#1046 - Russ - Can Ambitious People Ever Have Balance?

30:32Isn't that interesting? That concept is what I named my deluxe album after, The Elephant and the Rider. It's so interesting to me. You swear you're in control, but that elephant, once it decides where it wants to go, it's going. Yeah. Fuck. I've heard you talk about people dismissing internal struggle. Well, people only validate struggles that they understand. There's a line from Oliver Berkman that says, just because someone carries it well doesn't mean the weight isn't heavy. Yeah. I think that's so great. God. Yeah. Yeah, and I think with men especially, you know, the whole cliche like we've been taught to hide it and to carry it alone, and that's what makes you be a man is carrying all your shit and keeping it under wraps, you know?

31:23And I also like, there is truth and validity to the fact that material struggle is vital, you know? Having food, water, and shelter is necessary, but there are so many internal struggles that are harder to see and it doesn't mean that they're not real, you know? And I think everyone is just so quick to get into this struggle competition with people. Like, yeah, but I had to go through this. But there's always going to be someone who can say, that's cute. I had to go through this. It doesn't mean that your shit isn't real. It doesn't mean it didn't have an impact, didn't affect you. Yeah, it's so divisive to me.

32:11Well, it's an interesting one because, and this speaks to your age and stage of development. Two things can be true at once. Many people who don't deserve the term victim use it as a way to gain leverage and status and accolade. And also lots of people are denying just how fucking hard their life was. So Rogan's got this idea where he says, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. So if the worst day of your life is somebody misgendering you in a Starbucks, then that's a pretty big deal. But if the worst day of your life is you running into battle at the fucking Battle of the Somme, that is also – and everything then becomes kind of relative to that.

32:55And it's also – there's a recency bias. Yeah. There's a, well, life's been pretty good recently. And you begin to get a bit of sort of like, you know, velvet nightgown syndrome where you think, well, stuff doesn't really need to be that. And then you get hit by something and you realize me 10 years ago would have dealt with this more differently. And now me now feels like I'm more fragile. We're not static in one person's ability or lack of to deal with discomfort needs to be sort of scrutinized carefully. you go I don't think that that's that big of a deal and there's a very easy way to call that out but also going dude you need to accept when you've been kicked in the dick and when it's really really hurt yeah I think lately I've just been trying to expand my capacity to handle bullshit you know how do you do that god I wish I fucking like knew really actionable advice for me I think it's just interrupting patterns catching them When I start to spiral and start to catastrophize certain things, just at least step one, being aware that I do that.

34:04Step two is now interrupting it and being like, I'm okay. My world is okay. It's not a fucking tragedy. But it's tough, you know? And I think that was a lot of my resistance with wanting more success was, well, more success means getting hit more. and I've been hit before by my last version of success. I don't want to be hit again, but then I don't want less success because then I'm stagnant. So the only answer is you need to increase your capacity to handle shit, you know, to juggle. Me and my therapist always talk about is grief and gratitude simultaneously, you know? And that's been challenging, man, because I could have swore once you get success, it's just all things that you're supposed to be grateful for.

34:54There is no more grief. Just all gratitude. It's all fun shit. I used to always like look around and be like, this is fucked up and they fucked that launch up and this just happened, whatever. And just feel like I had some broken version of success. Like surely there's something wrong with the version of success that I bought. I need to trade this back in. like this is malfunction this is not right but it's like no man there is always going to be some bullshit and some good shit going on and it's just the ability to hold both you know and not just ignore the bullshit you know acknowledge it um but not ignore the gratitude and not think that it's just supposed to only be that well that's a painful realization for everybody that there will be no point when you have no problems in life yeah what did you think that one day you we're going to have no more problems, like getting to a level in a video game and there being no enemies left.

35:52That's not the way that life works. There will never be a time when you have no problems. Right. And unfortunately, the problems... That's not what they sell you, though. Yeah, no, no, no. Reach the escape velocity, dude. Out in space, they can't hear you scream and they definitely can't hear your fucking problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know one of those balance boards? It's like a skateboard deck and it's got a cylinder underneath it and people use it for working on their balance. Yeah. I think about life a lot of the time kind of like that. even when you're, it looks really flat and I'm looking at you and you're almost perfectly still.

36:22Yeah. You're making these little micro adjustments at all times. And then sometimes you go, whoa, on one side or the other. And I just, the more, the more that I experienced life, the more that I think it works like that. Yeah. That there is no point where you reach stasis. There are times when you are more steady and more flat and there are times where you're more extreme and sometimes you meant to because you're playing around and sometimes you were forced to because there was a big fucking gust of wind yeah um but there's no point where you're not fixing making those micro adjustments fixing things and making my micro adjustments yeah you'll never be able to fully take your eyes off the ball and i think that was it still is a big hurdle of mine is overreacting and catastrophizing the small little like you know adjustments that need to be made and it's because it it feels it feels like a it used to feel like a threat against who i was and what i built and did i build something unstable did i build something not that great wrong did i build something wrong am i wrong am i fucked up well what that reinforces if you don't ever hear this and it's why it's so wonderful to hear the inner workings of somebody's mind it helps people to realize oh this isn't a personal curse yes on me this isn't because i did it wrong this isn't because this is just the way life always is for me everybody else has arrived everybody else is going to have it in such an easy gentle way they're whole they don't have problems yeah no no no this is endemic yeah this is a feature it's not a bug.

38:05Yeah. And everybody else feels this too. They just don't talk about it. This is why I envy bands. I envy bands because you guys all go through the same shit together. That's so incredible to me. Like I think about the Beatles. I'm like, you all got famous at the exact same time. Like, so you always had each other to talk to, but when you're just an artist, everything you're experiencing feels like it's happening in a vacuum and you're sure that nobody else is having this experience well what they even if they say they are having your experience you can excuse it away because well the way that they play or the music there the genre the fan group that well you know their instagram game is like totally they actually came up on the there's a way to excuse it but yeah you're right you have a it's a wonderful a wonderful split test when you're in a band yeah if you're one of four or six or whatever members of a band you go well everybody else is experiencing the exact same thing yeah maybe they play a different instrument but we're all and so the similarities we can assume are because of the situation and the differences we can assume are just mine yeah right because i my constitution is different to theirs and it helps you to run a pretty good experiment on why you feel the way you do yeah and i think that was comforting on the come up because me and my friends were all at the same place you know i mean so there was a bit of synergy there psychologically and there was community inherently and then when one of you kind of ascends to this crazy level it's kind of like well now i know nobody who gets this and you expect me to what go like make friends as an adult that's impossible you know i mean so it's it's just fucked yeah we'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem.

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41:19It's that whole like I'm going to downplay what I want so that if I don't get it, I can just say I didn't even really want it anyway. You do want it and that's okay. That's why I love like Timothee Chalamet coming out and saying I want to be great. I'm in pursuit of greatness. That's awesome. All this fake modesty, like too cool shit, I fucking hate. I think it's fake and I think that that's just it's posturing. It's image management. You're trying to be relatable. it's not real though like i love hearing people claim that i'm trying to be the biggest artist in the world i want to be the best i think i'm the best i love that because we all we all have something we desperately want you know and i think it's okay for you to be serious about getting that i think that there's times where you shouldn't take yourself and certain things too serious but it's okay to take your life serious.

42:16This is your life. You're not going to take this serious? If not this, then what? You know? Strange to me. It's very strange. I think seriousness gets a bad rap. Yeah. Because it's seen as a stern, not fun having, too rigid, too contrived. And yeah, totally effortless achievement from the outside doesn't trigger many of the defense mechanisms because, oh my God, he must just be so talented. You know, like how amazing. And he's not sort of shoving it in our face and he didn't say what he was going to do before and so on and so forth after. But I think taking things seriously and the bravery to take something seriously is like a wonderful skill to develop.

43:08Earnestness as well. think about seriousness in your idea i think is to do with saying what you want yeah frankly and showing the level of effort and commitment that you're prepared to put in to go and get it might be a good way to look at it yeah but earnestness would be the same but directed inwardly toward emotions so earnestness would be the bravery to take your emotions seriously and uh i like earnest people you know i think your point is basically that um detachment is self-protection yeah 100 by keeping things at a distance yeah i don't i don't really connect myself it's the person who's never fully committed in a relationship yeah because well if they reject me they're not rejecting me because i kept this little bit of me for me yeah They didn't get to see all of them.

44:02Exactly, yeah, because if I'd really wanted them, if I'd really tried, then I would have had them. But I did. I held this little bit back. So you... You always come out on top. Yeah, you avoid failure publicly by guaranteeing your failure privately. Wow, yeah. It's a defense mechanism against embarrassment. You know? And... Yeah, it's... it's just okay to want something in your life and want to take it serious you know it just is and i think it's kind of interesting i always like relate it back to watching certain anime and certain characters who didn't have the innate skill they were fucking annoying they had to like really bust their ass to like get good and get their powers and shit and they were annoying to me they were not as cool as the character who was just nonchalant and just like had the shit yep yep and i think as dudes we all look at that guy like he's fucking awesome he's not even trying and he's badass and we look at the main character who like doesn't have the skills yet has to work as like annoying but to me that's just because it's confronting a lot of times you know there's a lot of times when i see somebody busting their ass and um saying like this is the journey i'm about to go on.

