16 Brutal Life Lessons for Ambitious People - Michael Smoak - #1083

25:25I am more myself. I feel more myself and more rooted in my sense of identity, who I am and what I feel God's called me to do than I ever was before I went through that with my old man. And that's why I think we should count it all joy. The worst thing I've ever been through has been, God willing, somebody else's greatest breakthrough because I've helped them battle grief, manage grief, feel grief, and come out the other side liberated from it. And that's the greatest gift I could have ever been given. I had a conversation with Alain de Botton toward the back end of last year, and he has this line, and he says, the best men have been broken.

26:02And I asked him, how can you tell? What do you mean, and how can you tell? He says, there's just a look. There's a twinkle in the eye. There's a kind of humility. There's a humbleness. There's a recognition of their own limits, even if they're really high. And I definitely see that, especially after getting kicked in the nuts permanently for the last two years with my health and having to manage an awful lot of things. It does push you. When you're going against the grain of life, you begin to look at your behavior and your patterns and your motivations and your goals under more of a microscope than you do when things are going well.

26:47You feel the texture of existence more, kind of like swimming into a river as opposed to being lazy, riveted down it. You feel all of the small elements come past you. And that's a real uncomfortable situation to be in at the time, but it's a beautiful gift afterward. And yeah, I agree as well that almost all of the greatest accomplishments that you've done in your entire life have been germinated from your lowest points. And adversity is a Let me ask you, when you were going through all of that, and I told you how much I appreciated you, that's probably one of the more vulnerable things you've ever put on the internet.

27:30I mean, it's you in hospital beds, getting blood transfusions, all kinds of crazy shit. It's very vulnerable. And that's a superpower, by the way. You probably empowered. I mean, I know you empowered me to talk about it because I went and made an episode that day. It was like, hey, guys, I feel like shit all the time. And I've been pretending I don't. So I'm grateful that you did that. Thank you. You're welcome. but when you were in that what really what mattered to you in that moment or in those months because i know it got bad it was very protracted you know from

28:03about two years ago was when i started trying to unearth what was going on and about two and a half years ago when i got covid before i went on tour with james was when i started to notice i was getting a bit more tired i didn't really want to see my friends so much on a nighttime. It was strange. I was feeling lassitude, which is the emotion of being ill. I didn't want to eat new things. I didn't want to go to new places. And I was getting more tired and I was getting a bit of brain fog. I was ripping. 2023, it felt like my brain was on fire. It felt like I was permanently on cocaine. It was like being 23 again.

28:40And I noticed the change and i didn't like it and that got worse and worse and worse throughout 2024 and it got to the stage where we would be flying around i remember we did a trip to new york with gymshark and then i flew to florida to do chris bumstead and ben shapiro and i we arrive in fucking baton rouge is that in florida is that what i'm talking about yeah baton rouge right no that's in louisiana no where the fuck was it where the fuck did we go boca raton it's the right amount of syllables you know me boca raton whatever the fuck that's not i mean it's geographically very far away but linguistically it's right next yeah they're both shitholes it's all right no boca's nice um so i'm uh we fly in and we've got an episode the next day or maybe we'd recorded with ben that day and it was 6.30 p.m.

29:38at night and I went to bed and I woke up at 7 a.m. in the morning. The guys had gone for dinner and done some adventure thing and I just felt so on the outside. I felt very much on the outside. I wasn't me. I didn't have access to me and it just kept getting worse. It kept getting worse, kept getting worse. It's getting more tired and I was trying to take a break. I wasn't pushing myself as hard. So I'm like, I'm being more gentle with myself and the more gentle I am, the more tired I get. And all I wanted was to have access back to the texture of my mind. I really love inhabiting my own mind.

30:12It's a really lovely place to be for the most part. But I remember one of my friends, her dad was ill and ill for a long time and was getting his mental capacities were being diminished over time. and he turned to her once in the hospital bed and he said this illness has taken everything from me it's even taken myself and I think what he meant by that was especially for smart people or people that are competent and feel like they have agency and sovereignty in the world what you rely on is your mental faculties I think homozy's got two fears in life one is chronic pain and the other is dementia because the first one is just suffering for the rest of time.

31:00And the second one makes him a burden that can't fix himself. And that really stuck with me. And I don't know why it's one of those random lines that somebody just says about someone else and it stuck with me. And then as I started to go through it, I realized, oh, this is what I feel. This is how I feel. I feel like this is taking away my own capacity to fix myself. And what if this spiral just continues to go down, continues to go down. And I guess one other kind of interesting lesson is how hard it is to not try hard. You need to try hard at not trying hard. To be gentle with yourself requires effort.

31:38But if you apply too much effort, that's no longer being gentle with yourself. And then if you get it wrong, you start to whip yourself into submission for not being sufficiently gentle with yourself, which is not being gentle about your un-gentleness. And a lot of this, I think, is to do with the shame, the suppression of things. But it's also to do with your patterns. What am I used to? What's the pace that I'm used to working at? You know, there will be lots of people for whom this isn't going to hit them until they're 60. And there will also be people for whom it'll hit them when they're 15.

32:10And you think, fuck, I really did want to have to learn this lesson. Not now. Why now? Why does it have to be now? Could it not have been, I don't deserve of it now. But the realization is you're not bulletproof, but you do have more capacity than you think. So it's a recognition of resilience and fragility at the same time. And I think that's where the humility comes from. That's where the empathy comes from. That's what Alain was talking about. But I love that line, adversity is a terrible thing to waste because you develop a a chip on your shoulder and you have something to prove again especially after a while people run out of gas in some regard you know the kids that didn't believe in you in school the bullies that mocked you or the teacher that wasn't supportive or the coach that benched you that will power a young person for a good while but not forever and it's kind of nice to make a existential enemy every so often.

33:16I think it's good to just have, for this season, I've got a new, there's a new bad guy in town. And this time it's this thing. And I'm not going to be able to get my revenge on him now, but in a couple of seasons, I actually reckon that this is going to be the next metamorphosis thing that I come out of. And it's like a little pit stop or a little lily pad that you can jump off to get to whatever the next level is, but it requires you to take a dip first. In other news, I've been in the gym for nearly two decades now, and it wasn't until the past few years that I had the best training run of my entire life.

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34:51That's rpstrength.com slash modernwisdom at modernwisdom at checkout. What's the biggest lesson you learned from that period of having such an issue with cognition and energy in a world where your cognition and energy is critical for your success? Literally the only thing that I do. It affects a particular mold, especially affects a particular area of the brain that's associated with word recall. All I do is recall words. It was like a purpose-built curse just for me. Like somebody had designed a malady only to impact the things that I needed to do. I could have been a lumberjack and I'm sure I would have been tired, but I would have still been able to chop wood.

35:31Not this job. That was not good. The single biggest lesson that I learned throughout all of that.

35:40One that comes to mind is recognizing the fact that the people around you really do want to help. and that sounds like a very basic bitch insight, but I think a lot of people, especially if you're the competent one in your friend group, if you listen to podcasts like mine, watch content like yours, you know, you're teaching your friends. From the outside, you look like you've got it all together. You're probably a leader in some form or another, or maybe you have a good education or you go to the gym and you sort your life out and your friends are the fat messes. Not you, your friends are the fat messes.

36:21and that often I think makes it almost intimidating for our friends to help us because you go what am I gonna why am I gonna tell Michael he's got it got it all together how can I step in and say hey man you you seem a little are you okay or whatever he'll have it all or there'll be somebody way more competent than me in his life that's able to step in and help but um leaning on people reaching out and genuinely asking for help i think i probably received more hugs in 2025 than the decade prior to that sort of all combined uh you know i was doing before live shows if i was feeling really really bad i'd have bennett giving me a hug while praying over me and it just felt really nice it was support i'm stealing a bit of his nervous system and spirituality at the same time.

37:12That was cool. But it was just good. It was being able to lean on people as an only child. It's something that you have to learn through instruction, not emergence. You're not born with it. By age five, you've known what it is to have a fight with your brother and then hug and make up the next morning because you don't hate each other. And that's what it means for you and someone to disagree, but still be on the same team. You don't, there is no learning that at any point. So yeah, the ability to lean on people without feeling less than was a big part of it. Were you scared? Yeah, terrified. Terrified.

37:58I mean, finally felt like I'd arrived. Like I've done all of this stuff and I finally got myself to this country I've dreamed to live in for so long.

38:09The reason that you do the work is to get to the stage where you can do this, have my own space and have my own team and finally talk to the people that I want to for as long as I want about what I want. Just as it felt like I'd got my foot in the door and arrived, it felt like that had been whipped out from underneath me. It felt unfair. I think that's what a lot of people feel, unfairness. I think about this. I wonder how many people died. Someone gets hit by a car, somebody gets shot on purpose or accidentally stray bullets, or there's a mugging that goes wrong or somebody slips and falls from something.

