# Champion Mindset Explained: High Performance, Discipline & Obsession | Chris | FO512 Raj Shamani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCOb1w_LTOg

[00:00] People try to look at champions to work out what they have that other people are missing, but they've got it backwards.
[00:05] Champions are missing something that everybody else has, which is an off switch.
[00:10] So true.
[00:10] In order to become a champion, you certainly lose an off switch.
[00:13] You lose everything except for the pursuit.
[00:16] Everything becomes sacrificed.
[00:16] Your friends, your family, your social life, your sex life.
[00:20] If you're prepared to make that sacrifice, the likelihood is that you'll be beaten by somebody that is prepared to make that sacrifice.
[00:26] Chris Williamson, host of Modern Wisdom, one of the biggest self-improvement podcast in the world.
[00:30] If you want better focus, better habits, and a stronger mindset, this episode is for you.
[00:36] Do you think arrogance is important to become the goat?
[00:38] Oh, yeah.
[00:40] You need to believe that you can do something that's never been done before.
[00:42] The only way that you can do that is to kind of have a type of delusion.
[00:45] All that success is appropriate strategy, good timing, and consistency for a significantly long enough duration, largely anybody can achieve success.
[00:55] Do you think it's good to show vulnerability or not?
[00:56] I think vulnerability is the only way that you can have true strength.
[00:57] I think if
[01:00] there's nothing on the line, if you're not risking anything, then there's no such thing as courage.
[01:05] Courage is being scared and doing it anyway.
[01:07] A lot of people see vulnerability as crying, oversharing emotions unnecessarily, and it's not.
[01:12] It's saying what's true for you, regardless of how scary it feels.
[01:16] If you show a lot of emotion, people stop relying on you too much.
[01:18] A lot of hard-charging ambitious people use the mantra "Get your feelings, just work harder" to get them to push aside their emotions in order to keep on with the mission.
[01:27] That's great, and I think that that is [music] a huge step that lots of people can take.
[01:32] Men choose their partner based on who's going to elevate their status in terms of looks.
[01:37] Women choose their partner based on power.
[01:38] Do you think that's true?
[01:40] It seems to show up in the data that men are more concerned with looks than women are, on average, and that women are more concerned with resources and status than men are.
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[02:15] [music]
[02:18] If someone's watching you for the first time and they've never heard about you,
[02:22] Mhm. never seen you, and still is wondering who this guy is,
[02:27] for that 1% how would you define yourself?
[02:29] Who are you and why should they care about what you say?
[02:39] I'm a person who's very confused about himself for a long time.
[02:43] And kind of like a olden style explorer going and investigating some ancient tomb.
[02:55] I tried to work out who I was.
[02:58] And I still haven't done it, but I've got a lot closer.
[03:01] And
[03:03] I'm strange.
[03:03] I'm a weird guy.
[03:07] But I'm representative of normal people enough that many of the questions that I ask myself are questions that other people ask themselves, too.
[03:18] So, my body of work is a personal exploration masquerading as a podcast.
[03:24] And if you listen to it, you'll probably learn something about yourself, too, because I'm not that different to you.
[03:29] I'm just different enough to talk about it.
[03:33] Nice.
[03:33] You have shaped so many good things in my life and you've damaged equally.
[03:44] Okay.
[03:44] Uh tell me what I've damaged first.
[03:46] I'll tell you both, right?
[03:48] Because when I like started my podcast, I used to watch like a lot of podcasts.
[03:53] And you, Steven, specifically, like both of you, I used to watch like a lot.
[03:59] And because of that, I've learned a lot of things.
[04:00] I've learned to introspect, I've learned to learn my love myself,
[04:04] I've learned to actually question people.
[04:08] I think my way of understanding, listening, sitting down, researching, a lot of things come from your and Steven's work, right?
[04:15] Yep.
[04:15] Even though we all started like almost at the same time, but I used to get inspired a lot.
[04:20] So, it has helped me a lot in my personal life.
[04:23] But because I'm also a podcaster, it came to a point where like I could see that I'm not me.
[04:27] I'm just you or Steven.
[04:33] Like it started destroying me and damaging me in a way like
[04:36] Exactly.
[04:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[04:38] Yeah, I understand what you mean.
[04:40] So, that's what you develop a British accent?
[04:42] No.
[04:42] [laughter]
[04:44] Okay.
[04:44] Okay, yeah, yeah.
[04:44] No, wait.
[04:45] But then my way of asking questions, my way of researching, my way of approaching things just became you and him.
[04:50] And I was
[04:51] Like this this needs to be Well, all right.
[04:53] So, I I understand why.
[04:55] You want originality, right?
[04:57] You want to feel like I'm doing my own thing.
[05:00] But there's a great line that says,
[05:01] "Originality is just undetected plagiarism."
[05:05] And I was influenced by Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, uh Alain de Botton from The School of Life.
[05:14] You know, I was very influenced by them, too.
[05:17] And then you try to do your version of something that you like because there's no rules to this.
[05:22] You know, you go and become a NFL star, and there's component skills.
[05:25] There's a very linear track of, "Okay, what are the component parts that I need to learn in order for me to be able to come good at this thing that I want to do."
[05:32] The same thing isn't true with podcasting.
[05:33] So, you learn by listening to people that you like, and why do I get on with them, and so on and so forth.
[05:38] And then you make it your own.
[05:40] But I don't think I don't think it's a bad thing to be, you know, lapping, copycatting somebody else up until the point at which you then make it into your own and it becomes different.
[05:49] Yeah.
[05:49] I agree with that.
[05:51] I also believe that copying is good.
[05:53] I think there's nothing like original thinking.
[05:55] It's all influential thinking.
[05:57] You get influenced and you do things.
[05:59] Everything that you learn, whether it's writing, painting, talking, you all learn by copying.
[06:02] So, I believe in that.
[06:05] But, it came to a point where
[06:06] like after a point you need to figure out maybe what's your style, what your country's style is, what your audience wants, what like, you know, there's a mix of all of that.
[06:14] Mhm.
[06:15] Well, you learn the rules so that you can then break the rules.
[06:18] But, if you don't learn learn the rules first, you're just not playing the game.
[06:20] True.
[06:22] Makes sense.
[06:22] True.
[06:22] Yeah.
[06:22] True.
[06:23] So, I learned with you guys and then I stopped like since last, I think, a year and a half or maybe some like something like that.
[06:31] 18 months I've just stopped watching you like purposely trying to not watch you.
[06:35] You need to be less influenced.
[06:37] Very good.
[06:37] Well, that's why my viewer numbers will be down.
[06:38] But, I understand.
[06:42] But, yeah.
[06:42] That's that's where the damage part was.
[06:43] So, now I'm In 18 months I've been unlearning what you guys do well.
[06:47] Good man.
[06:47] Good man.
[06:49] So, that's what I've heard.
[06:49] See, if you've sat with like very high achievers in your life, right?
[06:55] And tons of them.
[06:55] I've done the same thing.
[06:57] And what my experience have been by just noticing them is
[07:03] even after achieving the world, they're still
[07:07] this kid who's like, it's not enough.
[07:09] They give them a different tag, a different version of maybe saving the world or whatever they want to give it.
[07:14] Sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's societal, sometimes it's just about country, whatever.
[07:19] They can tag it differently.
[07:21] But, at the end of the day they're still chasing and they're running feeling of not being enough.
[07:24] Well, what was it that I said, you know, the the driving forces of you at 18 and 28 and 38 and 48 they tend to be the same.
[07:34] And that means that if you don't feel enough at 18, that's going to keep on going.
[07:36] And what people do, kind of like a hungry ghost, they assume, well, if I just achieve enough, I'll fix this internal void.
[07:44] You can take external success, grab it, and shove it into this hole, and that'll make it feel okay.
[07:52] Now, it's my current belief that you need to achieve your goals, but the only reason to achieve them is so that you're free of them.
[08:02] The only reason that you achieve them is so that you know that that wasn't the answer, but you can't skip that point.
[08:08] I don't think that you can speed run through I thought it was a Ferrari.
[08:13] I thought it was a Fra- I thought when I got the Ferrari that everything would be fixed.
[08:17] You can't leapfrog that.
[08:18] You have to get the Ferrari, realize that you're still unsatisfied, realize that you need to do deeper work, and then close the loop.
[08:26] And you're okay, right, the Ferrari can go away.
[08:29] And then we move on to what's deeper, and then we move on to what's deeper.
[08:32] But you're right, the the richest people on the planet, the highest performers, the best sports stars, the most successful business people, all should be looked at with more pity than envy.
[08:45] What's happened to you that's caused you to drive yourself this hard?
[08:47] This isn't everyone.
[08:49] Obviously, there are some people out there who are just lovers of their pursuit, and it's a well-balanced desire to maximize their time on this planet and enjoy the pursuits that they do.
[08:59] But if I was to place a bet, I would guess that most high performers are driven by a fear of not being enough as opposed to
[09:08] the inner desire to simply max- maximize their time and and and fulfill their logos and speak their truth forward and you know, alchemize their life.
[09:18] I don't think it's that for most people.
[09:20] And that means that when you look at the people who are unbelievably successful and drive themselves so hard, do I want to be that person?
[09:29] Probably not.
[09:29] What do you think is driving them to do that to themselves?
[09:32] To have worked so hard, to have built a billion-dollar company.
[09:36] Like, why?
[09:36] What do you think?
[09:38] Why was it not Why were you not done at 10 million or 1 million?
[09:40] Why were you not enough already?
[09:44] And again, that's not to say that people can't become successful from a balanced place, but I do think I'm going to guess in your experience, too, when you sit down opposite these people,
[09:54] most of them are driven by this insatiable hunger to prove to the world that they matter.
[10:01] Has that been your experience?
[10:02] Absolutely.
[10:02] Have you met anyone who's who's number one in whatever they do?
[10:07] I'm not talking about two, three, four,
[10:09] five, six, seven.
[10:09] Yeah, yeah.
[10:10] I'm talking about number one in in whatever field.
[10:13] They are number one, they still to be number one, and they're balanced.
[10:16] I mean, look at Tiger Woods.
[10:18] You know, Tiger Woods in the news again all this week, last week as we record.
[10:23] He flipped a car.
[10:23] Like, the second time.
[10:25] Didn't he break both of his legs not long ago in a car crash or something?
[10:28] He fell asleep at the wheel or he was by the side of the road.
[10:31] That guy's the goat.
[10:31] He's the goat of golf.
[10:33] But, what does it take in order to do that to yourself to become that good at one thing?