45:21This is what I want. This is what I'm willing to do. This is what I'm going after. I'm not there yet, but I believe I can get there. I see how people react to that. And I just think it's confronting because it's a mirror for most people. It's asking you, are you willing to do the work that this person's willing to do? What are you doing with your life? But also suggests that success is more in reach than you might think. That's the part that fucks people up. Yeah. Because, well, actually it's not because of blasé innate talent. That's this mystical, ephemeral difficult to replicate thing yeah oh he he just worked hard and yeah fuck that means all i needed to do was work hard and right therefore the fact that i'm not where they are might be my fault because i didn't try you know it's easier to say i think he just sold his soul i think that's like it's got to be what it is it's so much easier to just do that instead of the truth.

46:15The truth is far less sexy. Correct. I mean, that is increasingly the direction of this podcast going in, very unsexy truths, unfortunately, over and over. And, you know, some of the seductive mirages that I was facing when I was a younger man, and now that I'm a young but slightly less younger man, a lot of, I've got to them and realized it wasn't some oasis, it was just like this sort of vision thing. And one of those is earnestness and seriousness and taking things seriously. And I fucking hate, I hate ironic speech so much. I think it fucking blows. This sort of cynical side eye. I never plant my position in the ground.

47:00I never say like, hey, you went too far. Like you're not supposed to say that. It's always lol, but actually you're the, it's like, no, don't say lol. Say fuck you because that's how you felt. but because you don't want to say to somebody that you actually hold a position that you can be hurt by something or that you care about something as soon as you say that you care about something that's a flag that's planted in the ground and that gives a territory that other people can try to attack yeah whereas if you're i didn't really care about her all that much it wasn't really that important to me i didn't want the business to go that well i like i'm not that you know like i'm just doing comedy on the side like it's just like you know whatever whatever I had another essay recently.

47:41Procrastination is often about fear. We like to pretend procrastination is a time management problem, but regularly it isn't. It's often a self-protection strategy wearing a Fitbit. When we delay doing the thing that we know we should do, we're sometimes not wrestling with our schedule, we're wrestling with our self-worth. The logic goes like this. If I try and fail, everyone will see. So if I never try at all, the failure is private, deniable, and safe. This is the psychological sleight of hand at the heart of much procrastination. It feels like avoidance, but functions like armor. You convince yourself the task is scary or the conditions aren't perfect or you need to feel ready first.

48:13But really, you're just terrified that doing your best might not be good enough. So you don't do anything. Yeah. I think that's everyone. I think you nailed it too with, you know, it's just you get to fail privately. And you can handle that, you know. But I just, I have a lot of respect for people who publicly go after shit. And I think deep down, it's an attractive trait. That's why a lot of times those people attract a lot of fans and a lot, because we all know as society, ambition and earnestness is attractive because we know it's a really tough thing to have. And it's no surprise that it's also polarizing.

48:55with with that people need feel the need to like temper their ambition and their earnestness though because if you're too much then in the uk you would be called a kino as in keen keen like you're too keen you're overly enthusiastic yeah um it would be cringe yeah right like this person who believes this thing and like me yeah maybe he got there or whatever but like he sort of loves it too much or whatever and it's strange because some people seem to be able to play it off with sort of an artistic likable quality and then for some other people i don't know what it is they're just the way that they deliver something similar the obsession sort of leaks out of them in a less aesthetic shape i think you know what i've noticed and i i'm guilty of this for sure in the past sometimes it comes off like you're trying to prove it to yourself.

49:50Yeah, that's interesting. You know what I mean? It's the guy at the party who introduces himself as saying, just sold a business for$1 billion. Right. As opposed to just it coming out naturally in the course of the conversation. And people can feel the intention. It's like, this feels like you're trying to prove to yourself. Compensation. Yeah. But I do think that there's just an issue with society wanting to control and own the key to other people's confidence. Oh, that's great. Like, no, no, no. We will let you know when you're allowed to feel confident about yourself. Because again, kind of what you said earlier, they have to believe that because it reaffirms the hierarchy in their head that we're in control.

50:37Confidence is something given by us to you. as opposed to the truth, which is, no, no, no, no. I give myself confidence. I own my confidence. This is a good one. So this woman went on a pod recently. I'm going to play this clip for you. Please. This woman went on a pod recently and gave a really wonderful insight about the relationship of how much reputation people think that you deserve. I thought this was so cool. people have an assumption of the level of celebration you deserve interesting right like how good you are and how um much reputation you deserve how do people decide that let's get to that because you you want to try to engineer it yep if you're above that people think you're overrated and they want to bring you down and they don't like you if they perceive that you're below that then you're underrated like underrated is a compliment why is it why is it a good thing to be poorly rated.

51:36In my mind, it's sort of like you fumbled. Like, what do you mean you're not well rated? Like, go fix it. But underrated is a compliment. Overrated is an insult. You would think that being highly rated is good, but overrated is not. So people want to fill that delta. If they think you're underrated, they'll try to bring you up. So this is like what people will get to this too, but this is what people have been saying about Google Gemini. It's underrated. It's like it's high status to say. Yeah, it's a compliment, but it's a compliment, but it's also like seen as insightful and valuable and useful to point out that Google Gemini is good.

52:06That's true. Yes, people feel good when they make that point. Yeah, they're like, I'm pointing this out. So I'm writing some kind of wrong in the universe. I'm feeling that imbalance. I guess people also feel good about themselves when they call it something overrated. People just feel good about identifying the discrepancy. We're all kind of reputational Karens. We feel off when something isn't where it should be. And that's why all these phrases exist. So cool. So real, though. Yeah. That's why I like I'm of the opposite mind. I like seeing the Chiefs win the Super Bowl every I want them to win the Super Bowl every year.

52:38Like I want the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl every year. I like when Taylor Swift drops an album and it goes number one and people say, well, she couldn't just let that girl go. No, beat me. I love shit like that. I love shit like that. I don't even I have no favorite NFL team. When my brother was like, who do you want to win the Super Bowl this year? I'm like, the Chiefs. I just want to see dominance. You know what I mean? Because I hate all this like, let someone else win. It's like, you're not even that great. Prove it. You know what I mean? I love shit like that. But that, I mean, again, that's just like society is just, in my opinion, bitch made.

53:16It's just a bunch of like weak-minded people who don't want to face the reality that they themselves lack the quality and the fuel that this person used to become great. Well, that's why the, I think it's called the bigotry of small differences or the narcissism of small differences, that the closer you are to somebody, the more rivalrous you feel your relationship to them. if it's someone who grew up in a different country or a very different sort of upbringing or from a different family. Like, yeah, you might not rate their success, but it doesn't have the same sort of visceral status rivalry that you would expect.

53:59But if it's the person who grew up down the street from you and you basically had the same opportunities, that really hurts. Yeah. It's another reason why I've chosen a profession, an industry that is very easy to criticize because everybody does this over the dinner table. Right. Right. I have not tried to put together a track. I have not tried to open up fucking Ableton or Pro Tools or whatever the fuck and make a song. therefore when I see what you do I can say that I do I don't like it but it's so removed from the skill set that I have but the closer that you get the fact that I haven't had to put in 10 20 30 years on logic or whatever to work out how to fucking make this thing uh anybody can do a podcast how many times have someone been over dinner and said bro we should have recorded that that was like that was such a good that was better than like fucking Joe Rogan like we should put that we should have put that on the internet maybe we should start a podcast like every white guy And the fact that people feel close, it's the same reason that everybody has an insight about how Nike should be doing their social media.

55:06Oh, I didn't like that social media post. They shouldn't be using AI. Because everybody's got a social media profile. Yeah. So everybody has some. Everybody's an expert. But not everybody files the fucking P &L tax return at the end of year for their company. Right. Well, I mean, I would have done it differently. You don't know how the spreadsheet works. You don't have to do a V-Luckup or any of this stuff. So you have more of an opinion and you can be more triggered and push back more when something that somebody else does, it feels like you're a part of the industry in a roundabout way. And the more walled off, the further away that particular industry is.

55:47Elon, you can laugh at the fact that a rocket bursts into flames if it doesn't work right, but you don't know how it happened. I would have done it differently no of course not but if you listen to a podcast that goes bad you have an opinion right well you have an opinion about that why because you think that you oh if I'd been there and then maybe some people could play football so they'll think well I would have you know that play is just stupid why did they call that play that play is fucking dumb yeah and the further and further away that you get if you're some you know microbiologist that's just come up with something you go it was good or bad the resolution with which your criticism or compliments can be deployed, lowered, the more difficult the task is, basically, and the further your skill set is away from it.