38:49And in the final few moments before they die, how many of them were just surprised or felt like it was unfair. That has to be a huge proportion of people. I wasn't supposed to, this wasn't supposed to be me. And that's it. So it felt unfair. Yeah. I'm scared, yeah. Well, I'm glad you're, for the most part, on the other side of that now, it seems. Slowly, one step at a time. The world keeps on providing me new challenges to get over, but I'm definitely, I didn't need a bigger dose of humility. I didn't need any more ego stripping from me, but for one reason or another, that decided to happen. You've got another line that I disagree with, and I want to talk about it.

39:35Great. Words can only hurt you to the degree that you believe they are true. Yeah. Why do you disagree? Did you believe that the words of the people who tried to cancel you, soft cancellation, baby cancellation. Diet cancel. You're correct. Did you believe that they were true? No. Did you fear that other people might think that they were true? No. You didn't fear that other people might think that they were true. Someone had never heard of you before. Why would I fear? If it's completely out of my control, there's nothing to fear. That's where this lesson of surrender that I learned a long time ago comes back to.

40:15The pain that I was feeling, and this is, again, counted all joy when you face trials of many kinds. my threshold for stress is a lot higher than a few left-wing angry creators making nasty videos about me and people photoshopping the maga hat on my head pretty funny someone made a clown photo at one point with me holding a magazine ai is getting good cute

40:37i wish i wish i had a better answer than no it didn't bother me but

40:45a lot of the pain earlier we talked about arthur brooks talking about, I think it's the Buddhism formula for suffering, pain times resistance. The pain that I felt when my dad was sick was largely rooted in my desire to change the outcome. It was arguing with doctors. It was trying to get him to force take 20 pills a day. As a 70-year-old man, he was pretty set in his ways. And I was so agonizingly in pain because Because it was like I was holding this hot pan and I'm going, ow, this is burning me. And God's like, all you got to do is put the pan down. Do you, because there's still going to be a lot of upset.

41:25I'm aware of the difference between pain and suffering. Right. But there are things that you can do. And learning to blend a desire to take control of the situation and make an impact on it. Agency, sovereignty, something that I know that you care about a lot and everybody else does as well. with surrender. Surrender can quite easily turn into passivity if you're not careful. If you don't know how to wield it, it can become nihilism, lackadaisicalness, things that you don't want. Does that make sense? You can see how surrender could become passiveness. Yeah, I think if you lack the discernment to know where the line is, that that's certainly true.

42:07So for me, putting the pan down and the analogy of losing so much of the pain, surrendering the pain to Christ in my scenario, saying like, I don't, whatever happens to my dad is God's will for my life. I did get supernatural peace from that. It doesn't mean I didn't care for him, show up for him, show up for myself. It doesn't mean I didn't do things. See, that's passivity would be the absence of doing anything. It doesn't mean I still didn't help him and me and my mom and my siblings. So when we talk about the internet example. Do you want to explain what happened? What your soft cancellation was?

42:36Sure. Yeah, I'd love to. It's not, you know, it's only a few people will hear this. So it's not like this could kick the fire back. So I was getting a lot of heat to speak on what happened in Minneapolis. And I, I'll be honest with you. I don't watch the news because I think it's a cancer and a cortisol dump. And that's not what my algorithm is. I don't have the news on the TV. I mainly just watch YouTube. And I kept getting hammered with these comments. Speak about, I speak about Minneapolis, speak about what happened to Alex Peretti. God rest his soul. And I didn't know what any of that meant.

43:10I truly didn't. This was days after it happened. And so I even reached out to friends that were creators and said, are you guys getting hammered with these comments? And all of them said no. So I said, well, what did I do to curate an audience that would do this? And I started doing research and I went, wow, that's terrible. Someone was killed in Minneapolis by ICE agents. That's awful. Murder under no circumstances is justified. And I kept getting hounded. And I saw other creators just letting their audience sort of puppeteer them into saying something or saying what they thought their audience wanted to hear.

43:47And then I thought and thought and thought and I prayed on it deeply. Should I make this video? And this is where faith becomes an easy barometer for decision making. So you ask me if these words hurt me. I made a video And the barometer for choice of to post or not was do I feel that what i'm about to say honors god It's very simple question Yes or no am I attacking people or am I choosing to love on people? Am I adding flames to the fire of hatred and division? Or am I just stating my opinion? So in the video I said something to the effect of A lot of you were asking me to give my stance on what happened in minneapolis with the ice agents And my opinion is that you don't want my opinion.

44:33You want to watch the first five to eight seconds of my video and decide if i'm your enemy or not And In that video I say my opinion is very simple murder and killing others Is a tragedy And it's not what god calls us to do. It's directly against what god calls us to do Luke chapter 6 tells us to love those who hate us That when someone slaps you you offer them the other cheek when someone takes your shirt Don't hesitate then don't hesitate then to give them your robe because the only thing that blocks out hate is love. The only thing that changes a hateful heart is a loving one. That's what I said.

45:06And I said, you don't follow me because I'm a political commentator and you pressuring all of these big creators who got here through fitness or mindset to now become political mouthpieces for your opinions isn't fair. I'm not politically aligned with any party. I think there's fools on both sides because that's how the world works. I think there's smart people on both sides. but I said, I'm not your puppet. I'm not going to do what you demand of me because you think it's what I should do. You want to hear my opinion come out of your mouth. I'm going to continue to create content. That was the reason that allowed you to follow me.

45:38I'm going to help you in areas that I'm competent in. And the geopolitical climate of the world isn't one of them. I love you. Thank you. Holy shit. Did that, what I thought was a fairly, fairly logical and general opinion start an absolute shit storm. I think that video across platforms has 15 ,000 comments. It's pretty split on positive negative. So that's what happened. That's the scenario. And that kicked up hundreds of creators stitching my video, putting my face on their back screen and attacking me. And somehow that, that evolved to not, I can't believe I'm talking about this on the show with you.

46:15It's so funny. Nazi, racist, MAGA, none of which were said in the video, by the way. So it was amazing to watch the conclusions that people drew about my character from that video. That's the scenario, which brings us to today, which is you asking, basically what you're asking me is, did the things that people said about me hurt my feelings? No, not quite. Not far from. But your point is, words can only hurt you to the degree that you believe they are true. Yes. I understand what you mean. And it's the only insults that hurt are the ones that we agree with. But I think the insults that hurt most are the ones that we don't believe, but we fear other people may believe.

46:56Because that allows a sense of injustice. And it doesn't really matter how you feel about it if other people believe it. That is fake news. That's having your status besmirched. That's having your good name tarnished. And I think that that drives people absolutely insane. Now, this is the false accusation pandemic. And if somebody goes through that, they pay all of the costs of being somebody who did the thing without having done the thing. And if you believe that other people might believe it, or if it seems to you like other people are believing it and you didn't do it and you don't believe it yourself, that to me feels like a special circle of hell to descend into.

47:49And that's why optics management and looking after the way that your brand is interpreted online is really important. Because let's say that that happened once and then it happened again. People got a vendetta that decided that they were going to pick apart and selectively edit because all of the edits that were done of you got rid of the bit where you said any death is a tragedy and just kept the bit where I said, I'm not your puppet. And made me look incredibly condescending and arrogant. Exactly. Imagine if five of those had happened in a row because they'd gone back and they'd been able to edit your videos in that manner.

48:23Well, now there's a narrative that Michael guy, he seems like he's behaving in a way, there's a consistent pattern of behavior. Now, not only can you go back and say, well, no, look, look, that's not what I said. I mean, even think about it, your indignation at the fact that that's not what I said. You're pleading to people to say what they say I am is not who I am. And I have evidence. But imagine you didn't have the evidence, a false accusation of some kind. I heard Michael say this thing at some live event. I didn't record it, but I can promise you that it's true. I didn't, but you don't have the recording either.

48:58And there's no proof around that. And then that narrative starts to take hold and before you know it i just i agree that words hurt you to the degree that you believe they are true but i also believe that words hurt you to the degree that you believe others will believe that they are true and that is where your good name to what extent you've got it left gets uh sideswiped and you didn't deserve it good enough to get here you're among friends well let's let's ping pong this back and forth a little bit because yeah that can be true if if i were to have built an internet platform to the size that it is on a false identity then i'd be really fucking nervous but anyone you know someone said to me that that video you made is authentic it feels like you and that's the type of video that anyone who truly watches your stuff knows you in real life they're gonna they're gonna rock with you even harder because of that.

49:54And the people who were never really watching or just casual or just sort of get their news from TikTok, they're going to unfollow you. They're going to say nasty things about you. But those aren't the people I want in my audience anyway. I'm not here to appease people or make as many fans as I possibly can. I'm just here to make an impact on the people who are prepared to listen. So yeah, that's true. There's a bunch of people out there who probably think a thing about me based on the eight second doctored edited video. Sure. But frankly, those aren't the people that I'm those aren't the people that are prepared to listen to my videos anyway they could have been could have been they could have been I I understand your point I do think that as you're trying to grow a platform uh your audience and the total available audience is always going to be massively different unless you're Mr.