[10:37] Michael Jordan.
[10:39] You ever seen Michael Jordan's uh Hall of Fame acceptance speech?
[10:43] So, he basically This is his crowning achievement.
[10:45] I think it was 1992 or 1993.
[10:47] Michael Jordan's crowning achievement toward the end of his career.
[10:52] And he spends almost the entire speech calling out all of the people that didn't believe him.
[10:58] Like, litigating these disputes between people that he felt had slighted him in his past.
[11:06] That was how driven by revenge and com-
[11:11] competition and pain.
[11:14] He was, that even in the greatest moment of glory, he still needed to find enemies and competitions and rivalries to keep pushing him.
[11:26] Then after that, that's where they a lot of them not they don't start feeling the same way.
[11:29] They stop feeling the same way.
[11:31] Yeah.
[11:33] Do you care about rankings?
[11:34] I was number eight in the world last year.
[11:36] That was cool.
[11:37] But I mean, if I'm not number seven or lower this year, that will feel like a failure.
[11:44] Which is strange, right?
[11:45] You know, the higher you climb, the farther you have to fall.
[11:48] Um, I don't know.
[11:50] I it was nice, but I didn't think about it.
[11:52] Like especially now, dude.
[11:54] Especially after getting into the top 10 globally.
[11:58] Like, what else have I got to prove?
[11:59] Is number seven really going to feel that different to number eight?
[12:02] Or is number six really going to And number one would feel very special.
[12:06] But there's only one place to go from.
[12:11] Number one, right?
[12:13] You can only go backwards from there.
[12:15] And uh maybe this is my inner design not to fail showing again.
[12:20] But it was great.
[12:22] I feel very proud of of getting to number eight.
[12:23] I thought that was that was awesome.
[12:25] But if I never charted in the top 10 again for the rest of my career, I wouldn't see it as a failure.
[12:27] I love the conversations that I have.
[12:29] I really enjoy what I do.
[12:31] I think that they make the world a better place.
[12:32] I think that they help people to understand themselves.
[12:33] I think they make them less alone.
[12:37] Like I did this I did my show I did Modern Wisdom before anybody listened.
[12:41] And I'll do it long after everyone has stopped listening as well.
[12:45] I just enjoy what I do.
[12:47] I like these conversations.
[12:48] I think they're important.
[12:50] It doesn't matter.
[12:52] Out of all the people who are who you've met in terms of podcasters who do you think really badly wants to be number one?
[12:58] Actually cares about it.
[13:00] Uh I think Joe really doesn't.
[13:02] He's the most unlikely number one.
[13:05] I think Steven Bartlett is driving very hard for growth.
[13:08] That's his thing.
[13:10] You know, he's he's the Mr. Beast of podcasting.
[13:10] And he's done a
[13:13] phenomenal job of working out the component parts of growth and then really driving it forward.
[13:19] Uh Mel Robbins is super super ambitious.
[13:22] And that's very very impressive.
[13:25] Um But then there's other people that are are going to be in the top 10 this year like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Tim Dillon.
[13:32] There's lots of people that are really great at what they're doing and don't give a about the about the ranking.
[13:37] They're almost anti-ranking.
[13:40] Um, but yeah, I think I think Steven, Mel, you know, like a lot of that LA energy, uh, Lewis Howes, Tom Bilyeu, um, Jay Shetty, you know, these guys.
[13:53] But think about that.
[13:53] Like me, Jay, Steven, that's three British people in the top 10 globally.
[13:57] So, maybe the UK isn't maybe we are showering ourselves in glory.
[13:59] I don't know.
[14:00] You'll see us Indians in the top 10 as well.
[14:02] Good.
[14:02] Soon.
[14:02] Good.
[14:02] Good.
[14:04] We're going to be there.
[14:05] You know, I was speaking to someone, uh, an executive at Spotify and I was asking them like, do people or podcasters or just singers or
[14:13] pop stars or rappers, do they care about being in top 10?
[14:18] They're like, "Nobody cares apart from the month of the list."
[14:22] Mhm.
[14:25] He's like, "In the month of the list, there are people who would care about when the list is about to happen because they know that.
[14:29] So, they really go nuts.
[14:31] They're almost like paranoid about it.
[14:33] And they're asking them, calling them again and again, trying to get the numbers and trying to figure out what their stance is.
[14:38] And then there are people who sulk it for a month after the list comes.
[14:43] And then everybody disappears."
[14:44] And then I was like, "This is interesting."
[14:49] And they all were like, "This is what one of the people said and I think there's truth in it."
[14:54] Said, "The number one in all the categories almost doesn't care."
[14:58] Yes.
[14:58] Right?
[14:58] Yeah.
[15:01] But they know from the demeanor that the day they lose it, they're going to lose a lot.
[15:04] Uh, of course.
[15:06] Well, you know, the loss aversion as a psychological bias, right?
[15:09] If I was to give you £5, that's great.
[15:13] But if you were to lose £5, that would be more painful than the
[15:15] gifting of finding £5.
[15:17] And it's the same with There's a a a
[15:20] from a Jon Bellion and Luke Combs song
[15:23] which says, "If the higher I climb is
[15:26] the further I fall,
[15:27] then why love anything at all?"
[15:29] And he's talking about opening his heart to
[15:30] another person, a relationship.
[15:33] But the same thing is true in success as well.
[15:35] If the higher you climb is the further
[15:37] you fall, then why achieve anything at
[15:38] all?
[15:40] Because as soon as you become number one, you're terrified of losing
[15:41] it.
[15:43] There is no end to this, and this is why, you know, getting to
[15:46] This is why I'm glad I'm, you know, I
[15:47] haven't thought about it this way, but
[15:49] I'm I'm really glad that I managed to
[15:51] surprise myself by charting last year.
[15:54] So, I'm like, "Dude, I did top 10."
[15:55] You know, top 10 in the world in
[15:58] anything is crazy.
[16:00] And I'm really glad that I did it.
[16:04] And I felt no different
[16:06] the day after the day that I found out
[16:08] than the day before the day that I found
[16:09] out.
[16:10] Nothing materially changed about my
[16:12] life.
[16:13] Uh maybe we've found it easier to book
[16:15] some guests this year or something like that.
[16:17] But it could like it could come on.
[16:18] Like is that really the I probably would have got there in any case.
[16:22] So, we would just send a few more emails or got a better connection or spoken to the partner and it would have taken longer or something.
[16:29] Do you think Do you think it's that Again, like very interesting point.
[16:34] I'm just thinking about That's it is the way you think right now about, let's say, the hustle that the number one ambition and all of that.
[16:45] It has a lot to do with It It has a lot to do with the way a lot of Western world thinks.
[16:50] Mhm. Like Meritocracy.
[16:54] No, like what I meant by this, like in the Western world, that's whole of a of a spike in understanding meaningfulness, purpose, enjoying what you do.
[17:06] Like, you know, the like whole this mindfulness Well, that's gone, right?
[17:11] That's increased in line with the decrease of religion.
[17:16] I think as people have lost religion,
[17:18] they're trying to find meaning in other places.
[17:19] Okay.
[17:22] And they were trying to find it in what capitalism promised.
[17:25] And they've done that and they've found it lacking.
[17:27] Some people have found it lacking.
[17:29] And they're now asking themselves what's the next thing.
[17:33] That's where meditation comes from.
[17:35] That's where journaling, mindfulness, gratitude, yoga, stoicism, you know, these are all secular solutions to what were previously religious questions.
[17:44] Yeah.
[17:47] And I think that's what's going on, at least in part.
[17:49] Okay.
[17:52] But my question was more on if you compare it with the Eastern world right now, right?
[17:54] And I'm I'm not going to say Eastern as well, even the African like just okay.
[17:58] Think about both of these worlds.
[18:00] If you look at India, you look at China, you look at Africa,
[18:03] all of the people here, like most of it, the national character almost is about go for the win, hustle hard, be like really Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:11] Forget like work-life balance.
[18:13] You need to be number one at the same time.
[18:14] You know, like this hustle, hustle, hustle.
[18:18] Whereas you think about Western world,
[18:19] they're like mindfulness and then all of this, right?
[18:23] And that's why it's it's great.
[18:24] Like Steven optimizes for it, Joe doesn't.
[18:29] Mhm. Yep. There's a lot to it.
[18:30] Do you think both of these civilizations are wanting something they already had?
[18:35] But it's like grass is the greener Oh, that's lovely.
[18:39] Yeah. No, that I see exactly what you mean.
[18:40] You might be right.
[18:41] Like like India and China, specifically India can talk about we have a great history of yoga, meditation.
[18:50] All of these are like we have given this to the world.
[18:52] And now it's almost like we want what you guys have.
[18:54] Like the hustle culture, the like meritocracy, like I want to go for the ambition and the world is going to be my playground.
[19:01] Whereas you guys want what I
[19:05] Grass is always greener, dude.
[19:07] Grass is always greener.
[19:10] Yeah, peop- if you have done something
[19:12] Also, I guess if as you've got a globalized world you begin to just look outside.
[19:17] It's the same thing as if you
[19:19] ate a really great meal but that was the only meal that you ate for the rest of your life.
[19:23] You'd probably get bored of it.
[19:24] I mean, there's there's a lot of options here.
[19:26] I should try something different.
[19:29] And you should try something different can often mean I should do something different.
[19:34] Right?
[19:34] I'm going to try a different path.
[19:36] I'm going to try and fulfill myself in a different way.
[19:40] And I I It's a really lovely duality that the East had peace and is seeking achievement.
[19:47] And the West had achievement and is seeking peace.
[19:49] I think I think you're I think you're bang on with that.
[19:53] What do you think humans need then?
[19:54] Both.
[19:54] I mean, you need both, right?
[19:57] You want to We're a social species and you can't beat the biology and the psychology is just the biology, right?
[20:04] You can't beat a few million years of evolution.
[20:05] To that's made us care about the opinions of others, want to feel like we're progressing achievement, status, recognition, renown, respect admiration
[20:21] from people that we admire. These things
[20:23] are deeply deeply rooted in us and
[20:25] they're easy roots, easy paths toward
[20:28] feeling good about yourself. And so you
[20:29] should get them.
[20:31] But the problem is assuming that that is
[20:32] the end of the game or assuming that you
[20:35] need an infinite amount of that in order
[20:36] to feel fulfilled and that's where
[20:38] people get stuck.
[20:40] But the same thing is true on the other
[20:41] side that if you just try to become an
[20:43] ascetic, live in a cave in the woods,
[20:46] renounce all worldly possessions
[20:48] I think you're going to struggle.
