#702 - 16 Lessons From 700 Episodes

30:25All of that, like these unnecessary caveats and the hurdles that guys need to jump over, especially in some regards, if you're a young dude that goes to the gym, right? You're just branded as some right wing firebrand, andru -tate, like, fucking from wish, because that is how the mainstream media has captured all of the conversations around men. And it's just, that bit sucks. But anyway, I was trying after the conversations that had to work out why men struggling and is largely a thankless task. Like, why is it that it's so hard to give men any attention or to give them much attention in the mainstream media?

31:15And I think it's because of a zero sum view of empathy. So there's an assumption that any attention paid toward men takes it away from women or some other minority group who is more deserving. Like, after all, haven't had it good for long enough, maybe they should just suck it up for a while, but empathy doesn't work in this way, right? Like it's not a limited resource and recognizing the plights of men does not ignore the plights of women. And ultimately, women end up suffering in any case because it's this increasing cohort of apathetic, checked out resentful men who contribute to the exact lack of eligible partners that women say that they're struggling with.

31:58So the women who post like mocking tweets saying, boohoo, poor patriarchy sad whilst also complaining, where are all of the good men at? It's just mating logic, sepuku, right? Like they're just... If one sex loses, both sex is lose. And I think the difference is... The main difference is that at least when it comes to women's problems and they have many of them, I think that five or ten years time, the actual big story is going to be male body image and female crisis of femininity. I think that it's going to pivot, whereas at the moment it's mostly in terms of the way that people appear, women's bodies, standards and body types and men's mental health.

32:46I think that's going to flip based on the trends. male body dysmorphiria is set to overtake women within the space of the next two decades. So everything's going to go upside down. But anyway, male blame, right? A common question, I think, is why don't men just do better? Surely they can just try harder in school and employment and in health. It's like chop chop men hurry up and stop being so useless. But But no other group is told that when they suffer with poor performance or accolades in the real world, that they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Like we don't tell any other group that they should just talk about their problems.

33:29Instead we spend billions in taxpayer funded money and private charity to set up committees, departments and campaigns and funds to solve the problem. So, if a woman has a problem, we ask, what can we do to fix society? And if a man has a problem, we ask, what can men do to fix themselves? And it's a blatant double standard. And anyone who is unwilling to admit the structural disadvantages faced by men are standing in the way of us solving the problems that are hurting men and the potential wives that they should be viable for. The problems are not in men's heads, but they're out there in society.

34:10We shouldn't gaslight men into thinking that they can solve these problems by just being less toxically masculine. If the patriarchy is so powerful, why aren't men flourishing more? The single biggest risk to a man under the age of 40 is his own hands. Christians. Christi and I have had this really lovely quote where she said, many men feel that their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of just because you're in the majority doesn't mean you don't need support. So in this regard, modern men are being made to pay for the sins and the advantages that that perhaps their fathers and their grandfathers enjoyed.

34:55And, you know, it's just, it's such a shame that men are kind of told if only you were less masculine, if only you were more like a woman. Like most of the, or the only in fact, mainstream publicly acceptable versions of masculinity look an awful lot like traditional femininity. They need to open up more about their emotions. They need to not be so focused on status and prestige and mastery and conquering. Their aggression needs to be tuned down. Or, you know, okay, like, I get that, but that's not fixing masculinity. That's neutering masculinity, right? It's not sanitizing the bad elements that men are struggling from.

35:43It's sterilizing them altogether. And yeah, it's just, it's not gonna work. It's ultimately not gonna work because you're fighting against biology. And then there was a study, I wish I'd read it earlier on, but Dr. John Barry, he was on the show, maybe six months ago, Center for Male Psychology, the lead for the Center of Male Psychology. And he said, having a negative view of masculinity, damages boys and men's mental health, brand new research, assessing the views of over 4 ,000 men, found that thinking masculinity is bad for your behavior, is linked to having worse mental wellbeing. Around 85 % of respondents thought that the term toxic masculinity is insulting and probably harmful to boys, although the direction of causation isn't definite, right?

