Why optimism can be your secret superpower with Sahil Bloom (E241)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance app. be challenged and to grow. Here's what's coming up today. It's one of the hardest things in the world. If you are surrounded by people who are telling you that you can't do something, you're never going to go where you want to go in life. And the hardest thing is when those people are your family. What about when it's your spouse? What about when that's your parents? What about when it's your sibling, best friend? And it's really, really hard to make those changes. One of the exercises I did, encouraged by a mentor of mine, was to envision my life at the end.

1:07Basically envision my ideal life at age 80. And then you zoom back and think about, okay, what are the actions that I need to be taking on a daily basis today to create that ideal future? My natural wiring is a psychopath. If I got excited about something and I went head down on it, you wouldn't see me for a year. And a lot of my relationships would suffer and a lot of every other area of my life would suffer. But man, would I be dialed in on that thing? All of this comes down to becoming more self-aware over the course of your life, figuring out what those sort of demons are that you have. Mine is this psychopath and figuring out how to manage that.

1:50Today, we welcome to the show an incredibly inspiring investor, entrepreneur, creator, explorer. I think this guy is someone who is exploring life. His name is Sahil Bloom, and he has captured the imagination of millions of people across the world. And in this conversation, you're going to hear him talk about how he totally changed the path that his life was heading in, how we can all embrace difficult conversations, the importance of pushing our body on a daily basis, how we can expand our minds and find the opportunity for personal growth. We also discover the power of luck, the importance of goals, and how we can make big decisions and all the challenges of chasing something meaningful in our life.

2:33And please make sure you stick around to hear Sahil's golden rule at the end of this conversation. It was one of the most perfect, powerful, pertinent answers we've ever had on this show. It's such a great conversation. I'm so excited you're here for it. Don't forget for even more from High Performance, you can check us out on YouTube. You can also download the High Performance app. But let's get straight to a conversation that I can't wait for you to hear. As we welcome Sahil Bloom to High Performance. Just before we welcome today's guest, we've got some messages from our valued partners. If you prefer to listen ad-free, you can do so on the High Performance app.

3:11i just want to take a very quick moment to talk to you about something that i really love my whoop band this is wearable fitness tech that feeds back what's actually going on inside my body after hundreds of conversations on this podcast i'm told all the time that consistency is king and what does whoop do tells me about my strain it tells me about my sleep it tells me about my recovery once i used to think that i was the kind of person that could cope with high stress without a lot of sleep, without going to the gym for a couple of weeks. And then I got whoop. And then I got the truth. I mean, I can take a look at my phone right now because last night I was at an event for my daughter.

3:47I needed eight and a half hours sleep. I got less than five hours. What does that mean if I click recovery? Well, it tells me my recovery is only 43 % and my heart rate variability, my HRV, how my heart's beating, is lower than its usual range. So that then tells me that today needs to be a recovery day, not a heavy gym day. Honestly, Whoop has changed the way that I feel about everything, and I'd love it to do the same for you. So if you want to get involved, then you can. Just go to join.whoop.com forward slash HPP, and you can join risk-free for 30 days with no commitment. It's changed my life.

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6:11Well, Sahil, thank you so much for joining us. I am thrilled to be here. Thank you. Good man. What do you believe high performance to be? I think of high performance as being totally individual, finding within yourself what your true potential is. And I think of potential as a little bit different than most people. So most people think of potential as something God-given. You're born with your potential, and then you go out and you hope that you can achieve your potential. I think of potential as being a byproduct of your beliefs and your environment. And both of those things are within your control.

6:48Your beliefs, if you have tons of limiting beliefs about who you are and the type of change that you can create in your life and the type of person you are, your potential will be limited. Your environment, if you're surrounded by negative people, people who are envious or jealous, people who are telling you to be realistic about what you can become, that limits your potential. On the flip side, when you change that about who you are, you change those beliefs and you change your environment, your potential becomes limitless. And I think of high performance as being the pursuit of both expanding that potential sphere and then of taking the daily action to try to close that gap between your current reality and between what that potential is.

7:31I'd love to talk about how you change the spheres around you. Changing your environment is one of the biggest challenges for people. What would you suggest people that aren't happy in the place they're in, the environment they're in, the people they're surrounded by, what moves can they make, do you think? I think the first thing is people. It's one of the hardest things in the world, is if you are surrounded by people who are telling you that you can't do something to be realistic, that they're talking about the past, they're not thinking about the future, you're never going to go where you want to go in life.

8:10and the hardest thing is when those people are your family. It's easy to say, oh, cut these people out of your life. I can sit here and sell you that till kingdom come. Hey, cut the people out of your life. But what about when it's your spouse? What about when that's your parents? What about when it's your sibling, your best friend? It's really, really hard to make those changes. They have to be made in order for you to become what you want to become and what you're meant to become, but it's more difficult than meets the eye. And so that piece of advice I always give to people is to separate time from energy.

