Revisited: Choose Your Seven Humans Wisely with Author Fredrik Backman

0:00My best friend and my wife, if they would have gone on one of the matchmaking websites or something, if they would have put themselves through an algorithm and said, find me a person, they would have never found me. Like never in a million years would an algorithm have said, this lunatic, he's the guy for you. Never. I was fortunate in the way that I stumbled upon people early on in my life that was very different for me. And I found out very quickly that that was a good thing for me. That was like I needed people who were not like me so that I could look at their best qualities and strive for them.

0:53If you're an avid listener of this podcast, you may know something about me, that I'm not a reader. I've actually written more books than I've read. But this conversation with Frederick Bachman makes me want to read. The way he thinks, the way he sees the world, the way he sees humans and friendships and people, it inspired me. I actually bought two of his novels, Anxious People and a Man Called Ove, which was later made into a movie, A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. We live in a world where loneliness is an epidemic, and Frederick reminds us that meaningful relationships are built with intention.

1:32They take showing up again and again and again, even when it's inconvenient. His new book, My Friends, drives that point home. The people who have deep, meaningful connections in the world, they're not lucky. They do the work, and that work is worth it. I wanted to begin this episode talking about Frederick's fantastic viral speech that he gave about creative anxiety and procrastination at Simon & Schuster's Centennial. He is, of course, humble about the video's success, but it's easy to see why his words connected with so many people. It's brilliant, hilarious, and painfully relatable for introverts like me.

2:14And that is a perfect description for the conversation that follows. This is a bit of optimism. Oh, and P.S., if you ever go to Stockholm, Frederick and I reveal who has the best cardamom buns in the world.

2:34This episode is brought to you by Porsche. And like all great brands with great products, it's the people behind the products that make them so spectacular. You already know this. Irrespective of whether people are fans of your books or not, the little video you did at the publishing thing uh went viral and made you a bit of an internet sensation yeah fueled by pure panic my wife has this thing where she doesn't give me all of the information which she finds to be very effective so she didn't i thought my my publisher was celebrating their 100 years simon schuster and they only invited me because they needed like a Scandinavian like they needed to show we have authors from all over the world and at some point someone in a meeting was like do we have anyone from Scandinavia and they were like yeah I think we have a guy my wife also explained to me like oh they're gonna have a thing in a you know and I thought based on what she told me that I was gonna give a speech at a dinner and then I arrived and it was at a theater in the presence of of a lot of a lot of writers and a lot of people that I really, really admire and really look up to.

3:51And I had prepared a speech full of stupid jokes. I don't know how to write a speech. Good evening. My name is Fredrik Backman. I'm here tonight because my agent said that this would be good for my career. She said I need to learn how to speak in front of people. Well, it will be fun, she said. So I told her that I write books. I spend eight hours every day locked inside a room with people I have made up. If I was comfortable talking to real people, I would have a real job.

4:33But my agent said, you know, just go up there and talk about the life of a writer. And I said, all right. being a writer is the best way i know how to get paid for being insane so it was it was pure panic what you saw on on the video that was just me panicking and thinking this is going to be the end of my time at this very nice publishing house well the good news is they hire you for being a writer not a speech giver and the better news is you nail but inherently the audience is always rooting for who's ever on the stage i've found and where things are the best and we most enjoy what we hear is that somebody is showing who they truly are which is if they're nervous or if they speak slowly as long as that's who they are i think people fall in love i am here tonight with all of my anxiety because i know that in this room there might be someone who is dreaming about writing a book dreaming of becoming an author so i am here to tell you that I am obviously an idiot.

5:36I have no idea what I'm doing, but I became an author anyway. So you can too. And I hope that one day I will be able to tell my agent that the reason that my next book is not finished yet is because I was busy reading yours. Thank you very much. I think that's what happened, which is we fell in love with somebody who was very honest about how you were actually feeling in the day and age where we filter everything and everything's performative. I'm glad if it felt that way. There was a lot of people who told me afterwards, like, it was so good because, you know, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't, like, practiced.

