Dr. Benjamin Hardy: The Mindset Shift That Stops You From Feeling Like a Failure | Mental Wealth Series | E4

23:36Hala Taha:It also handles payment, inventory, shipping and returns. And if you get stuck, there's 24 seven support. So if you've been thinking, what if this idea could work? It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash profiting. Go to shopify.com slash profiting. Again, that's shopify.com slash profiting. Something that I thought was really interesting when I was reading your work is this concept of you actually thinking of your future self as a completely different person. And I thought that was really eye opening because for one, I feel like you give yourself some more grace when you think of your past and your future self as a different person.

24:19Hala Taha:It's like you start to feel empathy for yourself and you're not so hard on yourself depending on what outcomes, you know, end up happening. So I'd love to understand the importance of actually thinking of yourself as different present self, future self, even past self? I've had some of my biggest wins and I've had also some of my biggest mistakes, but I know that I'm not the same person I was again, like I said, even a few weeks ago. And so I don't, I'm not mad at my past self though. Like my past self was coming from a different place. I'm not. And so I think it's always good to have compassion and empathy towards your former self because you now know so many things that they didn't know.

24:56You know, you're in a different place. You, you see things differently. And so one, I think it's very beautiful to recognize you're not the same person as you were in the past and to have only empathy towards your past. There's no upsides to having bad or negative emotions towards your past. It does nothing for your future. It does nothing for your present. And so always transforming your past into gains and greater perspective, learning. That is, again, back to post-traumatic growth. It's that you are grateful. Like the idea of trauma is really that something happened to your past and you feel like you're now in some way inferior.

25:38You've gone backwards. You're also crippled in some way because of what happened, whereas the opposite is that now you're empowered because of what happened. So I guess that's one. In terms of always seeing your future self as a different person, to me what that does is it propels a growth mindset. The definition of a fixed mindset is that you've purely defined who you are based on your past and then you assume that who you are now is who you're always gonna be. So you have a fixed mindset. You don't think you're gonna change. You've already kind of painted your future self into a box that your future self is the exact person you are today.

26:14And so that leads you, I mean, what the research shows is that leads to kind of having a fragile or a brittle approach to life where you're too afraid to fail because you're trying to prove yourself. Whereas if I know that my future self a week from now is gonna be different, they're gonna be way more knowledgeable, they're gonna be less ignorant, then that gives me right now a lot of grace. Like you said, I don't have to have all the answers right now. One of my favorite models for this, it comes from Brene Brown's book, The Atlas of the Heart, where she said you're either trying to be right or you're trying to get it right.

26:46And if you're trying to be right, that's the definition of a fixed mindset. You're trying to prove your current self because your future self isn't going to be any different. You're kind of stuck. Whereas if you're just trying to get it right, I know I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. I know I don't have all the answers now. And I know my future self is going to have better perspectives. And once I get there, they're going to be blown away at how different they are from who I am today. But also, they're always going to be trying to figure it out. Like you're always trying to get it right. And you're always growing and changing.

27:11And so it just leads you to not needing to have it all figured out. Instead, you're just in a state of learning, which is a growth mindset.

27:19Hala Taha:Yeah. And something that I think is really interesting is that it's actually hard to imagine ourselves as a future self. I think some people are better than others, but a lot of people have trouble imagining who they are in the future. Can you talk to us about why that is? The main reason that people have a hard time, and this is something that Daniel Gilbert said, he's a Harvard psychologist who's been studying this concept for 20 years. And he actually gave a main stage TED talk called The Psychology of Your Future Self back in 2014. But he said that the reason people have a hard time imagining their future self is because they don't do it.

27:55Like they literally don't take the time. Like if anyone here was sitting listening, I would ask in the last seven days, how much time have you spent imagining your future self? How much time have you spent journaling and thinking about it? My guess is that the average listener, and this is a very like, and maybe this group would be different because these are young people who are actually, you know, have big visions. But I'd say the average person who struggles to think about this, the main reason is just because they're not taking the time to think about it. Imagination is very much a skill. It's a skill that you can get better and better at.