8:43And what I mean by that is you can spend time with someone, but not give them your energy, not open yourself up to them to be hit by their toxicity. If you have a family member who consistently makes you feel bad or consistently makes you feel small, when you're with them, you don't have to open up to allow them to do that to you. You can have a guard so that when they are making the comments, the subtle digs, saying those things to you, you're not allowing it to actually strike at your core. And that's a way that you can cut them out of your life without actually having to go say, hey, you're out of my life.

9:21We've had Johnny Wilkinson, probably the greatest English rugby player ever, tell us that high performance is exploration. and we've had Professor Brian Cox sit in the chair you're in right now and tell us that being proved wrong is the greatest thing that can happen to you. He said, think like a scientist, learn the things that you don't know. Yet we live in a society where so many people are fearful of failure or they don't even take the leap because they're fearful of failure. So what advice would you give to people that are in that space right now? I think generally it's realizing that failure is never quite as bad as we imagine it to be.

9:59There's a famous quote, and fear is often greater in imagination than in reality. And what you realize, like if you look at a child, I think it's a perfect example. Most failure is reversible in some way. It's not a deadly failure. And yet we build it in our mind to be this deadly thing. So we sit, like when I was thinking about leaving my first job to go try this entrepreneurial thing that I had no idea what it looked like. I built that up to be the scariest thing in the world. And in my mind, I said, oh, if I quit here, I'm never going to be able to get this job again. And it's mostly just bullshit.

10:35The reality is like, if you have a job at Deloitte and you're working at Deloitte and you're progressing and you leave for a year and go do something interesting, you're more interesting to rehire at Deloitte than you were before. But we build it up that it's this terrifying thing. So how did you still do it then? And I had to have a true reckoning moment of seeing almost like a vision of what my life might be if I didn't make a change. I mean, I had a conversation with a friend who asked me about how my life was. I said, good, but I'm not seeing my parents very often. I grew up very, very close with my parents and mentioned my father and our relationship.

11:20And I was seeing them once a year. We were living in California. I was making more and more money every year. Everything was good from the outside looking in. It was like I was winning the game, right? And I was silently miserable. And my relationship with my wife was suffering because I was stressed and not present. My relationship with my friends were suffering because I never had time to spend with them, to be around them. And I was as far away as I could imagine being from the two most important older mentor figures in my life. And this friend asked me how often I saw them. I said, once a year.

11:54He said, how old are they? I said, mid-60s. And he just looked me in the eye and he said, okay, so you're going to see them 15 more times before they die. And it hit me like a punch in the gut. And the next morning, I woke up and told my wife that I wanted to move back to the East Coast. And within 45 days, I had quit my job. We had sold our house in California and bought a house on the East Coast and moved back with no plan. And it was the best decision I've ever made in hindsight. But it only happened because of that forced realization that the most important things in life were going to disappear before my eyes if I let them.

12:39See, my previous life, I was a Formula One presenter, right? It was challenging. It was global. It was just amazing. And then my wife was having our first child. And I remember sitting down with her and going through my new... I had offered a four-year contract from the BBC to do all of these amazing shows. All of them were outside the UK. World Cups, Euros, Commonwealth Games, Olympics, Formula One. And she just said, I'm never going to see you. and you're never going to see our daughter. So I quit that job. I mean, it's not a woe is me story because I had a great job to go to, which was being a football host.

13:16But actually it was the quitting of that job that made me realize that the fear was huge. Like, how am I going to miss this? And I missed the first couple of races and I was a bit, I was pining for it at that point. But, you know, she was born a few days before the first Grand Prix of the new year and she sat on my lap for the first race. And from that moment on, it was like, sometimes we can control this, sometimes we can't. But making the leap, when you realize as a human being that you can make the leap and that actually it will be okay, I think it can allow you a real life of exploration, can't it?

13:50Yeah, that planning phase, that preparing phase, is interestingly a lot of time where your dreams go to die. because we can get paralyzed in that phase of like, well, I'll make the jump when I have the idea or when things are perfect and when I figured this or that out or when our life is more stable or when our mortgage is paid or when our kid is born and now's not the right time. It's like one of my favorite quotes is Rumi, the ancient Persian poet says, as you begin to walk on the way, the way appears. You cannot sit in your current seat and see the exact way. You have to start walking and then suddenly light begins to appear in the path in front of you.