6:16And I'm like, well, I tried. It wasn't my intention. It was my intention for it to be good. You know, you walk up on stage and I had a piece of paper with the speech written down. And they said, no, no, we can put that on the teleprompter. and I was like absolutely not I'm holding on to the paper that like this is like my life raft on open sea I'm holding on to this like I'm holding on to like the the edge of a mountain it went all right but it was uh it was there was a lot of panic involved this is also a lot of panic involved and uh that we we talked about that earlier but the reason that I the reason that I said yesterday, I was going to explain to my children what I was going to do today.

7:01I said, well, I'm going to be on this podcast. And I said, what kind of podcast is this? And I said, this incredibly intelligent man who has written these books on leadership. And he invites these incredibly smart people to his podcast. And they talk about profound things. And they talk about research and science and the world and the society. And you can see my kids looking at me like, when are we going to get to the part of why you're here? Why are you going to be on it? But the reason that I couldn't say no was that my best friend, we've known each other since we were teenagers of 30 plus years.

7:38He's a great extrovert. You know, he was always a good leader. Always one of those guys that you followed everywhere because he just had that charisma. And when he was 19, he started working as a forklift driver at a warehouse, food and vegetables. and uh and then over the course of 25 years he's worked his way up and now he's the head of hr uh for the company of 900 people he talks about you know your books and your writing and how it's affected his view on leadership how it's affected his view on how to be of service to others like he talks a lot about he talks a lot about how he learned that leadership it's not about the position it's about the responsibility and responsibility to others and being of service to others we talk about it a lot um so i couldn't like there was no way that he would forgive me if i said no to this that's very kind thank you what i'm taking away from that story which is so beautiful is how proud you are of him you're glowing as you talk about it and as i've been looking at friendship and trying to understand friendship there's this very interesting observation that we all i hope have at least one but a few a group of people that we can turn to in dark times when we're at our worst when we're struggling we can go to these people and say i i just need to vent i need your help i'm not doing well you know i i hope that everybody has that that group of friends what i've found fascinating is that it's a smaller group of friends that we can call to brag, that we can call to say, I did something great.

9:23Something great happened to me. My book hit the bestseller list. I'm so proud of myself. And there's no jealousy on the other side. And there's no envy. And what I find so fascinating is the number of people that we can brag to is smaller than the number of people we can go to in hard times. And so this says a lot, I think, about the quality of your friendship you said he's such a close friend you've been friends since you were teenagers that you were talking about his accomplishments as if they're your own has it always been like that or have you ever had times in your in that friendship where you were jealous or something he did highlighted an insecurity in you no i i think it's always been that we were really proud of each other i think it's always was always that we we rooted so strongly for each other he's always been insanely proud of me like for whatever i accomplished and i but i think i really really think that i he was the person who taught me how to be that it was important to be happy for others like that that was a genuine part of the friendship to be to have that to be able to be genuinely happy for each other it's funny that you say that because i have that with him that i call him sometimes and i say i can't say i can't say this to anyone else because i'm gonna sound like a like a douchebag i'm gonna sound really full of myself but this thing happened and i'm super proud of it and we also have this he can call me once in a while and he'll say you know i'm this thing happened i'm really you know i'm i'm upset with this person i just need to vent is that okay and then he just goes off and then at the end of it it's like i know i'm i'm like exaggerating i'm overreacting i know that but i have to like sometimes you need to get it out to like edit yourself and like yeah this is not how i'm gonna say it to them but i needed to say it to you first.

