Success Myths Debunked: A Deep Dive into the Psychology of Money | Morgan Housel

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24:50Go to mintmobile.com slash charm. That's mintmobile.com slash charm. Limited time offer. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months required. That's$15 a month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes when the network is busy. Capable device required. Availability speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Totally. I get it. Yeah. And the content that they created, again, they were just appeasing the algorithm that wanted a specific thing. And so the content was not feeding their own soul as a creator.

25:27And they weren't just being an artist. They were just being a slave, more or less, to that algorithm. An algorithm that's going to change tomorrow, by the way. So it might not even like you tomorrow. That's always something that I've tried to fight back against. I don't know if I've done it perfectly. I don't think anybody has. But I've always thought that I write for an audience of one, which is myself. I just write content that I would want to read myself. And I write stories that I find interesting. I write about topics that I think are neat. Rather than saying, I think it's really dangerous.

25:57The typical writing advice of know your audience is very dangerous because know your audience turns into pander to your audience very quickly. And so I think to me, I think maybe if there is one thing that I've tried to do to push back against this, it's really tried to be true to the art of content. And the art is, what do I like? Not what, not what will you like? It's what do I like? And I'm just going to stick with that. And it can be hard because a lot of what I like, other people don't. So if you put out something that fed your soul as an artist, you need to know that there's going to be at least 10 % or more of those people that are going to say, this sucks.

26:31I don't like this. This is, you know, you should, you should do it differently. And you really just need to take a step back. If you are a content creator and be like, no, this is what I like. I know other people won't, but this is the art that I enjoy. Well, you just mentioned two traps that are very important for people to watch out for, which is one, that algorithm that'll suck you in and make you a slave. But AJ and I have seen people who have become slaves or imprisoned by their own audience. And then whenever they now have an opinion on the latest thing and it doesn't go with what their audience feels that they should be with, they end up in a lot of trouble, which then brings us back to, well, then who are you creating content for?

27:11Lucky for myself, before I got involved in this, I was a touring musician and a club promoter. And so for myself, the art was always about what were the bands that I want to hear? What was the music that I wanted to hear? And that's what we did. And that kept us from chasing an audience or chasing money in that manner, which that's where you become imprisoned. Yeah. And you know, I've seen several artists do this. I'll give you two examples of one who I think did it really well and one who didn't. Taylor Swift managed the transition from country to pop better than anybody. And obviously now that she switched to pop music, she's a hundred times bigger than she was when she was just a country singer.

27:54And of course she was massive back then even. That's an incredible transition. Did she do that because she was pandering, for lack of a better word, to a bigger audience? Maybe, but she pulled it off. And I'm convinced that the music she's doing now is feeding her soul, so to speak. The musician that I think did not pull this off in a good way is Offspring, which back in the day was like the best punk band of the, I don't know, late 80s, 90s. They were like amazing. And in the early 2000s, they shifted to something that was closer to pop too. And I think so many of the original Offspring fans were like, what the hell is this?

28:29Like, what are you guys even doing here? and did they do it because a record label said hey if you switch to pop we can sell three times as many albums probably i don't know that to be the case but that's probably what it is and it's kind of sad to watch a band that in the early 90s you could tell was just doing music that they loved and the early 2000s it was like i imagine that you the offspring are like cringing when you record this this music that's like it's i i don't criticize them because i understand why they would do that but as a content creator you need to watch that in real time to know what to avoid If I'm not mistaken, they had the number one selling album on an independent label.

29:06So the record that they blew up was independent, which how do you follow up something like that? For bands like Metallica, when you reach a certain pinnacle, there's nowhere else to go but down. And this brings us up to another point in the book of where's the top and when do you come out of that? And so I use the example of the book of Jerry Seinfeld, who of course his show was as big as it had ever been when he pulled the plug. And he had this comment I loved afterwards when he was asked why he quit. And he said, the only way to know where the top is, is to experience the decline. And I have no interest in experiencing that.

29:46And it's true. You can easily imagine a situation in which Seinfeld kept going for another 10 seasons and lost it and declined and was actually canceled instead of him pulling the plug on his own. terms. And the best example of that is The Simpsons, which back in the 90s was the greatest show. It was so great back in the 90s. Most people don't know this. They still make new episodes of The Simpsons. It's still on. And most people don't know that because from my understanding, it's terrible now. It's not what it used to be. So you compare those two of quitting on the top versus just dragging it out as long as you possibly can.