36:31Do negative views about masculinity damage mental health or does low mental health cause men to view masculinity negatively? It's clear that negative views of masculinity are linked to wellbeing to a significant degree. And on the other hand, having a positive view of masculinity is linked to better mental well -being. And it fits with other evidence that's overlooked in the media and everywhere that masculinity can be beneficial to mental health. The news shouldn't really be any surprise to any average person on the street who actually recognized the value of masculinity, but much more people who are in academia and the media and the government probably don't.

37:09There's rare exceptions, but the majority of information about masculinity that we all get exposed to is unreasonably negative. So you can be forgiven for thinking that men are the oppressors of women rather than the protectors of women. And interestingly, the study found that better mental well -being was associated with believing masculinity makes men protective of women. And worse mental well -being was associated with believing masculinity makes men feel violent toward women. So one of the implications of the study is that if we want men to have good mental health, a useful strategy might be to help them appreciate the ways in which their masculinity can have a positive impact on their behaviour and the people around them.

37:54So the message to schools and the media and the government from Dr. John Barry is there is more to be gained by being positive, so it's time to stop being so negative about men and masculinity. And if you were to think that it's kind of it's almost like an information hazard that the self -fulfilling prophecy of what you tell men, what you tell people about what they are and what that means actually ends up changing the outcomes of their mental health. If you allow the media and academia to perpetuate a negative narrative about masculinity, that is directly linked to worse mental health outcomes for men.

38:42That's almost like, I don't know, like a custom pathogen or something that only impacts half of the population and only impacts their mental health, but just allowing that to be perpetuated. And the presumption is, oh, you know, like men are just whining, they need to get over it. It's like, hang in a second. I thought that the whole point of this was that we were trying to bring men along for the ride and that we were supposed to care about their mental health. So yeah, that's like that whole masculinity conversation. I'm really glad that I had so many great guests on, you know, George from the Tin Man, just phenomenal, super, super interesting dude, talking about it from a leftist perspective.

39:22Christine Amber talking about it from a feminist perspective. Really great. I think Richard Reeves has got something new coming out next year too, so he'll be back on. I think he might, no, it's going to be next year. Anyway, something else that I realized I came up with this rule called the parental cloud gauge, which is how I work out whether a news story has reached mainstream significance or not. And it's not when it trends on Twitter or or hit daytime news or lands on the front page of a newspaper, it's when my dad messages me about it on Facebook. Like that is holy shit, like this is a big story.

40:03He messaged me maybe 18 months ago saying, I see your friend Mr. Rogan is in the news again. And he messaged something about Andrew Tate as well. It's like it can be all well and good. You know, there can be like millions, billions of tweets trending on Twitter. That's fine, but when your mum or your dad messages you about something from your world, that's when you go, oh my god, like, what's that? This has got way out of hand and way too big. So the rule stands pretty well too, that it's only the biggest stories that actually cross the threshold from the millennial boomer wall that's being built.

40:48Yeah, it's funny. I put out last week on my newsletter. I put out a new theory about why women support body positivity so much or at least a contributing element to it. So I'm going to try and dance through this minefield here. I do think that there's some there there, but upfront, it's only a potential theory, so just hear me out. It's also not a comment on anyone as a person. So this is the rivalry theory of body positivity. Female support for body positivity is at least in part fueled deep down by female intersexual competition, which pushes women out of the dating pool by discouraging them from losing weight.

41:36So, Bilba on one of his Netflix specials where he did it outdoors at Red Rocks, I think, said, quote, you guys are so into destroying each other. I see all that sneaky shit you do. Ladies, if you could just support the WNBA, the way you support a fat chick who's proud of her body and no longer a threat to you, that league would be doing better numbers than the NBA. Oh my god, you're a goddess, you're gorgeous, you look great in that bikini. I'd kill myself if I looked like that. Keep eating, keep eating, lose a toe, you fat bitch. It's like if you saw an alcoholic, oh my god, your face down passed out, your kids are crying, you're a hero, you're a god, keep doing what you're doing.

