The Real Reason You Feel Empty (Even When Life Looks Good) with Musician Mike Posner

0:00Simon Sinek:Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that pain is a teacher. I realized that I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I've got a few hits, got a few million dollars, and I'm just sort of looking around like, is this it? Because I got all the stuff I was supposed to. There was this asymmetry between what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world. and I said if I keep following that script I know I'm never going to close the gap. I have to admit something. I am not a millennial. I also don't listen to a lot of popular music and so if I'm really honest I didn't really know who Mike Posner was when we booked him on the podcast.

0:50Simon Sinek:Turns out he's a multi-platinum Grammy-nominated recording artist and producer but my team knew exactly who he was because they're millennials. And for them, Mike's hits were more than just songs, they were anthems for their generation. Songs like Cooler Than Me and I Took a Pill in Ibiza became part of the zeitgeist. But I'm really glad that Mike came on the podcast. Whether you know his songs or not, whether his songs captured your feelings or not, his message actually matters to all of us. By every external metric, Mike was hugely successful. But no one prepared him for life once the party ended.

1:28Simon Sinek:Mike spent the past decade trying to find himself again. He walked across America. He almost died of a snake bite. He climbed Mount Everest, and here's the thing. It worked. He learned something beautiful about himself. Self-acceptance. Mike will freely admit he is now a different person from the guy who needed to chase external validation. And his new song, I Went Back to Ibiza, tells his new story. It turns out, whether you have a Grammy nomination or not, But whether you're famous or not, the lessons Mike learned apply to all of us. Because his journey is a very human journey. This is a bit of optimism.

2:16Simon Sinek:You know, it's funny. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Yeah. And your career, your story, your presence, it seems to have shown up at the right time for the times we live in. The challenges that people are dealing with, the journeys that people are on, your story, your message, your inspiration would not have worked 20 years ago. So I don't know if you feel that.

2:52I don't know. I haven't really contemplated it before. I've toyed with this idea that God gives teachers pain. And if you learn to overcome that pain, you can teach others to do the same. And the teaching then is imbued with sort of like a gravitas that it wouldn't otherwise have. You teach them from experience rather than a conceptual reading of some book that you've never gone through. So I guess, thank you. I guess, thank you. But you're right. You go through certain trials and tribulations and challenges, we could just call them that, that maybe the ones that I've overcome or figured out some kind of rhyme or reason to how to get through them.

3:47maybe they were like yeah five ten years before a lot of other people are undergoing the same ones I'm not sure I'm just trying to share and help people where I can did you want to be a

3:59Simon Sinek:musician or a teacher depends what what age Mike we're we're asking I think at 16 I just wanted to be cool and have some girls pay attention to me you know it was probably as far as I had had planned out. Definitely, definitely not a teacher. I guess it also speaks to the role of art, right? Which I'm fascinated by. As an art lover, I spend, you know... Do you know how rich you sound when you say as an art lover? Oh, my... Really? Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Now you're going to get me... Okay. Now this beautiful invitation to have you on the podcast is now going to change and I'm going to pull up my soapbox and I'm going to do all the talking now all right because that is such a trigger i love art too by the way but when you say as an art lover if you start a sentence like that as your friend i want you to know certain people are gonna does it sound elitist to say as a music lover no no right does it sound elitist to say as a food lover in the middle in the middle so i think i think we're speaking to one of the problems with with art right i understand why it doesn't sound elitist when you say it for music is because music for 14.95 a month you have unlimited access to all the music in the world you know so it's accessible but this is the mistake about art which is art is accessible too it's the institutions that house the art or sell the art that are the elitist assholes that I hate.

5:34Simon Sinek:I love art and I hate the art world. Yeah. And there are incredibly talented young artists whose work is accessible. You can visit a museum, you can visit a gallery. Many of those are free. You can also scroll through the internet and scroll through Instagram and you can appreciate somebody's intensity and creativity all day. And so - Or you could watch a train go by. Or you can watch a train go by, and I think you're absolutely right. I have these moments. They're ultra, ultra present moments, and they catch me by surprise. I don't do it on purpose, where I'm fully consumed by the sights and sound of the thing I'm doing.

6:13Simon Sinek:so when I'm making coffee in the morning and it doesn't happen all the time but I'll randomly it's like a switch goes and I'm all of a sudden hyper attuned to the clank of the coffee pot and the swish of the spoon in the coffee and the sprinkle of the coffee into the cup you know and all those sounds become my morning music and everything else is completely tuned out to your point we We are surrounded by beautiful, beautiful things. That wasn't my point. I was just trying to tease you a little bit. I know.