30:22What's going to lead to more happiness. It's so obvious that quitting on your own terms and pulling the plug when you're at the top is superior to happiness than just dragging along the carcass of what used to be great and before you're eventually canceled. And as we talked about earlier, I mean, those expectations are not going to wane. They don't adjust on the way down. You see this with some athletes as well. Michael Jordan is an interesting example of like, you know, peaked as an athlete in the late nineties, but kept it going and then left and came back and left and came back was his last game with the Wizards.

30:55How did he feel? That's not rhetorical because I don't know the answer to that question, but I would bet if he was like most people, and by definition, he's not, but if he was like most people, if he, if his last game was with the Bulls in the nineties at his peak, he would have left being like absolutely just hands in the air. Like I I'm the goat, absolutely incredible. Could not have done a better job. Maybe, I don't know this, but maybe when he played his last game with the Wizards, he was like, man, great career, I'm proud of what I accomplished, but I am not who I used to be. I peaked seven years ago, whatever it was.

31:27Most people would fall into that trap. Another great chapter in the book is around competitive advantages. Oftentimes, we hear, if you're the first to market or you can build up this advantage, you're unstoppable, but we've got to shift the time horizon because as evolution shows us, all of these competitive advantages over time with enough other people competing wither away. What can we take from that around our own lives, because I feel so many of us look at others right now as having this competitive advantage and we can't catch them, they're so far ahead. But in reality, it is a mirage as we talked about earlier.

32:01I think there's this irony for everyone, individuals, companies, for anyone who's trying to get ahead, that the reason you're successful is because you're working very hard. And the reason you're working very hard is because you have this idea that at some point in the future you won't need to work as hard anymore. Like you're working really hard so that you can eventually stop. That's the idea. So when you get to that point, you're really successful. And then you feel like you can take a justifiable step back and take a break. Well, then what made you successful, the hard work and the paranoia is now gone.

32:35And that is the first day of your decline. And you see this with so many businesses and individuals of like, the reason they're successful is because they were just, they woke up terrified every morning and they were just grinding to get ahead. And then they got ahead and then they justifiably said, I'm going to take a little break here. Well, now the magic that made you so successful is gone. So of course you're going to start declining. Businesses do this all the time. Like the stark examples of, there's probably no two businesses that had a bigger moat around their success than Kodak and Sears.

33:06Those two businesses, if you go back 30 years ago, it'd be like, nobody compete with Kodak. Nobody can compete with Sears. It doesn't happen. And then, and now both of them are done, you know, in fact, either out of business or effectively out of business. And I think those are stark examples. But the reason that they did it is because I think you can go back in the culture and see that they got fat and happy. They were just kind of like reveling in their success to a degree that they were blind and oblivious to the competitors that were chasing them, which was digital photography and Walmart.

33:35And so I think that happens with individuals as well, whether it's like, you know, a lawyer or a doctor, a young lawyer, a young doctor is going to work so hard to get ahead. An older lawyer might be like, man, I've made it. I got the corner office. I got the vacation beach house. I don't need to grind like I used to. And that's when you start making careless mistakes. And so it happens for individuals and businesses all alike. The common denominator is like most competitive advantages have a shelf life. What made you successful yesterday is probably not something that you can maintain indefinitely to keep that success going.

34:05Yeah, I know growing up, I shopped at Sears with my family and they had everything from clothes, appliances, even tires. is we'd get our car repaired there. And now they're completely empty buildings back where I grew up. They haven't even been replaced by Walmarts. Yeah, and you can say that for Kodak too. There was no other company that every family in America used it every week. And there was a little bit of competition from Fujifilm, but Kodak pretty much had, I don't know, 95 % of the market. And it was just, you're just going in to buy film every week. It was just like, couldn't have been a better business.

34:34And to take that, like, one of the best businesses that's ever been created and in the mid to late 90s, not that long ago, it was at its peak, and now it's zero. It makes you wonder, what is the equivalent of that 25 years from now? Maybe it's Amazon. Maybe it's Apple. Maybe it's Google. And it's hard to contemplate that today, but it would have been just as hard to contemplate. If this is 1995 and I said, Kodak's going to be a zero, that would have seemed as crazy as saying Apple, Amazon, Google might be a zero 25 years from now. Yeah, certainly for us. And I know raised in an age when the internet came online, most of our user experience was go into a search bar, turn it into Google, and then sift through the answers.

