The Resilient Mind - Change Everything: From Who You’ve Been to Who You’re Meant to Be - Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author whose work bridges the gap between mindset and massive growth. His books have sold millions worldwide, empowering entrepreneurs to rewire their identity and scale with purpose.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with The Icons by Motiversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY1xLtbvvzA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Change Everything with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. And I thought we'd start on happiness because I was struck by a study I came across recently that said, in the studies that ask people about happiness over time, it seems like happiness levels are just about an all-time low. How do we help people become happier? How I understand happiness is that a person's experience in the present is largely shaped by

their relationship with their past and their relationship with their future. That's really how I see it as a positive psychologist, I guess you could say. And so from my view, happiness in the present is about having an increasingly purposeful, useful past, which is something you develop mastery on, something you get better and better at, I guess you could say, utilizing your past, reframing it, also redeveloping your relationship with your past self and people in your past, as well as the relationship you have with your own future self, having a sense of purpose, having a sense of clarity, and utilizing that to make better decisions in the present, build confidence, have a sense of meaning similar to what Victor Frankel would

have said, you know, 70 years ago. So, I mean, it's really about developing mastery of those two things, developing mastery over your own past, continually making it better, more useful, something you're grateful for no matter what it was, no matter how traumatic or disappointing, whatever it is, and then getting clear and clear and more emotionally connected to your future self and ultimately operating from that. And so you bring up this idea of future self, an area that you focus on. Can you help me understand what future self means? Yeah, absolutely.

So we all, I guess the easiest way to start is identity. So identity is fundamentally two things. It's the story you have for yourself. It's a narrative, but it's not a singular narrative. It's the narrative you have of your past, present, and your future. and then it's the, and then secondarily it's your standards, which is essentially your floor and your ceiling. And so the story that we all have of our, well, I guess one way of looking at it is that we all have what would be considered a future. The typical way of having a future that is what would be

considered by many a default future. So our brain is a prediction machine. Our brain's constantly making predictions or what psychologists would call prospects, prospection. We have tons of different prospects for our future. And the default future is really the future that is most expected, most predicted, even if it's the one that's not the most wanted. And so the goal of future self is to begin taking stock on that future, to begin thinking about it. A lot of research shows that even if, say, I asked you, you know, are you the exact same person you were 10 years ago? We went back to 2013. We're having this conversation in 2023. So if you went back to September of 2013 and really thought about who you were, what your life was like, what you were thinking about,

even thinking about, you know, what your goals were, your values, your friends, your interests, you could probably see a massive change. So even after people do that, if we were to ask, well, who are you going to be in 10 years from now? Most people haven't really thought about it. And so most people assume that who they are in the present is going to, for the most part, be the same person they are in the future. And Daniel Gilbert, who's a Harvard psychologist, has been studying this for decades, attributes that mostly just to a lack of imagination, just that most people are not simply thinking about it. And so because they're not thinking about it, they just push the present into the future. From my perspective, it's a lot more useful

to imagine the future and then pull the future into the present. So let the future dictate what you do in the present rather than let the present dictate how you see the future. And it's a skill. It's honestly a skill. Developing imagination for your future self, starting to build the connection with that identity, and then honestly starting to operate from that identity. It's a skill that people can develop and that people do develop. Yeah, yeah. It sounds different than goals. I mean, a lot of people would have a dream or a goal. Obviously, they're connected, but what's the difference between kind of really imagining yourself in the future versus having a goal? I think that imagining your future self is what can inform your goals. And so, like, as an example, when I was a graduate

student, I really wanted to be a professional author. I saw that as something I wanted to do, and so that informed the goals I set, such as I want to get a book deal, which goal subsequently, you know, allowed me to go and start blogging online and learning how to develop an audience so that I actually could get that book deal. So my future self, the person I wanted to be thinking about my identity and goals are highly correlated. And so, yeah, I think that that's what informs your goals, is your future self. It's also what ultimately allows them to be accomplished if you study deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is essentially getting connected to your future self and practicing as your future self.

Obviously, there's a lot of mechanics with the deliberate practice, but it's essentially operate, when it's done well, you're connected to the future self. You're even operating as much as you can through that lens. So as an example, when I was blogging online,

I was very connected to the idea of my future self being a professional author, having big book deals. And so that was the identity that I would tap into when I would start blogging online, even as a beginner blogger. And I think that it was very contributory. could say to my fast growth. Wow. So what do you mean by tapping into? Like, does that mean,

like, as you sit down at the computer, you're envisioning you in a certain amount of time? Like, what do you mean tapping in? I mean, you've probably heard of the framework. There's a, there's a framework of B, then, do, then have. Have you heard of that framework? No. Okay, okay. So I'll take you through two different frameworks. One is, you know, to even think about your future stuff, you have to think about it, right? So that's the imagination piece. Albert Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. This is what Daniel Gilbert said. Most people just don't think about their future self. So the first step is thinking about it. And honestly, a lot of research from different scholars talking about the idea of vividness. You do want to get that future self

to be more vivid. From my view, I think about my future self quite long term, but also much more like saying the next like three years. Who I'm going to be in three years? Obviously with a growth mindset, you're a lot more connected to or even identified by your future self than a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset would be you're overly identified with who you are today or even who you were in the past. Growth mindset means you're not overly identified with who you are today. You know that who you are is flexible. So you're getting really, really connected with who you could be in the future, believing that your future self could be massively more capable, more skilled, more confident, etc.

So I guess the two models I would give you is one is you want to go from thinking to feeling to knowing. Going from thinking, and there's a lot of research as well on the idea of getting emotionally connected to your future self. And so you want to think about it, but ultimately you want to get to a place of knowing your future self. having a friendship with your future self, beginning to invest in your future self. For me, reaching a place of acceptance, acceptance, commitment, even gratitude, appreciation, and then you get to the place of knowing where that's like, that's where I would say you're kind of at a place of confidence. You already, you reach a place of knowing that that's who you are now, even if there's not

that much evidence. If you're building that evidence, you start to know that that's the direction you're going. You start to talk more about it. You're not that afraid of it. And so, like, you just, you're saying, what, I would say that, Knowing is also really connected with commitment where, like, you're now, like, going to find the way. This fits, you know, with Frankel as well. Victor Frankel and Mansrich for meaning where he says, when the Y is strong enough, you know, you can bear anyhow, but also when the Y is strong enough, you will find the how.

So this fits with hope and what would be considered pathways thinking that once you get really committed, you have that place of knowing. And so that's one of the models. I'll tell you the other one in a second after you share your thoughts on this. Yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm curious. You shared an example of Mr. Beast in the opening of... I did. Yeah, yeah. of one of your recent books. And you're talking about that he in 2017, correct me if I'm wrong.

15. 2015. Okay, so he filmed four different videos. Yep. He was 17 years old. Okay, yeah, tell me the story, and why do you think that was so powerful for him? So, yeah.