14:39And what about people who start the walk fearful that they're not going to see the change and that sometimes that can take a while? Change does take a while. Most important things in life, you immediately know if it's going to work or not. And this is sort of contrary to what people will tell you. Most people will tell you you have to be willing to bang your head into a wall for 10 years, right? Like we celebrate the success of the person who pounded their head into a wall for five years and then found extraordinary success. We were like, Mr. Beast made 500 videos before one took off. You know, whatever, entrepreneur, double mortgaged their house and then, you know, had the success, James Dyson, whoever it is.

15:23The reality is every great thing that you've achieved in your life, and definitely that I have, you've known very quickly if the big picture was going to work. And the details took a long time, 10 times longer than you ever thought to fill in. But the big picture, you quickly understand like, oh, is this going to work? Okay, I started to feel the good thing. And now I have to go spend years and years filling in all the details along the way and what it's going to look like. And that's going to be really hard, harder than I ever thought possible, going to take longer than I ever thought. But I knew, like I had that feeling.

16:01And that is the piece that people need to figure out. That is how I think about these things is like, you very quickly will know if there's something to this or not. Be honest with yourself about that. If there isn't, change direction slightly. But if there is, embrace it and know that the details of what that is going to be are going to take way longer than you think. And patience is an important thing to talk about as well. You've posted about the growth paradox. I think we should explain to people that just because it's the right thing doesn't mean the success comes immediately. Yeah, the growth paradox says that growth takes a much longer time coming than you think, but then happens much faster than you ever thought possible.

16:48And it has been the case for almost everything of meaning and substance that I have achieved in life. It's the case for a lot of relationships. The beauty of relationships, we think that it's in that falling phase where you fall in love with someone and that's the beauty. The reality is the beauty comes during the growth phase when you're crawling through the mud with someone, when you have those hard experiences, the shared struggle. That is the growth of a relationship that things take off and you feel like you're on an entirely different level with the person. But it takes years and years to get to that feeling where things suddenly change.

17:22What's this about for you? Why are you doing this? Why are you sharing these things? How did it all start? I want to create positive ripples in the world, fundamentally. I was on a path in my life, I guess I would characterize it as living by default rather than by design. Societally, culturally, familially, there are paths that are sort of predetermined that get handed to you. You go to school and you're in eighth grade and they start deciding if you're smart or not. You get put into certain classes and then you're in university and they decide if you're an engineer, if you're an economist, whatever, like the thing.

18:03And your whole path sort of starts getting handed to you, actually. You're not actually thinking about it. It's getting handed to you. And it's really comfortable to just stick to that because it's the easiest thing. Like, I know what that path looks like. If I've been determined that I'm a doctor and I continue to walk down that path, I'm going to become a doctor and I know I'm going to make this much money and here's my life and here's what it's going to look like. But if you're miserable on that path and if that doesn't create meaning for you on a daily basis, you're going to blink and wake up in 50 years and wonder what the hell just happened with your life.

18:33And that is what I was doing. I took a job that I thought would be a marker of what a successful life looked like. and that was on the basis of a broken scoreboard, which is a scoreboard defined by money. And it is the default scoreboard that we all live around because it's so easily measured. It's the easiest score to put on the board is money. And to be able to look at it and you see it go up and down and you can track it and you can manage it. And it's so neat and clean that everyone marches down that scoreboard and we status signal and we live our whole lives sort of bowing down to this like almighty scoreboard.

19:18And my fundamental realization that I came to around that whole period of wanting to move back home to be closer to family was that the scoreboard was broken and I needed a much more comprehensive way to measure what I viewed as a wealthy life. And I went on a journey to find that. And that journey is what I'm on still. It's everything I share is my own struggle with these topics. It's not me saying, I'm your guru. I have figured all these things out. My relationship is perfect. My health is perfect. My fitness is perfect. It's all a work in progress. Every single thing. I think I'm asking better questions than I ever was before.

20:06I think I'm starting to find answers that are creating value in my life and compounding value in my life in a way that is worth sharing because other people can learn from it. But it's going to be 80 years before I possibly figure out the purpose of all of this. So what does your scoreboard look like now? I would say that people are the central piece of my scoreboard. Spending time with people that inspire me and that I love and care deeply about is my number one. And I'm writing a book right now around, the title is The Five Types of Wealth. And the whole idea is to kind of redefine how we think about building a wealthy life and some of the systems that I think are the highest leverage approach to building wealth in those different areas.

20:57Let's talk then about these five areas of wealth, if you're happy to do that. I mean, the first one is, let's start with the financial wealth. Something I've written about in the past is the idea that success financially has a price. And there's a list price that you know about, and that is the hard work, the dedication, the hours that you're going to have to put in, the long nights. And then there's the real price, which is the thing they don't tell you about, which is the time missed with your children. It's the time missed with your spouse. It's the missed recitals. It's the missed sports games.

