The School of Greatness - 482 Decoding the Myths of Success with Eric Barker

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

"Believing yourself is nice but forgiving yourself is nicer." - Eric Barker If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/482

This is episode number 482 with Eric Barker. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. I'm so grateful that you showed up today.

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thank you so much. And I'm very excited about this episode. And before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to the review of the week over on iTunes. And this is from Soxboy56. The podcast is life-changing, he said. I began listening about a year ago, and it has been one of the biggest difference makers in my life. Lewis is an inspiring person, and no matter what walk of life or background you have, he finds guests who can relate to all. These guests bring the most inspiring messages you could hope to find anywhere.

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for acknowledging all the incredible guests we have on as it's my duty as the dean of greatness to bring only the best professors in the world who can teach you how to unlock the greatness within you so i continue to be the curator to make sure that I bring in only the best of the best. I'm constantly researching. I'm constantly building relationships, and I'm staying on people sometimes two, three, four years to get them on. So I'm doing my best to bring the best, and today we've got someone who's incredible. His name is Eric Barker, and his humorous blog is called Barking Up the Wrong Tree,

and it presents science-based answers and expert insights on how to be awesome at life. That's right, another person searching for greatness. He's got almost 300,000 people who subscribe to his newsletter. His content is syndicated by Time Magazine, Business Insider, and The Week. And he's been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Financial Times, and he's also been all over NPR, spoken at MIT, Yale, West Point, all the big places. He's a big shot. And what we talk about today are how to really find the science behind the success and the myths behind the success. So there's a lot of research that Eric's done that we talk about, and we cover some of these main points, which are what happens when introverts act like extroverts

and how they can be successful. Also, one of the biggest elements of success and what you need to do if you want to be successful, how the paradigm of confidence is broken. What is nicer than believing in yourself? We're going to reveal the answer. And also how to keep going when you want to give up when things are so rough, how you continue to keep going. I am super pumped for this one. I hope you guys enjoy it. As always, make sure to share with your friends, lewishowes.com

slash 482. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Eric Barker. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Eric Barker in the house. How you doing, man? Good to see you, buddy. Good to see you, man. I'm excited about this. You're kind of the mad scientist of breaking down success. And you've got a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree. And it's the surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong. and it's out right now make sure you guys go pick this up I'm excited about this because when we were talking about this before you said it's kind of like the

MythBusters of success where each thing out there each principle principle success you go see if it's actually true or not yeah in the real world you test it you apply it you get research on it yeah and you figure out what works and what doesn't work. Absolutely. And you've been writing a blog for over eight years, right? It's got almost 300,000 subscribers. You've been featuring it everywhere you can think of. And you started to write about these things on your site.

Yeah. And what did you notice when you started to write about some of these ideas out there? What did you notice as a feedback? Well, it was just crazy to see that a lot of the questions that we all have actually have answers. William Gibson has this awesome quote I love that's, you know, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. And there's a lot of questions we have about success

that, you know, academic research experts already have the answers to, and we just don't know them. And we get caught up in many of these maxims that we hear that haven't been tested, have never been put to the metal, and they're just pithy. So nice guys finish last. Winners never quit. Quitters never win. It's not what you know, it's who you know. And me personally, it's like, I've had a bunch of career changes. I've had a bunch of shifts. I tried following these things and it just was never that simple. It was never that easy. There always seemed to be exceptions. There always seemed

to be different cases. We all know people who maybe network fantastic, but aren't good at their job or great at their job. They don't network. What is really the answer? So frankly, these are things I was struggling with, I've been wondering about. And so I decided after eight years of doing the blog, of talking to experts and trying to get the real answers to questions we all wonder about. It's like to really go down the rabbit hole, put a book together, and just like you said, Mythbusters, you go to each one of these maxims, look at the research, talk to the experts and say, let's give this thing its day in court and let's see, is it true? Is it not true? When is it true? When is it not? So that we can actually start getting what we want. Right. What was the most surprising

thing or what's the thing that people are always curious about the most? I mean, one thing people are always curious about is, you know, the whole issue of networking and, is it what you know or who you know? I've always thought it's about who you know and who knows you. Yeah. And those are two very separate things where it's like, you know, who do you know versus who knows you is a whole different shift because who you know, that's fine. But a lot of people, you know, President of the United States,

in any situation, somebody's going to know him, but, you know, who does he know? I mean, it's how big is your audience in that sense. But what do you see down the- You want to have both. You want to have relationships with a lot of people that are, could be key partners or key allies in the future. Absolutely. And you want also, I think, a lot of people to know who you are. Yeah.