42:17So that really got me thinking. I was like, that's ruthless, but really, really smart. And then there was this new study that just came out a couple of weeks ago in the journal of personality and individual differences, that kind of put a little bit more legitimacy to this idea than just like some comedians two minute segment. So they found that women who are high in intracexual competitiveness are more likely to advise women who they perceive as potential mating threats to cut off more hair potentially in an attempt to sabotage their attractiveness. The researchers studied 450 women who are presented with hypothetical salon clients.

43:01Participants were asked to cut off the amount of hair, to recommend the amount of hair to be cut off for each client. Women who reported higher levels of intracetual competitiveness were more likely to recommend that clients have more hair cut off when the hair was in good condition, and clients expressed a preference for minimal cutting. And the reason behind this recommendation might be to subtly manipulate the appearance of the rivals, right? Because long a hair is a cue to youth and health. By advising more extensive haircuts, these women could potentially diminish the physical attractiveness of other women.

43:41Another finding is that women advise clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hair. So in this scenario, participants effectively targeted women they perceived as being on the same attractiveness level as them, which suggests a form of competitive behaviour called horizontal competition when individuals compete with others of similar attributes or qualities. So the choice to focus on women of similar attractiveness may be strategic. High attractive individuals may not pose a significant mating threat to others because they likely already have access to high quality mates.

44:21on the other hand, targeting less attractive individuals might not yield the desired results, as their physical appearance might not be easily harmed through hairstyle changes. Okay, so why do I think that this relates to the body positivity movement? Because as far as I can tell, the parallels seem pretty obvious. Plus, you get social renown for standing up for a mistreated group. And importantly, there's no body positivity movement for men. right? If a guy is unhappy with his body, either publicly or privately, most guys won't say something along the lines of, you know, you're absolutely gorgeous as you are.

45:02You shouldn't feel any discomfort between where you are and where you want to get to. And women, the justification for this from an Eve site perspective is that women use indirect aggression way more than men do. So men's intracetual competition is more like a large sledgehammer, whereas women's is like a poisoned arrow that you never see coming. And I'm not saying that this is the entirety of the justification for female support for body positivity, but I think it would be naive to say that it doesn't contribute at all. Now I imagine that this is going to be an unpopular idea because it's uncomfortable to realize that what we thought were altruistic compulsions might have a selfish, undercurrent.

45:52But intracexual competition is a hell of a motivator. And it's just an idea, but I do think that there is something here to do with this. And if I make it through the next couple of weeks, then I'll be fine. Another thing that I've been thinking about a good bit, I've started pivoting back into a little bit of productivity stuff because the show has been quite aggressive, plus, obviously, a new tonic launch, which has been just so much work behind the scenes. And then Live Tour, which is Ireland and UK and Dubai and Canada and America supporting James and Methylated this year. And then just a ton of all of the cinema episodes, everything.

46:37There's been lots and lots of pressure behind the scenes for me. So I got back into thinking about productivity and there was this idea from Anna Codriarado that I totally forgot about and then I was reminded of it and it's just I've fallen in love with it. So this is productivity dysmorphia. Productivity dysmorphia is the inability to see one's own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output. It sits at the intersection of burnout, out, imposter syndrome and anxiety. It is ambitions alter ego. The pursuit of productivity spurs us to do more while robbing us of the ability to save or any success that we might encounter along the way.

47:19I've started thinking of this unhealthy relationship I have with my professional achievements as productivity dysmorphian, and I said, I have realized that it is an inability to see my own success. It's like I'm looking in the mirror of my professional life and I don't see the published author staring back at me, all I see is a failure. So good, dude. Productivity, dysmorphia is just this total jaded opinion of what we do of the achievements that we have made of the outcomes that we're getting on a, you know, or minute or daily basis, especially, especially if you are a little bit more isolated when it comes to the work that you do, you know, if you're a work from home kind of person or work for yourself or, you know, nomads, entrepreneur type thing.

48:10Or, you know, anybody that just isn't part of a team that has very objective metrics of success, because who you're comparing yourself to, right? How are you comparing your PT sessions that you do for your clients with someone else's where you can come in and do more PT sessions earlier or later than everyone else? Are you fit more into the same time when your clients get better outcomes? It's all kind of fluffy stuff. It's real hard to work out. How much of that has got there and how much of the rest of it is just me sort of beessing myself. And then for the people that work at home, Dude, I went to an office for the first time in probably two years, the back end of 2021.