So Mr. Beast, obviously, we most people know who he is these days. If you don't know who he is, he's pretty much the biggest person on the Internet. But he's young. I think he's, so if I understand properly, he was 17 years old. in 2015. So what does that make him today? He's somewhere like 24, 24 years old. But basically

what happened was, and I don't know the exact date, I actually became aware of him in like 2019, 2020, and I was watching his videos. I just thought he was fascinating. But what I saw in 2020, and I think it was October now that I think about it, was a video and it had a picture of him. And it was like an old picture of him from five years before. It didn't look like his other videos because his videos are like very well polished. Like this was like a really like sloppy picture for the thumbnail and stuff like that. And it was him saying, like, waving. And it said, hi, me in five years. And it's like two minutes long. So I click on it and I'm like, this is interesting. And it's an old video where he's 17 years old and it's back in 2015. So this is

five years ago. And he's basically saying, you know, hey, this is me in 2015. I'm filming a video talking to my future self five years into the future. So hey, future me. And he's basically just talking to his future self very publicly. And ultimately, if you go back, you can see that he actually, that same night, filmed multiple other videos. So basically what happened was is that night, he even says in the first video that he was skipping a history test to do this. And he was, I think he had been doing YouTube for quite some time, actually, before that. I think it was multiple years he had been doing YouTube.

I think he started around age 12, so he'd been doing it like five years, but honestly he had not made enormous progress. But that night, for one reason or another, he decided to film four YouTube videos, essentially just talking to his future self. One of them was for six months into the future, and he was very direct about where he wanted his future self to be six months into the future. Then he did a year into the future,

then he did five years, and then he did 10. So his 10-year one isn't even out yet. But basically, in the sixth month one, he was just, and it is interesting to the different timeframes because when you're thinking about your future self six months from now, it's a different conversation than if it's five years into the future, and you could even see that in his conversations with himself.

I liked it because what he ultimately did was he had these various conversations about two minutes each, and then he published them all onto his YouTube channel but didn't set them to go live. He basically set them to go live at the associated time frame. So the six-month one came out six months. He just set it to go live six months into the future. The other one one year, five years. And so he actually had forgotten that he had filmed that. So in 2020, when the video came out, his YouTube channel had like 45 million subscribers,

and he had forgotten that he had filmed it. In the video, he said he was like heavily committed that he would become a professional YouTuber by five years into the future and that he would have a million subscribers. And he was kind of desperately talking to his future self. He's like, I better have a million subscribers and stuff like that. But everyone was kind of humbled who was watching the, watching the video and posting the comments because he was like 45 million subscribers. By that point, he was massive. And he was a, you could see that he was not the same person. And so I think it was just a beautiful time capsule to see like who he was and just to see how

dramatic the change was over that five-year period of time. One of the things that I did when I was very heavily studying him was you really can see if you go back to when he filmed those videos and then the videos like shortly after, you can see a difference. From my view, you can see like an extreme difference in his commitment. He made those videos for a reason. Like he was getting more and more committed to his goal. He'd been doing it for four or five years, but now he's being more public with it. He's getting a lot more thoughtful. And ultimately, like, his video started changing. And he did surpass his six-month goals. And then by the time his year-long video came out, he was way past where he projected himself to be. And then his growth curve just

was massively exponential from there. I'm curious about the second framework, but is that like a good example for someone who's trying to understand future self but then go to action with it? Like, is that the kind of thing that people would do where they time capsule themselves or like what are the type of activities people do to actually get into this practice? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a really good one because that's essentially a letter to his future self. It's just a, it's like a vocal letter and it's filmed and it's public, which adds so many additional elements rather than doing it written in private, which is the more typical. Often people will write a letter to their future selves. Me and my wife even did this,

where basically a year into our marriage, we decided to make a time capsule. So we were a year into our marriage and we made a time capsule for our future selves at our 10-year wedding anniversary, which happened to be last year. And so we opened that time capsule. And I even forgot what was in it. And so we actually filmed videos, stuck them in like stuck them on flash or put them in a mason jar, wrote letters to each other, saying, like, so I wrote a letter to my wife nine years into the future. She wrote a letter to me saying, you know, whatever, whatever she wanted to say. We also, like, had a shared document with our goals and individual documents with our goals.

And so, like, that's an example. A lot of times in the research, there's a lot of research that basically says it's actually a lot more effective rather than, like, writing to your future self to actually get into the mindset of your future self and write a letter from your future self to you. Oh, interesting. And I have friends who do this every year where, like, say on January 1st, rather than filming a video saying where they want to be a year in the future, they'll actually film a video as their future self a year ahead and say, this is what happened. And so they're kind of speaking from the future back. And I do that regularly where I'll sit in my journal.

It could be three years in the future. And I'll literally think about the context of my future self. Think about where I want to be. And I will then write a letter as my future self. to me, who would be my future selves past self, three years, you know. So I'm speaking, say, today is sometime in September of 2023. So if I want to do this myself, I could, you know, back at the hotel or back at my house, just sit in journal for, I really don't think it needs to take that long. Like, you could just take 10 or 15 minutes. It's, it's really a skill. I think that

the past and the future are skills. You get good at, like, drafting them. So you get better and better at being flexible. There's a huge concept in psychology called psychological flexibility. And so a lot of this has to do with your ability to frame, reframe, see it from a different angle, not be so dogmatic about one angle or one view. So I can know, for example, that my view of even today is going to change and that in a week from now I'll have different perspectives. And so I don't need to be so clingy, I guess you could say, to one angle. But also that same thing can be true of my future self. And so I think you become a lot more flexible. less rigid about, you know, needing to do it right. I can do it as a draft, just like I would

draft a blog post. And so I can get into the mindset, really think about my future self, think about where I want to be, and play with it. I could play with my imagination, you know, back to Einstein. And then I can just, if I want to, get into the mindset and just write myself a letter, talking to my past self back in 2023, it being 2026, and just say, here's where I'm at. Here's what I advise to you, Ben, or here's the things that happen. Here are the big inflection points. I mean, you can just honestly practice and you can get good at it. And it's really just a tool for insight. The future in the past are just tools for effectively operating in the present. I mean, it's kind of coming to mind now when you're talking about your future self, writing a letter

to you. I almost had to stop and wrap my head around this. And I read it in your book, Victor Frankel saying, imagine you're already in the future. Imagine you've already lived your life. and this moment is in the past. Yep. And you're about to make the mistakes you did then. I found that framing so interesting. Hopefully I'm getting it right. You are, yeah.

That's exactly what Frankel said. Yeah. And so it's that idea of really looking backwards as opposed to projecting forward has more power in this psychology. Yeah, and I think that when you are less dogmatic about your current view of the past, so how I view it is is that my past is a draft.

And really, that's how most, that's how most psychologists would view it. Actually not most, but that's how some psychologists would view it is, is that the past is actually a representation of who I am now, rather than who I am now is a representation of my past. So I'll say that again. Basically, my own past... I want to write this down, because I feel like that just blew my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, so when you're thinking about neuroscience, and you're even just thinking about memory in general, memory is always a reconstruction in the present. So if I was to think right now about last week, that would be different than if I was thinking about it a week from now.