28:32Psychologists, there's kind of levels to seeing your future self. The first one is honestly just connecting with your future self and having empathy for them. Just like you would want to have empathy for your past self, a crucial first step to connecting to your future self is having empathy that your future self is a real person. They're coming from a certain place and they're being impacted by what you do. And so like, if just a guy would have empathy for another person, if I was more emotionally intelligent, I would realize that they're coming from a different place than me. They've got different perspectives, different values, different goals.

29:04They're in a different situation. I would want to start by understanding. But then you go from connecting to getting really vivid, where it's like, you now start to kind of see the context of your future self. And obviously you get to create that Like your future self is going to be different from mine. And I get to choose in large part what I want my future self to look like. And so I think you just take the time to think, who do I want my future self to be in five or 10 years? What do I want that to look like? What's going to be really important to my future self? What's going to be really important to them that I should be paying attention to now?

29:38I mean, I think it's just taking the time to really think about it and putting yourself in the situation, like just as one simple example. like let me just put myself into my future self's shoes call it in 2030 so 2030 is eight years away one way of putting myself into that person's shoes is literally just thinking things through so I know that it's a little crazy for a lot of people but I have six kids and the oldest one is 15 the youngest one is two so like I know that my 15 year old in eight years from now is going to be 23. Like, so that's one thing is like, okay, I'm gonna have a 23 year old son, my youngest is gonna be 10.

30:15And so I'm just starting to like, actually start to think about that. I'll be 10 years older, what do I want that to look like? Where do I want to be? What do I want to be focused on? What's gonna be really important to me then? Like literally starting to put yourself in the shoes and start to think about it. And then starting to think what are the most important things that I could do now that would set that future self up? I know that and you can do it in shorter time frames, but it's literally just actually putting concrete around it and context to really start thinking about it. Yeah.

30:41Hala Taha:So related to this, in your book, you say that your identity is what you're most committed to. And it's your identity that actually drives your behaviors or your future identity. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah. So identity is such an interesting concept. And I really do think it's kind of the driver of everything. But then the question is, well, what drives identity. And identity is really actually driven by what your goals are, what you're most committed to. And when I say it's what you're most committed to, it's really two things. It's the story that you're most committed to in terms of your past, present, and future.

31:17Like, we all have a story about our past and who we were and what led us to this point. We have a story about who we are now, and we also have a story for our future. And so that's one commitment, is the story or the narrative you have. The second one is actually your standards. So your standards as a person are what you're committed to. Like we all have standards. Like I'll give an example. Like I was recently back home visiting home and I have a cousin who's been living at my dad's house for call it five years. He's a cousin that lives at my dad's house now. And he's one of those people who plays World of Warcraft literally like all day unless he's at work or sleeping.

31:52And actually, honestly, that's how I used to be. Like I used to be that way where I played video games like 16 hours a day. But it was interesting because I was talking to him and I was just catching up with him. And I was just asking him what was going on in the game because that's kind of the main thing he does. And he said, well, I recently left my group, my guild. It's a guild in this online game. And I said, well, why did you leave the guild? And he said, because they're just not up to my standard. Like I have bigger goals that I want to achieve in the game. And there's things I want to do.

32:23And I just can't do it in this group. And he's one of those people who's like at the top of the top of the top in this game. And I said that was interesting that his standard for himself is really high in the game. Like I have zero standards for myself in that game because it's not it's not it's not valuable to me. Like it's not what I value. So I have no standards there. But the question is, well, where are my standards? Where do I actually care? And how high are my standards in those areas? And your standard does reflect what you're committed to. So like he showed that he was committed to something more, which is why he left that group because his standards were higher.

32:55So as you elevate your standards and your story, you change your identity. And so your standards are just whatever you hold yourself to. That could be in your finances. It could be in your health. And when you raise the standards and it's a true commitment, you don't go back below those standards. You start saying no to everything that's below those and it stops resonating with your identity. because your standards and your identity are pretty much the same thing. So as you elevate your standards, basically you no longer can go back to doing what you were doing before because it just doesn't resonate with your identity anymore.

33:30There's things that I was even saying yes to call it a few months ago, which would be unfathomable to me now. It just doesn't fit with what's acceptable or even with what's relevant to me anymore because it no longer fits the standard. Yeah.