So that you can create opportunities for yourself. Either way, right? Oh, fantastic. And you want also, I think, a lot of people to know who you are so that you can create opportunities for yourself. Either way. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, that's exactly what you want. Because what you see with the trade-off with extroversion and introversion is extroverts, it's fantastic. It's easy to build a network. They make friends wherever they go.

And extroversion is one of the most key things that has been proven over and over again in personality research is extroverts are happier. They've got friends around them. They've got bigger support networks. You start to look at all this stuff, you wonder why would anybody want to be an introvert? Then you see, and one of those damning studies you see is that when introverts pretend to be extroverts, they're happier.

Really? Yes. Wasn't there a whole book about like quiet, like Susan Cain talking about the power of introverts or something? Yeah. And then you look at the research on introverts and you see the difference. And that is that what was the line from the study with its academic jargon was higher

levels of extroversion are inversely correlated with individual proficiency, which is academic speak for the more extroverted you are, the worse you are at your job. Really? Because introverts have more time to get good at what they do. And one of the craziest things is you look at studies of Olympic athletes and top athletes, and you see more introverts because less time partying is more time in the batting cage.

There's machines of efficiency. Absolutely. Constantly mastering their craft, like kind of their inner world. Yeah. Working with like one coach and just like repeating the process over and over, right? Absolutely. It's like, you know, you want to talk about 10,000 hours. Okay.

You've got more hours to work on your stuff. So you see a lot of experts in their field are more likely to be introverts. But the truth is that most people are not at the extremes. Most people are what's called ambiverts or somewhere in the middle. And those people have a superpower too. What's funny is people assume that, oh, extroverts are going to be the better salespeople. And the truth is that extroverts are often too pushy, too engaged, introverts, too laid back, not a servant of Amberverts. The people in the middle usually have that wiggle room to actually be able to say.

It was Adam Grant in an interview. So the Amberverts can kind of say, who do I need to be here? What skills do I need to bring to task? And they have that. They're not at the extremes. So they can actually navigate certain situations better because they can call on different aspects of their personality. Sounds like they're more aware of who they need to be in a situation with someone else. Absolutely.

They're aware of that person's needs or if they're introverted or extroverted so they can kind of match them in a way whereas they feel more comfortable and more light, which could potentially get a better result. Yeah. It's all about that connection when you're thinking about the other person. Wow. So which one are you? Oh, I'm definitely an introvert. I'm definitely an introvert.

That's how this book got done was me head down. Any blogger who's that detailed and does that much research as well and writes long posts, you always know they're an introvert. Yeah. It's kind of like, oh, yeah. It's the extrovert who's just like, let's just have a conversation and get it out there. We'll talk about it. We'll figure it out as we go along. Let's the extrovert who's just like, let's just have a conversation and get it out there. We'll talk about it. We'll figure it out as we go along.

Let's have some fun. No, I mean, you know, everybody's got their advantages. Everybody got their things. The thing that comes up, you know, again and again in the book and in the research is just, you know, knowing thyself. It goes back to the Oracle of Delphi. It's like knowing yourself and then picking the right pond. You know, as Boris Groysberg, you know, at Harvard Business School was talking about, you about, that perfect environment because context matters so much. So if you know who you are and you get yourself in an environment that is aligned with your skill set, that's a key element to success versus somebody who doesn't know themselves or knows themselves and put themselves in a situation where their skills aren't vital.

So a really big element of success is just alignment between you, your skills, and where you're at. Got it. Another myth that I want to learn about from you is the myth of never giving up. Should we never give up or should we fail fast? See, and that's really critical because right now, grit is having its big moment and it's grit, grit, grit. And, you know, but if you never quit anything, if I never quit anything, I'd still be playing t-ball. I mean, you know, it's like you've got to let things go. Yeah, if they're not working for you.

No. And so there's that balance where on one hand, you know, you look at key elements like optimism, like stories, like framing things as a game that can really help increase resilience. But on the flip side, something people don't talk about is how do you figure out what you can let go? You know, and one of the stories I tell in the book is a friend of mine, really fascinating, very accomplished guy, Spencer Glendon, who this guy's enormously accomplished, runs, he's director of research for one of the biggest wealth, biggest wealth management fund in Massachusetts, has done so much in his life. And for the majority of his life, he has been seriously ill.

But he managed to accomplish some incredible things. And that is because, pretty funny, he's a PhD in economics and he firsthand got a lesson in opportunity cost and being able to say, every time I pick one thing, I'm not picking something else. So when you're physically compromised, you only have a few hours in every day. You have to really ask yourself the hard question. What am I going to do with my time? I don't have time to waste.

