Simon Sinek on India’s Future, Trust Crisis, Gen Z Burnout, Anxiety & AI Friends | FO476 Raj Shamani

14:23Raj Shamani:Yes. Who do you think? Whose fault is this? It's ours.

14:26Simon Sinek:Everybody. Everybody's to blame. Not the algorithms, not the platforms, not these companies. Of course, of course, they bear liability. And if one of them, if I hear another one of them say, well, buyer beware, you know, they can always not use us. That's like telling an addict was like, well, you have the choice not to be a drinker or a smoker. You can just stop. You'd be like, no, not really. No, especially when you have teams of scientists figuring out how to hijack our dopamine system to keep us online for longer. You know, infinite scroll and all the rest of it. Of course, they bear responsibility.

15:00Simon Sinek:You know, it's you can't remove them from the chain of events. Now, do they bear all the responsibility? Of course not. But of course they bear responsibility.

15:07Raj Shamani:So what do we do now? Like, how do we bring it back? How do we bring this this world where we used to trust each other more? We used to trust people more. We used to trust news more.

15:18Simon Sinek:Yeah. Well, change starts at home, right? It's all fine and good to complain about companies and complain about the system or complain about the government. But if we want to see and feel change in our lives, then we have to be the agents of change. And so if you want to feel trusted and trust more, then start with your friends. Start at home. Start at work. Learn to be a trusted person. You know, our world is somewhat of a reflection of us.

15:43Raj Shamani:So you said learn to become trusted first. How can somebody do that? What are the ingredients of trust?

15:52Simon Sinek:So I think very often we confuse trust and reliability. you know, simply doing what you say is a component. But we've all have friends that we trust that let us down. And sometimes we let other people down. Does that mean all trust is violated? No, it could be a step back, but it's not a complete breakdown. Trust comes from psychological safety. It's the feeling we get when we feel that someone has our back. You know, none of us walk around with a notebook in our back pocket, keeping track of all the things our friends do for us, and how many things we do for our friends. You know, uh, uh, my, my, I may do a hundred things for my friends and my friends do nothing for me, but I never say, well, you owe me because this month, look what all the things I did for you and you didn't do anything for me.

16:39Simon Sinek:Cause I walk around with the, um, absolute confidence that if, and when I need them, I know without a doubt, they'll be there for me. And so I think that, that, that psychological safety that's built up over time. and sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it happens slowly but it's and it's a dance right you start with a little bit and you ask a little more and like I have friends that are just for fun my friend they're just fun do I rely on them do I know they'd be there for me no but I love spending time with them and then I have friends who that I know that I could call and no matter what time of day or night they'll be there for me um and so I think I think it's hard to trust when you are not trusted.

17:22Simon Sinek:I think, I think very often we, we forget it's like being, it's like being, it's like if I were to go to a party and sit in the corner by myself like this, with a scowl on my face and say, people are the worst. People are so unfriendly. Not one person has come over here and said hello to me and even expressed any curiosity about me or my life. I hate this place and I hate everybody here. I'm like, like, it starts with you sitting in the corner by yourself with your arms folded, looking grumpy. Like it, it takes two. And so to, to, to put yourself out there, to be a trusted person. And remember, we don't build trust by offering help.

18:05Simon Sinek:We build trust by asking for it. And the ability to ask for help and make yourself available to say, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't, I'm unsure and give someone else the, the honor of getting to be there for you. That's where it starts. It starts by us taking the first step, by the way, that's what leadership is. We call you a leader, not because you have rank. We call you a leader because you went first. You're the first to take the risk. You're the first to run towards danger. You're the first to admit you don't know something or made a mistake. You set the tone that's what leader means and so if you want to lead the way to building trust then you have to start by asking for help and you will build trust let's say there are friends who you

18:45Raj Shamani:trust even though you don't talk to them very often yes but you know that you can rely on them right and there are people who you just go out to have fun yeah right and necessarily not both of them must have offered you help up front but still you trust few people and you don't again

19:02Simon Sinek:offered versus asked so you're everybody goes like let me know if you need any help like everybody says exactly right but how many friends call you and say i'm stuck and i don't mean a favor like i'm not talking like hey you know can you put me on your podcast i'm not talking about that's not asking for help i'm talking about like hey i'm i don't know what to do and i don't know who else

19:24Raj Shamani:to call so are you saying that people who you can trust they're the only like they've always asked you first?

19:32Simon Sinek:No, it's one of the ways in which you build trust. You could go first, you know, and you give them the honor of being there for you. So it doesn't matter who starts, but the relationship has to start somewhere.

19:45Raj Shamani:Then what's the difference between people who you can versus who you can't trust? Because they both are friends.

19:50Simon Sinek:Some of it's based on timing. Some of it's based on what you're going through, what they're going through. Some of it's based on values. Some of it's based on how much sleep you got the night before? I mean, like, I don't have a formula. I can tell you some of the things that would help. Like I could tell you some of the things that would help to have a successful relationship. But at the end of the day, there's certain intangibles that

20:15Simon Sinek:some people you just click with and some people you don't. So, I mean, if I'd figured this out, I think we forget this, which is human beings are messy. And human beings are emotional. and human beings are irrational. And so I think we overcomplicate what it means to be human when we ask for scientific, rational, highly structured checklists in order to achieve an emotional goal like trust or love or any of these feelings. Like, again, I can tell you some best practices. I can tell you some things that will probably contribute, but I also have friends where a lot of those things flew out the window and we love each other and trust each other so you know again i can tell you some of the things that would help but you're we can't we can't apply too much structure to an emotional irrational messy situation

21:09Raj Shamani:that's part of the magic and annoying things about people you know there are a lot of times where you deal with a messy person and that person breaks your trust so you like a lot of people have heard and they say it often that they instantly go in that mode where now they're trusting no one what do you think is worse is trusting a wrong person worse or trusting nobody

21:32Simon Sinek:for life we know the answer to that one of course trusting no one is the wrong answer okay you got burned but if you build a wall around you because you were afraid of being hurt you will it's like people who say i'm not going to fall in love ever again because i got hurt that one time i was like well then you're going to live a lonely life and an unhappy life like yes Everyone has had trust violated. Every one of us. Every one of us has violated trust. We've also been the victims and we've been the causes of those messy situations. And we've been defensive even though we know we're wrong. And other people have been defensive even though everybody knows that they're wrong.

22:12Simon Sinek:It's like accountability becomes a big part of it. And I think trust is not about getting everything right or getting everything wrong. A huge part of building trust is being accountable for when you get things right or when you get things wrong, right? And that's part of creating that psychological safety, which is if somebody accuses me of violating trust, even though it may be defensive because it hurts to hear. At some point, I'm going to have to get to the point sooner rather than later, even if it's the next day, to be like, you know what? I was thinking about what you're telling me and you're right.

22:39Simon Sinek:I let you down. And I didn't communicate. And I was rude. And I was defensive. And that's not right. And I'm sorry. like that's a huge thing accountability is a huge part of building trust something like 70 percent of medical malpractices are simply because the doctor refused to apologize you know um so i think when when people are willing to take responsibility for their words and for their actions it makes us more want to trust them even knowing that they get things wrong you know one

23:08Raj Shamani:one more thing that we never learn apart from trust like how to trust and more and more young people now because they're losing trust because of information overload and all these things that we talked about that we're not even becoming the person one thing which is also bothering is we never even learn how to sit with ourselves now to how to be idle how to be bored so we don't reflect and that's why we don't even think that how to become a better person what do you think happens with an entire generation when the generation doesn't really learns to sit alone that just constantly stimulated.

23:49Simon Sinek:So it's like when you bake bread, you have to let it prove, you have to let it rise, you have to just let it be. You can't just mix the ingredients in a bowl, knead the dough and throw it in the oven. You know, you have to let the yeast rise. And I think we undervalue, we undervalue boredom, but it's partially because we've over-indexed on making, you know, we care about productivity too much. We all think that you're doing well if you're productive and you're not doing well if you're unproductive. I used to wake up on a weekend at like 8 or 8.30 in the morning and then sit and build till noon.

