The Anxiety Expert: How To Stop Caring What Other People Think

26:06You've got books with that word on it. I can't tell you how many emails I get from cranky old ladies telling me. You don't need to swear. Yeah, I get it on the YouTube channel a lot as well. But is there anything else in your life that you think, okay, I don't want people to... think that about me or you know it's funny sometimes I get attacked by the I would call it kind of like the political far left because of we haven't gotten to the responsibility piece yet but like I mean ultimately like so much of mental health and happiness and and flourishing is like driven through personal responsibility and the ability to like choose your own life and choose how you see things and like take ownership of the things in your life and for some reason I don't think this is a good thing but like a lot of people on the left have started associating that view with i guess right wing politics and so i get attacked for that which is weird because i'm not politically right wing uh but yeah i get i get well back what i was saying if we wanted to get hated or canceled it's time talking about like people's mental health you know well all you have to do is like push through the pain and you'll be fine you know like and then people take that the wrong way and i think that you've got to be sensitive to it it's nuanced right you know it's it's the it's the bell curve and and there are legitimately people on the wrong side of the curve and you do have to to pay attention to them and be compassionate for them and everything but it's like it's the internet i mean it's it's just par for the course that if you're going to post things online people are going to hate you and and a lot some of it will be legitimate like some of some of them will legitimately just disagree with you, which is fine.

27:48But some of them will just project whatever they're going through and their own experiences onto you. Sometimes I found that people can actually educate you in an area you weren't thinking about. Absolutely. So sometimes it's good if people don't like you. Absolutely. And you can learn. I think what other people think, one of the areas, I mean, I've been with my wife 23 years. I really care what she thinks. Yep. And I can't ever, I wish I couldn't, if there's any answer to that one. Yes. You know, there is, there is an answer. because she definitely gets inside my head. I would say it's good that you care what your wife thinks.

28:18Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I'm not… Can you get to that level though where you don't? I'm not a marriage counselor. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's good that you care what your wife thinks. But I think it's actually, it's useful to think about this. I'm glad you brought that up because I think it's useful to think about this in tears. So one of my most viral social media posts is I said, if you wouldn't ask them for advice, then why the fuck do you care about their criticism? which is brilliant people don't consider that so if you kind of imagine you've got this pyramid and these are all the people that you interact with in your life and we'll say like we'll say like up here is my wife and Callum maybe is like family you know we've got co-workers neighbors, community whatever and then down here you get down to strangers.

29:13And then down here you get to people you don't respect. Let's just call them assholes. Yeah, let's do it. This is actually an academic term. Yeah, I've heard it. Yeah, it's a certain sociologist called them assholes. But yeah, it's basically people you don't respect. You don't respect their opinion. You know, it's the trolls, it's the haters, it's the shit posters, it's the bots. and it's interesting to the point about social media people will over index on these people they can be the loudest that's why and then they will under index on these people so it's like again if you take that girl singing it's like if she did that all of her friends oh we should have to add friends go girl well done every single person she's ever known in her whole life would send her a message of encouragement being like good for you go get it oh my god it was amazing I'm so proud of you right but what is she indexing on she's indexing on this and it's one of those ways that I think I always say that social media is like a fun house mirror it's not that it's not reflecting it is reflecting reality but it's distorting the proportions of reality it's making things that actually aren't important look way more important and it's making things that are not important or that are important look less important I think this is partly because we used to live in tribes yes and of course yes we'd have our family and friends and co-workers but if we lived in tribes on average of 5 ,000 people these arseholes actually mattered they don't matter now but it's instinctively in us as part of our DNA as humans we've got this far you know what's got us here won't get us there right so I kind of think like we need to reset this bit yeah because in the in a tribal scene that mattered those arseholes mattered because you're still living with them you might not like them you don't need to do anything but they're slagging you off to the neighbours and to the other people in the tribe and even your co-workers they can they can infect the rest of the tribe against you so and I would say too that it's like the social media platforms in general they just they amplify these down here right it's these are the people you hear from the most.