And so that builds incredible focus. And quitting here gives you more time for grit there. And that level of opportunity cost of saying what's important to me, what's number one, when you know you only have so much time, that brought it to the forefront for him. But that's a question we can all ask ourselves. And there's a number of other tools, but kind of like what you're saying where Peter Sims wrote a great book, Little Bets, all about basically looking at your life almost like a venture capital firm would, where I'm going to try a couple different things. I'm almost going to be a flake. I want to try 10 things. I know I'm going to quit seven of them. Two might be fun. And one is going to be my venture capital. It's going to be my Google

or my Facebook. But by always taking 5% of your time and trying something new, maybe I quit, maybe I don't, you can find that next big thing. You can find great opportunities, meet great people. We always need to be open to new things. We don't have to go all in on something all the time and never look at anything else. Absolutely. We don't have to try something and go all in right away. We can have our main thing

that's kind of like our bread and butter that continues to grow and then try other things. I feel like I'm that way in a lot of ways. My podcast is very consistent three times a week. It's constantly getting better, but we're always testing and trying other programs and products

and things where we want to see what works and what doesn't work. Absolutely. Some of these things bomb big time. We put a lot of money into it and we're like,

this is a bad idea. But I would rather try something that I'm curious about or interested in and then end it quickly than always be thinking I wonder what if. Personally.

With my personality. I'd rather be like, this would be a cool idea to do someday. I'd rather just try it. If it doesn't work, okay, we know it doesn't work. That can move on to something else. I don't know. Maybe people think differently. I think you got the right attitude there. Even with the blog, I'll do the same thing.

I know there's bedrock stuff that people are always curious about, productivity, happiness. That's great, but it's kind of like you get that attitude of one for the Pope, one for the people where it's like here's a safe thing, and then I'm going to try something crazy. Sometimes they fall flat. Other times, you find a vein of interest, something that people are really key on or take something at a different angle and that really connects and clicks with people. And the only thing constant in the world is change. So if you're not trying new things, eventually you're going to be horse and buggy in a car world. That's true.

So no, I think you got the right attitude. Constantly got to be innovating in some ways, right? Absolutely. What's a post you did that you thought like, I don't think many people are going to be into this, but it was actually like a massive hit for you. What was the topic? Do you remember? Two years ago, I wrote a piece on imposter syndrome and I just didn't know if this was something that was really going to resonate with people. And it just exploded because, you know, we, we, cause I think that's, that's inherent in imposter syndrome where, you know, you think, Oh my God, I'm, how did I get here? I don't deserve this. I'm a fraud.

I'm not really. And the truth is, everybody's wondering about it. They're not talking about it. If they talked about it, it might not be an issue. People might be able to say, oh, no, no, no, look here. But we don't. We hold it back. And so everybody's feeling that to some degree or another. But because we don't share it, and because people aren't talking about it, I'm wondering, is this something that only affects 2% of my readers? It turns out it's something that everybody feels. Everybody feels. And that is something, you know, to be able to open up and talk about that, then we can

get verification. You know, we can have the reassurance, the love, the support we need. And, you know, simply having somebody say, look at your resume. Right. Look at what you've done. You know, we all need that. support we need and you know simply having somebody say look at your resume right look at what you've done you know we all need that yeah what can someone do if they feel like they're an imposter they're not ready for the greatness that's supposed to come to them or that they want to achieve if they feel like they're years behind what's the approach i mean the the first

step is you know is opening up is being able to talk to people talking to people about it because very often we use a different lens with ourselves than we do with others. And that's a fundamental attribution bias where it's like when somebody else cuts you off in traffic, they're a jerk. When you cut somebody off in traffic, well, I had to. It's like we use different lenses. And in that same way, we'll look at somebody else's accomplishments accomplishments and say, oh my God, it's amazing, amazing. But we discount our own because, oh, I got lucky.

Oh, I got this. But everybody gets lucky. Everybody has their moment. And to share that, to talk with people, to hear other voices other than the critical one in your own head, that's really the first step to making some progress and getting out of that fear. Yeah. You talked about poisonous personalities and the out of that fear. Yeah. You talked about poisonous personalities and the qualities of poisonous personalities in becoming performance

enhancing drugs. What do you mean by that? How is that possible? It's really interesting. Part of that was on the research by Gautam Wakunda at Harvard Business School on the different types of leaders. And what you see is that at the extremes, there are some things that are negatives in one situation, positives in another. Sometimes we need a placater, a negotiator, and sometimes

we need somebody who's hard as nails. And in some situations, comes back to the issue of picking the right pond you know in some situations that negative stubbornness trait that we call it grit sometimes sometimes weirdness is eccentricity right and you know so sometimes when we're at extreme situations extreme personality traits are really sometimes they're they're vital you know um i I talk about one time, was it when Pixar, they had just finished up finding Nemo. Brad Bird was going to do a movie for Pixar and they weren't sure about how to do it. Steve Jobs at that point was very concerned

that Pixar was losing its edge, that they were getting complacent. And Brad Bird said, give me all the black sheep. Give me all the guys who are headed out the door. Give me the crazy people that nobody wants. Put them on my team. At Pixar.