33:47Hala Taha:So basically it's having this very clear, vivid picture of your future self. And then whenever you have decisions in terms of how you act or the things that you do, you're always being true to your future self. And it helps you basically be able to say no more often and make the decisions that will be good to your future self or what is aligned to your future self. Yeah. I mean, when you start to make your future self the standard, then it becomes a massive filtering tool where it's like, what would my future self do? Or if I was my future self now, how would they approach this? And how would my future self want me to do this?

34:25We were talking about Viktor Frankl, you know, earlier in this call, and that's literally what Viktor Frankl invited people to do. He said, I want you to imagine this moment that you're sitting in right now and imagine that you had already lived it. So whatever you're doing, let's just call it you're on your way home from work and you're about to go home from work. So let's just imagine that this moment right now has already passed and you acted poorly. You acted the way you're about to act. And you're having to deal with the consequences of whatever it is you're going to do. But now you get to come back and relive it again and you get to actually do it differently and better.

35:02like that that's something that like and so that's just using your future self as the standard like I know that my future self wants the best for me and also wants me to be my best and so if I start to make my future self the standard then all of a sudden I I'm gonna start making a lot better decisions in the present because not only am I am I am I thinking about what's best for me in my future but I'm now using that as the tool for making the best decisions now whether that's call it I'm at home. And, you know, I could be engaging with my kids on a really high level, which is what my future self would probably want me to do.

35:38But instead, I'm just kind of spacing out like sitting on my phone, like, if I'm using my future self as the standard, and my future self being what would be ultimately best for me, and what I value most, it becomes a lot easier to make the decision here and now to do what's best for the present and the future. Mm-hmm.

35:57Hala Taha:And I could imagine that if you don't have a clear goal or vision of your future, your life is just willy-nilly, right? You're just doing things to do them. You don't have a clear goal. It's chaotic. So what's the downside of not even having a future self-vision? Yeah. So if you don't know who your future self is in any degree, or if you're absolutely not connected to your future self at all. Like the extreme end of that. And like you can see this, the extreme end of being disconnected to your future self is someone who has zero perspective of consequences. And like, they're like almost so, they're so out of touch.

36:39Like, and I've seen this even with my kids where it's like, they're acting so poorly, like right before bed, sometimes as a family, like if they do certain things like our night routine really well, sometimes we'll like watch like half a movie or something like that before bed. And like, we will tell them sometimes, like, if you go through these, if you do the routine really well, we'll, we'll like have ice cream and watch a movie. Like, you know, for like 40 minutes, if they're not connected to that future self, even 45 minutes into the future, like they will do absolute terrible things that then lead us to saying, nope, can't do it.

37:18And then they throw a fit. They're like, they can't even believe that they lost what they did, but they were so disconnected to what they were doing and the consequences. And like, this is what happens for extreme addicts where like you do something and you're so disconnected from the consequences that you're shocked when you, when all of a sudden, like everything's falling apart. And so like one degree of looking at this is like, if you are so disconnected from your behavior and reality being consequences, which is what my kids were like, they're acting so opposite to the results that they want or think that they want, but they don't even know it.

37:57It's like, are you aware that what you're doing right now is literally sabotaging you in 10 minutes from now and you're about to throw a fit and they don't see it. Like that is utter blindness. But the other angle, which is kind of more the direction you were going was, it's kind of like the Alice in Wonderland thing where, you know, Alice meets the cat and the cat says, you know, well, Alice says, which way should I go? Because there's two different paths. And the cat says, well, that depends on where you want to go. And she says, well, I don't know where I'm going in. So he says, then you can literally go any direction you want.

38:32Because if you don't know where you want to go, if you don't have a destination in mind, then it literally doesn't matter what you do today. And that's part of, I guess, what you would say is being connected to your future self is once you get specific about where you want to go, about what you want, then you can start to formulate pathways of getting there. But if you have absolutely no direction, no destination, then it does not matter what you do here and now. You're essentially rudderless. I mean, your future self becomes the anchor and it becomes the compass to like the decisions you make here and now.

39:03And that's, that's actually literally what all the research shows now. And, and by the way, the psychology today magazine that just came out in September and October was all about future self and about the person you're going to be in the future, because this topic is becoming so, so big in, in psychology and even in therapy, like therapists are finding that there's really no way we can help someone change long term without getting them connected to their future self. Because if they're not thinking about who they want to be, it's very hard to change without a goal or without a why. That then just becomes behavior change, which is kind of willpower focused.

