Coach for SpaceX & OpenAI destroys your limiting beliefs for 88 minutes straight

21:41And anything that I don't want to visualize, I slow way the down and feel everything I don't want to feel. The big trick is to feel the things you don't want to feel. The reason that that's the trick is because, look, if I said to you, like most entrepreneurs, one of the things that they get scared about is being homeless. Who knows why, but it is something that many entrepreneurs get scared about. And if I said to you, hey, you're going to be homeless, but you are going to be happier, more content. You're going to feel great. Like how the thing of the best time you've ever felt in your entire life, it's going to be 10X that all the time.

22:18If you knew that to be true, how scared are you to be homeless? I want to be homeless. Right, exactly. So what's actually occurring is that we're scared of an emotional experience, not an actual experience. And neurologically, this is proven. So if I was to take the emotional center out of your brain, you would have an IQ that is the same as it is now, but you would have an incredibly hard time making decisions and your total life would fall apart. So, and you can read a book about this. It's called Descartes' Error. It was written by a neuroscientist in like 2012 or something. And so we've known this for a long time.

22:57So basically, if I pull out that emotional part of your brain, it's going to take you like a half an hour to decide what color pen to use. It's going to take you an hour or two to decide where to have lunch. So your whole life falls apart because you can't make decisions. And this was people who had brain damage or like a stroke in a certain area. And you, oh, your logical center is still working and decisions are logical, right? Yes. And it's like, no, no, not right. Not right. Not even simple decisions. Right. The only decisions that aren't emotionally based are the decisions that bypass the emotional center like a snake coming at you.

23:34Like you jump back without it going through that part of your brain.

24:04agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

24:07Sam Parr:What about the nervous system bit? Because that seems like the most challenging. I've read The Body Keeps the Score and I like intuitively know that like trauma is a physical thing. But like to put it on a really practical level, you ever get like a Slack or an email from a coworker that says, can we talk? And you're like, they're quitting. I feel like you feel like you get goosebumps and you're like, you feel something. How do you address this at a neurological level? Yeah, so nervous system, that's like a super tricky one. There's a lot of things that you can do, but this is like, it's all very primal.

24:43And this is where like repetition and do I do this every day? This is where it really comes in handy. So there's not like an intellectual or emotional aha that can change a nervous system just like that. occasionally high doses of psilocybin or something. I've seen changed nervous systems, but it's very undependable. And so this is actually where repetition matters in the nervous system. So one of the key principles is how do you allow yourself to experience pleasure more and more deeply? Because pleasure means that we're not under attack. So our nervous system thinks that we're under attack when we're not.

25:30And so it amps up. Now, sometimes that occurs because we have an abusive self-talk. And so if I was your boss and I was like, oh, you f***ed that up, you did that wrong. Like, why are you biting your nails? Why aren't you looking at Joe while you're podcasting? Why are you taking notes instead of being connected to your co-host? Like, if I was doing that perpetually, it would cause you f***ing stress. because you're perpetually under attack. But often we're doing that to ourselves. And so that's activating the nervous system. So that is the intellectual, that's like how the intellect and the nervous system relate.

26:10But there's a whole bunch of things that also happen with the nervous system. I'll use my own example in this. Because my mom, German, super rigid woman, loved me dearly in her capacity. But like, if I was five minutes early, I was late and I would get in trouble. You know, it was like that kind of a thing and like things needed to be very perfect. And so there was a sense of obligation. And if I wasn't going to fulfill that obligation, I was going to be in trouble. And so my nervous system gets activated when, you know, I'm a minute it late for a podcast, though it's not going to affect anything.

26:51My nervous system is going to get messed up. So there's some nervous system stuff that happens just like through training. And so one, the kind of the overall background thought process is how do I allow as much pleasure as possible as to like to reset my baseline. But the second thing is to really start to notice and be present with for like one or two seconds, those moments when my nervous system is activated or when your nervous system is activated. So when that phone call comes in and you're like, oh shit, you just stop. And you're like, what is it like to be me? Two seconds. And then you go ahead and do your thing.

27:31Like, go ahead, be anxious again. Like, don't try to control yourself because trying to control your anxiety is just an anxiety producing, right? Like, it just creates more of the same thing. It's just being really, really in touch with what's going on. Bringing awareness into that moment is all that's really necessary, but it's necessary to do it over and over and over again to see what's actually occurring in your system and what's really necessary. And then pretty soon it unpacks what's going on beneath your nervous system. Your intellect starts to understand it, but your intellect will never get it at first.

28:06It really requires lots of just being with present for one or two seconds when you notice that activation occur. Hey, can I ask you about avoiding conflict? Something that I thought, you know, I think I'm usually pretty good at, but man, lately there's been a situation where I'm just, I can see myself doing it. I can feel myself doing it. I know I'm not supposed to be doing it, but I'm doing it. By God, I'm doing it. And, you know, I don't really have a lot of language or kind of experience or wisdom around this. And I was really hoping you could help me out with that. So can we talk about conflict, avoiding conflict, especially with those who we're closest to?

28:47Yeah. I think it's maybe the hardest. Yeah. So I think intellectually, the important thing to recognize about conflict, it is, imagine you're working in a factory and somebody can tell you where the machine is going to break. Or someone can point to you, this is where the machine's broken, this is where the machine's broken. And you're like, great, thanks. And you ignore it. That's what avoiding conflict is like. Because conflict is the place where efficiency can be gained, whether it's in a marriage or in a business or between business partners. So I'll give you a story about this. So recently we had a facilitator in our business and somebody who probably wants to be a facilitator in our business who felt like the facilitator wasn't doing a good job and wanted to give the facilitator feedback.

29:43And we have a very open culture where everybody can give anybody feedback. And we could say, you need to go to their boss and then their boss will have the conversation because we're going to avoid the conflict. And we're, as a company, deciding like, how does this feedback, is this feedback going to work? and what we realize is that if this person gives feedback to the facilitator and the facilitator gets hurt that's something for the facilitator to work on and if this person's doing it out of some sort of like arrogance or narcissism like I think I can do a better job and the feedback is shit then that needs to be addressed but either way if he has arrogance and narcissism addressing that's going to make our business better if this facilitator isn't doing a good job, that's going to make our business better.