[20:50] I think that a lot of people are not
[20:51] built for that. The level of mindfulness
[20:54] that you need to do, you know, your
[20:55] 10,000 hours needs to be multiplied by
[20:57] 10 in order to be able to get there. Uh
[20:59] and most people can't. Uh so for me, I
[21:02] think trying to play within the confines
[21:04] of a game and this is different. I'm a
[21:06] little older now. I'm 38, which means
[21:09] the energy that I bring to my pursuits
[21:10] at 38 is different to it was at 28. 28
[21:13] was very much hustle, like deny how I
[21:15] believe deny how I feel, work until my
[21:18] eyes bleed, you know, spit sawdust. I
[21:20] want to do the thing.
[21:22] But part of the reason that you wanted
[21:24] to work so hard
[21:26] is so that you don't need to work so
[21:27] hard in future. If all that you do is
[21:29] work really hard so that in the future
[21:31] you can work hard with leverage,
[21:34] how I like I mean fine, maybe you love
[21:36] what you do and stuff, but even after
[21:38] that, okay, you're going to the rest of
[21:40] your life is going to be this? That's
[21:41] the one pathway that you have found is
[21:44] to just crush it and be competitive and
[21:46] face other people and you're always
[21:48] Okay, well, maybe there's something
[21:49] else. And I think a lot of people
[21:53] achieve a level of success. You know, I
[21:54] was with Chris Hemsworth in uh Australia
[21:58] a week and a bit ago. Me, him, both of
[22:01] his brothers, and a friend of his with a
[22:03] couple of my guys. We flew to Byron Bay
[22:05] from Brisbane for the day.
[22:08] And we spent an afternoon with him and
[22:09] his boys.
[22:10] All they wanted to talk about was this.
[22:12] All they wanted to talk about is the the
[22:15] um third passage, right? The middle way.
[22:19] I've done a lot of what the world told
[22:21] me I should achieve.
[22:23] I'm interested in what's beyond that.
[22:25] I'm interested in what is post success.
[22:28] I'm not you know,
[22:31] I'm trying to turn success into more
[22:34] success but in an easier way.
[22:36] But uh
[22:37] do you know the idea of false peaks in
[22:39] mountaineering? So, imagine that you're
[22:41] trying to get to the highest point that
[22:42] you can in a mountain range. And you
[22:45] climb up a big hill and you get to the
[22:47] top and you go, "Wow,
[22:48] I'm like I'm I'm really really high."
[22:50] That is your local maxima.
[22:53] But your global maxima, if you were to
[22:55] take a broader perspective, if you were
[22:56] to look out across the vista and see,
[22:59] "Oh, there's a higher mountain over
[23:01] there."
[23:03] But in order for me to get there, I need
[23:04] to descend this one. I need to go down.
[23:06] So, that's a false peak. Technically, a
[23:08] false peak would be climbing a mountain,
[23:10] getting to the top of the hill, and
[23:12] realizing that in order to get to the
[23:13] top of the mountain, you need to go back
[23:14] down, to go back up, to go back down.
[23:16] And
[23:17] I think a lot of the time what people
[23:18] have discovered are false peaks.
[23:20] They've achieved something that they
[23:21] thought would bring them a level of
[23:23] success and and happiness. Uh and it
[23:26] didn't. Uh you know, and it's a an
[23:29] interesting question that a lot of guys
[23:31] you know, in my in my 20s, I asked
[23:34] myself at the end of my 20s, I asked
[23:35] myself, who would I be if I was able to
[23:39] determine my life however I wanted?
[23:42] That was a big question. I I I don't
[23:44] want to be constrained by my habits, by
[23:45] my patterns, by
[23:47] the opinions of others, and that caused
[23:49] me to change myself a lot. That was
[23:51] great.
[23:52] And now I'm asking myself a deeper
[23:55] question, I think, or maybe just a
[23:57] different question, which is
[24:00] who would I be if I wasn't constrained
[24:02] by the need to perform? If I wasn't
[24:04] constrained by
[24:05] the
[24:07] need to be seen as successful.
[24:09] Uh
[24:10] and maybe this is why I'm never going to
[24:11] become a billionaire. I have no desire
[24:13] to become a billionaire. I don't Wait.
[24:15] I don't
[24:17] I don't know. I'm more interested in
[24:18] other things. Like
[24:21] experience it I want to start a family,
[24:23] uh experiencing some deep
[24:26] peace, varying my life,
[24:29] uh
[24:30] connecting with my friends, giving
[24:31] spaciousness so that I can explore my
[24:33] own mind.
[24:34] That seems interesting to me. And I you
[24:36] know, I'm fortunate that what I do with
[24:38] the show allows me to do both things at
[24:40] once, you know? Like I have a great
[24:42] wealth-making vehicle that is very
[24:44] successful and reaches lots of people
[24:45] and impacts the world. Like it's so many
[24:47] things and also is a vehicle for
[24:49] personal growth.
[24:50] It's also this sort of transformation
[24:52] technology that it selfishly is all
[24:53] about me. I get to bring on whoever I'm
[24:55] interested in to speak specifically talk
[24:57] on the very problem that I'm struggling
[24:59] with right now
[25:01] and then I leave and it's a it's called
[25:03] a job I went to work that day but what I
[25:05] really did was selfishly ask a bunch of
[25:06] questions that I want to know about my
[25:08] next stage of personal transformation.
[25:10] And um
[25:11] and that's that feels like a weird hack.
[25:13] Whatever me and you do is a very strange
[25:16] uh
[25:17] glitch in the matrix that we've managed
[25:18] to sort of inject ourselves into the
[25:20] middle of but yeah I in
[25:23] I have no desire to become a
[25:24] billionaire.
[25:26] And uh I mean the likelihood of me
[25:28] becoming a billionaire is probably very
[25:29] low in any case. I'm not it's like I'm
[25:31] choosing to not be a billionaire. Oh no
[25:33] not for me. Not for me [laughter] thank
[25:35] you. I'm not choosing to not be a
[25:36] billionaire but it just even the energy
[25:38] in order that I can look at the energy
[25:40] that would be required to get to that. I
[25:42] mean sometimes you can flick it like
[25:43] Neat Tonic right? This energy drink
[25:45] company that I've got smarter energy
[25:46] drink it's brilliant. And um maybe we'll
[25:48] have this is
[25:50] I'd give it a 30% chance that we have a
[25:52] really really large exit with that. Like
[25:55] a generational wealth sized exit. We've
[25:58] just raised 6 million on 60 and by the
[26:00] end of the year it'll be valued at 100
[26:02] million dollars.
[26:03] brilliant right? Really cool.
[26:05] Super exciting.
[26:07] So maybe with the some
[26:10] but if I do that am I going to
[26:13] desperately be ready to run it back to
[26:15] fold my
[26:17] payout whatever I get from it into the
[26:19] well we we we we must I must turn it
[26:21] into time is 10x my 10x you know no
[26:24] no and this is why
[26:26] I'm
[26:27] I I saw this really great tweet that
[26:29] said uh the more I heal the less I'm
[26:32] ambitious.
[26:34] And I think it's so great and it
[26:36] speaks to what you were talking about
[26:37] before.
[26:39] Alex Hormozi one of my really good
[26:40] friends he's got this line where he says
[26:44] people try to look at champions to work
[26:46] out what they have
[26:48] that other people are missing
[26:50] but they've got it backward.
[26:52] Champions are missing something that
[26:53] everybody else has,
[26:55] which is an off switch.
[26:58] I think it's true. So true.
[27:02] So true. In order to become a champion,
[27:05] you almost lose almost you certainly
[27:08] lose an off switch. But you lose
[27:10] everything except for the pursuit.
[27:13] Right? Everything becomes sacrificed
[27:15] because
[27:16] if you're prepared to
[27:19] make a trade from your primary pursuit
[27:21] for something which doesn't contribute
[27:23] to it,
[27:24] your friends, your family, your social
[27:25] life, your sex life, your your your
[27:28] financial position, your health,
[27:30] if you're prepared to make that
[27:32] sacrifice, the likelihood is that you'll
[27:34] be beaten by somebody that is prepared
[27:36] to make that sacrifice. Eddie Hall,
[27:38] World's Strongest Man, British guy. I
[27:40] think he won World's Strongest Man in
[27:41] 2018. So you see him at the very end,
[27:44] he's been working toward this thing for
[27:46] you know, a decade, something more.
[27:48] And he's holding this
[27:51] trophy in the uh and he's saying, "Nana,
[27:53] Grandma." In British. "Nana, this is for
[27:55] you." You know, his grandma passed away
[27:58] at some point recently and he's sort
[27:59] he's crying and and he retires. He
[28:01] retires on the the podium, basically
[28:03] retires. That's it. I'm done. Won once.
[28:06] And in an interview that I saw with him
[28:08] a little while afterward, he said, "If I
[28:10] hadn't retired when I won World's
[28:12] Strongest Man, I would be dead,
[28:15] divorced, with no relationship to my
[28:16] kids." Because he was
[28:19] 180 kilos
[28:22] at 6'4 with blood pressure that would
[28:26] power a jet engine.
[28:28] And he was working so hard and pushing
[28:31] himself with performance-enhancing drugs
[28:32] and eating all this food and training
[28:33] all this time, his relationship with his
[28:35] wife was falling apart, and he didn't
[28:37] have any time to see his kid.
[28:40] In order for you to beat Eddie Hall,
[28:43] you need to sacrifice everything that
[28:45] Eddie is prepared to sacrifice, which
[28:47] was everything.
[28:49] Which was his health, his family,
[28:51] his wife, his partnership, everything.
[28:53] He was prepared to sacrifice it all. The
[28:55] only way that you can do it without
[28:57] sacrificing everything is to be so good
[29:01] that you have additional capacity, that
[29:03] your 98% is better than his 101%.
[29:07] But most people aren't, right? And even
[29:10] if that is the case, who's to say that
[29:11] there isn't someone that's more talented
[29:12] than you that's going to give 99 or 100
[29:14] or 101, and now your 98 is exactly the
[29:17] reason that you lost. And you never
[29:19] know. You never know whether or not that
[29:21] person How good am I really? Am I a
[29:23] generational talent? No, you just give
[29:26] everything. It's that maniacal focus
[29:28] that pushes people forward. And that's
[29:29] what we raise up. That's why Michael
[29:31] Jordan, The Last Dance, right? An
[29:32] amazing documentary series on Netflix.
[29:34] So cool.