49:00I want to go and see Mike Winett from the Contrapreneur series at his office in Warrington, which is not even Manchester in the Northwest of the UK. And I went to go and see him and I'd, you know, just been locked in the house for quite a while, working for the best part of two years and then snapped a kill, he's in all the rest of it. So we're quite insulated and forgotten what normal office like was life was like. And, you know, Mike's team, hardworking and they do their stuff and all the rest of it. But I went in and just observed people, you know, that all of the fucking distractions that you have of an open plan office, how someone's going to get up and just anybody want a coffee and then you know for 90 seconds or two minutes everyone talks about the different coffee.

49:49I once had a really great coffee from this place and are there any of those biscuits left with the ones that have got the raisins in it? What about the oh we're going to have to go to the we need to get more coffee for the whatever. And I realized that my perception of my own work rate was measured against some totally arbitrary view of perfection that was unrealistic anywhere else and it's only when you get around other people and you realize especially in some way like an office, just how much slippage there is. So much, just things occurring that just chip away here and there. And this isn't to say that it doesn't happen at home.

50:31In fact, you know, for some people, maybe even for most, it also does happen even more so at home because there's no one looking over your shoulder to make sure that you don't scroll Instagram or check YouTube or reply to emails when you're supposed to be deep working or do something else when you're supposed to be replying to emails, like, I don't think that any one situation is necessarily better than the other, but although there are definitely personalities that lend themselves to one of the other being better, but there is definitely a case to be made that you should see your level of productivity with a lot more equanimity than you do.

51:05And this kind of leads into an idea I had about monk mode. So I'd, I first learned about monk mode. Fuck, like 2018, probably, probably 2018, and one of my friends, Jordan, sent me this awesome article from Illimitable Man, who was kind of red pill before there was red pill, but it was much more to do with productivity and personal men's advice and exclusively about dating and doing things for dating. But the last few years we've seen Monk Mode really accelerate. Iman Gadzee is a big proponent of it. I think he's got an app or something that tracks your Monk Mode. So, yeah, it's grown hugely in popularity over the last few years.

51:53And it's especially amongst men, a popular self -improvement strategy. So, for the people that don't know, Monk Mode is at least originally a productivity strategy you where you retreat from the world to focus on three eyes. There's introspection, isolation, and improvement. And despite the recent ascendance, it's nothing new, like I say, that 2014 blog post that I read from Elimitable Man described it as, monk mode is a temporary form of men going that own way. By cutting yourself off from the rest of the world for a while, you can find junior focus, calibrate your direction, and confront yourself.

52:34You'll be acknowledging your weaknesses, and then formulating a plan of action to deal with them. So the focus is on minimizing your time contributed to social obligations and junk activities because these consume much of your time whilst yielding little to negligible increases toward your social market value. So Monkmo is a serious commitment not to be half -assed. You're either doing it or you're not. It'll be a struggle in the beginning, but once you've fully engaged, it becomes beneficial and productive. And there I say it, even an addictive lifestyle. And that's the words of a limitable man.

53:07So it's that last bit, even an addictive, dare I say, even an addictive lifestyle. So for me, right, the reason I can comment on this is I've gone full monk mode a number of times in my life with really, really great success. I did 2017, did 2018, then I did mid 2019, basically straight through COVID until 2021, when I moved out here. I cut out alcohol for over 2 ,000 days in the last eight years. I did 500 days without caffeine, 1500 sessions of meditation, over five years of daily journals filled, like over 300 sessions of Yin Yoga, 500 sessions of Stuart McGill's Big Three, pretty much all of that done in a bedroom, in Newcastle, sat on my own, usually first thing in the morning, and almost all of the most important progress that I've ever made was facilitated by a concentrated period like this.