39:40And you can't really sustain that without a direction. And so, yeah, I would say it's very difficult to be intentional if you don't have a future yourself you're working towards.

39:51Hala Taha:Yeah. And, you know, I interview really successful people all the time like yourself. I had Alex Trimosey on the show, who's like everybody's new favorite sales and marketing entrepreneur and guru. And we were talking about focus. And this idea of focus is becoming such a big theme lately. I've been doing podcasting for almost five years now. And more and more, it just sounds like people saying you need to get focused. If you're unfocused, if you're unprioritized, you're not going to really achieve extraordinary success. You can be successful, of course, but to really become that 1%, Scott Galloway was on and said the same thing.

40:28Hala Taha:And so what you're saying is aligned to that. Understanding your future self is having this extreme focus of who you want to be, right? And the steps you're going to take to get there because you understand who you want to be. And that target's always moving, but you're always taking the actions that's going to help your future self.

40:49Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't? It happens to the best of us. And in business, that adds up fast. Because when somebody is ready to talk, speed can secure the deal. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. I've seen this firsthand with my clients. Suddenly, a lot of our clients don't want Slack or cool automations. They just want to text and get a fast response. They want to go back to basics. And if we don't make that easy for them, we become the bottleneck. So we decided to switch to Quo.

41:24Hala Taha:Now we use one shared business number. Every call and text goes to the whole team. Everybody sees the thread and anyone can respond and nothing gets lost. No bottlenecks. No, I'll get back to this later. Just fast, clean communication. How clients actually want it. It's a simple shift that removes one of the easiest ways to quietly lose revenue. Money is on the line, Yap fam. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. That's Q-U-O dot com slash profiting. Quo dot com slash profiting.

42:00Hala Taha:Yep, gang, I didn't really understand the importance of life insurance until I saw what it did for my family when my dad passed. My dad had life insurance, and when he died, my mom was taken care of financially. And in an already difficult moment, that stability made a huge difference for us. It's something that I've never forgotten. That experience changed how I think about all of it. Life insurance isn't really about you. It's about the people that you leave behind. That's why I want to share Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today, made for busy entrepreneurs and parents like you all.

42:37Hala Taha:You could do it right from your couch and you could be covered in under 10 minutes, often with no health exam required. And it's designed so you can choose coverage that actually fits your family and your budget. Because being responsible isn't just about what you build in your lifetime. It's about what you leave protected. Join the thousands of entrepreneurs and parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash profiting. That's meetfabric.com slash profiting. And use my link so they know that I sent you. That's M-E-E-T fabric, F-A-B-R-I-C dot com slash profiting, meetfabric.com slash profiting.

43:15Hala Taha:Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. You talk about Mr. Beast in your book, I believe. And so I'd love to understand how Mr. Beast used this concept to be a 17-year-old kid, no money, no skills to one of the most famous people in the world. So this was really interesting to me. I was shocked when it happened because I was writing Be Your Future Self Now. It was kind of, so I wrote a book called Personality Isn't Permanent and I did not know about the future self research, even though like I had already done a PhD.

43:54it was still kind of a growing, they call it like a branch or a vein of research. Like it was a topic I'd never really heard of. And it was kind of small, but it was burgeoning, meaning it was growing. And anyways, while I was writing that book, call it end of 2019, early 2020, I fell upon the research on future self. And I was like, oh my goodness, why have I never heard of this before? Like, why have I never even seen this? Why have I never heard people talking about this, whether it's in psychology or in self-development or anything like why is this a new idea uh it seems like this is like the grounding of all self-development ideas and also like psychology like i'm but anyways i knew i wanted to write a book on it um and so i was doing all sorts of research on it while writing other books and then all of a sudden in 2020 and i had known who mr beast was just because i mean i like youtube i was watching it you know he's the he's this interesting figure right doing these huge outlandish videos and i was mostly watching them with my kids and just blown away by what he was doing.