56:34I think because brilliance is boring and it's subtle. I was watching this documentary on Pixar and the guy was saying, the trees in the background, the animation, it's so perfect that you don't notice it. But if that tree was drawn fucked up, you would notice it. Same thing with soccer players, basketball, like the music I make, whatever. There's certain decisions that are getting made that are the culmination of so many hours in a high level of taste or intelligence, whatever. Not just in my field and all these different fields that the average person doesn't recognize them. They only recognize the fuck up.

57:11But it's like you don't recognize the brilliance when you don't recognize when it's going well because you don't know what goes into this. And you think that your volume of commentary replaces your lack of credentials. You don't know what's going on. Well, one of the problems as well is that people bind together over criticism way more than over compliments. Well, misery loves company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, to me, you give yourself an excuse if you reject the truth, which is there's a lot of people, kind of what you're saying, like similar opportunities, who just worked harder. They worked harder or they just were naturally better than you at this thing.

57:53And they developed their skills or whatever it is. And so the truth is that you didn't maximize your opportunities. And that sucks to hear. And what's easier to do is reject their journey, dismiss it with some rumor or some nonsense because the truth is that you could have been here too. But you fucked up. take it up with your mirror. This has got nothing to do with me, you know? In other news, you've probably heard me talk about Element before, and that's because I am, frankly, dependent on it. And it's how I've started my day every single morning. This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market.

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59:09Best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all. And if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back and you don't even have to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. it's a it's a strange challenge that people have when it comes to you do i do i want to criticize this thing because i genuinely have an issue with it don't want to criticize this thing because it's triggered in me something that I feel uncomfortable about.

59:58And the idea that being a black sheep is still being a sheep. Just because you're against something doesn't mean that you're in the minority. It doesn't mean it's a more sophisticated position. You don't really like anything. You regularly dislike most things. What a sophisticated position to hold. Congratulations, dude. You must have such refined taste. I was just talking about this, man, like this whole community of people who hate anything that's popular because it's popular. Not because they actually don't like it. They just don't like it because it's popular. Whether it's an artist, whether it's shoes or whatever.

1:00:36It's like sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes things are popular because they're good. And sometimes things are not popular because they're not good. Not all the time, but sometimes. and it just it's people who who feel like they they get to have some sort of autonomy and some sort of like leverage over the rest of society like you guys like that that's the underrated overrated thing again right right yeah uh yeah it is funny there's sort of two camps of people there's uh one who are creators that are underground and oh dude you know it's just my my work's so sophisticated no one gets it they just yeah they just don't get it it's like God, maybe it's just not that good.

1:01:18No kidding. But just because something is big doesn't necessarily mean it's good. But on average, it typically is. Like, people vote with their feet. And there's a lot of competition out there. A lot of competition. Do you think it's got to be that? Do you think Luke Combs has got to be that big if he can't do country well? Right. No, obviously not. I have a good friend who said something a long time ago at the beginning of, like, my journey. And I'm sure we were, like, hating on some artist or something. And he was like, you know what? every artist that's like wildly successful or famous, I can always find something about them that I think is like really genius.

1:01:52Like every single one. And I was like, wow. And this is a conversation from 10 years ago. Ever since then, even artists where I don't like their music, I'm always able to find something about them, whether it's their branding or their visuals or something where I'm like, that's fucking genius. It's much more useful because - I can take it. Yes. allow me to take the one thing like oh my god i think this person sucks yeah and i've found something that i think is great so if my opinion is right how much of a compensatory mechanism is this one thing they must have the best instagram on the planet right right as opposed to this just sucks everything about it sucks it's like you're just doing yourself a disservice you could be stealing and learning and evolving this is i think related to the fear of embarrassment that a lot of people have.

1:02:43You've got a line that's very similar to a friend's. You said, people who are less talented than you simply care less about being criticized and made fun of will get so much further. Fear of embarrassment is friction. Another friend of mine said, there's someone with half your talent and five times your self-belief making 10 times the money. That was like, I think to be honest, that's me. That's why I've always talked about it. But how do you, so I'm trying to work out how lots of insecurity married with lots of self-belief? Because those two things don't always comport. No, I think the insecurity was I'm not good enough.

1:03:20We'll just keep it simple. Early on, it was I'm not good enough at making songs. My raps aren't good enough. My singing isn't good enough. The beats that I'm making aren't good enough. The mixing isn't good. None of this is good enough. I knew that deep down because I would make shit and I would love it, But then I would go listen to established artists at the time, Wiz Khalifa or Drake or Kendrick or J.Core or whoever. And I'd be like, damn, that shit just sounds like way better than my stuff. And so I knew that my shit wasn't there yet. But I really still genuinely liked what I was doing. And I had this belief that I could become good enough.

1:03:55And so the reason I always tell people, it's like, I loved everything I was doing. But if I loved it to the point that I'd never thought I could be better, I would have stopped going to the studio. I would have been like, no, I made my best song ever. It was last night. My best song ever is the one I'm making tonight. And it always is, you know. But, yeah, it's that. That marriage is the old fuel that I'm talking about, you know. It was. Because how long am I supposed to not feel good enough? You know what I mean? Because now I don't feel like that anymore. I feel like my music, this is years now where I felt like it's good enough.

1:04:33But yeah, it was a conundrum, man. It really was. Strange. What was the original question? Fear of embarrassment. How do we work that in? Because I said there's someone with half your talent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just hopefully making 10 times the money. So I really was not the most talented person at all. There's artists who their fifth song they've ever made is a massive song. I'm like, I simply did not have the talent that my fifth song could have even been that big. I was 110 songs deep before I think that, I think on my eighth album, so maybe like 85 songs released, but probably hundreds of songs made before I had made something that was good enough to even be a big song.

1:05:20You know what I mean? That's a lot of work to even just get to the starting line. and um that's why i kind of preach what i preach to up-and-coming artists which is the majority of y 'all are going to be like me you're not going to be like the dude who picked it up and on his fifth song it's a billboard charting song because he's just a freaking nature talent that the majority of us are me where this shit sucks for mad long like these songs are not good enough for like 200 songs you know i mean that is the majority of us and I think the belief that I could end up making a great song is what kept me going and still to this day while I try to figure out the direction my hunger is supposed to be pointing in that you know North Star has never changed which is I still think I can make the greatest song of my life, you know?

1:06:14And I still think I haven't made it. So, but again, it's like, I think I've beaten out so many people who were so much better than me. I had friends growing up that were way better than me, way better. But they just, what I'll say is this, I think a lot of people cannot tolerate uncertainty the way I can. I think that's a very underrated skill. The ability to withstand uncertainty over an extended period of time is a pretty big indicator of if you're going to be a successful artist or not. You know, I had a lot of friends who they put out one song, didn't blow up. All right, I'm going to college.

1:06:54Or they put out one mixtape, it didn't blow up, and they're like, this is bullshit, I'm out. Up and coming artists that I've talked to over the years who, they put out a couple songs a year, they're mad their career is not moving fast. It's like, you're not moving fast. How fast can the career move if you're moving slow? And you have to deal with that uncertainty of the external uncertainty. And for me, I was able to tolerate external uncertainty. I was able to tolerate lack of external evidence because I gave myself to certainty. I knew I was going to make it. So I didn't need early on. I didn't need the external validation my own internal certainty was enough to temper the fact that when i put the song out it gets two streams you know because i just knew that y 'all were wrong i believe that i seriously thought the first mixtape i ever dropped i thought it was gonna blow up i remember like tweeting tomorrow my life's gonna change you know i mean it's like it did it at all but But I believed it, you know?

1:08:00What about the fear of embarrassment thing, overcoming that? I didn't have that. I was consequence blind early on, which I think is just a trait of being young and ignorant, you know? I didn't know there was pitfalls. I thought you put out music and it blows up and then you ride off into the sunset and everybody loves you, you know? Which is why this is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but I encourage everyone to go after that crazy dream as young as possible. Because the older you get, the more aware you become that all that glitters is not gold. And you start becoming aware of the trade, of the cost of everything.

1:08:42You also have more to trade, right? Yeah, right. And so for me now even, it's like the fear of embarrassment, all that stuff is amplified now. Because I know there's people watching. I know there's people looking at me. well I mean someone asked me this maybe at the Vancouver show this week and they said basically I want to do my first podcast but I'm really nervous I'm nervous about what people think I'm nervous if people are going to have a judgment on it or the rest of it I'm just going to it's a wonderful question and it's one that I think a lot of people have I'm going to stop you right there I can promise you that no one is going to laugh at you for your first podcast do you know why?