54:00So you might think why have you got a problem with monk mode if you have benefited from it so much and it was such a powerful productivity tool for you, but it's precisely monk mode's reliable effectiveness Creates a problem because the dark side is that addictive lifestyle thing the issue is monk mode Justifies a retreat from life and risk and self adventure as it justifies it as self -development and it makes you feel noble in isolation. So much so that it can become hard to bring yourself back out. And this means that if you already have a tendency to live a sheltered slightly unsocial life, you're encouraging yourself to further abscond away from ever building a real -life support network, which is ultimately the thing you need the most in the long run.

54:55And I saw this in a friend probably a decade ago. So he went on a fitness journey. He was already pretty introverted and shy. And then he had an upcoming fitness competition which justified 8 PM bad times and militant routines and the rejection of all social invites. The competition came and went, but the routine didn't change. and it took years for him to revanchure out into some sense of normality. And this is largely a personal reflection for me as well, right? The allure of perpetually working on yourself is very, very high because improvement is rewarding. But if you're not careful, you can spend the rest of your life focused on those three eyes at the expense of the actual reason that you did monk mode in the first place to be able to show up in the world in a better way.

55:51Bill Perkins, the dude that wrote, die with zero, who's now become a really good friend, says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And with monk mode, you practice in private so that you can perform in public, private practice in the extreme results in no public performance. So the fear is, I guess the summary is don't obsess for too long in solitude for personal growth or you will struggle to reintegrate and the best solution that I've found and kind of my strategic tactical takeaway is to periodize, right? So you set a deadline for your monk mode to end three to six months, I think it's a sweet spot in my experience.

56:35You can do longer if you've not done it before and shorter if you've been doing it a good bit, but if you do not set some sort of end goal you're just going to continue to blast through whatever time, what's the reason for you to ever reintegrate? And you hear this in YouTube comments and I get it like I do I've been there. I've been the person who has found the comfort of not having to rely on other people of always saying no to social invites to the point where you no longer need to say no, especially if you're a bit of a people please are like, I am saying no to things is tough. So creating a routine of people not inviting you because they know that you're going to say no.

57:23Also alleviates the nose that you have to say in future. It is so seductive and enjoyable to go and do this thing. But the reason that you went to go and do this isolation personal development thing in the first place was to then reintegrate into the world as a leveled up higher social market value, more equanimous, more calm, more peaceful, more competent person with this whole new skill set and this degree of self -love and self -awareness. And if you never actually bother to reintegrate, or if you even make it so difficult to reintegrate because you can't remember what it's like to not do that, it's dangerous.

58:07Like, it's, there are, here there be demons or whatever it is. Here, here, there be monsters. Something that can be really, really good in the first place can end up being toxic at high doses. And I think Monk Mode is one of those. And I would have made life a little bit easier if I'd just taken small breaks every six months, also as opposed to doing these much bigger, longer stretches where breaking the habit becomes super rough. So post content clarity is another idea that I fell in love with and I was, you know, largely a lot of what I'm doing is trying to aggregate interesting shit from the internet and books and and other podcasts and and musen stuff and then use them to instigate new ideas on my or on the show or in my writing.

59:01And I was finding myself feeling, I don't know, just unsettled sometimes after I would consume certain bits of content. So I wanted to create a rule for myself that would help me work out whether the content that I was consuming was making my life better or worse. Because the problem is, while you will watch anything, you're distracted by the content itself, which means that you can't judge how the content impacts you during the consumption of it. The creator of whatever you're consuming has designed a content to be compelling and to keep you hooked because if they didn't, they'd be beaten by another creator who just did that better.

59:43But just because something is compelling doesn't mean that it's good for you. You will happily hate watch, adversarial, argumentative videos, because not because there's a fascinating question being answered, but because you want to make your team, you want to see your team, make the other team look silly. And you pity follow accounts to check in on the slow motion car crash of whatever catastrophe is happening in some person's existence. Are you descending to scroll holes and browse Twitter arguments as your heart rate gets jacked up through the roof in some silent apoplectic rage? But when you finish consuming it, you forget that you consumed it and you move on with your life and you don't assess whether or not that was actually good for you.