44:51And then all of a sudden in October, so it's an October of 2020, a video comes up and it's called Hi Me in Five Years. And it's got a picture of like a younger version of Mr. Beast, Jimmy Donaldson, right? And it's, it's sketchy. Like I turned, I clicked the video and it's, it's him talking as a 17 year old kid in 2015. So it's, it's filmed in 2015 and he's saying, hi, you know, whenever you see this video, I just want to let you know like it's 2015 I'm filming this video from my room I should be studying for my history test but I just wanted to take this minute and have a conversation with myself in five years from now and he basically just starts talking to his future self it's like two minutes long it's it's really rough filmed from a really bad camera he shows where he's at with his YouTube channel I think he's got like 8 ,000 subscribers and basically he just talks about his future self he's like you know where do I want to be in five years like who do I think I'm going to be in five years.

45:46And he's just kind of having this intimate, personal conversation with his future self in public. So basically what happened, and as you scroll way back in time through his channel, you actually see that he did this multiple times, but he did it all the same night. So it was in October. It was, well, if you use the exact date, it was October 4th of 2015. and he was 17 years old and he what he ended up doing I don't know where he got the idea but he filmed four different future self videos each of them were like two minutes long so the first one was where do I want to be he said hi me in six months or something like that and so he was talking to his future self six months into the future and just saying where mostly because his obsession which as you can see whatever you focus on expands he got very good at YouTube but most of his future self was related to like himself as a YouTuber.

46:40You know, he wanted to be a famous YouTuber. He wanted to be the biggest YouTuber in the world. And so like, as he's talking to his future self six months into the future, he's like, you know, if I have 20 ,000 subscribers, it's gonna be absolutely amazing and stuff like that. If I don't, it's gonna be embarrassing. So he did one for six months out, one for a year out. I think he did one for five years out. And then he did a 10 year all that night. Basically, all of those videos were only two minutes long. and what he did is he filmed them all in one place, one time, he probably took 10 or 15 minutes to film the four videos.

47:09And then he put them, you know, he set them to go publish on his YouTube channel, but he set them to go into their corresponding times. And so he set the six month one to go live, six months into the future, the one year one to go live, a year into the future, the five year one. And so on October 4th of 2020, when the video just automatically went live because he had set it to go live five years into the future, he actually had forgotten that he had made that video. Like it was a shock to him. But in that video, he said he wanted to have a million YouTube subscribers and he wouldn't have even been able to fathom what it would have been like to have a million subscribers.

47:46Well, when the video actually went live in 2020, his channel had like 45 million subscribers. By that point, he was incomparably a different person. He had a huge business. He was like, had a big team. He was, all of his videos were getting like tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of views. And even since then now, he's got multiple channels and he's doing so many things, it's even ridiculous. But he's just an interesting example of someone who was very public about his future self, not afraid of admitting his future self. And you can actually see when you watch his old videos before that day, October 4th of 2015, you can see that obviously he got really clear and committed to his future self because the videos started changing after that time.

48:27And his growth started to really accelerate. And so he's just someone who is obviously connected to, committed to his future self. He used his future self as the basis for what he did. He was talking to his future self in public. And that was obviously his identity that drove him forward. And he continued to raise his standard for who he became and what he did. So he's just a brilliant example of it.

48:47Hala Taha:Yeah. And what a great idea in terms of like shooting videos, basically speaking to your future self. What a great kind of exercise. Like no embarrassment. Like he doesn't care. And I think that's a huge thing is to not be ashamed of your future self. So many people are afraid to admit what they want. Yeah. How about in terms of like the timeline of your future self? Is there a certain, should we think about ourselves five years from now, 10 years from now? Do we want to think of like a range? Like what's your suggestion there? So this is the beautiful part about time psychologically is that you can use it however you want.

49:23One of the areas, and we don't have to go too deep into this in the book, but like obviously a lot of people believe in God. And so a lot of people believe in their future self after this life. And so obviously a lot of people are thinking about the afterlife and they're using their views of that to dictate their decisions now. So you can go as far into the future as you want. You can go beyond this life if you want. You can think about your future self there and learn about that, which a lot of people do. And that influences a lot of their decisions and the meaning in their life. You can think, you know, Stephen Covey had the old concept of imagining your 80th birthday party and what you want your life to be like on your 80th birthday party.