21:40It's the friendships that have atrophied because you weren't there. You weren't able to support them. And oftentimes that real price of success that you want, the success you want financially is way steeper than we ever appreciate. and if you continue chasing that single scoreboard, you're going to find that you paid a price that you actually did not want to pay. Does money not make you happier though? I think money reduces stress to a certain point in a way that makes you feel much happier. And that number varies based on where you live and what you do and what your needs are, what your definition is of enough.

22:23but beyond a certain point I no longer think it is what drives durable lasting meaning and fulfillment in your life and I don't think by the way that number has been cited as being like 75 000 us dollars a year in some famous studies back in the day I think it's higher than that I won't come and say that especially in London especially in New York especially in LA I'm not that naive to say that. But beyond a certain point, the broader idea here is that continuing to chase money as the means to achieve fulfillment and happiness is very misguided. And the diminishing returns to the curve of money and happiness are very sharp.

23:08And what actually drives meaning in the end or these other things. I mean, one of the exercises I did, encouraged by a mentor of mine, was to envision my life at the end. Basically, envision my ideal life at age 80. What are you doing? Like, actually, on a daily basis, what are you doing at age 80? And for me, it was sitting on a porch with a bunch of land in front of me, kind of out in nature, with my wife next to me, our kids around us chatting, grandkids playing out in the yard, and a bunch of friends coming over for a big dinner. And then you zoom back and think about, okay, what are the actions that I need to be taking on a daily basis today to create that ideal future?

23:57Well, not a whole lot of that has to do with making like billions of dollars, right? There's no private jet, there's no yacht, there's no mansion. I'm talking about a house. But how do I need to treat the people around me on a daily basis so that they want to spend time with me? I mean, I've heard it defined as like the true pest of success is that when your kids are adults, that they want to spend time with you. And I can't think of a better definition of success than that, than having your adult children still want to spend time with you. Because it means that you are a supportive and loving parent every single day of their life.

24:37And what more could you want? So true. And I think sometimes we, we sometimes think when our kids are little that they're just talking to us about little things, right? And we forget that to them, those little things are actually really big things. And I read a study not long ago that said by the time our children reach the age of 12, we've had 75 % of the time that we get with them. You can't throw away those early years, man, because there's not much after that. you have a 10-year window when you are your child's most important person in the world. So it's not just time. It's also just in their mind, who are you to them?

25:16And during that 10 years, you and your spouse are the most important person in their entire world. After that, they have best friends. They have girlfriends, boyfriends. They get married. They have partners. They have tons of other really important people in their life. And you never serve that role for them again, as harsh as that sounds. But what more call to action do you need to be there and to really embrace and enjoy that 10-year window? I'm feeling that. I have a 10-year-old and an 8.5-year-old. So I'm coming towards the end for both of them. I remember someone saying, you never realize the last time you pick up your child.

25:53Sam Harris. When someone says that, you're like, oh man. Every time I pick up my now large daughter, like she's 10 so she's nearly as tall as my wife like you've got to enjoy those moments there was an article that I'll send you we can put it in the show notes maybe it was an op-ed written by a man whose son he had twin boys had passed away suddenly in the middle of the night one of them and had a very rare form of epilepsy that leads to sudden death and one of his sons passed away in the middle of the night. And he was writing this op-ed a few weeks after this had happened. And in the op-ed, he writes about the fact that that night, his son had come into...

26:40That's going to make me choke up. His son had come into their room and had been having a nightmare. And he had kind of told him like, you know, it's okay, nightmare, let me take you back to bed. and he'd taken him back to bed and put him back to sleep. And just reflecting on that, like truly it was the last time that your child would walk into the room like that. And obviously freak scenario, the biggest tragedy I can possibly imagine. But again, like there is a last time that your child is going to want to come crawl into bed with you. They're going to want you to kiss them goodnight, that you're going to be able to pick them up, carry them.

27:24There's a last time that you're going to go on a walk with your parents on the beach, that you're going to hold your spouse's hand and go on a walk. That is such a powerful thing to think about in your life. And it's not morbid. It should be empowering. I mean, it should be illuminating to the things that really matter to you and that you really care about. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. I made the switch because I was tired of those ridiculous bills and sneaky charges from my old provider.

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28:37Speeds may slow up a 35 gig on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead, no rigid long-term contracts, just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. Hey, I'm Dr. Z and I'm a neurosurgeon. So that means long hours, early rounds, late nights, and everything in between.