Yes. Yes. And he got all of these crazy guys, the difficult ones, the problematic ones, and he let them try their crazy theories. And for a vastly smaller budget, they did everything better finding Nemo. And the movie they ended up creating was The Incredibles, which won the Best Animated Picture Oscar and made over $600 million. Wow. So those difficult traits, those problematic people, given license, given the right environment, were game changers.

So in some situations, those people might be the problems. They might be the difficult. But in a situation where you're trying to creatively solve a problem, you need somebody to shake things up. I like that. That's pretty interesting. Huh. So how many people were on that team, do you know? These were people that were going to fire?

They were actually going to fire this group of people? These were the black sheep. These were the people that nobody wanted who were probably going to quit, who were probably going to leave. No one listened to their vision or no one was like, this guy's got a crazy idea. This guy doesn't want to do it the way we always do it. Right. We're probably going to leave. No one listened to their vision or no one was like, this guy's got a crazy idea. This guy doesn't want to do it the way we always do it. And the funny thing was that Pixar was facing the issue of complacency, of turning into Disney, to the other companies that have been around for decades. And so they started listening to the rabble-rousers, the problem children. And what they ended up doing was winning an Oscar and creating a ton of money.

Exactly. Wow. Let's talk about confidence. Yeah. Now there's a, there's a part in the beginning of the book where you talk about confidence and how training for confidence, what did you say here? Training for confidence, or trying to increase confidence fails, but there's a Buddhist philosophy that holds superior to the solution. What's really interesting is with a lot of the issues of success, it's, oh, is it this side or is it this side? Is it the people who stick with it or the people who quit? And with confidence, what you see is that it looks like the whole paradigm is kind of broken because confidence doesn't lead to success so much as it follows success.

You gain confidence when you create a result. Exactly. You earn it. You're not just confident before you do anything. Yeah. You've got to prove something to yourself and to whatever situation. Certainly. And then the more you have little wins, if you win a game, you're like, oh, I can do this.

Yeah. And when we try and train people for confidence, and this has been done. California had a big initiative a while back. You don't actually – the kids don't get better grades. Really? The kids don't stay off drugs. All you're doing generally is increasing narcissism. I'm the best.

You haven't done anything. Exactly. Increasing entitlement. And with confidence, the danger is that people get overconfident. And Dan Ariely did some research, it was fascinating, where they gave people a test and they let them, they let it kind of be known that there was a way to cheat. And so the people who cheated obviously did better.

They didn't know that the researchers had a way to detect this. Then they said on a subsequent test, how do you think you'd do? And the people who cheated felt that they would do better on a subsequent test. They had succeeded by cheating, but they now had believed, I'm good at this. So it's like flying a plane on autopilot and then thinking next time you get in the cockpit without the autopilot, you're actually going to be a good pilot. So the confidence isn't necessarily connected to actual skill level. So not only can you become dangerously overconfident, where there's no such thing as a pretty good alligator wrestler. You're either good or you're not. And being overconfident,

that's an area where it's very dangerous. And by the same token, these people become, you can become a jerk. And obviously, low confidence, we know what happens there. So the Buddhist element, and this has been tested extensively by Kristen F. at University of Texas at Austin, is self-compassion. Instead of lying to yourself about how awesome you are, it's having a more realistic notion and forgiving yourself when you screw up. So those people have a much more realistic vision of reality, but they're not, you know, crushed when bad things happen

because they're able to forgive themselves. Yeah. You had a quote in here. I have it in the other book. Yeah. It said something about like, maybe it's around confidence, something around like training for confidence.

Let me see this. I highlighted it here. You said believing yourself is nice, but forgiving yourself is better. Yeah. It kind of goes into that. Absolutely. It's like having self-compassion. Yeah.

It's like forgiving yourself. You're like, it's going to be okay. We're harder next time. Yeah. But just having belief in yourself and be like, I'm going to do it when you've never proven anything to yourself. Absolutely. Or put in the reps or practiced. And just saying, I'm going to do it when you've never proven anything to yourself or put in the reps or practiced and just saying, I'm going to wrangle an alligator. Yeah.

It's hard to have the confidence, right? Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to lie to yourself. You can just forgive yourself instead. And both of those allow you to keep going when things are tough. I also think like training for confidence, I used to be terrified to speak on stage. Yeah.