And a week from now, I'll be slightly different. I'll be in a different context. And so if I'm thinking back a few weeks, I'm going to be in a different place. And so the main thing is that who you are in the present is basically what is creating the past. Obviously, the past influences who you are in the present. It's kind of a circular. But memory is always a reconstruction in the present.

And one of my favorite psychologists, he wrote a book called Time and Psychological Explanation. His name's Brent's Life, but he said that it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. And so what I take from that and what I've learned from that is that who I am in the present, it's largely up to me what I do with my past, how I frame it, whether I utilize it or whether I believe it's driving me. And I've learned more and more to use my past as a tool,

but also to turn it into an asset where I create more and more value from it, where I can learn more and more from it. The only reason I bring this up now is because I can, I can right here, you know, with you, think back on just the last 12 months. And I can think about my decisions. I can think about what went well, what could have gone differently. I can analyze my decisions differently because I can have hindsight. And so what Frankel's inviting you to do is not only get good at that, but to get good at being in the future. And rather than moving forward in time, you're letting the future look backward in time so that you don't have to make needless errors. I mean, certainly we will all continue to, you know, fumble our way forward, but you can do it

with a lot more thought, a lot more insight. And I apply this quite regularly. I even share in that book how I do it to be a lot more present with my children, just thinking about, you know, do I really want to, do I really want to have this argument with my son? Like, is this really going to be worth it in a week from now? Is this something that's been damaging or how would my future self want me to handle this? Even in an hour from now, what would be this, what would my future self wish I had done in this situation? And so it just allows you to think about it and be more thoughtful rather than reactive. It's interesting because when I was reading your book on future self, books on future self, one of the things that came to mind is this idea that, yeah,

I love this idea, but economists would also say, you know, people are really trapped by their socioeconomic realities. True. And so, you know, if you think about the average, not the average, but, you know, 40-some percent of Americans, if they get a $1,000 bill, don't know where that money comes from. So it's this, you know, grandiose idea to imagine your future self, but you're so locked in the present. And so it feels like the way you're helping people reframe their current experience and understand. understand their past differently allows them to project forward? Is that a fair way to see it? Or how would you, how would you offer advice to somebody who feels like this all sounds cool, Dr. Benjamin, but I'm literally locked in the moment right now. And I don't have a lot of

headspace or slack in my life to do anything otherwise. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I have six kids. Life can be busy. You know what I mean? It's easy to get caught in the president. Honestly, that's the, that's the bias we actually all have. So there's There's a lot of research from Dr. Hal Herschfield. He has studied the future self concept or this idea for 20 years. And it's most common, honestly, for us to downplay our future selves, for us to push the future self off and to downplay how they will feel. So how Herschfield looks like that, how he looks at that is it's a lack of empathy for your own future self. And so instead, we put a magnifying glass on our current situation, our current emotions. and even if I'm bored, you know, I'm sitting at work, I may be so bored that I magnify that

emotion and I make it a bigger deal than it needs to be, and then I'll go and do something to distract myself, right, which may be useful or maybe actually very negative for myself even in 10, 20 minutes. And so it's actually the bias to overly infatuate on our present self. And the world can be this way too. I mean, the internet is very distracting. All sorts of things are seeking to give us immediate rewards. And so not only do we have a bias towards immediate rewards, but we also just, we're more, I guess you could just say we overly value our current emotions and we tend to not worry so much about our future self. And so basically to, one thought I will say to this person that you're describing is, it's very common to get absorbed in the present and to think that

the present is all that matters rather than to kind of thoughtfully look at it, maybe get in touch. and getting in touch with your future self is very similar to just honestly meditation. It's not the same as meditation, but it could be a form of meditation. And so I would argue if you're not taking time regularly, even to just sit and just like think for even like five or ten minutes, but like everything feels too overwhelming, then you're, from my view, you're definitely like probably off course. And like, so getting connected to the future self, a lot of it's just really about like, am I on the right track?

Am I on a track I want to be on? do I like this? It's really a way of having conversations with yourself. It's very in line with just the whole framework of important versus urgent, right? And so it's like if everything feels urgent and you're not connected to what's important, then you're probably not making massive strides forward. You're probably on autopilot. You're probably on the hamster wheel. So I think it's extremely important, even if you feel stressed, even if you feel busy, even if you feel like you don't have those five minutes to just go and sit and sit in your journal and just write all the things you should. You probably need that more than anyone. But you never reach a point

when you don't need that. You never reach a point when you don't need those 10 minutes. It's a continuous process of clarity and of making progress and of learning to prioritize and learning self-awareness. And so we all need it. We can all get overly absorbed in the present by the stresses of it and then downplay our future. So I think it's very common. Yeah, yeah. I've just jotting this down, but I want to ask in a moment about trauma, because I feel like it adds a bit of a different piece to it. But two things are coming in mind right now is, you know, if someone had five minutes and wanted to start this, like they're bought in, what would somebody do? I've got five minutes my day. That's all I got. What would be the

practice that I get into? I would honestly actually start. If you only are going to give yourself five minutes, period, flat, actually do it at night. night. So do it at night. And if you would or could, so research shows that 90% of people procrastinate sleep by just mindless scrolling. And so they're literally procrastinating sleep and literally putting their future self in a hole the next morning because of mindless consumption. So, and we all, you know, that's very common. And so it's, in my view, what you do in the last hour of your day is the most potent form of habit formation. So like what we do at night, right before we sleep is going to inform our habits

way more than any other period of the day. And so a lot of huge, huge amount of research on this, that if you just simply, at the end of your day, pull out your journal and just write down three things from that day that you are grateful for. It's so basic, but it's shown dramatically to increase happiness and to increase sleep quality.

It just gets things down, but also if you just give yourself three to five minutes, a lot of times because people are not practiced at this, and I have different iterations of this. I have, in my mind, a lot deeper forms of reflection than just simply writing what you're grateful for. But this is like, honestly, just a start because it trains people to look back at the day and to think about it. And to just simply say, you know, the initial reaction, if I asked my three, you know, my older three kids who are teenagers, what do you, what do you happy about from the day? Or what are you grateful for?

Sometimes just say literally nothing. And it's like, well, then think about it. What happened today? What could you be grateful for? And so by actually thinking about it and pondering it, they'll say, well, actually, you know, that person at work was super nice to me. I'm grateful for that. So now they're starting to take ownership of their past. They're starting to create the frame. They're starting to actually pull usefulness from it. And so they can then think, well, today actually was pretty great. Or there was components of today that were all right. And so just by simply doing that, that's a great start. My view is, is you can take it a step further. Because that would be

that would be kind of providing meeting or kind of looking back and reshaping how you're interpreting now. That's what you're doing. Reflection. You are shaping the meaning of the past in the present, in your journal. And you're now framing the day as useful.

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. And so I think that idea of gratitude journals makes sense. I'm curious how it connects to the future self part because reflection is a different mechanism than looking forward. So then what's that piece look like?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. Well, so here's how I do it. I actually don't do it in that form, but that's like honestly basic. Like if people really, if people really want to get started, they only have five minutes and they're not. So how I do it is, and this is still starting with the night. How I do it is at the end of the day, I think, how am I different from who I was when I woke up?