6:51Simon Sinek:Do you have to have courage to put so much of yourself and your vulnerability in your work for display? Like, why not just sing about love and happiness and joy? Why sing about loss and pain and hurt? Because most art or most music, it's superficial. Let's be honest. the lyricists and the lyrics that are written it's forced rhymes and silly stories and made up ideas what is it about your work is it courage is it naivete that you are so raw well first of all thank you for for recognizing that as you asked the question i had this this riff that our friend in Q sometimes goes on. I know he's been a guest on your.

7:42Simon Sinek:Yeah. He's, I loved his episode. He has this great riff that he'll sometimes do on stage and he says, art is alchemy. Yeah. Okay. So you're taking pain that you undergo in life and pain is a part of life. We all go through pain. Every single person at some point will undergo extreme stress. Not like, oh, I stubbed my toe. Like, man, this person died. Like, every single human being gets the privilege of experiencing extreme pain at some point. Artists have this gift. We get to make, if we do our job well, something beautiful out of that pain. so our friend Adam and Q he calls that alchemy he says you are alchemizing pain into beauty now someone else like you as an art lover can go either listen to the song or hear the poem or see the painting.

8:49And that imbues you with a sense of fellowship, okay? Going, wow, I too have felt that sort of pain, but it was hard for me to describe. It was hard for me to put my finger on. Maybe because it's hard to even describe in words to begin with. But if you get to play with music, or you get to play with color, then suddenly you can put your finger on this thing that was otherwise ineffable. And then you, Simon, as our placeholder, as an art lover, can say, wow, I'm not the only one. So art is an artist with a capital A. And I agree with you, you know, a lot of the art. And it's not with judgment, because I've done it too, right?

9:35Most of the art or the music, most of the music rather that we have, it's not art, it's a commodity. Most of the artists become brand ambassadors for a picture of themselves that they used to be.

9:48Simon Sinek:Or it's simply a commercial enterprise and it's a product and they choose the product that sells well. Great, great. And nothing wrong with it. Yep. But art, as you asked, with a capital A, it often involves – I haven't thought about it enough to say it always involves, but it often involves this sort of alchemy. and it's somebody saying, the artist saying, hey, this is what it's like for me to be human. This is the stuff I don't tell other people or I don't even know how to start telling. But when I sit down with this keyboard, I pick up this guitar. This is what it's like for me to be me. Anybody else?

10:30Does anyone else feel this way? And if we do a good job, someone hears it, looks, sees it, and they might not even be born yet.

10:41Simon Sinek:That's the crazy thing. And they go, thank you. Me too. Okay. I have so many thoughts bubbling. I have talked about this publicly, that we have misinterpreted vulnerability in broadcast, that going into a room by yourself with your phone, turning on the camera, and crying and talking about how you're a loss is not really vulnerability, but it is broadcast. And it's actually more difficult to say those exact same words to a friend in person, in private, than it is by yourself in your room with your phone, right? Right. but this is where i need your help what's the difference between the broadcast of my feelings by myself in my room with my camera and you sitting by yourself writing down your lyrics strumming your guitar recording the album and putting it out there why is one art and designed to be a mirror to make others feel not alone in that pain and the other seems to kind of like Like, I know it feels different, but it feels to miss the mark.

11:53Simon Sinek:Like, because they're similar, what makes them different? Well, it comes down to intention.

12:03Because you're right, you know, going alone in the guitar. Look, I got my microphone right here. You know, I could be alone in this room. This is where I do my music, by the way. If I just sit here and I write a song from that exact viewpoint, which is not to create a human connection and fellowship, it but is actually to get attention and in q riffs on this he said that's not alchemy

12:27Simon Sinek:that's turning pain to pain the equation would be then if you're broadcasting and the likes and the follows are the thing that alleviate the pain you miss the point yes the album sales and the downloads of your song are not the thing that relieve the pain but the album sales and the downloads are a recognition that others may either appreciate the music superficially or feel not alone when they share your pain perhaps perhaps you know they could be because you didn't write the song and say this is going to be the hit no i'm always surprised by those you know i've had i think it's five songs that you could air quote call hits in my career two have been that i sing and then the other three have been songs i've written for other artists right that i don't perform right but people ask me this question sometimes they'll be like you know because i've made albums my entire adult life i think i have 12 now so almost one a year for like the last 15 years i just thought you were a guy who wrote a song right so people ask me this question they say but listen the context in which i live now is like my last hit song was i don't know like nine or ten years ago like really popular song so people will say to me like when are you gonna write another song like i've written hundreds of songs since then all in the context of for whatever reason i'm always shocked by which of my songs have become popular yeah i i feel like i meet and work with and know other recording artists who can sort of like sit down and go hey we're gonna make a big one and then they do and then they say this is the big one and then they promote it and then it's the big one i always put these on like man surely this one's gonna be this one's gonna be very popular it never works out And then I'll write something like my most popular song so far is called I Took a Pill in Ibiza.