35:16But now kids growing up are going to chat GPT and they're just getting the answer. There's no reason to use Google. And that's why Google now has to compete more than ever. Yeah, or TikTok. They're getting their news from TikTok and Instagram and whatnot. Literally, the Instagram search feature is their Google. Rather than looking for a text answer, they just want to see a five-second reel about this topic. And so, yeah, you put that together with something like ChatGPT, and it's like, look, that's not a forecast. I think the most likely scenario is that in 20 years, Google is still a dominant trillion-dollar company.

35:47But if you go back across history, there are so many examples, whether it's Kodak, Sears, IBM, General Motors, General Electric, of companies that appeared utterly unstoppable that either fell 90 % or literally went out of business. Yeah, there's no moat large enough. And that's why we're saying Google has to compete now in AI. They can't just rest on search results to win the day. And you see that with individuals too. Like the Stark examples would be like an actress or an actor who was huge at a certain age. I mean, well, here's what's top of mind. I just watched Home Alone with my kids today.

36:20Macaulay Culkin peaked at age eight. The skills that are going to help you in one era are not always transferable to the next. And that can be very hard to deal with because our mind wants to assume that they are. That whenever you have some skills, some competitive advantage, it's very hard to envisioning that going away. And so just that observation makes you try to protect it and also just realize how special it is when you do have it. Well, even with the technology that AJ and I grew up with when starting this company, I mean, MySpace was the big deal. And now we're even seeing people laugh when you ask if they're on Facebook.

36:58They're like, you're on Facebook? I mean, so, you know, all of these things do have a shelf life, but we also see how competitive Silicon Valley is in what is the next thing? What do we need to develop? How do we stay on top? Because they know in a blink of an eye, you could be out. And we're already seeing how many swings and misses on other tech things. For instance, I haven't heard anyone say anything about Clubhouse in a couple of years. And what happened with threads? Is that going to be a thing? Are people on threads? I mean, these things need to be done. They have to throw them out there.

37:36And then you have to see if people want to use them and want to adopt them. Yeah. I mean, the other example is like, what was the first big social network? It was AOL Instant Messenger. I, I'm sure both of you, that's what we grew up on as teenagers. That's how you talk to your friends. That was really a social network that doesn't exist anymore. And you're right about Facebook too. that Facebook went from the coolest, like in 2005, if you were on Facebook, it was like, oh, that is the coolest thing in the world. And then it shifted to, oh, everyone's getting on there. Then it's like dominated by our parents.

38:07And now it's like, you're right. It's like, if you're on Facebook, it's like you raise an eyebrow a little bit. If you're under age 65 on Facebook, it's like, what are you doing? And you can imagine in 15 years, that being TikTok, that today TikTok is like, is the cool thing to be on. That's what all the teenagers are on. And you know, like every generation needs their own social network. And so ours, when we were in our 20s, was Facebook. For the Gen Z, it's TikTok. And you know, for my kids, it's going to be something completely different. And I think whenever it is like a social network, it's hard for that to transition across generations.

38:40And with that, the network effect. So on the one hand, you see TikTok grow rapidly and you see these influencers make tons of money and they get tons of eyeballs. and all of a sudden you can't get those eyeballs anymore because 3 billion people are on TikTok. So we've got to go to the next platform where we can try to get that reach and get the algorithm as it's new and it allows us to be displayed more quickly. We see this in business all the time. It was Google ads and it's Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads. Technology is ever-changing and evolving and as Johnny brought up, there's going to be some swings and misses.

39:11Now unfortunately some of our audience members tend to fall into the perfectionist category and with that, that leads to some blind spots I know you talk about evolution quite a bit in the book and how a little imperfection actually goes a long way to moving everything forward. If you're stuck in a state of perfectionism where nothing can be imperfect, you're actually stuck, period. I think for a lot of businesses, so much of the key, particularly if you're in some sort of tech that's quickly evolving, is knowing how to fail really well. The best example I think of this is Amazon, particularly during the Jeff Bezos era.