11:24I think you just summed up the problem with social media, which is our initial reaction, which is not the best reaction. It's the venting reaction. It's not the way we actually want to say something to somebody. It's not constructive, but it is necessary for us to get it all out in the most exaggerated form so that we can be calmer and rational again. That I think a lot of people are using the social media, the comment section as that outlet, not not the friend if you're married and you're upset you know you have an argument with your wife and you go to your friends and you say you know i i just you know it's this and this and this and this and this and you know and we had this argument she didn't listen and whatever it is your friends will tell you yeah but you know but you are that way like you're she's right about these three things like you might be right about this one thing but the other three things she's spot on there like you're you're the annoying one you're in the wrong and you have to go like all right all right fine and then you kind of edit yourself yeah because they're your editors and you go back and you you're like okay this is how i feel you need people around you who edit you when people have read one of my books and they tell me like well i'm excited to meet you because i read one of your books and i want to tell them like you need to tone down your expectations because you read my book i edited the book for a year that's the best version of me and if you didn't like the book that's still the most you're gonna like me because that that was that was the that was all i had that was the best that was the best way that i could phrase this like i i maybe i rewrote that sentence 150 times before i'm like yeah this is how i feel about it if you meet me in real life before editing, then that's how I found writing.

13:20When I was a kid, I was very bad at being in an argument, being in a confrontation. I didn't know, like, I always went away like, oh, I should have said that, I should have said that, I should have said that. So writing was my way to find, I was in an argument, I think I was in an argument with my dad. He's very good with words. so he would win all the time because he knew more words i mean he he could like twist an argument and i was maybe six or seven years old and i was like i went into my room and i was really angry and instead of like engaging in the argument i went to my room and i wrote him a letter and i started doing that a little bit with people like when i was upset with them i sat down and i wrote them a letter because then i could edit myself so it didn't come out it came out the way that I wanted it to come out.

14:12That's how I started writing, I think. I absolutely love this idea as friend, as editor. And there are people who are better editors than they are writers, you know, where they can see the flaws in the argument or they can see how to make the argument better more than we can. They have clarity and we're open to editors. The good writers are open to editors. The good writers know that they won't get it right and they need somebody's input to see the things that we can't see. And to think of a friend, to have that same clarity and objectivity and to be able to see what we're trying to say, and for us to be open to an editor rather than to just hire somebody to just agree with our writing.

14:57You said that you learned to be proud of somebody else from him. did he actually sit down and teach you the lesson or did you just feel his joy for you and and you learned it by example by watching him no with him i think i learned with that that particular thing i think i learned by example uh and and uh still do i mean he's still my he's still very much my role model he's always you know showed showed me how to be a better person i'm always trying to give me an example he was always the first with a lot of things so he was the first to get a serious relationship we were 22 23 and we would always watch movies we would always end up at you know whatever night it was we were at usually at my apartment and we would watch movies and or play video games he met a girl and and and uh you know after a while they got serious and one night He just sat there and he just looked at me and he said, you know what?

16:09I think this is going to be the last time for a very long time that I watch a movie with you guys. I was like, what? And he's like, no, I've been thinking about it. And this is something that we do, but we're going to do other things. Like we're going to go grab a beer. We're going to go grab dinner. We're going to hang out. We're going to go to concerts. We're still going to do all that. but this like tuesday night just sitting around watching a movie i'm gonna do that with my girlfriend now because that time is really important for me to have with her if this is gonna work and i want this to work and he had this really discussion with us that that you know you need to be happy for me for this and um and we would you know we were 22 which was a you know and it was such a mature way of telling your friends like i love you i i but but i have to invest time in her and then a few years later he was 25 and they had their first child and uh we were 25 years old you know you're not the smartest and we were all single the rest of us so we i remember we were in a room and three of his friends started as a joke and then it went a little too far and then we kind of said well you never you know you never hang out with us anymore because you always have to be with your family now that you have a kid you always have to be with your family.