The reason this is super important, I know that this is not future self. This is me, again, re-relating to my past self, is that if I thought about it, just like with thinking about those three gratitudes, if I actually think about it, and I say, how am I a different person than I was this morning when I woke up?

The initial reaction would be I'm not. It's only been like 12 hours. How could I be different? But if I really think about it, what do I now know that I didn't know before? What experiences have I had that my prior self hadn't had when I had just woken up? And if I actually think about it, just like gratitude, I'm creating the frame of my past. I actually can and do see that I am different than my past self, even 12, 13 hours ago, or the night before 24 hours ago. and by actually focusing on that, and by appreciating that, I now acknowledge that I've changed,

which increases my psychological flexibility. It allows me to see that I am not the same person, that I am growing, that I am evolving, which is really useful for then getting skillful, you know, thinking of your future self as a different person. If I'm different from who I was 24 hours from now, then it's likely that my future self-could be different in 24 hours in positive, meaningful, and even self-directed ways. And so I just think that it's really, mastery of the past is very powerful for also developing mastery of your future. So I don't know if you wanted to note that. I'm very happy to share starter points on getting connected to the future self. But I just think that it's incredibly

useful to recognize the differences between your current and your past self and also very useful to be explicit about that. And by writing it down, that's actually part of the integration process. It actually creates change that would not have been there if you hadn't done that process. If I didn't do that at night, then there are certain changes that would not have occurred because I didn't think about it and because I didn't frame it and because I didn't make it explicit say, oh, here's how I'm different from my past self. Maybe I was a lot more thoughtful in this conversation, right, than maybe I would have been a week ago or even than I was yesterday. And so by writing it down, I've now made that change more potent than it would have been had I not

done that. And so I think that that's really powerful. I would say one other really important thing here is in recognizing that I'm not my past self, whether it's 24 hours ago or whether it's 10 months ago, I have nothing but empathy for my past self. I'm not carrying around a past self that I'm angry at. I don't have any regrets because I'm not the same person as my past. They were operating from a different framework. And so the future self is the same. My future self is insanely empathetic towards my current self. My future self has way more wisdom, perspective, context than I do. And so it allows me a lot of freedom to make mistakes, which is a huge aspect of having a growth mindset. Fixed mindset means you're afraid of making mistakes, afraid of trying

new things, afraid of, you know, being wrong. I mean, a fixed mindset means that you really are dogmatic and fragile, and so you don't want to be wrong. Whereas if I know that my future self has better perspectives, then I'm okay making mistakes. I'm okay trying new things. I think people need to hear that. I think that's really powerful. I think people need a way to have empathy towards their past self. Oh, that's

huge. Yeah, there's no value in not. And I think that, again, as all things, it's a skill, but you can have empathy towards your past, off, present self, and your future self. And what Daniel Gilbert would say is that your present self is as present

as fleeting as the present moment. And so, like, I know that I'm constantly in a state of change, especially if I'm seeking to be, and if I'm constantly connected with my future self, yet also constantly reframing the meaning of my past. But, yeah, I think that it's very, it's very freeing to, to not, I'm not saying you're letting your pass off off the hook, but what you're doing is, is you're acknowledging that they were operating from a different place. And it fits with having empathy, it fits with having love, it fits with having compassion. You can also apply this to other people. You know, someone who may have hurt you or someone who have let you down to apply the same things, that they're not the same

person. And if you were to actually have a conversation with them about it and get some understanding from their shoes, you would see things differently. So can we dig into that a bit deeper? Like, I'm curious on the trauma side. So I just came across this stat that 60% of Americans will have trauma in their life and have PTSD. And so to me, that's not just, I mean, part of it's having empathy for your past self, there's a moment or something locked in time or a trigger that's just causing you to keep getting pulled back there. How could this be applied to help somebody get unlocked from something that feels very traumatic in that way? Yeah. Obviously, you know, you're not given the toolkit when you're born to having what I'm calling psychological flexibility. This is a really high bar of what would be called emotional intelligence.

But the more emotionally intelligent you get, again, the less dogmatic you see a certain thing. And so, from my view, trauma is typically, certainly it was an insanely unexpected, painful emotional experience that is continuing to impact you now. Even if you're long away from the experience, if the trauma is still impacting you, then you're still framing it such that it's still actually happening, which is really interesting. There is a lot of research that even shows, obviously having a conversation about it with someone is useful. Further research showing if you can just think about what you learned from it. So that's a big part of push-traumatic growth.

I'm a lot more aggressive about it, frankly. I'm regularly seeking to turn it into benefits as fast as possible, which is if it's along the lines of anti-fragile versus fragile. So like anti-fragile is a framework created by Nassin. to Leb, but it's really about how no matter what happens to you, whether you're at a peak or in a valley, whatever, if it's something negative, you're as soon as possible turning it into benefits, turning it into gains would be the language that we used. Anti-fragile, is what it's called. Oh, yeah. Anti-fragile means it's the opposite of fragile. So fragile means if something negative

happens, you know, you're worse off as a result. It creates more entropy into the future. And that's also a view where the past is driving the present. But if you recognize it's actually the present that drives the past. And I'm talking purely in the future. And I'm talking purely in the future. psychological terms. That it's the presence. It drives the meaning of the past. Deeply. Yeah. It drives the framing of the past, the context, which determines the content, the angle. And so if I know that, even if I, you know, this is not as traumatic as we're talking about, where we're talking about PTSD, although, you know, I've gone through extreme trauma, adopted three, you know, kids went through the foster system who they've had trauma.

But even if I have a conversation, say, with my 15-year-old son, and it just doesn't go well. Like, honestly, I don't handle it well. I have a choice. Like, I either can reshape it, reshape the meaning of that conversation, turn into something beneficial, turn into learning and growth, or just let it be. And if I don't do anything about it, then the past is going to dictate the present, rather than the present dictating the past. And so, from my standpoint, it's just very useful for me to know that either

on a time frame. So let me just say, like, from here to the last year, or specific events. I have a lot of control over what those mean. I have a lot of control over framing what it means. What does my last year mean? What was the good of it? What was, you know, do I want to look at it from a positive or from a negative, but also specific events? My parents getting divorced, right? Me being in a car crash that almost kills my mom, right? I can think on certain events, and I can say, well, there's one of two ways. Either my present is shaping it. And, or it's shaping my present. And usually with trauma, the past is still determining the present. There isn't a lot of proactive in the present taking control, approaching it, and wanting to do

something about it. You have, you can't, it's not going to change in a positive way by chance. It literally has to by choice. You have to decide. You have to decide, I'm going to do something about this. I'm going to learn from this. I'm not going to keep seeing it the same way. You say that again. I think that that's always true with trauma. So it's not going to happen by chance. No, and sometimes the tools are above your pay grade. I get that.