1:09:16no one's going to see it no one's fucking listening that's why because no one knows who you are no one cares so you have this beautiful upside only. You already are not a podcaster. You already are not a recording artist. There is only upside. Imagine if you did a trade and you said you can bet the whole, obviously you can fucking put money down, you can leave a job, but assuming that you don't do something insane in order to get your first mixtape or podcast off the ground, you can only get better. It's only upside. You can only get more views. You've already done no views. yeah yeah congratulations yeah you have an infinity more views that you can get right yeah you're competing with zero correct now you're competing like you said at the beginning you're competing now next year with number eight yeah but uh it's it's it's funny I always tell up and coming artists take advantage of the fact that nobody gives a fuck because they spend so much they spend so much time like do you think that I can drop a song like this right now or what do you think people will think I'm like you got 10 fans bro nobody gives a flying buck.

1:10:22Like, this is the time to do whatever. I envy the anonymity that up-and-coming artists have to a degree. Obviously, me not being anonymous and me being successful gives me all these great things, but the purity and clarity you get to operate from when you don't have anyone listening. You don't have any feedback. That's why people use pseudonyms, right? Are they still a side project? Oh, yeah. Put on a mask. Yep. Alternate your voice. I've thought about doing shit like that. like starting a whole other career and just alter my voice, pitch it down or pitch it up, change the production. Wouldn't that be cool.

1:11:00I've thought about it almost every day, like five years. Do you know that sick kick guy? Sick kick, no. Sick kick. So he's a, fuck, like a lot of things. He does live sequencing is one of his big things. So big fuck off MIDI pad. And he always wears a mask. I did a big doom scroll. I wanted to call it a deep dive, but that makes it sound too sophisticated. I was doom scrolling. and uh went through his instagram and i was like oh nobody knows who this motherfucker is yeah the guy can sing he can rap he can definitely fucking produce and mix and uh he does some originals he's got like original albums all the rest of it and he said uh i'm never going to release my uh face until i get a grammy and the whole thing if he sings he lifts the mask up just so it covers the bottom of his nose he'll sing through that and then he'll pull it back down he plays dj gigs and does all the rest of it.

1:11:49And I thought that was really cool. There's a big rapper right now, SD Kid from London, who everyone thinks is Timothee Chalamet. Isn't that awesome? And he's rapping with like a Scouse accent. Right, okay. I can promise you it's not Timothee Chalamet. It might be. Wouldn't that be fucking... And Timothee Chalamet is like feeding into it. They're asking him in interviews. They're like, is this you? And he's like, oh, we'll be revealed. Brilliant. What if it's him? Imagine if you're that artist though and you find out that Timothee Chalamet... You love that. Through no construction of your own is somehow feeding into your own law.

1:12:21Right. Like, hey, Timothy, dude, fucking appreciate you, man. Because you know there's going to be time in five years when everyone's like, you remember when people thought. Yeah, yeah, of course. But it's, no, it is a, anonymity is freedom. You know, there's a liberty, creative liberty and freedom you have when nobody knows who you are. But again, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall. that there's a big difference between never made it and fell off. Holy fuck, dude. Fell off hurts so much harder than never made it. Well, because you had it. Yeah. You were there. You were there. Yeah.

1:12:54But by design, by design, unless you continue to be the best in the world. Like Mike Tyson, you're not going to continue to be the most dominant. Athletes, I don't know how they do it, man. It's a lesson in humility. Because the stuff that we do, we can do forever. You know? But athletes, it's like, you got what a 10 year window maybe especially like if you're running back in the nfl eight well think about even from your industry musicians oh yeah female artists yeah female artists have an additional price that they need to pay yeah like oh you want a family guess what that you want you want a couple of kids that's like a four five year hiatus i think about that all the time man to be honest because i know in my industry specifically rap youth is equivalent to cool old is lame and the currency in rap is being cool and so how do you be old and cool in a genre where those are antonyms you know what i mean um but that's why i love seeing older rappers have success who's a good example clips push T and his brother Malice who Grammy nominated they're like 49 years old the album's great it's like that's important for hip-hop as a whole whether or not you feel this way about them or whatever the music it doesn't matter it's what it's doing for the genre which is telling people you can have maturity wisdom and still be cool in a genre that appears to only clap for youthful energy i'll say you know it's like oh man that is inspiring so you're telling me it doesn't all end without being a legacy act without you just having to run it back right just play your debut you know i mean they're putting out a new album that people love like it was their debut album that to me is inspiring we're seeing an artist like kehlani catch her biggest hit ever 10 years into her career.

1:14:58Like I just posted that today. I'm like, if this doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will. Like this is, for me as an artist, the scariest thing is to consider the possibility that, well, at some point, your best years are going to be behind you, right? Surely, like your biggest song was the one you put out five years ago and you'll just never do it again. And so I always get scared that, is that this year? Well, it's a good excuse to not put out your best song, right? That's why somebody would, I'll just hold a little bit back. Right. Hold a little bit back. Yeah. And that's why people don't understand why for me and other artists I know, the numbers, it's not ego anymore.

1:15:40It's existential. You know, if I look at streams and I see they're lower than I think they should be, I don't have an ego situation happening. I have an existential crisis happening because I'm thinking, oh, my God, is this it? Is this the start of the decline? I'm no longer able to take care of myself, my family, the responsibility. Is this it? Is this it? So it's not ego. It's not my songs are so much better than this. This is some bullshit. It feels like it's feedback turns into a threat instead of just data, you know, and it's scary. Well, because your sense of self is wrapped up in this thing now.

1:16:23Oh, yeah. When the work becomes your worth, it's over with. Of course. Yeah. Do people love me for who I am or for what I do? Yeah. And if all I do is what I do, then what happens when that gets taken away? Yeah. That means that the love's going to go too. That people only want me because of what I can do. Yeah. And if I can do less, then I am less. And it's strange because people want to - He has men, right? Not to do the woe is me men shit. But we do get taught that we're only as good as what we provide, as the value we provide. And so as an artist, as a man, it's like, well, I'm providing value now.

1:17:01But to your point, if the streams are going down, does that mean I'm providing less? And if I start to provide less value, does that mean the love is going to decline as well? It's a great point. And I've talked so much about sex differences. Yeah. And the first conversation I ever had this year where someone just called it out direct, and it's the first time that anyone's ever done it. I thought it was so great. I was having a conversation with a guy who wrote a book about the female orgasm. And he was basically saying that as far as he could see, the female orgasm is a selection mechanism, that it is a physiological embodied way of the woman's desire responding to how she perceives her mate.

1:17:44And I basically mentioned that, well, this feels a little bit ruthless that guys are sort of being judged in this manner that they don't really get to control. They just sort of are who they are and they've worked on themselves to the extent that they do and they turn up. Whereas for women, they don't have the same type of judgment. Men are more mechanical, let's say, in that regard. And instead of equivocating, instead of needing to say, well, you know, because men have got it. And he went, no, you're right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's tough and that's the way it is. Women have this particular type of blessing or curse or judgment or ability to scrutinize or bestow status or take it away from a guy in the same way as is true here, which is I think that you just need to accept as a man, yeah your value to the world is going to be tightly tied to your competence yeah 100 % if your competence seems to be dipping the world is going to love you a little bit less they're going to need you a little bit less that's why you can't rely on that and it's also why you need a fucking partner who sees outside of that like if you have I've got a couple of friends who are in relationships with I don't know what you would call it like high highly status sensitive women one of them that is such a gentle but i'm really trying to use because what well look one of them one of them's diana fleischman who is a evolutionary psychologist and she's married to jeffrey miller and uh jeffrey's told me this story before but she's like got some dark triad tendency she's wonderful warm lady i i think she's fantastic and i like her a lot but she's definitely got some sort of psychopathic tendencies in her enough enough and enough to make a fantastic mother and a great partner but also that she has some sensitivities that i i've heard like just great sort of like if if if they're driving and jeffrey misses a turn because he's not watching or because he like gets bullied by somebody who's in the lane that he needs to get in And she has like a little bit of an ick response because her sensitivity to his competence level is quite tightly attuned.

1:20:00I was talking to a girl not long ago and she said that she saw her partner trip on the street and was like, I'm not really, I don't want to like, you know, for the next five minutes, you're not that attractive to me. And I think that in some ways, that kind of a relationship would compel men to keep doing more. Not only do you have to perform out there, but you've got to perform in here too. But - That's bad. For, and for certain guys, like Jeffrey, for some reason, this guy is just construct, these two are built to be together. So constructed to be together. He's got no jealousy. He's got no insecurity.

1:20:31He's just like, it is what it is. And he keeps on showing up. For me, with my construction, I need a safe harbor. I need to feel like I'm done being Chris Williamson and I get to come home and be Christopher. Yeah. And that like, there's a line, I wrote this a little while ago. um Sturgill Simpson has a song that my friend um played at his wedding and was the best man at his wedding and uh I I came up with what I think basically every man wants to hear which is I know you can be more but you are enough already and even if you just stay where you are I'll be right here next to you you're going to be great but you don't need to be great and I'm with you no matter what or as said best by Sturgill Simpson's mum boy I don't care if you hit it big because you're already number one i would say i do right now but that i think that is so spot on man i agree it's so spot on because we feel like we have to go out there and conquer and perform and excel and climb and and if you feel like you still have to be on your fucking a game yeah and And be on.

