#964 - Simon Sinek - How To Find Meaning When Life Feels Overwhelming

25:51You teach me things. You show me things. You hold me accountable when I screw up. I like that. Invariably you're probably going to get a response that says, you're doing the same for me and I really appreciate too. Or, well, I'm glad you like it. I don't get that for me. You're going to get information. But I think that the pursuit of friendship is to find someone who's willing to grow with you. Now, the big caveat is, are you willing to grow yourself? Are you willing to grow yourself? And I think where people get stuck, and this is the saddest part, I hear people tell me, I have no close friends.

26:32They have friends they hang out with. People they have a good time with, go out, play video games with whatever it is, you know? But they wouldn't call any of them to say I'm struggling. And so that's where the loneliness sets in. And there is some degree of accountability there, right? Where we can play the victim. And to be a victim means I am not accountable. Right, that's what it is. It is being done to me, but I am not, I'm a passive player in this. right? And even if that's true, you still have a role in this thing called your life. You're the actor in this play, right? You still have a role to play.

27:20And so even if things are being done to you, how you respond is you, right? How you respond to conflict is you? You can choose to just disengage. I've seen that happen professionally. I've seen it happen personally. Something goes, hey, wire, whether they deserve it or not. And they choose to just disengage. We'll screw this as opposed to learning how to have a confrontation, which doesn't mean coming and screaming and yelling and pointing. It means it comes in saying, I am struggling. There is a story that I'm telling myself. I don't know if it's true or not, but can I tell you my story?

28:06And there's a great irony in it when you have a confrontation like that, which is your job is to help is to help the other person feel safe even though you feel that they're the oppressor. Hmm. Okay, let's unpack that. Deacon, who is a BAFTA winning, I think she's an Emmy winning as well, a documentarian, grew up, she's a Muslim woman living in the UK. She made some comments on the BBC that went viral about multicultural society and she started getting trolled by the far right by the white supremacists. It got so bad that the police advised her to stay away from open windows. The way that Dia responded was to move to the United States and try to get to know white supremacists.

29:06She was at Charlotte'sville, walking with them, not marching with them, but walking with them, big difference. And she offered them a safe space to feel heard. Now, this sounds insane, right? They should be giving her a safe space to feel hurt. Yeah, but that's never going to happen. And that's part of the problem. And I talked to Dia after George Floyd, I talked to her after January 6th, I talked to her after all of these sort of big events. And she said to me, you're not going to like my answer, but in all the research that she's done with she had ease and white supremacists and all of it. In every circumstance, she says the victim has to go first.

29:46Because the quote unquote oppressor will never go first. They will never do it. And so what she did, and she made a documentary called White Right Meeting the Enemy, you can go watch it happen, you can see it. She doesn't agree with them, she doesn't affirm their beliefs, but she offers them a safe space to feel heard. And then over the course of time, something happens. You see the transformation. They can no longer reconcile their racist points of view with the fact that they now trust this woman and consider her a friend and one by one they drop out of the movement. And so if there is a boss who is a bad boss or a friend who is a bad friend or a partner who is a bad partner, you can play the victim and you can wait and wait and wait for them to do the right thing.

30:32Which should they? Yeah, they should. Yeah, it's your boss, they should know better. They should be the one that comes in says, hey, it's not working out. Let's can we have a conversation? All this tension, I'd like to lean into the tension. You're with a partner. I'd like to lean. We've been tense for the past three weeks. I'd like to lean into it. Yeah, yeah, they should. They won't either because they don't care. They don't know. They don't have the skills. They're embarrassed. They're afraid. Who knows what the reasons are? Only a few times is because they hate you and they want to hurt you.

31:03Most of the times it's obliviousness, fear, lack of skills. And so yeah, you're the one who has to go and this is where the accountability comes in. You're gonna have to walk in and be like, Hey, here's the story I'm telling myself. I feel like you hate me. You don't say you hate me. That's an accusation. I feel. I feel like you hate me. And there's a few things and maybe I'm looking for the evidence because I'm really sensitive right now, but Let me tell you the three things that make me feel like you hate me. And I want to put it on the table because I don't want to hate you and I don't want us to fail.

31:37And I don't know how to have this conversation, but I want to put it on the table. That is a human skill. And those are the skills we're lacking. Those are the skills we're lacking. And the only reason to want to learn those skills is because we take accountability for the people that we are. I can't control anything in this world. I can't control how people treat me. I can't control world events. I can't control politics. I can't control natural disasters. I have zero control over any of that. So I can sit around and wait for the world to look after me. And sometimes I'll get lucky and sometimes I'll get unlucky.

32:19You know, things have gone my way by no talent of my own, and things have gone badly no matter how much I tried.

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33:45Is you can't take full responsibility when things go right either. You can't mix your logics, right? I love talking to like finance people. I love talking to bankers because when they make tons of money, they'll tell you it's because they're geniuses. And if they lose tons of money, they'll tell you it's because of the market conditions. You can't mix your logics. You're either lucky and unlucky, or you're a genius and an idiot, but you can't mix the logics. And the same goes with ourselves. I can't take all the credit when things go right. If I won't take some responsibility when things go wrong, I can either choose to say all my success is dumb luck and all of my failures are bad luck, or I can say I work hard and I'm an idiot.

34:31Right? I can't mix the logics. You can pick what's the logic you want, I don't care.

34:40But you can't mix them. And I think this is part of what we're saying, which is I can choose to go through life, luckier, unlucky. It's a mode. You can choose to just walk through life, you know, it's not a criticism. Or you can choose to say, no, no, no, I take responsibility that I in some way shape or form contribute to the situation that I'm in and the feelings that I have. And even though I may not have been able to control the circumstances, I can control my reaction to those circumstances. Did I go off the handle? Did I attack somebody personally? Did I attack them versus their behavior?

35:13We do that. That one is the easiest one to fix on the most common one we make, the common mistake we make. You're a liar versus you told me a lie. You attack someone's character, watch how they respond. They will come back with ferocity. If you say you told me a lie, you can actually have a conversation about that. It's a behavior. You're a cheat. You cheated. I am not a cheat, but I did cheat. It's not my character. Remember, everybody thinks they're good. And this is the thing that I think people get wrong all the time, which is really fun. And just to have these little awarenesses, I'll give you a great example.

35:57So, do you remember the movie in glorious bastards? I didn't watch them. Oh, it's one of the greatest films ever made. I mean, I cannot recommend it enough. Christophe Valtz, who plays the Nazi, plays the main Nazi. It put him on the map. He was this obscure Austrian actor and then this movie made him an international star. I think he won an Oscar for it, actually. He's brilliant in it. He's chillingly brilliant. How good he is in this Nazi role, right? And he's relaxed and he's got a sense of humor. He doesn't play this caricature of evil. You know, that's one of the reasons he's so chilling.

