#139: Numbness...

0:05Damn! Got a coffee, got the incense going, got the candles, it's go time. Today we're talking about numbness. and is numbness a price tag to success because i uh i've been feeling aspects of my life that have been numb and the only reason it's come to my mind in the forefront is because i've had my brother here uh living with me and he's been able to experience the way i act and he He is wondering whether I'm stripping away a lot of the good pieces of my life because of my inability to react when things go to plan. And I say to him, I've had so many things not go to plan, even though I thought they were going to go to plan.

0:59So when I think they're going to plan, I don't get excited until they've actually gone to plan because I don't want to get hurt. I've been burnt way too many times and it sucks so much. So is numbness a price tag to success? I like to look at numbness as a defense mechanism. It's like a protection. It's a way to stop over-investing your sense of self in things you can't control. The reason you become numb to certain things is because you don't want to tie yourself and the way that you feel about things to things that are outside of your control. I actually wrote this like falling asleep in bed one night.

1:58And I think this will be powerful. I wonder if numbness is a price tag to achieving great things. The journey is so challenging that the reward can feel like it never comes, so when it arrives, it doesn't even feel real. Most of the time is spent alone, so you don't feel like you can relate. Even though your life is one people admire, they didn't see what it took to get there. In fact, almost no one knows, which is why it can feel isolating. You wouldn't change a thing. Life is great. but sometimes you crave some normality, an ability to have your mind switch off, do normal things and actually enjoy them, turn on a movie and not fall asleep, make your cup of coffee and put milk in it without feeling like it will make you less productive.

2:42There's a certain price to success no one seems to talk about, and it's not the milk in your coffee or the inability to watch a movie, it's the constant over optimization of life that can strip away your peace I don't have milk in this coffee and then I don't know if anyone else can relate to this but when you're drinking coffee there's an enjoyment coffee and then there's a functional coffee and I don't know if it's placebo I don't know if it's the dairy I don't know what it is but when you have a straight black coffee, it is like rocket fuel. And so I've got a little bit of Laird Hamilton's creamer in here, which has the lion's mane and stuff in it.

3:24But that's just one example of over-optimizing your life so that you can succeed. And there's another interesting piece here, right? Is when outcomes stop reliably tracking your effort, your nervous system learns not to spike as hard on either end. It's adaptive. You stop getting wrecked by the lows, and the cost is that the highs get quieter too. The people who achieve a lot of success often discover years in that the numbness wasn't a side effect of success, it was a strategy that enabled a particular kind of success. The kind built on not letting yourself need to win too much. That can work for a long time, but it's worth asking whether the goal is to keep achieving while feeling less or to build a life where you don't need the armor as much in the first place.

4:23So the success has come from your ability to be numb, because if you weren't numb, you would get affected by the inevitable lows that you're going to face on a challenging journey to achieving success. So because you get burnt so many times, things don't go to plan so often. You lack clarity and you get frustrated time and time again. People do you wrong. Things take five hours when they should have taken 20 minutes. All of these things stack up enough times where when you get presented with them, you don't get phased by them because you're numb to those things. But equally, because the same receptor that makes you feel something down there also is a thing that makes you feel something up here.

5:21And so when you achieve the highs, you also feel more numb. I'll give you an example. I've had my brother, I've had my head of sales uh in town and and we've been working and we're doing we've been doing a lot of work and and if you guys have been tuning into the show regularly you've been seeing we're doing a lot of solo podcasts and the reason for this is because i'm just so focused and i'm so honed in on what i'm trying to achieve right now and frankly there's two things the sprint with guests is an extremely uh full-on pursuit it's amazing it's the most beautiful thing ever but when you're focusing so much on interviewing guests the the preparation for them the um like the obsession to getting bigger guests on and keeping that momentum building and playing the podcast game it's a full-time job in itself and i'm trying to run two businesses off the other end and um and everything else that i'm trying to do we've got travel we're going to europe in a couple of weeks we're uh doing a lot of things and i've been super focused but as a byproduct of that is because i've been focusing on business business has been very fruitful we've been making a lot of money and uh and jack will like he'll see me like we'll make all this money in a day and and i like we'll just be like i'll maybe like i'll give him a little fist bump or something like this and um and then you know like something else really cool will happen or like I'll get a call about a brand deal and it'll be fifty thousand dollars and I'll like tell Jack and he'll be like super stoked and I'll be like yeah it's great and uh but the deal hadn't come into my bank yet so I'm just like fully numb from it and and I was kind of just like yeah it's cool and he's been observing the the lack of feeling i'm having for a lot of things where he's getting really super excited and buzzed and uh the patterns that he's been recognizing because and i can't speak for him i'm just like observing the room because he's spending more time with me now we've been together for about a month or a bit over now um he's been recognizing that i haven't been as high in a lot of the moments where he's been as high, but equally in the challenges, I've not been low.