24:20Simon Sinek:I would just like read the newspaper, do a crossword puzzle, send a few texts. And like people get mad at me. They're like, how can you just waste your day like that? I was like, first of all, it's my day. I can do whatever I want. And second of all, maybe that time alone where I'm not engaging and just getting to do things that my brain enjoys, like the crossword puzzle or listening to music, I would sit in bed and just listen to music. Maybe that's good for me. Maybe that makes me healthier. Like just cause I'm not productive. You know, you know, the story of the two lumberjacks every morning, they both start cutting wood at the same time.

25:01Simon Sinek:Every day they stopped cutting wood at the same time. And every day in the middle of the day, one lumberjack disappears for an hour. And every day that lumberjacks cuts more woods than the other one cuts more wood than the other one. And so one day after months of this, the lumberjack who works all day, he says, I have to ask you every day. We start work at the same time. Every day we stop work at the same time. Every day you disappear for one hour in the middle of the day. And every day you cut more wood than me. Where do you go for that hour? And the other lumberjack looks up and goes, Oh, I go home and sharpen my ax.

25:32Simon Sinek:And so working all the time doesn't necessarily make you more productive. Taking breaks and sharpening your axe makes you more productive. And we don't allow our minds to wander because of constant engagement. And we know like anybody who's ever had an idea, you rarely have the idea in the brainstorming session. Usually the brainstorming session is valuable for posing the question or presenting the challenge. But we usually have our best ideas in the shower or we go for a run or we're sitting in the car driving to work or we're sitting on the bus and we're just looking out the window and all of a sudden you're like, I have it.

26:10Simon Sinek:And you come to work and be like, I have it, I have it, I have it, right? Well, what's going on there? And it's because our rational brains, our rational brains, our conscious brains have access to the equivalent of about two feet of information around us. This is the part of the brain we access, we access our expertise, we weigh the pros and cons, we think about the problem, all the stuff we do in the brainstorming session. But our subconscious brains have access to the equivalent of something like 11 acres of information. Every question, every movie, every book gets stored somewhere.

26:43Raj Shamani:But you

26:44Simon Sinek:can't consciously access that part of the brain. So when you allow your brain to just ruminate, now it won't ruminate about anything. It'll only ruminate about challenges or opportunities or questions that are right in front of you. But when you're allowing your brain to ruminate, It finds connections that your thinking brain doesn't. And so standing in the shower is a, you know, you can't be on your phone. That's why you're having an idea. When you're driving, you can't be on your phone. You shouldn't be on your phone. You know, that's why you have an idea. Your mind just wanders. And so the idea of doing nothing, we seem to be afraid of lack of productivity and lack of boredom.

27:17Simon Sinek:In reality, what we're doing is we're allowing our minds to wander. And I carve out time for this. I'll go for a walk without my phone. I'll go to a museum, I'll put my phone in airplane mode, and I'll just walk around and look at art. Now, it doesn't always happen that I solve a problem, but I'm increasing the likelihood. So one of the ways I have ideas is I build in what you would call boredom. Time to do things that are engaging or disengaging in different ways.

27:43Raj Shamani:Listening to music.

27:46Simon Sinek:So, yeah, I think we undervalue boredom as a source of ideas.

27:50Raj Shamani:There was a research in 2014 that people were asked to sit alone and sit idle. and about 67 % people said that they'd rather have electric shocks than to be sitting alone. That's funny. It happened in 2014. What do you think? Where have we reached today?

28:06Simon Sinek:I mean, I think we are afraid of doing nothing. You can see it. You know, when you go for dinner and your friend goes to the bathroom, what's the first thing you do? Take out your phone. Because God forbid you should just sit in the restaurant and look around. You know, you get on the bus. What's the first thing you do? Take out your phone. You sit, we just saw it driving here. I'm sitting in a red light. I look over at the car next to me. What's the driver doing at a red light on the phone? Yeah. Like it looks and feels like an addiction because that's what it is, right? Every gap I've got, I've got to fill it.

28:38Simon Sinek:Yeah. You know, I I'm on my phone in the bathroom. I'm on my phone when the TV commercial comes on, I'm on the phone. If I'm bored watching the movie, I'm on the phone like it's in bed. I'm in the phone. The first thing I do when I wake, wake up, you know, and there's nothing wrong with any of those things unless you feel like you have to do it all over the time like if you're looking for your phone before you go to the toilet you know like and these are all it i mean it's a dopamine addiction and it most closely resembles a gambling addiction but it's it's addictive behavior do you think because of this we are losing our ability to think originally like almost there are no original thinkers because

29:20Raj Shamani:is original thinking requires some sort of friction, some sort of discomfort, some kind of chaos, like some kind of just sitting alone and being uncomfortable?

29:30Simon Sinek:It's a good question. I don't think that's the only reason. I think the other reason is what's happened in media, you know, which is there's fewer bets, you know, when institutional money gets involved in the media business, this is why we see so many franchises and remakes. It's because the risk, they're managing risk. and I think when you make art and when you have an idea, you let go of that risk profile to some degree. It was a different risk profile. You know, it would have been much easier for me as a career after I wrote start with why and had success with my first book to just franchise it, serialize it, you know, start with why for chefs, start with why for parents, start with why for dentists, right?

30:12Simon Sinek:Like I could have written book after book, after book, after book, and you know, maybe they would do well, who knows? But, but for me, though that would be the low risk high probability of success option but uh i i that's not why i do things and i i i'm not a businessman i'm an artist so i kind of have an artist's approach to things which is the desire to make things that i don't know how to make the desire to learn things i don't know how they work the desire to solve problems i don't know how to solve i like things that make my head hurt

30:50Simon Sinek:but that's a different risk profile I think both have their place in an economy but to your point is the balance being lopsided to one way over the other and the answer is of course and then you look at the way businesses and startups are happening which is it used to be that if you had a private business you had more freedom than a public company because you didn't have the pressure from the investor community but now you look at private businesses and the amount of venture capital and private equity that are in private businesses, they're as bad as public companies. The pressure is overwhelming for short-term results because the business models of the venture capitalist is they need to get their money out in three to five, five to seven years.

31:30Simon Sinek:And they're not interested in a company to build it for 20 years. And so, everybody wants to know what the growth plan is, what the scalability is. Well, not everything is growable at high speed and not everything is instantly scalable. And there's still good businesses. There might be smaller businesses, but there's still good businesses. And we're so obsessed with the wrong metrics. I mean, you talk to young entrepreneurs and they're more obsessed with telling you what their growth is or, or which venture capitalists gave them money. I mean, even the way we've defined a unicorn, a unicorn used to be defined as a company with a billion dollars in revenues.

32:10Simon Sinek:Now it's a company defined as the billion dollar valuation. Valuations are made up. A billion, right? And somebody goes, yeah. And then there you go, you're a unicorn, right? Revenues, you can actually count that way. And so why did we change the definition of a unicorn? Because it's all speculative now, right? It's all speculative. And so, you know, I think one of the reasons we see, and again, it's risk profile. When a venture capitalist is weighing the risk of their investment, they would like to see something that's scalable with a fast growth thing because it protects their investment. but that disallows for it disallows for art projects and sometimes art projects are worth it and beautiful and a lot of businesses started off more like an art project which was it was the curiosity of the founder to solve a problem you know Richard Branson and Virgin just trying to make a thing that didn't exist for himself you know true and like a lot of them though they solve real problems the business model came a little bit later wouldn't it be cool if is how a lot of these great great great companies started you know even facebook wouldn't it be cool if versus you know i think i could make a billion with and again they have their place but the balance is wrong don't you think it should be

33:44Raj Shamani:opposite because now there's more capital available there are more options for you to actually put out your work without the approval of some institution there are more opportunities for a young person like me or anyone who's watching that they can be more artistic they

34:02Simon Sinek:can be more original and yet they are choosing not to be original and not to be artistic

34:09Raj Shamani:why do we why are we losing people like that ask the algorithm i was i mean when you add money to

34:17Simon Sinek:an equation it changes everything right there was um this is a real case there was two young content makers who would do crazy videos because and they put them on youtube and that was their income, YouTube dollars. And they did a video where he held a dictionary, a big thick dictionary on his chest, and she took out a gun and shot him thinking that the dictionary would stop the bullet. It was a stunt they did for views. Well, turns out she killed him, shot him right through the heart, through the dictionary. Okay. And it, it was, it was an accident of monumentally stupid proportions, epic proportions, because they were so driven by the need to do something more and more outlandish for the views that logic was put aside.