14:37And this song is like, I finished it and I loved it. It felt true to me. It felt like territory I hadn't already trodden as a writer. But I also thought, surely this will never become popular. Because it's got a drug reference in the title. It's like, this will never be on the radio. And lo and behold, it became quite popular.

15:06Simon Sinek:So I never know. I want to go back to something that we said before. I said there were lots of thoughts. And there's another one that I had, which is you had the courage, and I call it courage, to put your feelings, your hardships in a song for all to hear. but do we live in a world right now where people and i'll skew younger you know that younger people well maybe old people not to be ageist are afraid of discomfort and the reason i say younger people is because i think you know they didn't live through the war they didn't live through civil rights you know arguably there's a lot of discomfort these days there seems to be a lot of upheaval and discomfort these days for all kinds of reasons.

15:53Simon Sinek:Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that pain is a teacher. But are we learning the lessons? Are we learning the lessons of pain now or are we just avoidant and putting up barriers and walls and creating boundaries? I put it in air quotes because the pain is just too much. Scott Galloway talks about this. Go screw something up. Go fail. Go humiliate yourself. It'll be more valuable to your life than none of those difficult, hard and uncomfortable feelings. Absolutely. I wouldn't.

16:30You know, I got a degree from Duke University in sociology, but I haven't really kept up with that in the last 20 years, Simon. I'm vaguely familiar with the archetypal stereotypes of Gen Z and millennial, all this stuff. But I wouldn't be so bold as to say a whole generation is this way or that way. I can say in my own life, many of the things that you just referenced are true. That things went relatively well. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. There was no capital T trauma in my childhood. I got really good grades. I went to Duke University all the while sort of developing this skill as a musician.

17:14Before I graduated from Duke University, I won myself a record deal. My career had started to take off. I was becoming famous. Flash cut forward. Now I'm 30 years old. And I've got a few hits. Got a few million dollars in the bank account. and I'm just sort of looking around like, is this it? Because I got all the stuff I was supposed to. When it comes to like the American society or like what's the pinnacle? It's like president, rock star, you know? It's like, which one would you rather be? At least for our generation, I think now it's like Instagram influencer is up there for kids. But for people my age is like, I was a pop star, man.

18:02man, you can't go that much higher than that. It's true. I think pop star is even higher than movie star. Maybe, perhaps. I think then there's levels to each. I realized that I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I was living in West Hollywood. And I just thought, you know, this can't be it. This can't be it. And there was this feeling, Simon, that maybe you'll resonate with. And I'm willing to bet more than one person resonate with listening. There was this feeling like there was more inside me than I was expressing. like I had more to give inside my soul than my actual life reflected there was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world and I couldn't figure out how to close that gap and people would say to me at the time but you've done so much you're the guy that's saying cooler than me you did I took a pill in Ibiza like you got nominated for a Grammy What do you mean?

19:17You've given so much to the world. But it wasn't about the external. It was this just internal knowing like something is off. And I remember like for years I felt like, man, I was just like one supplement away. Or like one new biohacking trick away. Or one change in my diet away from feeling peace. From feeling like my life was the way it was supposed to be.

19:48and at age 30 i said i don't know how i'm gonna close this peace gap but i know if i just keep doing what i'm doing like because i was on a trajectory i was supposed to make albums then go on tour then make another album then go on tour man make another album and go on tour i was supposed to basically do that until i died or became so irrelevant that it was no longer a business that that that a multinational corporation could count on right so i said if i keep following that script i know i'm never going to close the gap that's a recipe to not close the

20:27Simon Sinek:gap so to scott galloway's point like i have to try something else so that's when i chose to do this crazy idea which was to walk across the the united states i wanted to start walking on the east coast the atlantic ocean new jersey and walk all the way to the west coast it is some strange effort i was trying to lose myself and find myself at the same time and i only tell this whole wild story because at age 30 i made the decision to go and then i actually started when i was 31. is a funny change of numbers because I grew up Jewish. In Judaism, you're supposed to have a bar mitzvah when you're 13, and that's when you're supposed to become a man.

21:16But now I wasn't 13. I was 31. And I realized, you know, I'm not a man. Why am I not a man? Because I haven't gone through hard stuff. Life's just kind of worked. And there's been hardship internally. But you know what? But instead of trying to make myself more famous, more money so I can get more stuff and make my little box inside LA more comfortable, I'm going to make it as uncomfortable as possible. I'm going to do something I don't know if I can do. And it's going to be physically hard. It's actually going to be dangerous. And it's going to be so divorced from what I'm supposed to do that it might actually risk the work that I put in the last 10 years of my life to become a pop star.