7:46In fact, I've not even been phased by any of them. And the highs get numbed, but I feel it's worth it because then you don't have to experience all the shit. The only time you actually feel a low is when it's actually a low, not some external low that's out of your control, not something that's petty and, uh, you know, something that doesn't actually like emoting to it doesn't actually really gain anything. Right. Um, the more reps you go through, the more you become numb to those things, the more or that less stuff phases you. Now, where I want to tie this in, which has just got me pondering, is, is numbness the right term?

8:47Because numbness would be the absence of feeling entirely, which is not the case. Numbness would be not being able to feel any of the highs and the lows in life as a whole. That's not the case. I feel so many highs. I'm filled with so much joy so often. But when I get in the zone of trying to achieve something, perhaps my mechanism that kicks into place is more of a numb mechanism that is protecting me from not having to go through the shit. But equally on that journey, it's not allowing me to feel the highs as much as well. in pursuit of achieving something great. So for an example, if I want to make a million dollars, I know that to get there, it's going to be quite challenging.

9:43So if I celebrate massively and get super excited about the little wins on that journey, what I'm probably going to feel is extreme lows on that journey too. so I'm going to feel super excited when we make$20 ,000 in a day. Then I'm going to get a brand deal that's coming in at$50 ,000 or$60 ,000, and then I get off the phone call, and it's coming through, and then I explain to Jack that it's coming through, and we get super excited and buzz, and then I don't hear anything from the brand deal, and then a week later, it's fully fizzled out, and they've offered me a few thousand dollars. now if I went super super high on making some money in a day and then I like really emoted and got really high with that my guess would be is that when the brand deal came through and then it fell through I probably would have crumbled because my expectation was now that the money hit my bank, in which case it hadn't.

10:55It was actually wanting a lie. It was a slippery slope because I'm tying myself to something that's completely out of my control. It's a different conversation when the money's already in your bank. When the money's in your bank, then you can go, well, it's mine. Great. Awesome. No one can take it from me. I can control that. I can control how I spend it, I can control what happens with the money, it's mine. But emoting before even obtaining the ability to control the outcome is a very slippery slope and I've learned this the hardest way. I've had to go to the deepest of lows because I inflated my highs so much to realize that inflating the highs is not worth enjoying because the lows suck way too much.

11:50And so maybe we discern the difference here because I've been thinking about this. Numbness being the absence of feeling. In fact, I wrote it down here. Numbness would be the absence of feeling anything. Protection could be the absence of being affected by things outside of your control. So maybe numbness isn't the right term because numbness would be not being able to feel anything. Protection would be removing yourself from the ability to, well, removing yourself from feeling extreme feelings when things are outside of your control. And there's exceptions to the rule, right? You can be fully in love with someone and love them so deeply and you can be affected by that when they break your heart.

12:37I'm not saying we need to be numb beings, right? But the things that are outside of our control for the most part that we're operating in, the more that we can remove ourselves from the extreme highs, it will save us a whole lot of heartache. And you know what? Maybe something on top of this is the fact that this advice is not even productive. The reason I learned the advice is because I went through the shit. I had all the expectations. I had all of the things that I was getting super excited and buzzed about before they had even happened. And then what happened was is they didn't happen. So then I got absolutely burnt.

13:19And then I did it again and again and again. I set my expectation here. My reality was here. The gap between that was disappointment. So then until things were final, I could not act in excitement. there was a level of numbness which was the protection mechanism to stop me from going through more pain which then by turn is the thing that enabled the success because I was able to go through things that people would have struggled to go through because that I because I didn't emote in those low times because I didn't even perceive them to be low times because I didn't experience the polar opposite of the high, which would make the low time low anyway.

14:04When I went through enough lows, I became numb to emoting when things are outside of my control.

14:18And the thing I really want to rein home here is like, the byproduct of this is not just an emotionless person. the byproduct is not just a person that doesn't feel that doesn't express his feelings that's hard and every like feminist will clip all this up and be like he's just some misogynist or whatever whatever term they want to whatever term they want to throw at it but but the the twist here is the fact that you develop a calm stoic nature a nature that's grounded a nature that's not like this in your life. It's a smooth, steady person that can go through more challenge a whole lot easier.

15:10Feel calm, grounded, and sure in the low time, which is a selfless act. Because when you do that, and when you can truly just develop that as your default, not only do you go through that easier, but everyone around you goes through it easier too. Because true leadership is being able to show up as the person that gives everyone else the belief that everything's going to be okay, that gives everyone else the empowerment that they can crush it, that we are going to crush it, that things are going well, that if we just keep sticking this out, the light at the end is going to be so bright. True leadership can hold their own and be grounded in that presence.