But that's also part of choice is saying, I may not have the tools to do this. That fits with Frankel directly as well, which is when the Y is strong enough. Although he would quote Nietzsche saying, when the Y is strong enough, you can bear anyhow. But for me, I'm more interested in the research on Hope that talks about pathway thinking,

when the Y is strong enough, you will find the how. And often that means also, finding the who, finding people who can give you the tools, the resources. And so, yeah, if you're ready, you know, and it takes time, you know, to get to that place of commitment, but it is a place of choice. You have to choose to change it. You have to choose to change what it means, choose to change from it so that you're not the same person as the one who experienced it. You know, it could be the next morning. I'm not the same person who had the same conversation with my son where I was actually not being very empathetic where I was listening.

I'm choosing to be different. And I'm choosing to go and talk to him about it and say, you know, yesterday I was totally off. You know what I mean? I was not listening. I'm really sorry about that. That is literally reshaping the meaning of that conversation. And then saying like, you know, can we try that again? Like I want to try again on that. I could have done better there. Or I just wasn't, I wasn't paying attention to you. I'm really sorry. Now that's reforming what we think about that conversation. Obviously, that's not to the extent of the extreme forms of PTSD we're talking about. But I think you do have to go back. I mean, you have to. You have to approach it. There's either approach mindset or avoid mindset. You're either approaching it or you're avoiding it.

Everything is approach or avoid it. And at some point, you have to directly approach it and decide I'm going to do something different. I'm going to look at this different. Everything is approach to avoid. Wow. Everything is approach or avoid. I've got, I feel like I've got so many questions forming, but you mentioned. Go ahead and throw it. I mean, we can work. The second framework you wanted to bring up, and so I just want to circle back. I mean, I don't know if it's directly useful anymore. I think that I just want to emphasize really quickly we're saying that the past is either an asset or it's a liability.

And if it's an asset, that means it's something that's continuing to pay you more and more. You believe that the present and future are better as a result. Because of that experience, you're continuing to get kind of interest in the present and future, whereas if it's a liability, you believe it's continuing to drain your present and future. And that is all based on how you're choosing to frame it, what you're choosing to do with it. And in the beginning, you may not feel like you have choice in the matter. Like, how could you see it any different? And that's like the ability to get to the point where you start to try.

And you start to believe that it's possible. And then you start to work on it, maybe even start to get help in looking at it from a different angle, starting to learn from it, starting to think that it was something useful. Even if you find reasons, just like finding things you're grateful for at the end of the day, you've got to actually exert some creativity on it. You have to actually like, it is creativity, just as much as creativity towards your future. Because I think that those were my questions. Really, yeah, I had a lot of questions, but where I was kind of hung up coming into the conversation

was the power of the past. And so what's been interesting in this conversation is that it's almost like building your muscle by working on your past is a big part of what allows you to have. have that kind of flexible psychology for the future. I mean, it feels like there's been a lot of discussion about the past, almost to give you that muscle to now get into that place where you can start to shape things differently. And I think it's continuous. It's not like you just master the past and spend five years on that so that we can now focus on the future. I feel like it's daily. I'm getting more and more connected from my future self and operating from that filter,

but I'm also refiltering my past. I'm refiltering or reframing. So I do it daily. And I think you can practice, you know, empathy towards your pass-off. Practice, looking at an event that you consider traumatic and asking what good could have come from this or what good has come from this. Just try it. Remember, it's a draft. Tomorrow, maybe you'll have a little bit more space to grab a little bit more value from it if you want to. And your future self will see it from a different perspective. You brought up this term before gap mentality that I'd never heard it before. Can you give me a sense of what gap mentality means? Yeah, so this is a framework that was initially created by Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan being a guy that I wrote three books with. He's

an entrepreneurial coach who's been coaching entrepreneurs for 50 years. He's just very good at creating frameworks. For me, I liked his framework of the gap in the game because it fits so much with all the stuff we're just talking about right now, which is a lot of the core components of future self. I'm sorry, a lot of the core components of positive psychology. But basically the gap and the gain framework in simple terms is, and he works directly with high achievers. but I feel like it's relevant for all people. But he does work specifically with really successful entrepreneurs and what he found in just observing them.

He didn't do any research or dig into the literature, but he was just observing his clients who, you know, paying them lots of money and were high achieving entrepreneurs, but he just noticed that, and he met with them every 90 days. That was just kind of part of the process. And he would notice very regularly that they would downplay their success. And he just wondered why. So he would ask a various client, like, you know, what happened in the last 90 days?

They'd say, oh, nothing great. And he's like, what do you mean nothing great? And he's like, you know, literally nothing good happened. And they're like, well, you know, I got this new client or that new client. But, you know, it doesn't matter because this is what should have happened or this is what could have happened. You know, this is the whole idea of just downplaying. And so he viewed the gap and we built a whole book around it. And I kind of developed more of the psychology and the research side behind it.

but the idea of the gap is just always measuring yourself against the moving horizon, which is your future self, honestly. But it's the less defined future self. It's just your ideals. And those ideals might have come from society. They might have been planted in your mind by social media. But we all have ideals. That's just what we think we want.

And high achievers particularly, but I think people in general, and I can explain to you how even parents do this or teachers or coaches, but we tend to measure ourselves against that horizon. which is constantly moving. If you're running towards the horizon, you know, in the desert, you're never going to get there. It's going to keep going. And so it doesn't matter how many steps you take towards it. If you're always measuring yourself against it and feeling like a loser for not being there, then no matter where you are, you'll feel like a loser. And that's the tip, that's very common. It's, in psychology, they even call it the hedonic treadmill,

which destroys happiness, which is just always measuring yourself against the next thing. And so the gain is really the opposite. Rather, I mean, certainly you want a future self. For me, my future self, I'm very connected to, and even, as stated before in this conversation, operating more and more as, and filtering everything I do from the lens of my future self, but in terms of measuring my progress, rather than measuring myself against my future self, I'm actually measuring myself backwards against my past self. And so that's recognizing the gain. And so even if I've, you know, even if today didn't go so well, I can measure myself against where I was the day before and I can find gains. I can find progress. As I said,

how did I learn something today? Or how have I progressed in the last 12 months? And just writing it down. And you can be really basic about this. You could even just write it down in bullets. Like seriously, at the end of the week, just say, what key progress did I make this week? What were the positive experiences I had?

Or what were the important wins or the important learnings? And if you just literally write it down, this takes the whole gratitude practice like multiple levels further. where you're like actually because a lot of times especially with high achieving people they're so focused on next which is awesome that they don't take any time

to actually measure progress and from a confidence standpoint confidence is comes from achievements from the past and it can propel the future but if you're not actually measuring that progress then you're missing so much value and so it just I think it's an amazing

dopamine kick it's just an amazing booster just to actually think what happened in the last 90 days. And when you tend to do that, you're also training your brain what to see from your past, which creates expectations for what you'll see in the future. So if I train myself at the end of every day to say, what were three important forms of progress today? Again, I'm training myself to look for those in my past. In psychology, they call it selective attention. So like, I'm training my brain to find things, you know, we're always, you know, our brains are all trained to find what we're looking for. But you're

training yourself to see progress. And so those things then create expectations for the future. And so, yeah, I think that's just kind of the gain mindset. It's the opposite of the gap. People live in the gap. I mean, I'll just say one thing real quick. And that's, as a parent, I know him in the gap when my son plays tennis. If I just am always, you know, he plays a tournament, loses, right? And I just tell him all the things he could have done better. Or even if he won, I'm only telling him the things he could have done better. He comes home with his grades. And is all I see is the one B, right? Like, I think it's very typical for a coach, a teacher, or a parent to only see the gap.