30:36And so every time that we're avoiding conflict in a business, we're looking at a place that we could potentially make the system better and we're not going to do it. Yeah, you're avoiding progress, not conflict. Exactly, yeah, thank you.

30:51Sam Parr:Yeah, but that's what a lot of people feel like. Like, for example, I've talked to really big, big shot tycoon types and they'll be like, I need to let go of this person, but I'm too afraid of the conversation. And so like you just said this on an intellectual level, totally, I'm on board. Totally agree. Everything you're saying makes tons of sense. And yeah, I'm still like, but I don't have the courage or I don't have the toolbox or the language to do this effectively. Yeah. So yeah, let's get into that. But I think that the, I do want to say one more thing intellectually too, because it's, if I go in and monitor a company's health, I literally just use two metrics.

31:30how quickly do they have the hard conversation and how quickly do they resolve it? So let's say you have a CEO who's a yeller. I guarantee you that a lot of hard conversations aren't going to be had and they're not resolving quickly. And let's say you have a CEO who's conflict avoidant. A lot of hard conversations aren't going to be had and a lot of things are going to be avoided. So it doesn't really matter what the actions are of people. Just to think about those two metrics as the health of an organization is just a great way to go in and very quickly see how healthy that organization is. Okay, so now how do you do it?

32:06So typically, before we get into how you do it, let's talk about the resistance to it. So the resistance is usually I'm going to be abandoned, not loved. This is a waste of my time. I'm not going to get anywhere anyway, and it's going to take so much energy. I could use the energy somewhere else. That's the second reason that people choose not to do it. and the third is I'm going to destroy something that I care about. Like I have the hard conversation, that person leaves and then the company is going to collapse or then the sales department is going to collapse or whatever.

32:37Sam Parr:Is there a fourth one, which is like, I don't even know if this is a problem worth addressing. Maybe I should just give it time. I feel like that's like a reason for one of the other excuses, but I'm sure that there's moments where that's the case. And sometimes there's actually some, there's some validity to that. Like I've given them feedback. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks and see what happens instead of like be on their ass every day about the thing. I can see that there would be some validity to it. And so some of that speaks to the fact that the person doesn't know how to make the conflict productive reliably.

33:14Like I have conflict and it just ends up in a worse fight that just like doesn't go the place that I want to go. So typically, if I'm talking about it, let's just take one example, because this gets a little complex. If I'm taking just, I want to have a hard conversation with somebody, what do I do? The first thing that I'm going to do is I am going to not solve the problem for them. To most people in a hard conversation say, hey, sales is off, and what I need you to do is make more phone calls, and we're going to monitor those through this set of data, right? that's incredibly disempowering and that conversation usually doesn't go very well.

33:55But if you say instead, hey, sales are off, I need a plan, please present it to me tomorrow about how we're going to get sales back on track, that's a far more powerful way to do it. Because you're not disempowering the person and you're not coming in and telling them what to do. So letting them solve the problem for you rather than you solve the problem for them you solving the problem for them is self-reliance again. And it's what most CEOs do instead of let them solve the problem for you, which is far more empowering to them. And it makes them feel like they can't blame you for it. So that's one of the skills that I would teach.

34:36The other one is I would really try to understand their situation before having the hard conversation. So I'd ask a lot of open-ended questions. I would make sure that they feel very heard. And so I understand what's going on. So as a CEO, I sit down and I'm like, I have an idea of what's going on over here in billing, but I don't. I do not have the full picture. If I have the full picture, I should fire the person because they're not doing a job good enough where I don't have to pay attention. So the first thing I want to do is really ask their context and understand what's actually going on with them and see if they're even happy with the job that they're doing or what's going on actually.

35:15Another thing I would do is I would actually be very vulnerable about where I am with it. So I would say something like, wow, I feel like we've lost trust. I noticed that I'm not trusting that this is going to get done. And so I'm not having confidence around this. And that sucks for me and that's got to suck for you. And so I want to know how we're going to fix it. So I'm going to be very vulnerable with how I am rather than making about them. So this is, again, back to the self-reliance piece. Entrepreneurs who are self-reliant have a hard time expressing when they're hurt, have a hard time expressing some sort of, this isn't working for me really well.

35:56And therefore, the problem is always about the other person instead of about them helping fix your issue, which is the way an organization is designed. The energy is backwards if you're trying to fix everybody's issues rather than everybody's fixing your issues. If I was to invest in your company, as an example, and I got to pick one person who was just stoked as hell, I would pick the CEO because that's going to be the best investment. The CEO is happy with the way the company is going. The company is going the way it should be going. If the head of marketing is happy, but the CEO is miserable about the way that company is going, that's not a good investment.

36:37So the happiness of the CEO is where everybody needs to be pointed. It doesn't mean that the CEO's job isn't to be helpful to people, but it means that the general energy of the company is supposed to be towards pleasing the CEO, making the CEO happy, which self-reliant CEOs have a really hard time getting through their head because that puts them in the position of the authority that they don't particularly want to be because authority was bad in their childhood. So that's an example. So those are all ways that I would talk to somebody if I'm having that hard conversation. So there are very practical skills of having hard conversations.

37:18but the biggest skill over all of this stuff is the internal space. If you feel like you're bad for having the conversation, if you feel like this is completely reasonable for me to ask, if you feel like I'm actually helping this person become more empowered and I'm doing them a service and helping them become a better at their job, like that state of mind has a huge impact on how the person receives it so i'll just give you like a very short example if i was like hey sean you're such a dick like why are you such a dick or if i said oh sean you're being a dick you're going to take those two things very very differently because in one case i don't want you to be a dick and in the other case i'm like oh you know you're being a dick that's okay and so your attitude coming in if you're scared you're like more likely to get attacked you're more likely to have a bad experience with it so your your calm your what i would call vagal authority, your nervous system authority coming into the room and your understanding of you're here to be of service to this person is going to make all the difference.

38:45Sam Parr:You have this cool quote. I think I don't have in front of me. I think it was something like negative self-talk is always wrong or something like that, which like I read that and I was, that was kind of shocking to me. And it seems like self-talk is a really important thing. And a lot of like ambitious people, I think are like, they're like their biggest hater. Most people, generally. Most people, yeah. Do you have any patterns that you have seen of self-talk? And what are the practical tips on improving that? So there's like three or four different kind of self-talk abuse cycles that you're like, there's like the really overt one, which is like, you're f***ing up.