17:47And he sat down and he did it in the nicest, most compassionate way. But he sat down and he looked at us and he says, it's not that I have to be with them. It's that I want to be with them. And he says, you know, I love you. I love hanging out with you. But there is no situation where I wouldn't rather be with my kid. and it was so just it was such uh such a moment for the rest of us we were all single we didn't have kids we didn't know anything about that and we all and remember and we've talked about it afterwards like it was such a profound moment for the rest of us in the room and it kind of it impacted the way i really think it impacted the way that we looked at a relationship because after that we were we were all okay that's what i'm looking for that's the thing i'm looking for over the next five six years we all met someone we're still with that person 10 15 years later we're still with that person and we all have kids and we all look at our families the way that he told the way that he said that that day we still we're all like we're all invested in our families in the same way we we all have this discussion all the time that people talk about quality time over quantity time yeah and i think that's the part where we would wildly disagree like all four of us is like i would rather have quantity I would rather have a hundred hours with you over the phone than like going on this trip to Las Vegas and watch a Formula One race or whatever, you know, super experience that you could have with a group of friends.

19:46I would much rather have a hundred hours with you over the phone. Yeah, he's impacted me tremendously because he's he's always been the one to do something first. Very often he said something. And then three years later, I'm like, I get it, though. I didn't get it at the time, but I get it now. You were right. There's so many things that I'm taking away from this. He's also talking about growing up. And that our life changes, we grow and we have to buy. We have to reprioritize. and sometimes that'll come at the expense of the people who aren't at the place we're at you know as you said you were single he was in a relationship you learned some of the things he was saying you understand some things you're saying only three years later when some of your life caught up with some his life but i so appreciate that level of communication where you tell your friends just so you know and they get to have the reaction no no no you know as opposed to getting angry because it's more passive which is i think unfortunately what most of us do a because i think it's easier and b because i don't think we know how to tell our friends for fear of disappointing them or upsetting them and he didn't seem to have that fear no no i think i practiced talking about my emotions because we we were that kind of group of friends and it was always very normal to us to to talk about how we felt especially me and him um and it it so i had a lot of practice talking about my emotions and he also you know he's a great editor he's very good at telling me like yeah you're way off here you know you're talking about honesty he's honest and he was always uh but he was also also this you know he taught me how to

21:35um to view time we live seven hours apart in sweden now because i i moved north so uh we talk over the phone a lot and um so we can text each other like are you we both have dogs so i'll i'll text him like are you gonna walk the dog he's like yeah at 9 p.m i'm gonna walk the dog I'll call them. But we were always talking about time, like time. Like he was so clear so early on in life that this is the amount of time I have. You know, and these are the things that I need to do. And I like, we're still going to hang out, but I'm going to have to take a little bit of it. He said on multiple occasions that like the only thing I can give you is time.

22:24like that's what i have like that's that's what i'm that's what i have redeemable precious commodity yeah and and for him it was i can give you time whenever there's someone who loses someone he's that person who he just gets in the car and he goes to their house and he says i'm here and he says if you don't need me for anything i'll go sit in the car But I just want you to know that I'm here. And at so many occasions, someone lost someone. And there's this thing that happens when you lose someone that everyone thinks, oh, I don't want to call. I don't want to disturb. I don't want to intrude in there.

23:13So they end up sitting there alone. and he would say like there are probably people who can say smarter things or or give you like more profound words at this time or like but i can give you like i can be around i can be here i can do the dishes or you know go get food or or i'll you know if there there's a chore around the house i'll do that like i'll i'll give me something to do a lot of people listening to this are I don't want to use the word jealous or envious maybe the feeling of longing to have that in their lives and I know people are asking this how do I get a friend like your friend look who you are and who you become that we have to we have to admit in some way shape or form whether it's you as a father, you as a husband, you as a friend you as an author, in some way shape or form you have become good at those things in part because of this person in your life who's been rooting for you since the beginning who's been honest with you since the beginning who's been helping manage time since the beginning i've been modeling what all that looks like for you and i know a lot of people listening to this are thinking themselves how do i get that i want that it there's beauty in what you're talking about there's also profound sadness that could go habit

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25:57I was 21 and I was racing on the German DTM schedule in a one make 911 Cup Series where down to the steering wheel in the seat everybody's cars were identical as delivered from Porsche and basically the driver was the differentiator. It was my college career if you will. You know I was the first non-German to be signed into the Porsche junior team the farm league where they developed their factory fighter pilots. By the fourth race I had my first victory and I think people were shocked not only because I was a rookie but because I was an American and Americans racing in Europe are sort of black sheeps for whatever reason and just still loving every new journey within the brand.

