The Danger of Outsourcing Your Thinking to AI | Ryan Hawk

18:15Ryan Hanley:She had other plans for what she wanted to do. And we're very good at the business of marriage. So no, no knock on my ex-wife. We actually, I'm incredibly, as much as she drives me nuts, as all exes do, you know, we get along incredibly well and she's a wonderful mother to my children. It's all good. That being said, I understand that because I am also incredibly curious, I also have incredibly severe ADHD. I am, I have to be so difficult to like be in a relationship Because like in one second, I'll be talking about, you know, reading about the fact that they just found new chambers underneath the Sphinx.

18:53Ryan Hanley:And oh, my God, what does this mean? Is that where the power plant on switch was? And you know, and then the next sentence, I'm talking about, you know, some economics thing that I saw because some person who doesn't understand economics is talking about how you can't be a billionaire without cheating your way of getting there. You know, I mean, it's just like this because all these things just fascinate me, like the world. fascinates me. So when I picked up on that from you, I was like, and just like seeing your stuff and watching a few of your shows, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to love this conversation with this guy.

19:22Ryan Hanley:So like, how do you, you said that you weren't always curious, um, or at least it wasn't maybe like a core thing that you had as part of your day-to-day life. And now it has become that if someone's listening to this and they're going, man, I wish I, I would like to have, I'd like to be a little more curious day to day. Do you have any, like, how do we cultivate curiosity? Is this a, is this a skill we can develop? Is this like a system or a framework we can build a course around and sell to people? Like, how do we, how do you get more curiosity in your life?

19:54Ryan Hawk:I think of the quote, read what you love until you love to read. But apply that to all things in life, not just about reading. Now that helps with making you want to be a reader because so, you know, your kids are what, 12 and 10. So you want them to be readers. We all want our kids to be readers. And so we're, you know, unlimited budget on books, library, buy them, whatever, because I don't care what they're reading. I just want them to love to read because I think it opens up their mind to be more curious and it will create them to read more books. So I think that take that ethos and kind of apply it to everything.

20:31Ryan Hawk:I also think of Barbara Jordan's quote from many years ago, the old congresswoman from Texas who said, to be interesting, be interested. And so when you meet somebody, try to learn about their story, learn about where they're from, learn about what they're doing and why they're doing it. It can lead you down so many paths that have interesting conversations about other people. Like you'll see it really benefits you to genuinely care and be into somebody else or be into a specific topic. It could make you more interesting because you are interested in other people as well as other things. I did have a question for you, though, about what it's like dating you, because I've heard this, and I wonder if you get this, too.

21:16Does it, especially for the woman you're with now, did it feel like you were interviewing her or you still interview her at times?

21:24Ryan Hawk:I've been told this because if you start asking questions or too many questions, they'll say, like, am I in an interview? Like, what's happening here? Do you ever get that?

21:33Ryan Hanley:Yes and no. I have definitely

21:40Ryan Hanley:I'm going to say something that the audience judge me, don't judge me if people listen to this show they understand where I'm coming from I have found that left-leaning women do not like to be interviewed and women on the right will have absolutely no problem with it and I don't know why that is a broad stroke from a very small sample set however I have found that And I found that, and I don't know if it's a general distrust, distrust of men or whatever, but it's kind of like after a few questions, I start to get that like, well, why are you so interested in me? Like, why are you going so deep?

22:18Ryan Hanley:Where, you know, I find with, you know, women who tend to be a little more conservative leaning, it's just a natural conversation about getting to know each other and going deep. And they tend to be more willing to talk about their faith. They tend to be more willing to talk about their kids. They tend to be more willing to talk about these things. And I'm not saying one is right or one is wrong, but it has absolutely been something that I've found. And maybe that's not a true factor. Maybe that's a causation isn't, or correlation doesn't equal causation for sure. But, and it also could just be that I am, in today's standards, very obviously more conservative minded.

23:00Ryan Hanley:And maybe they're just like, I don't want to be with this guy right from the rip. So that could be it too.