39:26Why are you f***ing up? Why didn't you, like, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? There's that version. Then there's the version of you got to do this. Now you got to do this. You got to do this. Why don't you do this? you gotta do this. Don't forget to do this. You gotta do this. There's another version of negative self-talk. Then there's like some kind of hidden ones, which are like, you've got it. You can do this. It's all good. You've got this thing. You can do this thing, which you would like, could you imagine going to Michael Jordan and going, yeah, you can do it. You can shoot the basket.

39:58I know you can, Mike. Like you would never do it because you have confidence in that person. And so there's this subtle undermining, saying that you actually need this, right? It's not, you're fine either way. And like, there's not like a natural confidence in it. So that's all. There's about 20 tools to work with self-talk, negative self-talk. One of the ways that you know it's negative self-talk is because it's repeating, right? So when negative self-talk starts dying in your system, when it starts atrophying, you just have a lot less thought. Just as a lot less thought occurs. And the thought that you have is more like epiphanies.

40:40It's like, oh, here's a cool idea. Oh, that's a cool idea. They're not repetitive over and over again thoughts. So I'll give you just a couple really practical ones. If you try to change the self-talk, it's very inefficient. If you change the way you react to the self-talk, it's far, far more efficient. Your self-talk is like, wow, you just really screwed up that podcast, Joe. And like most people, they listen to that the way that they would listen to a, think about the politician you hate most talking on stage, and then think about the person in the audience who's like, yep, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, that's right.

41:21Uh-huh, yeah. That's how we listen to our self-talk. Most of us listen to our self-talk as, you know oh you screwed that up it's like yep i screwed that up i should do something about that like that's that's the relationship so instead you change the reaction to it like oh you screwed that stuff up oh i see how scared you are i say i'm right here with you you can be scared or you up uh wow that's really shitty management could you try to manage me in a different way please. You f***ed up. Prove it. You f***ed up. Oh, really? I think you f***ed up. So you're changing the reaction. And so like a great experiment to run on this is think about the reaction that you want to experiment with.

42:07It doesn't have to be good or bad. It's just an experiment. And you, every time your negative self-talk happens that day, every time you remember, you react in this way that you're experimenting with. And then two days later, you do a new experiment. Two days later, you do a new experiment. So you're constantly changing the way that you're reacting to your self-talk. And just like both of you are different when you're interacting with each other than when you're interacting with your significant other or your kids, if you have them, or your best friend from college, the voice in our head reacts differently depending on how we treat it.

42:42And you get to start seeing that. And so that's a really simple way to start not manage, but start bringing awareness and therefore changing and transforming your negative self-talk. Another really good one that's just really easy is write out, here are the 20 things that negative voice in my head says the most, and look for seven ways they're not true. And if you can't find them, ask your friends. Because what your negative voice in your head is saying is not true. I mean, I can give you anything. If you tell me anything that your negative voice in your head, it says to you on a regular basis, I can prove and I can tell you five ways it's not true.

43:19Hey, can I ask you a question that sort of violates that rule? You know, never ask a man a question that a salary depends on the answer or whatever. You can try. Yeah. So, so, you know, whenever I learn about this stuff and as you can see, I got notes and notes right now, like I love, I get like really fascinated by this. You're saying words like vagal authority. I'm like, Oh, I got to go look into that. I want to learn that. I want to learn to do this. And then within like, I would say as soon as I pass like the 90 minute mark of any of this, I'm like completely exhausted. And I almost like go through like the cycle where I start out as a idiot caveman.

43:55Then I think I'm becoming this like elevated higher level being who's really in touch with everything. And then I'm like, oh my God, this is so much work. I just want to go back to being a lovable idiot again at the end of this. And like, dude, it's all good. don't worry about it like you know that I go and and I think actually recently this kind of a retard maxing kind of phrase caught on at least in Silicon Valley other people are probably like what the hell is this guy talking about but um this idea of like you know you're trying too hard to be too smart you're too in touch with your emotions you're over therapized like there is a reaction to the reaction yeah and I almost wonder like are people better off just being kind of like more like a dog like just dumb and happy you know just wagging our tail and running around and you know, licking our butts.

44:38Like, are we just happier that way than trying to go do all this work and kind of master the psyche and all of its different parts? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, it seems like you have two questions in there. So let me address the first one, which is that cycle that you get into, which is, oh, I'm super inspired and now I feel exhausted. And the thing that's happening there is that in your mind, you're telling yourself you have have to do all this stuff. And that's what makes it exhausting rather than like, what's the one cool experiment I'm going to run this week. And, and that's maybe yours.

45:20Another person's is like, I have to be perfect. And so that like takes all the joy out of it and, and, and makes it like less effective. So to me, it's like how you approach it is incredibly important, both for the effectiveness and for whether it's worthwhile. The way I think about meditation is kind of an example. One of the things that I say is meditation for most people is just self abuse because they're just sitting there trying to manage themselves for 90 minutes, right? And there's no enjoyment in it. And so the question is like, how do you enjoy meditation? That's a question. Or how do you enjoy self-growth or self-awareness or understanding yourself better instead of making it a grind?

46:12If you can do that, then it's great and it's totally worth it. And it's lovely and you'll be inspired to do it. But if it becomes like this to-do list so that one day you'll be good enough so that, you know, if you make it like your company, right? Which is, once I get enough money and I have enough power, then I'll be happy. Once I, you know, understand myself enough and I deal with the voice in my head and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'll be happy and then I'll be done. Or you can be like, oh, like, what can I learn today? What's the, what's the experiment I can run? Right. And this is the same way that I would suggest, if you want to learn how to market, it's the same thing.

46:51Like, what's the experiment you can run? What can you learn today? What can you read about that's fun to read about? What's the cool thing to try? Rather than, oh my God, I got to do this because my business completely depends on it. Right. You're going to make a lot more progress on the first than the second. I think that's a great insight. I want to come back to the second question, but just to add onto that, last year I decided to learn the piano and I had two teachers. The first teacher I went to made me almost quit the first day because we sat down and they were like, all right, so here's what you're going to need to learn.