35:13Simon Sinek:And so, you know, I was at an event once I was sitting, waiting for a concert to start. And this girl comes down the stairs and some guys taking pictures of her and she's doing all her posing and the person next to me nudges me and goes she's a famous influencer and i responded cynically you mean she's a freelance employee of an algorithm and that's largely what a lot of content creation is is you're a freelance employee of an algorithm you work for the algorithm which is why you can't take a day off and you can't take a vacation because if you do the algorithm is not happy my boss likes you to work all the time And so, and if they, you saw what happened with YouTube when they changed their algorithm and it affected people's income, they showed up at the YouTube headquarters with a gun because you took away all my income.

35:59Simon Sinek:And so we've just stopped working for people and started working for algorithms. And so are you asking me, you know, shouldn't people make all their money? Shouldn't they, you know, sort of make all their own content and be creative? Sure. But the minute you include money and the minute you're working for the algorithm, then you're no longer working for the creativity anymore. You're working for the algorithm. I think the origin stories on a lot of these are pure. It's like the first book, the first video, the first thing that goes viral. That was pure. That was the art. But the minute somebody says, I'll put you on television, I'll give you money, I'll give you a sponsorship, the pressures are great.

36:35Simon Sinek:And we know this, the data shows this, that influencers aren't actually that influential. you know the because once they start doing things for money everybody gets a little bit cynical

36:44Raj Shamani:they're just doing it for money right um but it's a it's a hustle culture right even the concept of

36:51Simon Sinek:selling out young generations today first of all they don't even know what that means when you say oh he's such a sellout like young people like literally don't know what that means and if you explain well they decided to just take the money as opposed to have a high high integrity and young people will say to me yeah it's their ip they should make money like the idea of exploiting yourself at least is better than being exploited um i'm exploiting myself for money but it's not a very happy way to live i don't think at some point it all of these things have shelf lives

37:24Simon Sinek:again i think as an artist and rick rubin talks about this right when you start working for the approval of others, it destroys art. And art is when you trust your own taste and you accept the risk that the world may or may not like this. And that's okay. And then you'll try again. But as long as you're pure to yourself, if you have a talent or you have a taste, that's the root of art. That's the risk. This is why art has a high risk profile.

37:55Raj Shamani:Explain sellout. You said people don't understand. explain in simple terms explain what sell out

38:07Simon Sinek:okay i'll just use myself as a as an example so i built a public reputation right i have a public life now i'm in the world i have good followings on all my socials and sell books and all of that good stuff and then all of a sudden you see me making a commercial i'm on like a tv commercial for, you know, plumbing supplies. And then I'm on another TV commercial selling you deodorant. And then I'm, and everybody's looking going, what? Why is Simon selling plumbing supplies and deodorant? Like it makes no sense. And you asked me, why'd you do it? I'm like, well, you should see what they paid me. That's a sellout.

38:45Simon Sinek:You put aside your movement, you put aside your beliefs, you put aside your ethics, and you just take the paycheck. You exploit the

38:52Raj Shamani:thing you've built for money that's selling out what has helped you stay like this what what helped you stay pure i'm not very good at business isn't that obvious

39:06Raj Shamani:i'm sure that's not the only reason i mean it is one of the reasons um

39:14Simon Sinek:i think

39:18Simon Sinek:you know there have been certain people in my life that have inspired me and i I got to know people in the military pretty young, like the same year that I first publicly articulated the golden circle and start with why many years before a book, many years before any TED talk. That same year, by sheer coincidence, I got introduced to the United States Air Force. And I got to know some people who devoted their lives to service. And I very quickly realized that my two favorite people on the planet are military and artists because they're the exact same human being. We assume that their politics are opposite because one is in defense and one is in the arts.

39:57Simon Sinek:First of all, don't make such assumptions. People have different politics and all different ways of life. Okay, so that's number one. But they're the exact same human being. Both of them, whether they knew it from the beginning or they discovered it later on, what they do becomes a calling. They can't not do it. Right? Right? Secondly, they both know that they're not going to get rich doing what they're doing. They both know that. They both make tremendous sacrifices to do what they do. And in both cases, 100 % of the product that they make is for the benefit of others. And you see the way that artists are with artists.

40:30Simon Sinek:And you see the way that military are with military. And there's a brotherhood and a sisterhood. You know, you and I have colleagues and co-workers. In the military, they have brothers and sisters. And they mean it. That's what those relationships are. And the first time one of my friends in uniform called me brother, it meant something. Hey, brother. Right? It wasn't just being polite. Like they don't throw that term around loosely. I got to spend some time with the Navy SEALs. And we were talking about, I want to understand the culture and why those guys are so intense and why they're so effective.

40:58Simon Sinek:And one of the reasons they're so effective is not because they're individually amazing. It's because their ability to work as a team. And you look at all the special operators, the Army Rangers, you know, Delta Force, you know, SEALs, you know, you know, the PJs, like all of these, the Marine Raiders, all of these special operators, right? One of the reasons that they're so incredible is because they're effective teams, that they're able to put them, their individuality aside for the good of the team. And what we, what we see as courage, and I can only speak to the Navy SEALs, but I assume it's the same for all of them.

41:33Simon Sinek:What we see as courage is actually something quite more sophisticated and more beautiful, which is they're actually more afraid of letting down their teammates than they are of dying. They're more afraid of letting down the team than dying. That's why they're so good. It's because the commitment to the team and the success of the team. And if you look in the private sector, we're committed to ourselves and the success of me. and very few of us will take a risk or have any desire for any kind of self-sacrifice for the good of the team and i saw these relationships and i envied them i came from the corporate world and i had no relationships like that i envied the brotherhood they don't even necessarily like each other but they trust each other and i envied that and i wanted that and so some of them become became my friends and i learned from them and and and then we this takes us right back to the beginning which is why are we so selfish well look at all the incentive structures all the incentive structures around us reward us for individuality we've heroized ceos we've heroized personalities on the screen we've heroized um uh uh influencers they're all individuals who who either actually believe that they're heroes or like to present themselves as such.

43:01Simon Sinek:And the reward structures reinforce it. We have an entire class of people who want to be on reality TV shows. I mean, I was watching one of these reality TV shows the other day. My niece was watching a show and I was just watching with her. And the way they put their personal lives on public display, there's cameras in the room while they're like having a breakup or something or talking about cheating on their spouse and you're like what motivates somebody to want to air all of their laundry in public and you're like the driver is very simple fame they value fame more than privacy right and i guess good for them i mean it's highly entertaining for us but that's the the incentive structure that we offer that we will make you rich and famous if you're willing to humiliate your family.

43:53Simon Sinek:Because I was thinking about it. It's like the poor person who this woman was cheating on, he's not on the TV show, but everybody else is watching who knows him. And his family didn't agree to be on the TV show. And his friends didn't agree to be on the TV show. But her desire to be rich and famous was more important than any of those things. And that's the world we live in. And the TV studios don't care and the producers don't care because... That's what... So whatever. And I remember I did an interview once. I was on a documentary and they gave me a release to sign. Right. And it was a standard release for a reality TV show.

44:32And it literally said, we reserve the right to edit this in any way we want, even if it changes the meaning of your words, even if it like it paints you in a bad light.