50:41Beast and that means that if you are curtailed neutered from being able to access more of these people because some how many people got turned off of Rogan because of what happened. I mean, he managed to flip, reverse it with an Uno reverse card during COVID, but how many people could have, if he hadn't managed to ride the waves appropriately, how many of them would have never watched him? How many of them would have been turned off from tuning into his content? Or the same thing for, who else has been through a cancellation recently that could be, could be, Chris Pratt as a good example. Like what did he do?

51:24Uh, was Christian. People didn't like the fact that he's Christian and, um, uh, they don't go watch his movie because they think that he believes a thing, which I don't think he believes any of the things that they're accusing him of. Well, I, I understand that those people, the sort of, they don't deserve it. She doesn't deserve you anyway. Uh, yeah. But people make snap judgments. They make quick assessments about what someone's character is. And I think that we want to play sport on as smooth of a pitch as possible. And if that's been muddied and sullied ahead of us, we want to be like, fuck.

52:10This has made my life harder. I'm now having to climb uphill on a hill that I didn't make. You made it. I didn't do anything wrong. And I think there's indignation. there. So that's my additional perspective. No, I hear it. And I appreciate that perspective. I think that the closing remark for me that what I truly believe, again, I know as a believer, as a Christian myself, my identity is in Christ and my belief in God. And if what I feel what I said honors him in everything, I do not just that video. It's an easy barometer for decision-making for me. And I'm able to stand on that because I built a relationship with God.

52:44and I got nods that felt like fruits byproducts as a result of that video you know I got a nod from some of the top people in the industry saying like that was a very reasonable video and some people who I really respect and admire intellectually and so if people who I really respect and admire saying it's reasonable and correct then I probably have reason to believe it's correct you know Oliver Emberton said if you're not pissing anybody off you're probably not doing anything very important and if being at the top means winning everybody over and a version of myself that has to constantly try to control the narrative, then I don't want that.

53:18I would rather have radical authenticity and authentic expression in a way that is intact with my character ethics and morals and impact as many people as I can that way. So I don't risk building a mountain of success on a false identity that I could worry the mask slips and it all comes crumbling down because none of those people ever really knew me in the first place. So that's how I view that video. And by every metric in real life, things improved. The business did well, the page did well, and I got a lot of love. In exchange for all those hate comments and crazy things people said, I had a ton of people come to my defense and love.

53:55The advantage that you had was, I think we can probably name it Smoke's Razor, which everything needs a name. I got my own term. Yeah. I think you can call it Smoke's Razor, which is when anybody asks you to speak on a topic. They're not asking you to speak on a topic. They're asking you to agree with their position. Speak on Iran. You don't want me to talk on Iran. You want me to say what you think about Iran. Because if I speak on Iran, but I say the opposite thing to what you believe, you'll be unhappy. So say what you mean to say. Say what I want you to say about Iran. That's more accurate.

54:32Now you're not part of Smoke's Razor. But I agree. I think it's a great take and I can't unsee it now whenever anybody says, when are you going to comment on? When are you going to comment on this thing? It's like, you don't want me to comment on this thing. You want me to say what you think about this thing. You want me to echo your opinion. And I'm sure you get that just a few times a day. I got in a lot of trouble this year from doing that, not for not doing that. I did it too much, which is interesting because the world has two things that are true at once. You're not Iranian and you're also not from Minneapolis, but you were supposed to comment on it.

55:06But there's also worlds where people are told like, what are men doing talking about women's bodies? I mean, if the men were in support of access to contraception, that's speaking about women's bodies. I'm sure that that would be fine. Like, you shouldn't be talking about this group because you're not a part of it. Well, gay rights are fucked. because I'm not gay. And Peter is fucked as well, because I'm not a chicken or a cow. The Ukraine war, I'm afraid I'm from neither of those locations, so I can't comment on that. I'm not a whale, so the Save the Oceans project, that's out the window. If we are only allowed to talk on topics that we are a member of, that restricts a lot of things.

55:54And at the same time, people will also say, you have a platform. It's your duty to use it. The world is filled with people commenting on things that they know nothing about. I don't intend on trying to add to that. I already do. I encroach on that territory enough already. But I think the world would be better if people said, I don't know. I don't know much about that. So I'm not going to say anything about it. Like we don't need more psychology professors turning into global terrorism experts. No. There are people who have specialities in these worlds. And if you can bro science your way through things, you can talk about whatever you would like.

56:33Don't posit yourself as some sort of fucking authority. And certainly don't hamstring somebody into saying something. Yeah. Simply because you have an agenda. We're doing the world a favor by depriving them - Shutting the fuck up? By depriving them of two mid-20s, early 30s white dudes who think they have an opinion about something. Correct. Correct. Okay. A quick aside, there is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95 % of people don't get enough fiber, not because they're being careless, but because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually quite hard.

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57:38Best of all, Momentous Officer 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you're not sure, you can buy Fiber Plus, try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back, and they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35 % off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. The number one fear that holds people back from having everything they've ever wanted in life is the fear of being perceived.

58:13Most of us are operating from a place of deep fear and scarcity. Where we need to be operating from is a place of deep trust and abundance. Your slogan for the year should be simple. What you fear is Your slogan for the year should be simple. Where your fear is, there your task is. Lean directly into the things that make you most afraid if you want to build the life you've always wanted for yourself. That's the thing that holds people back. It's not the fear of failure. It's not even the fear of success because sometimes there's that that comes into the equation of who will I have to become if this all works, what will have to shift within me.

58:50At every level we hit we all have different thresholds for this Is the fear of being perceived It's that little middle schooler inside of us that says what will they think of me? Will I be cast out of the of the cool kid crew? I'll be cast out of the tribe. What will the internet think? Like I said, every person has a level for this For some people for most people that I get questions around it's posting for the first time online What if I look cringe? What if I look corny? For many people, it's the fear of public speaking. You know, that's the number one fear ahead of death in many psychological surveys, which I find fascinating.

59:22Do you think that's true? I've read that too. Do you think that's true? I mean, it's in the data. I'm gonna shoot you or I'm gonna put you on stage. Yeah, you're gonna go on stage, but your body's probably gonna have a fit. This is also not fair. You do it for a living. So like you're a bit of a biased resource on the answer. Some people might literally rather be killed. I don't know. I did have a friend once say to me, and I quote that we couldn't experiment on him. He said, no, I'd literally rather die than get on a stage in front of 2000 people. And he didn't laugh. So, I mean, his word was bond at that point.

59:52But at every level, we hit a wall of perception, a fear of perception. You know, at first it was for me posting online and then I did it and it started to work. And then I overcame that, if you will. And then it was, the audience got bigger and now it was, and then I got canceled for the first time. This happened last year too. It was about a different thing. And then the fear of perception kind of crept in there. And then maybe it was my first public speaking event in front of a couple of hundred people. And the fear of perception came back in. Everybody is afraid of what they will be thought of.

1:00:22And if the narrative that the people project onto them is aligned with what they believe about themselves to be true and really their deepest, darkest fear. What if they confirm that I am not enough? What if they confirm that I am incompetent? All the things that we deal with, because someone said those things to us, you're inadequate, you're not enough. You can't sit with us. You're not good enough, whatever, when we were a kid and we chose to believe that thing. The fear of perception gets to everybody, but there's a level to it for everyone. Your fear of perception is much higher than the person at home listening to this or sitting in their car on their drive to work right now.

1:00:53But at some point you hit a level where you go, what will they think of me if I do this? There's something within you that could hit, maybe it's a new style of content. Maybe it's throwing out that certain joke that you really know is pushing it in the new talk. Maybe it's being vulnerable to a degree that you've never been online before because that's not what the other guys are doing. So what will those guys think of me? Because you're batting in a league that's pretty high. What will those guys think of me if I say something totally different in my videos? It's there somewhere. But I think too many people view it as a fight.

1:01:26I can overcome the fear of perception or if I can conquer the fear of perception. The goal is not to overcome the fear of perception. It's to stay tapped in with inspiration. because you're inspired until you hit the wall. You know, the content was flowing for me and I was super inspired in creating a bunch. And then the first wall was boom, canceled because I said something polarizing. This was, like I said, a year plus ago, I made a fat joke that was pretty off the, it was off color, but it was funny. And that was where it first crept in. People, big creators started saying crazy stuff about me that wasn't true.

1:01:56And then I got blocked from inspiration. I didn't know what to create because I was worried what they will think of me with what came next. And so if the goal is not to overcome the fear of perception but to stay tapped into inspiration Then that shifts it from a fight to more of a dance Is everybody wants to maximize their potential, but I don't think that's the game I think you don't want to maximize your potential. You want to know deeply the parts of you that don't want you to do that because when I decided to do seminars last year, there was a part of me that went what if nobody shows up Maybe a fear you had selling tickets across the world.

1:02:29Maybe not but that fear crept in and so then the job is not oh let me just bury that the job is then let me go explore that part of me that thinks nobody will show up so i can get to as i said earlier is this true why is that that kid in me so afraid that nobody will come to my birthday party right that's the that's the adult equivalent of the the speaking tour i did last year and so through deeply understanding and knowing the parts of us that don't want us to maximize our potential it is only in doing that, that the fear of perception falls away, but there's nowhere to get. That's the game, dude.