[29:35] Do you want to be Michael Jordan? I
[29:37] don't want to be Michael Jordan.
[29:39] I mean, I I respect and admire, and he's
[29:41] so cool
[29:43] to see what he did during his career,
[29:44] but he's still ravaged by that same
[29:47] competitive drive.
[29:49] And that's tough.
[29:50] That's tough. And he alchemized it into
[29:52] something great. Now, the worst position
[29:53] to be in is to have that competitive
[29:55] drive, but not the discipline to deploy
[29:56] it.
[29:57] That's when you're ruthless, because you
[30:02] you are going to spend your entire life
[30:03] feeling like you didn't fulfill your
[30:05] potential.
[30:07] You want this thing, and you can't get
[30:08] it. And that has to be way more of the
[30:11] champions that never were, that we never
[30:13] even learn about, right? Because there
[30:15] can only be one, number one.
[30:16] Uh, I know. The I I'm fascinated by this
[30:19] conversation. I'm fascinated by this
[30:20] this question. I think it's very very
[30:22] interesting.
[30:23] It's
[30:24] Every time I think about it,
[30:26] >> [snorts]
[30:27] >> because
[30:29] I believe from a very long time, from a
[30:30] very young age, I'm
[30:32] I'm usually on the other hand. I'm I'm
[30:34] one of those who's like extremely
[30:36] driven, and
[30:37] it
[30:40] Apart from like few moments in a year,
[30:43] like not even like a day or a month or
[30:44] like apart from a few moments in a year,
[30:47] I don't even realize that it's all a
[30:48] sacrifice.
[30:50] Like it's I'm so blinded by probably
[30:53] some wound in my childhood which has
[30:56] caused me to be like this that
[30:58] I'm just so driven and every time I
[31:00] think about it, I think like
[31:02] and every time I meet a champion and
[31:04] this is very strong feeling for like 4
[31:06] days after meeting Michael Phelps that
[31:09] you know
[31:11] champions have only one thing which you
[31:13] want. That's a championship trophy.
[31:16] And champions don't have everything that
[31:18] you want that you have.
[31:20] Mhm.
[31:22] Like champions are thinking that they
[31:23] don't have they just have one thing and
[31:25] they don't have anything at all. Yeah.
[31:28] And you have everything and you're not
[31:30] cherishing it because you want that one
[31:31] thing.
[31:32] >> Correct.
[31:32] >> It's like one versus 100 and you still
[31:34] want that one because probably some
[31:37] wound or some society or somebody around
[31:39] you has made you believe that one thing
[31:40] is way more important than 100 that you
[31:42] have. So good. Such a great point. I
[31:44] think Michael Phelps is a really great
[31:46] example of that too. I've heard that he
[31:48] is very sort of driven by that not
[31:50] enoughness energy.
[31:52] Uh one interesting element on this is
[31:56] I don't want to demonize all ambition
[31:59] and drive. I think it's very very
[32:01] important and great. Like you go and get
[32:02] go and win the thing. Just know that it
[32:05] isn't going to be the end. It's not
[32:06] going to fix everything. There are other
[32:09] pathways to your fulfillment that you
[32:11] need to spend some time on.
[32:14] But there is a a relationship between
[32:16] discipline, motivation, and obsession,
[32:18] right? So discipline is I will make
[32:21] myself do the thing.
[32:23] Motivation is I want to do the thing and
[32:26] obsession is I can't not do the thing.
[32:29] And a lot of people look at people who
[32:31] are now disciplined and what they don't
[32:34] realize is that
[32:35] the current discipline is just the
[32:39] echo of a past obsession.
[32:42] So, for me going to the gym and
[32:43] training, I started when I was 17. I was
[32:45] really obsessed with going to the gym.
[32:46] Obsession is strange. You can't really
[32:48] engineer obsession. Obsession is this
[32:51] weird alignment of predisposition,
[32:54] opportunity, desire,
[32:57] uh uh little bit of wounding, it's it's
[33:00] some motivation,
[33:02] social influence. You know, it's like
[33:03] it's a strange blend of everything
[33:05] together.
[33:07] And
[33:08] what happens after a while,
[33:10] obsession cools off.
[33:12] >> [snorts]
[33:12] >> You're not obsessed with the same thing
[33:14] typically for decades on end. Some
[33:16] people are, but most aren't.
[33:18] But what ends up happening after that is
[33:20] Michael Phelps will always swim.
[33:23] He will always swim. Michael Jordan will
[33:25] always have some athletic performance
[33:28] pursuit. I know that he doesn't like
[33:29] actually specifically playing
[33:30] basketball, I think because he's super
[33:31] competitive and he doesn't like to lose.
[33:34] Um
[33:35] most people will cool off their
[33:37] obsession into
[33:40] identity. It just becomes a part of
[33:42] them, right? Yeah, I used to be a
[33:44] competitive cyclist. Now I just bike on
[33:47] a weekend with my friends.
[33:48] Yeah, I used to be a a a podcaster for,
[33:51] you know, a decade, two decades. Now,
[33:54] you know, I just I I I speak publicly or
[33:57] I do whatever. Like it cools off into a
[33:58] part of your identity but with less
[34:00] velocity.
[34:01] Uh but the this is me trying to
[34:04] counterbalance all of that talking
[34:05] that we've done about ambition stuff. I
[34:06] think it's I [laughter] think it's
[34:07] important because, you know, I know that
[34:08] Indian people are very ambitious and
[34:10] they're upward aiming and I don't want
[34:10] to pull the rug out from underneath
[34:12] them. So, this is for the people who are
[34:13] still on the drive. If you can't stop
[34:16] thinking about the pursuit that's in
[34:19] front of you,
[34:20] that means that you have the freest
[34:21] motivation and discipline that you're
[34:23] ever going to get and it's not going to
[34:25] be there forever. If you can't not think
[34:28] about the business or the podcast or the
[34:30] partnership or the gym program,
[34:33] now is the time to let it crawl inside
[34:36] of you and wear you like a glove. You
[34:38] want to be puppeted by your obsessions,
[34:40] assuming they're good, not obsessions
[34:42] with your ex or politics or porn.
[34:44] >> [laughter]
[34:45] >> If your obsession is something that's
[34:46] positive and you've made the the
[34:48] adjudication, this is something I should
[34:50] focus on,
[34:51] you are never going to be able to make
[34:53] so progress with so little willpower.
[34:56] Like, you can't not do the thing. You're
[34:58] going to bed every single night thinking
[35:00] about the podcast, thinking about how I
[35:02] get the camera angles better and I need
[35:04] to speak to this partner. I'd love to
[35:05] get this guest on and who do I know that
[35:06] knows that person and I need to change
[35:08] the thumbnail title and didididididi.
[35:11] You don't have to It's There's no
[35:12] effort.
[35:13] And at some point in future,
[35:16] that's going to cool off
[35:17] and you're going to have to use effort.
[35:19] And that is going to be a lot harder.
[35:22] So, what you should do while you have an
[35:24] obsession, if it's pointing in the right
[35:25] direction,
[35:26] use it. Allow it to use you.
[35:28] Assuming that it's not negative, allow
[35:30] it to use you. It's the freest
[35:31] discipline and motivation you'll ever
[35:32] get. And then once it becomes a part of
[35:34] your identity, you kind of coast on that
[35:38] for the rest of your life. The same with
[35:40] the gym for me. I just Even sometimes my
[35:42] training's more dialed, sometimes it's
[35:44] less dialed,
[35:45] but I
[35:46] usually am training
[35:48] because I was obsessed with it for a
[35:49] decade and a half. And now I just I
[35:52] It's good. It just ticks over and it's
[35:54] nice. It's a part of me. And I think the
[35:55] same thing is true for most other
[35:57] obsessions as well. True. I was speaking
[35:58] to one of the
[36:00] uh
[36:00] one of the
[36:02] one of the doctors who's an expert in
[36:03] addiction.
[36:05] And he said, "Obsession is just a better
[36:07] word for addiction." Not far off. He's
[36:10] like,
[36:11] "Everybody's addicted to something.
[36:14] People who don't understand what they're
[36:16] addicted to, they usually are driven
[36:19] towards substances." Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
[36:22] Well, I mean, look. And he's like,
[36:24] "Addiction is just like a nature. So,
[36:26] everybody's addicted. Some call this
[36:29] addiction and some very early on by some
[36:32] incident or
[36:33] or or an experience,
[36:35] they find some pursuit
[36:38] which becomes their obsession. That's
[36:40] actually just an addiction. And if
[36:42] you're going to take that thing away
[36:43] from them, they're either going to go
[36:44] mad or they're going to find a new thing
[36:46] to be obsessed with.
[36:48] It's not that they're obsessed being
[36:50] being number one. It's just that they're
[36:52] obsessed. Obsession is a feeling that
[36:55] they're craving. Yeah.
[36:56] Let's Let's get back to the conversation
[36:58] of becoming a goat. I think I like that
[37:00] for a little being. Right? The ambition
[37:02] part that we're talking about because we
[37:04] we
[37:06] we talked about how bad that is. We
[37:07] [laughter] on ambition for a bit. Let's
[37:08] make it good again.
[37:09] >> on it like quite a lot. So, we should
[37:10] talk about the good side because
[37:13] I think I talk a lot about ambition. I'm
[37:15] very very obsessed and I want probably
[37:18] in an ideal world everyone who's
[37:20] listening to be listening to this should
[37:22] be ambitious as Mhm. in whatever they
[37:25] in whatever field. It can be just
[37:27] being ambitious with having the best
[37:29] relationship in the world or best family
[37:31] in the world.
[37:31] >> mother. Yeah. Or it can be just like
[37:33] materialistic things in the world. Okay.
[37:35] Good. Go and get it all.
[37:37] Right? So, first we're talking about
[37:39] good. Why do you think everyone's name's
[37:40] Michael, man?
[37:41] >> [laughter]
[37:41] >> I don't know.
[37:42] You know You know the Michael Fass,
[37:44] Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Michael
[37:46] Jordan the actor. How? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[37:47] Yeah. You know the the number one name
[37:50] for NBA players is Michael as well.
[37:55] Interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah.
[37:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[37:57] So,
[37:59] do you think arrogance is important to
[38:00] become the goat?
[38:02] Oh, yeah. I think a level of
[38:03] self-delusion is very important. Uh
[38:07] Uh
[38:08] some people are driven by a lot of
[38:09] self-criticism, which is great,
[38:11] because it causes you to pay a lot of
[38:13] attention.