36:39He's so good at it. So he was on a talk show when he was promoting the movie. And the host asks him, what did you have to do as an actor to play evil so effectively? And he's literally, look, he's got this look of total confusion on his face. He doesn't understand the question. He goes, What? And the host says again, you are so good. What did you have to source yourself from to play evil? You were so scary. And he looks at the host and goes, he wasn't evil. And this is why he was so good at his role, because what he understood is no one thinks they're evil. Everyone thinks they're on the side of good.

37:23Everyone thinks they're on the side of good. We look at our political discourse these days. it's fricking hilarious. Everybody's accusing each other of being evil and bad, but both sides, if you talk to them, actually think that they're trying to do good. Both sides are on the side of good. And if you just remember that, that people think they're on the side of good. Now, they may be misdirected, and all of those things are still true, but everybody thinks they're on the side of good. If you just start with that basic knowledge, how we interact is very different. Where we no longer seek to criticize, because you're evil, that's my judgment.

37:55But I seek to understand where you're sourcing that good from. And curiosity is a great way to interact with human beings with whom we disagree. Isn't it interesting that we are better at giving advice to other people than we are to ourselves? You know, a little bit of time spent refining our, are we in the advice giving mode or in the listening mode, learning to have a mindfulness gap, being able to sit with silence and all of this sort of stuff. That is a skill that I think most people can develop really well for a fund. I think so. That is a skill that I think most people will really struggle to develop for themselves.

38:39Yeah, I think that's true too. And you make a good point, which is, Are you a good friend to yourself? My friend Rick, who's sort of this remarkable entrepreneur monk, not literally, but he's just one of the coolest sort of advice givers I know. I was talking to him about loneliness. And I asked him point blank, do you ever get lonely? Do you ever feel lonely? And he smiled and said, no, I'm always with myself. He's cultivated such a beautiful relationship with himself, that he allows himself to have all the things, all the feels. Do you know Dry Creek Dwayne? Do you know who that is? He's a rancher and Wrangler from Wyoming, a big beard, permanently affixed with a cigar between his fingers.

39:30And I had him on the show. We were talking about something not too dissimilar. And he said, I like me. I'd buy me a beer. Yeah, it's just such a simple way. I love that to put across. I'd buy me a beer and it took a long time, you know, he's in his 60s now. Yeah. And it took him a long time to cultivate in himself the sort of person he would want to be friends with. Yeah. And if you're the kind of person who regularly makes promises and doesn't keep them to you. Yeah. If you're the sort of person who places the opinions of others over the opinion of yourself, you're an untrustworthy ally. You're a bad friend.

40:09You're your self. You're a bad friend. Yes. You're a bad friend. You're a bad self friend. You're a bad friend. And I love that. If we say this is a beautiful, let's take that definition of self. You know, let's add it to my definitions of two people who agree to grow together. I am one person who agrees to grow with myself. You know? I think that is beautiful. Do I think that I'm helping me? Do I think that I'm helping me? And grace is something that we don't talk about. To give yourself grace. You know? That it's okay to have... It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be lonely. It's okay to be angry.

40:42It's okay to have any feeling that you're having. You know, just allow feelings to happen. Things happen in the world. We have emotional responses. It's okay. You only have to really ask for help or think you're unhealthy if you get stuck in one of those feelings for too long. But if you're generally having feelings, and here's the best one, I learned this during lockdown. You can actually have two conflicting feelings simultaneously. For example, when I can't get out of my entrepreneurial self, it's in my DNA. As an entrepreneur and as a creative person, my happy place is chaos. Creativity is finding order in chaos.

41:24In order for me to be creative, I have a little chaos, whether it's imposed upon me or I stir the pot myself. right? So when we went into lockdown and it destroyed my business, I mean it blew it up. I was having a blast. I was having so much fun. Lots of problems to fix. Oh my God. I had to reinvent the whole business from scratch. I mean literally I was like, I was and I was very embarrassed because there was death and there was uncertainty and there was pain. All around me. And I kept it to myself because I, but at the same time, I realized I can have two feelings. I can be sad and I can mourn and I can have fun simultaneously Simultaneously and so I think sometimes we get embarrassed and we feel that we're having a like if I'm like right now like life's great and My friend is really struggling I'm embarrassed that I'm good when they're bad No, I can be empathetic and be like sit in the mud with him be like this is awful Oh my God.

42:26And if they say, how are you? I'm like, I'm great. I don't have to say, well, you know, it's okay. Like we can have both. I can be upset about the world. I can be frustrated and uncertain. And I can be excited and clear all at the same time. And I think that's what we forget, which is as emotional animals. The one thing that we can all agree on about emotions is they're messy. Sometimes they fire at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we have an emotion that doesn't quite match the situation. Sometimes we overdo it. Sometimes we underdo it. Multiple emotions, simultaneously. Human beings are messy.

43:06That's part of what makes life fun. Like somebody just gave you a big ball of twisted up string and said, okay, the job for your life is to do your best job untangling this. And people who go through life and just allow life to happen to them, they just walk on and holding the ball of string going, I don't even know where to start. This is too difficult. This is a twisted knot. This is a mess. What do you want me to do with this? This is unusable. Ugh. Or there are some people who are like, all right, well, this is a fricking mess, but I'll start somewhere. This looks like it has promised up. It didn't, all right, I'll try something else and they're just spending their life trying to untangle the ball of string.

43:44And if you just get a little bit of an untangled, not only does it give you confidence that you can get more entangled, but you serve as an inspiration to your friend. Wow, you really are a different version of when I met you a bunch of years ago. That's because I'm busy working on this tangled bowl of string. I can help you with yours. It's probably not the same as mine, but I can show you some of the things I tried and maybe they'll work for you. Let's have a look. Let's have a look. I wanted to give you a read and essay that I wrote last week that I thought might be interesting to you. And it relates to something we've been talking about so far.

44:16Now, lots of people that consume work like yours, listen to shows like this, many of them would identify as something like an insecure overachiever. I think somebody that's very introspective, they ruminate, they like to improve themselves, their growth -minded, their upward aiming. And I think they sometimes focus on working hard. The almost a Puritan work ethic would be the way that they approach life. So there's a famous Victor Frankl quote, one a man can't find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure. Frankl is arguing that a lack of meaning causes people to seek temporary relief in superficial pursuits rather than addressing the underlying existential void.

45:01Perhaps for many, maybe even most people this is a big issue, but there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem, Frankl's inverse law. When a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. If ease, grace, joy and playfulness don't come easily to you, one solution is to just ignore moment to moment happiness entirely and always pursue hard things. You become a world champion at winning the marshmallow test. You convince yourself that delayed gratification in perpetuity is noble because you struggle to ever feel grateful. TLDR, you prioritize meaning over happiness because happiness doesn't come easily to you.

45:37As my friend Bill Pocken says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification, or Alan Watts, if we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives, we may forget altogether to live them. Everyone is taught that on the other side of discomfort is something valuable. We're told that worthwhile things are difficult to attain, because if they weren't difficult to attain, there wouldn't be worthwhile. This is how non -valuable, but difficult things, get slipped into our desires without us noticing. Something. Some people are hyper responders to this instruction and go on to become workaholics and insecure overachievers.