1:03:05Like that's the game. There's nowhere to get. It's an exponential curve. It never touches zero. There's for every new level. There's a new devil. I love that quote. And when you went from your first episode on your couch in the UK to top 50 to top 25 to now eight, there's a fear that creeps in at every point, something that you have to work through. but I think the secret is knowing deeply the part of you that says you don't deserve that you can't have that and instead of saying that's wrong familiarize yourself with it and then you can process it and that's the difference between unprocessing your emotion and being run by your emotion because you're the two decisions you make if you listen to the narrative I'm not enough versus observe it and understand it and move through it are wildly different decisions so that's what the fear of perception is to me it's it's the goal to stay tapped into the inspiration of what I believe the messages that God is placing on my heart are.

1:03:57And that's why my content is so diverse. One day I'll make a video about grief and what I learned from the death of my father. And the next day it's the fucking review of the Coke flavored Oreo or the Oreo flavored Coke zero, my most viral video ever classically, which is hilarious. There's no, it was just inspiration. It was following the inspiration. And in doing that, I've built a business out of it, but conventional rules would tell me, well, you're not sticking to the framework and the structures and the virality. It's all bullshit. So the goal is to stay tapped in to inspiration by dancing with that fear of perception.

1:04:31There's an interesting line between scarcity and abundance. So George Mack is just the most abundance mindset person I've ever met. He really is. He has, this is one of my fucking favorite George stories. I think he must be on his 30th pair of AirPods now, and he's kept them all in his Bluetooth history. I hope he has Apple stock. Probably. And you can see George's AirPods, one, two, three, four, all the way up to 30. But because they're all linked to his Find My, there's one pair that's in the United Nations building in downtown New York City. There's one left AirPod, I think, that's in Kandahar or something so he's lost them around the world or some of them will be in the ocean others of them have been picked up by people where he's left them and uh he left them in dean's the other night oh my god when we were at dinner yes oh my god left them at dean's uh and he can see he tracks them and every so often because you can do the find my he just plays a sound out of the airpods so the fucking un building will be beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep And it's just him fucking with the dude in Kandahar.

1:05:43He's just like fucking with him because he knows that he's got a glass of airpods. It's so good. But he's just got this abundance mindset, man. And I don't think anyone's done a full treatment on the difference between scarcity and abundance mindset. Not enough. It's a really obvious meme, I guess, if you've been in the personal development world for a while. I haven't seen it fully sort of break through. And the idea that a glass half full versus half empty is a pretty sort of cliche way to think about it. Just assuming that it's okay, things will get better. I can take the risk. I can spend the money.

1:06:21I can treat myself. I can give myself time off. I can permit myself to attempt this thing that I don't know whether or not it's going to go well. Just assume that things are going to go well. And it's a particular type of advice for a particular type of person that maybe many, perhaps even most people, actually need the opposite advice. They need to be told to pump the brakes on their risk tolerance. There is a big subset of people, I'm going to guess, at the very least like me, perhaps like you, who need the opposite piece of advice. I needed to read Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, because otherwise I would have just been scrimping and saving.

1:06:58There's a difference between misers and like spenders. And unfortunately, I fell into the camp of I'd never had money. So I thought, well, now I've got it. I should hold on to it. What if it goes away? Well, that means that you never get to arrive at a place where you arrive. And yeah, abundance mindset is a wonderful salve to the uncertainty and the fear that I think a lot of us feel. Your episode shift, are we allowed to talk about the new style of content that's coming It'll be before this one. So yeah. Okay. The, the, the four-way episode that we had, we had a lovely four-way the other day.

1:07:33It was fantastic. Uh, me, me, you have an Indian man in there for diversity. Yeah, of course it was great. Yes. He taught us a lot about breastfeeding. It was an interesting conversation. Go listen to that one. The, but that's a great example, right? You could have said, well, this isn't what my audience expects of me. This isn't what got me to top eight in the world. I can't do a four-way podcast of me and my boys bullshitting. I've been the interview guy I've been the solo guy giving advice but to me I've viewed what you did as an act of authenticity and trusting that diversifying is actually the exact thing you should do because you haven't done it up to this point and the more frictionless less buttoned up you know pop a button and let your hair down approach to this like us just talking and joking and some of the crazy stuff that happened in that episode is exactly what people want to see from you because it makes you so relational.

1:08:23So I view creators through this lens as well. There's this guy who said he uses his content as a direct exposure therapy to people pleasing. He posts whatever he wants. He says, I don't, I wish I knew his name so I can give him credit. I post whatever I want. I'm not really overly mindful of what my audience wants. And I have a wide variety of topics that I speak on. He's an authority in some places. He's very human and goofy in others. And he talks about his story in other facets of content. So there's three pillars I think that exist. There's informational, aspirational, and relational. Informational is the authority figure content.

1:08:56I'm teaching you something. And then relational is the OpenTabs podcast, if that's what you decide to call it. Did you decide on a name? We're still working between Rabbit Hole, OpenTabs, SideQuest, and Stuff I Love. I like OpenTabs, dude. OpenTabs is fun. OpenTabs is good. So informational is we'll use my content for example when i'm teaching you about creatine or the form and fashion of public speaking tips How to limit your filler words something i'm competent on and then there's relational it's just me saying This is the oreo flavored coke. Let me review it and it's just total. It's total brain rot It's just funny.

1:09:34I'm cracking jokes and then there's aspirational There's look at what I overcame and you can too leo skeppi is a master class on this I don't know if you know who that is, but he's a huge creator. He's got 10 million followers on TikTok, five on Instagram and a big podcast. But he is a therapist in his podcast. Basically, he does this video. It's like, come get ready with me and let you see my outfit before I go out in Vegas for the night. And it's like no value. People are saying like, this feels like a FaceTime from you. I love you. And then aspirational, he talks about overcoming an abusive relationship and the hardship that he dealt with to get to where he is now, which is wealthy, healthy, and abundant.

1:10:08and when you combine those three pillars you get an audience that is really bought into you because not only can you teach them something but they can relate to you and and they can also feel that they can overcome hardship too you're not just this person this man or woman in the ivory tower sitting in your beautiful podcast studio no you've been through shit because you're human and that's what i think is that makes an incredible creator and also allows us to continuously break through the levels of the fear of perception and that's honestly how i view content like my video my videos are me expressing myself in the purest fashion that i think is almost childlike to me also makes for an interesting person yeah an interesting life we don't want the thing we want the feeling that the thing gives us why yeah what did we're speed running our recancellation right now with all the references we're pulling what did andrew tate say you don't want the ferrari you want everyone to know you have the Ferrari and that they can't have the Ferrari.

1:11:05All right. We don't, we don't. Having things isn't fun. Getting things is fun. Having things isn't fun. Getting things is fun, but we don't want the thing. We want the feeling that it gives us because I'll give you my opinion on this. It's a faith-based one yet again. We'll come back to this. My pastor, Philip Mitchell, that I referenced earlier says that everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart and they try to fill it with the things of the world. And this is why biblically idolatry is a sin. Sin is actually just God's way of protecting us from hurting ourselves because we're stupid. We're people, we're dumb and we make mistakes.

1:11:37To idolize something is to put it on a pedestal and to put it on a pedestal implies that it can never let you down. But things of the world are imperfect. They'll always let us down. And so we don't want the thing. We want the feeling the thing gives us because the nice watch, the nice car, the status, the success, the money, whatever, any form of material success, will it make us feel significant, seen, heard, understood, important in our place in the world? And it never does. Like you said, it's the hedonic treadmill. You step into the thing. It's really cool. You get the dopamine hit. And then the Ferrari just becomes, we'll take my car.

1:12:12Well, don't forget, there's a much more squirrely, pernicious version of this, which is developing yourself with your traits and your skills and maybe your knowledge as well. And Naval has this cool idea where he talks about how he wasn't that concerned about being smart, but he really wanted to appear smart. So what he did is he just wrote, memorized tons of stuff. And that gave him the illusion of being smart to other people, but it didn't mean he actually understood what he was doing. And that difference of when I'm able to impress people around a dinner table, when everybody else shuts up and they think I'm the most interesting person in the room, then, or a black belt in some martial art.

1:12:55When I get there, then. And the difference is, there's an obvious cultural meme around how cringy it is to assume that a Ferrari is going to fix your self-worth problem. But there's far less about, well, once I've done a thousand hours of meditation, once I've got my black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, once I've finally read all of the classics and can quote them verbatim around the dinner table, once I've done even more pernicious than this, go deeper. Once I've done every level of the Hoffman process or internal family systems, or I know every Joe Hudson Art of Accomplishment podcast off by heart, and I've done the work, and I've transcended and included my Wilburian ego, and everything has now become a perfect manifestation.

1:13:37I've alchemized myself. That is just a slightly cleverer twist on the same arrival fallacy but i will be when i will be something when i something else it's the same dynamic it's just done in a slightly less shallow obviously that big way yeah that's that's it man that's that's what i thought that's what i was talking about earlier there's nowhere to get there's nowhere to get it doesn't mean you don't go there doesn't mean you don't achieve the thing and build the accolades. That doesn't mean it's not fun and it doesn't feel good, but there's nowhere to get. There are just levels to climb through.