[38:14] You need to really really scrutinize,
[38:16] why am I
[38:17] why am I speaking in that way? Why How I
[38:20] keep on using the word like as my filler
[38:22] words when I do a podcast or how come I
[38:24] interrupt a guest I feel uncomfortable
[38:26] with silence or I keep on offering up
[38:29] options when I ask a question and I need
[38:31] to stop doing that. The level of
[38:33] scrutiny that you need to pay to your
[38:35] own performance. Michael Phelps
[38:37] obsessing over every inch of his stride
[38:39] and how he jumps off of the board etc.
[38:42] etc.
[38:44] A lot of that comes from deep self
[38:46] judgment and self criticism. So it's
[38:47] good. But on the other side of that you
[38:49] need to believe that you can do
[38:51] something that's never been done before.
[38:52] And the only way that you can do that is
[38:54] to kind of have a a type of delusion.
[38:57] Where you go
[38:58] This has never been done or the
[39:00] incumbent champion is better than me and
[39:01] more highly regarded than me and I'm
[39:03] going to beat them but I haven't yet
[39:05] beaten them.
[39:06] That's nothing that that that is
[39:08] at best confidence but realistically
[39:11] delusion. Right? Well informed delusion.
[39:14] I think one of the best things that
[39:15] people can be
[39:17] is
[39:19] cultivated delusion. Would be a good a
[39:22] good way because one of the problems
[39:24] that you have
[39:25] of overthinking too much is that you'll
[39:27] usually think your way out of things
[39:29] more than you think your way into
[39:30] things.
[39:31] It causes you to hesitate. It causes you
[39:33] to be a little bit more realistic.
[39:36] And don't want to be realistic. If you
[39:38] want to do if you want 27 year old 28
[39:40] year old Chris
[39:41] to sit in front of you I wasn't
[39:43] realistic about anything that I did. I
[39:45] wasn't realistic about trying to move to
[39:46] America and talk to people on the
[39:49] internet as a job. I wasn't realistic
[39:51] about trying to do these live tours as
[39:53] someone who's never done live before and
[39:55] see if I can sell out the largest venue
[39:57] the largest theater in London which is
[39:58] the Apollo and we did that last year and
[40:00] we'll do it again this year 3 and 1/2
[40:01] thousand people.
[40:02] And none of these things are realistic.
[40:04] But it's not blind confidence. It is a
[40:08] type of type of arrogance I think.
[40:11] But it's also a degree of delusion and I
[40:13] think
[40:15] strategic ignorance is probably another
[40:17] good thing that you can do, right?
[40:20] Uh strategic ignorance of not actually
[40:22] having to overthink it that much. Just
[40:24] letting your foot off the gas. A good
[40:25] place to start. You said three words.
[40:27] Explain each of them very nicely. You
[40:29] said
[40:30] cultivated
[40:32] delusion.
[40:33] >> Mhm. Right? Explain. What what is
[40:36] Because the difference between
[40:37] straight-up delusion and cultivated
[40:38] delusion would be
[40:41] you need to know
[40:43] where
[40:44] you can
[40:46] believe beyond your capacity.
[40:49] So it needs to be done in a manner
[40:51] that's
[40:55] conscious.
[40:56] Straight delusion causes you to become a
[40:59] crazy person.
[41:01] Which you don't want. You you know? So
[41:03] cultivating your delusion in this area
[41:06] I'm going to allow my dreams to become
[41:08] boundless.
[41:10] But not around my health or my sleep or
[41:13] my partnership or whatever. Right? Not
[41:15] around my finances. Should not There's a
[41:17] few areas that we can guarantee you
[41:18] should not be delusional around and your
[41:20] finances are one of them. Right? Right?
[41:23] That's a bad idea. Right? You become
[41:24] bankrupt, it's game over.
[41:25] >> [laughter]
[41:25] >> Right? It's a very very bad idea.
[41:27] Uh but in the
[41:31] ability of you to impact other people's
[41:34] lives, to grow very quickly. Like these
[41:36] are these are things that are good
[41:38] delusion.
[41:39] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cultivated. Okay. So
[41:41] that's delusion because I also believe
[41:44] I'm delu- delusional and I believe
[41:46] everyone should have irrational optimism
[41:50] in at least one field in their life.
[41:52] >> Mhm. Mhm. That's good.
[41:53] >> every field. And one field
[41:54] >> Well, that's the problem. You know, you
[41:55] have irrational optimism everywhere and
[41:57] you're like you're jumping off cliffs
[41:59] trying to fly. Yeah.
[42:00] >> [laughter]
[42:00] >> Yeah.
[42:01] There are people who have tried that.
[42:03] >> Yep.
[42:04] So that's one. Second Second term was
[42:06] strategic arrogance. Yes. What do you
[42:08] mean by that?
[42:09] >> Very similar, but that you don't want to
[42:12] be arrogant everywhere. You need to be a
[42:13] good operator behind the scenes. You
[42:15] know, let's say let's take a sports star
[42:17] or a musician, right?
[42:19] You need to deal with the venues that
[42:21] you work with and the roadies that are
[42:22] supporting you or the referees at your
[42:26] game.
[42:27] You don't want to be Are you going to be
[42:28] arrogant with the people who are there
[42:30] to kind of make the thing that you do
[42:32] happen?
[42:33] No, that's a bad idea, right? You're a
[42:35] poor operator if you do that. But your
[42:37] arrogance with
[42:39] I am better than these people. I am
[42:42] better than the estimations that
[42:45] everybody around me has. The limitations
[42:47] that I place on myself. You're basically
[42:50] overclocking your confidence would be a
[42:52] way to think about it, right? I'm just
[42:54] tuning up my confidence a little bit
[42:56] more than it is so that I push my limits
[42:58] further so that I believe that I can do
[43:00] more than I can.
[43:01] At what point do you think people
[43:05] people who are trying to do something,
[43:07] they start believing in it and then they
[43:09] actually
[43:10] become like almost delusional about it
[43:12] and they get arrogant about it. Like at
[43:13] what's what's that point? Because I'll
[43:15] quote a specific thing. I was speaking
[43:17] when I was speaking to Michael, Michael
[43:18] said
[43:19] uh there was a point which is in in like
[43:21] it's it's it's fitting right here,
[43:23] right? He said, I was asking him, "Were
[43:25] you not
[43:26] uh
[43:27] were you not worried that the other guy
[43:29] will beat you?"
[43:30] Right? And he said,
[43:32] "I was more prepared to beat a shark in
[43:34] water, forget humans.
[43:36] I was the most prepared person or living
[43:39] being on planet Earth." Yeah. I knew it
[43:42] like in that race format.
[43:44] No one could touch me. Maybe in the
[43:45] ocean people can, but in that Yeah. I
[43:48] was more prepared to beat a shark. And I
[43:50] was like
[43:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool.
[43:52] >> What what is that point where you become
[43:53] that
[43:54] I like you're so delusional and arrogant
[43:57] >> I don't think that's arrogance, dude. I
[43:58] mean, obviously he's being hyperbolic,
[44:00] right? Talking about a shark. You put a
[44:01] shark in the water with Michael Phelps
[44:02] and only one of those animals is going
[44:03] to come out.
[44:04] >> [laughter]
[44:05] >> But
[44:07] I bet Michael will come out. Yeah,
[44:09] that's right. He's got it in a
[44:10] headlock. Um
[44:14] After a while, dude, you you really do
[44:16] feel that you're untouchable. And you
[44:19] know, like Floyd Mayweather.
[44:21] And you look at that guy, especially
[44:22] toward the mid end of his career, he was
[44:24] just unstoppable. Like absolutely
[44:26] unstoppable.
[44:30] It's a combination of high ambition and
[44:33] high proof.
[44:35] You combine those two things and you're
[44:37] overclocking that confidence, right? And
[44:40] you're adding in more fuel. Each success
[44:42] furthers your ability to say I'm going
[44:44] to keep keep going, keep doing, keep
[44:46] going.
[44:49] Who do you think out of all your guests
[44:51] or out of everyone who is who you have
[44:54] spoken to?
[44:55] Who do you think is closest to this
[44:56] mindset?
[44:58] Well, that's a good question.
[45:03] Ross Edgley
[45:05] has a very interesting mindset. He's the
[45:07] first man to swim around the UK.
[45:10] So, he basically swam 6 hours on, 6
[45:12] hours off.
[45:14] So, slept biphasically for
[45:17] most of a year
[45:18] and swam around the UK. He's the first
[45:20] person to have ever I think the only
[45:21] person to have ever done it.
[45:23] And um
[45:25] he has such a fascinating mindset cuz
[45:27] he's not doing it from a place of pain.
[45:30] He's doing it from a place of suffering
[45:32] strategically managed. That's how he
[45:34] refers to it. Suffering strategically
[45:36] managed. He knows it's going to hurt,
[45:38] but he knows that he can handle it.
[45:40] And I just I I really really admire the
[45:43] way that he approaches this stuff.
[45:46] Uh
[45:48] I think
[45:50] some of the athletes that I've spoken to
[45:52] at least cuz who I'm interested in, they
[45:55] tend to be the ones that are deeply
[45:57] unsure and still succeeded in spite of
[46:00] that. Um so, they're kind of
[46:02] Phelpsian, Floyd Mayweather, Michael
[46:05] Jordan, I am the best of all time thing.
[46:08] I've been exposed to as many of those
[46:09] people,
[46:10] uh, but Ross is one of these guys who
[46:12] you just put I mean he he did a
[46:14] triathlon with a tree.
[46:17] He called it the tree-athlon. He's got
[46:19] the longest ever single distance river
[46:21] swim that he did in Canada.
[46:24] And it was like 300 miles without
[46:27] touching land, without stopping, 50
[46:30] hours. He swam for two over two days
[46:33] without stopping.
[46:35] It unbelievable, dude. It's absolutely
[46:37] insane. And um,
[46:40] Yeah, it's crazy. But he he's driven
[46:42] he's driven by
[46:44] just a desire to see what he can do.
[46:46] Like it's so he's like an explorer, but
[46:49] he's an explorer of himself. He's an
[46:50] explorer of his own limits. I think
[46:52] that's a really cool approach. That's
[46:55] This new word I'm fascinated by,
[46:57] strategically
[46:58] strategic suffering managed. That's
[47:00] suffering strategically managed.
[47:02] Suffering strategically managed. Yes.
[47:05] Explain how can people implement that in
[47:07] their life? He understands that pain and
[47:10] difficulty is just made of of component
[47:13] parts. There's some willpower, there's
[47:15] physical discomfort, there's
[47:18] uh, ego depletion.