39:44A really interesting thing, when Amazon came out with the Fire Phone, like the physical phone that they built the fire. It was hot garbage. Like nobody used it. Like everybody panned it. And then Jeff Bezos was asked about this and he was like, oh, if you think that's a failure, wait till you see what we're coming out next. It's going to be way worse than that. And he meant this in a very positive way of like Amazon is not afraid to fail. And over the years, they have experimented with dozens and dozens of new products and all but effectively two of them have failed, which was Prime and AWS. And everything else that they tried, from the Fire Phone and like all the other dozens of things haven't really worked and that's fine.

40:21Like that's the picture of success. And so many of these businesses and entrepreneurs, you see what works and you see the successes and behind the scenes is a million things that did not work. One of the examples I see this a lot in is in comedy where by the time you see Chris Rock on a Netflix special, of course, every joke he says is hilarious and it's a 10 out of 10 joke, everything, like every single one. The reason he got to that point is because at a smaller club in the previous year, he tried 100 jokes. 95 % of them were not funny at all. But within there was a nugget that people laughed at.

40:57And he was like, oh, I'm going to work on that and use that in the special. So even when you see someone who's like the A-list top of their game, the majority of what they're doing doesn't work. They're just showing you what did work. And I think when, because the successes are usually only what's visible, it gives everyone else this false sense of what it takes to get ahead. Well, I think this is why the intrigue with Elon Musk, I mean, even after buying Twitter, he flat out said, we are going to do a lot of dumb things over here and you're just going to have to get used to seeing that. And for AJ and I were like, that's a tech guy.

41:29That's a guy who knows that innovation comes through failure and he's got to fail a whole bunch. Meanwhile, everyone else is like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. He's blowing it up. And I'm just like, no, this is how this works. And we get to see it in real time. Yeah, and I've had the fortune of taking friends in LA who come visit to one of those nights at a comedy show and they'll get all excited. They're like, oh my God, my favorite comic is performing and not on the venue headline. And I'm like, you're not going to enjoy it. Most of it's going to be trash. And we'll leave and they're just like shocked.

42:02Like, I can't believe he bombed so bad. And I'm like, he bombed so bad so that you would enjoy that special. Not everything he writes is going to be fire. I remember years ago, I read this newspaper article of Chris Rock going to a show. I think it was in New Brunswick. And it was a tiny little hole in the wall comedy show. So of course, everyone's like, jaw's going to be on the floor. Like, holy shit, Chris Rock is coming. The article is about like how terrible it was. He said he sat there with a stack of cue cards that he had written. And he was just going through one bomb after another. And he would tell a joke and look around and no one would laugh.

42:32And he'd be like, all right, done with that one. Move on to the next joke. That's how you find the great one. And I think it's a perfect representation of how all entrepreneurship works. Yeah, we saw Daniel Tosh, like when Tosh.0 was in its heyday and everyone was watching it and referencing it. And the crowd was so excited, a lot of tourists in town. And he pulls out his iPhone and he's going through jokes and literally in the middle of the set, he's like, okay, scratch that, that bombed, all right, I'm done. And just walked off stage, no applause. And my friend's looking at me like, I cannot believe we just witnessed that.

43:03It's like, that's exactly part of the process. Yes. Yeah. I think what's true for myself as a writer, and this is probably also true for comedy, is that even when you've been doing it for a long time, you don't know what's going to work. So there's plenty of times that I write a blog post that in my head, in my head, I'm like, oh, this is good. This is good. And it flops and vice versa. There's plenty of times when I'm like, I'm ashamed to publish this piece because it seems so obvious and trite. And that's what blows up. And so, but it's really hard, even if you've been doing this for 17 years, to really get a good sense of what's going to work and what's not.

43:36And the only way to navigate it then is just put out a bunch of stuff and what works is going to get attention and what's not is going to die on the vine. Yeah, that's why we always raise our eyebrows when someone comes to us and says they can make us go viral. As if there's just a one, two, three step process and we're viral. Yeah, I've always thought 90 % of virality is luck. And maybe luck is the wrong word, but things outside of your control isn't. And if you want to go viral all the time, and build a big audience, a lot of those people are just putting out tons and tons of content. They're tweeting 30 times a day.

44:08And if you do that, if you tweet 30 times a day, two of them are probably going to be really good. And you do that every day for 10 years, that's how you build a viral audience. Exactly, the compounding. So we know compounding in finance can help us retire. Compounding also happens through just small and incremental improvements in anything you do over the long haul, the long enough time horizon, and you will go viral on Twitter. You will have that massive following. But so many people right now, because the content they consume is polished and they assume there was no hard work, there was no mistakes to get there, and they often don't know, well, when that first tweet was published by that influencer, that was seven years ago of tweeting daily to get to that following.