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29:50let's talk then about another form of wealth which is physical health i'd love to know what some of the things are that you do on a daily basis to find optimization in your health i think it's great to share these messages with people so go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day what time i go to bed at i live on a 90 year old man schedule so i go to bed at about 8 30 p.m and i'm up at 4 30 a.m um how was you Because I like an early night, but my wife is like, we need a couple of hours of telly when the kids have gone down. We need a little bit of us time. You don't get that, I guess.

30:26My son goes to bed at about 7, and my wife and I hang out until about 8.30. And you're aligned on this, yeah? We're totally aligned on it. I mean, one of the great joys of my life is that I found my person at such a young age. We met when she was 14, I was 15. And that we are complementary in so many ways, and that we're so aligned on some of these core lifestyle values around things like that. Why does 4.30 in the morning work for you? 4.30 in the morning for me is less about the time and more about the fact that I get three hours before chaos ensues. If I don't wake up at 4.30, it's hard to find a time of day when things are just quiet.

31:12And what I find is that my creative rhythm is early. So what I need to do, I get up at 4.30. The first thing I do is I get in my cold plunge. So I have a cold plunge out on our deck of our master bedroom. I film it every day so everyone sees it. But I go out there in the pitch black and sit for five-ish minutes in this freezing cold water. And that sparks me to just like start my entire day. I mean, I feel like a superhero when I get out of there. And I actually have no idea whether any of the purported health benefits exist, physical health benefits exist, like brown fat, immune system, all the things that have started to pop up in research, no clue.

31:53But the mental health benefits that I experience of the feeling of energy, the feeling of focus, the feeling of just like feeling like a badass to start the day. When you feel like a winner, everything sort of starts falling into line. I mean, we all know that feeling, like it's happened to us. but you can create that feeling every single day. And it doesn't have to be a cold plunge, by the way. Getting up, do 50 push-ups, do 10 push-ups, do 10 sit-ups. Do one little thing right when you start the day that makes you feel like a winner. And that has ripple effects that extend throughout your whole life.

32:25So I do that to start my day. I always work out when I'm at home and in my routines. It's definitely at least an hour. And I do a combination of resistance training and then running. So I got into running last year in 2023 and became a pretty avid distance runner. My diet is really focused on making sure I hit my protein goals for the day. I try not to worry beyond that. So like the non-negotiable there for me is like 200 grams of protein a day. What I have found is that as long as I hit that, everything else can sort of fill in based on what I'm doing during the course of the day and I'm fine.

33:04Like that keeps me on track and I'm making forward progress. And then outside of that, the only other thing that I do religiously every day is I try to have a sauna in the evening. I have one at my house. So when I'm home, I'm able to do that always. Really helps me unwind. You can't bring your phone in because it's too hot. It's just like the reflect, slow down, read something that I've been wanting to read. That kind of cools me down to go to bed in the evening. Heats me up to cool me down, I suppose. I'm sure there are people listening to this thinking, that sounds like a lot of work. Is it?

33:38The atomic unit of all of it is not a lot of work. So when I'm on the road, the version of this is like a three-minute cold shower, a 30-minute workout in the hotel gym, like what I did this morning, and trying to prioritize protein at the meals that I eat. And as long as I'm doing that and doing my best with sleep. Like I try to limit alcohol. I haven't like stopped alcohol full out. I try to limit, you know, cheap meals and different things. But for the most part, if I distill it down to that essence and I know I'm hitting that, I feel pretty good. And I've kind of controlled the controllables and I don't stress.

34:21I don't worry about the other things. You know, I kind of like the framework that I would give people to think about it is for any daily goal that you have in your life, whether it's your health, your relationships, your work, I try to have an A goal, a B goal, and a C goal. So the A goal is my optimal best case scenario. That's I'm at home in my routines dialed in. That's the two hour workout. That's the full cold plunge. That's the sauna on the physical side. The B goal is like your base case, right? It's like the middle of the road. you're trying to hit that 80 % of the time. And then the C goal is your minimum viable version.

35:01The idea that like anything above zero compounds positively. So I'm just going to do the tiny minimum viable version of it. Having those three is so empowering mentally because you know, I don't need to stress. Like, hey, I'm traveling. I'm in London right now. I'm not going to sleep that well. Okay. Well, what is my C goal for my health and fitness? I'm going to make sure I like take a short cold shower. I'm going to make sure that I walk around for 30 minutes today. And I'm fine. I know that I'm like, I haven't let everything go to shit. And I'm making forward progress. And applying that to other areas of your life, it really is empowering because it starts encouraging you.

35:37You don't have to beat yourself up if you're not perfect every day, because you've hit something. You've achieved one level of what these goals look like. And you need to make the C goal achievable on any day, anywhere. Like relationships. relationships. Yeah, my A goal is to spend an hour of focused time with my wife every day for us to go on a long walk, for us to talk about deep things. But I'm here in London. She's at home. How would I do that? Well, my C goal is we're going to talk on the phone for 15 minutes, no matter what, every single day. And if I can hit that, like I know that we're still connecting.