49:59Who do you want to be there? What do you want people to talk about your life about? So you can think way ahead and think big picture and expand that out and really start to think what will really have mattered at the end of my life? What matters? And ideally, you spend most of your time on the things which matter, not on the things which don't. But in terms of hyper-practicality, I think it's good to build your future self around various timelines, like various important anchor moments. And so like I gave you 2030 on purpose. That wasn't an accident. The reason I gave you 2030 is because in eight years from now, the youngest one that we adopted, so we adopted three kids and then we had three of our own.

50:43And the youngest one that we adopted is currently 11 years old. In 2030, he will turn 18.

50:49Hala Taha:And so the older two will be gone. He will be leaving in 2030. And that is going to be a big moment for me, my wife and our younger three kids, because chances are, we're going to move from Florida, like when he moves, we live in Florida, we might not, you know, our future selves might have different plans. But that's kind of a huge anchor moment for my future self for my family's future self is like, our older three kids are going to leave our younger ones are much younger than the ones we adopted. So like, me and my wife have spent some time thinking about like, what's going to happen when logan leaves like where are we gonna go become nomadic and like travel the world live in different countries like and so like we're starting to think about our future self on that timeline because there's a key moment there like there's a key anchor to that and so like it's good to think about your future self in terms of key anchoring times because then you can really start to map out like what do i want to see happen in the next eight years and like where would i like to be when logan leaves like i can really think big uh on an eight-year scale like I can do a lot of things between now and 2030 when he leaves.

51:52In terms of super practicality, I think three years in terms of tangible goals, in terms of like, if I want to accelerate toward a big progress, three years is a really good timeline for really achieving big, specific things. Like, you know, you and I over the last three years, you know, it's been a little over three years now, but like in terms of you three years ago, if you're thinking about like, how big do you want to see your podcast go? Like over three years, you can grow enormously toward a very specific goal. And so thinking in terms of like, if I want to grow really big in a very specific direction, call it me as an author, you as a podcast, someone in their finances, someone towards skills, three years, you can, you can get really specific and you can still grow like 10x, 100x, 1 ,000x big in a certain direction.

52:45So I think three years or less in terms of really big sprints towards big goals. I love that.

52:53Hala Taha:I think that's super, super helpful. Okay. So I want to go, I want to move into purpose and understanding how purpose is related to all of this. And so I think a good place to start would be understanding the levels of every behavior. You say it's the what, the why, and the how. Can you talk to us about how your why really drives the what and the how? Yeah, so the why is the reason for doing it, right? So this is where you start to become intentional. So as an example, if someone's listening to this podcast, my question would be, well, why are you listening to it? and the why would then highlight what you're ultimately trying to do and what you ultimately value.

53:37Like everyone's gonna have a different why for why we're doing this. You have a different why for interviewing me as I have for being interviewed, right? And so it's important to clarify and understand what the why is that's driving everything you're doing. And I'm of the belief that you do choose the why. Like you do choose it, you clarify it but you you can scrape away levels of understanding it but the why is just the purpose the purpose is the goal like what is the ultimate reason you're doing this um aristotle would call that final cause which is basically the end so as an example like if if i'm hungry you know like if i get up and go to the to the kitchen and start eating well it's like well why did i get up and go to the kitchen um it might have been because i'm hungry but it also might have been because I was triggered and I'm just trying to avoid like I'm just like trying to avoid working like and so it's just understanding the why and the purpose starts to help you realize what's driving your behavior is it is it something you really want you know like when you're a teenager maybe your why was which again the why is the goal and this is why the goal drives everything you do including your identity um you know when you're younger the why might have been just to impress your friends, right?

54:57And so there's always a why behind every action. And how psychologists frame it is, is every goal is either an approach-oriented goal where you're trying to approach what you want or you're trying to avoid what you don't want. And so the why is always gonna either be approaching something you want or avoiding something you don't want, you know? And so it's helpful when the why is more approach-oriented. Sure, you wanna avoid bad things from happening, But if everything you're doing is just to avoid negative things from happening, that kind of probably shows that there's a lot of trauma that's unresolved in the past.

55:33And so you're trying to avoid a lot of pain. Yeah.