26:46how do people get a friend like that i mean part of it is just i was lucky just the way that i talk about you know my wife well i i was lucky um i you know i ran into someone um and they were my humans me and riyadh my best friend and and that friend group like that i still have like those three friends i still have in my life and it's they're still my my my most important people and and and i figured out with them and then i did the same with my wife we figured out that okay there's there's two things that we need to be aware of here first we need to have rules of fighting if that makes sense and like my wife and i very early on in our relationship when we had been just started dating like we we agreed that we would never in a fight no one could say no one could threaten with like maybe we shouldn't be together maybe we shouldn't you know maybe well maybe this relationship is a mistake maybe you should leave me like no one could do that because that's like an atomic bomb in or in in like the discussion is immediately over someone threatens to leave yeah then the argument is immediately over then you won like we set up boundaries for fighting and i think we talked about the way we fight like after the fight we would talk for hours and hours and hours and hours about the fight if that made sense like we would try to analyze each other and we would try to figure each other out and i think it was coming from a place where we understood that we are very very very different and i think it's the same thing with my wife we knew immediately going into that relationship like we are really different people yeah this is gonna be a journey for both of us when you're young people tell you that, well, a relationship is a lot of work.

28:59And when you're young, you think it sounds unromantic because you think like, well, in that case, it's not true love. If you have to work on it, it's not true love. But that's because when you're young, you don't understand that the work is not on the relationship and it's on you. The work is on you. That's what people mean when they say a relationship is a lot of work. The work is on me. it's i have to work i have to work on who i am communicating better explaining my feelings better understanding me better so that i can explain myself better but also the fact that me and riyad has we've been friends for 30 plus years um my wife and i have been together for 18 years and we change all the time like we've changed a lot like we've changed immensely it's like the you you find someone you get married and then you have kids like you become a completely different person in some regards when you have kids because then then there's this whole other responsibility that i have to you're unraveling some of the tropes and the and the and the punch lines you know like relationships are a lot of work and to your point it was like yes but the work is on yourself like that's that's not people don't say that um you know i love my relationship because i've been working on myself and i'm a better version of myself and that's my definition of a great relationship whether it's a friendship or a romantic relationship the youth do the growth yourself the other persons can only support you they can't grow for you and and i think when we talk about sort of the sadness that goes along with hearing about a friendship like yours, I can't accept that it's a lottery.

30:48I can't accept that it's like some people are good looking, some people are smart, and some people get great friends. Like I can't accept that. You know, the good looking and the smart, you know, that's genetics. That really is a lottery. But the friendship, I know you said you were lucky, and that's probably how you feel. But based on everything you've been describing in your relationship about the choice to do the work and your friend's choice to spend time with his family and his choice to spend time with his his his girlfriend i think the way you get one of those friends that you want is you choose to be that friend first you choose to show up at someone's house and say i'm here give me give me give me something to do that's the work on yourself like first you have to choose to be the good friend your friend made the choice to be a good friend and when he got back was a great friend what's the term you use in business roi return of investment that's why i talk more about quantity time than quality time i think it's a return of investment for me i'm the same way with my kids i'm um i know that i'm not a great dad i know that i'm not like i'm aiming to be an okay dad i i know that i because i live in my head a lot and i'm easily distracted and i have all these things and i i am bad with stress and all of that but i'm i'm like if i'm around enough then i will have time to make up for my mistakes does your wife think that you're a bad dad no i think she would agree that i'm i'm i i'm usually distracted i think she she would say that i'm a good dad because i really try so that's that's because that's her that's her definition she's a better judge of the quality of your parenting than you i would imagine because they're her kids too and she doesn't want you to screw them up no no she tells me that a lot like you like you you are good like they think you're a good dad because they can see how hard you try to be a good dad and then you make mistakes sometimes and that's all right and you know you mess it up but i think it's the same way with friendships and it's the same way with with my relationship with my wife the thing we invest in is our friendship if i if that makes sense like if we would like i i view i view that relationship as it's it's a romantic relationship it's husband and wife it's all of that but it's also at its core we invested in in in our friendship like hanging out doing things together this whole conversation to me goes right back to where we started on the four minute speech you gave at Simon & Schuster which is you tried and I think I think that you're tying together a lot of things I've said a lot of things before that you're tying together for me my girlfriend we were having a fight that went like this i said here's what i got right and here's what you got wrong and she responded well here's what i got right and here's what you got wrong and you can see how this goes backwards and forwards and at some point like you know i i interrupted the fight and said this is not going to go anywhere good i'm changing the rules and the rules are i'm going to tell you what i did wrong i'm going to tell you what you did right then you're going to go and that's what we did and within 30 seconds what we both discovered is we're trying And I think this idea of letting people see that you're trying, not just tell them that you're trying, but let them see that you're trying.