15:59And a byproduct is everyone that they're leading rises from that. Everyone that they're leading starts to get closer to the life that they truly want to live. Because imagine if you had a leader that was just up, down, super buzzed, super sad, super buzzed, super sad. These people that you're leading are going to be absolutely confused. They're going to be drained. If you haven't calloused your ability to be able to go through lows and go through highs in a calm, stoic way, it really affects you. It really affects you. The lows will mess you up. And if you've got a certain amount of things that you need to do throughout your day, and you have a low that absolutely destroys you, and it debilitates you from being able to do any of the other stuff that you have to do in your day, how do you think that day is going to pan out from a productivity standpoint?

16:58How do you think you're going to be able to finish all of the things and have cognitive alertness when you're stressed, anxious, and drained from something that didn't go to plan? Well, you're not going to be able to. And so if you emote massively on the highs on a micro scale in terms of how you operate throughout your days, you're bound to be disappointed. You're bound to be let down and you're bound to experience a low, which then results in getting nothing else done, which results in poor leadership and results in a state where you can't operate smoothly. And so for me, I don't think it's about telling anyone to try and be calm.

17:56but what I can say is found that I've found worked really well for me is I've just been burnt too many times that it's actually just developed what's this piece here the people who achieve a lot of success often discover years in that the numbness wasn't a side effect of success it was a strategy that enabled a particular kind of success the kind built on not letting yourself need to win too much that you can work for a long time. So if you don't need to win too much, you can continue the work. Whereas if you're moat too high, it's going to be very hard. And then the other part is you stop getting wrecked by the lows because your nervous system learns not to spike as hard on either end.

18:43It becomes adaptive. Yeah. And so I think when you pursue a path that is quite challenging and you pursue goals and you pursue things that maybe are not common, you start to go through a lot of challenge. And at the start, it can get really exciting. You can get these little wins. You can get a response from an email. You can make your first dollar online. You can do all this stuff. And it's important to cheer on and celebrate things. but I think maybe it's important to distinguish the difference between a macro and a micro celebration and probably breaking it out on days, weeks, and months, and then also tying it to the goals that you're having and realizing that is the celebration too premature.

19:32I'll give you an example. Say you've got a salesman and he's got a quota. He has to hit 50 dials in the day.

19:43He's one comes around, he gets lucky. He calls him up, picks up, books in a sales call straight away from a cold call. Gets super excited. Yeah, let's go. Booked in a call. Then you get on the call and he no-shows.

20:08How do you think the guy's going to feel? Whereas if He just went, all right, cool. Yeah, awesome. I booked you in. You're going to check your emails. Make sure you got that calendar invite. Yeah, you got it? Awesome. Cool. What you do is make sure you do the preparation before I'm going to send you this video. Be sure to watch. It's going to be key fundamental for the sales. Not for the sales. It's going to be key fundamental for giving you clarity on the process that I'm going to walk you through on this call. And so all I'll ask, obviously, we're investing each other's time. If you can just make sure that you watch that video before the call, and I'll see you later today.

20:41Awesome. perfect great see you later bye book it in cool all right that's one yes let's go next one call again call again call again and and and then say you get to the third call after that and the guy goes mate piss off stop calling me take me off the list it's like okay all good okay that's all I hope he has a better rest of his day. Next one. You might be perceived to be numb, but it's a defense mechanism, a way to manage your emotions so that you're not getting inflatedly high unnecessarily with things you can't control. And then you might get to the end of the day and you go, Fuck yes. I made my$50.

21:38I've actually made$54. I've booked in the quota. I've got these sales calls and I'm super stoked. That was a win. Let's go. And then you eat your dinner with peace, with enjoyment, with satisfaction. Great. But the likelihood is, is if you got too excited and you got too stoked at the first call and then the sixth call and then the eighth call, what's going to happen is you're going to be going like this throughout your day because you're going to have the first call is going to book you in. And then the third call is going to tell you to piss off. And then the next call, you're going to get booked in.

22:16And then they're going to tell you to fuck off. And then you're going to get so drained that by midday, you literally need to have a nap. Your anxiety is through the roof. You're stressed. You can't even function. And then what will happen is you'll probably get to the end of the day. And what would happen? You haven't made your 50 dials. So then you have a negative reinforcement loop here where you haven't made your calls so that then your boss is then going to be questioning your output. Even though you've been working all day, it just hasn't been efficient because you've been on an emotional roller coaster over just doing the work required.

22:55And that's the same with everything in life. when we celebrate too high on small wins that are outside of our control or steps towards a win that are outside of our control, when we emote too high, the likelihood is right around the corner there's a low. And if we keep playing this game of highs and lows, we're going to sap the life out of us and it's not going to allow us to do good work for a long period of time. And that's probably what Jack's been experiencing with seeing me operate here. We have so many wins throughout our days, but equally we have so many lows. I was supposed to be recording with a guest right now.