55:36Hala Taha:So I'd love if we could just dig on this a little bit. So we're talking about the difference between approach motivations and avoid motivations. When we approach motivation, we're basically creating our future. rather avoid motivation is just avoiding a future we don't want and it's better to proactively create one is what you're saying i just want to understand what you're trying to say well i mean it's good to avoid things you don't want like it's good to be strategic about avoiding call it bad decisions avoiding bad people but if you're always just avoiding um then then then basically every action you're taking is a reaction against something else like i'm trying to not but even avoiding things is based on the future like i'm you know so i'm like i'm trying to avoid being out of shape right like that could be i don't want to like be obese in the future so i'm going to avoid that like that's one way of approaching your future um but it's far more powerful and more proactive to say well what do what is it i truly want to approach like what is it i want to like direct my attention towards and focus on and create and yeah i can avoid landfalls along the way and I can learn from experiences and avoid those kind of people or I can avoid those kind of dumb mistakes.

56:45Like certainly you can avoid things, but it is very powerful to be proactive and kind of consciously creating like this is what I want and then to watch yourself go and get it. And so both are useful. Both are incredibly useful. Both are motivations. And I think it's helpful when you're trying to observe yourself like why am I doing this? It's either going to be to approach something you want or to avoid something you don't. And that can start to highlight kind of the why. And I guess one reason why avoid motivations can have downsides is because if you're always just trying to avoid something, then that means that one of the things you're avoiding is fear.

57:23Like you're avoiding going through the emotions of getting what you want. Like if you're always avoiding, then you're also avoiding the hard truths. You're avoiding the fear. You're avoiding hard conversations. If you're always avoiding, then what that means is that you're not passing through the emotions and the fear that are going to get you where you want to go. When you're operating with commitment and courage, you're not avoiding. You're going right through it and you're transforming through it.

57:50Hala Taha:I love that. This has been awesome, Ben. So just to round this out, I thought a good story that kind of ties into a lot that we were talking about, and I know that he's a big inspiration for you, is Viktor Frankl's life. So can you tell us the story about Viktor Frankl and how he used his purpose of protecting his book to survive while he was in the concentration camps in the Holocaust and what you learned from his story about hope and purpose. And then we'll close out the conversation. So the reason Frankl is so important is that Frankl highlights a lot of what Mr. Beast understood, but Frankl makes it even more dramatic.

58:34Basically what Frankl shows, and again, Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most important books in the world, he was a Jewish person who in 1942 was taken into the Holocaust, right? Like the German Nazi concentration camps. And what he found with people who were living in such dire situations, we really, I mean, unless you actually study the Holocaust, you don't even understand what I'm saying. It's gibberish right now. It was almost unfathomable how bad it was. Like everyone was, the people were starved. They were thrown in gas chambers. People were shot in the head right next to you. You're sitting doing grunt work for months, months, months, years and years and years.

59:12Everything's been taken from you, even the clothes off your back. You're standing there naked, deprived of everything, deprived of your dreams, deprived of everything. And what Frankel noticed when he was in those situations, because he was a psychologist, and so he was paying attention to this stuff, he was very in tune with what was going on in people's heads and why some people could be resilient and even be happy. happy in these crazy conditions and why some people would get desperate, lose their minds. And he started to draw an interesting correlation, which was in those dire situations when you're kind of deprived of everything and you're also starved physically.

59:48I mean, they were only given like a small piece of bread every day. He saw an immediate correlation that like when someone lost hope toward their future, within days they died in those situations. Like their body didn't have enough to sustain them. If you and I lost hope in our future, we'd start to fall apart physically, like we'd probably lose our health. You know, and hope from a psychology standpoint is like air to your physical body, like food and air, like you need hope psychologically, because who you are right now is largely dictated by your views of the future. So basically what Frankel found was is that unless you had a specific goal, which is a huge aspect of hope.

1:00:30Without a specific goal that gave your life meaning and substance, you couldn't handle the present, especially when it was that bad. And so that's why he always quoted Nietzsche, which is when you have a why to live for, you can bear almost anyhow. And so everything he did, and he literally, he layers it, and I share the best quotes of it in Future Self, but he says, when you lose hope in your future, you're doomed. But he also said that everything we did in the concentration camps to give people hope or to even help them to be able to manage their mind or manage their emotions was we had to give to them a goal in their future, which they could work towards.