47:21Here's the musical notation. We're going to memorize all these letters and here's what, then we're going to learn rhythm and we're going to learn the scales, but you can't get the scales if you don't first don't have finger control and posture. Why are you sitting like that? And like, she basically presented the whole elephant I'm going to have to eat. And I was like, oh God, I'm like, I'm just tired thinking about what all I'm going to have to do just to be able to, this stupid dream of mine, how much did I really want this anyways? And then the second teacher, so I, luckily I didn't quit. I just, I bumped into a second teacher and then the second teacher was like, cool.

47:50So like, what, what made you want to do this? What's a song you like? And what would be cool if you could play it? I'm like, oh, this song. She's like, oh, you know what? That's actually not that hard here. Forget the left hand. We're just going to live to the right hand. And we're just going to learn this intro lick. We'll walk out of here. You'll be able to play this little thing. Right. And you know, it just got, and then it's like, oh, do you want to be able to play the next thing? You're going to have to learn what a chord is. You want a chord is? And then I learned the next thing progressively.

48:10And now I can play the piano. Right. And it's like that for all things in life. So what you said definitely I didn't realize the connection between those two until you said that. Yeah. If anybody told us what we had to do just to make our business successful and like just handed like, this is everything you're going to have to do. Like most people would be like, that. Yeah. Yeah. Or having kids or anything else like that. Can we, can we do the second part now of, are we better off just being sort of, you know, retard-baxing and then not over-introspecting, not overly getting in touch with our feelings and just saying like, feel good, do more.

48:44doesn't feel good, do less, let me just move on and not overthink it. It can potentially work out if you're super lucky and the world doesn't change under your feet, but it's not going to work out otherwise. Meaning like the CEO of a tech company that has really, really hard recruitment because everybody with any kind of AI degree is already recruited is going to have to have a different set of skills and understanding than the person who's running a tomato, 50 ,000 acre tomato farm. And potentially the CEO of one is not gonna be successful in the CEO of the other, even though they might be great CEOs in the business of their choice.

49:25Because one is high margin, one is low margin, one is about a certain kind of efficiency, one is about a certain kind of creativity. So if you are not self-aware, then you better have landed in a place where you, by nature, are going to be capable. And that place can't change. But if you are going to be required to change as a human being and change who you are and your identity as a human being to maintain or continue success, then you're just shooting yourself in the foot by not being self-aware. There's also this kind of trajectory of self-awareness. Like the beginning is, why am I doing this work?

50:05And then I can't see the change. Other people are telling me I'm changing, but I can't see the change. Why am I even doing this? And then there's like, holy shit, this life is better. And then when you hit the holy shit life is better moment, oftentimes like two or three years for people, they really get that moment. Then it's just like, why in the hell would I ever stop this? It's a little bit like working out. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses.

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51:21Sam Parr:Speaking of like working out and actually Sean's example with the piano was awesome. And we've only been talking for an hour and I'm like totally bought in. I love what you do. I believe what you were saying is true. but in the back of my head I'm like this sounds amazing I'm a little overwhelmed I don't know where to start and if it's like working out and if you said you know the end goal is you want to bench 300 pounds over the next year like here's like a really interesting progression and here's like some experiments or workouts you can do each week it might be too reductive but are there like this idea of experimenting weekly is pretty cool that sounds exciting and that sounds fun Is there like a checklist or a playbook where it's like...

52:02No, I think starting point is a good word. Like if somebody listened to this, great. What, you know, what's a beautiful place in the next 24 hours, 48 hours that they could go? What's a thing they could do that would get them on the road?

52:14Sam Parr:Yeah, and like what are, and then what's the progression and where are some other weekly experiments that I could like follow to improve myself? Yeah, so there's, I can tell you how I did and then I can tell you the resources that we have for people. So I just basically picked topics that I was interested in. I would read something on that topic and I would design an experiment for myself and I'd run that experiment for a week. And I actually have a book that I just finished writing that'll be published in like whatever a year and something that has 52 experiments on different topics. And then a whole bunch of writing on these topics.

52:52What's one of them? A really cool, super cool experiment is, so right now, enjoy yourself. Don't change what you're doing at all, but just enjoy what you're doing 10 % more. Totally possible, totally capable, nothing to it. So just do that five times a day for the next week. Five times a day, go, oh, how do I enjoy myself? Without changing anything, just 5 % more, 10 % more.

53:21Sam Parr:It sounds like so basic and almost stupid. And then I think of myself wanting to do that. I'm like, that's actually really helpful. Yeah, super. Yeah, it's like all of a sudden, like you'll be sitting in a meeting and you'll like your whole mindset will change. And then the thing you say will change. And yeah, that's a simple, like really cool little experiment to run. The other one is, I think we talked about the one with the voice in the head. That's another great experiment to run. Another great experiment to run would be, oh yeah, this one's good, especially if you're a grinder. Don't do anything you don't enjoy for a week.

53:57Go to work and you can only do the shit that you enjoy. And at some point in that week, there's going to be something that happens. And I'll tell you my experience of this. I did this before I had a business and I was sitting in front of the trash and I hated taking the trash out. But I also didn't enjoy smelling the trash. So I was sitting there like, well, what do I do? because I've committed to not doing anything I don't enjoy. And then I was like, oh, I have to figure out how to enjoy taking out the trash. And so that's another cool experiment is just see what it's like to live a week doing only what you enjoy.

54:34Because a lot of the lack of enjoyment that occurs is because we tell ourselves we have to endure it when we absolutely could be enjoying it. So you said something in that first experiment. You said, without doing anything different, enjoy it more. which to me reads like, you know, because one version of how do I take out the trash more? Oh, I'm going to listen to my favorite song while I do it. Okay. I changed what I was doing. Right. That's fair. But there's the other version, which is I'm literally not going to do anything different. I'm just going to feel it more. I'm going to like bring my awareness to it.