44:44Simon Sinek:And I'm reading this document. I'm like going through it and crossing everything out. And they got mad at me. They're like, you can't cross all this out. Nobody else has crossed it out. I'm like, nobody else read it. Right. But I'm literally reading the release that gives the producers total control of how to edit it. So they can decide you're going to be the bad person. We're going to edit it so you're the bad person. so the incentive structure roles are screwed up the reward systems are all screwed up and in the military the reward system is humility i'll give you a real life example so there was an incident on base where uh some young officers went out drinking off base which She's fine.

45:27Simon Sinek:And they were fraternizing with a young enlisted woman and officers enlisted aren't allowed to because it breaks the the chain of it's bad. Right. One of them was dating. One of the officers was dating one of the enlisted, which is not allowed. So that was number one. They all came back to base and they knew that they were drinking and they were afraid that they would get pulled over for drunk driving on base. So the officers said to the young enlisted woman, you drive. So now there's a power dynamic. Okay. So she drives, they start driving on base, they get pulled over by the cops and she gets breathalyzed and she gets arrested for being over the limit.

46:05Okay.

46:07Simon Sinek:It all comes out what happens. Now there, these officers are in a very, very elite program, a very elite program. And now they're all in trouble. Okay. For many reasons. And their senior officer, the Colonel had, had to bring them into his office one by one to tell them that they've probably ruined their careers, right? That they have to be thrown out of the program. Now, if you and I were in charge, we would probably say something like, what the hell were you thinking? How can you be so stupid? You've destroyed your career. What were you thinking? You know better. That's what we would say. It's about the individual.

46:49Simon Sinek:that's not what the colonel said what the colonel said was do you have any idea how many people you've let down you've let down your senior officers who nominated you for this program you've let down your parents who raised you you've let down all of your colleagues who supported you through this program you've let me down do you have any idea how many people you've let down that's how they got in trouble so immediately you see the thing that they that they value more than anything else is the esprit de corps it's the team it's the camaraderie it's the commitment to the other not just to yourself and so even the way they get in trouble reinforces the commitment to team.

47:37Simon Sinek:I know, you know, they're so like, humility is a valued commodity that when you meet the really, really, really, really talented leaders in the military, like they are amazing. And you say to them, oh my God, you're so amazing. They all say the same thing. It's not just me. I've got a team of people around me. In the business world, people are like, thank you. thanks you know we're encouraged to take the credit we're in the military they're encouraged to to distribute the credit do you think it's because earlier you had the whole map in front

48:12Raj Shamani:of you like you're born then you gotta take the right job then marry then have a have a partner have a wife settle down like there was a structured way of doing things you were not asking yourself question and not even getting disturbed here and there like there was always a map and today there are no maps there's no certain way to do certain things and that's why people are confused so they don't have an identity and they are just chasing things which probably were coming out of their insecurities it's an interesting question it's an interesting proposition i think it goes back to

48:47Simon Sinek:what we're saying a moment ago which is it's about belonging right i'm not so sure that the map was clear, but there were definitely circumstances that allowed for the opportunity to belong to something bigger than yourself. So in World War II, more young men died by suicide who didn't get called to action than who did, because the shame of not being included and belonging to the war effort. And if you even look at the war effort, you either joined, and if you couldn't join, or you weren't eligible to join, or you were too old or something, then you bought war bonds to support the war effort. And if you couldn't afford a war bond, you planted a war garden, which didn't do anything, but it made you feel like you were a part of it.

49:30Simon Sinek:And so, you know, after September 11th, we saw lots of people quit their jobs, be like, my job is stupid. And they joined the military, they did something that made them feel like they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. So I'm not so sure that I would subscribe to the fact that there was a path. I'm not sure I subscribe to that logic, but I do subscribe to the logic that there was something that provided an opportunity to be a part of something. And so what you're describing as the path was a means to get to that thing. And, um, and even in the fifties and sixties, you know, that was a family, that was the path to being part of something bigger than yourself.

50:06Simon Sinek:And you sort of, sort of the traditional home, you know, man goes to job, woman stays home and raises kids, you know, that there was, there was, there was a, a mechanism to be a part of something bigger on yourself that i have to work hard for the for the good of others right and uh for various reasons that those things evaporated even the the the collapse of the soviet union and and the end of cold war 1.0 um because we're in cold war 2.0 now but the end of cold war 1.0 at least if you did something you felt like there was, I was a, even if I was part of this country, I was a part of something bigger than myself, you know?

50:51And I think to your point, it goes right back to where

50:55Simon Sinek:we were, where are the places or institutions that I can go to where I can feel like I, I'm, I get to contribute to something bigger than me because the only other alternative is to contribute to me, which is what we all seem to be doing. And I think that's true. I think there's a lack of belonging and companies all have purpose statements thank goodness that's a i mean that's my work it's a step in the right direction but most of them don't believe it it's just marketing yeah um you know at least the movement is working that they have public pressure to do it but now you have to actually follow it and companies don't have long-term plans now they don't have five-year plans and if they do they're not following them and so there is no bigger longer you know it's only shorter and faster um so i think that's true i think what you're describing as the path i think is is a symptom of a lack of things or places or institutions we can go to where we feel like we're part of something bigger i think that's a true statement

51:52Raj Shamani:and because of this then we join certain companies in the beginning because we are fresh we believe in the purpose that probably is just on the wall and then just few days of working in probably a few years of working in we have this some sort of quarter life crisis like at 25 we are thinking about a crisis because we don't feel belonged we don't feel we're cherished we don't think our incentives are actually aligned with the company and more and more people now midlife crisis have become quarter life crisis so what do they do when the world is changing so fast and the meaning is just getting lost so what should young people do I think you have to choose to be the leader you wish you had, which is, remember we said at the beginning that trust was built not by asking for help, but by offering it.

52:39Simon Sinek:So instead of going, I need someone to give me the ability to belong to something bigger. Like if you can find that more power to you, but that's not a strategy. What is a strategy is making the choice to give the people to the left of you and the people to the right of you the feeling that they're a part of something bigger. And even though you might work for a soulless, short-term driven public company, you can come to work and say, that's true. But our team, our team, it's about us. It's about taking care of each other. It's about committing to see each of us, helping each of us grow. Because I think that's what a successful corporate culture is.

53:14Simon Sinek:A group of people who agree to grow together. And commit to making sure that the other people on my team are successful. and you can find a sense of belonging and that sense of purpose in a small group of people inside a larger dysfunctional system absolutely but you have to choose to be the leader you wish you had and you have to go on that journey of education how to be that leader doesn't happen overnight it's like i think i'm going to become a high performer swimmer well you can't just jump in the pool and it happens like you have to train and learn and get a coach and read about it and watch videos and it's the same you got to go on a learning journey and um and it's bumpy and uncomfortable and sometimes you get you swallow water and you're humiliated and you know sometimes

53:56Raj Shamani:it goes well and sometimes it goes badly but it's worth it you know when i get inspired by looking at these things and probably a lot of people do by hearing certain things like that i have an opportunity to inspire left right belonging all of that and then i go home i sit on my phone and i swap and then i just keep looking at algorithm looking at somebody at 19 is like a billionaire 22 is doing this 25 is doing that and at 25 i already feel like i've left i'm left behind how do i get out of this feeling which is a feeling for majority of people that they feel that they've left behind even before they've started who are you competing with who are you competing with i'm going to ask you a question i want you to answer me honestly is there somebody who does something similar than you that has more money than you yeah okay is there

54:49Simon Sinek:somebody uh are there other men about your age who are better looking than you yes okay um are there people who do podcasts like this one who have more followers absolutely okay so what's the problem we've accepted that you're not number one who gives a shit great what do you what what does number one mean? What does winning mean? You're playing the wrong game. So there's always somebody out there that you can always find who's better than you. It depends what metric you're looking at. So if I look at book sales, I can show you an author who blows me out of the water and I'll be like, oh my God, I'm a failure.