1:01:07And he himself, you know, he literally stated the goal that gave him purpose and gave him meaning and allowed him to endure the trials. And for him, it was he wanted to be reconnected with his wife, Tilly, who was taken to another camp. He didn't know that she'd already been killed when she was pregnant with their baby, but he didn't know that. He wanted to be reconnect with her. But also he wanted to rewrite his book, which was almost done being written when they got basically taken by the Nazis and they took the manuscript and tore it apart. And so he really wanted, he literally states this in Man's Search for Meaning.

1:01:39He said, my deep desire to rewrite that book anew and publish it allowed me to overcome the rigors and the pain of the camps. So when you have a why to live for, you can bear almost any how. If you don't have a why to live for, if you don't have hope and commitment in your future, then you're not gonna be very productive. I mean, little things in your day can throw you way off, right? But for him in those situations, it was life or death. It's literally life or death.

1:02:04Hala Taha:Yeah, so, so fascinating. I think this is a great way to close out the interview. So I always end the interview with a couple last questions and then we do something fun at the end of the year and recap them. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? doesn't have to be money related yeah yeah yeah i mean here's what i'm gonna say it goes back to the alex hermosi comment for me right now which is i love the quote it's better to be a meaningful specific than a wandering generality and so the more clear you get on your future self and the more specific um that obviously takes you down a specific direction you're not trying to be everything for everyone.

1:02:47Like some of the recent decisions I've made in my career and in the books I'm writing have to do with like becoming even more focused, even more specific in a narrow range. It's kind of like the 80-20 principle, like 80 % of what you're doing is kind of a distraction, whereas it's just the core 20 that makes sense. And so you want to go deeper and deeper into that, like let go of everything else, like actually commit and go deep and get 10 times better in something specific. Like if you get really, really good in something specific, it kind of reminds me of that quote, become so good you can't be ignored.

1:03:20Like, but it's really about qualitative, not quantitative. It's not about the quantity of what you do. It's about the quality of how you do it. And that requires focus, commitment, and purpose. And so just commit to something and commit to getting really, really good and unique in that thing. That's actually what mastery is. It's not about doing something well. It's about doing something uniquely well, incomparably well. And that takes commitment and depth, not broadness.

1:03:48Hala Taha:Love that. Mic drop. All right. And what is your secret to profiting in life? Defining what profit means to me. Not everything is profitable. Not everything is worth my time. Not everything is useful. And so defining what I value, what I care about, what matters most, and then going all in on those few things and letting go of everything else. And Ben, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? BenjaminHardy.com and FutureSelf.com. Awesome. And we're gonna stick all of your links in the show notes. Ben, thank you again for coming back on to Young and Profiting Podcast.

1:04:24I'm happy to be with you. Your future self, who you are today is unimaginable to who you were four years ago. It's so cool.

1:04:32Hala Taha:Thank you so much. What a powerful way to close out our mental wealth series. I have to say this episode is one that I always think about. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from this conversation, it's this. You are not behind. You are not your past. And you are not limited to the version of yourself that you are today. Benjamin reminds us that high achievers often get trapped in the gap. We measure ourselves against the ideal, the dream, the bigger goal, the thing we still have not reached yet. And when we do that, even our wins can feel like failures. But when we measure backwards, when we look at who we were a year ago, five years ago, or even just a few months ago, we start to see the gain.

1:05:17Hala Taha:We start to see the growth, and that gives us the confidence, clarity, and energy to keep going from a way healthier place. So here's your final challenge, Yap Gang. Go to yapmedia.com slash mentalwealth. Again, that's yapmedia.com slash mentalwealth, and open the Future Self Worksheet. In the I am column, I want you to write down who you want to become in five years from now and try to make it bigger than just work. For example, it could be I am a present parent or I'm a great leader or I am a healthy, creative, joyful person, whatever it is. And then in the I should column, write the small actions you're going to take right now to become that person eventually.

1:06:01Hala Taha:Because your future self is not built someday. It's built in these small choices that you make right now, today. And as we wrap up this series, I want you to remember this. Your mind is your greatest business asset, not your sales funnel, not your calendar, not your strategy, your beautiful mind. So protect it, train it, listen to it, and build a life and business that your future self will thank you for. Thank you so much for joining me on this Mental Wealth series. This is the final episode of our program, and I hope you enjoyed it. Keep doing the work, keep choosing growth, and keep becoming the person you were meant to be.

1:06:38Hala Taha:This is your host, Hala Taha, signing off.