36:11We're still creating value in our relationship, that we're growing together. We're talking about the things that struggle during the course of the day. So I have just found that like that way of thinking, of being dynamic, having a stake in the ground of what great looks like, but also just knowing that the vagaries of life enter, and you can still make progress when they do, is really empowering. You know, we've done over 300 episodes of this podcast, and we think the high performance is doing the best you can where you are with what you've got, which is pretty much what you're describing. Yeah, ABC goals.

36:46I want to talk about mental health. And I suppose I really want to talk about Solomon's paradox. Because I'm very good at, I mean, my wife will tell you, her favorite phrase is, when you stop talking about bloody high performance, I'm very good at dishing it out. I'm not so good at doing it myself. What steps do you take to protect, look after, and nurture your mental health? I try to slow down more than my natural wiring allows me to. My natural wiring is a psychopath. Somewhere inside me, like the internal guy inside me is a complete madman. Right. And that's a blessing and a curse. Is that useful in some ways?

37:35Super useful in a lot of cases because I can go, if I got excited about something and I went head down on it, You wouldn't see me for a year, and a lot of my relationships would suffer, and a lot of every other area of my life would suffer, but man, would I be dialed in on that thing and would make a lot of progress. And at times in my life, that really allowed me to ramp up a curve fast. When I first started my first job, I ramped up it fast. When I pursued baseball with a lot of my heart, I ramped up it fast. When I got into running, I ramped up it fast. But a lot of other areas suffer when that happens.

38:11And so all of this comes down to becoming more self-aware over the course of your life, figuring out what those sort of demons are that you have. Mine is this psychopath. Yours might be the sloth that doesn't want to do anything and figuring out how to manage that. And for me, it means slowing down. Like every single day, take time away from your phone, walking, not listening to a podcast, not listening to an audiobook, just completely in your own thoughts and quiet and slow. That, I think, is the most important thing long term. It's like that increasing level of self-awareness and the ability to kind of manage whatever that guy is within you.

38:55There's Anthony Bourdain has this quote that he has a guy inside of him that just wants to sit in bed, smoke pot, and watch cartoons all day. And that his whole life has been a series of stratagems to outwit that guy. And he's obviously talking about it from a place of real darkness that he experienced in his life. But the broader application of that idea is really important for us to all understand, which is we all have that guy in some form or function within us. yeah mine is this crazy person yours might be the sloth that's telling you to do nothing but we all need to figure out what that guy is and then figure out how we're going to manage its influence in our life mine is the procrastinator and man sometimes he is vocal we'll talk about procrastination and working well in a minute but while we're on the topic of looking after our mental health.

39:56I think that sometimes for people listening to these podcasts, I worry that everything sounds easy and simple for the people that are having the conversation, right? And there is no doubt about it. Part of the reason why you're able to talk in the way you are able to talk and share the things you do and live the life you live is because you have been lucky. Even to have met your wife at the age you did, to have the incredible parents that you've had, to have the physical ability to do the sport you did. For those watching on YouTube, they should be grateful because you're stunning looking. That's lucky, right?

40:31I think we should talk about luck as well. I know that it's something that you've investigated over the years. Yeah. It's also a byproduct of pain and struggle that you sat with. I'll come back to luck. There's this, again, going back to Rumi, there's a quote that he has that is, the wound is where the light enters you. The wound is where the light enters you. That gives me chills to think about. The idea is that if you sit with pain and sorrow, the light will enter you. That next thing, the growth, the experience, we've all experienced that intrinsically, this idea that those periods of pain and struggle in hindsight were the seed of something that was planted, that was incredible, whatever our next growth was.

41:19And do you have the wounds from those times? Yeah, and I feel like where I am today is a byproduct of the wound from some of the experiences of failure. That feeling of where my life was headed, the feeling of feeling completely lost, of feeling like my relationships were slipping away, seeing the pain and struggle in some of those relationships that I had created, if I was being honest with myself. and that, like from a mental health standpoint, allowing yourself to sit with pain and sorrow rather than needing to just fix it. Sometimes you just need to sit with it. There was a amazing podcast recently, this comedian, Theo Vaughn.

42:08I don't know if you know him. He's an American comedian. And he did a podcast with Sean Strickland, who's this MMA fighter. And during the podcast, Sean Strickland starts talking about some really dark trauma that he had experienced with an abusive father. And he's this big, tough, strong guy. And he starts breaking down. And you can see him like he's physically clenching his fist as he tries to bottle up this emotion that's welling up. And Theo Vaughn had this amazing moment where he just says, hey, man, we don't need to talk. I'll just sit here with you for a minute. And there's so much power in that statement.

