spend that much money. You have to wake up and try to spend that much money. Yeah. And so he's in enough as enough person. So now he's, you know, doing stuff that he's,

thinks it's good for the world. You know how you mentioned that you want to do a study on this? Do you know the term the hedonic treadmill or hedonic? Yeah. Yeah. That's like the rat in the wheel is buy something new and six months later or six weeks later it doesn't bring you happiness anymore. It's just normal. And they've done all these studies. Well, they haven't done a lot, but there's a particularly famous one about people who win the lottery. And people who get paralyzed that I've talked about on the podcast before. And you would expect, like, if I make all this money, my life is going to change. But then, of course, it actually goes back to a relatively stable level. And I would assume that people who are like, the more, more, more people,

their only hit is coming from gaining wealth. And so they're on this, like, hedonic treadmill of like, okay, when I get here, I'll be happy. And they think that they're an enough is enough person but they're not they are actually a more is more person be so interesting to see like the distinction between like the psychological drivers behind these people and like yeah because i yeah it would be fascinating to uh you know disaggregate people and wealthy people into more as better and enough is enough and then tests that against their happiness and their fulfillment and their productivity and their relationships with friends and family and their physical health because i would bet um i would bet that the enough is enough people score better on a lot of life outcomes,

the more is better people. Oh, yeah. Totally, because it's also like they can relax at some stage and they can give back. And we know that generosity and pro-social spending is like super empowering. Which kind of brings me to this next question that I have, which is specifically for people in their 20s. How do you recommend we handle comparison within our career part?

So seeing people make more money than us, seeing people know what their passion is, seeing people being able to monetize their passion, how do we manage that? You have to just not do it, right? You have to not do it. Your social comparison is useless. And so I'll give you two kind of thoughts. One is a good friend of mine as a professor of business strategy at Texas A&M. And his saying that he says all the time is, Today is a good day to be better than I was yesterday. He just says it all the time. And then I've got a buddy. He's one of the best full contact jousters in the world. It's his thing, right? It's his passion.

And he says, you know, I'm not competing with anyone. I'm competing to be better than I was yesterday. And so then here's what might be a tip. It comes from atomic habits by James Clear. And it's this mathematical reality that one, 0.0 raised to the 365th power is 1.0.1. So 1% more raised to the 365th power is 37. 37 versus 1. So if you can get 1% better every day, you're going to be 37 times better at the end of the year. And maybe 1% every day is too much, but get 1% better every month or every quarter.

or every year. And that's all you really need to do. You know, screw what everybody else is doing. Get 1% better. And I'm sure you've seen that work. I've seen that work. Like I'm running a half marathon on the weekend. I couldn't run 3Ks when I first, at the start of the year. And it's just also committing to being slow and steady and understanding, and if you're a frequent listener of the podcast, you will know this analogy.

comparison is not a ladder, it is a circle. We often assume that it's like, oh, there's someone who's better than me, and there's someone who's better than them, and there's someone at the very top who has everything. Actually, you're comparing yourself to Jill, who's comparing yourself to Joe, who's comparing himself to Michael, who's comparing himself to you. Every single person has something that someone else does not have,

and that person has something that you don't have. And so understanding that, like, you are comparing based on a figment of, of your insecurity, you imagine their life as being amazing because you aren't sure that your life is. That was like the real key that unlocked it for me where I was like, okay, this is me just trying to sabotage me using this person as like an excuse. I love it. I love what you're saying because this is all, this is all inside of you, right? So you're better at running a half marathon this month than you were last month. And I can see. the smile on your face, you're taking pride in getting better at your goal of a half marathon.

What could you be doing? You could be going, look at this person who can run a marathon every week. They're so cool and I'm so bad, right? I'm so envious because they're awesome. That would be completely useless to you. And think about how much happy you are as a human because your mindset is I'm better than it was last month and that's great. You know what? I'm going to get better next month too, and I'm going to achieve this goal. Like, that's a really positive and productive mindset. Speaking of advice, we have one, well, I have one final question for you. We ask every single listener this question, which is, what is one thing you wish you had known in your 20s, one piece of advice that has nothing to do with what we talked about today?

Take care of your body. And I'm going to give you the mathematical reason to take care of your body. So there's this idea of maximum heart rate, which is 220 minus your age. So if you're, the math is easy for 20 years old, your maximum heart rate is 200. So then there's all these correlations that are about to happen. If you can get your heart rate to 60% of maximum, at least 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, that's the independent variable. And you can do that on anything, but 60% of maximum heart rate, which would be 120 beats per minute if you're 20 years old, at least 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week. Here come the correlations. negatively correlated with heart disease, which is the number one killer,

negatively correlated with cancer, which is the number two killer, negatively correlated with anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts. Positively correlated correlated with longevity, happiness, IQ, sex appeal, is negatively correlated with all the worst things and positively correlated with all the best things. I mean, think about happiness, longevity, and IQ, you, what the hell else do you want? Yeah.

And so when I make this impassioned plea to students, I'm like, there is not a better case for a human being to do anything in this life than that case I just made you. It is not possible to make a better case than that. So please find that thing that you can do with your body. And at my age, a brisk walk will do it, right? Yeah. Find that thing. It might be tennis or swimming or weightlifting or it could do anything, right?

Whatever it is, find that thing. Well, I love that advice. I think that's like, no one's ever given it before either. So that's always a good thing. I love it. And I just want to thank you again for coming on. This conversation has honestly been so fun for me, which is always like a good way to end interviews. And I just love what you're putting out into the world.

So yeah, I want to say a big thank you. Where can people find you as well? They can finally at georgeampling.com. Cool. And I'm going to leave a link in the description for George's book. I know a lot of psychology students do listen to the podcast. If you are interested in organizational psychology specifically, I think this is a good companion, especially if you want to practice and you want to practice with people who are in emerging

adulthood. Great. Great example of a book for that. So again, George, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who has listened this far. If you have made it this far, leave in the course. comment below what you think your current career path is. Is it independent money, passion, experiment, or balanced? Let's see if we can like match George's numbers here and match his,

um, his statistics. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, leave a five star review, make sure you are following along and following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast. It's December guest month on the podcast. So we have some cool other guests coming in. Make sure that you are following us to see who they are. And until next time, stay safe. Be kind. Be gentle to your and we all talk very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist

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