34:30When you show up at someone's house and say, I'm here, give me something to do, meaning I don't know what to say. I didn't prepare anything. I don't have a sense of what right or wrong is in this situation. But I'm here, give me something to do is the greatest indication of I'm trying. telling your friends guys just so you know this will be the last time i come to movie night which is i'm going to try this relationship thing and that's the respect we had for him is was the effort the the visual effort the measurable effort is the most romantic thing in the world in in a romantic relationship or a friendship or a work relationship is effort that someone is investing in in a person not that they get it right and I think you're an amazing father because you're trying so hard to be a good father

35:28yeah and I I don't know why I'm so emotional today like I have close friends and I have a good relationship with my folks and they're both amazing parents you know I don't know why this is touching me so much I mean this is super emotional to me too because we're talking about you know we're talking about these are my most important like my wife my kids and my best friends these are my you know humans I always separate like I always try to explain that I don't there are people and there are humans like humans you have maybe seven humans that you chose these are your and then people are the ones at the airport you can be annoyed by people and still love humans my best friend and my wife if they would have if they would have gone on one of like the matchmaking websites or something one of the apps or whatever it is now it's like i i'm too old for that but i'm too old to understand the technology now but if like if they would have put themselves through an algorithm and said find me a person they would have never found me like never in a million years would an algorithm have said this this lunatic he's the guy for you never i was fortunate in the way that i stumble upon people early on in my life that was very different for me yeah and i found out very quickly that that was a good thing for me that was like i needed people who were not like me um so so that i could look at their best qualities and strive for them i wanted to sort of double click on one other thing which is you're very self-deprecating and there's a difference between being self-deprecating and being uh having low self-esteem and i think you're self-deprecating you accept you i think you find you funny i think your ego is healthy and i think the ability to be self-deprecating in a way that you're is owning either real shortcomings or perceived shortcomings is by by naming it you can say i'm working on it i'm trying you can make it a thing as opposed to not naming it keeping it hidden means it can never be addressed it can never grow and it and that then becomes an insecurity and i i'm fascinated by healthy self-deprecators you know where by putting it as well as way to put it now i i mean i do i think there's a difference between uh i'm i'm no good at this versus yeah i'm i'm no good at this but it's not a giving up it's an identifying and that's the difference i think Low self-esteem is giving up and accepting this is my luck.

38:28This is how I am. Self-deprecation, when it's healthy, is simply identifying something and saying, look, sometimes it goes better, sometimes it gets worse. I'm working on it. You know, haven't conquered it yet, but still doing it. And it probably might take me my whole life and I may never get to the standard I want, but I'm working on it. And I think the ability to put it out there does so many things. A, I think it's super healthy. It also makes you super authentic. it also allows others to support you in whatever journey you're trying to grow in i mean i watched your speech and i was so inspired by it because i just loved that you just put it out there and said this is what i'm going to try and do and here you go i also wonder how much of it is just because you're swedish you know what is it janta what's it called janta janta janta the janta law there's a certain part of it so that people know what we're talking about do they teach it at school in Sweden?