1:21:46Vigilant. You know, with your partner. Oh, man. That would just be a wreck. And to be honest, it's been a hurdle of mine because that's my default setting. Right? Is to perform, be on, be perfect. And, you know, that I think has caused vulnerability issues for me. Because if I'm vulnerable, then I'm going to not be perfect. You're going to see me not be great. You're going to see me with training wheels on. I don't want you to see me be training. My love will be withdrawn. Yeah. You know, it's been - Come back when I'm doing flips. Yeah. A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s.

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1:23:32One of the wildest things is this year I've probably been more below the neck than I ever have. it's a journey that i kind of regret regret i hate previous me for embarking on it because it's really fucking hard i think future me will be proud okay but at the moment i'm in the valley of just eating shit with emotions um but one of the things i've noticed this year more people have said that they love me than ever before more friends have said you know just guys dudes i like i fucking love you man and then like you know just like it comes out of you sometimes sometimes maybe it's because we're getting a bit older maybe it's because we're part of this movement maybe it's because i've released like 30 podcasts this year on fucking emotions and they've all been listening to them and it's i've read people cry for yeah yeah i've read pulled them with the same kryptonite that i read pilled myself with and now we're all in the valley of despair together i'm not too sure yeah but um more more of my friends have said that they love me this year than ever before and i i i just have to fucking assume that that's because they actually got to see me a bit they genuinely got to see me you know i'm backstage at some show and i'm just in the fucking trenches like everything everything everything everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong and uh one of the shows two weeks ago one of my boys like hugged me for two minutes must have been two minutes and the other one said a prayer while we were there and then i go out did the show show went good came back and i was like fuck like i borrowed his nervous system yeah like Like I fucking, like mine was not, mine wasn't robust enough.

1:25:05So like he fucking lent me some of his piece. Yeah, wow. So great. What would you do in that moment if they're not there? What does that look like? The same thing I've done my entire life. I'm an only child, dude. Like I can get through anything, but I'm sick of fucking Lone Rangering. I'm sick of white knuckling my way through it. Because now not only do I know that the show went great and everybody really loved it and the people from CAA were there and they've got all of these notes and oh, we need to do the blah, blah, all this stuff. But now I've got the memory of like me and the guys backstage and it's not a memory of us high-fiving or drinking beers or celebrating.

1:25:41It's like this very small, like kind of mundane, very private, normal, like beautiful memory that I've got. I'm like, fuck, like I borrowed some of Max's nervous system and Bennett said a fucking prayer and like, that's, you know, seared into my... It's like microdosing, going through a hard time together. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And finding like connection in the community. Yeah, they're seeing it. And they're like, fuck, Chris is really fucking suffering at the moment. And that's what gets them. And I'm like, oh, if I'd kept that in, I would have not got the support that I desperately needed.

1:26:20You didn't even give them the opportunity. Yeah. They would have not had the opportunity to give that to me. we would not have all gone through this shared experience of difficulty that we came out the other side of which has now bonded us all together you know just an endless list of reasons to do it and like the reason to not do it is that some people might laugh at you right it's like well i don't know if the people around you laugh at you when you show your emotions if you're the sort of person who feels them and i'm not i'm not convinced that everybody feels them equally sort of widely or deeply but if you're the sort of person that does like you need to be around people that can hold that yeah need to be around i think you you know conor beaton oh yeah good friend of mine yeah and uh he's got this line where he talks about uh your friends need to be able to hold you in the complexity of your emotions yeah and some people have got more complexity and some have less and that's why i think so many friendships that don't work and relationships that don't work are just two people it's it's incompatibility it's not that they're bad it's that that you're fundamentally incompatible and the you think it's a capacity issue though yeah to yes yes yes yes yes um yeah that would be that's an even better way to put it yes but and that's almost like a choice though i'm not it's almost like is it incompatible because of something innate or is it incompatible because you're choosing to not expand your capacity for my shit i had a great conversation with connor sat in that seat like two weeks ago and coming out in between Christmas and New Year.

1:27:52And I basically asked this question, I was like, does everybody, because again, me putting on the diving mask and going fully down over the last 12 months, it just keeps growing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the amount that my emotions can sort of permeate everything that I do and like my fucking daily experience is so great and so painful at the same time. like does everyone feel shit like this and his position was genuinely there are some people who just don't have that big of a breadth or maybe their sort of net of positive and negative is skewed in different sorts of ways yeah so you know if you're talking about excitement they're happy to go there with you but if you want to talk about wistfulness or rumination or vigilance or sadness or anxiety, they're not.

1:28:43And the same vice versa too. Stan Tatkin has this idea of airplanes and submarines. Airplanes, nervous systems are able to move real fast and they're kind of up high. And submarines, they go slow and deep and then they take a little while to come back up and repressurize. But maybe far more people than know it are not feeling feelings because they choose not to than because they can't. Yeah. Like there is a much bigger proportion of people who should be feeling them and aren't than like can't. Right. I agree. Yeah. I think there's also, I've had to learn that not everyone is meant to know everything and you're not meant to share everything with everyone.

1:29:27Certain friends are. Selective. Yeah. It's like, this is for them. This is, that used to fuck me up though. It made me feel like I was being fake or something, you know, like not everyone in my life needs to get every part of me, otherwise I'm being inauthentic. It's like, no, this is, you know. How do you balance vulnerability and strength? You're in an industry which is not exactly renowned for its acceptance of male fragility and inner work. How do you think about balancing those um it's scary and it's getting less scary because i'm doing it so naturally i'm you know kind of disarming the fear by just facing it it's scary because i know that not only is the genre that i'm in sort of resistant to vulnerability but the audience of men are resistant to vulnerability.

1:30:27So, you know, I think my music and my career has gone through this transition where I would say before Santiago, this album that I put out, 2023, everything before then was me about conquering the external terrain. And then Santiago marked the shift in this like line of demarcation where it was well now i'm going inward you know let me explore this and now the most recent album is sort of the integration that's what i'm working on now because again i said earlier i don't want to just endlessly self-monitor and just stay in here you know i do have to figure out what's the new dream now you know um but i'm just a very big believer in being vulnerable and confronting the parts of you that are, you know, that you've been trying to act like don't exist.

1:31:26That's real strength. I don't think you're strong for being scared to face yourself, you know? And I think I haven't said it on this song clue that I just put out like a couple of weeks ago where, um, I said the monsters I'm making amends with monsters that you're scared to face, you know, and the demons you pretend to don't exist. I'm fighting publicly. it's like that to me what i'm doing you know is courageous and i know it is because this is the kind of shit that i was scared to do in private i was scared to sit with the parts of me that i didn't like in private i'm telling you about them on a song you know i'm not rapping about someone else's life this is my shit you know i mean this is my life these are songs that are sparking conversations with my parents and family members and like yo what you know like this is real life I'm fighting this shit publicly in hopes that, one, it's because it's cathartic for me and I need to, and it's exciting for me to just talk about.

1:32:22It's what I'm passionate about. But two, it's the hopes that a couple more years of doing this, the men in my fan base be like, okay, I can do it now. You've given them permission. Right, right. You've given them permission, and the scariest thing is someone who does that permissionlessly. Yeah. There was no permission to do that. Yeah. Or fewer role models, fewer archetypes. Yeah. Is the reverse of yours that still resonates with you sort of the most deeply, this huge, massive back catalog of yours? Is this something that you come back to as a philosophy, Lots? Wow. I've never been asked that.

1:33:05Shit. I have recency bias, though. It's just whatever the most recent song is.

1:33:14probably Clue because Clue is the first song where I have said what I've been trying to say for years, which is you just don't have a clue about what it's like to be me. And I didn't know how to articulate it without sounding like whining about success, you know? And so I was very, um, intentional about not, not making it sound like that, not talking about anything material really um but you know the second verse is i resent your audacity you can't last as me you spineless fucker you can't hold your life together let alone the lives of others so you talk it to like and it goes into this whole thing about just like i don't resent you i resent your audacity that you think you know what this is you don't and that's okay and what I tell people is sometimes your level of understanding should just be that you don't understand.

1:34:12And that's gotta be enough. You're claiming that you do. And you haven't done the life experience to understand and you're commenting. So you just haven't earned the experience to comment on this. And that goes for so many people. That's what spawned my posts about people comparing struggles it's like i would never critique or comment somebody's struggle that i just don't know about i don't have the resume i don't have the credentials to comment on what it's like to be you know you were a single mom and this happened you lost your job yeah it's like i don't fucking know like that's i kind of get imposter syndrome when fans hit me up with like certain stories of theirs where they're like i'm going through this what do you think i should do i'm like i have no fucking idea that sounds fucking hard dude yeah and you know that's something i've had to learn too is within my own family is um that fine line between empathy and jumping into the hole with y 'all you know you're going through a hard time well fuck it me too now because that to me is what love is and and caring is but that does us no good have you got into joe hudson you familiar with joe no i'll send you some of his stuff so he's um good really really great coach eastern western stuff and he's got a framework for conversations view vulnerability impartiality empathy and wonder so vulnerability is speaking your truth especially when it's scary.