55:28Simon Sinek:But if I look at Instagram following for the same person, oh my God, I'm destroying him. So should I be high and mighty on myself because one metric says I'm the Mac daddy or should I be depressed because the other metric says I'm failing? It depends where you look. There's no winning. We haven't agreed on what the metrics are. You've chosen one arbitrary metric and decided that you're a failure. It's ridiculous. Worry about yourself. Let them worry about themselves. We can all be successful at the same time. There's plenty of people to listen to podcasts. There's plenty of people to buy books.

56:04Simon Sinek:People can listen to more than one podcast. They can buy more than one book. There's no winning and losing in this game. And so when you set up a finite construction of a winner or a loser in a game that has no winners and losers, you will always feel like you're failing. And if you are ahead for a minute, it's temporary. And then you're playing defense and you're desperately afraid of losing it. So you're playing the wrong game. It's the wrong mindset. Nobody wins career. Nobody wins business. Nobody wins health. Nobody wins family. Nobody wins fitness. It doesn't exist. There's no number one in any of those things.

56:40Simon Sinek:So how can you set up the construction of I'm losing or I'm behind in a game that we haven't all agreed what the rules are?

56:46Raj Shamani:True.

56:48Simon Sinek:So worry about yourself. Say to yourself, am I doing better today than I did yesterday? Am I a better human being today than I was yesterday? Am I a better leader today than I was yesterday? Am I making better content today than I was yesterday? Worry about the race against yourself. Compete against you. That's the best competitor. That's the only success metric to look for. In the infinite game. if you're playing cricket then yeah worry about beating the other team

57:14Raj Shamani:because there's no definition out there it felt it feels like when i like when you speak to people who are my parents generation they all have like some sort of success definition which is like

57:25Simon Sinek:laid out i think the way that our parents defined it was get a good job work hard do well provide for your family make sure that your kids are good and taken care of make sure you're looking after your spouse that's we're good i mean you come from a place where arranged marriages were like and i mean still pretty popular but for a long time like pretty much the only thing and arranged marriages have very low divorce rates which surprises people it's because you're like okay we're doing this i'm gonna i'm gonna do the best i can which is a very selfless way of approaching a relationship you know whereas the selfish one's like okay are you good enough for me i chose you you know uh yeah arranged marriages have lower divorce rates than than

58:19Raj Shamani:unarranged marriages which i find fascinating but it has to do a fact with that in a lot of cultures in India specifically, divorce is not even a thing. So maybe it's not just arranged marriages have lesser divorce rate. It also means because for a long time there was nothing like divorce and even today the social structure doesn't allow you to get divorced very easily.

58:41Simon Sinek:So look, neither answer is 100 % right. Like if something is really unhappy and really dysfunctional, then there should be a mechanism to get out of it. Of course, right? Like we're not saying unhappy people should stay together. But there is some sort of like, let's work through this and see if we can get through it. I was just talking to a friend of mine yesterday who's married and her marriage is going through, it went through a really, really rocky patch. Like through, because of family reasons, like he was not the person she married. It was bad. And she just committed to sticking with it.

59:18Simon Sinek:And she just committed to trying to work through it. And now they're really good. they're really good but she had to commit to have about a year or two years of awful but she believed in him and she believed in the relationship and so there's a patience component as well that goes with it right yeah um i mean maybe maybe the corollary you know i hear this all the time in the military you know they don't get to pick their teams it's like you're the leader of this team that they gave you where in business we like we we get to pick our teams right but maybe not picking your team is

59:58Raj Shamani:not so bad yeah when you look at america and when you look at india america what i understand from the look of it at least yeah is more people are driven individually with their just thinking about themselves and taking decision based on what they would like or how they would see themselves winning or losing in the life versus india you make a collective decision you almost you don't want to disappoint your family so you take their decision into consideration you don't want to disappoint the religion or the culture or the society that you come from you don't want to disappoint that so every decision is not just yourself yeah it's like you have to take decision which is combined what do you think which one's a better approach the answer is both have their

1:00:43Simon Sinek:strengths and both have their weaknesses. That's it. That's it. There are benefits and detractors to both systems. So the question is, is which system would you rather be a part of? So either stay where you are or emigrate, right? Like to idolize one system over another is foolish. That's like saying I'm a better person than you. Well, that's ridiculous, right? I have some strengths and I, I have some characters. I don't believe in strengths and weaknesses. I believe in characteristics and attributes. There's some ways I, there's some talents I have, some gifts I have, some strengths I have, and every one of those things have benefits to me and they have, uh, detriments to me.

1:01:26Right.

1:01:26Simon Sinek:And the opportunity I have is to put myself in situations where those characteristics and attributes are more likely to show up as strengths. So for example, okay, I think out loud, right? So put me on a stage and people get to watch me think out loud, put me on a podcast and ask me a couple of questions and you just wind up, wind me up and off I go, that shows up pretty well. Like this characteristic attribute shows up as a strength in a context like this one. Put me in a meeting, I talk too much. That's, I always get that feedback. Simon, let other people talk in the meeting, but I'm just thinking, but i'm talking and so is it a strength or a weakness the answer is depends on the context right and so to say which system is better is is a fake question it's what are the benefits and and and detriments of each system and where do i want to be what where would i thrive and that's why immigration and emigration happens right like if you're very entrepreneurial and you're living in a society that's not entrepreneurial, then you should move somewhere that's entrepreneurial.

1:02:33Simon Sinek:You'll fit in better. You'll feel like you belong. I found my people. Right? Like New York City is the island of misfit toys. Like everyone who doesn't feel like they belong wherever they grew up, they all feel like they belong in New York. So it's not a question of which one's better. It's a question of where do you belong?

1:02:53Raj Shamani:Yeah. You mentioned Cold War 2.0.

1:02:56Simon Sinek:Yeah.

1:02:56Raj Shamani:What do you mean by that?

1:02:57Simon Sinek:Well, the Cold War, uh cold war exists on three tensions there's an an existential tension like are we going to survive are we going to live or not in the case of cold war 1.0 the two largest nuclear powers in the world with the united states and soviet union then there's a philosophical tension uh there you have two philosoph two views of the world and they're both looking for for buyers for customers democracy and capitalism um versus soviet-style communism our alliances were super simple back then if you're a communist we're not friends with you ta-da right so there's philosophical competition ideological competition and then the final is economic competition um uh both the united states and soviet union were the two largest economies in the world and so you'll find that the desire to pay any price and bear any burden exists always on these three tensions, life, philosophy, and economics.

1:03:57Simon Sinek:And they were all conveniently co-located in a single nation called the Soviet Union. Well, the Soviet Union went bankrupt. And the biggest mistake that the United States and the West made of the 20th century was declare victory in a game that has no finish line. They said that we won the Cold War. No, we didn't. The player dropped out of the game because they ran out of money, right? That's like one company goes bankrupt and the other company says, we won. No, you didn't. Just they went out of business and new players emerged to fill those tensions so the nuclear tension was replaced by north korea maybe iran right you've got india and pakistan that are now nuclear armed right um uh the the uh ideological competition uh for many years was replaced by religious extremism and now is morphing into something else and the economic tension was replaced by china like we don't fear nuclear war with China, at least not yet.