1:14:17And zero is death. Zero is when your life is over. And that, in my opinion, takes all the weight off of it. It makes it more fun, easier to obtain. And that when I get to the end of my life, I will have hopefully, God willing, done a lot of cool shit. But the ultimate mission for me is

1:14:40I hope You know my dad said this to me like four weeks before he died I thought it was very interesting that a guy who was Living what I thought was the fullest life ever the stories. He told me the things he got to do The things him and his friends did The last four to six weeks he was alive when he was just Stuck on the couch and we would just sit and talk and one thing i'm really thankful for that I did that I hope anyone listening to this with parents who are still here do is I recorded a series of podcasts with my dad when he got sick and I asked him all the hard questions and it was fucking brutal and like had to turn the camera off, had to walk away.

1:15:20It was, it's a unique pain to look at my dad and say, what do you want to say to me on my wedding day? Can you say it right there? That's hard, but I'm grateful that I did it because now I have it. And it goes back to I don't really think a lot of what the people on the internet think about me because I had to do that My threshold for pain is so much higher for stress is so much higher. I don't want to control the narrative I tried that and it created so much more pain within me But back to the original point it was interesting to hear A man who I thought was 10 feet tall and bulletproof and had done everything in the world and had shown up for me Every time I needed it and was a great husband a great dad The best i'd ever seen When he got to the end of his life all he could tell me about was the things he wishes he did more of And it wasn't anything complex It wasn't that he wish he Sold more tracks because he was a running track salesman.

1:16:16It wasn't that he wishes he did more skydive jumps or That he spent more time on the golf course. He said two things. He said Well, he said three things. He said number one I should have spent more time at home with your mom and less time on the golf course with my buddies Number two, I should have been here for you guys more when you were growing up I didn't perceive it that way to me. My dad was always there when I needed him Like I was lucky to have a dad who really loved me and showed up for me and my brother and sister And the last thing he said was all I hope to hear When I get wherever i'm going Is well done my good and faithful servant you fought the good fight you've run your race Here's your crown.

1:16:56It's time to rest that's scriptural and to me these achievements are fun they're so fun i'm i'm words cannot put be put into the feeling i have of gratitude to be sitting across the table from you right now man like it's so cool i told my boy today he called me he's like how you feeling i was like dude we do downloads on modern wisdom we were getting our walks together in college like this is so cool it's incredible. But where I stand with my belief is that God's not going to say, well done, my good and faithful podcast host, my good and faithful content creator, business owner. He's not going to say husband or father or brother.

1:17:36He's going to say servant. And if what I do glorifies God, and if I feel that way and I receive confirmation or what I think is confirmation, that's what I think I'm here to do. And that's what I think we're all here to do. And I think if more people open their heart to the possibility of that being true, they would still have fun pursuing the thing and getting the thing and having the thing. But they'd understand that that's really all we're here for and that the only zero, the only arrival is the end of it. And that it's all just fun. It's fun and service. That's it. Before we continue, as you're probably aware, I'm not a massive drinker, at least not anymore.

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1:19:46Correct. It's the human centipede, but we've both got our ass and mouth attached to each other. We're Earl Burrussing each other or whatever the fuck it's called. That's correct. Yeah. My mouth to Chris's ass. Clip that. Very good. Yeah. I mean, you and Hormozy talked about the lonely chapter. And I remember going through that being 22 years old and wondering. I really had one friend, my best friend, still the guy I just told you I was on the phone with earlier. Will, I love you if you're listening to this. It was just he and I. I would have these feelings of why do I care this much about resistance training, progressive overload?

1:20:24Why do I want to learn about hormesis and heat exposure and listen to Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk for three hours about those things with Joe Rogan? why do I care what Chris Williamson and Andrew Huberman are going to talk about for two hours and when I go talk to it about my talk about it to my friends they go sick dude it's like you can't expect everyone to have the interest same interest as you I get that you must slide me one of those yeah get in there appreciate it a little nicotine bump go on what is this is this the mint one this is the watermelon peppermint I think watermelon peppermint now we're just finding different ways to stimulate ourselves yeah I have an oral fixation which is great to say after we just talked about ass to mouth yeah chris loves funny ways to get orally stimulated for sure that's correct um the i remember i remember the uh this nicotine toothpicks about to go straight to my frontal lobe and allow me to cohesively pull this thought together but i remember being very confused about why nobody gave a shit about the things i gave a shit about and i just had this one friend it was me and will and we he was up in new york at college and i was down in georgia and so we'd do these things we call neat chats where we go out and go for a walk, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, walking, neat chats.

1:21:30He just texts me like neat and we go and we do downloads on the podcast we were listening to, but we were each other's only outlet and that can feel lonely. And I remember a girl I was dating at the time saying, I talked to her about the first time I heard about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. And I went, this is groundbreaking fucking information. I've got to tell the world. Like the British are coming, the British are coming. The AMCC is growing. The AMCC is growing. Fuck you, it's boring. Yeah, exactly. And it was a very loving, you should like make content or something. You should talk about this.

1:22:03Yeah. But not to me. But not to me. That's exactly right. It would be really great if you didn't talk to me about it. That's exactly right. And at the time it felt like rejection, but in hindsight, I'm like, yeah, I can't expect you to care about the things I care about. So for me, this period of losing weight when I was overweight, I lost 60 pounds when I was 21. and kept the weight off, became passionate about understanding that it's actually not that hard. My life got better when I did that. People treated me better. My energy was better. My clothes fit. I felt better about myself. Look good, feel good, play good.

1:22:34Why does everybody think this is so hard? And then it got deeper. My grandma died of Alzheimer's, so I became interested in cognitive decline as it pertains to exercise and lifestyle. And this passion just kept growing within me where all I was consuming was podcasts and information on this at any chance I could, but I wasn't really doing anything with it other than my own benefit. And I realize now so clearly looking back that I, that that was God preparing me for this. I use everything I learned over that seven year period in my job every day. And people ask me, how do you know all this? I just spend six years alone, walking by yourself, listening to podcasts for a thousand hours.

1:23:12That's what it takes. And that was my lonely chapter. And it felt like it was for nothing. And looking back, I laugh at the idea of that because it's part of why I'm in this room with you was my obsession with those things with no seeming or visible horizon of payoff in the future. You know, what does Hormozzi say? Being able to do the work without the promise or expectation of it paying off at any given point. I did that and eventually it paid off, but that's where my love came from. And that's where the understanding I tell people, if you feel like you've outgrown in your words, you've outgrown your old group and you haven't found your new one yet, that is a barometer that you're actually on exactly the path that you're supposed to be.

1:23:51At least that's my take. And it's, it's what I've seen in people who other consider themselves high performers as well. And I think you feel similarly given that clip that blew up. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's, it was the central thrust of the last live show that I did. It was the thing that people spoke about the most. It's kind of taken on a life of its own, which is really cool. And I think what's coolest about it is that it puts a name to something that a lot of people feel and that nobody had actually come up with a term for previously. And yeah, it's not romantic. There's no point in that process that makes you feel like there's glory happening.

1:24:32Your entire journey of personal development is just steeped in uncertainty and self-doubt. It's not cool. It's not sexy. The Rocky cutscene was three and a half minutes in the movies. It's been four years for me. What the fuck is going on? There's no promise of any success on the other side of it. I'm permanently questioning if you're making any progress. Am I doing this right? And it isn't like every training montage that you've seen, where the hero goes from realizing he needs to change to the change with ups and downs in the journey and the progress, but no loss of conviction. I lost conviction all the fucking time.

1:25:15Like, what should I be doing? Should I be, maybe I need to do more yoga. I'm actually CrossFit. I should be doing CrossFit. And if I did more CrossFit, no, fuck, because I need to meditate more. If I meditate more, I should learn. What should I learn? Should I learn the classic? Maybe I should read philosophy. No, I should do evolutionary research. Just constantly trying to work out what I'm self-generating and self-educating. And yeah, when I look back, I've got this couch in Newcastle, the old studio, the one that I had to paint the ceiling of because it had candle set because I had a candle obsession for a while.

1:25:48And everybody said that it was mold. It wasn't mold. It wasn't my mom's basement. It was my bedroom in my house that I bought and I loved but it didn't look that great so i did have to get it painted the internet bullied me into getting painters around two gay painters it was brilliant and uh they came around did this thing and then uh it was a douglas murray episode actually that put the final like because he said what's that on the ceiling and i was like right okay i'm fucking doing it um right next to that set right remembering this is the first studio i've ever owned that wasn't in my house the last decade, every single house that I've stayed in, every Airbnb I've stayed in, every hotel I've stayed in for more than three weeks has had some form of studio in it.

1:26:30And this is the first one that isn't in my abode. Right next to that studio setup, which had my bed in the background, and then there would be a bear on the bed, was a couch. It's a leather couch that came with the house, and I kind of liked it. It was comfy. And I spent hundreds, probably over a thousand hours. In fact, it must be over a thousand hours, just sat on one half of this couch. I had this little wooden table next to me and I'd have a little coaster like this, a little coaster with my salt and lemon in water, like just table salt because it was before Element was available in the UK.