23:04Ryan Hawk:I never thought of it that way. Do you think, do you think more people are not on the far ends of the spectrum though? It feels like more people are kind of like, hey, I believe in this, this and this, but I don't believe in this and this. And then sometimes they're like, wait, where does that put me on this line of the spectrum? You know what I mean? I found it seems like more and more, when you go out for like a speaking gig and you talked to a lot of people, And there's some that may be deemed this or some may be deemed that, but most people are closer towards the middle of things, more independent.

23:34Ryan Hawk:What do you say?

23:34Ryan Hanley:For sure. And remember I'm in New York. You've kind of been programmed here to lean left. And, and I don't, honestly, I don't care to me, to me, literally my entire flight. The only reason that I even classify as, and I'm the reason I say more conservative today, because like, today's standards, I lean conservative, but I, I don't like view myself that way. Like I'm an American, like literally my values are, you know, my, my kids, my broader family, my God, my country, my friends, like those are the five things that I care about. I literally don't care about the other things. However, one value that I have that I refuse to set aside is I live in reality.

24:19Ryan Hanley:So I cannot, I cannot abide methodologies that have no historical backing for success. Like, like I got one of my buddies always gives me crap because if you follow me on X, I rail like to an obnoxious extent against socialism and communism. I just think that this is the cancer of our day. And unfortunately, like seemingly has to happen since this idea has been brought into existence. We're in a cycle where once again, people are starting to believe like this philosophy works.

24:50Ryan Hawk:It has killed more human beings than all diseases combined.

24:54Ryan Hanley:It's killed more human beings than all wars combined. Like we're talking about hundreds of millions of humans that have died from one single philosophy. and with no results, like there's no country that you can point at and say they're doing well using this philosophy, yet we're supposed to believe that it has merit, okay? So I can't operate, my brain does not, can't hold an ideal that has no backing. And people go, well, you're a Christian, you believe in God. I don't care if you believe in God. And I've had moments in my 45 years in which I have struggled with my connection with God where different things have happened.

25:33Ryan Hanley:However, what I have always believed is that the Bible, including the Old Testament, so Judeo-Christian text, is the guidebook, the number one best self-improvement book that has ever been written. You do not have to believe that there's a God with sandals and a white dress sitting in the clouds, looking down on us, like pulling the strings, to read that book and the lessons inside it and not have your life get better. like it is the so so take god out of it if you need to i don't need you to believe in god i do but you don't need to there's no context for our friendship or our relationship that you believe in god however you have to respect at least in your relationship with me that i believe it's the best self-improvement book that's ever been written so that's kind of where my philosophy

26:19Ryan Hawk:i think more maybe it's based on what's around me but i think more people believe with both of those things that you just said then i think the overwhelming majority agree with both of those things. If you, if you live in reality, if you actually are curious, if you read, I think the majority of Americans, of humans, yeah, they're on board with both, both of those things. But sometimes the minority of people who, who at least claim they believe whatever, if you're talking about socialism, communism, any of that, they're just loud and they get amplified on certain social media platforms or you see them maybe based on where you live um that it's like do people really think this like are they really are they really thinking this and and and i feel like the majority are do not but yeah if you're out in the dating world and maybe you see on a date it probably what do you do like have you gone on a date with somebody and that and that comes up you're like oh my god dude should we just leave or like what happens i actually i went on a couple dates with this woman again this is more than a year and a half ago now because i've been seeing someone for

27:25Ryan Hanley:a long time, who is fantastic. If she's listening, you're fantastic. So we go out. She wants to go hit golf balls, right? She's like, hey, let's go hit golf balls. Let's go. Great first date. Let's go. Sounds awesome. So we go and we start talking and like

27:49Ryan Hanley:she makes a comment about our governor, Kathy Hochul. I don't know where it comes from. Kathy Ochoa. Kathy Ochoa is a leftist shill. She's completely vapid. She hasn't had an original thought her entire life. And I can, you know, I mean, you just see it in the way her she pattern breaks and just chases trends. I mean, literally, she will turn on a dime, you know, if their money's there. And now that I have my own opinions on her or anything, but I just said, I just said, well, you know, that's not working. You know, because because if you look at the numbers, New York now officially is the number one net loser of both companies and residents of any state.