But the problem is, is that that measuring stick is constantly moving. Like, and so if I'm doing that to my son, then is all he feels for me is where he's not showing up. What I'm not doing is I'm not telling him, hey, Caleb, like, we can certainly address those things, but I'm not showing him where he was three months ago or six months ago. And the fact is that the progress has been dramatic. And if I can show him that or help him learn how to do that, then he can decide the meaning of his own experiences

rather than paying attention to mine. I bet you a lot of parents are going to hear that. You brought up a quote in your writing. I think it's an Ernest Hemingway quote where he says, nobility is not about being better than others. It's about true nobility is about being better than who you were. Yeah, totally. It has nothing to do with other people.

Yeah, yeah. So, but this idea of high achievers, what have you found since exploring this idea of gap or gain? Because if this idea of the gap is a defining characteristic of high achievers, is that actually what's allowing them to be successful? Like, if they start to use the gain mentality, do they up happiness but lose effectiveness? Or what have you found over time? No, that's what they believe is what's making them successful. Okay. is that they're never happy, they're never satisfied. It's not actually what's, it's not actually a factor. Like, you can be in the gain, I can be in the gain, and you will actually be more effective for multiple reasons. First off, you will appreciate your progress. You will, you will feel good. Like fundamentally, feeling good is beneficial for making progress. But it doesn't kill ambition. It actually increases it over time. But it increases intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic. I think often the gap is trying to fill some hole from unresolved trauma, bad relations with your parents,

or, you know, often high achievers are literally trying to fill a hole. And so that whole is the gap that they're trying to fill and they'll never feel it. It's an internal issue that they're trying to fill with external accomplishments and they'll never actually fill it. And so they'll never actually have a positive relationship with themselves. Certainly it can fuel all sorts of success, but the question that you have is the question with this topic. And the question is, if you removed the gap, which you'll never remove it, by the way. It's not like you'll just diminish it. Every person's going to continue to go to the gap. Yeah, you're never going to, it's not like you just flip a switch where you're never going to go there. I go there regularly.

And I think it's a useful tool to be in the gap. I think that you learn from it. But you, You won't be benefited by it until you start turning it into a personal gain, until you start turning it into meaning, learning, growth. And what I get out of the gain and what I see others get out of it, and what Dan has seen, ultimately studying this for 50 years, is that it reorients yourself towards your progress and towards your future, rather than needing it. Because usually when you're in the gap, you think you need the thing to be worthy or to be successful. No matter what you've accomplished in the past, none of it matters because I need that

thing. And if you're operating out of need, then it's an unhealthy attachment, right? Whereas when you start living from a gain perspective, not only do you increase the value of who you are in the present, because you're in the same position, whether you're in the gap of the game. One makes your present feel like trash, you know, because it's not that. It also makes your past trash because it could have been something else. If someone's in the gap, it means that they believe their past should have been something different because they're not happy with where they're at. They should be somewhere else. So being in the gain ultimately allows your past to be valuable, to be useful. It also increases the value of where you're at the present. Rather than starting at ground zero every day,

you're starting with rocket fuel from your past. But again, how you look at your past trains what you'll expect from your future. So if I feel phenomenal about my past, if I feel phenomenal about my progress, all of those things only boost my intrinsic motivation towards what I most want, not what I think I need. need any future achievements. But there's certain things I absolutely want to do, and I absolutely will go and get them, and being in the gain allows you to stop what you were just describing, needing to be in any forms of comparison, or even worrying about what anyone's opinion is of my goals or of my own progress. My progress is my own, but also so is my goals. And so for me, I feel it boosts a healthy fuel source of intrinsic motivation, of wanting rather than unhealthy

the attachment and thinking you need this thing, which is going to be a continuous rabbit hold in nowhere. That idea of need versus one. I've never thought about that before. Because I would frame a lot of things in that, you know, the power of need. If I can put it, like, it's that important to me. I'm going to have that much more to go towards it. But you're saying that you almost lose power.

I think it's suffocating over time. Oh, interesting. I think that it's, I think that it can get you places for a while. It's certainly a fuel source to think you need it. But I think over time, getting to a place where you pursue it because you want it. It doesn't have to be as weak. A lot of times people think that it's weak, but I mean, I can want something extremely and even be insanely committed to it without thinking I need it.

And my fuel for it, my strategy for it is not, I mean, I can strategize for it just as powerfully. One of the things that's so cool about this show is that, you know, shaped around icons, it's not just people who have great ideas, it's also people who have the street credit, but they've actually pulled it off. They've actually done it. They've actually had the success. You know, I'm caught in your story in the sense that you've got six children. You've written eight books at a young age.

I mean, you are producing at a high level. And one of the articles that you wrote that went viral was around kind of the 80-20 principle. Can you kind of flush that out for me? Because I just think that for people who, again, feel like all of this sounds great, but I'm flat out. Like, I don't have the time to create space for any of the stuff we're talking about. What's the concept around 80-20 and how could maybe they apply that to get more flexibility? So the unique angle on 80-20 that I feel like Dan Sullivan and I contributed was around 10x versus 2x thinking. So we've been talking about gap and gain.

Again, one of the beauties of Dan's thinking is he thinks in terms of like opposites. And so when we were writing that book, 10x is easier than 2x. We were really going deep into the conversations between a future orientation or a past orientation. So just to get it super simple, and then we'll go into the 80, 20 of it. If you're going for a 2X mindset, 2X growth in anything, right? It's very linear. It's very much taking the past and the present and projecting that into the future. So it's like, you know, this is – and really you don't have to transform that much to go for 2X growth.

you're really just continuing more of what you're doing, and it's pretty predictable. Like, you may have to make various tweaks, and so 10x mindset is completely the opposite. 10x is a future that's so big and seemingly impossible, but it's also a future mindset back to imagination, back to upper-dineine, where you're letting the future frame what you do in the present. And so 10x is a future orientation towards the present, whereas 2x is a present orientation towards the future. You're letting the present dictate what you do in the future, whereas 10x is a future model that you're utilizing in the present to do to decide what you do.

And that's even in a basic way what the research on future self says. And this is a lot more basic. I mean, when we're going to go into 80, 20, it's more technical. But the basics of future self is getting connected to your future self such that you let the future self dictate what you do in the present, whether that means making the healthy choice, whether that means being kind, whether that means beginning to invest in your future self. such that you let the future self dictate what you do in the present, whether that means making the healthy choice, whether that means being kind, whether that means beginning to invest in your future, right?

So when it comes to scaling that to a 10x level and now going into the 80-20, there's just a framework that we made for that book, but basically if you're going to go for 2x of anything, you can keep 80% of your life. You really don't have to transform. If I'm going for two times the book sales that I had last year, most of my strategy that I'm applying right now can work.