31:35Like, you know, you get on Twitter, you don't see people posting, you know, look at my new puppy or, you know, oh my God, my brother. People should do that, by the way. Yeah, they should. There you go. A little idea for you. They'll probably do quite well. Yeah, post your puppy. Post your puppy as well. No, you get on and it's like, it's literally just like all of the 18 ways the world is going to end in the next six months. And whose fault it is? And then Elon Musk will retweet it anyway. Exactly. They're only retweeted the negative stuff. I've sent lovely messages to Elon Musk. is every tweet.

32:04You say something negative, like Elon Musk is a scammer and he'll share it. People also like to amplify the arseholes as well, which is the weird thing. Okay, next on the list was personal responsibilities. Okay, so tell us about personal responsibility. All right. So ultimately, we talked about how you're giving a fuck about something and ultimately it's a choice. It's like you're choosing to make something important. You're choosing to give it your attention or your emotion. that is a choice that you're making each and every moment. You are deciding what to pay attention to, how to react to something, what to think about it all the time, whether you realize it or not.

32:44And this is a funny thing is like when people criticize me for the personal responsibility piece, I don't think they actually read my book because if they did, they'd realize that it's like, this is not like, this is not a subjective argument. I'm not like making a, this is not a prescriptive like, oh, people should be responsible. No, this is a philosophical like you are responsible in every single moment because you are making choices in every single moment. Like in this moment, we are choosing to talk and listen to each other. We're choosing to sit in front of a camera. We're choosing to, you know, whatever we talk about next, like every single moment we are making choices.

33:19And because we are making choices and we have agency, that means we have a responsibility for those choices. So even if I walk outside here and I get hit by a bus and it was not my fault, I had nothing to do with it, I'm purely a victim, it is still my responsibility when I wake up in the hospital to get better. It's still my responsibility to decide what am I going to think about this? What am I going to feel about this? What are my goals from here? What are my recovery goals? Am I going to go back to work? Who am I going to call? Am I going to call my parents am i going to call my wife like those are all i'm responsible for every single one of those choices in those moments and so just because something is not your fault every single thing in your life is still your responsibility i love that to me it's reframing like good luck and bad luck are both still luck yes depends on how you frame it right so you know i made a lot of money selling a company you could argue that was good luck then i didn't have anything to do because i had too much money and i didn't have any purpose for a while you know like so the Good luck was bad luck.

34:18I think framing is really important, right? How people frame their, like you say, their accident. It can happen to any of us. Hopefully not touch wood, but it can happen to any of us, right? And then, yeah, like you say, oh, this gives me a chance to reset my life and reset my values and build myself stronger and better than before, right? That kind of like positive attitude towards even the worst situations. I think, yeah, I think that's one of the things that's kind of happened to society now. A lot of this personal responsibility has been taken away from you. The government's letting you down.

34:45Yeah. The government's not paying enough. the cost of living are too high you know so it's someone else's fault I think political parties lean on this too because this is it isn't it we're looking for to blame someone else for not taking responsibility for their actions I mean you're a marketer you know like what's the easiest way to hook somebody tell them they're a victim totally tell them it's not your fault you've been scammed let me show you the way like it's it is yeah it's sick and I think it's the the proliferation of those messages just has happened and so much more with the internet and technology that we're inundated with it a lot more often.

35:22And I think it raises the stakes for this, for the understanding of this, the realization of it, because it's that much more important. I tried to stay out of politics, but just lately I'm getting dragged into it a little bit because there's a lot of politicians in England that will blame someone else and people just lap it up. So there's two sides in England anyway. the left will blame the rich. So it's taxed the rich. So somehow it's all the rich people's fault. And if you're poor, it's their fault. And equally on the other side, the right will kind of like, oh, it's an immigrant's fault. They took your job.

35:58They took your opportunity. We have a similar thing over here. Yeah. I just think that if we just back up and just say, look, what can you do to change things? How can you make your life better? That agency thing really is important. And it's getting lost because actually there's no middle ground. anymore. This isn't being said as a political party. So people are hearing all this noise. Are you on this side? It's all the rich people's fault. Or on this side, it's an immigrant's fault. Pick a side. Whereas you can just pick the middle, which I think is like, okay, what can I do to make the world a better place, first of all?