21:59And that's what my agents and managers told me. They said, you're going to ruin your whole career by doing this. Okay, let's go. And for me, that was my real bar mitzvah. That was my real starting to become an adult. I think there's a lot more to that. So I agree with you. You know, a lot of what mental health is supposed to be is actually mental weakness. And it's like, I'm going to take time off. I'm going to make boundaries. I'm going to shield myself from stuff that's challenging or difficult. That's not mental health. That's weakness. You can't deal with things that are challenging. No, you actually want to become inoculated.

22:39Choose hardship. And I realized like maybe some people listening to this are thinking, oh, this is absurd. You know, Mike Posner, you're like a healthy, young white guy who has a lot of money saying choose hardship. And I'm saying, yes, you're right. I had a life that didn't have so much hardship. In fact, it was so devoid of hardship that it was empty.

23:11We need hardship. We pretend that we don't want any challenges in our life. In actuality, we crave them. We crave challenges. Because even though our intellectual minds tell us, hey let's make life as comfortable as possible the only way to grow the real way to grow is through challenges challenges come we ask what are we supposed to learn from this

23:38Simon Sinek:who were you when you set off in new jersey and who were you when you arrived in california well i can remember when i arrived in california i looked at my friend and i said man before i started this i was such a bitch I just, you know, you learn. There's a through line of me and all of us, I think, never changes. But there's a lot that we can change more than we give ourselves credit for. We got to be real careful when we start saying, I'm this kind of person. I'm an introvert. I'm an avoidant type of person. I'm an anxious type of person. No, you're not. You have avoidant tendency. You have avoidant habits, patterns.

24:22You have anxious habits, patterns. A lot of stuff we can change we don't give ourselves credit for. So to your question, what changed? A lot of things didn't change. You know, a lot of things didn't change. I didn't learn to become a better person in relationships. I didn't become somebody that somebody else would want to marry. I didn't find joy and fulfillment. But what did change? I found a freaking tougher part of myself, man.

24:52Simon Sinek:That was never going to come out in West Hollywood. Because I almost died on the journey. I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake and spent, I think it was three nights in the ICU. And my legs swelled to the size of an elephant trunk. And when that happened, I got really famous. I got a lot of attention. I got picked up by mainstream media and TMZ. And my Instagram followers went up. So I was getting all this attention after I got hurt.

25:27and it was a crossroads moment because i was either going to go back to living my life based on how much attention i could get from other people just goes back to the beginning of our conversation or i was going to finish this thing because the more i more i was hurt that's the more attention i got and when i was walking i I didn't get that much attention. There's an irony in it, isn't there? It's ridiculous.

25:54Simon Sinek:There's an irony, which is if you had just walked across the country and not get bitten by a snake, you would have learned your lessons. You would have had your hardship. You would have come out and said, I was this, I'm now this. Different because you got bitten by a snake, but you would have had your lessons of humility and all of the rest of it, right? But walking across the country for the rest of us is boring. You know what I mean? like hearing about a guy walking is boring not for the person doing it i understand and so there's an irony that the very thing you're trying to escape is the thing that doubled because of the event of the drama the near death because it's newsworthy right and this is where i find this whole conversation quite frankly difficult because it's all true hardship builds character Hardship teaches you things about yourself you would never learn.

26:51Simon Sinek:We don't learn anything when things go well. We learn things when things go badly. All the lessons are in the difficult. Everything you're saying is true. Challenging ourselves, getting out of our comfort zones. All of this is good advice and makes great posters with dangling kittens. All easier said than done in practice. Somebody says, I'm going to walk across the country and then you hear about you getting bitten by a snake. You're like, ah, you know? it sort of only adds the risk the reason I struggle with the conversation I'm even struggling being articulate about why I'm struggling with the conversation is because it's because there's two kinds of hardship right there's an event I got bitten by a snake that's an event that's a one kind of hardship you know I lost somebody I love that's a hardship my relationship collapsed that's a hardship right and there's a different kind of hardship which is sort of like I'm trying to change my lot in life.

27:47Simon Sinek:I started my own business. I've decided I'm going to live a life without a corporate job. And that hardship is more ongoing and more extended. Where I'm trying to get to is like, are we talking about either one? Are we talking about both? Because some hardship we can create for ourselves, you know, it's called risk. and other hardship just happens to us whether we like it or not. Yes, yes. Take a breakup, for example, right? Someone's not in a relationship and they're so afraid of being hurt that they keep their walls up so high and are so incapable of vulnerability that they'll never actually get the relationship and they spend their life angry that they can't be in a relationship, not recognizing that they're the ones that have built this wall around them out of fear of losing.

28:33Simon Sinek:Or you can actually be in the relationship. Wait, wait, wait. Have you read my journals from ages 20 to 34? What's going on? Or you can be in the relationship and so afraid of losing it that you become a pleaser to the other person, manipulating your own self into points of quite extreme discomfort just to ensure the other person's happy for fear of losing the relationship, which, by the way, will probably shorten the life of the relationship because you're not being yourself. Yeah.