1:00:26So in this way, you're kind of like a shop owner in a shop with no walls. You're allowing your most valuable resource, which is your attention, to be stolen by whichever individuals are the most bold and aggressive. and then tomorrow you forget that they didn't pay you and you allow them to do it all over again. So the solution I think is to ask yourself, how does watching different creators make me feel? Right? Some YouTube channels are compelling and limitically hijacking and they keep me watching, but I feel uptight and tense and negative and cynical and zero sum after watching them. Like, I don't want to message my friends and tell them that I miss them or pay people compliments or ring my mom or Go outside and see nature and I feel like the world is against me and That's not the sort of content that I want to consume any of No matter how much it makes my dopamine fire, right on the other hand You can watch content or read or whatever listen to stuff that makes you feel the most connected to the world that makes you feel hopeful and open and prepared and informed and light and aligned.

1:01:41If you think that your body is made up of what you put into your mouth, your mind is made up of things that you put into your eyes and ears, and your content diet should be spirulina for the soul, not fast food for your amygdala. So, thinking very carefully about how you feel after you consume some content is the only fix for this, because during the consumption of it, it is so compelling and it's been designed to be that compelling. And if it wasn't sufficiently compelling, you wouldn't be watching it. You'd be watching something which is more compelling. You can't really defeat the consumption of the content while you're consuming it.

1:02:20What you can do is assess how you feel afterward. If you go back through your YouTube history, which is something that you can do, and think, okay, how did I feel after I watch that. It's best to do it probably, you know, five or ten minutes after you finish up. Hmm. Check that as well. Sexy little, new tonic cooler. Um, think about how you feel after you finished watching something or reading something, spending time on any social media and just reflect, okay, would I want to do that again tomorrow? And if not, start to tune down your use of that. You know, there's a not interested or don't show this channel or not interested, I think, to options that you can click when you see videos on your home feed.

1:03:08So let's say that you watch some video and you don't like it. Don't show this channel. You will never see that channel again on your suggested feed, right? Or in up next. There you go. That's fixed. If it's more platform wide, you know, you can delete the app. If you can managed to stick to it. George Mack has this solution of his two phones where he's got a cocaine phone and he's got a kale phone. The cocaine phone is only on Wi -Fi and the kale phone is the one that goes around with them on the time and the cocaine phone's got all of the bullshit on it and the kale phone has just got like Uber and audible and kindle and stuff like that.

1:03:46George Hedge actually has an awesome rule. He calls max content razor. Would you consume your own content if not, don't post it? Awesome, right? You know, I asked a bunch of different guys over the last year, whether or not they would consume the stuff that they make and there's definitely a trend amongst the guys who amongst the guys who seem more dissatisfied with their content creation life that when I ask them that question, there's like a... Like, dude, if it takes you more than five seconds to say yes, that's a fucking no, right? That's one of the advantages, I think, like let's break the fourth all about some content creation stuff, right?

1:04:45Like when you... Etonic bottle. When you start doing any content, the accepted wisdom is you should niche down super, super hard, capture an audience, get the thousand true fans, and then you can broaden out from that because it's way easier to penetrate into a very small cohort or a narrow cohort than it is to penetrate across multiple cohorts all at once. The problem is, as far as I can see, very few people are just interested in one thing. Like, there's some obsessive CrossFit people out there, but even the most obsessive CrossFit person is also into 70s jazz, you know, and, and, and, rum comms and, uh, loves to play pickleball.

1:05:32Like, you know, there's the cooking, bakery, whatever. Everyone is this Frankenstein's monster of idiosyncratic limbs that's kind of been attached to a torso. And by niching down super, super hard, what it does is get you known very, very well for one thing, but in future that can often become your, kind of like an Achilles heel, but it's almost a restrictive label. You know, Zach, my housemate, started off in fitness for a long time and crushed. He's got some of the best fitness videos. If you're talking Olympic weightlifting, I think he's the best on all of YouTube. Olympic weightlifting is a super popular sport, but he's now at a stage of his life where he may never go back and compete in Olympic weightlifting again.