36:29What can you do to make people's lives better? Help someone for four minutes a day, that type of thing. But equally, how can you help yourself? Take control. And I really wish we could give that to people. Have you always felt this way? Have you always taken personal responsibility? No, no, no. I was very much, when I was young, I was lazy, entitled, whiny, smoked a lot of pot. You know, this came later for me. What changed? How come this hit you? Post-traumatic growth. So when I was 19, a really good friend of mine drowned and died. I was with him when it happened. and it just sent me into a deep depression.

37:15I spiraled into this just black hole for three or four months. And one of the outcomes of that, by the end of it, was I just had this deep feeling that I was wasting my time, that I was wasting my life. Because part of what was so hard about that experience was realizing it could have been me. I was just as drunk as he was. I was swimming in the same lake. It literally could have been anybody. And being exposed, I was 19, so being exposed to just your own mortality in that dramatic of a way, I really came out of it being like, I have to stop fucking around. I quit smoking pot. I started going to the gym.

38:00I started actually studying for class for the first time in my life. And I actually let myself start to dream. you know i never really i had had like one dream up to that point you know i wanted to be a musician when i was young um but similar to the to the the girl on the tiktok like i i i mean i worked towards it but i also i wasn't doing everything i could and uh and coming out of that experience like i really it really kind of reset that it was like look man you're you're 1920 you're smart you've never really like applied yourself at anything before what if you do like what could you become what can you do in this world right and uh it really set me on a much better trajectory but it's it's like so much is downstream of this like if you don't believe you have any choice in your own life then it's powerless you know it's you know there's a spider-man thing so remember uncle ben tells spider-man he says uh um with great power comes great responsibility

39:05so that's wrong or maybe it's right but like he's dead now he can't even defend himself yeah he can't even defend himself he would have a hater right now if he was here the truth is it works in reverse the more responsibility you take for your life the more power you have over your life because when you take responsibility for your life essentially what you're saying to yourself is I can change this You can take the worst shit that's happened to you, the worst circumstance, and if you decide you're responsible for it, essentially what you're telling your subconscious is, I can change this. And not only can I change it, but I'm morally obliged to change it.

39:46I'm doing myself a disservice by not changing it. I'm doing the people who care about me a disservice by not changing it. And that may feel heavy, but it's actually extremely liberating when you adopt it. I love this so much. I've never heard this before. And I think it's, if you take responsibility, like I tried to promote the idea that people could start their own business, but a lot of people were working for someone else. Ironically, if you take responsibility in your job, you'll get power. Yes. It's funny how that works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you accept, oh, I could have done this better, or I can do this better, or I will do this, the power will come your way.

40:22Like, as a boss, as an employer, like nothing sounds more like music to my ears when somebody on my team comes to me and is like, you know, I just took care of this thing. Yeah. I just did it. Yeah. I'm like, it's like the clouds part, the angels sing. I'm like, thank you for this person. You know, it's like, as an employer, like that's what you dream about. Let's do a comic book. I'm doing a kid's book. At the moment, I'm doing a book with Penguin for eight to 12 year olds. I think this is a really interesting thing because I want kids to have superpowers. Yeah. But ironically, take responsibility for things.

40:55Like my son at the moment is unloading and loading up the dishwasher. sure even that sounds a bit privileged yeah but he's got a responsibility and i kind of see he has power it's like i'm doing that the other day i tried to do it because i wanted to quickly go watch a program with him so i know it's mine yeah he has power in that responsibility that silly little responsibility and i think there's a lot of studies showing that kids that have uh take on things like they do chores in the house for example they grow up much more balanced they take on things right they take on that their responsibility yeah and that empowers them and gives them freedom?