1:27:08Maybe I didn't even know it existed. Maybe it didn't even exist. And I'd have my Kindle and I'd have this little blanket and I'd put this blanket over my knees and I'd have a cushion and I'd put my Kindle on the cushion and I'd sit down and try and read. I remember when I first started trying to read after a decade of being a club promoter, and that's just, I think I sent and received, the last time I checked my stats, I sent and received 8 million messages on WhatsApp with thumbs. So I'm just used to bings and bongs and notifications and colors. And I sit down and it's just this black and white screen with words on it.

1:27:43And my body used to move. My body used to sort of twitch a little bit. Like it was trying to search for extra dopamine inside of you? I literally think it was learning what lower stimulus felt like. And then I'd maybe try and meditate or I'd do whatever. That whole process now, in retrospect, is just one of the coolest periods of my life. And it was me in this ex-garage extension of a house in bumfuck village near Newcastle upon Tyne around the corner from a primary school. And I just spent thousands of hours sat there just doing shit, experimenting with myself, I guess, and learning about me.

1:28:29Experimenting with yourself, you say? I was, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly trying to fit my own mouth around my own ass so that I don't need you anymore. I just want to feed my own ideas back into myself. That's an echo chamber right there. True Ouroboros. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's fucking awesome. And lots of people, even the most powerful and successful ones. Homozi talks about sleeping on the gym floor. There's cars, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, driving over the top of the gym where he slept. And he would hear the kids that were his age partying above him, and he was still downstairs.

1:29:00And I would hear families coming and going from the school, and I'd still be sat there. And I'd have heard them drop the kids off on the morning, and I'd still be there. And they'd have left later that day, and then maybe I'd be working on my laptop doing whatever now. It's cool. And I think that, yeah, the path to being the best version of yourself should be lonely. Or at the very least, being lonely is not an indication that you are not on the path to becoming the best version of yourself. that people sort of rage against the fact that there is lots of self-doubt and there isn't that much glory and it does seem like it's tarnishing the experience and I don't know if it's going to work and I'm racked with this lack of belief.

1:29:42Yet that is par for the course because if you're going to try and break out of the mold of wherever you are, you need to do something that's unbelievably weird and different and strange. And that means that there's going to be very few people by design like you. Very few people are going to be self-selecting to go and do this thing, which means that you have to go off on your own. And maybe you're super fortunate and you've got a brother or a friend or whatever that is on the journey with you. But for the most part, people are born in towns. If you're into this sort of stuff, you're the one person within a five-year age bracket where you live that you know that's into this and there's no else.

1:30:23So yeah, it's an indication that you're on the right path. I think you're correct. Did you think this would all happen when you started on that couch in Newcastle? No. I mean, look, grand plans, sort of big, impressive goals for life is never something I've been particularly good at. Really? but this wasn't a plan right this was emergent this was me failing forward falling forward that someone once described adulthood as like being pushed down a set of stairs at age 18 and trying to catch your feet until you die and it does feel a little bit like that i'm like performing adulthood performing competence whatever it is um but no it absolutely wasn't the plan i didn't have any i didn't have any plan at all but i really enjoyed the process of following my passions, which I'd suppressed for a long time.

1:31:20So I did two degrees at university. I did a bachelor's in business management, then a master's in international marketing, and I did a year in industry. So I was at university for five years, left at 23. And I remember when I completed my master's dissertation, I finished it. I started and finished it in 36 hours. I'd been given the entire summer to write it, and technically the entire year to write it. And I've started and finished it in 36 hours. And I did it on a case of Red Bull and three bags of very, very questionable cocaine from my local dealer. And I was so wired and just screwy by the end of it.

1:31:56My housemate had had a party downstairs and I kept going downstairs to do a line to then come back upstairs. I was like watching the party slowly degenerate as I was finishing my dissertation. I was completely sober. I mean, apart from the cocaine. Completely sober is a crazy thing to say when you were railing. Completely cocaine. Yeah, but like not, you know, I'm coke sober. yeah sure um and i i didn't trust myself to hand my dissertation in i didn't trust myself to drive it in so i walked it into town i walked to town from my house because i wouldn't drive obviously because i was completely i was like you did just dedicate a year of your life and kind of the crowning achievement of your academic career to this thing so you were prepared to roll the dice with this and it came back and i got uh one of the highest marks of like my entire module was was around that dissertation.

1:32:46So cocaine's a hell of a drug. My point being,

1:32:52when I decided I'm going to try and do something that's just for me, I looked back on my degrees and realized I should have done philosophy or psychology. I wasn't fired up about business. I didn't want to do business, but I couldn't work out what job a philosopher would get. I didn't know. I didn't know what job a psychologist would get. Psychology was interesting to me. So I suppressed what I was interested in and did it in service of a thing that I thought would be functional. And then, you know, 15 years later, I can't remember anything that I learned. So it was completely pointless. And I got the opportunity to run it back and basically create my own university course.

1:33:31And the one thing that I knew that I did want, like the one goal that I did have was to be respected by people that I respected. I really wanted to be seen as a peer by people who I admired and I think that's one of the coolest things to have someone who got dude I really fucking love your work I really like this way that you approach the world and for them to say oh yeah I like this about you too that is a fuel I think that will drive people it's not as transactional as just status growth it's wow this person is discerning and they're good at what they do and they like what I do too amazing what a great stamp commendation that i've received and that was something that i really wanted and yeah i had my fucking mount rushmore of guests and that was largely around mount rushmore of people that i wanted to respect what i did and uh that was what drove me for a good while but so do you feel like you've done that now still need to get rogan on he's fucking skittish and he keeps on going elk hunting, so he's busy.

1:34:36But yeah, I think so. I think all of the people that I started off wanting to turn from an idol into a rival and a peer, I managed to do. And that was awesome. And now it's a case of, okay, what does it look like to start to forge something new? Right. What's next? I don't know. More of this. I'm just enjoying fucking having fun on the show, speaking to people like you and seeing what a new generation of creators that I can collaborate with is like. Guys like you, Joe Foley, Alex O 'Connor, Dylan O'Sullivan, Chris Griffin, Elliot Buick. There's a lot of young talent, younger talent that's an entire generation in internet speak, but realistically only between 10 and 15 years in real life.

1:35:24And that's cool. I think that's really fun. Okay, well, what other angles have we got that we can play around with here? Who else is coming up? And then you get to be a platform for other people, which is sick, because for almost all of your career in something like this, you're basically riding off the coattails of people who are more successful than you and like suckling at the teat of someone who's already suckling today. Accumulated a lot of - A lot of that on his mind. I don't - What can I say?

1:35:56And then eventually you get to the stage where you can pay it forward and you go, wow, I really fucking like this person. I'm going to give him a crack. Angelo Summers, fucking unreal. One of the best video essayists. So good and criminally undersubscribed. I just loved his essays. I'm like, I want to talk to him. Come to Austin. I want to talk to you. It's sick. And I'm not quite yet a kingmaker, but it's good. We're getting there. And that's really, really fun. Is that, I was going to ask you a question. I feel like you kind of answered it. what would you do for free right now? What would make you really happy?

1:36:33Is it to have that next generation around and on? I would sit down and have these conversations for free. I did this before anybody listened. I did this long before anybody listened. It took, I think, two years to hit 10K subs. That's 150 episodes. And then it took three years to hit 100K. so we're now at 300 episodes and then when I moved to America you're at 250k subs and that was 450 episodes we've only done a thousand nearly 50 percent of the show was done before I moved to America and under 250k subs and then I came out here and all of this stuff happened and it It was really amazing, but I'd already done it when nobody was watching for a long time.

1:37:27Now we were stuck at, I think it was like 7K for nearly a year. And I didn't care. I just loved what I was doing and it's still the same. And so there's nothing else that I want to do at 5.20 PM central time than be here and chat to you. There's nothing else that I want to do. I'm enjoying the stage stuff. That's fun. Going and doing the live stuff's cool, but there's nothing else. All right. I've got another one. I want to harass you about this one. If you want exceptional things, you have to be willing to work toward them for exceptional periods of time. I'm willing to bet 90 % of people who didn't get where they wanted did so simply because they stopped too early.

1:38:07I'm going to do the thing, the aphorism thing. 90 % of success can be boiled down to doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time without convincing yourself you're smarter than you are is the end of that quote from, from Mr. Hormozzi himself. What was the obvious thing with growing the podcast? What are the obvious things that you did that got it to where it is today? Not stopping. That's it. With social media growth, people ask me all the time, what's the number one thing you'd recommend? Post every day for six months. 90 plus, I would guarantee you 90 plus percent of people wash out after 90 days of posting.