[47:20] There is going to be fatigue, and he
[47:22] just looks at each of these things and
[47:23] says, "Well,
[47:27] I'm going to get tired, so I use
[47:28] caffeine.
[47:30] I'm going to run out of fuel, so I'm
[47:31] going to eat.
[47:33] I'm going to be in pain, so I'm going to
[47:35] have little moments of joy throughout
[47:38] the swim that keeps me going.
[47:40] I'm going to at each
[47:42] different point of where am I
[47:45] Like before you
[47:47] try to take on any challenge, you could
[47:49] simply ask yourself the question,
[47:53] "Where are the potential
[47:55] trapdoors that I could fall down?" Or
[47:58] when I'm doing my thing, I want to lose
[48:00] weight. I want to lose weight. I want to
[48:01] get in shape. Okay.
[48:03] When you've tried to lose weight
[48:05] previously, what have been the pitfalls?
[48:08] Or just imagine game out for me over the
[48:10] next 6 months. What are the things?
[48:11] Well, sometimes I might eat cheat meals
[48:14] on a night time. Okay, that's a
[48:15] potential trap door that you could fall
[48:16] into.
[48:17] How do you
[48:19] strategically manage that?
[48:21] Well, if I don't have junk food in the
[48:22] house, I can't eat it. You can't eat the
[48:24] cookie that isn't there.
[48:25] Okay. Sometimes I miss training
[48:27] sessions. Okay, well, what are some of
[48:29] the ways that can increase your
[48:30] compliance?
[48:32] I'm going to train first thing in the
[48:33] morning so I don't have time to think
[48:34] about it. Or I'm going to have a
[48:35] training partner so I have social
[48:37] pressure. And if I don't turn up,
[48:38] they're going to know. Or I'm going to
[48:39] get a trainer. I'm going to pay for a
[48:40] PT. I'm going to do classes so that I
[48:42] outsource my motivation to everybody
[48:44] else. Okay, at each different one of
[48:46] these points,
[48:48] you're able to find where is the
[48:50] challenge and how do I overcome it. And
[48:51] when it comes to suffering and
[48:52] strategically managing suffering, the
[48:54] same thing is true.
[48:56] It's going to be difficult for you to do
[48:59] three podcast episodes a week. It was
[49:01] for me. So, I started doing calls with a
[49:05] couple of the other guys on my team.
[49:07] So, I didn't need to do it on my own.
[49:09] Like my There was suffering when I was
[49:11] writing, you know, I've done a thousand
[49:13] episodes.
[49:15] Writing descriptions for every single
[49:17] episode, doing ad reads, and coming up
[49:19] with titles and thumbnails and clips and
[49:21] all the rest of it. I found that if I
[49:23] got on a call with some of my friends
[49:26] that work for me,
[49:28] I kind of didn't mind so much. So, there
[49:31] was some suffering.
[49:32] I strategically managed it by coming up
[49:34] with a solution.
[49:36] Interesting. What do you think? Like,
[49:37] why
[49:39] people who come from outside, they're
[49:42] the ones who
[49:43] actually go very far. Like, what in
[49:46] their heads
[49:48] causes them to win the game? Like,
[49:50] >> What do you in that.
[49:51] >> from outside?
[49:52] Uh
[49:54] Think about Einstein, Newton, or like
[49:57] even Elon. Like, whatever they do, first
[50:00] they were considered strange. They
[50:02] didn't have any right to win at the
[50:03] place or in the thing that they were
[50:05] going to win at, right?
[50:07] Like, rockets, Elon had no business of
[50:09] making rockets, right? And then he won
[50:11] that game.
[50:12] Uh
[50:13] Bezos, similar thing. Uh you go back
[50:17] like with Einstein, Newton, similar
[50:19] things. Like, even right now, even the
[50:20] smallest thing that you pick up, for
[50:22] example, podcasting. Right?
[50:25] Joe is not professionally trained
[50:27] interviewee or interviewer or whatever.
[50:31] He's not
[50:32] He's not the best journalist out there.
[50:34] He's not prepared.
[50:36] If years and years and tried to learn
[50:38] the craft, right? He's not, and he's
[50:40] still winning. S-
[50:42] In almost every field,
[50:44] someone from the outside, they come in
[50:47] and then they win.
[50:49] Why do you think so? Like, what happens
[50:51] cognitively in their brain that they're
[50:53] designed to win more? They see something
[50:55] that other people don't. You know, you
[50:57] say that Joe didn't get trained as an
[50:59] interviewer or an interviewee, but he'd
[51:01] done 10,000, 20,000 hours of on-stage
[51:05] comedy.
[51:06] What is that?
[51:08] Comfort with speaking.
[51:10] It's an understanding of flow.
[51:12] It's the ability to communicate and play
[51:14] with words.
[51:16] It's uh uh
[51:17] a level of
[51:20] uh safety in silence, which is very
[51:22] important when you're having a
[51:23] conversation with someone. If you've
[51:25] bombed on stage in front of an audience
[51:26] of people, like, what does it mean that
[51:28] you asked a question and someone thinks
[51:29] that you're dumb? Doesn't matter. So, he
[51:32] took a tangential skill and moved it
[51:35] across into something else. The same
[51:36] goes for Elon. You know, Elon's got
[51:39] fascinating mind, but we
[51:41] regardless of what you think of him,
[51:43] unbelievable mind.
[51:44] Okay, so he looked at the problem Joe
[51:47] looked at the problem of podcasting from
[51:50] the angle of somebody that had done Fear
[51:51] Factor and classic TV presenting and
[51:54] comedy. And Elon looked at rocket ships
[51:57] from first principles. Right? So, one of
[51:59] the reasons I mean, look, what you'll
[52:00] notice is that no one who spent their
[52:03] entire life doing baseball
[52:07] goes across and becomes great at
[52:08] cricket.
[52:09] Right?
[52:10] Because the skill of cricket is
[52:13] relatively linear. But there are other
[52:16] industries where tangential first
[52:18] principles, like orthogonal thinkers,
[52:21] can unlock everything. And it's not true
[52:23] for all pursuits, but it's certainly
[52:25] true for some pursuits.
[52:29] Okay, to some pursuits,
[52:32] is it just because they've been trained
[52:34] in the similar skills
[52:36] in some other other aspect of their life
[52:38] which they're now using it, or is it
[52:40] just they get some sort of edge in
[52:43] disrupting because
[52:45] I don't know. Because of something, some
[52:47] the way they see.
[52:49] Or the way they cannot help but see.
[52:51] >> Probably both, I think. The the
[52:53] perspective that they have.
[52:55] You know, this is one of the wonderful
[52:56] things about being an underdog or an
[52:57] outlier
[52:59] is that you can step into an industry
[53:00] that you weren't supposed to be in
[53:03] and very quickly rise up.
[53:05] And
[53:07] again, we were talking about cultivated
[53:08] delusion. Proper delusion is believing
[53:11] that because you're good at baseball,
[53:12] you can be great at cricket.
[53:14] Maybe, but something tells me that the
[53:17] guys that have played cricket their
[53:17] entire life are going to be better.
[53:21] Understanding, well, the same thing's
[53:23] probably not true for rocketry.
[53:26] But we can look at
[53:27] building electric cars.
[53:29] Uh that's actually a little bit
[53:30] different. The way that I um
[53:33] design a business experience for
[53:36] somebody because I come from nightlife
[53:39] and I'm going to make a coffee shop. And
[53:41] my coffee shop is going to treat
[53:43] building a coffee experience the way
[53:45] that we used to build a nightclub
[53:47] experience.
[53:48] That to me seems like a pretty good
[53:50] place to have some delusion. We could we
[53:52] can show people uh uh
[53:55] a kind of uh food and drink
[53:59] uh experience that they can't get
[54:02] elsewhere because everyone that's
[54:04] existing within the current paradigm
[54:07] only sees things in the same way. It's
[54:09] too mimetic and too cyclical. It's
[54:10] constrained.
[54:11] >> Yeah.
[54:12] But if you come from outside, that's
[54:13] when you get to have a really new
[54:15] perspective. And it's not just the
[54:17] perspective cuz these are the two things
[54:18] that you said. It's a sort of skill set
[54:20] and perspective. But the two things come
[54:22] side by side cuz where is your
[54:24] perspective from? It's from your skill
[54:25] set. And because the skill set's
[54:26] different, the perspective's different.
[54:28] You know? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me, how do
[54:30] you build that mindset to see a
[54:32] different perspective? Mhm. Whether you
[54:34] are from the inside or from the outside,
[54:37] if you pursue or if you want to be the
[54:40] disruptor and you want to go really
[54:41] really far, how do you build that
[54:43] mindset to see things differently? From
[54:45] the inside is hard. From the inside is
[54:47] very difficult because you're usually
[54:48] constrained by everybody else that's
[54:50] around you. From the outside is easier.
[54:52] Um but dude, I for me, the greatest
[54:56] place of of seeing opportunity is when
[54:59] other
[55:00] I I spend time with friends who are also
[55:02] in different industries.
[55:03] And they speak to me about what they're
[55:05] dealing with. My best friend's writing a
[55:06] book at the moment. So he's talking to
[55:08] me about all of these different ideas
[55:10] and what he's struggling with and
[55:11] storytelling. He's learned so much about
[55:12] storytelling. And from his uh uh
[55:15] literary approach to storytelling,
[55:19] I've changed my spoken approach to
[55:22] storytelling.
[55:24] The he has a uh a strategy where instead
[55:28] of having the lead of the story up top,
[55:31] um so
[55:33] if I was to tell you let me give you a
[55:34] story, okay? So in the mid-90s, there
[55:37] was a woman living in quiet poverty in
[55:39] Edinburgh.
[55:41] And she was in an abusive marriage.
[55:44] She tried to leave.
[55:46] Her husband didn't let her leave. She
[55:48] fled from Portugal with her baby
[55:50] daughter and early chapters of a book
[55:52] that she was working on hidden in a
[55:54] suitcase. And her partner tried to hide
[55:56] the manuscript to stop it from leaving.
[55:58] She got to Edinburgh, said that she was
[56:00] clinically depressed and suicidal. She
[56:03] used to push her daughter's pram to a
[56:06] cafe so that she could work in the
[56:09] warmth while she wrote her book because
[56:11] she couldn't afford heating at home.
[56:14] Right?