1:06:22And he does much, he's got way more varied interests. He's interested in philosophy and psychology and human nature and culture. Okay, so he now has to pivot from that super tight, defined niche to try and broaden out. And as he does that, the people who came for one thing are going to leave. Look, it's not impossible to do. And I think that Zach will do a good job of it. So if you want to watch, if you want to watch us, someone does it. I guess you just watch his channel over the next couple of years. but certainly from my side, would you consume your own content if not don't post it? If you are not engaged with the stuff that you are producing online, the sort of things that you're talking about, the kind of stories that you're sharing on your Instagram, etc.

1:07:12Just stop. Don't do it. Just make stuff and share stuff that you like, not that you think people will like. Because ultimately, if you're only doing what people, what you think people will like, you become a puppet and you outsource your sense of self -worth and all of the content creation to the crowd. You know, these episodes, I don't know, it's, well, an hour and ten minutes or something me waffling on about bro philosophy horse shit that I've like pulled out of my pulled out of the last nine months of life in the hopes that something's interesting. But it's what I would have wanted 10 years ago.

1:07:49Like this entire show is what I wish that I had when I was 25 and starting to realize there's probably more to the world than just getting drunk and partying. All right, where do I start? So and it still largely is. All of the lessons still largely are. So yeah, all right, let's do, let's do too much. I've got this, this, like, double up from Mark Manson, which is great. So this is about resilience. The willingness to be disliked is a superpower. If you develop the willingness to be disliked, you will inevitably have the courage to do the hard things that most people are not willing to do. This will then imbue your life with a sense of meaning and importance.

1:08:29It will also lead to success that others will be too intimidated to go after, but I would go even further than this. I would argue that until you're comfortable with the disapproval of others, you are not truly a free individual yourself. You must develop the ability to be disliked in order to free yourself from the prison of other people's opinions. Learn to do what's right, even if others think it might be wrong. Learn to tolerate criticism and negative feedback because that's what will make you better. Learn to be laughter, hate it on and trolled, because if you can become comfortable with the hate, you'll be fucking unstoppable.

1:09:06And he's got this other, uh, what's that book? The courage to be disliked by some Japanese author whose name I'm going to absolutely butchered and I haven't read, but I've heard is really great. He also taught me about choose your suck every single pursuit, no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous it may initially seem, comes with its own brand of shit sandwich its own lousy side effects. Everything sucks some of the time. You just have to decide what sort of suckage you're willing to deal with. So the question is not so much what are you passionate about? The question is what are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?

1:09:46Because if you love something and want something enough, whatever it is, then you don't really mind eating the shit sandwich that comes with it. And Mark said this on the episode that we did a couple of months ago where he mentioned that when the blogosphere started kicking off a few years ago, maybe a decade ago or so, he would go to these conventions. And I think his blog post, he would maybe do multiple thousand, two thousand, three thousand word essays per week. And he would be asked, I think, by other people, how he was able to put out such a high volume of content and he said something on the lines of like it just comes it comes a combination of easily to me and the difficulty comes easily to me too.

1:10:36It's like, oh that's interesting. The difficulty comes easily to me too. Like that's the shit sandwich that he's prepared to eat and I think it helps to make you much more aligned with what you want. Anything that you want to pursue is going to be it's going to have an amount of associated pain. And the best predictor is not who loves the thing the most. The best predictor is who else can deal with the suck that comes along with whatever you want to do the best. So yeah, orienting yourself toward the difficulties as opposed to toward the pleasures will no one very few people stop doing a thing or don't achieve success because of a lack of pleasure.

1:11:14It's more an increase of pain, I think. Yes, sure, you need positive reinforcement, but you get that from the dopamine of just making progress in any case. The pains that you come up against, the burnout, the self -doubt, the, oh god, I've got to do that thing. I got to get the paint brush out and get the ease of that or whatever. That's really what's going to cause you to stop as far as I can see. So yeah, orient yourself toward the pains and that would be the best way to do this. Anyway, utonic .com, go try this, get yourself a case right now. available on Amazon Prime next day delivery UK and US.

1:11:49You're going to get that right now at eutonic .com or search on Amazon for N -E -U -T -O -N -I -C. And that's pretty much it. I will see you in 98 more episodes.