28:27Ryan Hanley:They've now officially outpaced both. Yeah, they've officially outpaced California and Illinois. California was leading the charge. New York has taken over. So New York and is losing the most businesses and the most residents of any state in the country. Just in the last year, we've lost 900 businesses with 80 % of those going to North Carolina, Texas, and Florida. So Corning, which was one of the largest companies in the entire state, just decided to change putting a 4 ,000 job extension to one of their plants south of Buffalo. They literally this week just changed to North Carolina. They're going to split it up between North Carolina and Texas because of the business environment in the state so by that measure she's not doing a very good job right like i don't i mean i don't know what other measures there are but if everyone's leaving it seems like probably not the best job and so when i brought that stat up it was like i had bent over and farted right in her face it was over from that point on all right have a nice day see you yeah it was kind of like this we awkwardly finished our bucket of balls and then like it was this very weird like kind of like side shoulder hug thing and then no no no nothing else after that got you okay i'm

29:50Ryan Hawk:just curious i haven't been in that world in a while so i'm just curious how it goes i know i'm sure they're good days and not as not so good days but it seems like you're good now bro dating is

30:00Ryan Hanley:the worst it is the worst i you know i just and and and it's the worst for women too i i don't mean that like it's one-sided it's the worst for everybody because what doesn't happen anymore is like you have somebody that you know that you think is great and and you're like hey i got this buddy you know he's cool like you guys should meet here's your phone like that doesn't really happen anymore i mean it does a little and i'm sure everyone in the comments will be like i was refer to my whatever it that really doesn't happen that much anymore um like mostly you have to go on the apps because even if you try to approach a woman and i get this from them like this is not if i was a woman i'd probably be like this too like out in public they don't want to be approached and even if they do the general stance is very standoffish it's very you know i'm not here for you to come over and try to hit on me kind of thing right which i also i completely understand Like women should be able to go out, go on their day and not have to constantly be hit on by men.

30:58Ryan Hanley:Like I'm not trying to knock that. So you have to use the apps. Well, the apps are brutal. They're also optimized for you to not meet the perfect person because if you meet the perfect person, you don't come back. Right. So this is this actually came out about a year or so ago. I saw this. It was right before I met the woman that I'm dating now. So maybe more than a year then was this, this story that came out that someone found that the algorithms are actually optimizing for people that are slightly off of what they think are a perfect. So it's a good date, but it's not the best date because then you come back again, which is like, oh my God, we can't trust anybody.

31:37Ryan Hanley:But yeah, dude, it's just like this awkward. And then you have everybody, especially in your forties, like everybody's got baggage. You know what I mean? Like we all do. We all have kids or exes or this thing or this thing happened. And it's just, man, if you found your lifelong person in your 20s, God bless you. You have hit the lotto. Hold on to that person for everything you have. Fight for the relationship if there's even an ounce of love there. Because no matter what your buddies tell you or what social media looks like, the grass is not greener. I feel like I may have gotten lucky in the woman that I'm seeing now.

32:13Ryan Hanley:But dude, it was four plus years of like, you know, you go on a couple dates, then it falls apart, then you never hear from the person or you start to get to know them. And all of a sudden you realize they've been, I learned this term called love bombing. I had no idea what this was. And I dated this woman for like six months. And for the first like four months, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to marry this woman. Like, she's amazing. Like we get along so great. We love the same thing. She's into fitness. She's into business. Like, this is awesome. and then literally at the four-month mark, like this switch flipped.

32:43Ryan Hanley:And all of a sudden I was like, who is this person? A couple of them, I coached baseball and she had come to a couple of the baseball games for my son to watch. And which is probably a mistake, it's probably a little early. And the moms are like, oh yeah, she was love bombing you. We thought you knew. And I'm like, how would I know what love bombing is? So this is where, and men and women do this again, not just women, where essentially you just act like the person is God's gift to the earth, right? Everything is amazing. Everything they say is amazing. Everything's amazing. But you're saying you're not really showing who you are to try to suck them in.