And I remember it shifted for me a while ago. I still get nervous every now and then. Now, it's not like I'm a pro or anything, but it shifted a while ago when someone said, you get so nervous that you're focusing on how you're going to look. Instead of focusing on how you're going to do or how you're going to look,

focus on how you can help others. Don't make it about you. Make it about everyone in that room and how you can impact them the best way possible. And forgive yourself afterwards for not saying all the right words or stumbling or forgetting something like it's going to be OK. As long as you focus on giving your best to the room as opposed to wanting all the praise afterwards,

it's going to be good. So I think it's like a way to believe in yourself, kind of tricking yourself like, yeah, I want to believe in myself by helping others. Yeah. It's going to be good. So I think it's like a way to believe in yourself, kind of tricking yourself like, yeah, I want to believe in myself by helping others. Yeah. As opposed to having to look the best in this situation. Yeah. You're focused on the outside rather than the inside.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's cool. That's critical. What do you feel like has been your biggest challenge in being successful or reaching your goals or achieving what you want to achieve? your goals or achieving what you want to achieve? I mean, a big thing for me was, you know, like finding the, finding the answers, finding the path, finding the mentors, because, you know, I've heard so many different things. That's, that's why I started the blog. It's why I started the book, because I knew there were answers to a lot of these questions.

And, you know, I just felt like I was getting bad roadmaps and I'm following them down. They're not working out for me. And it's like you start to learn a few things, but you hear that, oh, just being smart or being creative or beating this, but there's no one metric. It's one of the things I talk about in the work-life balance chapter is that the problem is it's called a collapsing strategy. When we collapse everything and we have one metric in life and we say, as long as that number goes up, everything's going to be great. And it's just not the case. Because if you're just focused on happiness in the moment, you're probably not thinking long term. If you're just focused on

achievement, your relationships and your happiness are probably going to suffer. So it's just collapsing everything into one metric. That doesn't really work. There's an issue of balance. And for me, I was like, what path do I take? Who do I listen to? And so I just started trying to cobble together everything and talking to people far smarter than I am to try and get some answers about, you know, what were the best steps to take? Yeah. Yeah. What's the, what's your belief on balance? You know, is there such a thing as balance? There's definitely a thing on balance, but, uh, you know, I think the first step is really having a personal definition of success because when you take it whole cloth, the difference between a tailored suit and a suit off the rack. I mean, if you just say, you know, our culture screams, you know, money, success with this.

And you've got to kind of ask yourself, you know, what's really important to me? What's going to make me happy? Because otherwise we just get caught in these loops. And, you know, we sacrifice family for money. You know, we sacrifice, you know, you know, happiness for progress or progress for happiness. And, you know, to really sit there and say, what's important to me, you know, what do I need? Because if we follow somebody else's roadmap, we don't end up where we want to go. So it's kind of defining at first your vision, your dream and what it's going to look like for you to be happy and fulfilled or achievement.

Yeah. What does that look like? Because for you it might be – or for a mom or a woman it might be like to have a family and have a couple kids and be active in their community and feel like she's making an impact on that. Yeah. That could be her measure of success, right? No doubt. No doubt. So for me, I looked at – there was some great research by two Harvard Business School professors,

and they were some of the ones who talked about that collapsing strategy. The other mistake a lot of people make is the sequencing strategy, where first I'm going to work really hard, then I'm going to fall in love and have a family, and then I'm going to do something fulfilling. And I'm going to make a lot of money, then I'll do this. Then, and you never get there. Or, yeah, I'm going to do this for that, and I'm going to make a lot of money. Then I'll do this. Then, and you never get there. Or, yeah, I'm going to do this for that, and I'm miserable. And then all the other relationships, but now my kids are 15.

They don't even know me because I was too busy working. It's like you can't break it up like that. So it was Stevenson and Nash were two professors who looked at this. And what they found among the people who had balance was they looked at four key metrics were consistent with them. Collins was they looked at four key metrics were consistent with them. Happiness, achievement, they had a legacy and they had significance. Yes. And those were the fours. Basically, happiness is are you enjoying what you're doing? Are you enjoying your time, having fun? Second was achievement. Achievement was progressing goals, making money, success in your career. Third was significance. To the people you love, the people who love you,

are you making a positive impact on their life? Yes. And then legacy is, am I making the world a better place? Am I contributing to the future and to others? Because it's easy to just hit two or three of these and miss out on another. And it sounds like a lot to balance for, but it's not that hard actually to look at your calendar, look at the hours and say, which buckets is this making a deposit? Is this towards achievement? Is this towards happiness? Is this towards significance? Is this towards legacy? And then you can start to, almost like a boat, you don't go totally straight. You kind of tick, tack, tick, tack, and make sure you're putting a little bit in each one

of the buckets. That's a good way to try and find balance as opposed to just, as long as I do this one thing, it's not going to work. Yeah. I kind of think that's interesting. I saw a mentor of mine who I've actually had on here. He gives himself a rating at the end of every day. He has a calendar where every single day he looks at it and rates himself on kind of his own categories.