41:26I believe it. You definitely see it in research among adults. So in the psychological literature, this is often referred to as self-efficacy, which is basically the belief that you have the ability to influence your own life. And self-efficacy is, I mean, it's correlated with basically every good outcome you could ever want. You know, people with high self-efficacy, they tend to be happier. They're more resilient when things go wrong. They achieve more success. They're more motivated. they tend to be physically healthier they live longer like you know you just go down the line it's just everything i want to i think a lot of people try to strip this from you there's nothing you can do yeah unless you vote for me yeah right unless you buy my shit buy my shit it all gets fixed yeah yeah buy my book and it'll be fine all right okay so uh finally emotional management so what do we need to know about this i mean basically it's it's to come back to the skill thing i think there's two kind of interesting analogies to play with with emotions.

42:27We already talked about the skill thing to a certain extent. You know, you can develop skill sets around your emotions. So first of all, this is the biggest mistake that everybody makes. You know, they feel anxious a lot or they feel angry or they feel sad. And their natural instinct is, I want to stop being anxious or I want to stop being sad or I want to stop being angry. And that never works because ultimately, like your emotions, they serve a biological and neurological purpose. Your emotions are feedback. They are telling you that something is off in your life or in your environment and that you need to adapt to it.

43:02And so if you try to suppress or pretend like the emotion's not there, you're essentially removing a feedback mechanism that's designed for your own survival and your own flourishing. So never try to get rid of an emotion. There's no such thing as a bad emotion. There's only bad responses to emotions. So every emotion is immediately okay. There's just, it's fine. You can feel whatever you feel. That said, there are better and worse ways to respond to each emotion. And part of those good and bad responses are, we talked about it being a skill, developing the skill set around anger or developing a skill set around your anxiety.

43:42Another interesting metaphor is that there are emotional habits, right? If you look at somebody who, quote unquote, has anger issues, it's not so much that maybe they're angry a lot. There are a lot of people that get angry a lot. It's just not everybody's punching holes in walls and wrecking their car and starting fights on the street corner every weekend. It's some of it is the habits that you've built around the emotion. Like there's a kind of an if-then process that happens in your brain of like, if angry, then do X, Y, Z. And if the X, Y, Z that you've linked to the emotion are just really bad behaviors, then that emotion is going to be really problematic in your life.

44:28And so the point is, don't get rid of the emotion, change the associated behaviors.

45:01I think, so my seven-year-old, I was thinking, he doesn't do what I say, he does what I do. I think we do, our environment is very about this. If you see someone get angry quickly, you end up getting angry quickly. Who you associate with can really directly connect to your emotions. If people are listening and they're like, okay, so I do feel emotional, I do react badly, is it like, count for 10 seconds? Is there a coping mechanism? People can reset these things? Generally, the easiest way to cope, I mean, the most dependable way to cope with any emotion, especially a negative emotion, is time.

45:36And that's where the 10-second thing comes from.

45:41So when we get overwhelmed by an emotion, we get triggered, as the term has become very popular. And when you're triggered, that means that you're essentially out of your executive function and you're just responding. You have lost awareness of yourself and your own behaviors and you're just doing the action. And so the, the taking 10 seconds, taking a deep breath, removing yourself from a situation that's very useful for somebody who, who either has been triggered or gets triggered very often or easily. It can help you develop that, that separation between emotion and response. I personally, I think meditation is actually great for this because what meditation is actually training you to do from a psychological perspective, as you observe your own thoughts and feelings in your mind, the more you observe them, the more you disassociate from them or disassociates, probably not the proper word, but like you disidentify with them.

46:43That's the proper word. The more you observe them, the more you disidentify from them. Like the more it there's, there's a thing in Zen Buddhism that they always say, or my Zen master used to say, which is like he said you're it's don't say you are angry say you have anger because when you say you are angry you are identifying as anger that is a permanent state or it's a part of you that you can't control whereas if you say i have anger well i have anger i can put it over here or i can put it over there or i can do this i can throw it away i can do all sorts of stuff with it right It brings back that agency and responsibility.

47:22It brings that agency back. So you can say, instead of being like, I am anxious, you say, I have anxiety right now. What am I going to do with it? But yeah, meditation is a great practice for developing that separation from stimulus and response. And then in that gap between the two, you will slowly develop the ability to decide where to actually direct the emotion. I tried meditation myself. I can never clear my mind. My mind just won't let me clear. Nobody can. I think sleep and eating proper food, if you can, so stupid, simple, simple stuff. It's not so true, dude. Sleep. So, okay. This is the obnoxious lesson of the last four years of my life.