1:38:45And so extraordinary success comes from just doing the boring stuff, but you can't package that. You can't make an incredible viral clip out of it or a multimillion dollar business. If you just tell people, if you want to get jacked, you should probably just not stop working out and not stop eating well and not stop walking. And if you want to have a successful podcast, you should probably just not stop uploading an episode a week or two episodes a week. It's the same with social media. I haven't missed an upload in two and a half years on social media. Yeah, the byproduct is the growth, but it's the obvious thing and it's the thing it's not easy to do because things get in the way you have all these ideas or creative blocks or reasons you can't post but it's simple to understand is if you want to be where you want to be you have to do the boring shit for a long time and that's what i've noticed from everybody at the top there was never this game-changing revolutionary formula for how they got there they just kept fucking showing up and if they had 10 to give that day if i had 10 to give that day and i gave it i gave 100 percent because I truly understand that that is so much better than nothing.

1:39:48And I do think so many people on social media stop right before they pop. So many people in the gym stop right before they hit that flow state with their workouts that gets them in the best shape of their life, or they find that way of eating that feels comfortable and that they can sustain forever. Most people stop right before they strike gold. And I know if I just keep showing up, even if it all falls away like you just said i'd still do this for free if all the sponsors and the platform got stripped you'd still come into this room and record which means you climb again but not many people have the testicular fortitude to be able to do that i think also one of the things is people mistake doing something they feel they should be doing instead of doing something that they're obsessed with.

1:40:37So I've got the difference between discipline, motivation, and obsession. So discipline is, I will make myself do the thing. Motivation is, I want to do the thing. And obsession is, I can't not do the thing. Sort of climbed inside of you, and it's staring out through your eyes. And what we look at with a lot of people, now it appears like discipline. But what it is, is just the remnant of what was previously an obsession. Going to the gym, for me, was something that I did because I was obsessed with it. I wouldn't go on nights out at university because I wanted to stay in and read bodybuilding.com forums to see if this blueberry extract would get me more jacked or whatever the fuck.

1:41:13And now my training pattern is just like the hard rock that's cooled after that lava erupted for a while. And it looks like discipline from the outside, but it's actually just the remnant of this thing that kind of wore me for a while. And I don't know whether you have heard me talk about this before, but 90 % of podcasts don't make it past episode three. And of the 10 % that do, 90 % of them don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you were in the top percentile of all podcasters ever. Let's go. We did it. And it just sort of goes to show how rare consistency is. And yeah, if you want to, I want to be in the top percentile of all podcasters ever.

1:41:58Okay, just do 21. Like they can be shit. do 21 and you have already won and yeah consistency is not sexy and it doesn't really fit very well on an instagram reel because it's not a quick fix so yeah it doesn't surprise me that it doesn't surprise me that people don't want to do it i think another element a lot of people didn't get to where they are because of a lack of support so i think the lonely chapter thing. I was for a very long time, still maybe deep down now, uncertain. Am I doing this right? Is it okay for me to want to do this thing? I basically have a lifestyle-wide praise kink. And if you just say to me the thing that encouraged me, that is a really good fuel source for me.

1:42:50But that means that in the UK, somewhere which is quite disparaging if anybody wants to do anything different, it's the opposite. And I know that the Lonely Chapter thing particularly resonated with people in the UK because it's one big fuck off lonely chapter. And that's also one of the reasons I think that we've got such millionaire exit, like the, whatever it's called, brain drain, this millionaire flight that's happening from the UK. Because if you're the sort of person that wants to make a lot of yourself, it's not a wonderful culture to be in. And I really would love to change that. Yeah.

1:43:18The praise kink is a super funny way to put that. Lifestyle wide praise kink. Good boy, Chris. Good boy. Don't you do it. I don't need it from you. But I love what you just said there. The 21 episodes about putting you in the top 1%. They are probably going to be shit. That's the other thing. My love. Is what Mr. B says, create 100 videos and understand they're all going to suck. And then maybe you can start to get kind of good at it. That's the best creator on the planet by every observable metric. I look back at my old content. It's horrific. I cringe. It's awful. But it has to be shitty before it can get good.

1:43:51Your episode one through five are probably nowhere near. I listened to episode one, actually. What do you think? I mean, compared to this, you suck. Listenable, but comparatively shitty. And it's the same thing with my pod and my first videos. It's suspending the ego long enough for the skill sets to catch up. Yeah, that's lovely. That's what it really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and because your inspirations are not the people that are only one step ahead of you. They're the people that are 15 steps ahead of you or 100 steps ahead of you. So you compare that to where you are, but nobody does that nobody starts playing football on a weekend and says well cristiano ronaldo is so much better than me it's fucking pointless me even trying you go well i suppose so but if there was ever a well i i was talking to louis through this morning and he said about the two jobs that british young boys want number one is still i actually think this is a good sign number one is still to be a premier league footballer i think that's a good sign but Number two is be a YouTuber.

1:44:55And there's this weird world where what people need, what young boys need is more resilience if they're going to do that. And it seems like more patience as well. It's a particularly impatient culture for people who want to be YouTubers an awful lot. Yeah, I love that phrase, why do grown men love pro athletes so much? Because it's a kid that never gave up on their dreams. and they want to be like that. And so it's cool to hear that there are kids that are still wanting that. And I think that that childlike wonder gets taken from us at some point along the way in many people. And I still see that in what you do, the open tabs episodes, the way you fuck around, talking about how you were railing lines of Coke, like this, it's a playful, not that kids should do Coke, not what I'm saying.

1:45:42It's a great nootropic. It's laser focused. But it's at some point, something happens to us and we just forget to play and have fun. And that's why content is so easy for me to create. Proverbs 13, 12 says, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life or a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. And I viewed a tree of life in that quote as inspiration. And the hope deferred was me not creating the content. And when people ask me what my strategy is for videos, I don't have one because I treat it like a kid in a sandbox building castles. It's all content. It's all ideas and when i suspend the disbelief that it has to be anything the inspiration just continues to flow and that's i encourage all the adults out there to unpucker their asses and have fun find a way to have fun like you and i in the park the other day throwing the fucking unwinding our fucking rotator cups for 15 minutes i was not i was truly i was oh yeah i forgot it cracked oh yeah let's see if you can get this on the microphone oh it's popping inside my shoulder but i uh i went like this on the pod the other day and it just the whole studio heard but we were it was so funny the way like the 12 year old inside of all of us or inside of you and I on that walk as I bent down for the ball we both went yep and then it just no words directly into a game of catch yeah clarity and conviction is perceived by those who hear it as confidence and competence one of the most important things someone ever said to me it was a mentor of mine clarity and conviction is perceived by those who hear it as competence and confidence.

1:47:13I think communication is the number one skill you can develop in this life. You've built a career off of it and you're only as good as your ability to tell a story or tell your story or tell other people's stories on their behalf. But everybody seems to think, or so many people think, I am just this way with my speaking, my words. It's viewed as this static thing, but it's a muscle that you can train. So when you speak clearly, when you enunciate properly and with conviction, that when you sit across the table from me, whether you agree with me or not, you can tell that I believe what I'm saying.

1:47:45You're perceived by the people around you as competent, intelligent, and confident. And people follow competent, confident people. I mean, look at politicians. They might not always be telling the truth, but they sure do speak with clarity and conviction. Someone like Barack Obama's touted as one of the best speakers in the entire presidential candidacy in the history of the presidency. And people loved him because he spoke clearly and with conviction. And then people perceived him as competent and confident enough to elect him twice. So the Bible says life and death is in the tongue. What you say is incredibly powerful, both about yourself and the message that you're able to portray about whatever it is.

1:48:25So I encourage people to develop those skillsets and understand it's just a muscle. Communication skills are just a muscle. It's like the first time you went to the gym and your hands were soft. And now you look at my palms and I've got these calluses as, as you do from all the times I've picked up the dumbbell or the barbell. But the first time I did it, it hurt. And then over time, the hands got harder and more durable communication and public speaking are the same way. And that's about this crazy challenge as this public speaking challenge that I've somehow become tied to has just grown on the internet.

1:49:00I think there's something like 60 or 70 ,000 people doing it. Did I tell you about this? maybe not if if you search on instagram i know it's on more on tiktok if you search on instagram hashtag higher up wellness challenge it says 28 000 posts a year ago i made a video maybe more than this maybe two years ago i made it yeah two years ago i made a video and i said the number one skill that can change your life is the ability to communicate efficiently and effectively and if you don't think you can do it i promise you can you just need to practice so here's what i recommend I recommend you pick pick up the phone turn the front camera on hit record and talk for 60 seconds unbroken Whatever comes up whatever comes out no topics.

1:49:42No, it doesn't have to be about anything Anything goes try not to use too many filler words like um, you know, don't use those words And just speak for 60 seconds with no cuts and do it for a minimum of 30 days. I didn't say Tag me and hashtag it this I didn't try to start a challenge. What happened was this kid, Brandon, he took that video and sort of cut it up. And he said, I'm really terrified to post online and public speaking scares me. And this video convicted me to do it. So I'm just going to title this the higher up wellness, public speaking challenge. First video ever, mind you, I said, post on a burner account.