39:27yeah it's just a common everybody knows about it don't pick up yourself never brag, never think you're better than anybody else don't seek attention it's all of these forced humility things and Swedes I know if you walk through the very very fancy street with all the fancy shops in downtown Stockholm like in the Gucci and the Prada in the window, nothing has a logo on it. You know, no conspicuous displays of wealth is looked down upon and talking about yourself and bragging about yourself. I think a certain part of it, sure. And I think it's, to a certain extent, I defend Janta. I think it's, I mean, for some of us, it's kind of good.

40:10It's like, you know, don't get too full of yourself. The bad quality of it is what you call crabs in a bucket um like one crab tries to get out of the buckets and the other crabs pull him back down yeah but i think part of it is that sweden is a small country and i think it's the same if you grow up in america but in a small town yeah well kind of it does something to you you have this idea that we kind of have to stick together a little bit yes and we have to find a way to get along because there's fewer of us and so there i think there's uh there's a positive quality to it but i also think honestly i think it's a huge part of it i've always looked for people who are different for me i think i i very it was good for me to very early on in life understand like the people that i bought head with like the people that i get annoyed by but very often people who are more like me yeah like i get annoyed with someone at the airport and my wife and my kids will go like yeah because he's like you that's how you are when you're having a bad day that's how you are when you're annoyed by something it was a blessing for me very early on in my life that i have stumbled on but also have sought out people who were very different from me so that i mean what you call self-deprecating it's also part of it is also that you know if you hang out with people are very different from you you kind of learn how to make jokes about how different you are yeah you you you understand the way that you are different from the people around you sure it can be self-deprecating but it can also be this we never feel that we deserve each other yeah we always feel that we have to earn it like i always feel like i have to i have to earn the attention of my wife like i always feel like i have to try a little harder to make her laugh or to to you know to make her think that i'm i'm doing okay what you're talking about is doing the work what you're talking about is is you're doing the work of the relationship like it requires effort like you can't take any of it for granted you have to earn it every single day that's the work like i have very few close friends i have very few humans in my life because i figured out very early on that i i you for you to get the best out of me you have to spend a lot of time with me because i'm also going to be very annoying and i'm also going to be very intense sometimes because i can't you know i'm very often at a one or an 11 i talk too little or i can't shut up it's so there's a lot of things that i'm going to do that you're going to find highly annoying yeah so i need so i need a lot of time from you so that you can see my good qualities too and i figured that out and realized from you know riyad's lesson that okay so everything is about time then i can't have i can't have 300 friends it's um because i'm never going to be able to give them the best of me for the record i like the the yanta law my only complaint about it is that all of those things are expressed in the negative.

43:43Don't do this. Don't be this. Don't do this. Don't do this. And I would love to see it updated for the modern world that says, be humble, be appreciative of others, see the value in others. I'd rather the young law tells us what to do rather than not what not to do. And I wonder if it's a bucket of crabs because everybody's saying you can't do that as opposed to let's lift each other up as opposed to pull each other down. That's actually

44:11incredibly clever and very very true and i have to admit that i've been living with this my entire life and i haven't thought about it that way but it's exactly that it should be if you if you would just turn around and say these are the things you should do then it would be a list of very positive things because that's the kind of like all of the things are things that you try to teach your kids i like yanta i just wish it was expressed and i'm going to rewrite all the yanta laws and in the affirmative that's what i'm going to do you should this i think i think this could really benefit all of us i wish i could have 10 more hours the i i'm so profoundly moved by this idea of time and choice you know and i'm so i'm so curious about riadam is if he's if his his obsession with time if it's born out of fear or something else so i you know this is a very personal thing to say about someone that you you have in your life and that i love you you know immensely i think it's a fear for him it's always been a fear of not being enough for people like that's his main fear for a long time he's tried like every if you rise within a company you get a new role you become all of a sudden you're the boss of people you used to work with yeah and you have to change your identity a little you have to this is certain there's a new responsibility now and i have to think differently i have to be of service to others and all that yeah i think he he had this self-esteem problem at every new level he felt everyone knows more than i do they have more education than i do they come from this huge background they bring so much to the table yeah and i don't have anything that i'm bringing so he always felt that he had to outwork everybody he had to come the best prepared the most like he had to just find so much things to bring to the table.