33:20Ryan Hanley:And then once you get them on the hook, you start showing them your real personality, hoping at that point, you've got them far enough along the path that they don't leave you. That's some messed up psychological stuff that you got to deal with, dude.

33:33Ryan Hawk:Dude, I don't know about that.

33:35Ryan Hanley:That sounds wild. That sounds wild. That's wild. I could do hours on the dating scene. I mean, I'm here to talk about you. Sorry. Okay. Oh, my God. So let's just say using dating apps is not one of the compounding practices to high performance. Let's just say that.

33:55Ryan Hawk:Got you. Okay. Okay. I've never, yeah, I've never had the opportunity. I guess I'm glad that I don't.

34:05Ryan Hanley:no dude it's be glad be glad I um you know if you're with someone you don't like and and it's not working um even though I am a Catholic I do think divorce is a healthy option in many in some situations you know if you're not running towards it if you're working at it and it just doesn't work I think that it can be a very healthy option for everybody um I do think your kids can be fine if you do it the right way if you communicate with them you know that kind of stuff um but the grass is the grass isn't necessarily greener. It could be, but it's not this, like you're running around, like my buddies would be like, Oh, how come you're not just out there like dating 25 year olds?

34:45Ryan Hanley:I'm like, cause I'm 44 and I don't want to date a 25 year old. Cause I have literally nothing to talk to that human about. Like I want someone who understands the stuff that I'm dealing with. You know what I mean? Like having kids and work and you know, aches and pains in your knees when you wake up. Cause you played college sports, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like, Why do I have to take two aspirin? No, it's just, I don't know. It's a wild world. But getting this podcast back on track, most recent book, The Price of Becoming, right?

35:18Ryan Hanley:One, finishing up our conversation on curiosity, where does curiosity fall into high performance? And to me, it feels like a bedrock trait. but like where does it fall where does curiosity in particular fall in the hierarchy and then what are some of the easy everyone's looking for easy wins and I and I like I like starting with easy wins because they're never actually easy but what are some of those where do we fall with curiosity and then take us into some of those places where people can start to where high performance can feel accessible I guess that that's what I'm trying to get to is is not necessarily easy, but accessibility of high performance.

36:01Ryan Hawk:Okay. I, I love, um, so the whole idea of this, the idea of compounding comes from, uh, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. And one of my favorite Charlie Munger quotes, there's lots of them is this idea of going to bed a little bit wiser than you were when you woke up. And I love prompts. I'm a prompt driven writer, a prompt driven thinker. I love Q and a sessions during keynotes, all that stuff. And so one question I think that, that I think is worth it to ask yourself if you're trying to work this curiosity muscle at the end of every single day is what specifically did I do today to go to bed a little bit wiser than I was when I woke up?

36:42Ryan Hawk:And then write down whatever it is that you did and know that you're going to be asking yourself this question at the end of every day and that you're going to need to write something down. And so what I think this does is it works as a forcing function to go out into the world and be curious. Be curious about people. Be curious about ideas. Be curious about anything. You read a book. You read an article. You talked to a person who's an expert on something. You met with a mentor. You went on a date. Like, whatever it is, what did I do today to go to bed a little bit wiser than I was when I woke up?

37:15Ryan Hawk:And so prompts, to me at least, really help drive my decision-making. They help drive my behavior. And I've seen when you stack day after day after day after day, then it compounds just like money has for Warren Buffett, who's made the bulk of his money after the age of 60 because of the power of compounding. And so try to implement those portable lessons from those guys when it comes to business and money, but implement that into your actual life. And in this case, we're talking about being more curious. So what's a prompt that you know you're going to ask yourself at the end of each day to work as a forcing function so that you go out and actually live it and do it?