44:53I heard this great anecdote recently that whenever a new YouTuber comes to Mr. Beast and he says, hey, give me feedback on my first video, Mr. Beast, he always says the same thing. He says, go publish 100 videos. And after that, I'll give you some feedback. And he said, 99 % of people don't publish 100 videos. They quit after three. And the one person who did actually make it to 100 doesn't need his help anymore. And I was like, yeah, that's it. It's just repetition. And go back and watch Mr. Beast's first couple of videos. They're not bad. They're not good. Like he learned along the way. He learned what works and what doesn't.

45:26Yeah, it's not something that you can just pass on to someone else either, right? And I think that's another blind spot that we all have is that, okay, well, I saw someone else experience it. If I just follow their playbook, then I can achieve that exact same success. So much of life is timing, luck, circumstance, completely outside of whatever they've ascribed to themselves as the successful playbook to follow. Which is why most people who are super successful don't package and sell their advice as follow this exact playbook to get the same level of success as me. You can't. And for so many of those people, if there is actually a formula of how did you do this, it's a ridiculous amount of focus and hard work that 99.9 % of people are not willing to put in.

46:07There's this great story from Mozart where when Mozart was at his prime, a father brought in his 14-year-old son and said, Mozart, I want you to give my son advice on how to write a symphony. And Mozart said, he's 14, he's way too young to be writing symphonies. And the father said, Mozart, you are writing symphonies at age eight. Mozart said, yes, but I was not asking for people's advice on how to do it. And so, so much of it is just like, can you put in the work? Like, do you have the skill? And by the way, when I say like most people won't put in the work, I think most people, including myself, will look at the amount of work that's required and say, I don't want to do that.

46:41I am so glad that people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg exist because of what they've created, given the world and created for the world. But I do not look at those people and say, I would want that for myself. Because so often the reason they're successful is because they've been singular focused on one thing for their entire life. And that focus and that hard work has come at the direct expense of their family, their relationship, their health, their mental health, all of those things. You know, Bill Gates had talked about that he went like 20 years without taking a single day off.

47:13He worked seven days a week for 20 years. Again, I'm so glad he exists. That's amazing. I'm not criticizing that, but never would I want that for my own life. That's like my definition of hell. Like I never spend time with my kids or my wife. I never sleep well. That sounds terrible. I never want to live that life. So once you just see the cost of what it took to make it, I think most people, including myself, will come to the reasonable conclusion of like, that's amazing, but I'm not going to try to copy you because I don't want that for myself. And it's also so surprising that people in general are so shocked to find out that these extraordinary people are cantankerous, not easily to be pulled or swayed in a direction, difficult to get along with, because it takes a level of crazy to say no to all of that.

47:56to push away your family, to only be singular focused on getting a rocket to Mars at the expense of everything else in your life, including sleep and health and all the other great judgments that most people would say you should be doing to be that successful. I remember hearing this story about President Obama. There were times during the early days of his presidency where his aides would come in with a presentation to give him. Here's a presentation about something that's going on in the world. Sometimes 10 seconds in, he would just stand up and walk out. He would not even address it. I think in his mind, he was just like, I'm busy.

48:27I'm the leader of the free. I got better things to do and then listen to this dumb presentation that I already know everything you're about to say. And I think that's true too. You hear similar anecdotes about Steve Jobs, all these people are just like, they have one goal and no one's gonna waste their time. They're just gonna bulldoze their way through it and get to that one thing. I think about like even people who I really look up to and admire. For myself, it's Warren Buffett. If you read his biography, the most in-depth is a book called The Snowball. You realize that it highlights so starkly that the reason he is so successful at what he's done is because since he's been 11 years old through today at age 92, he's had a singular focus in his life, which is how do I pick the best stocks?

49:07And the biography goes into dips into how that impacted his marriage and his relationship with his kids. I read a lot of biographies of entrepreneurs and politicians, like very successful people. I can't think of one example. When I got to the end of the biography where I thought to myself, I want that person's life. That's what's so great about biographies. It's like you see so starkly the cost of admission of why they got so successful. And that recognition that it's supposed to be hard, that if you're choosing things to be easy or you're looking constantly for shortcuts or just three-step solutions, you're actually so far off the map from success.