23:48And I checked my phone last night and it's pulled out. And so I wasn't phased at all. I was like, okay, let's do a solo. But imagine if I tied my worth so much towards doing that guest and I got so excited, all the prep that I did, it was like do or die. And then they pull out. I wonder if I could even show up with a clear mind today to record this. I wonder if like when I'm waking up, if I had that expectation of doing that recording, I wonder if when I was up at 5am just like thinking and preparing for today's recording, I wonder if I would have been able to have a clear mind when recording this and when preparing for this.

24:41Because all I'd be thinking about is motherfucker, he pulled out of the thing. Like that's just so annoying. And so we use this as a defense mechanism. And I do think that it is one that is quite powerful. And so then if we tie it into other things in life, like relationships and other beauties of life, like maybe just seeing the beautiful ocean and hearing the waves crash. or hiking up into a waterfall and hearing the water and letting the water splash on your face. Like all of those things, do your emotions get numb to that? And I would say no. When you're sitting down on a couch with someone that you love and one hour turns into four hours, like do you feel that?

25:43Yeah. In fact, I feel it so deeply. I feel that stuff incredibly deeply. And perhaps the piece around this is because I've been able to manage and deal with my emotions in extreme turmoil and chaos situations in business, for example. because I've been able to do that so many times, which has stemmed from not being able to do that and getting so frustrated and burnt that I started to develop it as a safety mechanism. And then because I've been able to do that so much and go through so many times where I should be exploding and being able to sit there in a calm, stoic way, I've been able to build up these reps of going through challenge a whole lot easier.

26:44So then when I can develop that up, I have this stoic, calm nature about me. So then when I have a stoic, calm nature about me, I'm less affected by things, which means when I'm less affected by things, I have less noise in my life. And when I have less noise in my life, I can look within easier. so then when I can look within easier I can feel and understand more about who I am so then when I understand who more about who I am I then start to be more clear on what that person is and make sure that my environment reflects that so then I have a standard for my life that It is super aligned with me and I don't fall below it.

27:36So then when something enters that standard, I feel it so deeply because I know who I am and I know that's aligned with me. And that all stemmed from being able to be calm in the chaos so that things don't affect me, so there's less noise in my life, so I can actually hear what my heart is saying, what my soul desires. and through all of that the realest emotions feel really real like when i'm up about a two kilometer hike from my house we've got this beautiful waterfall and in malibu and it's actually like a super famous one on on tiktok and they've just closed the last little bit of it off because it's quite like steep and slippery to get up there And so no one's up at the main waterfall, but I got there and we went up there the other day and it's beautiful.

28:39Just like lying in the water, the water is just like the waterfall is just like flat breaking all on my face. And I'm just so stoked. I'm like laughing. I'm super happy. I am just like buzzed at life and I can't believe it's so close to my house. And it was great. So great. I felt that. And then just down a couple hundred meters, I'm at the beach here in Malibu. And you go down to the beach at sunset and you put your feet in the sand. And you feel that. When I sat down here and it was time to record. and when I sip on this coffee, like, I feel it and I get excited. I get really excited. When I am speaking to someone that I love, I light up.

29:46I spoke to, I had a great FaceTime call with Michael Smoke, one of my really good friends, Harap Wellness. Yesterday on FaceTime, we've not spoken in a little while and we were like super excited and buzzed and just like energized. So I can feel the things that feel real to me, but I don't feel as much, I still feel, I'm not just a robot, but I don't feel as much of the things that are more out of my control that I don't think are going to serve me. I've like developed a callus for things that I know in the past when I've reacted to them have been negative use of my reaction and negative use of my emotions.

30:33And so maybe I've developed like a good filter to it. Maybe. Hmm. This is interesting. Okay. So.

30:52Maybe I've developed a callous to feeling emotion for things in the external world.

31:04But because of that callous of emotion on the external world, I've been able to increase my ability to feel the emotions internally. To feel the emotion of the things that actually matter. Not the materialistic world. I'm more numb to material things, but I'm more full to love. I'm more full to the things that actually matter in my life because I can deal with all of the stuff that doesn't matter easily or easier to then free up space and have the energy required to invite the good stuff in. Like all of this material stuff doesn't really matter. When we think about it, it's not the thing that really matters.

31:59The fancy car, the nice watch, how good the girl looks on your arm. All this stuff doesn't matter in comparison to deep connection with the people that you love, being healthy, nourishing your body with good foods, letting suns shine on your face as it's rising in the morning, touching some grass, going for a run, getting a sweat on, working hard towards something that you're really passionate about, that serves the greater good. All of these things really matter. Deep connection with the people that you love, building a family. All of this stuff trumps a fancy car. All of the things that will build up your ego.

32:42it trumps it the material world isn't one that serves us it's an illusion it's something that we have made up and the stories and society have placed on us that these things actually matter but they don't and