37:59Ryan Hawk:And that's the one for me. What am I going to do? Or what did I do today to go to bed a little bit wiser than I was when I woke up? And then stack days, man, day after day after day. And again, I like your chances for developing that skill, that muscle of being curious, of learning, of improving a little bit. And then the power of compounding takes over as it goes as long as you're consistent for years. And that's part of the part that's not as easy is it takes a long time. And it also takes consistency over the course of a long time. And that is what most people don't want to do. Because time, we don't have patience or like you said, we have ADHD.

38:42Ryan Hawk:Like a lot of us, that's what we, that's very real. And so the power of compounding is super, super powerful, but it does take consistency and it takes time.

38:53Ryan Hanley:So it's almost like you're thinking about your mind like a bank account. Like I make a deposit every day. It's a small deposit. it. It's just one thing that I learned that added a little knowledge to me or a little insight. And the idea is that over time, as we do this every day, maybe some of those ideas start to stack on top of each other, or we see a connection between two ideas that weren't there before. But if we're not doing it every day, right, then that value, that capital, right, thinking about a bank is not there to begin with. So how do you create the consistency? Because, and I'm going to leave you with this, that there is this interview with Kobe Bryant that haunts me.

39:41Ryan Hanley:Because I have a very loud internal voice, which I know isn't me, if you read The Untethered Soul, but it's very loud. And it constantly wants me to negotiate with myself.

39:53Ryan Hawk:Yeah, you said you'd do that every day,

39:56Ryan Hanley:but come on, man. Like, you're a little tired today or, you know, you don't have to read today. You know, just you read yesterday. You're good. Like, how do we not let that voice talk us out of this thing that we committed to?

40:12Ryan Hawk:I think it is a daily fist fight to suffocate excuses. My friend Garen Stokes shares this poem about excuses with me all the time. And one of the opening lines of that poem is, any excuse, no matter where it comes from or what it is, softens the character. Thinking of that line kills me. Any excuse softens the character. We all have excuses. We all make them all the time. But if you make a commitment to yourself that you're going to do something, making an excuse softens the character. and that hurts. And so I think about that. So that's one thing of thinking of excuses as the fact that they're softening your character and I just cannot live with myself if I'm going to be softening my character every day.

41:04Ryan Hawk:Also, the prompts. You're going to have these prompts that you're going to commit to asking yourself at the end of the day. I think it's just imperative to do it, to be consistent to do it. Another thing that could be really helpful, especially for all of us, we all need this, is who are the people in your life who are your truth tellers? the ones who are willing and able to say, Ryan, dude, that's not it, man. Like we made a commitment to do this. We're going to get up at this time. We're going to do this thing. We said, we're going to do this. Let's go, dude. You're not doing it. I think we all need teammates.

41:36Ryan Hawk:We all need truth tellers. We all need those, that, that, those foxhole people that are willing to tell you the truth and let you know if you're becoming, your ego is getting too big or becoming too full. We need that, especially as your fame is rising. it's even more important, I think, to have, to maintain awareness because you've seen this with people who've gained fame. It's super easy for them to lose awareness of the world because the truth tellers, they don't let them in there. They kick them out of their life or they aren't intentional about surrounding themselves. So when it comes to making commitments, when it comes to being consistent, to me, it's very helpful that I have the truth tellers who are willing to say, dude, that's not it, man.

42:19Ryan Hawk:That's not what we talked about. That's not what you said your values are. That's not what you said, how you want to live. And it may sting. It may hurt when I get told that information, but they're gold. They're gold. I love those people. Even if in the moment, I hate them. I love them the longer term because they're going to make me better. And I try my best to be that for them too. So yeah, I think it's a combination of making commitments, having end of the day prompts and then surrounding yourself with truth tellers who care and love you enough to tell you the truth especially when you're off track

42:50Ryan Hanley:how do you deal with ego as it relates to a truth teller in your life giving you feedback that you just simply do not want to hear

43:02Ryan Hawk:because no matter how

43:04Ryan Hanley:open we are sometimes some people say something and a lot of times it's because you know it's true right and your ego just rises up and how do you deal with that personally because if we allow that ego to stay in control then we don't internalize the feedback that we're getting that we need that are that we've we've assigned this person as a truth teller in our life they're giving us what we ask them to give us and now our ego is fighting that thing how do you work through the ego in your own life and making sure you're staying aware and open and humble to accepting what these truth dollars give you?