1:35:49Impartiality is not trying to change your experience. Empathy is sitting in the emotion without becoming the emotion. And wonder is curiosity without an outcome. So view, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. Really, that's just emotional sovereignty is what I wrapped up. That's been the toughest thing for me. How do I hear about a hard time my mom's going through without wanting to make her emotions my emotions. Well, the problem, there's two reasons there, two multiple fucking horrible things. First one, if you absorb somebody else's emotions as yours, you're now in a much more unfunctional position to be able to help them.

1:36:37Exactly. You don't have the bandwidth. with secondly if someone is upset and they see that they're upset is causing you to be upset that means that they feel like their pain is hurting you and they'll clamp it down exactly so there isn't room for it uh and i mean one of the things that one of the things that connor says that i've never heard anybody say before which i think is such a fucking wonderful like reassuring third place. So Joe talks about speaking from the third place. So first place is judgment. Second place is savior. Third place is just impartiality. So you can even feel it when you sort of sit in it.

1:37:21So the next time that someone's trying to have a difficult conversation with you, just sat across, if you've got like an open posture, so your feet are on the ground and your hands are just sort of on your thighs and you're not sort of forward and you're not sort of back and doing the judgment thing. You just sat in a third place and you're balanced between that judgment and that savior position. Wow. And, uh, I kind of had this line where he said, uh, your emotions aren't too big for me. Hmm. Oh, dude, your emotions aren't too big for me. Yeah. I can hold you in this. That's fine. I'm safe. I'm okay.

1:37:52Yeah. You don't need to worry about you. You worry about you. You don't need to worry about me. Yeah. Right. And I just thought, I thought it was so wonderful. It is, man. God, that has been a challenge of my thirties. I've gotten better at it now but it used to be I couldn't understand why me swooping in to fix things and being so affected by your emotions to the point where they feel like they're mine what I was doing wrong I could have swore like no you're the one that's fucked up for catastrophizing small shit and freaking out to the point where I gotta feel like I gotta swoop in but I had to learn that well wait a second I'm not doing anyone a service by jumping into this fucking lake with you while you're drowning, but you're not really drowning.

1:38:39Your feet are on the floor. You're just flapping your arms. And I'm starting to flap my arms too. Like, yeah, what is going, you know what I mean? That's not doing anything. So I had to learn.

1:38:50My emotions end here and you're a start there. And there's space. And now I can still be here for you and I can help. and if you don't want a solution, that's fine. I can just be here. And I have so much more bandwidth now. I had no bandwidth my whole life because I wasn't just dealing with my emotions. I had hers, I had his. It was all part of my shit, you know? And it's not like perfect now, but just understanding that concept of emotional sovereignty has been life-changing. When you start off as permeable, as absorbent as you were, even the smallest movement in the right direction feels like a massive gain.

1:39:41It's such a normal response. It's such a normal response. Somebody's going through something and you want to say, it's going to be okay. You want to make them be okay. Because they're in pain and you don't want them to be in pain. But you saying to somebody who's in pain, it's going to be okay, is the same as you saying, your not okayness is making me not okay, and I need you to be okay so that I can be okay. There is no room for your emotions. They're too big. They're too big, and they're making me uncomfortable, or I don't think that you can handle them or something. So I'm going to step in, and I'm going to pervert this direction that you're on, as opposed to just going, fuck.

1:40:23man i'm really sorry that you're feeling that yeah really sorry that you're feeling that you know what connor told me one time is getting to the place where your partner or someone that you love has a bad day you're allowed to have a good day though them having a bad day oh wow yeah like and it's not threatening to them and yeah guilt ridden to you yeah your wife your mom whoever they can be having a bad day and you're still allowed to have a good day. And that was a huge shift for me. Cause I was like, nah, if my girl's having a bad, I'm like, I'm upset. But then that creates that whole, oh, so me being upset is not making you upset.

1:41:03Of course. And it's just a mess. There's no space. Yeah. Yeah. Obligations are weird. Yeah, man, that, um, in order for you to not be okay. Yeah. In order for, for me to be okay. I need you to not be okay. Like, that's the inverse, which is people who take a degree of, like, cathartic, resentful pleasure in their part, just somebody in their life falling behind. That's the rivalrous sort of nature thing. So it occurs on both sides. Like, the people that you're coming up with, you're brushing shoulders and a couple of sharp elbows with, and you see somebody fall behind. And then, so if you reflect on that enough and you're an empathetic human, you realize that that's kind of a toxic fuel and you don't really want to be using that.

1:41:49You don't want your success to stand on the shoulders of other people's downfalls. And then the people in your life, if they feel bad, now you feel bad. You felt guilty for that one. And yeah, so that emotional sovereignty, I think is a lovely way to think about it. Joe, an equivalent of that is vagal authority, where he stays in a room, if somebody is losing their shit, do you maintain your vagal independence yeah and uh yeah i think that's a it's cool that you've arrived at the same realization well yeah my default setting was to be intertwined you know so even with um even with my career you know i mean projected onto my fans like the emotional enmeshment i'm in with my fans and career is damaging sometimes you know because sometimes I'll feel again, I'll catastrophize what's happening in my life because the streams being low this time feels existential.

1:42:46And then I'll show up with that energy to the world and to my fans. And it, it's, what does that energy look like? I don't know if it is, I think it's covert. I hope it's covert. It's like, nah, we can tell. You're a mess. Yeah. You're a mess and we know.

1:43:12Um, I honestly, I don't know what it looks like for them. I think for me, it's more visceral. It's frantic. It's panicky. It's, um, bouncing off the walls. It's, I got to make something happen right now. I got to make something shake, you know? And, uh, yeah, it's like, sometimes I don't know if this, I feel like this is related because I'm feeling compelled to say sometimes I wish I was the kind of artist who could drop one album every two years and it's huge and massive you do the tour and I'll see you on two years right you know it's 50 % of the reason why I dropped so much music is because I love making songs and sharing them genuinely the other 50 % is because none of these have gone huge yet to the point where I can take time off yeah you You know what I mean?

1:44:05And it's some of that franticness, some of that existential, oh my God, the ship is sinking is what fuels the output still to this day. Same for me, dude. Same for me. Six years in at three a week, you'll be episode 1 ,150, 1 ,100, something like that. I don't want to give the universe a chance. Yeah. Just crushing. A chance to move on. Crushing volumes of evidence. Yeah. Like there is no way that with this much output that it wouldn't work. Something's got to happen. Yeah, exactly. But it is, you make yourself a victim of your own work rate. Yeah. And there's an idea called the Red Queen effect.

1:44:43I think anyone's ever talked about this, at least not in music, which is crazy because it's a fucking sick idea. So in Alice in Wonderland, Alice is running around a tree and she runs faster and faster and faster around the tree, but she starts moving more slowly. There's a line from the Red Queen where she says, you see my dear, you now have to run as fast as you can. just to stay in the same place. Oh, shit. I think that's really cool. Yeah. It's the classic full calendar day, and now you need to become more efficient, and you need an assistant to take on the extra calls, and you've got to do the day.

1:45:18And before you know it, in order to just stay in the same place, you have to work as hard as you ever have. Fuck.

1:45:28That's why the idea of climbing another mountain is fun. because it i i kind of alluded to uh when you're cutting weight versus bulking versus maintenance maintenance sucks for me because there's no big change happening cutting you see weight flying off or bulking you see weight flying on and to your point it's just it it gets exhausting having to exert so much energy just to maintain. Yeah. Yeah. Because you set yourself a, a pace when the fuel was different. And, you know, this is another Joe Hudson thing where he says, when you become successful, your job is not to work hard. Your job is to have great ideas.

1:46:17And if, if your goal is to make it and then you do make it and you're still punishing yourself just as much as you were in the beginning, you've still got that sort of come up energy in many ways that's uh compelling it it's inspiring to people yeah it feels grassroots and sort of upward aiming and noble but so much of that is you being terrified that if a few things if people see you take your foot off the gas maybe you'll become irrelevant or if people see you take your foot off the gas they'll think that you've like become a bourgeois luxuriating, like incumbent, right? You're like, you're a Nepo baby, but you're the father and the child.

1:47:04Yes, yes. That's the, the real fear is that it's, I'm going to lose relevance. And the only way to find out if I can be one of those artists who can go away and come back and not is by doing it. But then you might find out too late. Not everyone's John Bellion. Yeah, I've seen that happen to artists, you know? Or yeah, the, oh, well, who do you think you are? You think you're just this. You don't need to work so hard. It goes back to the overrated, underrated thing. There's a real sick part of my fucking mind that is terrified of more success because right now to my fans, I'm still very much slept on and underrated.