46:08From the outside, this looks like you've transcended the shallow need for pleasure, but in reality, it's just cope to avoid facing the fact that you struggle to feel joy. So instead, you perpetually promise yourself that happiness might finally come tomorrow, but like running toward the horizon, tomorrow never arrives. Congratulations, you've managed to subjugate your joy as a tribute to your work. do not confuse humorous and fun lacking seriousness with being sophisticated and caring about your pursuit. Theroux says, the price of anything is the amount of life that you exchange for it and by this logic many of us are paying into a bank account that we never withdraw from.

46:42I think with this Olympic champion, the LeBron James of winning the Marshmallow Test, I wonder how many people are bypassing more simple day -to -day joy because it feels originally it was hard for them to access. And now it feels flimsy, unsophisticated. I should be aiming for something higher than this. And I wonder how many people can be fulfilled with much simpler pleasures than the ones that they're pursuing delayed gratification to try and achieve? Yeah, I think it's very well said and very well written. And look, I think both are true. At the end of the day, and you and I were talking about this off camera before we started, which is there's a paradox to being human, which is, and this is where Maslowv and his hierarchy of needs, Maslowv got it wrong, and it speaks to what you're speaking about.

47:48Right? Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people, you know, the basic level of the triangle of the pyramid is food and shelter. That we need food and shelter first. The third level up is relationships, and then the top is self -actualization. Right? But he's wrong. Because Maslow made the classic mistake, which is he forgot that there's a paradox being human, which is every moment of every day. We are both individuals and members of groups, every day. And every day we're confronted with small or big choices. Do I put myself first at the sacrifice of the group? I put the group first at the sacrifice of myself and we can debate which one you're supposed to do and the answer is you both right and you're both wrong It's a paradox because we have to be ourselves and pursue our own purpose, but we're also supposed to be social animals and contribute to the society the family the team that we're a part of Go and you're saying the same thing here, which is and this is where Maslow got it wrong He only thought about us as individuals I've right as an individual on a desert island you're right food shelter comes first relationships I'll deal with that later.

48:47But can you imagine living a whole life or self -actualization? How lonely? How about shared actualization? I've never heard of anybody dying because they were hungry.

48:57I've heard of people dying by suicide because they were lonely. So that means relationships as a member of a group is more important than food and shelter. If you consider us members of groups, not just individuals, and it's both, and I think that you're saying the same thing here, it's not a debate of do I put happiness ahead of purpose or purpose ahead of happiness? The answer is it's both and it's messy and sometimes competitive But there's entire camps, you know, you have the on the extremely hedonists that say no happiness in the moment Purpose be damned we're all gonna die and on the other end you'd like no no longevity Purpose what's it all mean at the expense and the answer is yes and it's both and I think this is where we've made this mistake and we keep doing this in our lives.

49:43We make complex arguments binary, and then we choose one. And we attempt to build lives around one pillar when the reactivity is its both. And sometimes it'll be in balance, and sometimes it'll be out of balance. And I think to let go, and I think the way you construct it is right. You have the insecure, hyperformer, but you also have the insecure, low performer. right? And the question is, okay, so what does the secure high performer look like? And I would argue that the secure high performer is not following the game plan that these people are following of grow, grow, grow, retreat, retreats, you know, off to Costa Rica again, you know, read every book, do every practice, take every supplement, you know, wake up at five o 'clock in morning, cold plunge, cold plunge, right?

50:36You talk to the happiest people in the world. They do some of that. They don't do all of it. They all have great relationships. And so I wish people would pay as much attention to how they show up for their friends as they do to which supplements they take, how many hours of sleep they're getting, whether they're cold plunging or not or what their exercise regime is. I wish they would pay that much attention to the kind of friend they are, to the kind of partner they are. That would find balance, even like the blue zones, like everybody's obsessed with, like, look at their diet, look, they walk every day.

51:09They also convene and eat with their friends every single day, and they have senses of humor, and they're okay with being underachievers, right? Like, and I think, and I think you're right, you've talked about gratitude, gratitude to do this big part of it, right? Which is to just be grateful for what you have. Like, what if you, everybody's chasing some sort of finish line? But what if you, just today, just made the decision, because they're all decisions, I've already won. I've already won. That's it. I'm alive. I've got one good friend. I'm sure everyone is confined something in our lives that we like.

52:03I got a great score on my video game yesterday. Really happy about that. Like it can be something stupid and mundane but something that you're a little bit proud of even if it's a little bit embarrassing. Like I like that paragene. Right? I want on a good date. Whatever it is. Right? things are okay. And this idea of already thinking of yourself as having won the game and the rest of life is simply it's all after the finish line. It's anything you want to do out of the finish line go have go have a good time and Somebody gave me that advice my friend Rick He said what if you just decided you won already and I was like oh my god Everything's great, you know a quick aside if you haven't been feeling a sharp or energize as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function.

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53:43uh, this idea of what does it be, what does it mean to be a success? I went through this recently where I think one of the reasons I, I tend to find peace and things is I'm, I'm not competing with anybody else but myself. There's always somebody smarter. There's always somebody who's sold more books, you know, it's always something like you You read that statement and I sat here and went, wow, that is beautiful. Wow, that is great. That is, I didn't think, oh, I should have come up with that. Oh my God, he said it better than me. I have to be the one that comes with us. No, that was frickin' gorgeous.

54:23Thank you for sharing. Wow, right? But by thinking of myself, I have saying already one, I'm not in competition with you in what you've written. If I think that I haven't won yet, then I sit here and see. Maybe get competitive. And so I had this, it was a disagreement with somebody recently where our team missed a goal. Pretty significantly. It's okay, right? I think goals are important, like my homeworkers are important, but they're not the end of the deal, it's not the end of the game. Just a measurement of speed and distance. And we had a five year plan, we missed the first year goal. So we're off plan now, right?

55:04And so one of my colleagues wanted to change the second year goal, make it lower. That's why we change. Why would we do that? Well, she said because we're not going to hit the second year goal. I'm like, I know because we missed the first year goal. But if we change the second year goal, that means you're changing the whole five year goal just because we missed year one. How about we just work harder, be more creative, find new ways. And maybe we'll miss the second year goal, but man, we can keep trying. No, we're not changing the goal. Why would you want to change it? And she said, because I don't like to fail and I know you don't either.

55:36And that's when I realized she's wrong. I'm totally fine being a failure. In fact, I came to the realization that most of my life is a failure. And what I mean by that is, is my desires and my ambitions are greater than my talents or my achievements. Like I want to do things in the world that I don't know how to do them. I'm, the reality is I'm probably not gonna do them, and the things that I've accomplished, like they're coming close to what I wanna achieve, but I haven't gotten there, and I may not. And a couple things have gone well that I planned, but most of the things fell short. And so I've been very comfortable being a failure, meaning I'm comfortable falling short of big goals.