43:40Ryan Hawk:It's hard. With that said, I think it's worth it to ask the question, are they right? Or is part of what they're saying right? And maybe, and this is a conversation I have my wife when we go on walks every night. If I get some critical feedback from one of those people, even if initially I think they're stupid and they're wrong, and that's mostly my ego talking, I still will say, hey, I got this feedback. Are they right? Is there a chance that they're right? Or is there a chance that part of this is correct? And then we talk through that and have conversations about that feedback. The other thing that's really, really important, I think, is I've had a, you've probably had a boss, I don't know if you ever had like a corporate America job, but like I've had corporate America jobs I did for 12 years.

44:24Ryan Hawk:And I'd have a boss that would say, oh, give me all the feedback, guys.

44:28Ryan Hanley:You know, I want it.

44:29Ryan Hawk:Give it to me. Give it to me. I'm trying to get better. I want to get better. And then the second you give them actual critical feedback that may sting them a little bit, they just blame or they complain or they get super defensive. And what is that leader telling you in that moment? They're telling you, I don't want any feedback. I can't handle any feedback. And so I think of that as me being in that position now. And if someone gives me feedback, if I immediately get defensive or say you're wrong, or I explain, oh, you don't understand this part of it. And so you're actually wrong. If I do that, what have I trained that person to do?

45:04Ryan Hawk:I've told them, I can't take it. I can't handle this. I don't actually want feedback. My actions are not following what I told you that I want. And so what is that person going to do? Ryan can't handle it. I'm not going to give him any feedback anymore.

45:19Ryan Hanley:That's what they're going to do.

45:20Ryan Hawk:And so to me, I'm upset. You're an athletic guy. You're in sports. Same growing up. Every single repetition as a quarterback when I played was on film. In practice, individual, one-on-ones, seven-on-seven, team periods, all of that is all on film. Obviously, every game rep is on film, and we are being coached, given a plus, minus, double plus, double minus on every single repetition of my life, right? And so I try to think of that same element of, I like being coached. I like getting feedback. I like trying to see that even when it's things, and certainly as a football player and as a quarterback, you take sacks, you throw pick sixes, you have all these bad things.

46:01Ryan Hawk:You're going to get coached and it's going to be really, really hard. You're going to be embarrassed in front of all your teammates. It's tough, but I think that's made me better. And I try to take that same approach to life now off of the field, even though it's things sometimes is, hey, I need it. I want it. And it's really important of how I respond when I get it, that I don't send the message to the other person. I can't handle this. I'm not tough enough. Or I said I wanted it, but I actually don't. My actions are showing that I don't. So I think feedback is really important as a leader to think about how are you receiving it?

46:35Ryan Hawk:And what's the body language? What are the words? What are your actions showing the other person when they have the guts and the love and the care to actually give it to you? Yeah.

46:44Ryan Hanley:And for the people who are kind of still coming up, I mean, there is nothing more intoxicating as a leader than someone who's coachable. When you see someone who's coachable, you literally will almost disregard wherever they are on the spectrum of like current talent, skill, experience. if you're like, I can tell this person or give this person guidance and they'll actually execute it, you will over-index on that person a hundred times over than the person who comes in with maybe a nice resume and some experience, but doesn't want to listen to what you have to say or thinks they know better. And that was actually, it's actually funny, in my own business, the insurance agency we were talking about, I found this.

47:26I hired a lot of moms with young kids or single moms

47:31Ryan Hanley:because in the insurance industry, very traditional, if you can't timestamp an 8.30 to 4.30, they don't want you. So these women would either get marginalized or shoved right out of these agencies, even though they're incredibly talented. And what I found is when I went pound for pound, these women who had predominantly been just customer service, not sales, I shouldn't say just, but they were customer service, not sales. And I put them in sales positions, but they were open to it, right? They wanted to make more money. They wanted that sale versus the producers that I would hire that I had to pay more money for, that I had to extract from some other agency and bring them in.