48:10I used to take pride. So for people who have read this, I kind of took pride as like, yeah, I'm the dude. staying up to 3am drinking whiskey and pounding Red Bulls and still building a business and crushing it and doing all this stuff. As soon as I got this stuff in order, oh my god, did I feel like an idiot. All three of these things unlocked so much more energy, so much more motivation and drive, and also made this stuff easier. You become you feel so much more stable in your emotions. I'll add alcohol to this because that was a huge one for me. I noticed that when I gave up alcohol, my anxiety lessened quite a bit.

49:03I was more even keel, even when I wasn't drinking. Like it was, you know, even days after drinking, I would be kind of emotionally up and down and unstable, you know really bummed out one day for no reason and when i stopped drinking all those things went away i find i don't want here which is people the right people around you that's great i mean i fell out with my mom when i was 15 years old you know it's a long story but since she's not in my life i feel less angry you know and she triggers me yeah and that's probably my fault as much as hers but like i think having the right people around you right the right partner in life yes i think it's probably the number one factor whether you're going to have a good life or not totally you know like and if you get sleep exercise eat well and not have alcohol you're probably like yeah you know really giving yourself a high chance of success it's it's so ironic too because this stuff is like it's so simple so obvious it's so obvious podcast about it i know and yet it is like we forget i know yeah and i i personally feel stupid you know it's funny so they did last year they did a massive meta-analysis of all every single intervention that you can have for depression.

50:10So like therapy, every form of therapy, every antidepressant on the market, even like unconventional stuff, you know, meditation, yoga, ESMR therapies, you know, rapid eye movement stuff, like you name it, it was in there. And you know what came out on top? Probably sleep and exercise. Exercise. Exercise is more effective than the best therapy and the best antidepressants on the market for depression. I got jet lagged the last few days, so I'm a bit grumpy with the team. It's definitely like, yeah, go, get some sleep. Can I just flip it for one second before we come to an end? Emotion, however, can also power you up.

50:52Absolutely. So I did a talk last week, and I was quite emotional about how we've got to fix the education system. And in that talk, I was really emotional. And the amount of LinkedIn posts afterwards, people were like, I feel emotional. That emotional transfer of what you care about, on the flip side, using emotion can be a tool. So let me ask you this. You said that you're very passionate about education, right? And that's a big cause for you, a big mission for you. I imagine you often get angry about the state of the education system. I try to suppress it so I don't show it on camera too much, but I do get quite angry about it.

51:25I imagine you do. So to me, that's a perfect example of you have anger and you have found a way to channel it. Yes. In a productive way. That's what I hate about politics again. Because I think sometimes present the problem and the solution is a dumb, not real solution. So I'd rather build something to fix the education system than my anger is contained in a vehicle that is taking action. Exactly. And that comes back to the point that there's no bad emotion. That's a good emotion. I need it. It gets me up in the morning. There's good and bad responses to an emotion. You found a good response for your anger around education.

52:00and it's like that's ultimately we have to do that with each of the things um you know each of the quote-unquote negative emotions in our life like we just need to find a channel for it in a in a direction that's productive and useful one of the things i mean people listening at criticism when i was younger i used to really hate it yeah um someone criticized me like last thing i need is you putting me down yeah as i get older i'm like that the emotion of like oh i have something i can improve on yeah you know like tell me i know there's a lot of things i can improve on of course but like you know i like it yeah i actually i'm like what what can i do better it's kind of callum and my team's always asking i like that you know it's like what you know that that trigger me come on you know it's like get me thinking about how i can be stronger you know it's um yeah i think emotion positive emotion is quite quite a unique thing not talked about enough actually yeah sometimes put in a box of like you know sort your emotions out get sleep exercise nutrition no alcohol good people but there's something in actually taking that emotion making a vehicle out of it.