56:24And I would rather fall short of a big goal. and consider myself a failure, then lower the goals to the level which I can accomplish all of them just so I can feel like I'm a success. And it's less about the goal setting and it's more about the mindset of being okay being the failure. Because what it does is it frees you to imagine bigger, take risks like you never imagined you could be for, because failure is not the thing you're afraid of.

57:00Um, you know, that entrepreneurial mindset, anybody who starts a business is an idiot. You have an over 90 % chance of failure. Why would you do that? Because their vision is bigger. Their ambition is bigger than their skills or their accomplishments. And if you're okay with that, you actually have a good time. And so I've been through it where I depressed when I realized I haven't achieved something, and I feel like a failure. And I feel like a failure. And now I'm just cool with it. And like and it's not false modesty or it's a it's a it's a hack. It's a mental little trick. Like even like we I'm trying something new at work.

57:50And I said to the team, This could be a wild success or a total failure, I don't know, but let's have a blast and find out which one. Now you and I sitting listening to this going well, that seems like a pretty good mentality for the success side having fun. Yeah Low stress and by the way, it absolutely might fail, but the team is like all right. Well, it's on us and we're all taking a bet on ourselves Not each other like you and I will and each other but like the point is we all see ourselves as contributors and it goes back to right back to what we were saying before, which is do want to be a victim and wait things to happen or do want to be a contributor.

58:26And if it fails, you'll be like, oh, we screwed that up.

58:34And I think so much of this is mindset. So much of this is my set. I just watched the thing yesterday. So funny how things show up at the right time, right? I just watched that thing yesterday where a guy compared the top five tennis players. Do you know about this? Compare the top five tennis players from the top 25 tennis players. So what makes the top five so much better than all the others? And he goes through the list. Is it their diet? Is it their coaching? Is it their work ethic? No, no, they all have that, right? And he literally goes through all the lists of what it could be and it's none of those things.

59:13The one thing that the top five have that the others don't is that when they score a point, they go, that's fun. I love this game. I love this game. When they miss a point, they go, oh, I missed that one, but wait till you see what I do in the next one. And there's sort of a joy and love of what they're doing. And a successor failure, their mindset in the moment. And what he found is that when they have that sort of joy, oh, I love this game when it goes well, don't worry, you'll get the next one. The heart rate goes down. And if you keep adding all up this little, so when you have your heart rate goes down, you have more, you preserve energy, you're more relaxed.

59:58For one point or two points, it means nothing, but if you now go to the end of the match, all those little things you've now stored up, you have way more energy at the end and your way more relaxed to play each point. And that's life. I think it's a great metaphor, which is all of this is infinite. It's all 1 % better. It's all the British cycling team that James Clear writes about. You know, that just this stupid little thing, but that by itself means nothing. And I'll give you an example, right? Go back to relationships. Like, how do you find love? Like, how do you get someone to love you? Do you buy them flowers on Valentine's Day and make sure to get them a cake on their birthday?

1:00:38Sure, those things are nice. Won't make them love you. It's the millions of innocuous little things that buy themselves do nothing. That when you wake up in the morning, you say good morning before you check your phone. That when you go to the fridge to get a drink, you're like, hey babe, you want a drink? And you bring them one. Or you write them a little card for no reason than to say, hey, I wrote this card just to tell you thank you and glad you're in my life. By themselves, each one of those things does very, very little. But if you add them up over time, someone will fall in love with you.

1:01:14And the same thing will happen to you. And this is the great thing about love is you never know when it happens. It's not like if you do these things on this date at this time, love is the reaction. You just, I don't know. It happens. At some point nobody ever sees it coming. Now treat joy and life that way. There's no date. There's no back plan. You have to trust. It's like exercise, right? Which if you say Simon, I want to get into shape. Can you teach me how? I'm like absolutely I can. I want you to work out every single day for 20 minutes. You're gonna have to do upper body, lower body core.

1:01:49You can do all these things. Where should I start? Yes. It doesn't matter. Pick one. Whatever one you want to do. But eventually you're gonna have to do them all and you have to work out every day for 20 minutes. Well, can I take a day off because I'm tired. Yes, how many days can I take off? I don't know, but not too many. 100 % of the time. You will get into shape. Everybody will. Some people a little sooner, some people a little later. Simon, what's the date and time that I will be in shape? I don't know and neither does any doctor, but you trust the process. We all know that that 20 minutes every day, 100 % of people will have 100 % success.

1:02:29How many things in life can you say that about? Well, I think that living our lives and finding joy is exactly the same, which is if you can trust the process of little things. That the big retreat and the big this and the big that and the moving across the country, those things are good, those things are helpful. That's called intensity. Like going to the dentist twice a year is intensity, But if that's all you do, all your teeth will fall out. It's the consistency of brushing your teeth every day, that even though brushing your teeth once does nothing, if you do it every single day, it works.

1:03:01And so yes, go on the retreats, have fun, but those aren't the things. It's the consistency. And I think that's where we miss out. The original name for this podcast, when I was brainstorming, was crushing a Tuesday. Glad that I went with Modern Wisdom. But crushing a Tuesday is an idea from Tim. and he says your life is made up of ordinary Tuesdays. So your goal should be to construct your life in a manner that an ordinary Tuesday gets crushed. That you do well, that it moves you in the right direction, that you enjoy it, that it's positively rewarding. It's like, what a cool idea. That life is made up of very normal Tuesdays.

1:03:37I don't know the concept that he talks about, but the way you've described it, I would actually push back a little bit. Why? What if you don't crush the Tuesday? What if you sit and watch TV all day and get nothing done? Are you a failure? Have you not crushed Tuesday? Should you be depressed and do double effort on Wednesday?

1:04:01Or maybe watching TV all day and being a vegetable is crushing Tuesday. So that's the problem with words like crushing Tuesday, which is it doubles down on achievement. It doubles down on productivity. And I learned this, this goes back many years, and I would wake up on a Sunday, wake up pretty early, just when I woke up, and then I would sit in bed and do I have no idea what until noon. And the guilt, and then somebody would be like, you know, I'd see somebody in the afternoon, they'd be like, oh, how's your day? What'd you do today? Because it's three o 'clock in the afternoon, right? And I'd be like, and I had this tremendous shame that I sat in bed until noon.

1:04:53And this went on for a while, and I thought myself lazy, and I would do stupid stuff. Yeah, I'd read the newspaper a little bit, but I play games. Maybe go get a cup of coffee, come back into bed, you know? And then I realized it's my Sunday. I can do whatever the hell I want with my Sunday. I love sitting in bed till noon on a Sunday. And if somebody's like, what'd you do to them? I'm like, I sat in bed till noon. And what you do, don't remember, don't know, couldn't tell you nothing worthwhile. And it's just what gave me the relaxation and recharge my batteries was not sitting in bed until noon.