[56:15] Her book was rejected by 12 different
[56:17] publishers. That's 12 different people
[56:19] saying in 12 different ways that you're
[56:20] not good enough. And this wasn't just a
[56:23] small slight. It was an existential
[56:25] crisis. Each rejection fueled her to try
[56:28] harder because if this book didn't work,
[56:29] that was the end of the road for her and
[56:31] her and her daughter.
[56:34] J.K. Rowling went on to sell 500 million
[56:36] copies in the Harry Potter franchise and
[56:38] became richer than the queen.
[56:40] Telling that story,
[56:42] if I say, "Dude, I've got this great
[56:43] story about J.K. Rowling. Let me tell
[56:45] you this." It
[56:46] completely kills all of the intrigue up
[56:48] top. Yeah. Waiting until the very end
[56:51] and then doing the J.K. Rowling reveal
[56:52] at the end gives people that That sense
[56:55] of satisfaction. And I learned that from
[56:57] George, my best friend. And um he's
[57:00] telling these stories. And he's telling
[57:01] the stories in the book and he's got
[57:02] this little flip reveal, kind of like a
[57:04] miniature thriller.
[57:05] And oh, the the
[57:07] the killer was hiding in the cupboard
[57:08] all along.
[57:09] He reveals it at the end.
[57:11] And uh
[57:12] I like that's from a It's a literary
[57:15] skill set
[57:17] and applying it to storytelling in
[57:19] podcasting. People in podcasting are
[57:21] storytellers, too, but they might not
[57:23] think about constructing it in a way
[57:24] that is more well-established
[57:28] in the industry of books and writing.
[57:31] Take that, put it in this thing, I think
[57:33] it works. That's cool. Sometimes it's
[57:35] not going to work. Sometimes you're
[57:36] going to try and take a dish that would
[57:39] work in fast food and put it in gourmet
[57:41] and it's a total nightmare.
[57:43] But other times it might work.
[57:44] True. How
[57:47] taking this point where you said from
[57:49] the inside is difficult, from the
[57:51] outside is is easier, right?
[57:54] You left UK and you came here. Like
[57:57] probably now you are the outside there
[58:00] here, right? Like you were the inside
[58:01] there.
[58:02] What I've seen usually people who change
[58:05] their environments, they usually carry
[58:07] the same wound. So they become like the
[58:10] same dysfunction version of themselves
[58:13] in a new costume.
[58:14] >> Correct. Right?
[58:15] >> Yep, very accurate. Yep, very good. How
[58:17] do you
[58:19] when you want to change your identity
[58:20] and change your reality,
[58:22] how do you change that reality
[58:25] by going to a new place where you know
[58:27] that you're not going to be the same
[58:28] person or trying to wear the same
[58:30] costume? Mhm. You genuinely change.
[58:34] You're not just
[58:36] I don't know, man. I I I I get what you
[58:37] mean that
[58:39] people's patterns in the same way as
[58:41] you've got the same feet that you had 10
[58:43] years ago, you have the same patterns
[58:44] and wounds that you had 10 years ago.
[58:46] >> Yeah.
[58:46] At least in my experience though, it is
[58:48] really hard
[58:50] for the exact same flavor of your coping
[58:53] strategies and your difficulties to
[58:55] survive
[58:56] a new environment and a new job and a
[58:58] new culture. And the more different that
[59:01] you can make where you're inhabiting,
[59:03] the harder it is for those old patterns
[59:05] to exist. So, yes.
[59:08] People can new costume, same problem.
[59:11] That can happen, but at least in my
[59:13] experience
[59:14] only for so long.
[59:16] Like your patterns aren't
[59:18] indestructible.
[59:20] And if you spend time around I mean,
[59:21] look, social influence is a huge part
[59:23] here. Mhm. If you go to somewhere new,
[59:25] you move to somewhere new, different
[59:26] industry, different career, different
[59:27] company, different city, different
[59:30] relationship,
[59:31] you will be influenced by the people
[59:33] around you. So, okay, what sort of
[59:34] person do I want to be like? Am I around
[59:36] people like that person? If so, you are
[59:38] more likely to become that person. If
[59:40] not, you are less likely to become that
[59:42] person. So, think carefully about what
[59:44] the influence is. But doesn't that
[59:46] happen in in a lot of cases where you
[59:48] change your circle, you change your
[59:49] people, you change your influence, but
[59:50] you're the same person inside? So, if
[59:52] you were feeling inferior somewhere
[59:53] else, you're going to feel inferior here
[59:55] as well. If you were like
[59:57] if you were feeling like a loser, you're
[59:59] still going to feel like a loser, no
[01:00:00] matter how many achievers you surround
[01:00:02] yourself with. Mhm.
[01:00:03] Uh the loser thing it would be true. So,
[01:00:06] what's the genuine mechanism of change?
[01:00:11] It for me, I can only speak for me.
[01:00:14] Desire.
[01:00:15] You have to want to change. Like, people
[01:00:17] talk about, you know, it'd be great to
[01:00:19] be in shape. Would you want to be in
[01:00:20] shape? Mhm, kind of. Okay. Do you want
[01:00:23] to live the lifestyle required to have
[01:00:25] the life?
[01:00:27] If you want the life without the
[01:00:29] lifestyle, you're guaranteeing yourself
[01:00:30] disappointment. I want to be a touring
[01:00:32] rock star. Okay, do you want to spend 10
[01:00:34] years playing guitar and learning
[01:00:35] chords? No. Okay, rid yourself of the
[01:00:38] desire because you're guaranteeing
[01:00:40] disappointment. If you want the life
[01:00:42] without the lifestyle, you guarantee
[01:00:44] disappointment. So many people want the
[01:00:46] outcome but not the training ground.
[01:00:48] That doesn't work. Yeah. Uh
[01:00:51] the loser thing or the inferiority thing
[01:00:54] is inherently relative. So, that is the
[01:00:56] sort of thing that can persist no matter
[01:00:57] where you go. Uh genuine change, if
[01:01:00] you're talking about that,
[01:01:02] the confidence, inferiority, insecurity
[01:01:06] thing,
[01:01:07] I think you just need more proof. After
[01:01:10] a while, you can kind of crush your
[01:01:12] imposter syndrome under
[01:01:14] mountains and mountains of evidence. At
[01:01:16] least it worked for me.
[01:01:18] True.
[01:01:19] True. I I've heard that you and Alex are
[01:01:21] talking about it like for a very long
[01:01:23] time and like multiple times you guys
[01:01:25] have spoken about. I like that the stack
[01:01:27] of proof thing.
[01:01:29] Talking about identity, here was here's
[01:01:32] something that
[01:01:33] I keep questioning and I keep observing
[01:01:35] in the people right now at least in my
[01:01:37] generation.
[01:01:39] If you look at an average 16 year old
[01:01:41] today,
[01:01:42] before they realize who they are,
[01:01:45] they learn to perform.
[01:01:47] Right? For the Instagram, for the world,
[01:01:49] for like that's like constantly online.
[01:01:52] So they want a version of them to be
[01:01:53] liked.
[01:01:54] How do how can somebody find themselves
[01:01:57] in a world where
[01:01:58] before they even realize who they are,
[01:02:01] they end up becoming just performers.
[01:02:04] Mhm. Yeah, well look, they keep changing
[01:02:06] themselves based on
[01:02:08] just a different version of performance
[01:02:10] and validation that they want.
[01:02:13] I don't know how new this is. I'm aware
[01:02:15] that it's been amplified. I don't think
[01:02:18] it's that new. Okay, what do you mean by
[01:02:20] that? I think that for almost all of
[01:02:22] human history, people have tried to make
[01:02:24] themselves
[01:02:26] appear better than they are. The only
[01:02:28] difference now is that we're able to do
[01:02:29] it globally 24 hours a day in real time
[01:02:32] and we're able to compare ourselves to 8
[01:02:33] billion others.
[01:02:35] So,
[01:02:36] yes, it's been tuned up,
[01:02:38] but I don't think that the dynamic's
[01:02:39] new. And I I try to hesitate laying too
[01:02:42] much
[01:02:43] at the feet of the modern world
[01:02:46] because it makes people feel like this
[01:02:48] is
[01:02:49] an unfair challenge on them now that
[01:02:53] other people didn't have to deal with.
[01:02:55] And I think realistically this is
[01:02:56] something that humans have had to deal
[01:02:57] with for all of their lives. We want to
[01:02:59] be
[01:03:00] perceived in a good light.
[01:03:02] So we curate our
[01:03:05] persona, not presentation,
[01:03:07] to try and achieve that. So that people
[01:03:09] make us feel good and so that other
[01:03:10] people
[01:03:11] see us as good.
[01:03:14] So it's not I I I I wonder how new it
[01:03:16] is. Not to say that it's not been
[01:03:17] amplified.
[01:03:20] When it comes to stopping the performing
[01:03:22] thing,
[01:03:23] the the number one solution for this is
[01:03:26] to be around people who you feel like
[01:03:28] yourself around.
[01:03:30] Can you be around friends where you
[01:03:31] don't need to perform?
[01:03:33] Like I just did I just like you.
[01:03:35] I just I just want to hang with you.
[01:03:37] Like you're funny and sometimes you
[01:03:39] up or whatever, but like I'm just I like
[01:03:41] you for you. It's very rare that people
[01:03:43] say it out loud. But the way to judge if
[01:03:46] that's the case is do you feel like you
[01:03:47] can be yourself?
[01:03:49] Are these Are the people that you're
[01:03:51] spending time with able to
[01:03:54] encourage you to dig deeper?
[01:03:56] Do you feel more like you or less like
[01:03:59] you when you're around them? Once you've
[01:04:01] finished up, do you feel more whole or
[01:04:02] more broken?
[01:04:04] And if you're moving in the right
[01:04:06] direction, I think what you very quickly
[01:04:09] become comfortable with,
[01:04:12] I don't need to be anybody else.
[01:04:13] My friends like me, or my partner likes
[01:04:15] me, or my family like me, or my
[01:04:16] colleagues like me.
[01:04:18] I don't need to do anything else.
[01:04:20] But what you're talking about, the
[01:04:22] performance, is inherently relative.
[01:04:24] It's not something that you do on your
[01:04:25] own. It's performing for someone else,
[01:04:27] right?
[01:04:28] And you're performing for someone else
[01:04:29] in the hopes of reflectively being made
[01:04:32] to feel enough or happy or whatever,
[01:04:34] fulfilled.
[01:04:36] But that means that what is
[01:04:39] powered or broken in union
[01:04:43] needs to be fixed in union, too.
[01:04:46] With somebody else. So just be around
[01:04:48] people that you want to be yourself
[01:04:49] around.