49:43Most of those biographies illustrate just how hard it is to achieve that level of greatness. The number of sacrifices you have to make, the number of people you have to piss off, enemies created. And along with that, yes, you can achieve great things, but I wouldn't trade places with that person. There's this incredible anecdote. This has happened two weeks ago of Jensen Wong of NVIDIA. He's a founder and CEO of NVIDIA. And NVIDIA, of course, is a ridiculous five-standard deviation success. It's a trillion-dollar company. It's exploding right now. This is the one-in-a-million company that actually made it.

50:18Two guys on a podcast said, hey, Jensen, if you could go back to the moment when you started NVIDIA and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be? And his advice, I'm paraphrasing if I'm getting some of these words wrong, but he said, I wouldn't do it again. And they were like, what? Like, why didn't you? He said, no, it was too hard. It was too stressful to do this. And this is the guy who made it. This is the guy who actually won. And he's looking back at the 27 years or whatever that NVIDIA has been around. He said, it's too hard. It was too stressful. That's an interesting thing. Like I was happy that he was so honest about it.

50:46Cause I think a lot of extremely successful entrepreneurs, even if they don't admit it to themselves, deep inside their soul, that's how they feel too. Maybe they're proud of their success, but they look back on it and say, God damn, that was hard. For a lot of people, they cannot comprehend what it is to wake up in that paranoid, stressed out state of how do I push this company forward? What they know is I got to get up at X time to be at work for X amount of hours. And then I leave and I don't think about that place after I leave at all until I think about what time am I going to get up to make it back there the next day.

51:29And for everybody, it's like, oh, I want to be a content creator, or I want to be an entrepreneur. Until you're there, you're not able to comprehend all of those pressures. Jeff Immelt, who was once the CEO of General Electric, he has this quote that I love. He says, every job looks easy when you're not the one doing it. And that's true for every It's so easy. You know if you look at the Gen Z, the young generation, if you ask them, what is your dream career? It's content creator. Yeah, I hear it all the time now. And look, A, it's so sad to hear that that's there. Not engineer, not scientist, not doctor.

52:04It's like, A, that's cat. But also, the people who they're looking up to, the content creators who've been really successful, do not have easy jobs. It's not a hard job. This is not digging ditches, But it's not easy to have that kind of pressure and whatnot, particularly for a lot of these people are teens or early 20s when it's like they are so emotionally vulnerable to the fame that they're getting. And I guarantee you that the dominant feeling that a lot of those successful content creators have is they are absolutely terrified of losing it, of the next video that they publish is going to bomb and they're going to say, I'm done, I'm over, I just got thrown out.

52:39And I think that's going to create so much stress, is creating so much stress. And how much of it is out of their control? We talked earlier about the algorithms and how it's constantly changing and evolving and what app is new hot app. And you see this, maybe you're big on YouTube and then views are moving away to YouTube or they're going to shorts and these long form content creators can't make the transition outside of the fact that, hey, you're giving an open view into your life and that's going to lead to a lot of people who aren't in the arena throwing stones and tearing you apart. And the mental health that comes along with all of the criticism that being so visible heaps on you.

53:13And so much of success comes with a large number of people not liking you exactly for the success that you've achieved. Look, there are obviously worse problems that exist in the world, but a tragic life story would be, became famous at age 19 on social media, was flooded with attention and adulation and fame, and then lost it at age 21, and then spiraled into some sort of dark depression. I think that's going to be the case for a lot of these people. And that's a terrible life. That's the Will Smith quote you have in the book. Yes. Will Smith talks about this. He says, gaining fame, becoming famous is an incredible feeling.

53:54Being famous is okay. And losing fame is a pain like you've never experienced before. And I think that's true. We have seen in our lifetimes how many young people who had success early, And these are movie stars, television actors, musicians, athletes, and then what their life had turned into after that fame was lost. And now we're going to have whole generations of young people trying to figure it out now that their star has been taken from them. Yeah, it's tough because the dopamine that you get from likes and retweets and shares on social media is so addictive. Virtually none of these people are going to quit on their own terms.