Similar to that, but some other things as well, like his health is in there. Like how did I do in my health on a scale of 1 to 10? My relationships, my business, all the things. Like did he have fun today? Exactly. And he rates himself, and he has a whole score by the end of the month. I thought it was fascinating. That way it gives you like a guide, and every day, week, month, you can look back and say, well, what do I need to change? As opposed to just like I have no clue like a guide and every day week month you can look back and say

well what do i need to change yeah i suppose just like i have no clue what i'm doing every day and i'm not sure how to get out of this but when we track these things it's a little easier oh no and that's i think that's that's critical when i spoke to to mike norton who's another professor harvard he was talking about that's the problem with money you know the problem with money is it's very easy to count. So you can say, am I making more money than I was last year? Yes, I'm doing good. But I'm a good brother. I'm a good boyfriend. I'm a good husband. I'm a good dad. There's no number for that. So it's very hard to track. And so I looked around, are there ways we can? And just like you were saying,

giving yourself a ranking on these other things, I think that's a critical thing. There was one venture capitalist who, what he did was he had his assistant not only track his schedule, but he had his assistant track at the end of every month, how many times did he have dinner with his family? And that became his metric. Because if there were too many times where that number fell under a certain thing, as a father, as a husband, he was screwing up. And he knew that number, just like all of his investments, needed to go up. Another, Kevin Bolin, who was a director of strategic investments at KPMG. He created a fun little game for himself.

He knew he needed to spend more time with his family before his sons graduated high school. So he basically set upon himself, I want to lose my frequent flyer status because if I'm still platinum status, that means I'm flying a lot. And if I'm flying a lot, I'm not home with my kids. So I want to see platinum drop down to gold next year. If I'm still platinum, I'm making a mistake. I'm not at home enough. Wow. Yeah.

Well, there's other ways you could do that. You could spend a lot on your business card and get platinum points. Take more buses. Exactly. Interesting. What's the thing that you've learned that surprised you the most out of all this stuff where you were like, huh, I can't believe this was actually true? to me was in terms of the work-life balance issue was, you know, we all think that, you know, it's like working harder does produce results. Just, you know, that's the problem.

Work harder, work smarter. I mean, well, there you go. And the funny thing was that there's the threshold hypothesis in terms of IQ. And what that means is we often think that, oh, IQ points, the higher it goes, the smarter you get, the better you'll do. No, not the case. When Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi looked at, yeah, creativity, studied eminent people across the arts, business, everything. And what he found was when people had an IQ of 120, they could be one of these people who won Nobel Prizes, National Book Award, anything like that.

But the difference between 120 and 180 was almost negligible. Because once you had the basic toolbox, once you had the basic things, it was the hours you spent, it was how much time you put in. So while there's certainly an argument for balance, spending more time does pay off. So that's why it's tricky. If it was as easy as, oh, after eight hours a day, it's fine. No. Once you have that personal definition of success, you can say how much I want to achieve because more does produce more results it just comes from one of the other buckets. Yeah and it's also you know if you want to be

the best chess player or the best basketball player in the world you can't just be like I'm going to practice an hour a day. It's just not going to happen. So you've got to put more time on achieving something if that's your main priority you've got to put more energy and time into that. Oh absolutely one of the most fascinating stories I came across that blew me away was, I think it was Nigel Richards, is the French Scrabble champion. And, you know, spent an enormous amount of time.

That's a tough game. It's very tough. I mean, and French actually has, I forget, 10, 20, 100,000 more words than the English language does. So it's even harder. But this guy spent a crazy amount of time working at it. In fact, he spent such a crazy amount of time that I guess I should mention, Nigel Richards does not speak French. Wow.

He was the English Scrabble champion. He did that, and then he said, I want to do the other thing. So he knows all these words. He doesn't know how to speak the language. When he accepted the award, he had to have a translator give the acceptance speech. That's crazy. Yes. Why did he just do this in English?

I mean, that was the thing. He spoke English? He spoke English. Why did he just do the English Scrabble? He was already the champion. He was already the champion. Oh, so he needed a new challenge. He needed a new challenge.

I got to take it to the next level. Oh, my goodness. So he doesn't know what the words mean, but he can spell them. Wow. It was crazy. That must have taken so much time to memorize 70 words. I can't imagine what that takes, but it's like when you're that ambitious, when you work that hard, you can do things that just sound patently ridiculous.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Now, here's one we talked about previously before we came on the show, last time we met. And you kind of went into this with the IQ. Do grades matter towards being successful? Like if I'm a valedictorian 4.0, highest IQ, everything else like that, is that the factor towards being successful in a career

or as an entrepreneur or generating, you know, a certain result in life? Uh, Sean Aker, uh, bestselling author. He, he did some research that basically showed your college grades. Uh, it's about as much of a roll of the dice. Really? Yeah. And if, if you look at another study of American millionaires, the average GPA among American millionaires is 2.9. Oh, my. Yeah. That's a C-minus average, right? Is that what it is? Or no, B-minus. Yeah.