1:04:51Simon Sinek:Right. And so the cold war, the tensions of the cold war are alive and well. They're just not conveniently co-located in a single nation. And so at least in the United States, we are oblivious to the fact that we're still in a cold war because we can't see quote unquote the enemy. We don't recognize that it's distributed. So yeah, cold war has what always happens in infinite game, which is the players come and go, but the nature of the game will change. So the nature of the game has changed, but all the basis all the foundations are still there but last cold war changed some sort of

1:05:19Raj Shamani:world order do you think now the change of world order is in place it's not gonna happen not yet

1:05:24Simon Sinek:not yet not yet no yet no still in a period of flux fascinated by the the way the world works i think that's so cool i think problems where there's no such thing as a right answer are very interesting to me you know problems where there's no obvious solution and that no one person can conceive of the problem because it's too complex or even come up with an answer those are really really really cool so you know states of the world and how nation states interact and

1:05:50Raj Shamani:that stuff fascinates me i love i love reading change of world order yeah yeah it's good stuff especially and specifically because india's at the neutrality of it so i love reading more about it

1:06:00Simon Sinek:i mean i think the future of india is fascinating you know just the size of the population and the entrepreneurship and ingenuity in that country and it's just it's a fascinating place what was experience like dharavi i mean it's a fascinating place i thought the amount of the entrepreneurship there was incredible unlike everywhere else that in the other places i and what do you mean by entrepreneurship like well you know in in if

1:06:32Simon Sinek:india i mean the brits were in india for what 300 years and so the the brits used Indians as their clerks. So you can see how that, you know, the, the, the industries that India still dominates, customer service, back office accounting, it's kind of like clerk and every, you know, you know, better than I do. Like kids are told, keep your head down, do as you're told, work hard, you'll do fine. But in Dharavi, it's different because there's, there's so much entrepreneurship because if you come from the farm and you move to the city to make money for your family like if you don't work you die and so everybody's a hustler yeah and there's factories and there's offices and i mean not offices companies and you go to the garbage and you take out all the plastic and then you sell it to somebody and then they take it and they organize it and they sell it and i was i thought it was amazing it's a different kind of india what do you think we can get wrong about india uh what can india get wrong for india that's a great question i think the question is is like what does it mean to be indian like what is your identity what are your strengths as a nation right if you like compare different nations you can see the mentality of the people in their in their economies right like the swiss everything is exact but things are slow and expensive too because everything's exact.

1:08:00Simon Sinek:Or the Germans, not a lot of joy in their businesses. My goodness, everything works perfectly. The engineering, you know, it's not just a trope. It's real. And you look at the Italians, it's all joy. Like everything's beautiful in design. It doesn't always work, but my goodness, they have fun. And there's a joie de vivre, you know. And you can look at this mentality of a people when you look at the economies that they dominate or the reason you choose one product over another from one nation or another. And I think the question I would ask Indy is, who are you? Like, what is your identity? What is it when everything works at its natural best, how do you show up?

1:08:40Then do that and be that in the world.

1:08:45Simon Sinek:Because I think people, when I look at other nations, people have over-glamorized America, right? Because America is very, very rich. A lot of nations copy the way we do business. But the way we do business hasn't, it's not the best way. But you see other nations trying to build their economies to emulate Americas because America's rich. But it comes at a cost again, right? And I think there's some things that I would like to go backwards the way we do things in America. Like, let's be more long term focused. Let's make sure we take care of our people more than we do. Like we've made some mistakes in order to make money, but the cost was high to our society and to the level of trust we have for each other.

1:09:26Simon Sinek:right so i would caution other nations to blindly copy america's business model

1:09:33Raj Shamani:you know what i love about india it's we're always there to serve that's almost in us like over the years over the decades we've been there yeah we say we are your friend we are your friend yeah in our companies and organizations we love serving yeah and that's what we're doing in the world as well and that's why i think you see the rise of indian talent all around the world because

1:09:58Simon Sinek:we look at all the tech companies right now the american tech companies the number of them that are run by indians is pretty amazing right yeah um uh yeah i mean again i think that should be a national that should be a national narrative and i think a lot of nations don't have a national narrative america had a clearer narrative when there was a soviet union but our narrative has

1:10:20Raj Shamani:been a bit fuzzy for many decades we have we have a narrative which is world's friend we our our leaders keep saying this again and again and we sort of believe it it's nice it's good we are we are the world's friend because if everybody comes together everybody grows yeah we don't have to choose sides yeah and that's what we keep doing and showing again and again okay coming back to the conversation that we were having about young people and quarter life crisis and stuff like that you know what one thing which i just have an anecdotal evidence around it because i speak to a lot of my employees a lot of my team members a lot of my friends and i feel like almost everybody somewhat feels like they're not doing enough or they are in some sort of race that we already discussed and because of that they are losing respect for themselves do you think that somebody can come back from becoming someone you don't respect again it's about changing the definition

1:11:20Simon Sinek:of the game like i think a gap year is one of the best things that the europeans ever invented right and i talk to american kids when they're graduating high school or college and i say why don't you take a gap year you know go get a job or if you have the means travel you know or go do something that doesn't matter to your career just go do something like go go get an internship you

1:11:42Raj Shamani:know and they all say the same thing to me i can't why not because i'll be behind because they'll see

1:11:47Simon Sinek:their friends getting jobs and then their friends will have a promotion before them and they'll feel like they're quote-unquote behind but it goes back to our lumberjack story go and sharpen your axe and you'll be amazed how much quicker your career so so yes it goes like this and then you're going to go like this and then it goes like this you know and you sort of you race ahead later because you have a different experience and a different skill set and a different view of the game but when they say i'm behind again it goes behind what you're not competing against your friends you went to school with that is a bad a bad construction that that your self-worth comes on how far ahead or behind you are somebody else who's living their own life and playing their own you know building their own career there is no ahead and behind it's just you it's just you it's what kind of life do you want to live it's just you it's a hard thing for young people to

1:12:42Raj Shamani:comprehend but a lot of times we mask it by saying that this is what i want

1:12:47Simon Sinek:this is what i think i want yeah this is what everybody else wants for me

1:12:50Raj Shamani:how can you differentiate between this is what i really want or this is something coming out of maybe insecurities maybe uh comparison well you can be accountable to yourself if i'm really really

1:13:02Simon Sinek:really honest with myself i'm only doing this for other people or i'm doing this for public approval i'm doing this so people will like me i'm doing this because i'm confused i'm doing this because i don't know it i'm doing this because i don't have a clue i'm doing this because i want to show my best friend that i'm better than he is just be honest that's it that's it doesn't mean you have to change your behavior overnight just be honest is it do you feel and let you give yourself

1:13:28Raj Shamani:grace right it's okay to be all of those things and then smile be like yeah i'm just you know don't be depressed about it just like yeah i did that whoops i think when you take the pressure

1:13:45Simon Sinek:off it's like when you make the implicit explicit it relieves tension so when there's tension in a relationship and both of you are just living in tension and one of you just says we're not getting along this is not fun it's not for me i can't imagine it is for you it relieves the tension when you make the implicit explicit doesn't mean there's an instant resolution but it does relieve

1:14:09Raj Shamani:tension and you can do it for yourself too true why do you think it has become a coping mechanism for a lot of us a lot of young people to just go chase this or do like just get in this race and like be ambitious achieve all of these things then to sit down and be like hey i don't have my life sorted and maybe i'm just running away from problems by naming it ambition do you think it is a coping mechanism for a lot of people that they escape i mean people deal

1:14:43Simon Sinek:with stress in different ways some people disappear and some people double down on work look it depends on the society you come to come from with right come from which is you know in the united states where i live it's a very materialistic society it's very much about individual performance and so conspicuous displays of success and wealth are a mechanism for respect um um that doesn't necessarily lead to joy or happiness or belonging but it's it's the it's the metric we have you know in other societies contribution to the family contribution to the team contribution to the community are valued more than individual success and so failing that the shame they get is not being rich or famous the shame they get is not giving to the family yeah so you know the different different places have different metrics um and you can't drop out of society you know there's still the pressures obviously from our society but at the same time and it goes back to what we're saying before the rick rubin living like an artist you know which is is this right for me is this what i want and it's okay not to

1:16:03Raj Shamani:know and it's okay to experiment and try a few things because you know this is what an infinite

1:16:09Simon Sinek:mindset is which is good news bad news who knows yeah you know and the way i describe the infinite mindset. It's based on this Chinese parable. The best way to understand it is from this Chinese parable. You know, a young man is born with an amazing ability for horse riding. And everybody in the village says, oh, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And then he falls off his horse and breaks his leg and his career is over. And everybody in the village says, oh, you're so unlucky. And the monk says, we'll see. And then war breaks out and all the young men are sent to battle, but he can't go because of his broken leg.