1:50:21Nobody will see it. First video ever, 5 million views overnight. Gymshark comments. I think the Cincinnati Bengals comment, like crazy, huge accounts comment on this kid just saying, I'm very nervous and I'm going to spend the next 30 days practicing my public speaking skills. And he went from zero to 40 ,000 followers overnight. And that started just this storm of people practicing their communication skills. I'm just, I think it's very cool that, and I'm honored to even be tied to it, but this kid and this other creator, Reagan did this and their videos blew up. And now I'm watching, when I click on the hashtag, I'm watching all these people.

1:50:58What I like to do is go to their day one video and then go to their day 30. Some of these people have been doing this for 380 days. There's a guy who's on day 381 and the transformation in their ability to show up, their confidence is unbelievable. I mean, it's direct evidence of the fruit of, of battling the fear of perception because everybody says i was so scared to post online in case i looked like a cornball some of them have developed social media followings one creator jet franzen went from zero to five hundred thousand i think across his platforms and just blew up and does incredible philosophical takes now and it's because he just decided to get out of his own way and do this silly challenge and it's so fucking cool to watch but it's proof that these are skills You can build clarity.

1:51:45You can build conviction. You can learn how to speak in stream of consciousness. We're not all just gifted with the ability to do it or not do it. It's a skill and you have to hone it. There's definitely an interesting duality to it that clarity and conviction is certainly perceived as confidence and competence and insight and expertise. But as you said, people who don't have expertise or competence can reverse engineer their way into seeming like somebody that you should listen to. it's the criticism of all style and no substance right but i think all substance and no style doesn't tend to get listened to james smith had this fucking unbelievable line about his first podcast he's now on his second one he's like a guy with multiple why i think he might be on his third one now um you say multiple wives well he's like a guy with multiple wives it's like serially dating his own podcast and renaming them and then fucking flipping the channel i thought you meant literally married i was like damn james on blast right now no no no not at all no he's fucking living a dad life in australia um and he had this line and he said

1:52:56on my podcast i speak to people who are far smarter than me but much more boring it's so true dude and i just thought oh that's so great or another way to look at it is everything worth saying has been said before, but nobody was listening, so it has to be said again. Has to be said with more clarity and conviction. And I think that's where James got it really right, was that a lot of people's ideas are fucking fantastic, but they just haven't yet quite worked out how to package them or promote them fully. and if you can, lots of people feel like the things that they have to contribute are really wonderful.

1:53:46Wouldn't it be great if more people knew about it? I've got a good take on what should happen with the WNBA. I really think that I can contribute to this. I think I could improve the WNBA, which I imagine needs improving. And why is no one listening to me? I think that my ideas have got veracity. I think that there's some truth in them. I think that they're really, really useful oh no one listens to me because of the style thing and it's kind of like being in a band and your band's music is just too cool it's just so progressive man like people just don't get it you it's a strange kind of protectionist strategy it keeps you at arm's distance because the fact that nobody gets it means that you're safe from ever having to compete in the landscape of ideas, music, whatever.

1:54:30Criticism. Yeah, with people who have got their foot in the door. And I think that this is one of the reasons that kind of the underground hero band is seen as a little bit sexy in that way. You wouldn't get it, man. Like it's, you know, it's so sophisticated for help. And you think, well, what if you knew how to promote it? And what if it was a little bit more attuned to the market and you still had all of this amazing technical ability on the fucking guitar or whatever it is that you're doing? and it at least adapted itself to the market somewhat. And also you need to play the game until you can start to change the rules of it.

1:55:05You don't get to change anything sat in the stands. You have to sort of earn your keep and then, okay, these are the rules of the game and now I can break them. Breaking the rules of the game before knowing them is just not playing the game. You just don't understand what you're doing. Yeah, that's it. The buy-in is to play by the rules or the opposite are, I guess the only other option would be sitting on the sideline and bitching about how the rules of the game are unfair. And nothing gets done there. So you might as well play and then learn them, just like you said. If you cannot do something as simple as return the shopping cart to its designated area, I'm going to assume you're a degenerate and your life is in shambles.

1:55:43Shopping cart theory. The litmus test for a good person. Yes. Okay, we've got two new razors out of this podcast. This has been revolutionary. I really believe that man and every that video I posted that just the other day but it's an old one and every time I think it's got the comment to like to view ratio is just totally fucked because it clearly stirs up negative emotion in people and every time somebody comments what a what a silly thing to care about or this is just stupid I would say just say you're a bad person you just added yourself completely just say you don't return the shopping cart jokes aside yeah it's a bit inflammatory and hyperbolic intentionally, but there's this great Reddit green text about how the shopping cart theory is the litmus test for if you're a functioning, self-governing member of society.

1:56:30If you can't even return your shopping cart, what can you do? What does your home life look like? What does your health look like? Everything's probably in shambles. It's with Jordan Peterson, clean your room for the Walmart generation. Yes, that's it for the Walmart. Yeah, That's exactly right. It is the test of self-agency and self-governing. It's just one of those things like, why would you not do it? Anyone who voluntarily doesn't do it, I just, safe to assume you probably also hate dogs and treat service workers poorly. It's just the other character to us. The way that you treat waiters and waitresses is a good indication of this.

1:57:08It's such a good one. And I'm just going to say, I think that Americans are the rudest fucking drivers on the planet. you guys treat lanes like they're your property you ever been to atlanta only the airport a lot but only the airport oh you've never seen driving like that before but you're right you're right because what's atlanta driving like like atlanta women you're gonna get me in trouble with all my friends back home i can't answer that i plead the fifth my opinion is that you don't want my opinion You don't want me to hear what I've got to say about Atlanta. Atlanta driving is like eyes peeled, bring a gun just in case sort of situation.

1:57:52It's if you're not 15 over, you're 15 under and everybody's really angry and got somewhere to be. But it's whatever you know to be true about Americans times three in Atlanta. Third worst traffic city in the world. Just for clarity, if you're in the UK and you are in front of the car that's in the lane that you're moving into, unless that car is going very quickly, they slow down and let you in. They flash you in. If you're in front of the car and you indicate, you get to move across. You get let in. And if you don't do that, it is incredibly bad form. Fucking unbelievably bad form. In the US, it almost feels like someone speeds up and slows down to make it impossible for you to enter the lane, even behind them.

1:58:35That's been one of the biggest changes of being here. And I feel like this is the driving equivalent of the shopping cart theory that how nice of a person can you be if you can't let somebody into the lane in front of you? Not very. We're touching on something close to your heart now, aren't we, Atlanta driver? Yeah. How's that feel? Yeah. But I'm very intentional. If you were in front of me, I'd let you in. Unless I was in a hurry, of course, and then it's fuck you. That's cute. That's really everybody's just in a hurry, I guess. Yeah, maybe. What was the biggest culture shock coming over here in terms of behaviors of people when you first got here?

1:59:08driving is a big one. Yeah. The driving quality here is horrendous. And I had to take my test and that explained why. Stupid Americans. It's, well, not necessarily stupid, just like distractible, I think. Caffeine fueled WhatsApp messaging. Fuck. Dude, we don't use WhatsApp over here. I tried to tell you that. Telegram messaging, whatever the fuck. I messaged. You should use, I mean, it would probably be fixed if you're using WhatsApp. Probably. The driving was a huge one. Tipping culture, massive, done to death, but just it's not like if you tip in the uk if you tip it's oh you're being generous and if you tip 10 it's fucking insane that you just don't need to people don't and then i went to the moody center to go and see jelly role play and there's a fully automated self-serve checkout kiosk beers and snacks and stuff like that and it asks for a tip dude that shit infuriates there is no human who am i tipping or the barista that you give them a black call you ask for a black coffee in a six second interaction they flip the screen and then stare at you so that that is because supposedly service workers are paid poorly i don't know what they get paid in in the u.s but if it's just a fucking robot dude sam altman sorry your downstream fucking progeny don't get my i'm not paying your fucking robot assistance it wouldn't be sam who would it be boston dynamics boston dynamics i'm sorry i'm not fucking paying you your little robot assistance dude we gotta go to dinner we got dinner with trigonometry and richard reeves uh where should people go you fucking rule i think your content's great and uh thank you brother i look forward to seeing what you do so why should people go uh higher up wellness on all platforms the higher up podcast I will say I am I don't have the name memorized but I'd love to uh share this because it just got news today marathon weekend in London I'm doing my first live show at the Bush Hall the Bush Hall theater yep April 25th marathon weekend tickets on that tickets for that go on sale this week I will be promoting it so just be on the lookout we're gonna do people get tickets uh it's gonna be posted to my Instagram story the link's not live I tried to ask him where can they get them And he said, I can't tell you that yet.

2:01:24We don't have it. So it'll be posted like hell on my social medias across the board. But thank you so much for giving me the time, man. I was sitting here before the episode went on and we were chatting and I said, I think I hold a pretty esteemed accolade. I think I'm, I was reviewing the guest list and I think I'm top 10 least formally educated guests you've ever had on the show. So to you community college grads, there's hope for you out there. Well done. I ranked in the most retarded modern wisdom guest. All right. Appreciate you. Goodbye, everybody. Bye. Thank you.

2:01:56I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life changing reads that I've ever found. And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free. And you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books