And so you really can keep 80% of your life, 80% of your habits, 80% of your mindset. To go to 2x, you just transform 20%, whatever that means. Maybe try a different strategy, get a different employee, or do, you know, work harder. And so the 10x is going to be the opposite. The future is so big that the filter is so high that, you know, 80% of what you're doing now won't get you to 10x. That's the main idea. And this comes from a lot of the research from constraint theory, a lot of it from Dr. Alan Bernard,

who studied the idea of impossible goals that if you're going for, say, 10% in anything, the problem with 10% growth is that there's too many options to get there. You could do a thousand different things to grow your business by 10%. But if you want to grow by 10x, almost nothing would work. It's just too big. And almost everything you're doing right now, call it 80% or more, would be filtered out. It's a distraction. It's in the 80% using the 8020 principle.

And so I find that it's very difficult to deploy the 80-20 principle without huge goals. I mean, you can do it. You can honestly just, you know, and this is more like Tim Ferriss-ish, but you could just look at your life and just analyze, like, you know, the 20% of the people in your life that are creating 80% of your stress. For me, I look at it more like 80% of my life is my past self. And only like only 20% that best 20% that best 20% with the most upside is relevant to my call it my 10x future self. Only 20% has any reflection

to my 10x feature self. And those are the areas I want to go deep on. And this, like all things, is a skill, but what I think is great with it is, like I know that 80% of what I do with my time is mostly maintenance at this point. It's maintaining the status quo. Or it's literally holding me back. It could be bad habits, distractions, addictions. 80% of my life right now is not moving me forward, very marginally. And effectiveness when it comes to decision making and even using your time well and learning is recognizing the things in your life that aren't moving you forward. And that's part of the reflection and saying, okay, these aren't moving me forward. What are the few things that are or where can I find those new pathways? And so I think it's very useful to find the 20% or to

let the future dictate the 20% and then to just focus your attention more and more on that and to let go of more and more. That takes commitment. It takes courage to strip out that. But as you do that, you're literally letting go of your past self and your attention is going deeper, which is really what creates massive growth. Because that was my immediate reaction. I mean, the idea of the 80-20 towards optimization, cool. 80-20 towards my identity.

Yeah. That's what it is. That's how I see it. That's terrifying and exciting. Like, I can feel it in me just even thinking about it. Yeah. I mean, so I use the example of Michelangelo in that book, 10x is easier than 2x. And Michelangelo was describing to the Pope how he created the David statue.

And he just said, I stripped away everything that was not David. I took away everything that's not David. So how I look at it is is that your future self is that David. Your future self, call it a 10x version of your future self. The next level version of your future self is that. And to get there, you strip away everything that's not that. And that is ultimately, you know, in this language, 80% of who you are right now, which can be terrifying, like you said.

But back to the idea of psychological flexibility is that the 80% of, of your life right now is what got you here, but it's not what's going to get you there. Even phenomenal things. I'll use myself as an example, and I've used this example before, but when I was in my first year of my PhD program, I really want to be a professional author. And so, like, that was my quote unquote 10x. That was my David, right, on that stage of time. And so by clarifying the goal, I was able to identify the 20% that would get me there.

There's not a lot of things that could give me that goal. I can't do a thousand things to become a professional author. only do a few things that are deeply relevant to that goal. In this case, getting really, really good at blogging and growing a massive email list and being published on various platforms. Those were the things that were very directly related to that goal. That was the 20% that if I focused on and got really good at, went deep on, call it got 10 times better at the 20% and like over the 80, which was my university position. I was the only person in my PhD program that paid tuition because I didn't do those things.

I was focused on my 20%. But the point is that when I actually did get 10 times better, and I did achieve that goal, I became my new version of the future self. Well, then at that new position, I had a different future self, and it wasn't just continuing what I was on. Blogging, which was deep in my 20%, went into my 80%. It got me here, but it won't get me there. That was my past self.

And I think one of the difficult things is that when your past is good. like when you've had when you've been making progress to let go because you're still letting the future dictate what you do, not the past. Even if it was an excellent past, it's growing you phenomenally. And I, you know, in recent past, you know, even just describing

these books I wrote with Dan, like, it got to the point where my future self and using the future as the filter was like, you know, if this doesn't change so that it's 10x, then this is also more a reflection of my past and my future. And so, you know, ultimately the collaboration came to a conclusion, and we're all in the gain

about it. We're all stoked about it. But it was an example of, it was phenomenal. It had a lot of momentum. We could have kept doing more books, but that's the past. And if you're operating 2x, you're letting the past and present dictate what you do in the future. Whereas if you're operating 10x, you're always thinking about the 10x future and letting the future dictate what you do in the present.

And if it's a 10x future, then the filter is really fine, meaning that only 20% or less is relevant. even some of the great things you're doing. And so that's one of the reasons why it's beautiful, is that it invites you to new pathways. It invites you to think creatively and invite you to make commitments and let go of,

and invite you to growth and let go of maybe even the things that no longer fit the 10x future. I feel like I'm so caught on just two things that are... Do it. Let's hear it. The fact that mastery of your past is that you get so good at your past, you shape your past,

or the meaning of your past, so that it doesn't dictate your future. Yes. And your future is the David, and you're stripping away everything that's not that. Yeah, so how I look at it is, and I kind of do it in this way, where I think about the present

as the circle that we're living in. And overlapping, you've got the past, and overlapping, you've got the future, right? So for me, the future is what dictates who I am and what I do in the present. Not the present dictates who I'm going to be in the future. Right? So the future is the filter for my present,

and my present is my filter for the past. I think a lot of people have just like gotten that crystal clear. Yeah. I mean, that's a skill. Most people do it the opposite way. We're trained the opposite way. We're trained that the past is driving me. That's even how psychology was as a discipline for 100 years.

Is that the past is, you know, dictating who you are. The idea is just look at your history. And the history is what has determined who you are. You're just a domino, you know, essentially determinism. But also most people, when they're in the present, even businesses. And, you know, I train now CEOs and business leaders, even companies doing really good, like big things. And even after training them on this, they will still default to linear approaches to the future, where they're letting the current conditions decide what they'll

go for in the future. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Remember, we're going to make a very big future that actually feels fairly impossible right now, and we're going to let that dictate what we do in the present. We're going to let that dictate the few things we're going to focus on and openly dictate the things that we know aren't relevant up there anymore, the things that we've got to change, you know, if you want to go for that, if you choose to go for that. So some of the questions we ask everyone who comes on the show is, what advice would you give your 20-year-old self? And maybe the tag to that is, and would you have listened? Would my 20-year-old self have listened? Yeah. I mean, it's a good invite to say,

am I listening to what my future self is asking me? Right. It's like, it fits within this conversation. Yeah. I don't know if I would say anything, to be honest with you, is weird as this sounds. I know that that's probably, the more interesting of what I would say to my 20-year-old self is how in the present am I looking at my 20-year-old self? I know that that may sound weird, but I have the option in the present to look at my 20-year-old self in a ton of different ways. And I may end up changing this answer along the way. But who was I at age 20? I was literally getting ready to go and serve a truck. church mission. I really don't think, this may sound weird, I really don't think anything I could say now, that's not true. I wouldn't say anything to them, honestly. I think that the main things are, most of ourselves need is, is assurance. And, you know, that's pretty cliche, but just assurance that they're on the right path or that they're doing, you know, that they're going to be fine. We typically even need that now, that everything's going to be okay. We often are just questioning the uncertainty of the future, whereas obviously it's not uncertain to me anymore.