1:05:28What gave me relaxation and recharge my batteries was liking that I sat in bed. Not being in tension against it. Yeah, well that's crushing a Sunday, you know? Again, but this is the problem with our vernacular in the modern day, which are these words remind us, crush. These are achievement words. Grind hustle. Grind hustle. Yeah. And that's the problem. The words matter. How about love a Tuesday? Winning a Tuesday. No. No. No. Loving a Tuesday. Enjoy a Tuesday. Love a Tuesday. Have a Tuesday. You know, survived Tuesday. Get through Tuesday. Right? Like all of these binary win -loss crush fail, you know?

1:06:14That's the problem is the binary. We're going right back to that problem again of those constructions that you talked about in your eloquent essay. It's not binary, it's messy. I wanted to just leave back a little there to people's sense of confidence in their own word. We mentioned before, we're often able to give advice to other people that we struggle to give to ourselves. We are able to show up, be sympathetic, empathetic, understanding, patient for other people in a manner that we can't to us. I'm interested in how we can learn to be more at ease with these slower days, how to give ourselves a little bit of a break when we know that you probably do need to have a Sunday when you stay in bed for a little while.

1:07:06There is this puritan work ethic, guilt, that comes through for the people who are perennial hard charges. How do you advise them to just really inquishe a little? I think of everything in terms of cost, right? And like I always say, what's the cost of this. Always. So what is the cost of being a high achiever? What is the cost of working constantly? What is the cost of putting all that pressure on yourself? Just weigh the cost. My relationships struggle. I beat myself up. Sometimes I can't sleep because my brain doesn't shut off. Just like being really honest about the costs of all of that.

1:07:53I don't You've earned some of it to go the other way. So maybe you've earned the right to line bed till noon just cause. And if you need to make an equation, I earned this. You use the analogy of deposits and withdrawals. Like you've made so many deposits. You can withdraw, you can withdraw a little me time. You've earned this, right? It's like, think of it if you were a leader and one of your teammates works all weekend voluntarily to get a project done on time. Right? You're going to say thank you. You're going to be like, great job. We couldn't have done this without you. And then you're going to say, if you're a good leader, take Monday off.

1:08:36Why don't you take Monday or Tuesday off to get your weekend back? You've earned it. I'm not asking you to make to pay a cost that I'm not willing to compensate you for. You gave me two days. I'll give you two days. It may not be consecutively, but I'll give you back your weekend. Thank you. That gesture will make somebody feel seen and heard, and they will give you many weekends knowing that you're willing to keep the equation balanced. If you never give them their time back and now they're just working seven days a week, they will either burn out or they will quit. it. So if we know that another person will burn out or quit if they maintain that pace without grace, then how come and it goes right back to yourself, managing yourself, lead yourself?

1:09:23You got to give yourself that time off because that's the deal you make. If you're the friend to yourself and if you lead yourself, that's what you do for somebody else. That's what you, well, I'm not other people and I have no you are. You might have a little more grit than somebody else, but you don't have endless amounts of it. Before we continue, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started every morning with element. Element contains a signs back to electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium with no sugar, no gluten or artificial ingredients or any other BS.

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1:10:33I'm heading to drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. When it comes to the purpose and meaning point, how do you advise people to manage the transition if a why the previously motivated them and fulfilled them starts to fall away? You mentioned yourself does this sort of sense of shame, guilt, of concern, a wistfulness, I would imagine. This used to be my thing. And now you're telling me that the thing that gave me loads of positive reinforcement isn't, I think, anymore. And I have to go and find a new thing. That sounds pretty terrifying. So how do people who have lost fulfillment in their why cope with that transition?

1:11:22Very simple answer. There was never their way to begin with. People confuse goals with purpose. It happens all the time. You see it in companies, vision statements. To be the best, that's not a vision, that's a goal. By the way, based on what metric that you chose. Right? So, sometimes we have goals that drive us, and they're exciting. But then what? And you see this very often with high achievers. So let's take extreme examples. Right? Olympic athletes. It's just an extreme example. They're very goal -oriented, and they've confused their goal with their purpose. my purpose is to win the Olympics.

1:11:56I love how they say that. I'm going to win the nobody wins the Olympics. That actually is not a it's not a you count there's no metal for winning the Olympics right but that's how they all talk when the Olympics right and all of their lives are completely architected around this goal all of their relationships are you useful all of their sacrifices I missed Thanksgiving I missed birthdays I missed all of these things because I disciplined and let's say they achieve it. Let's give them the success. They win a gold medal in the Olympics. And now they're too old to compete. The bodies are broken, whatever it is.

1:12:36Now what? Now what? And what you find, like Andre Agassi becomes the most storied tennis player in all time. What happens right after he retires? Depression. Michael Phelps becomes the most meddled Olympian in history. What happens right after he retires? Depression. You know, my friend who her entire goal of her entire life from Fagga, North Dakota was to be on Broadway and become a New York City Rockhead. She achieved both those things. She became a New York City Rockhead and she became a performer on Broadway. What happened right afterwards when she retired? Depression. We've confused a goal with purpose.

1:13:12A goal is one of the ways, even if it's extreme, One of the ways in which we are looking to advance our purpose, but a purpose is immutable. A purpose does not change. Your purpose is fully formed by the time you're in your mid to late teens. Who you are is fully formed by you the time you're in your mid to late teens. And the rest of your life is looking for opportunities to bring that cause to life. Right? Very common and particularly in high achievers. and they confuse their jobs with their purpose, with their identity. Right? So you see these high flyers who literally are afraid of not working because who am I if I'm not doing this thing?

1:13:58And they forgotten that the thing you're doing is just one of the ways you can bring your purpose to life. So my why, my purpose is not to write books, my why is not to achieve some goal, Some dead talk over which I have no control. My wise to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. That's why I get out of bed in the morning. That is permanent for the rest of my life till the day I die. Now, what are the opportunities that I can do that? Some of them big, some of them small, some of them risky, some of them not. And I can have goals that motivate me in the middle of that. But if I pick a goal that's just for the money or just for the accomplishment or whatever, odds are the stress is going to be far greater than the reward because it doesn't contribute to my purpose.

1:14:48And that's the second question, which is, how do I know into quit? And some people have this false belief that grit is the thing that makes you and you never quit. That's stupid. just as it is just as stupid as to say you always quit whenever it gets difficult. Both are the wrong mentality. My test is very simple. Does the sacrifice feel worth it? If the sacrifice feels worth it because there's some higher goal you're trying to achieve, some higher purpose, not even goal, a higher purpose you're trying to achieve, then you better show up the grit and you keep going. But if it just doesn't feel worth it anymore, It doesn't feel like I'm contributing to something bigger than myself.

1:15:32Then it's time to move on. I was writing a book called Leaders Eat Last. It's the single most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. It was impossible to organize. Each chapter could have been its own book. It was ridiculous. It made me a content that I was like, start with why was something like, I can remember like 68 ,000 words is something. When I was writing Leaders Eat Last, I wrote 150 ,000 words and I was just getting started. I called with a publisher. I said that I think this needs to be multi -volumes like that's I was impossible And it got to the point where I couldn't do it. It just I I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't figure it out And so it was about eight o 'clock at night and I decided I was done.