1:16:39Simon Sinek:And everybody in the village says, oh my God, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. Like good news, bad news, who knows? And so when we take a diversion or we experiment or we try something, you're not falling behind. It's just a different lesson. Good news, bad news, who knows? You know, you talk to any successful person on the planet, regardless of how you want to define success. They don't learn lessons when things go well. They learn lessons when things go badly. And every time things go wrong and they work their way through it or get their way through it, it makes them stronger, smarter, fitter, better.

1:17:09Simon Sinek:And so you can't live a life without adversity. You can't live a life without adversity. The question is, how do you manage that adversity? Do you learn from that adversity? Do you learn from the struggle? Do you ask for help in those struggles? Are you learning to be a better human being in those struggles? Are you just running away and hiding? And I'm not saying it's easy. it is not easy yeah um it is simple but it is not easy and so you're asking me questions about the the length of a life but you're asking me the questions based on like in individual episodes and the answer is i don't know you know life is a journey that's what it is i know it's so sort of overstated right and it and the older you get i know i'm like that person now when I was your age.

1:18:03Simon Sinek:I think the value of being young in a career is the stakes are low. You're not going to destroy the company with whatever decision you're going to make. You probably don't have a family yet. You don't have a lot of responsibility. Your bills aren't that high. You can screw up. Not much is going to happen. And so I always recommend to young people to treat their early career like they're still in university. Like this is your graduate degree on figuring stuff out. And so show up like a student. Don't pretend you're an expert. Show up like a student. Ask for help. Do a little research on the side.

1:18:44Simon Sinek:Ask for extra credit if you can do extra stuff here and there. Ask tons of questions. Admit you don't know. You know, that will do more for you when you're young. to treat your job like a class on how to do things and how not to do things. Pay attention to the leaders. Pay attention to the leaders who command respect and love and loyalty. Pay attention to the leaders who may be high performers, but nobody likes them and nobody respects them and nobody would follow them. Pay attention. And then start asking yourself, who do I want to be like? Start looking at the leaders who are like, I want to be like that person.

1:19:22Simon Sinek:you know um ask for mentors look for mentors one of the biggest mistakes young people make when they find an early job is they take the job that's either the most famous company with the most the flashiest brand or they take the biggest salary when i the one thing i got right i made so many mistakes when i was young but the one thing i say i think i got right is when i was starting my career i was interviewing with human resources and they'd say what are you looking for and i'd always say the same thing. What I'm looking for might be like looking for love, but I'm looking for a mentor. And I chose jobs based on who I would work for, not based on how much money they would pay me or what fancy brand or account it would be.

1:20:02Simon Sinek:And so what I ended up getting was making less money than some of my friends, working on things that people are like, why'd you take that job? But what I had that my friends didn't get, I had people who I loved working for, who taught me things, who had patience with me when I screwed up. I had mentors. I, and you know why I had them? Cause I looked for them. I took jobs for them. I want to work for that person, even though this company offers me more money. And I see most young people, they they're seduced by the early paychecks and they're seduced by the, the flashiness of telling their friends that I work for this company, but then you go work for an ogre and you'll hate your job anyway.

1:20:46Simon Sinek:And the money won't feel worth it when i said when i was like looking for a mentor is like looking for love which is it's hard to find right and you have to go on a lot of dates yeah you know unless it's an arranged marriage in which case you get one shot and then you just work really really hard um um that's what i meant i meant that it's maybe i'm being idealistic and stupid but i want to work for somebody that i really really really love let's say someone's young watching this right now

1:21:12Raj Shamani:and they're they're really ambitious do you think that love and ambition can go hand in hand or one has to be compromised yeah I think they go hand in hand I think if you want to accomplish

1:21:24Simon Sinek:anything in this world you better have at least one person in your life who supports you and loves you

1:21:28Raj Shamani:a lot of people don't put a lot of attention in their love life because they're too busy building or too focused on building what they want to build

1:21:36Simon Sinek:I think that personal life and professional life are inversely proportionate you know when one goes up the other one seems to go down um yeah i mean it's a it's a question of time and attention right like the plant that will grow is the one you water so if all you're doing is watering your career and you're not watering your relationships then the career will grow and the relationships will wither and die you know um so i think it's a balancing act and i think it's hard and that's why i say to have a wonderful partner probably helps your career and have wonderful colleagues probably helps your relationship yeah if you say to your friends do you mind if i take if i leave early today it's my my partner's birthday and i want to do something special and your friends go go go we'll get you covered today you know so it's people looking

1:22:34Raj Shamani:after people so it's like in society success fame ambition is applauded more than a good relationship why do you think that that's happening more and more now it's the reward structure so good

1:22:50Simon Sinek:relationship is not rewarding no no no it's it's the things that get attention and get rewarded so it was society would say good job you found somebody to fall in love with and it was considered a valuable thing do you think we consider that as a valuable thing anymore I mean, there's a whole economy to help people find love, isn't there?

1:23:06Raj Shamani:That runs on for you to not find love more. I mean, that's true.

1:23:13Simon Sinek:Look, cultures wax and wane. They're living, breathing animals. And tastes change. And cultures change. And politics change. And what's considered good or bad changes with time. I mean, again, culture is a living, breathing animal. And so I don't like any of these binary constructions. You know? Is this one better than that one? it depends on what kind of life you want to live just be honest about it i have chosen this path at this sacrifice i mean when i was young in my career i the way to spread a message it was pre social media the way to spread a message was to speak publicly that was the way you spread a message and i was on the road so much that i was basically undateable because i was just always traveling but i did it with eyes wide open i knew exactly the compromise i was making and to me it was worth it for a period of time until I decided it wasn't worth it.

1:24:06Simon Sinek:And then I, and I had a long term plan that I would do it until it had its own momentum. And then I would change my priorities, but I did it with eyes wide open. So I didn't ever complain about, I mean, I probably did, but, uh, the point is I, even though I might've complained about it, I knew what I was doing. And so again, I think of everything in terms of cost, everything comes at a cost. You want to be, you want to make a ton of money and be rich and famous. It comes at a cost. You want to prioritize, your health and your joy, it comes at a cost. You want to be obsessed with taking care of other people, it comes at a cost.

1:24:38Simon Sinek:You have to just weigh the costs. When people say you should never quit or you should know when to quit, well, which one of those is true? I believe that you should know when to quit and the time to know when to quit is when the cost is no longer worth it. The cost becomes too high. But for every decision we make, every single decision we make, personally or professionally it has a cost just be aware of what the costs are and be okay with those costs and the minute that those costs are no longer worth it then you have to change paths or change

1:25:06Raj Shamani:directions do you know you're talking about cost think about gen z at this point gen z have started thinking about cost so much that they've almost started avoiding hard conversations they've become like conflict avoidance and they just quit and then move on to the next thing yeah discomfort

1:25:25Simon Sinek:yeah they don't like discomfort so how can they build real cost of starting a new job is better

1:25:30Raj Shamani:than being uncomfortable how do you think they can start building the real intimacy when they

1:25:36Simon Sinek:avoid conflict so much goes back to everything we're saying up until now which is it's it's recognizing that you're not the only person in the world it's recognizing that you have accountability right like you are part of these equations you're not always a victim right that you play a role, you have a part here, that there's some benefit to learning the skills of human interaction and human confrontation that will benefit you personally and professionally for the rest of your life. And basically what you're doing is skipping school. And that's what I said before, which is treat your early life and treat your early job like it's a graduate degree.