42:50I'm not going to try to fix it. I'm not going to give you advice. I'm not going to tell you it's okay. I'm just going to sit here with you. I'm just going to be in the mud with you around this thing. We all need to do that more when we experience pain and sorrow. We don't need to feel the need to run, run, run, run, run and create movement and dig ourselves out of the hole. Like Warren Buffett has this idea that when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. We all just like keep, oh, let me dig faster and faster when I get to the bottom of the hole and we end up digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the hole.

43:23Sitting with pain and sorrow and embracing that is where the light enters you. Winding my way back to luck on the long route. Luck is a really interesting topic because it comes in many types. What you talked about, a lot of those areas, how you look, where you're born, who you're born to, those base circumstances of your life are acts of God, right? Like acts of the universe, whatever you believe in, that is what they are. Dr. James Austin was this neurologist who wrote a book called Chase Chance and Creativity, I think like 1978. And in it, he says that there are four types of luck. The first type is blind luck.

44:12These acts of God, where you're born, who you're born to, the base circumstances of your life, true acts of God, you cannot control them. But beyond that, the next three types of luck are controllable. And he defines them as luck from motion. That's you're creating collisions in the world. You're going out, you're meeting people, you're connecting people. That expands your luck surface area for lucky things to happen. There's luck from awareness, which is your expertise actually makes you really good at spotting lucky events because you're getting smarter and you can see the luck that's out there.

44:48And then the final one is luck from uniqueness, which is your weird eccentricities and hobbies that you've developed actually attract luck into your world. And the whole idea here is that the base circumstances of your life, that blind luck is set. You cannot do anything about it. But type two, three, and four, motion, awareness and uniqueness are within your control. You can actually expand your surface area on which lucky events can happen to you through action, through things that you're doing out in the world. And how much does optimism allow those lucky things to come your way? So much. I've said this before, but optimists are who you should spend time with.

45:27Pessimists sound smart. Optimists get rich. And I don't mean that in the financial sense, although it's true. I mean it in the life sense you know optimism to me is not about ignoring obstacles optimism is about viewing every obstacle as an opportunity rather than as a roadblock and there are two types of people in the world there are people who view obstacles as roadblocks and there are people who view obstacles as opportunities and things that they can creatively figure out the solution of how to get around and how to you know, break through or bust down whatever the thing is. Spending time with optimists is way more fun than spending time with pessimists.

46:12Let's talk about time because I think time is one of the maybe this is the final topic that I think that we should attack in this conversation. It goes by bloody fast. So do you make the time to actually enjoy the time? I think that comes back to what I said about slowing down. there's a famous commencement speech Kurt Vonnegut, the American author gave this commencement speech at Rice University and he talks about all the common tropes about you can do anything you want to do and he gives all the commencement speech basics that he has to give but he ends with this story about his uncle Alex and how his uncle used to stop in the middle of doing something and look up at the sky and say, if this isn't nice, what is?

47:01and what Vonnegut says is that he encourages all the graduates there to do that. When life is sweet and peaceful and you experience those tiny moments of joy, stop, look up at the sky, and say, if this isn't nice, what is? That, to me, is the essence of all of this. It's finding those moments of joy in your life and actually placing them at the top of your mind, actually stopping and recognizing those tiny moments of beauty. And what you find is that there are so many more of them than you thought. There's a tendency we all have to think that the moments of beauty are the vacations, are the weddings, the celebrations, the big moments, the birthdays, all of those things.

47:48But it's just as beautiful when you walk outside and you smell the smell after a rain. And you're with your kid and you see how they're looking at something with these bright, fresh eyes observing the world. I had a moment with my son when he was kind of first starting to be aware of the world. And we were walking past this tree on our normal walk, and we stopped. And he must have stopped and stared and touched this one leaf on this tree for like two minutes. And I stood there with him, and I was holding him. And so I was looking at the leaf. And it was just unbelievably beautiful. The single leaf on this enormous tree that had these amazing veins and different colors and all of these things about it that I would have walked past a thousand times in my life and never noticed the beauty of this one tiny thing, if not forced to stop.

48:41Right. Some quickfire questions, Sahil. The first one is your three non-negotiable behaviors that you and ideally the people around you should buy into. embrace difficult conversations how? you have to have difficult conversations to create meaningful relationships it's the idea everything you want in life is on the other side of something that kind of sucks and that difficult conversation is that for relationships you can't hide from them because small problems become big problems in the long run push your body in some way every single day and whether that's getting in a cold plunge, whether that's working out, whether that's getting in a sauna, whatever it is, doing five push-ups, whatever that thing is, push your body in some way every single day and expand your mind in some way every single day.