55:05That's why there are two experiences, two experiments. Right. And I had this when we sold a company and then I asked my business partner, Ben, I was like, dude, how does it feel? Big, you know, big win for you. Like, you know, first, like, how does it feel? Is it what you thought. He's like, honestly, no, not at all. He's like, I don't feel anything. And we were laughing and he didn't know what to make of it. So his meaning he put on that was like, dude, was I chasing the wrong goal this whole time? Like, am I, was I wrong in what I wanted? And what I kind of reframed or what I, my life experience was this.

55:33I was like, dude, I think all these feelings are like a muscle. You just never, how many times before this did you feel ecstatic and triumphant and never? So what'd you think you would just start today and suddenly feel it at level 100? like you never used that muscle before. So like the actual thing to do was practice using that muscle without having to sell your company. And then, you know, you sort of build up the capacity to feel, but you can't just, like, I think we think, oh, my happy is your happy. Dude, I got an uncle who I'm like, his capacity to feel happy is just fundamentally higher, like a VO2 max.

56:06It's way higher than mine. Is that, does that line up with like, I've never done the research. This is my life experience. Yes, definitely. Definitely. Definitely, especially the positive emotions. But they're the scariest emotions for most people to feel because they're the biggest identity destroying emotions. They just wreck your identity. The positive ones are. The positive ones, yeah. Why does that destroy your identity? Go be in bliss and find out where you are.

56:29Sam Parr:Well, I experienced that when I had kids. When I had kids, I wrote a post about this. I was like, not having kids was so much better in terms of ambition because it's quite simple. I just work, work, work. And there's a clear ladder and you just climb it. And then you have kids and you're like, I only mostly care about this and everything else is insignificant. And you're like, that part of me just died. I guess you grieve it a little bit. I don't know how you feel, but like when you have children, you're like everything that I thought I cared about, I now care about significantly less. Less, yeah.

57:03Sam Parr:And it like, and I'm happy. I prefer this life. And yet you're still working and still being effective, which is also an interesting thing to let your mind recognize that the identity doesn't have to be so attached to be able to be successful. Yeah. One more experiment that I think is really cool for entrepreneurs, especially if they have, because we've been talking about self-reliance. Thank five people a day. Consciously look around and go, what did somebody do for me that I'm grateful for? And thank five people a day. It'll totally change your self-reliance pattern. Hey, how do you find joy?

57:38Sam Parr:And how do you find what you should be doing? because you're like, fine, one of your exercises was do only what you like or enjoy something more. But that's actually kind of complicated because I don't think a lot of people have actually asked themselves or can't answer, what do I love doing? Yeah, I think because it's a false, I think that's really just like a self-abuse in disguise, right? Like, what's my purpose? What's my purpose is just a way to beat yourself up that you don't have your purpose. What do I enjoy? I think that the people that I find who have purpose and enjoy what they do, a lot of them weren't like, I think that what I'm going to do is I'm going to really get into risk analysis.

58:26But they ended up there, but they learned how to geek out on it and enjoy the thing itself. So I think the way that you find what you enjoy is on a day-to-day basis asking yourself, how would I enjoy doing this? How do I enjoy this? What would make it a little bit better? How would I change this? And I think for entrepreneurs, they think that that's a nice to have, but it's far more important than that. So if I had a car, if I wanted an efficient company, we think of it as a fast company. I got from A to B quickly. But if we had a car, A to B quickly isn't an efficient car. That's just a fast car.

59:06An efficient car is a car that gets to A to B without a lot of energy. And so if you want efficiency in your life, it's how much energy you spent in that day. And often that does end up making you go faster. And so if I get to the end of the day and I say, how much did I enjoy myself? That's the best measure of efficiency because I have energy for the next day and I want to come back. If I do a yoga class and I enjoyed the hell out of it, I'm far more likely to come back and do yoga and do it well tomorrow than if I had a yoga class that sucked and I hated it. And so as people learn how enjoyment works in their system, how to enjoy what they enjoy, what they're great at, then their whole business becomes far more efficient.

59:56And as a matter of fact, we get a lot of people who come and say, well, I'd like to work for you. And I'll just say, what's your passion? What's the thing that you care about that you would love doing? and if they say the thing that we have a slot for, then we'll talk to them. Because it's so, like, if someone's naturally motivated, it's so useful. It's interesting you say that. You know, when Sam asks these questions, I'm kind of like, how do you know? You know, my guess was that you were going to just be like, you know, when you see it, you feel it. It's not a heady thing. You can't think your way into this or out of this or, you know, to analyze your way into success in these.

1:00:32like there's a whole like kind of east-west or two sides of the brain type of thing. But I feel like when you're answering some of these, you are kind of thinking your way through. I guess, can you talk about just noticing or feel rather than, where does that play in for you? I can give you a great story on this. So my wife and I were sitting, we do these very intense long retreats. And so it's very tiring. And we were at the end of one of the retreats and there was this investment we could have made that would have given us enough money where we didn't have to start a business. And we were sitting there thinking, and I said, I'm really glad that didn't happen because we wouldn't have done this.

1:01:10And she said, yeah, me too. And I said, I'm just curious, would you sell this business for a billion dollars if we could not do it again? Like we would be done doing it, but we'd get a billion dollars. And both of us went like this. We both went, we wouldn't. that was our answer and I don't know I came home told the story to my daughters and then like two or three months later one of my daughters comes in and says I found my billion dollar idea I'm like cool something you can grow into a billion dollars and she's like no something I wouldn't sell for a billion dollars

1:01:51Sam Parr:that's cool and so if you're doing something that's like deeply meaningful to you That's one way to test if that's something that's deeply meaningful to you. If you're doing it for other reasons, if you're doing it because you think it's going to make you happy, if you're doing it because you think people will like you or because you'll have enough money or to just be better or to win or something like that, those can actually create very big and successful businesses. But they won't create contentment. I like talking with people like you because you have this really cool perspective where you've talked to the titans of industry, the best of the best, the Illuminati.

1:02:30Sam Parr:You know, you like, you have seen them. And we all know what they appear like in the media or on podcasts like this, where they usually look like they have their act together or they'll show just a little bit of vulnerability, show that like they're one of us. But are there any interesting stories or observations about the 1 % of performers that would surprise us or at least entertain us on how these guys might think that might surprise us or be different? Yeah, specifically I can't do, obviously. But what I could say is that there's nothing I've said on this podcast that I haven't said to one of the titans of industry.