1:16:14I couldn't do it Was gonna quit And I literally went for a long walk and planned my exit planned quitting I went through the checklist of the things that I'm gonna have to do over the next few days in order to unwind from this project. I'm gonna have to call my publisher and say, I can't do it. I'm technically in breach of contract, which means I'm gonna have to return the advance. I'm gonna have to make a public statement. I've been telling everybody I'm writing a new book, and I'm gonna have to say, it's not coming, so I'll be publicly humiliated for a short period of time, where people are like, what do you mean?

1:16:46And you're like, we've been looking forward to it. Why can't you do it, right? So I'm gonna be publicly humiliated. I'm gonna have to tell my friends, I can't do it, So I'm going to be privately humiliated. I'm going to hate myself for a while. I'm going to regret it and I'll get over and literally went through the checklist of all the things I'm going to have to do and prepare myself for Not sure why I did But I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine who at the time was in the Air Force Special Forces. I Don't even think I said hello He picked up the phone and I said what do you do when you can complete the mission?

1:17:17And as his his nature he started telling me a story He was in Afghanistan and he was ordered to go on a mission. He's a helicopter pilot where all of the intelligence said that they were going to get shot down. And this wasn't like a kill Hitler mission where you're all going to die but you'll kill Hitler. This is like you're all going to die and the mission will fail. Like it was just a pointless suicide mission, right? All the intel was was compelling. And so he and his wingman they're prepping their helicopter, getting ready to go on this ridiculous stupid mission. And his wingman turns him and says, what do we do?

1:17:54We've got why has we got kids? This is literally a suicide mission. Like, do we refuse to go? What do we do? And my friend sent to his wingman, no, this is what we signed up for. We go. And what he was saying is we go together. Obviously, cool heads prevailed and the mission was scrubbed. And so he He says to me, is this book more or less powerful than start with why? I said the research that I'm doing has impacted me more than start with why. He goes, okay, I'm going to tell you a funny little story because before I met you, I became disillusioned with the Air Force. I didn't want to be in anymore and I was going to leave.

1:18:34And I found this kooky little book called Start with Why and it completely inspired me. It made me a better leader and I stayed in the Air Force and I am so glad I did because I'm better than I was before. And if you're telling me that this book is more powerful than the first one, he goes, you have to finish it, he goes, this is what you signed up for, you do it. And what he was saying is, and I will be here with you. He made me feel not alone, but he also reminded me that it wasn't about the book. The book was contributing to something even bigger than myself, which is, I agreed that I would commit myself to a life where I would work tirelessly to inspire people to do things that inspire them.

1:19:13And if this is one of the things that I know will work, this is what I signed up for. The sacrifice is worth it. And I wasn't alone anymore. I now had somebody I could call and be like, I can't do this and he's like, come on, I gotcha. And this is the thing that I learned about folks in the military, which is our friends give it advice, give us advice like, you got this, yeah, you go. Which is basically like saying, off you go, in the military it's things like we go. even though I have to do the work, we go. I had another experience in the military where I was standing on the stage presenting to a bunch of officers, senior officers, generals and colonels, and I was telling a story that was really difficult and I started to well up and I'm starting to tell myself, should I just skip over this?

1:20:02I could easily just and I was stuck. I paused because you know when you when you're welling up you know that if you take one more word you're gonna lose it and I was right there is at that word. And I just stopped quietly. Now if this was in the private sector, because I know, because it's happened, it's happened for you too, somebody will say, it's okay, take your time. As if to say, you over there, you take what it will be waiting over here when you're ready. That's not what happened. I get stuck on the stage, I'm whelling up with tears, and the four star general at the back of the room goes, Go on.

1:20:41As if to say, we're here with you, you're not alone. It cracks me up just talking about it now. And this is what I learned about them. The reason they are high achievers, the reason they have the kind of grit that they do, the reason they do things that most of us don't want to do or can't do is because at no point do they ever make each other feel like they're alone. At every point along the way, they know that someone has their sex, someone has their back. They will sacrifice their lives for people they don't even like because they know that that person will sacrifice their lives for them.

1:21:19And I think this is the missing thing that we don't talk about enough in all of this high achievement stuff and finding your purpose stuff. It's too hard to do alone. Human beings aren't made to survive by ourselves. If you go out into the wilderness by yourself, you'll get eaten by something you will die. Go out in a group? You're fine. We're fine. We are social animals. And we spent so much time over -indexing on individual accomplishment, individual achievement, and individual happiness, and individual fulfillment. We've just overdone it. that we've forgotten that the hack is together. Friendship is the ultimate biohack.

1:22:08And if you want to find happiness, instead of going on another retreat or reading another book, what I would recommend is help someone who's struggling with the thing that you're struggling with. Commit yourself to a life of service to help somebody who's struggling with the exact same thing you're struggling with. and instead of over -committing yourself to whatever you're struggling with, over -commit yourself to helping them find whatever it is that you're also looking for. With no selfish intent whatsoever. Talking about groups, reflecting on the millennial question, Neely Tanya is late to now.

1:22:44Has it been that long? Eight years. Time flies. Given that that was a wild day, I remember that. Well, those millennials have grown up now. What advice would you give to Gen Z, who are dealing with a different but challenging climate? So, a lot of the things I said in that original commentary are still true. I think Gen Z is different than millennials in many ways. Many ways the same. I mean, from the technology standpoint, some of the parenting strengths standpoint, point. I think where they have an advantage is I think their parents, especially the ones who are a little younger now, are more aware of overcoddling their kids, which is the mistake the millennial parents made.

1:23:35So we're better at affirming emotions, we're betting at kids allowing to struggle, things like that. Where they are very different than millennials and the original criticisms of millennials, which is millennials were accused of being slactivists back in their day when they were younger, which is they loved to go on Twitter and tell you their opinion while they're sitting the back of a newbie on their way to brunch. Right? Like they didn't do anything, they didn't show up. Right? Where Gen Z are an activist generation, they don't just complain, they strike, they protest, they speak out, they vote, They run for office.

1:24:14We're having all these young kids running for office, you know, these 25 worlds running for office. And they're much more action oriented for the things that are scaring them or bothering them on all sides of the political aisles. And I think that's a good thing. They're taking accountability. Whether we disagree with, you know, with how they're doing it, that's debatable, that's fine, but they're making sacrifices and they're putting themselves cells out there, which I think is great. The technology addiction is still a thing, but I think it's a thing for all of us. I think it's pronounced when kids grew up with it because they don't know any different, and again, it's not their fault, it's parents.

1:24:55Parents who give unfettered access to a device when a child is young, they're setting themselves up for some real challenges later. I think there's lots of data now. When I was first talking about it with millennials, it sounded like sort of a whiny, you know, let -ite adults. But now, Jonathan Height has written about it extensively and there's lots and lots of data on it now. And we all know what dopamine is. We all know what a dopamine addiction is. We all know that the social media companies are hijacking our dopamine system. We all know it. It's like common knowledge now, right? So I think the awareness that they have is good.