54:40They're not going to say, oh, I have a million followers on TikTok and everyone loves me. I'm going to delete my account and then go meditate and become a doctor or something like that. No one's going to do that. Most of them are going to leave the arena when they are forcibly removed because their audiences leave them. And that's a tough thing. Now look, there's a lot of terrible things happening in the world. The fact that we are so concerned about influencers is, this is not the top concern in the world. But it's true. Young people look up to that and say, that looks like the dream. But it's very easy to see what's going on or to be blind to what's going on behind the scenes that is actually like extinguishing most of the joy that you think these people are getting.

55:18And I think going along with that, we talked about just how hard things are. I think we've glamorized success to a degree that it doesn't seem hard to achieve these things because it's constantly in your face on social media and online where you're constantly seeing everyone's highlight real. And then when you find yourself in a situation where things are difficult, things aren't going your way, there's a degree of self-judgment then that I'm not doing something right when this other person looks so successful and makes it look so easy. My wife and I always joke around this time of year when you start getting Christmas cards from friends.

55:54And of course, the Christmas card is everyone's beautiful, everyone's happy, kids look great. And it's funny, everybody, myself, you know people who look great in the Christmas card, but you're like, I know what's going on in your life. And it is not good right now. If people don't know you as well as we do, they get your Christmas card and they're like, oh, your family's beautiful, everything's going great. And you have no idea. You have no idea. Everybody is quietly suffering in various degrees, of course, but everybody, myself, you, everyone is quietly suffering about something. And we're almost always blind to that.

56:27And the wins that we have in life, we almost always go out of our way to exaggerate and make public. to exaggerate them, but also to show them off on social media and talk about them and make sure everyone knows about your wins, but our suffering, we're going to hide that. And maybe even your spouse doesn't know about it. Like you're, it's so hidden within you and you're so ashamed of it that you don't want to let anyone know about it. Well, in the book, you're discussing in one of the later chapters about how difficult growth is and to, to choose growth. So when you get hit with InstaFame at a very early age and you didn't earn that, you were lucky enough to have a lightning strike.

57:06And then that lightning strike that wears off, you now have to do work in order to recapture that or to get back to where you were. And for a lot of those folks, they don't know what that is, right? That work into growth is a mindset. And it's about, as we discussed, failure and trudging forward, knowing that I'm going to, not only did I fail and that I failed spectacularly, I need to get up so I can do it again. And especially when you're doing it in public on social media, if that's what you're doing, it's like, that's really hard, hard enough to when you're doing it in private, when you're failing in private, and then you have to face some sort of shame and humiliation among your family and friends, that's hard.

57:52To do it publicly, where, like, by and large, like, hopefully your spouse, when you fail, is going to say, hey, I still love you, I still support you. But when you fail in public, people love to point and laugh and kick you while you're down and make you feel even worse. Because, by and large, I think why that's happening is because when you make fun of somebody else's failure, it makes you more comfortable with your own failure. And it's like that saying, hurt people, hurt people. So whenever you have people like ganging up on someone else's failures, it's because it's making their own failures feel better by comparison.

58:24And which gets back to like all social media is a comparison game. That's why people are addicted to watching people's successes and saying, wow, she's prettier than me. He's richer than me. They're happier than me. On the way down, it happens just as fiercely in the other direction of, ha ha, look at that person failing. But I'm curious in all of these timeless lessons that you put together, what struck me is not so much that they're counterintuitive, but how many of them are counter to cultural narratives and rules and advice that is passed down generationally. Why do you think that is? Why do we have these timeless forces that are tied to our human nature, but so much of the story that we tell ourselves and pass down to our kids actually don't follow any of these forces?

59:06That's interesting. I don't think I've thought about that, but when you say it, it's like, yeah, I think that is true. If there is a common denominator, It's like, we want to dream about an easy, happy, calm life. That dream is so appealing for myself, for my children. That's all I want for myself, my children. But of course, if you know history, if you know reality, that ain't how it works. And it's not how it works for anybody. But of course, as let's say, as a father, I don't want to tell my children, life's going to suck. You're going to be heartbroken. You're going to fail. You're going to be ashamed.

59:36You're going to be embarrassed. Good luck to you. What I want to tell my children is you can be anything you want. Life's going to be great. Your parents are always going to be there for you. You're going to find a great spouse who supports you. That's what I want to tell them. And to some degree, that is probably what I do tell them. And so conflating the idealized world with reality, I think is probably the basis of a lot of this. We want to believe ourselves, and we genuinely believe ourselves what we want the most comfortable world to be, even if it is so contradictory to reality. Yeah, I think that's well put.