1:03:12Like the things that you're wrestling with are the exact same things that they're wrestling with, right?

1:03:19Sam Parr:What attributes do you tend to notice? Are they 10 out of 10 on or 1 out of 10 on? The really, really, the exceptional ones of like very fast paced businesses. So not like if you can be a slow paced business, then there's a different kind of attitude. You can be, you can actually be quite self-abusive in a slow paced business, but in a fast paced business, you can't second guess yourself very much. So very, very few of them are second guessers. So they just are like, and part of it is because they have to make so many decisions in a day. And so decisiveness is another one, especially for the fast-paced industries.

1:03:57There are some investment. If you're an investor and you can be a billionaire investor, you can really second-guess yourself a ton and still be a successful investor. But if you're the CEO of a tech company that's in fast-paced, you can't do that. The other thing that I think those very high performers, it's not all of them, but I would say at least 60, maybe 70%, they both feel like they're better than everybody and worse than everybody simultaneously. So they, on one level, in their conscious mind, they're like, I am more capable than people, than the average person. But underneath, they're like, I'm broken.

1:04:40And so they're kind of doing this thing because they know that they're better and they're trying to prove that they're not broken. It's not all the time, but it's more common in that population than in any other population that I've seen. There's a lot of people walk around thinking that they're better than everybody, right? I mean, you can go down into the dregs of our society and you will find somebody who thinks they're better than everybody. But that underlying, oh, I'm broken simultaneously with it and the way that that presents is very, there's a lot of it in that realm. you know one of the things we did in this podcast that's sort of backwards probably for most podcasts most podcasts start with like tell me about your background and your story yeah and we do it the opposite we say show me all the gold you've collected on your journey first we start there and then we say where'd you get all this man where where just what kind of journey did you go on yeah can you give us now now that we've you know gotten to see some of the gold can you give us a little bit of the journey.

1:05:44And I'm curious about one thing in particular. I've read something about like an eight second meditation experience. I'm very curious about that. But if you give us the journey, but make sure you hit that along the way. Yeah, I mean, I grew up going all over the world. I think by the time I was 28, I lived in 26 places. My dad was a CEO, but also became an alcoholic. And so I rebelled against that. Had a Mohawk, was a skateboarder. got kicked out of my first college, graduated valedictorian for my second college. And then first thing I did when I left college was like, I'm just having adventures one after the other.

1:06:23So I butchered fish in Alaska and I hitchhiked throughout the United States. And then I did international stock lending and I was in a band. So I was just like, I'm having whatever adventure I want from life.

1:06:40Sam Parr:Like James Bond, man. Well, it's because I saw my dad just like do this corporate thing and end up in misery. I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that. Then I met my wife and my wife was like, if we're going to get married, we're going to see a therapist. We're going to do a 10 day silent retreat and we're going to travel through third world together for like six months. And if we can do those three things, we're going to be capable of getting married and being successful. So those were her tasks. And so I did them. The therapy was amazing. We got blessed with a really good therapist and they're pretty rare.

1:07:18And then the silent retreat was my first time meditating ever. And on day three of Vipassana, they have, you know, it's when it changes from putting all your attention into your breath to like moving your attention through your body. And I had this experience of like evaporation and samadhi is what some people would call it, but this experience of I am one with everything and everything is good. And it lasted eight seconds. And it was like getting hooked on heroin. My entire life changed. I was like, whatever the that is, I'm obsessed. And unfortunately, I went about it in a very inefficient way.

1:07:59I very much was like, once I get there, I'll be happy. It was just the search for enlightenment was just like porn for perfection. it was just like my porn right and but the the plus side was that like i just because i had authority issues i just went and explored everything and took nothing very seriously and made everything an experiment so instead then now that's how we teach like when we do our courses everything is done as experiment there's not like we're talking and saying this is how things are we're like go and experience this ship for yourself here's how you do it you can do it with people right now.

1:08:33It's very in the moment experimentation. And I wasn't willing to say, you're the authority, you're the guru. I was like, I'm going to listen to every single modality that I can find from neuroscience to psychology to traditions that are 2000 years old. I'm going to try 10 forms of meditation. I'm going to do the Hoffman process. I'm going to do somatic work. I just did everything. And I was pretty dedicated to that. I'm not pretty. I was totally dedicated. kid. I didn't work for seven years. I lived off credit cards. I meditated for seven hours a day, looking, searching. I was obsessed with it.

1:09:12The search ended, what people would call awakening happened. It wasn't an end at all. There was no finish line, just like selling a company. It was just like, oh, I see how this whole thing is just easier and more spacious than I thought it was and then my identity got trapped in that for a while like i was the awake guy and then that evaporated and in that time period we had kids and then the kids were where the big emotional work came in was like really learning i there was this thing called hand in hand parenting which i highly recommend a book called listen which is like one of the most profound practices in my life and that was really where the big emotional understanding started coming in that that like oh, I can be with my children in these big emotions.

1:09:59And all they need to do is feel them and accept them to become amazing kids. And now my girls are 17 and 20, and they are freaking amazing. And it is, I think, all because of Hand in Hand and my wife. She's amazing. And so that was it. And then at some point, I became a venture capitalist. and... As one does. As one does. Yeah. I literally went from meditation, I did art, and then became a venture capitalist. You're like a sellout. Both of them just sit around all day doing that a lot. No, what happened was I was doing this large-scale art installation for a wealthy family and I was giving them business advice because before I had done international stock lending and other things.

1:10:47And it was like at the time when oil was going through the roof and gold was going through the roof. And I was just telling them like, hey, here's this thing. And they did and they made a lot of money.

1:10:55Sam Parr:That's like a hilarious thought, by the way. A guy doing an arts installation at a rich person's house got like the guru energy. And it's like, hey, do you guys want to discuss your bond portfolio? What did you actually tell them? What was going on? I was, buy oil and gold. This is a long time ago, right? But I was like, I've always been obsessed with business as well. So, and the way I think about those years is I was meditating and worrying about money. Those are the two things I did. So I had like a stack of Financial Times in the corner. And so I was, when they still had papers and I would read the Financial Times and because I started, one of the jobs I did was international stock lending and I got it like promoted three times.