But yeah, I wouldn't say anything to my past self. Mainly for me, it's about getting better and better at being proud of my past self. Something I heard recently from someone just that I know is that they feel like their past self is their hero, which I think is actually really cool, because I wouldn't be where I'm at if it wasn't for the decisions my pass off made. Certainly, like, the hard work, the things that they went through. And so even though I'm different from my past self, even though I would do things very different from even the 20-year-old self that I'm talking to, I owe that version of me a huge amount for the decisions they made.

What advice do you think your 20-year-old would have given you? my 20-year-old self could give me a huge amounts of advice, honestly. That would be useful. I think my 20-year-old self, I think that they would be shocked. They'd be extremely proud of me. I think my 20-year-old self would be extremely proud of me. I think that they would be surprised by me having six kids a PhD. Certainly at 20 years old, I had just flopped out of,

trying community college for the first time. I barely graduate high school. And so, like, I had no view of myself getting a college degree, let alone a PhD. And so, but even still, I think that they would, I think my past self, 20-year-old self, would probably tell me to have more fun, honestly. They'd probably tell me to have more fun. They'd re-remind me of, of little things that matter that could still matter and that maybe should matter more. It's funny, as you say that, we were asking ourselves this question today. We've never really flipped it that way. And that was what came back to me.

I thought about it for a while. I thought, I think my 20-year-old self would say chill out. And yeah, the question is, will I listen? You know, if you think about it from a future self, will I listen now perspective? But from a, you know, that advice can be shaping in lots of ways too, would I listen? I think it's a, I think what I like about what you're saying is, is that I have a lot I could learn from my future self, but I also have a lot I could learn from my past self. And the question is, is I am I listening to my experience, right? Exactly.

So I love it. I think it's beautiful. You brought up a couple rituals, routines. What are the, what are the ways that you block out your day in terms of habits? rituals, how do you do it? So I recently thought about my 2015 self, because that was when I was blogging and I actually was more interested in habits and routines back then than I am now. And so, like, I would say my, I actually reviewed an article I wrote back in 2015 that was read 20 million times. And it was about the eight things that I did before 8 a.m. And I literally

reviewed them and thought to myself, how. how do I look differently at time than my past self did? I'd say the fundamental thing that I believe to be different is that rather than trying to optimize for a day, I'm way more interested. So rather than trying to do the same thing every day to a certain event or to a certain extent, I think a lot more holistically than maybe like atomistically. And so I have a big picture future self, but also if I'm even thinking in terms of between now and the end of the year, right? That's going to deeply inform, like, so I'm thinking about like a quarter, like the next 90 days ahead.

That's going to inform my strategy a lot more than just what I want to accomplish today. I feel like habits are great. We all have habits. But my habits for the next 90 days are going to look really different from the habits I had in the last 90 days. And so I think bigger picture, there's a book that I read when I was writing, 10x is easier than 2x that really inform my thinking. It was called Catching the Big Fish. And Catching the Big Fish is all about consciousness and creativity. And he compares our consciousness to the ocean and about how if you're up at the surface is all you can see is small fish.

And it takes going really, really, really deep to start seeing the big fish. And so that changed how I look at flow and how I look at routines in general. I think in the past, I was interested more in what I would call cheap flow versus deep flow. So, like, for me, cheap flow is like get into a flow state for like 30, 60, you know, even 90 minutes and create some quick output. Which for me is now what I would consider up at the shallow. Like, yes, I can create results. But it's not the deep enough work. that is ultimately going to create something that could have a monumental impact.

Yeah, you can get good at writing viral articles and stuff like that, but none of those viral articles are going to be innovative. Like, truly. Like, they're going to be shallow work. Like, I mean, they could be innovative compared to other blog posts, but you've got to go really, really deep as a way of life to do things that are very powerful, very useful. And so I now look at things more holistically where it's like rather than seeing how much I could accomplish today, it's more like what two or three big fish am I trying to accomplish this month, which if I, if I, you know, design my weeks around those, it could be, you know, finishing a few chapters of my book. It could be going and traveling with my could. It could be a certain goal related to my work, but it's a lot bigger picture. And so now my, rather than doing the same routine every single day, it's more like, you know, what am I trying to accomplish? this week and what are the two or three big things I want to do and then designing the week

around those. So it's a lot more about deep focus and even deep recovery rather than doing the same thing every single day, like the same wake-up routine. And so like as an example, this week may look different than next week. This week actually looks really different since I'm in California, but like say this was a week where I was focused on my book. I'd probably have three days with zero things on my calendar and like I would be really deep on the book and then I would have a full day off somewhere in the middle for recovery and then maybe a few meetings like on a Friday. But it's possible that I'm not in that phase where I'm writing a book. Maybe I'm working on some other goal or some other project. So yeah, I'm more interested in depth and

accomplishing less to greater effect rather than trying to try to do the same thing. every day. Interesting. And so I've changed that. Yeah, because do you worry, I mean, to put it in the context of 2x, 10x, do you worry that getting too habit-based, too ritual-based, keeps you in the 2x? I think habits as a concept, like if you actually study deliberate practice, deliberate practice is an antidote to two habits.

It's certainly like you can be in the habit of going out of your comfort zone. But like deliberate practice as a concept means you are not doing things the same way you did them yesterday. did them yesterday. You're always trying new things. You're always pushing beyond the boundaries. And so obviously we all have habits. But for me, habits are a reflection of your current and your past self. You know, and you certainly don't have the same habits as your future self. That doesn't mean I don't do things regularly. I read books regularly. I write my journal regularly. So I guess you could call those habits. But I'm not doing them mechanistically. I'm not doing them the same way every time. And so, yeah,

Yeah, I'm very less interested in habits and more interested in, honestly, like, what's required for what I'm trying to accomplish now, which is going to look different than what I'm doing next year. And so I'm far more interested in, like, what is the priority? What are we trying to accomplish? What's required? What's, you know, what's the core focus? So, yeah, that's how I look at it. Let's go to, you know, the 100-year-old future self. What do you hope your legacy is?

I mean, I think the main things that matter to me are, you know, and I think my future self will have a much different answer. So, I mean, different answer to my future self, but my present self looking ahead, certainly family matters a lot. doing good in the world. I'm someone who wants, like you said at the beginning of this, to have a positive, huge positive impact in the world in specific ways. And so I'm like, I'm not really that thoughtful about my own legacy. I am more thoughtful about my family, my faith, and just yeah, doing, I want to learn as much as I possibly can and make it as easy for other people, you know, to speed

their process. So yeah, I just want to, I want to be as helpful as I can. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.