B-minus. Yeah. It's less than a B. And the thing is that when Karen Arnold at Boston College did a study of valedictorians, and what she found out is that basically they're playing by the rules. They're not trying to learn. They're usually just trying to get good grades. And that means, to some degree, kind of gaming the system. They're just focused on doing

well. They're complying with rules. And what happens in their longer term career is exactly the same thing, which they end up doing well, but they end up fitting into the system. They don't shake up the system. These are not the people who are going to be world changers. These are not the people who are going to take huge risks. They're going to be a part of the system. These are not the people who are going to be world changers. These are not the people who are going to take huge risks. They're going to be a part of the system. They're not going to question the system and improve the system. So it's one of those big questions where, you know, are you the kind of person who follows the rules versus breaks the rules? You know, so valedictorians do well. And the truth is they do very well in areas where strict compliance, follow the rules,

everything. But when life has a lot more options, a lot more possibilities, opportunities in the arts, entrepreneurship, this is where they're not as suited because life doesn't have clear boxes, fill in the- The scarecrow. Yeah, exactly. it's not that simple and straightforward so you know just get good grades

is not not at all a prescription for success wow so do you think you'll have kids one day I'm sorry do you think you'll have kids

kids one day I don't know I don't know maybe if they if you did kids if you had kids would you push them

to get really good grades I mean I you know I don't think it hurts but I but I but I wouldn't I wouldn't,

I wouldn't put that above all else because again, you know, what if, what if your kid wants to do something that's not, that's not a subject in school? Uh, what if when they start to get to know themselves, you know, they realize that again, they want to do something in the arts. They want to do something that's a little bit different. They want to do, want to be an entrepreneur. School doesn't train you well for that. So you have to think about what's there. What are emerging opportunities?

So I think that's the simple and quick path. But life has many options and possibilities. And we need to think a little bit broader. If you could go back to, let's say, grade school or high school and there was a class that hasn't been provided for you but you could create a class to learn one of these skills or principles to help you be more successful in life. Absolutely. What would you wish that class would have been on in teaching you? Would it have been soft skills? Would it have been public speaking? Would it have been training for confidence? What would it be for you? Would it have been soft skills? Would it have been public speaking? Would it have been training for confidence? What would it be for you? I think training for soft skills would be very valuable. Another thing I really wish that I don't think would be hard for schools to

implement is, you know, in high school, I would have loved to learn more about economics, just as a lens to look through the world. That idea of opportunity cost, of trade-offs, of realizing supply, demand, options. There are so many theories and just concepts, these tools and way of looking at the world that come from economics that most people don't learn at all. And some people learn too late to really apply those tools to their life. I think looking at the world in terms of tradeoffs, opportunity costs, those are valuable things, especially when you're young and you're starting to make decisions about school, career. It's a valuable tool that we don't provide the students.

Yeah, I think that's powerful. I think the soft skills are so important because if you don't understand how to connect with people, don't understand how to finesse a conversation and relationship and understand and be empathetic towards people, then it's hard. You become more of a robot, right? And well, I think it's really tricky because that's something I don't think we ever get formally exposed to. Unless your parents are teaching you. I mean, hopefully. But it's like formal training to kind of understand that. I mean, be great as opposed to, we've had, like I said, California's initiative to increase self-confidence. Could we have something to increase empathy? That would be really nice is just to have people thinking more about others rather than just trying to build themselves up

because it's not something you experience. And, you know, I don't, I don't think the world needs any more selfishness. We've got plenty. We're all stocked up. Exactly. We've got a lot of that. Why should someone get this book? What do you think is going to help them the most by getting this? I think we've just got a lot of myths out there. And I think to be asking the questions, I think, is a very powerful thing. But to think you have the answers and they're wrong is far more dangerous. So, I mean, in terms of understanding, because I'm not just sitting there saying, oh, do this. There's definitely prescriptive advice.

But, you know, in that, are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert? Are you more of somebody who plays by the rules? Are you somebody who can't help but break the rules? Understanding who you are, looking at the environments you're in, and starting to align your personality with where you're at, that's the real goal here. They're thinking that, you know, hey, nice guys finish last. Well, okay, well, then when we push that too far, what does that mean? What should I be doing? So I would rather be asking the questions than have the wrong answers.

So I think this, at least we can see the research, the experts, what do they have to say so that we can at least have better answers. Better understanding. Got it. Final few questions for you. This one's called The Three Truths. Okay. And you've written how many articles now?