1:11:38And so I was inside of like a 16 month period. And so it was just kind of, it was just something that I always thought about. And like one day we were sitting and having lunch And I was just like, hey, here's this thing. So he comes to me and he goes, hey, do you want to come and work for us and like help us in the family office? And I was like, no, I love being an artist. It's good. And he says, well, if you could do anything you want, just tell us what it would be. And so three months later, I was like, well, I think the biggest change agent on the planet, this is around 2006. I was like, it's gonna be clean tech.

1:12:10I think that this is like the biggest technological changes on the planet I think have come from venture. So I'd do that. And then I would work in the nonprofit, like helping increase consciousness, particularly in children. And so he said, yeah, let's do it. And it turned out I was not a great investor because I needed to be needed too much. Like a great investor is the investor who's like, I am investing because you don't need me at all. And I was like, I need to be needed, which was horrible as venture investor. and in that so the only way for me to be successful was to coach the CEOs into like turning their companies around and we had a positive result on the portfolio so we invested more and so I was investing for about 12 years but pretty soon the word about my coaching got out and in doing venture the thing that I realized about the personal work was that if you take a standard business tool and you put the awareness of personal work into it, the standard business tool gets better, right?

1:13:19If we have something that we teach called Vue, it's in our connection course. It's about how to communicate with people, how to have hard conversations, how to have sales conversations. When people have it, they sell better. They do product better. They talk to their husbands and wives better. They have hard conversations better. and it's because they're all related. And so as I was coaching people and learning all these business tools as a VC and blending them together, I just found more and more effective ways to do it, which made me a better coach. And so at some point I was like, I should be doing this and only this.

1:13:57And so 2016, I started the transition. 2018, I stopped working for the family and I started building Art of Accomplishment. We've been growing ever since.

1:14:07Sam Parr:But you're fun to talk to because this stuff is all really helpful. I'm so convinced now. You've got me drinking the Kool-Aid where I'm like, here, you're talking about this. And I'm like, nothing else matters except for this. And that's a little bit of an overwhelming feeling. Is there a practical way that I can get started other than going through one of your programs? Anything that you suggest I read or do? Because this sounds very fascinating. And I'm like, I'm in. Yeah, so the one thing I would do, So we have a podcast that I think has now like 180 episodes and they're all on different topics and it's all basically some version of a teaching.

1:14:44So I would pick a topic that's like particular for you. You're like, oh, wow, I'm a perfectionist. I go to the perfectionist podcast. I have self-reliance issues. Go to the self-reliance podcast. And then if there's not an experiment in it, a lot of them have experiments that you can run. then design an experiment from that and play there. We also have an experiments page where it teaches you how to design the experiments and how to run them. That's another thing that I think is really good. We have a podcast on running and designing experiments. That's another one. By the way, Sam, so brilliant that they call them experiments.

1:15:19He frames everything as experiments because so much of this industry that he's in is a, you should do this, you need to do this. this is the way versus less preachy, less rigid, more open.

1:15:34Sam Parr:Yeah, like try this weird thing and see what happens. You might be surprised. Yeah. And it makes it more fun. Yeah. Makes it more fun, yeah. It's also, there's another reason for it. So we have a part of our brain, I'm not going to be very specific about this, but we have a part of the brain called the habenula. It's with all invertebrates. And it's basically the part of our brain that like traffics our dopamine and stuff like that. And it prevents us from making the same mistake over and over and over and over again. And the reason this is because if you're a bear and you're fighting for sexual dominance and you lose, it'd be really stupid to go and fight the next day.

1:16:07If you eat the mushroom and it makes you sick, it'd be really stupid to eat that mushroom the next day. Unfortunately, what this does for us is it means we're not going to make the second sales call because we just got rejected. Or when we stop, we eat that piece of chocolate cake that we talked about earlier, I'm going to just quit my diet. it. That's what it does in our brain. So if you frame it as an experiment, then what you're doing is you're constantly learning and you're never failing. And so they did this study about people who were like, I think it was at or below poverty, and they figured out who lost weight when they tried.

1:16:42And the people who did were the people who were constantly iterating, where there was no, we failed. There's just, I'm going to try this. Now I'm going to try this. Now we're going to try this, which we obviously see in business, right? Those are the people who succeed in business. They keep on trying new stuff until they find the thing that works. And so to see self-awareness as a series of experiments and every experiment you learn, and all you need to do is learn about yourself, then you never really can fail and it works a lot better. And if you think about like fixing a watch, if you understand a watch, you can fix it.

1:17:15If you understand yourself, right, you can change.

1:17:19Sam Parr:You're like the worst doctor is a dermatologist because when they go out to parties with their family, everyone's like, I got a rash. Check this out. What is this? And like people are like popping their tops at parties. Like, what do you think this is? And like, if you go to a party with you, everyone's like, fix me. Or like, give me the answer. It must be exhausting. You probably have to lie about what you do. It's a little, yeah, it can be annoying. Chris Williamson, do you all know Chris? Yeah. Yeah, so Chris Williamson was hanging out with me and he was like, my life is walking down the street, some UPS driver says, hey man, good podcast.

1:18:02I'm like, thanks. Your life is, hey man, I've got daddy issues. Can we have a quick session? Yeah.

1:18:14So I would say that's one good way to start. But the other good way to start is on YouTube, I do these 15-minute coaching sessions. I do some with business folks, some without business folks. They're incredibly powerful. They're incredibly potent. And so if you can go through them and say, oh, I have this issue, and then watch the coaching session, you can get change that's not just on an intellectual level.

1:18:37Sam Parr:This has been a treat because I'm looking to hire an executive coach. Sean has one. and we're both in some transitioning periods of our lives with families and business. And so this was a treat for us because I think I needed this. I needed this. This was the perfect medicine. Cool. I'm happy to make some recommendations for you if you're interested. I'm all yours. Yeah, tell me everything. You can tell me off air. Brother, you got me eating out of your hand right now. I'll do whatever you say. As far as the book, the one thing that I think would be really useful, We have a program that's specifically for venture-backed startups that have found product market fit that are under 50 people.