1:00:05I feel a lot of it is seeking certainty, recognizing that we feel our best in certain times and we reach for forecasting and now we're excited about AI and the changes and advancements it's going to give us in hopes of certainty in the future. But in large part, the future is so full of uncertainty and rapidly changing at a rate as population continues to grow and little experiments of every single human's life unfolds on this planet. There's this thing in psychology called depressive realism, which is the idea that people who are clinically depressed actually have better, more accurate forecasts about the future.

1:00:39Whereas people who are not depressed, they're happy and chipper, they're the ones who are just blind and oblivious. Oh, the future is going to be great. My life's going to be great. The world's going to be great. Whereas depressed people are like, no, we're probably going to have a recession. I'm probably going to get laid off. They're actually more accurate about what the world is. So I think that's probably part of this too, is like you don't want to pass along the reality of how hard life can be because it's too depressing to swallow. It's a great place to wrap things up. We love asking every guest what their X factor is.

1:01:05What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary, Morgan? Well, first, I don't think I'm unique or extraordinary. I think, but if there's something that I maybe am proud of, it's that I really just try to be true to myself in my writing. I'm not writing for anybody else but myself. I'm not trying to pander. I'm not trying to sell you anything, certainly. I just think of it as I'm fortunate enough to get to read and learn about the world. And I try to tell a story about what I've learned. And some people will like it and some people won't. But it's always just going to be, this is what I enjoy writing about.

1:01:34and these are my views about the world. I'm just trying to stay true to that rather than trying to pander. Well, we love your writing. It's a page turner. Can't put it down. Just like your last book, Psychology of Money. Where can our audience find out more about you and the latest book? Well, my drug of choice, where I compare myself to everybody else on social media is Twitter. That's where I spend most of my time. My handle is Morgan Housel, first and last name. Beautiful. Thank you for joining us, Morgan. Thank you. Thanks so much.

1:02:07Johnny, I got to say, one thing I love about Morgan is he's full of anecdotes and great stories in both of his books, actually, sharing not only history's lessons, but it's just so easily consumable and applicable. Yes, absolutely. It was a lot of fun. He's a great guest. It's great working with people who love their craft so much. I tell everybody, if they want to be entrepreneurs, that they got to really love what it is that they do, or it's just not going to work. And certainly when we talk to some of our guests, you can tell the love that they have. All right. This week's shout out goes to Caleb, who wrote me an email earlier this week, and he writes, Hey, Johnny, it's Caleb.

1:02:50You know, stepping up into a senior engineering role really threw me for a loop. Suddenly I was in charge of a team. And let me tell you, that was a whole new ballgame. I had the tech stuff down, but leading a team, that was something else. I stumbled upon the Art of Charm X-Factor Accelerator from the podcast, and wow, did it change things. It was like learning a new language, but instead of code, I was learning how to click with my team. Leading them didn't just feel like a job anymore. It felt second nature. And delegating tasks used to terrify me, but not anymore. Thanks to the emotional bids lesson and conflict resolution strategies I picked up from the program.

1:03:30I'm dishing out tasks like a pro, and my team totally gets what I'm aiming for. Hats off to you and AJ. You didn't just teach, you got me into the thick of it, practicing and messing up in a cool stress-free zone, and it's where I found my stride and really grew my confidence. Now, I'm not just a tech whiz, I'm the guy who fires up the team, the leader that they look up to, and that, my friends, is worth its weight in gold. And thank you very much for that wonderful email, Caleb. If you're a fresh senior engineer trying to find your footing, the X-Factor Accelerator is the ace up your sleeve. Check out unlockyourxfactor.com and start your journey to becoming the leader you are meant to be.

1:04:13Remember, it's all about connecting, leading, and delegating with a cool head. Head on over to unlockyourxfactor.com and apply today. all right before we head out a huge thank you to our producers Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery and we have a quick favor to ask can you subscribe to this show and review us in your favorite podcast player now we hope you go out there and have an epic week yeah I remember you you were the bad boy you threw your love away like you was just a toy And you sold the world You're a song of a tragedy Cause you had your taste Of black only yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you In my back In my back In my back In my back In my back In my back And Doug.

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