1:47:40Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? What happens if and when I catch the Billboard Top 10 song and it's massive? Well, now, are you going to root for me now? because now I'm Tom Brady. You know what I mean? Now it's like, are you going to root for the person who's winning? Even though I'm winning, but to the like, from an optics viewpoint, it's like, well, he's not this super mainstream guy. He's still so slept on. He's not in the conversations. And part of me is like, let me just stay right here. I'm an underdog forever. Yeah, well, again, so much of that is a very accurate representation of the way that human psychology works, unfortunately.

1:48:23And it is that underdog overrated thing that, yeah, when you're on your way up, people support you because you remind them of their dreams. And when you're at the top, people try to tear you down because you remind them of what they gave up on. And God, yes. It's Alex, one of my friends, has this story about where he started off his gym business, sleeping on the gym floor and it was underneath a like a car park that had these metal rivets in so every time a car drove over at night we go and he was sleeping on the gym floor and he was the underdog people loved him when he was the underdog all they wanted to do was see him succeed and now he know that he slept he's moved his bedding over to the far side of the gym and then he'd take the classes and then he'd move it back at night and then 18 months later, I think he'd maybe expanded to a couple of locations.

1:49:19And when people came in, they'd be like, boss man, how's everything going? And he's like, well, I did what you, I did what you said you wanted me to do. I did it. And now that I've done it, you, the dynamics changed and you're no longer in my corner. People want you to be in pursuit forever because that's relatable. Oh, that's great. That's so true. They just want you to be in pursuit. They never want you to get there if you get there and i'm not there what's that say about me oh you think you're better than me because you got there well also it you're no longer relatable because if you're if you've made it then you're not and maybe that's part of the reason that if you appear to take your foot off the gas a little bit that it doesn't seem like you're still on the climb of course it feels like Like you're just sort of floating with momentum.

1:50:14In a fucked way, I'm scared that if more people like me, more people will not like me. Well, that's true. You know what I mean? Any increase in love often feels like an increase in hate because we forget the compliments and we remember the criticism. So if any time that your platform grows and you get, you know, the proportion of love stays the same, which is what you're trying to do and you should do on average, right? It's like, you know, 99 to 1, love to hate. but because you forget the love, any increase just feels like an increase in hate because your brain is like Teflon for good thoughts and Velcro for bad thoughts.

1:50:52Yeah. It's a radar for negativity. It's just on the hunt. Always looking for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an interesting difference between the UK and the US, and I wonder whether this will happen within sort of small communities too, but in America, I think on average, more people want to see you win in case you take them with you. and in the uk people want to see you stay where you are in case you leave them behind wow and this disparity between the two so there was a an article that came out in um the times uh and the lady who wrote this article was basically saying we've got three podcasters from the uk in the top 10 this year and it's really cringe and embarrassing because they're doing personal development and British people should be, they should satisfyingly wallow in their own misery and they should be stiff upper lipped in their own loneliness and discomfort.

1:51:48And trying to sort of improve yourself is sort of like lame and cringe and very Americanized and not cool. And, um, I just thought, what a, what a shame. I mean, our country is not exactly showering itself in glory at the moment. And if there was any better representation of how much the UK culture is one of tall poppy syndrome, that even in the opportunity to celebrate the fact that we're punching above our weight on the world stage when the country's kind of eating shit at the moment. No, we shouldn't have done it. We should have done it. We should have... You should have succeeded this way.

1:52:25ironic speech it was too earnest it was too serious you were trying to make you remember your place remember where you are remember where you're from right and uh i thought what a what a wonderful example of of of our culture like that's our cultural export at the moment not this not not a conversation about earnestness and bravery with emotions and trying to improve yourself not a uh ungainly unwieldy uh delicate conversation about how to balance lots of conflicting and intention desires in life but like a piss-taking comment going lol this is fucking gay dare i say on brand because it's a bit snobby dude it fucking works it works but it works it works for a very specific cohort and this is why unfortunately the uk for a wild variety of reasons but the culture is not insignificant we have um we have the same number of universities in the top 10 uh globally as america does wow but we produce 80 fewer entrepreneurs and you've got king's college london oxford cambridge maybe durham's in there i'm not sure it's at least three and uh you think so our candidate remembering that we'll have americans right so like we'll imbibe people from other countries yeah fucking stockholm syndrome into our culture of like don't get too big for your boots yeah uh yeah dude this is so hilarious i just thought it was so interesting um i think society wants to keep people at arm's length when it comes to relatability it's too scary when you're so far away from where i'm at you know especially when I knew you when you were right there, it's just confronting for people.

1:54:10And I just think people want you to be successful, just not more than them. You know what I mean? Like climb up the ladder. Just don't pass me though. I want you to climb as high as you can, as long as it's not higher than me. Yeah, as high, but just a tiny little bit. And then stay here forever and let's grind it out. Yeah. Forever. Let's be in a perpetual grind. Yeah. I love that idea about people want to always see you in pursuit. Yeah. Yeah, there's something romantic about it. There's something relatable about it. Mm-hmm. But that keeps people sort of with their foot on the gas. Again, like, if the things that you want to have happen happen, if you build the business, the body, the whatever, what happens when you get there?

1:54:56What is your plan when you finally get there? Because you kind of need to have one. And what you'll find is if you think about you're doing this big fucking journey, this massive, massive journey, and you've got to get to this place that's really, really, really far away. And the start of the journey is you going across a river. So you're in a boat. And then you realize 500 miles later that you're out of the river, but you're still carrying the fucking boat on your head. You're like, this tool, this fuel was meant for then, but it's not meant for now. And I think we have a very poor judgment of when we're supposed to let go of those tools of need for validation, insufficiency, desperate desire to be liked by that girl.

1:55:35Yeah. To the kids that didn't believe in me in school, like finally make mom and dad love me, whatever. Like you're very bad at switching fuels. Yeah. Well, but again, it's because most people live in this suspended chase forever. Most people are chasing the thing forever. ever and so they're not trying to hear any sort of pitfalls of the thing i'm chasing that do you mind you know i mean like that's the mentality and what can you tell them it's kind of like you know think about the alchemist book and santiago just yeah getting to the oasis and is that where the name for the album came from yeah have you walked it the camino no so i don't know whether i'm going to but i uh i might do the epilogue to the santiago over new year wow so you do the big camino to santiago you finish in santiago square is that the i think i'm talking about paulo coelho that yeah yeah yeah that's it so santiago's um it's a different camino but i think paulo coelho walked it and got it yeah it's got to be related to his name the journey that he takes him through fucking Egypt.

1:56:49But anyway, you walk from east to west and Santiago is kind of northwest of Spain, kind of above Portugal, but there's an epilogue to the walk and it goes from Santiago to Finisterra. And they thought it's the most westerly point of Spain and they thought it was the edge of the world because out in front of you is just the Atlantic. So it's about 90k, something like that and you can do it in five days ish so I'm thinking I'm gonna go to my mom and dad's for Christmas and then I'm gonna fly there on my own and I'm thinking about doing that over New Year's so yeah walk to the edge of the world from the middle ages perception yeah you were saying Santiago album yeah I just think that you know it's kind of like Santiago goes on this whole journey he falls in love with the girl in the desert the oasis he wants to stay at the oasis but he's like that's not even what the fuck I was supposed to be doing and she's like, you're a man of the desert.

1:57:48You're supposed to keep going. And he goes to the pyramid, he gets to the pyramid and he swears that there's gold there. And that's why he was going. And he's digging the shit up and there's no gold. And then he just like hits his ass beat. And they joke with him like, oh, he's probably thinking about the gold that's buried under that tree in Andalusia, which is where the story starts. It's Santiago waking up under this tree where the gold was at the whole time. so I don't I still kind of oscillate on what to make of it but I just think it's kind of how I interpreted it was it was you all along that was the last kind of song on my album was you were looking for you but you needed to go on this journey to end up kind of right back where you were which is with yourself and understanding that the journey was beautiful you met this girl you met Fatima you know you met all these people you learned what you're capable of, which I think is kind of why men have this fascination with, uh, self-sabotaging, you know, is because we all want to see what we're capable of, you know?

1:58:56And it's kind of fucked. It's a very toxic attraction to bottoming out, you know, what are we capable of? But that goes back to when the chips are down. Yeah. But that goes back to not having enough initiatory experiences. Yeah. Well, I think it's certainly the thing, and this wasn't my insight, I'm stealing it, but... That wasn't mine either. Yeah. I think that it's the best reading of that story, in my opinion, is ending up at the place that you started is not the same as having never left. Right. Right. That's beautiful. In order to go on this journey. So there's this example, I think it's...

1:59:39That's so beautiful. Some ancient Greek philosopher like Aristotle or something. And he said, imagine that you have a cork bobbing in the ocean and you have a ship that goes out and they're friends. And the ship goes out, sails around, goes and visits places and people get on and people get off. And there's a cork that's bobbing in the harbor. And then the ship eventually after this long, long, long journey, it comes back and the cork and the ship, they talk to each other. And the ship says to the cork, well, sort of what did you do? Did you go on a journey? He said, well, you know, I was here.