1:25:29But the advice is the same, which is, and I think what Gen Z is struggling with more than probably millennials is the loneliness question. And I think partially because of technology and isolation and because I can have a friend online and now the rise of AI friends that's going to be a whole new thing. But I am going to double down on what I've said before which is if we can find ways to help them make friends and I'm meeting young people who are still in college or just graduating high school or college and the thing that they're reporting is they really struggled to make friends when they were in college.

1:26:05But again, they're an activist generation, right? So like there's one, I, there's at least one I know. Her name's Aliqs. She started a company called Clicks where in full disclosure, I met Aliqs and I fell in love with her mission and I, I, I advised her and made a small investment. So just for full disclosure. But, but basically she started a company to help young people make friends because she struggle to make friends and the way she does it is by in -person events. And she's very open how she has started an app that she wants people to spend less and less time on her app, which is like you tell that to an investor that's horrible.

1:26:42So I think I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful because they are so attentive. I'm hopeful for the future because of this young generation. What are the mistakes of all the generations that millennials should not repeat? So the doubling down on rugged individualism, one, the concept of business existing for the benefit of an investor, whether it's a public markets or venture capitalist, no, the business exists to give something of benefit to a customer, make their lives easier, make it more fun, take them on a journey. whatever it is, it doesn't matter. And if you do that, the investors will win, but you don't build a company for an investor.

1:27:31You build a company for a customer. And you make the employees love the mission that they're on to serve those customers. I hope they undo that ridiculous mentality that is pervasive in business today. I think some of the things that they, I'm, you know, the rugged individualism, one is crazy and all. and you can see how we've built incentive structures that are all about individual achievement and not about team or group achievement. So I don't want them to repeat those mistakes. Did they have an opportunity to rein? Business is not, this is not how business always happened. Capitalism is Adam Smith imagined it when he wrote about it.

1:28:11The wealth of nations wasn't what we have now. He was customer focused. He was employee focused. And it was Jack Welch, the CEO of GE back in the 80s and 90s and an economist named Milton Friedman that made capitalism what it is today. So capitalism is good, just not this version of it. I wonder what an infinite game looks like in a modern culture that's obsessed with instant gratification and metrics. Yeah, well, you just said it. An infinite game is literally letting go of the instant gratification. You can enjoy it, you can appreciate it, but it's just one dot on a journey.

1:28:53It's just one way point, it's not the finish line. And you can hear how we talk about the end of the quarter, the end of the year, as if it's the end of the game. No, it's just one mile marker. You're either ahead or behind, you're either going fast or slow. That's it. Is there not something deeper and more truthful in that with regards to how the human and reward system works though, that we need to move toward these little goals, we need to have these way marker points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm wrong with metrics. Yeah, that tension, that balance between the two. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with metrics.

1:29:26We've just overdone the dopamine. Right, understand the caveman reason for dopamine. That's very good reason, right? Which is, I need food, I need shelter. right? So when you're wondering across the savannas with your caveman buddies and in the distance you see food and apple tree, a gazelle, whatever, you become fixated, that's the goal. Get there and you start untrying or moving towards the apple tree. And as the apple tree gets a little bigger you get the feeling that you're making progress. Don't remain hit. Keep going, keep going, the dopamine tells you, You keep going. And if you miss it, you'll try another day so you can get that feeling again.

1:30:12But if you get it, if you kill the animal or get to the apple tree, oh my God, the feeling of victory. Yes, yes, you high five all your caveman buddies. We did it. Right? But the feeling goes away. Nobody celebrates the victory they had three years ago. That feeling has gone away. And so you have to do it again. So dopamine isn't supposed to feed relationships. It's supposed to make you find the things you're looking for or achieve the things you're setting out to achieve. That's what it's designed to do. And where the hijacking happens is that becomes all of it. Repeat, repeat, repeat. That's called addiction.

1:30:50Literally almost every addiction is a dopamine addiction. And social media addiction is most closely, looks most closely to gambling addiction. But it's what the same thing is, which is you become achievement addicted, because it's the only way you ever get a good feeling is from when you achieve things. You just have to keep doing it, and it's kind of like moving the goalposts. Right? I keep achieving it. How come I haven't found success? You have it in a moment. You have that little feeling of elation that it goes away so quickly, and so we confuse joy, which is infinite. Love, which is infinite, which happiness, which is momentary.

1:31:22I'm looking for happiness. I can show you a million ways to get happiness. And it'll go away. You're gonna have to do it again. But to find love, like if you're in love with someone, you love your children, but you don't like them every day. You can love your partner, but you can hate them in moments, but that doesn't mean you're leaving. Just mean I hate you today. But yes, of course I love you. Of course I love you. And it's these underlying foundations that are infinite. And the happiness sits on top of it. And we've forgotten to build those underlying foundations and pursuit of just those dopamine hits.

1:31:58And so, and you, you summed it up beautifully, which is we've made the pursuit of oxytocin and serotonin. We've made the pursuit of love and purpose and joy. We've turned, we've gamified. We've taught, we've attempted to turn the seeking of things that require consistency and investment into events to be one or lost. And that's not how they are. We're applying intensity to elements that require consistency, goes back to the brushing your teeth analogy. We think if we go to the dentist more often, it'll be better. No, it'll just be more painful. Yeah, there's an interesting idea of instrumental goods and intrinsic goods in ethics philosophy, and it's kind of not too dissimilar to this.

1:32:47Intrinsic good is something that is good in and of itself and an instrumental good is something that essentially eventually gets you to the intrinsic good. But there is an issue that you can treat all of life instrumentally. Like everything that you do is done in service of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Yeah, I mean, this is the infinite mindset. This is exactly what I attempted to write about. You know, the best way to understand the infinite mindset, is this Chinese parable that's told many ways this is the way I know it, right? Young man is born with a remarkable ability for horse riding.

1:33:22Everyone in the village says, oh, you're so lucky. And the monk says, we'll see. He falls off his horse, breaks his leg, ends his horse riding career. Everyone in the village says, oh, you're so unlucky. The monk says, we'll see. War breaks out. All the young men are sent to battle. He can't go because of his busted leg. Like everyone in the village is, you're so lucky. The monk says, we'll see. Good news, bad news, who knows? It's part of a journey, right? And it sucks when you're in it. But it'll pass. But by the way, the same is true for good things. Like this is amazing when you're in it. It'll pass.

1:33:58And so the question is, how do you build the foundation? The foundation is built on relationships. The foundation is built on relationships. All the other stuff sits on top. achievement, accomplishment, win -win -win, you know. And I don't have never met a successful person in my life who learned anything when things went well. They learned every lesson they needed to learn that helped them achieve when things went horribly wrong and the most successful people in the world, every single one of them, hit zero or came damn close to it. Almost every single one. So gift. Oh my god, it's a D gift. Now, none of us want to go through it.