48:05Ryan Hanley:They would beat them nine out of 10 times because the producer coming in thought they knew everything. And these women were just like, I want to make more money. This is an opportunity. Whatever you tell me I need to do to make more money, I'll do it, right? And it's like, so all of a sudden it was like a big joke because the producers tended to be more male. they'd be like, oh, you like the ladies better. And I'm like, I like the ladies better because they're not jackasses who don't listen and just do shit their own way and underperform. Like they're beating you because they work the system, right?

48:37Ryan Hanley:And it's, so it's like almost like we're, we're just so willing to shoot ourselves in the foot because of our own ego, like our own, you know, I want to walk around like I'm the, you know, I'm the man. And it's like, no one I know who is, successful over the long term is closed off to feedback. Nobody. Short-term success, 100 % possible. Long-term success, I have never met one in my life.

49:03Ryan Hawk:This is why I loved, again, this may not be the right thing to say, and I'd said it and have issues with HR at times. I loved people who played team sports and people from our military because they're getting coached all the time. People from the military have to work together. In some cases, it's life or death, and they are side by side with teammates, and they got to be there for one another. So they're great teammates, and they're coachable. They're getting feedback constantly, and it's life or death. Team sports, it's not life or death, but they're getting feedback constantly, and they need to learn how to work together with others from diverse backgrounds, in some cases, of people who are completely different from them, and they all find a way.

49:42Ryan Hawk:That's why the locker room is so beautiful because you get these people from all over the world and they come together with a common goal and they get coached and they get feedback all the time. They get called out in front of each other all the time and they got to be able to handle that and keep going and keep going. They face adversity all the time and they got to keep going. And so to me, I probably over-indexed that in some cases too much. But if you play team sports, I don't care, guy, girl, whatever. if you were serving our country, I'm already going to, you're going to get an interview with me for sure.

50:17Ryan Hawk:Uh, then I'm, yeah, I don't know that I have done really well when I've, when I've hired people who did those two things.

50:25Ryan Hanley:Yeah. I know that there's been the last like 10, 15 years, there's been a big HR movement. I also don't think HR departments should even exist personally. um but that's a conversation for another day um and i mean no offense to the humans in those positions but i do think that that department in particular has destroyed and or throttled more companies than any other department in any organization i i couldn't i couldn't agree more with you man like there is absolutely like because it's an it's even in the sport you know take out take out the real death possibility of being in the military and maybe just say they're, you know, never in that type of situation.

51:05Ryan Hanley:Either way, there's still you have an ego death every day. And that to me is what's important. It's if you have never and this is we have an entire unfortunately, we have a we have a decently sized segment of multiple generations now that have literally never experienced failure, even when they've lost. It wasn't a failure. It was a, well, you tried hard, right? Well, you participated. Well, you were this. Well, you were. And I know that that seems mean, but it's real. And I'll tell you, I see it in the kids. I coach my son's travel baseball team. I see it every day. There are kids who grow up in households or there are teams of kids from certain towns that no matter what they do, win, lose or draw, play well, play not.

51:47Ryan Hanley:Everything's amazing. Everything's great. And I'm not saying we should be like, you know, tearing these kids apart. but the kid needs to experience what failure is like. If you lose the game, you should not get the trophy. You shouldn't, right? Like you should not get the trophy. You didn't win. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that you're not valuable as a human being to the world and it doesn't mean you won't win the next tournament but you did not win this one. And that ego death is so incredibly important, I think for our evolution into adulthood and into if we ever want to be successful someday.

52:26Ryan Hanley:Because if you're doing something worth doing, you are going to lose a lot. And you're going to get the crap beat out of you. And people are going to talk crap about you. And people are going to undercut you. And people are going to disappoint you. And none of those things are unnatural. They're just the way the world works. And if you've never experienced loss, you look at somebody coming to your company and then leaving in three months and you take that as some personal hit and oh my God, and you don't know how to handle that. Or someone says no to you for a big sale or someone doesn't want you to be the speaker at their event and they choose someone else and now you literally can't handle it and now you start looking for reasons to blame them.