46:19Everyone else just showed up, but he felt to deserve a seat at a table. I have to bring so much more than everyone else. This is something that I learned later on in life that I'm dealing, trying to learn now, trying to deal with now. But I think I kind of, I developed this fear of disappointing people, which my wife has told me a lot like you you have this fear of disappointing people and it's so strong in you that you do like you try to do too much and then when you don't feel appreciated or you feel like oh i think they're disappointed me you kind of lash out even before they've reacted you're so afraid that they'll be disappointed that you're you lash out at them you become angry before they're even disappointed yeah you you kind of you you took it out in advance and i'm really trying to become better at that my wife told me in so many words sometimes you the only thing you want is for the kids to be happy and you want that so much so if we're at some place and you wanted them to be so happy when we got to this place and you get kind of upset with them for not being happy enough and and and that's not on them that's on you because you raised your expectations of how happy you were going to make them and so this is this is a you problem i had a guest on my on the podcast and mo got it and he talked about expectations and fantasy like and And what happens is we have these expectations, we have these fantasies.

48:06And then what happens is if real life doesn't match that, that's where the disappointment happens. So you plan something for your kids. And in your mind, they scream and shout, Dad, you're the main, this is the best thing ever. And that's the fantasy that you concocted in your mind when you show up. And when reality shows up and it's not that, it's the delta that leaves you so disappointed, leaves us so disappointed. And his whole point was like, can you let go of the fantasy that you plan the thing and the reaction will be whatever the reaction will be? And trying to let go of the expectation because you're only going to be disappointed.

48:39No, but it's entirely true. I've been plagued by this my whole life. Like, I am more excited for the things I plan for people than they are. And I've had to learn that the gesture is the thing and not the reaction. And I still struggle with it. Here's another question for you. How can we understand bullies without excusing them?

49:05i think for me is to see how much i have in common with them i write books and it's not to be self-deprecating it's not to be humble but i often tell people that the the the worst people in my books the worst characters they're very often from me the most annoying characters that the characters with a lot of flaws and a lot of who do stupid things they're very often from me and the best characters are from people around me those are the people that i aspire to if people find something in my writing or in my characters that they connect to it's very often that i don't start i i don't i don't write about the best parts of me i write about the really you know the parts of me that i'm not super proud of the the you know when i'm envious or or i'm you know i'm i'm petty or I'm mean.

49:58I don't excuse bullies by seeing, oh, but there's good in them. I excuse them by seeing, but the things that they do, they are within me too. And maybe I'm not that far from them that I wish I was. Oh, that is such a brilliant device, which is instead of forcing each other to find the good of the people we don't like or disagree with, but rather to find what we have in common with the people we don't like or who bully us uh i i find that much more humbling and it's not so it's not so arrogant which is boy i'm pretty flawed too and i think what it does is it it produces empathy it helps you understand another person who's who we don't like or disagree with i do that a lot with my wife that i say you know someone did something at uh you know we see someone do something or say something or behave badly and we come home you know maybe we're at a party or a dinner or something and i come home and i say you know what i i saw him say this or i saw him behave in this way and i got this shame that that is probably something that i do once in a while and i have to become better at fighting that part of me and it's not to be it's not to be self-deprecating or humble but i think that i'm in large parts a narcissist i really do i just fight it and i think that's maybe that was my you know survival mechanism kicking in that that i have to find people around me who are different from me and better from me so that they constantly remind me not to be a jerk.