1:34:38None of us want to repeat it. It's awful. We're all secretly glad it happened.

1:34:49There's an interesting idea. And I'm not saying we should set it up either. Like, don't set yourself up too fail to learn the lesson. That's kind of doesn't like the goal is to learn to grow, but you're going to get battered. Like, like, life is not a smooth journey. It's a it's a bumpy ride. But the question is, are you enjoying the bumps or appreciating the bumps at least you have to enjoy them, but you can appreciate them. Can have a sense of humor. I think sense of humor is one of the greatest things in the world. Not enough is talked about sense of humor. You know, you can't be angry or sad when you're laughing.

1:35:23It's just you have you ever been in a fight with somebody and somebody makes a joke and you try not to smile because you're angry. and instantly the anger goes away. Stop it, I'm trying to be angry. Like parents and kids that happens all the time, right? Kid makes a joke, parents trying to be serious, right? You can't, it's too hard. It's too hard to be sad or angry when you're laughing. And I think sense of humor is unbelievably underappreciated as a coping mechanism in just a way of getting through it. Just to see the absurdity of it, you know? And so I look for every occasion to make jokes even when it's inappropriate.

1:36:04What would you say to someone who feels paralyzed by fear? Moving forward, they're uncomfortable in their decisions, they don't know where the things are going to go well and they are scared of committing. They don't have that level of conviction that they need to actually start to make movements. go help somebody else who's paralyzed with the same fear. Don't worry about it. You're good. Just go help someone else who's struggling with the same or similar thing. And I don't mean create it like a self -fulfilling victim circle. You know, that's not what I mean. Like, I don't confuse going to help somebody with reinforcing.

1:36:42So I can feel better about myself. We do that all the time, right? We create these little echo chambers where we all make ourselves feel better by reinforcing like, yeah, screw the world. Well, they did this to us. Yeah, they did it to me too. Like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Like, genuinely try and help somebody get through the stuck. And the easiest way to do that, it's also very hard is to make it known the ear struggling. Not so that someone will help you. It's just to create a space that somebody will say, me too, because everybody's lying hiding and faking, right? So we don't know which of our friends.

1:37:24Like it's with single biggest, biggest lesson I learned in my career. When I was young in my career, I was pretending that I was more control, more successful, happier than I felt. Never needed help. I was good. I had all the answers and if I didn't have the answers, I definitely pretended that I did. Nobody helped me. Why? I didn't ask for it. Didn't need it. I was projecting that I got it all in the control until I got to the point where I was struggling so much that I gave up and had to admit it because I didn't have any other choice. And the minute somebody said, how are you? And they're like, yeah, it's been a rough month.

1:37:59If I'm honest, it turns out I was surrounded by people who wanted to help me. They just didn't know I needed it. But I also was surrounded by people who needed help. But they were too embarrassed to share it because when I'm on top of the world, you see this in leadership all the time. leaders make this mistake. And really difficult times, leaders come in to work with a brave face. Everything's good, everything's fine, everything's great. And this is toxic positivity. They're not doing it for bad reasons. They're doing it for good reasons. They think they need to put on a positive face to help keep everybody up.

1:38:30And if it's a hard time, what they're doing is making people feel worse because they're looking at their boss going, God, they're so happy in this stress. I mean, I can't even like get sleep. What the hell? I'm even more of a loser. But when a boss comes to work and says, folks, this is, this is the most difficult thing I've ever ever to deal with work. I do not know how to get through this. And I am stressed and I'm worried. But you know what? We've got an amazing team. I know if we stick together and take care of each other, I know we'll get through this. And I'm not worried. That's the thing that gives me confidence.

1:39:03And everybody goes, oh, yeah, me too. I'm stressed too. Right? The responsibility of the leaders to create the safe space. And so somebody who has the courage to say, I am struggling, not because they're looking for help, not because they're looking for sympathy. Somebody who has the courage to say, I am struggling simply to create a safe space for somebody around them to say me too so that they can offer their help, that's called being a leader. We call you leader, not because you're in charge. We call you leader because you went first could you had the courage to go first? You are leading the way, literally.

1:39:39And so if somebody is really struggling, you don't have to do it publicly, you don't have to do it online, just do it to one friend. In fact, I would say it takes more courage to do it to one friend. You see people put these messages out on social. They're by themselves in their room, talking to a device to say, here's what I'm struggling with. I don't know how many takes they did to get it just right, which is just weird into itself, because that's easy to talk to yourself and then put it up there and get the affirmations online. That exact same conversation to have in person to one person and look at them in the eye and say, everything you said to yourself and you're roomed by yourself with your device is excruciatingly difficult because that's real vulnerability.

1:40:26And so I challenge somebody to find the courage, to say to a friend, I am struggling. I'm stuck. I'm confused. I'm lost. I don't know what I want to do. And if they start fixing you, say, I don't need you to fix me. What I need for you is just to listen. And I We guarantee you whether it's that person or a different friend, someone will say, me too. Now you have a project. Now you have an opportunity to serve. Why don't we go through this together? Let me do everything I can to support you to help you get through this and find what you're looking for. And you'll find yourself reading books, listening to podcasts, reading articles, not for yourself.

1:41:15You'll find it doing it for somebody else. and that is the most fulfilling thing you can do. An act of service. Simon, you're great. Let's bring this one home, dude. I appreciate the hack out of you. What are you working on now? What can people expect of the next foreseeable future? Lots of things, lots of balls in the air. Writing a book about friendship. I've realized that all of the things that I've written about wouldn't work if you didn't have other people in your life who agree to grow with you. And there's an entire industry to help us be better leaders. There's an entire industry to help us be, have better marriages, be better parents, right?

1:41:53There's barely anything on how to be a friend. And yet, if you look at all of those things, work, personal life, those things succeed because we have friends to support us in those journeys. Well, who's there to support the friends? So I'm loving that research and enjoying writing that book. Making huge changes at work, changing our business model, really enjoying myself, the teams having a blast, we're experimenting, trying new things, and just, you know, we're just having fun. So better things are happening with our learning product. We teach human skills. All the things we're talking about, you know, I want to be a part of that journey with people if they'll let me.

1:42:37So that's happening. And we're in beta right now, because I figured out a way to help people find their wine. And I've written about it and spoken about it. And so we're in beta right now where we have something called Y School, which is it's for coaches, personal coaches, executive coaches, people who are in corporate learning development departments for then to come and learn my exact same process so they can help other people learn their Y. Because I realize I want everybody to have their purpose, but I mean, there's only one of you. There's only one of me. And even if I trained a few people, there's only a few of us.

1:43:11but for people who are already out there in the helping business, if I can give them one more tool in their toolbox. That's cool. Yeah. Why can people check that out? It's not live yet, but it will come live. But, you know, SimonCentic .com is where all the good stuff is, you know, social media, all the usual places. Beautiful. So I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate a great conversation.