1:19:21And we have a program for their executive teams. So their executive teams come and do a summit with us twice a year. Super effective. Basically, we are all about getting that. How do we have the hard conversations quickly and effectively? and creating that so that you know and I know that two founders not getting along can cost a business decades, if not the entire business, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so we find the working with the team, the executive team is far more efficient for having a change both with the CEO inside the company. So that would be, it's called the council, and we open up applications once a year.

1:20:03dude it's crazy the responsibility you have like uh i read that the opening i team sends a car picks you up and you like coach the whole team or you coach the execs and then i'm on twitter and they're like uh hey i lead safety research it's like today like the big story right now is like anthropics guys like hey like we think there's a greater than 10 chance that it kills all of humanity you know it's like first of all they need a little comms coaching i don't if you do that on the side, but that would be nice. But secondly, like, you know, what responsibility, like coaching the people that are building the thing, the bomb, you know, like either the greatest thing ever, the worst thing ever.

1:20:39Sometimes they say it's the greatest ever. And sometimes they tell us it's going to be the worst thing ever. It's got to be a pretty, pretty heavy thing. Yeah, that's, it's really interesting. So just to be very clear about my, like, I, I coach people at OpenAI. I don't coach the whole leadership team. And I've coached most of the people who are in the research, like leading the research department. And I've worked with people in our like in-person and other programs from all the AI labs. They all come, one multiple from all of them have come through our thing. I have a really interesting take on this.

1:21:15You know, if you've had a kid, your wife's in the OR or in the birthing room, or maybe you had a doula at the house, but just imagine like she's giving birth to this thing. And now imagine like there's protests outside and there's people saying that they're gonna destroy humanity. And these people are doing something that's like substantial. And as a society, we are really not being supportive. And the reason I say being supportive is because the outcome is gonna be different, right? Like I'm sure they're out there, but I haven't met one of them yet who's trying to not do something that's good for humanity.

1:21:56And they're not concerned.

1:21:58Sam Parr:You must have seen the tweet Sean's referring to. That actually, this isn't in your wheelhouse maybe of expertise, but it might be given that you talk to all these cool people. Do you actually have an opinion on what that, basically for the listener, the tweet was a guy who worked at Claude quit and he said there's a 10 % chance or more that everyone's going to die because of AI. It was a very... one guy quit then the guy who's still there who leads that team that that guy was on said no he's right we do believe that I personally think it's a greater than 10 % chance yeah do you have an opinion on the seriousness yeah I do I have a very very strong opinion I've sat with a whole bunch of researchers and they were asked like these are the people building it and they were asked 20 questions does AGI exist now will it ever exist are the things and then they were asked to line up on this line and they lined up very, very differently.

1:22:53Like they were spread out. Okay, is it going to destroy the world? Is it going to be the best thing for humanity? They're all spread out on the line. Every single question, there's not everybody on one corner and everybody on the other corner. And so my takeaway from that is they're thinking about what's going to happen with AI has far more to do with how they were raised than it has to do with any kind of reality.

1:23:15Sam Parr:That's such a you answer. And it's a beautiful answer. So that's my opinion on it. I mean, of course, this has a chance to destroy humanity. So does nuclear weapons, and so does global warming, and so does, and something will eventually. And the question that I ask myself personally is like, what can I do that can affect a positive outcome? And am I participating in that? And somebody can say, that's easy, Joe, because you're coaching people like Sam. But I would say it is a democracy of clicks and money that's going to determine AI more than any one leader. And I think we shirk our responsibility by saying it's about one leader who's going to do it.

1:24:08Sam Parr:Does that make you feel better, Sean, or no? I don't think so. Honestly, no. Not at all. So we're going to die. No, not even that. I guess on one level, there's sort of humor in the situation. To use your analogy of like, they're sort of birthing this technology. And you said a lot of the opinions of these people has less to do. Let me paraphrase what you said. A lot of their opinions has less to do with the facts on the ground and the research, what they're seeing in the data versus how they're arrayed. They're daddy issues. And it's like AI's daddy has daddy issues. Therefore, maybe AI is going to have daddy issues as it grows up.

1:24:46Yeah, just like Metta's business is a reflection of the consciousness of Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I think that's why you coach because you can affect that. I think that's why maybe you have comfort because you know some of the people. I think that's why a lot of the people who are just in the YouTube comments who have a sort of billionaire aversion, tech guy aversion, right? This is like, if you go look at the sentiment, the sentiment around billionaires, tech leaders, and specifically the billionaire AI tech leaders, it's awful. Like there is zero trust, zero belief in the, that those are our great kings and fearless leaders that we want to get behind.

1:25:24Yeah. Part of that is because of their own poor communication and presentation. So it's not like they're just hated because of who they are, right? They contributed to some of that. Yeah. And some of it is people's, their own current life situation makes them hate, you know? And that's, you know, it's this weird, complicated thing that's going on. But to answer your question, Sam, does it make you feel a lot better? No, not necessarily.

1:25:47Sam Parr:I sort of think of it like, I don't know, just a much higher level of, like the earth has been around for billions of years. The odds that I will exist when the demise is here is very, very, very, very low. The funniest tweet was when the Antipak guy was like, yeah, 10 % chance it kills all humans. And then somebody quote tweeted it and said, by the way, LeBron was 9 % to go to the Sixers this summer. Just put that perspective in for you. I actually took a lot of comfort when I was reading about the Dead Sea Scrolls and I found out that the scrolls were kept by a cult who saw the end of the world coming.

1:26:28And I was like, oh, the end of the world was coming back then. Wait, wait, explain this.

1:26:33Sam Parr:I don't even know what is the Dead Sea Scrolls? Dead Sea Scrolls are like the... It's like an ancient biblical text. Yeah, exactly. That were like in a cave somewhere. and they were kept by a cult just post Jesus, I think, that was like the end of the world is coming and we have to prepare for it. And then we had Y2K. I don't know if you all are old enough, but that was the end of the world. Then we had like 2012, the Mayan prophecy. That was the end of the world. So like humans do have a thing about like the end of the world is coming. We do like that. Joe, thanks for coming on, man. Everybody go check out Art of Accomplishment and the podcast and all the good things.

1:27:08Yeah, thanks for having me. appreciate it. All right.

1:27:10Sam Parr:That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel never looking back. All right. Let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.