49:33Learn something new, get curious about something, read something, yeah. What's your biggest strength? What's your greatest weakness? I think my biggest strength is the ability to convey complex ideas in simple, digestible ways. And it's a work in progress, but I think that is what has allowed me to reach the people that I've reached to date in such a short period of time is that I don't overcomplicate things. I try to deliver things to people in ways that they can access it through their own lens. my greatest weakness I think I lack empathy too often for people that are wired differently from me and especially when I feel like people are creating self-induced wounds I try to fix instead of understanding and sitting with them I need to work on that if you could go back to one moment in your life where would you choose to go and why?

50:40So my wife and I had struggled to conceive, which is a topic that for whatever reason people don't talk about publicly. A lot of people struggle in silence with it. And there's a lot of stigma associated and women often feel really bad like they're not doing biological duty. so my wife was going to going to a fertility doctor that she was maybe going to have to start a series of treatments with and she was going to start these treatments like on a Monday and on the Saturday before she was going to start that she surprised me that she was pregnant and I still like I mean I can't even describe that emotion of that moment and all it felt.

51:34I mean, it was like the craziest rush and series of emotions of happiness at this news and also of just relief of my wife knowing that like she was fine. There was nothing. You were so happy for her. Oh, so happy for her. So happy for us. And just that moment, I mean, it's just still, I have a video of it because she filmed the whole thing on like a secret camera and it's just, I can't even describe the emotion of it. Unbelievable. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. What advice would you give to a teenage Sahil just starting out? Just stop hiding behind this veil of insecurity. Stop hiding who you really are.

52:17I was so insecure for so many years of my life. I mean, really until I was probably about 30. Until I really found what this new path was, I hid who I was from the world. and I played a character that I thought was the correct one. I played the tough athlete character all my high school years and in college, and it wasn't who I was, and it led to me acting and treating people in ways that I am ashamed of in a lot of cases. And it was all because I was trying to cover up the fact that I was insecure. and that I couldn't just come to terms with the fact that I wasn't who I wanted to be. And so I covered that up.

53:09And I wish I could just smack myself in the face. And I think that you just have to learn that the hard way, unfortunately. I don't think I would have heard it. I think I would have gotten smacked in the face and been like, ha ha, and just continued to be insecure, unfortunately. You were still doing your best. I was still doing my best, I think. I just wish that my best was more aligned with what I feel like my real values are. And that journey, I mean, for me to now share that even on a path that it looked like I was successful, that I was so deeply insecure, there's a lot of power that comes from just understanding that.

53:49The people that you look at that you think are so successful and great are deeply insecure. And when someone brags to you about where they are or what they're doing or shows this level of bravado, oftentimes that comes from a place of deep insecurity. People who are comfortable and confident and secure in themselves do not brag about things. They're not telling you how great they are. That's only insecurity manifesting itself. What book recommendation would you like to offer for the high-performance audience? When Breath Becomes Air, it's the story true story of a Stanford neurosurgeon who just finishing his residency about to become a neurosurgeon at Stanford and gets diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and he wrote the book in his last year of life and it's him wrestling with the shortness of life with this bad luck that has come into his world and why me and it's him wrestling with it in real time raw viscerally just as they're celebrating the news of his wife's pregnancy and that his daughter is going to be born and never know him um and it's just i mean i read it once a year yeah uh it's unbelievably powerful and look thank you so much for this incredible conversation honestly i've loved it it's been emotional it's been educational it's been insightful.

55:14The final thing is, I'd love you to leave us with your one golden rule, if you like, for the people that have listened or watched this, for living their own high performance life. What would you like to leave ringing in their ears? I guess my one golden rule is to create value for those around you. And if you create value, you will receive value. And I don't mean that in a financial sense. It can be in a financial sense, and I think that applies to financial means. But if you create value, if you are of value to the relationships, the people around you, to your children, to your partners, to your friends, the most incredible riches will enter your life.

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57:13Look, I really hope that you got a lot from that. I would only ask one thing in return for you listening to today's episode, and that is to head to the App Store and download the High Performance app. There is so much incredible stuff waiting for you on the app. It takes you deeper. It takes you closer to your own version of high performance. it's the place that we are putting so much time and energy into so please please please if you've got a spare couple of minutes head to the app store download the high performance app I'd love to know what you think of it and as always just thank you really thank you for growing for sharing this podcast around the world please continue to spread the learnings you're taking from these conversations and remember there is no secret it is all there for you so chase your own world-class basics.

57:56Don't get high on your own supply. Remain humble, curious, and empathetic. And we'll see you very soon.

58:25Thank you.