Oh, God. Probably about 5,000. 5,000? Yeah. Holy cow. You've got a bestselling book that's out right now. It's going to be a bestseller. You've had how many?

290,000 email subscribers, but how many millions of downloads or hits, reads on your site do you know? A lot. Millions and millions, right? Let's say this is your last day many years from now and you get to write three things down that is the only three things that people remember you by. 5,000 articles,

I don't know, millions of words you've written, but it comes down to three truths. Three things you know to be true about everything you've learned in your experience that you'd pass on to everyone else. Yeah. What do you think those three truths would be for you? I think the first one would be that issue of self-compassion, of forgiving ourselves. We're all going to make mistakes. It's like this book is about the mistakes a lot of us have made. And I think, I think forgiving yourself is

a lot of the anger, a lot of the problems that we deal with in life come from, you know, not, uh, the second one actually comes from not only the issue of happiness, but also the latest neuroscience research, which is when we focus, just like you were saying about with public speaking, when you focused on others, when you focused on the audience, you were good. When you let the voices in your head start talking to you about, oh, I'm concerned, is when we're focused, much like in meditation, and we're seeing this verified in neuroscience research, when you're focused, that's when you're clear. When you're unfocused, two things happen. Number one, you get a lot more negative thoughts start to come up.

And number two, we become self-focused. You know, we just start thinking about who are we? Am I right? Am I okay? Things get more, they get more me and they get more negative. But when we go out, when we think about others, when we think about what we're doing, when we're in a flow state, we're much happier and we're better at what we're doing. So that sort of focus on the outside, on what we're doing, on other people, you know, creates that.

And the third thing I would say is gratitude, where gratitude, if you look at Sonja Lubomirsky's research, it's basically, it is hard to feel unhappy when you are feeling gratitude. And it's something that's very simple. You don't actually have, what's fascinating about gratitude is that it's a perspective. You know, you don't have to have more money, more anything to feel it. If you said anything you have, you can feel gratitude or you can take it for granted. It is merely perspective. Nothing in your world has to change, just your attitude towards it. I am so lucky to have this versus, yes, of course, I'm entitled to it.

Having that attitude of gratitude is just something that creates enormous happiness in yourself. It bonds you to others, makes you thankful to others, and it's the easiest thing to do because you don't need any things to get it it's just a shift in how you look at the world and it can make you and others around you much happier yeah i love that one that's good man uh barking up the wrong tree the surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong make sure you guys go get this right now you can go in the bookstores. You can go online, Barking Up the

Wrong Tree. Go to Amazon, Bars on the Wall, everywhere else. Go to your website as well. Just Google Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Before I ask the final question, are you on social media and everything else as well? Should we connect with you? It's all Barking Up the Wrong Tree. They search for Eric Barker. Eric Barker. gotcha. Before I ask the last question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Eric, for going on the journey to find the solutions to all the things everyone's been looking for. And you do the hard work. You do the research. You've been doing this for years. And I think a lot of people are confused.

And for you to create relief for people through your words and your hard work and your research has helped so many people who read your message. And it's going to help a lot of people who read this book. So I acknowledge you for that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Final questions. What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is basically is, is finding out who you are, using that to define your goals, and using that to help others. It's not as simple as you've got to act, you've got to know who you are, you've got to act,

you've got to get where you want to go, but in the end, if it's just about you, I think that might be success, but it's not greatness. It's got to impact people beyond you. So knowing who you are, using that to achieve your goals, and having those goals positively impact the lives of others, to me that would be greatness.

Eric, thank you so much. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. There you have it, my greatness family. I hope you enjoyed this one. Eric Barker was a delight. Make sure to check out all of his information back at the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 482. You can learn about his book there. You can watch the full video interview and all the other stuff that we talked

about is back at the show notes lewishouse.com slash 482. Wherever you're listening to this, make sure to share this out with your friends and tag me on Instagram story or on your Instagram page. Tag me in the photo or in the video. Post this on Twitter. I'm at Lewis Howes or over on Facebook as well. Let me know what you enjoyed most about this. And as always, share it with your friends. I appreciate you guys so much. We've got some big, big interviews coming up like Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, one of the original founders of Shark Tank and the inventor of the

infomercial. He's done billions in sales on his infomercials. We've got Andy Frisella, the MFCEO, coming on as well. An incredible story about how he built a $100 million plus empire in the fitness and nutrition space.

We've got some amazing people. Rob Bell coming on the house back again. He's been on a few times, but he's coming back with a powerful message. One of my favorite people in the world. It's going to be an amazing next couple of weeks. So if this is your first time here, make sure to subscribe at iTunes.com slash greatness. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.