52:54It's funny because, I mean, especially in your world, kind of on the more business side of things, like it's, I see, you know, whenever I'm kind of a tourist in your world, you know, I'm more personal development. So like the emotional stuff comes up a lot. But like when I kind of venture in your world, it feels like everybody wants the productivity hack. Everybody wants the morning routine. Everybody wants to like, you know, what's your time boxing system or like what software are you using or whatever. You know, they want the tools and the tactics. and and i'll i'll start talking about this stuff i'm like well you know if you're like really aligned on your purpose and you're like feeling really motivated in your relationships in a good place you're gonna have like 50 more energy at work and you're gonna be more creative and you're gonna be like take feedback better and you're gonna have like you're gonna collaborate better and you're gonna make sales pitches better and i feel like nobody wants to hear that like oh no no no emotion yeah like none of that well people like this stuff because sleep exercise nutrition is is like a structural thing you can change.

53:53Emotion, most people, I've invested in over 80 companies and the ones that have done really well, they're like, they weren't doing it for the money, which is really cheesy, but they were doing it because there's a problem in the world they wanted to fix it. And it maybe affected them at some point. And then it won't stop until it's done. And I think that tapping into emotion is purpose. It gives you purpose. I just saw an advert on the way here for the military. It's like the military gives you purpose. And that's quite a dangerous ad, actually. I think it's quite an appealing ad because I think that's the thing a lot of people don't realise they're missing.

54:21and it comes from emotion i think purpose is extremely powerful yeah how did you i mean we talked about earlier with your steps but purpose was so in the early days what was your original framing okay you wrote that blog for three people but what was your early framing of that why did you write that honestly i mean initially i started just because it was a fun thing to do with my friends right so the the purpose was actually quite small and local um eventually you know once it kind of grew a little bit and I read Tim Ferriss's for our work week, you know, the purpose was, like I said, just to sustain a parting lifestyle in Argentina and Brazil.

54:58And I did that for a few years. Right. And then the snowball grew a little bit more and I kind of went back to the well and I looked at it again and the purpose got bigger again, which is like, you know, I really actually, I think I can have a career as an author and a writer and I would like to. And so I did that. And then it's, you know, it's just continued from there. I mean, I would say it's expanded again. Now it's, now it's more mission driven in that I think my industry is kind of fucked up, you know, self-help. There's a lot of really good information in the self-help space. There's a lot of really trashy information in the self-help space.

55:35And I think a lot of vulnerable people are taken advantage of in the self-help space. And so I, I believe very very passionately and just kind of being the antidote in this industry and being as authentic and healthy and evidence-based as possible and reaching as many people as possible. So that's what drives me today. You're awesome. Thanks. Just to say, I generally think what you're doing is awesome. It's needed. You're right. There's a lot of people out there that just need honest, real practical advice, common sense in some respects, but help in that way. there is a lot of bullshit there's this whole thing at the moment this guy putting his face in ice have you seen that trend you know it's like people kind of like it because it's like is that all I need to do I just need to put my face in ice don't forget the banana peel banana peel you know I've got a banana I've got a bowl of ice that's it every day will be perfect just got to get up at 350 and I'm set jump into my private pool but I think I think the world really needs more kind of practical real world advice but people need to learn knowledge they need to go deep on things You've got a new podcast doing just that, haven't you?

56:45Yes, we just launched a new podcast. It's called Solved. And the idea is that it goes super deep in a single topic for multiple hours. It covers all the bases. It's very comprehensive, all the different schools of thought, all the different competing theories and ideas, and then leaves the listener with clear takeaways on how to implement everything into their life. Speaking about the frustration with the industry, I feel like the podcast space and personal development it's it's all the same guests coming on saying the same things a lot of them contradict each other a lot of them are will say something crazy or loony and nobody calls them out on it just get the views as opposed to like giving people what they need yeah and it's just i think there really needs to be more clarity and and focus on uh a lot of these interventions for people so that that's the goal with it what's it called again it's called solved it's on my youtube channel so they just go to mark man's we'll put the link down below if you're bored of this podcast just go listen to that one.

57:40So go ahead. Thank you for what you do. I appreciate you. I hope you guys enjoyed this. If you did, let us know. And we'll have to have some chicken now. We'll see you later.