53:09Ryan Hanley:They're a, you know, just insert whatever ist works best for you and now you have a way of excusing your way out of the fact that you just weren't good enough for that thing. And I believe that we need those ego deaths. We need that. It's crucial to our development and our resilience.

53:30Ryan Hawk:Completely agree. This is why I love team sports. One of my daughters plays volleyball, and I love girls volleyball because they lose all the time. I mean, they play sets to 25, and so it's not uncommon to go five sets and think about how many points you've lost. If they win the set 25-23 and maybe they lost two of those sets to go to the five sets, there is an amazing amount of losing and having to respond immediately from that adversity of I got blocked or I made a mistake or that girl just crushed it on my head. They have to immediately be ready for the next play. Okay, next play. Let's go.

54:11Ryan Hawk:Let's go. Like this next play, next point mentality uh that's such a portable lesson for life in general you you get the adversity how do you respond and i so any ways we can practice that we can manufacture hardship is so important for all of us definitely for kids but for all of us of what are you doing to we love my miranda my wife and i love to go hiking like it's we're choosing to do something that is we're just in boulder colorado it's at altitude we don't have these high hikes i'm sitting here sounding like i'm way out of shape because i'm breathing so loud uh because it's hard but that's the point man that's the point of like choosing these harder things because it it that adversity i think as you call it like gives you those ego deaths of oh my god i'm kind of embarrassed but this is good for me this is good for me to go through this stuff it's making me better so yeah whatever it is that we're doing for kids yourself finding ways to do the tough thing and then keep fighting through it i think is a way to to hopefully go to bed again a little bit better than you were when you woke up

55:16Ryan Hanley:ryan dude i want to uh i want to be respectful of your time and that of the audiences um before we leave what would you consider your easy mode just knowing what you know about the topic now? What would be, what would be that thing for you?

55:32Ryan Hawk:Oh my gosh, man. I, um, I don't know if I have anything that's, I guess what's become more normal is to, uh, be curious about people. I think about just my youngest daughter's soccer games. You know, I feel like I've gotten to know the parents really, really well. And that's just because I'm interested in them and their stories because we're lucky to have like great parents and really good kids and our coach is good. And so I just kind of show up and, oh, listen, we got a new player this year. Okay, let me learn about her mom and her dad. And I don't know, I feel like it's built really fun and nice, enjoyable relationships for me beyond just getting to watch her compete and lose and have to come back and fight back from that, which is great.

56:17Ryan Hawk:And so maybe that comes a little bit more natural. People have made comments about that. Maybe behind my back, they make fun of me. I don't know. Um, but I, but I have that my, that gets brought up to my wife from time to time. So I think it should become more natural, more normal is just to try to learn about people and understand them. And that, that builds relationships. And again, that's what life is all about is, is really about relationships that you can build every opportunity. Everything you do in life comes through people. Let's try to get to know people. Curiosity is my love language.

56:45Ryan Hawk:So, um, to me, it seems to be the theme of our conversation today, but that, uh, I would say that's something that's become much more normal and like default setting without even and thinking that that just kind of happens.

56:57Ryan Hanley:I love it. The book is The Price of Becoming, The Compounding Practices of High Performance. Guys, I highly recommend that you subscribe to the Mindful Mondays newsletter that you have. Phenomenal, I'm a subscriber. Besides the website, learningleader.com, anywhere else where people should go to check you out, follow along with your journey?

57:18Ryan Hawk:I appreciate you, dude. That's mainly at learningleader.com. That's the name of the podcast, Learning Leader Show. and you know, the price of becoming is the next book. So really appreciate you. Yeah, man, sharing and showing up ready to have a fun conversation today. It was great. It was great. I felt like it was super raw and real and that's not always not always what happens on these things. So I really appreciate it, man.

57:41Ryan Hanley:Well, I appreciate you coming along for the journey, my friend. We're out of here, folks. Thank you. We're out of here. Peace.