1:26:12Simon Sinek:And if you choose not to show up to class, it's a difficult class day, I'm just going to drop out of school. That's what you're telling me. You're like, today the homework's too hard, I'm just

1:26:20Raj Shamani:going to drop out but that's what more and more young people are doing now but it's it's and i

1:26:25Simon Sinek:think it goes to the lack of accountability to to the team to the group goes back to the selfish behavior which is it's totally fine for me to leave it's my life i don't care it's like but hold on you're letting people down it's not just about you maybe this is good for you maybe a little tension is you'll teach you you know a little bit of grit build you know build up a muscle you know um and and it's and and i learned this the hard way but you never want to make decisions out of fear you want to make decisions out of opportunity you want to run towards things not away from things you know the best second job to take is something that's more inspiring the first one not less painful than the first one because then you'll just take whatever job is not this one which is not necessarily the right next thing to do so those are

1:27:17Raj Shamani:deeper philosophical questions but they'll learn eventually but then there's ai right where you feel like you're avoiding conflict and the other person doesn't understand you then you go to ai and then that understands you and somehow you feel like you just have this only one friend do you think it's in temporarily being lonely is better or when you have nobody ai talking to ai and making ai your friend is better it's a binary construction it's ai has some benefits

1:27:50Simon Sinek:but i would be worried if ai was the only friend that somebody had like i know a guy who had a long intense relationship with an ai bot but he also had regular friends too he's very healthy you know It's a really intense relationship he had with his AI friend, but it wasn't his only friend. So there was balance. So when you say, if AI is your only friend, we probably have a problem. If AI is involved in your life and you seek some sort of validation from AI, as long as it's a healthy amount. It's like video games are fine. Social media is fine. Cell phones are fine. Alcohol is fine. Gambling is fine.

1:28:24Simon Sinek:When you moderate, if all you do is gamble and all you do is drink and all you do is social media, then we have a problem.

1:28:31Raj Shamani:too much of anything too much water is bad for you yeah right like so the question isn't right

1:28:36Simon Sinek:or wrong or good or bad the question is moderation and are the systems set up to help us moderate and the answer is clearly not then what happens because ai doesn't disagree ai never needs more

1:28:46Raj Shamani:time it's an affirmation machine exactly so it never requires compromise it never requires time it never requires yeah it's the friend that's always nice it's the friend that's always available so what does it do to an individual when you have just a friend which is frictionless it gives you

1:29:01Simon Sinek:a full sense of how easy life is or a full sense of how great you are did you see the movie her no not yet i don't want to ruin it for you no go ahead tell me well i'm going to ruin it for lots of people okay if you haven't seen the movie her and you really really want to turn off now because i'm going to spoil the movie okay um so in the movie her he has a very intimate relationship with an ai bot i mean it's the perfect relationship he's madly in love with her right and then he discovers spoiler alert it's about to happen he discovers that she's having an intimate relationship with millions of people simultaneously and he's so upset because he thought he was special and she says no i can have relationships with millions of people you're not the only one but as human beings we want to be the only one we think we're the only one and so it's this crazy film where this relationship is so intense until he realizes he's not special and at the end of the day what makes a relationship amazing is that we know that we're special and ai bots will make us feel like we're special but at the same time they're doing it for millions of people simultaneously yeah i'd rather have i personally would rather have somebody who makes

1:30:13Raj Shamani:me feel that i'm special to them but it's getting more difficult and difficult yeah it comes at a cost everything comes at a cost i don't always know what the costs are there's a cost for everything You've worked very hard in your life. You've paid a cost with wide eyes open. Let's say you've paid a price. Yeah. And knowing what you were doing. Yeah. Do you think at, you're 51 now?

1:30:34Simon Sinek:52.

1:30:35Raj Shamani:52. Do you think it was all worth it? Or would you change something about it?

1:30:38Simon Sinek:I mean, I have a couple of regrets. And it's mainly, the couple of regrets I have is advice I took from people that I knew I shouldn't have taken and people I trusted that I knew I shouldn't have trusted. And I should have trusted my gut. But I felt intimidated because they were more successful or, you know, than me and thought they knew more. But I did what they suggested rather than trusting myself. But yeah, why would I? It's sliding doors. I don't know. If I changed something, I wouldn't be where I am or who I am today. So I can't make the choice of what I would or wouldn't have changed. It's like the horseman, you know, good news, bad news, who knows?

1:31:16Simon Sinek:Would I have liked to remove some of the pain? Of course. But the lessons that I learned and the relationships that I built in those pain, were they worth it?

1:31:23Raj Shamani:Yeah.

1:31:25Simon Sinek:So, no, I wouldn't change anything.

1:31:27Raj Shamani:Nothing.

1:31:28Simon Sinek:Just one or two things.

1:31:28Raj Shamani:Okay.

1:31:29Simon Sinek:Like I told you, there's a couple of pieces of advice that I wouldn't have followed and a couple of people that I would have ended those relationships.

1:31:35Raj Shamani:What's one advice you wouldn't follow and you don't want anyone to follow?

1:31:38Simon Sinek:I mean, I think any advice, remember, we're both individuals and members of groups all the time. Being human is living in paradox. I'm both me and I'm a member of a team or church, a sports team. like I have responsibility to others and I have to look after myself and I have to balance those and every day is a paradox because I'm going to let somebody down either I'm going to let myself down or I'm going to let them down take a choice and the answer is you don't get to choose it's both it's a difficult it's a paradox and any advice that says always prioritize the group or any advice that says always prioritize yourself that is flat out wrong and I'm watching a friend of mine right now who's in a very senior important job and he's so driven by duty and his people that he is exhausted he's exhausted i talked to him and he's got he's exhausted he can talk on the phone for two minutes and he's just exhausted all the time and i need him to like say no to something for himself and he feels bad because he wants to be there for his people and i'm like dude you were letting your people down by being this tired stay home and watch tv stay home and just do

1:32:43Raj Shamani:nothing you you introduce yourself as an optimist right and there was there was a quote i was reading that only optimists commit suicide. Optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. So what do you do when you run out of hope? Hope doesn't, it's,

1:33:01Simon Sinek:an optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright. And I believe even through adversity, it will get better at some point. Of course I have days where I'm like, I hate this. I don't want to do this. What's the point? Of course I do. And I either recognize that I'm tired because I know fatigue is a problem. like for optimism. So if I'm like, you're just tired, you're just tired, just get a good night's sleep, you'll be okay. Almost always that helps. Or I call somebody and be like, I can't do this anymore. And then if they're good, they just let me vent and come to my own conclusion. But yeah, no, of course, of course, I have doubt.

1:33:38Simon Sinek:And of course, I want to quit. Of course, it's called being human. Of course. But at the end of the day, I don't let I don't make a decision in those moments you know huge lifelong decisions should you you take time to make those decisions and then you realize oh i just had a bad day you know but of course there are moments where i i want to throw the whole throw it all out of course you said good friends that you went what do bad friends do try and fix everything not bad just they're not bad friends they're just the the skill you need in those moments is the funny thing about human beings is we know what we need you can just ask for it so when a friend starts to fix things when all you want them to do is listen you can say can you just not fix something can you just listen yeah and people

1:34:21Raj Shamani:are like all right all right thank you so much thanks for having me thank you for having this

1:34:24Simon Sinek:conversation how are you

1:34:34Raj Shamani:there you go thank you you're very welcome thanks very much i don't know how to put this excitement into intro like it's just it's the Simon's like you don't get it like it's like when I was a

1:34:49Simon Sinek:when I started learning about world or personal growth

1:34:56Raj Shamani:that what is to work on yourself, why, what is leadership, how to build business like whatever the purpose, all these conversations the first time I heard these words it was since that time it was a man who was relevant in my life. And like I've been following him since then and every one year or two years he will come up with some new concepts, some new theory, articulate it so well and it will have an impact on your life and you will change the course of your life or maybe try to get deeper just because he said something.

1:35:26Simon Sinek:Like he's that.

1:35:28Raj Shamani:The gravity of his thoughts. And he's given, at least the modern generation, he's given this concept of why. Instead of doing what you start with.

1:35:44Simon Sinek:Purpose means I don't know how to do it. Leadership means I don't know.

1:35:48Raj Shamani:Thank you so much for watching this podcast till the end. Please let us know in the comments. what all did we do right so that we can improve and keep doing that better and what all did we do wrong so that we never repeat it. And at the same time, please give us suggestions of who's the next guest that you want to see on the podcast. And don't forget to share this episode with at least one person who will get some insights because one conversation is enough to give people enough ideas to change their lives. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out. And also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel.

1:36:23Thank you.