2:00:08I was out in the ocean. I've been in the ocean the same time as you. It's the difference between going on a journey and staying in the harbor and bobbing up and down. The time's going to pass anyway. You're still in the water. Yeah. But what have you done? What did that adventure look like? About fulfillment, right? Yeah. It's funny, too. You know, I always think about that old, like, fisherman proverb when you talk about what do you do when you arrive. You know, the whole, like, the guy's out on the boat fishing, the businessman cars. This is what I'm doing right now. You know, but it's just so strange to me.

2:00:41I can't get a grasp on where my hunger is supposed to be. Well, humans aren't designed to arrive. We've never been designed to arrive. Yeah. You know, even ancestrally. When agricultural revolution, like 13 ,000 years ago, something like that, before that, the amount of food that you could store was as much as you could collect that day plus a bit. There is no arriving. There is just constant pursuit. There is just strive. So we are really maladapted to an environment in which you can actually take your foot off the gas. And then if you've been given a lot of reward by the world and you've habituated it, you've built all of these patterns and these sources of validation and just your daily behavioral routines, I need to let go of all of this plus a few million years of programming.

2:01:33In a desperate attempt to just be able to go. To just be. I've arrived. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good luck. And then.

2:01:43where does your sense of self worth come from that and i think that that's the big question that people, you know, lots of people that listen to your music and listen to my show will become successful and they will face a question that's not too dissimilar to this, which is, fuck, I thought that this thing was the answer to my problems. It's not. Am I going to keep eating more of the food that I know doesn't hydrate me in a desperate attempt to think that it will? Or am I going to turn around and try and find where the sort of problem comes from? And that's the therapy thing. I think in the meantime, I just keep doing the work.

2:02:15I keep making this. What does that look like to you well for me just learning that the fruits of my labor that whole saying the labor is the fruit you know and so while i try to figure out what the fuck to do and where to go and where to point my ambition and hunger and where where to get a charge from and the new dream, I'm going to at least keep my feet moving and keep doing the work of my artistry. Because that is still a huge sense of fulfillment for me. To still make a song, to have an idea, turn nothing into something, to execute an idea, for it to sound like this in my head and then it comes out sounding like that.

2:03:00It's still extremely rewarding. It's visceral when it happens. And so it's been a huge support system for me, my creative side, because while I try to figure everything else out, at least I have sustenance from this thing still, you know, without any metrics. I always tell people, if I make what I want to make, the song is a success. It has to be. I can't keep living and dying by the industry's metrics. As existential as it feels to look at those numbers, I can't play that game. I have to change the metrics of success to, did I make what I want? Did I put out and share what I want? And did I share it in the way I wanted to share it?

2:03:47And when I wanted to and all that. That creative freedom and creative execution has to be my metric for success. It feels like authenticity. Yeah. But the problem there is... Like alignment is the new reward, you know? Yeah, congruence. Yeah, exactly. There's a massive problem with audience capture that people don't realize. Throwing red meat to your audience, making what you think that they want to hear, et cetera, et cetera. You know, it's the YouTuber or podcaster that just starts beef with anybody they can because. I love how you just said that. Throwing red meat to your audience. It's so, I love that.

2:04:23It's so true. It's the musician that just has reverse engineered the exact type of beat or sound that's popular at the moment. and I'm going to do it and then it'll work or whatever. But the problem is, there's many millions, gazillions of problems. One of the really existential ones, if you do try and go down that route, is if the audience doesn't like what you did, you have no route out because you don't know what you were trying to achieve because it didn't come from you internally, and you will fucking hate your audience because you said, I did this for you. It's like being the child of a tough parent, not wanting to go and play violin, playing violin, making chair, and then your parent not being impressed.

2:05:06And you're going, but I did it all for you. I did it for your adoration. I didn't do it because I wanted to. And you will hate your audience. You will hate your audience if you make something for them. You will hate your audience if you just make stuff for them, no matter how successful it is or not. But if you make something for them and then they don't love it, you're going to feel, yeah, it's going to shoot you through the hucks. You go, I didn't even do it. I didn't even do me. I did this for you and you rejected me. Yeah. that's uh rick rubin always talks about the audience has to come last which i think is just so true and it's harder when there is an audience kind of what we were saying earlier it's real easy to put the audience last when there isn't an audience of course i don't care it's like no one cares you're not even you don't care nobody cares that's it's man that creative freedom that is maybe the biggest thing i miss about um the come up and being like an up-and-coming artist is the innate freedom that just comes with it.

2:06:01I know nobody's watching. So I don't have a doubt in my mind that I'm making what I actually want to make back then. But now I think I'm making what I want to make. But there's no way I can say that with full confidence because even if it's subconscious, there is something that's saying, you know people are going to hear this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the one advantage I think I have many disadvantages over the world of live music and recorded music. One of the advantages is that during a conversation, your ability to restrict what it is that you mean and what you say, your ability to perform does get eroded a little bit.

2:06:45You know, if you're two hours into a conversation, you're usually sort of, bits of you start to leak out. Authenticity begins to bleed through. Very difficult to keep the endurance race going. um and if that's the case it means well i can probably be pretty reliably uh assured that what i'm saying is actually like pretty aligned with what i'm mean to say and what i feel yeah and um yeah when you spend so long refining two in the morning you're looking at this fucking kick drum for the thousandth time like going like fuck should i put more cut off on it i don't know if i i don't know if i do i don't know if i like the sound of it maybe i should just sack this entire thing off but the the opportunity for you to obsess i've never even realized that before but that's a real blessing i think of this that it really is one and done and we don't edit anything we never cut anything beautiful um which means that the tightrope walk of if you fucked it or if there was a long pause or if you forget a thing like that's in because it was part of the vibe yeah you're not supposed to it's a difference between a track which is supposed to be as perfect as possible right you can have just played like one note like bing okay we'll add that in and then bing and then we'll add that in and that over time will construct a fucking riff uh the opposite would be one take all instruments single mic a lot of my best shit is accidents because i don't believe in accidents in the studio a lot of times i'll accidentally fill in this pattern of a hi-hat or i'll accidentally like i meant to click on that piano sound but i clicked on this plucked fucking sound from mandolin yeah and i went to do the melody i was like oh shit that's crazy you know so it's so many times that's where you kind of have to um start exercising your ability to surrender you know surrender to the moment surrender to the idea that surrender to faith really that's been a big challenge of mine faith in general i've had to do that at my shows you know because doing the show sober right before i go on stage the last thing i have to do the obligation that i have is to commit to surrendering it's going to be out of my control once i'm up there you know i don't know if this is a good crowd bad crowd they're gonna if the mic's gonna fucking go out my ears are gonna go out but I gotta surrender because when I start feeling like what's about to be out there now I'm in my head I gotta get in my body but to get in my body my thoughts and my brain has to surrender to the concept of faith but faith is difficult for me because I don't trust anyone more than I trust myself you know and that's real tough because I micromanage fucking everything because I would rather be the reason why something fucks up than you because at least you know what i took the last shot you know but that's it's not collaborative you know it doesn't curate or foster any trust with co-workers you know because it just makes them feel incompetent so you don't trust that i can do my job no i do i think i just do it better But like that used to be the mentality.

2:10:06That's the, any solopreneur that's ripped a project off the launch pad themselves. Yeah. You did do everything. And it's still that delusional self-belief that I can do that. Because again, it also comes from knowing I was not the most talented out the gate. that I had to work and bust my ass and spend so much time in the studio to just even get my shit to a level where it could be enjoyed by a shit ton of people. So I look at any other endeavor the same. I'm like, if I spend enough time, I do think I could get good at that. I just do because this didn't come easy. Now, if this came easy to me, I think I would I would just not understand the grind of getting good at something of developing the skill I know that I have what it takes to commit to something and build a skill but sometimes again it's like you're and my friends have told me this like you're downplaying how talented you were though you did have talent you know it sounds more romantic to say that you had nothing but then when I look at it from a logical POV I'm like if you go play, if 15-year-old me played his beats for 33-year-old me now, I would genuinely think he's not going to make it.

2:11:34That's why when people play me their music, I'm like, what do you want me to say? Because I should have no authority or control or influence on your decision to keep going or not going because I would tell myself his shit sucked. I would have told me to stop. you know so I don't know I just I think that's what's kind of given me the audacity to think I could write a book or I could act or I could go play basketball in Vietnam because why not I fucking became an artist and I was trash you know yeah Russ ladies and gentlemen dude you're awesome thank you man where should people go what can they expect next um what do I have next more music to combat the anxiety I have of being forgotten yep yep yeah um music I got a movie coming out in hopefully like in the spring of next year which is exciting congratulations yeah yeah just catch me spiraling on social media fuck yeah thanks man this was incredible I appreciate you having me seriously