[01:04:51] Do you think
[01:04:52] being around people in friendships,
[01:04:55] it's getting messed up and messed up
[01:04:56] just because more and more people are
[01:05:00] falling in to this trap of actually
[01:05:03] choosing their friends?
[01:05:06] Oh, as opposed to those four people in
[01:05:08] your tribe that are of your age.
[01:05:10] >> like you know, the whole friendship the
[01:05:11] purpose of friendship
[01:05:13] Forget purpose. Like just a friendship
[01:05:15] was supposed to be
[01:05:17] You end up meeting four jokes just like
[01:05:19] you. Random dudes, and you don't judge
[01:05:21] them based on ROI. You don't judge them
[01:05:23] based on like what's going to be
[01:05:26] Are they making me better? Are they
[01:05:27] making me worse? Are they Am I going to
[01:05:29] get
[01:05:31] I mean something out of them, etc. etc.
[01:05:33] etc. All these All this you're the
[01:05:35] average of five people, all that
[01:05:37] has actually probably made
[01:05:38] friendship worse. Made it more
[01:05:40] transactional. For sure. So the essence
[01:05:43] of friendship is not transactional.
[01:05:45] Uh it shouldn't be, but then you also
[01:05:48] don't want to be friends with someone
[01:05:49] who makes your life worse. Yeah. Right?
[01:05:51] That's not a very good friend.
[01:05:52] Right? I I I I don't think that it's a
[01:05:55] malady of the modern times to say that
[01:05:58] cutting
[01:05:59] toxic people out of your life is a good
[01:06:02] idea. Right? It's a great idea to do
[01:06:04] that. That's not new. You should have
[01:06:06] done that But what's the thin line
[01:06:09] of being being able to balance both in
[01:06:12] friendships because one can be extremely
[01:06:15] transactional and you're only trying to
[01:06:16] fit in in the room probably you don't
[01:06:18] belong, but and you don't even enjoy,
[01:06:20] but there's something to offer so you
[01:06:22] you are getting something
[01:06:22] >> said it that like like enjoy it. So
[01:06:24] there's two there's maybe two broad
[01:06:27] categories here. One is emotionally
[01:06:29] fulfilling, socially make you feel like
[01:06:31] you belong.
[01:06:32] The other is strategically useful.
[01:06:35] Uh furthers your
[01:06:37] ambitions for life. And sometimes the
[01:06:39] two cross over, but other times they
[01:06:40] don't. Right? Everybody has a boss or a
[01:06:44] colleague or a
[01:06:45] a person in their industry or whatever.
[01:06:48] Or the the mother of a son that your son
[01:06:52] plays with.
[01:06:54] You don't really like the mother.
[01:06:56] But you know that the son likes their
[01:06:57] son. Like I'm going to be friends with
[01:06:59] the mother that I don't like cuz it's
[01:07:00] strategically it's useful. There's a guy
[01:07:02] in your industry who's real powerful and
[01:07:04] seems to like you, but is a bit
[01:07:06] annoying.
[01:07:07] All right. Like fine. Like it's
[01:07:08] transactional. It's there to be
[01:07:10] transactional, but you know that it is.
[01:07:11] The problem is when you apply that
[01:07:13] mindset to what should be your
[01:07:15] emotionally fulfilling friendships. Does
[01:07:17] that make sense? Yeah. So,
[01:07:21] asking yourself the question, what do I
[01:07:23] get out of this person
[01:07:25] with the right parameters, I don't think
[01:07:27] it's a bad question. Like, do I feel
[01:07:29] good?
[01:07:30] Do they make me feel happy? Do they make
[01:07:32] me feel more like myself? Can I sit in
[01:07:34] silence with them
[01:07:36] and not need to fill it? Dude, I'm just
[01:07:37] chill. I'm just happy being here with
[01:07:40] you. Isn't this cool? Isn't this nice
[01:07:41] that we get to have this dinner? We get
[01:07:43] to go for this walk. We get to go on
[01:07:45] that trip.
[01:07:47] Isn't this good? Like, that's great.
[01:07:49] So,
[01:07:52] making sure that your friendships are
[01:07:54] places for you to feel whole and not to
[01:07:56] perform.
[01:07:57] Very important.
[01:07:59] Not the same. But, when it comes to your
[01:08:01] business relationships or the parents of
[01:08:02] the kids that your
[01:08:04] your kid plays with, slightly different.
[01:08:07] True. True. Do you think knowing a lot
[01:08:09] of these frameworks and like just
[01:08:13] listening, reading, understanding all
[01:08:16] this information about uh friendships
[01:08:19] and dating and optimizing yourself
[01:08:20] actually makes you worse or better, do
[01:08:22] you think?
[01:08:23] It made me worse for a while. I mean, it
[01:08:24] made me
[01:08:25] uh tactically better, but uh emotionally
[01:08:28] more challenged. But, one of the reasons
[01:08:30] that as you've been talking today, I've
[01:08:33] had to sort of pull myself back into a
[01:08:35] more tactical style of speaking
[01:08:37] is that
[01:08:38] I don't really think in this kind of a
[01:08:40] way that much anymore.
[01:08:42] I really try to just vibe code my way
[01:08:46] through a lot of
[01:08:48] life.
[01:08:50] Does this make me feel good? I already
[01:08:52] know I've got I've managed to avoid
[01:08:55] the addictions, the gambling, the porn,
[01:08:58] the video games, the alcohol. I would
[01:09:00] like I
[01:09:01] cuz if you say, "Does this make me feel
[01:09:02] good, you'll tend to revert to the
[01:09:04] bottom of the brain stem, right? You'll
[01:09:05] do the
[01:09:06] caveman-y, very limbically hijacked
[01:09:09] stuff.
[01:09:10] But assuming that you've managed to beat
[01:09:12] those and you've put, you know,
[01:09:14] frameworks and constraints in place,
[01:09:16] which is what I spent most of my 20s and
[01:09:17] 30s doing, but now I'm just kind of kind
[01:09:20] of going to follow what feels good. Who
[01:09:23] do I want to hang around with? And a lot
[01:09:25] of the friends that I want to hang
[01:09:26] around with,
[01:09:27] strategically, tactically, I don't get
[01:09:29] anything out of.
[01:09:31] But in as much as feeling good is the
[01:09:33] only reason that we're here in
[01:09:35] any case,
[01:09:36] I get everything out of them. And it
[01:09:38] means that my performance improves
[01:09:39] because the next morning I wake up and I
[01:09:40] go, "Do I I had such a great dinner last
[01:09:42] night and I learned nothing."
[01:09:45] And I thought he was brilliant. I had no
[01:09:46] stories to tell on the podcast, but I
[01:09:48] feel good. And because I feel good, I'm
[01:09:50] going to operate better. Yeah.
[01:09:52] Yeah. At what point somebody should
[01:09:53] start operating like this?
[01:09:55] It takes a while. You can't do it at the
[01:09:56] start, right? You can't code your way
[01:09:58] through. This is why
[01:10:00] we said it earlier, I think we said it
[01:10:02] before we got started, you need to learn
[01:10:04] the rules of the game before you can
[01:10:05] break the rules of the game.
[01:10:07] Breaking the rules of the game having
[01:10:09] not learned them is just not playing the
[01:10:11] game,
[01:10:12] right? And this is why
[01:10:14] it somebody like Joe, for instance, the
[01:10:16] secret to Joe's success at one of the
[01:10:18] secrets to Joe's success in podcasting
[01:10:19] is that he is able to ask a question
[01:10:21] with a statement.
[01:10:22] So he says statement
[01:10:25] that
[01:10:25] encourages a question encourages an
[01:10:27] answer from the guest. So he treats
[01:10:30] statements as questions.
[01:10:32] What that sounds like is you hearing
[01:10:34] someone just talk.
[01:10:37] It's just a conversation, not an
[01:10:38] interview.
[01:10:40] And that the fact that he's cultivated
[01:10:43] that, now he's hands off the wheel.
[01:10:45] Maybe it was native, maybe it was
[01:10:46] natural, maybe it was the way that he
[01:10:47] came into it, but even if it wasn't, he
[01:10:49] just says a statement and he gets a an
[01:10:51] answer back as if he'd asked a question.
[01:10:53] That's brilliant. That's genius.
[01:10:54] It's the simplest thing. Say a
[01:10:56] statement, get an answer.
[01:10:58] Don't need to ask questions in the same
[01:10:59] way. And then when you do ask a
[01:11:00] question, it's more pointed and more
[01:11:02] direct. That's brilliant, too.
[01:11:05] You can't do that from the off, because
[01:11:08] you need to learn what a good and a bad
[01:11:10] question is like, what a good and a bad
[01:11:11] statement is like. And only after that
[01:11:13] that the number of times on the pod, for
[01:11:15] instance, that I just say
[01:11:16] "Why?"
[01:11:17] or "What do you mean by that?" Like very
[01:11:20] short, snappy questions. I love doing
[01:11:22] that. But if you haven't built up the
[01:11:26] understanding of when you can deploy
[01:11:27] that. Cuz if you do that too much, it
[01:11:29] sounds very
[01:11:30] harsh.
[01:11:31] It sounds kind of almost
[01:11:32] confrontational. But if you have
[01:11:36] understood the
[01:11:38] And I don't even think about it. I'm not
[01:11:39] thinking about I used to think about it.
[01:11:40] Oh, I can ask the why question now
[01:11:42] because I feel like I've
[01:11:44] got enough warmth between me and the
[01:11:47] guest to show that this isn't uh a
[01:11:49] pointed, difficult question. Um
[01:11:53] It takes time. It takes time to learn.
[01:11:55] But
[01:11:57] I would say no sooner than 5 years and
[01:11:59] no later than 20 years, but your results
[01:12:01] may vary.
[01:12:03] >> [laughter]
[01:12:03] >> That's a good framework to think. Like
[01:12:05] at least for 5 years
[01:12:08] Play by the rules. Play by the rules.
[01:12:10] >> Play by the rules and be tactical about
[01:12:11] it.
[01:12:11] >> Exactly. Learn how I mean, look, even
[01:12:13] with Elon, the
[01:12:15] rocket thing, first principles. But
[01:12:17] remember where he took the first rocket
[01:12:19] designs from? They were the publicly
[01:12:20] available NASA blueprints.
[01:12:24] And only after that did he do like
[01:12:26] Falcon, and he did the uh
[01:12:28] Raptor Raptor engine, right? Did three,
[01:12:31] then two, then one, or one, then two,
[01:12:32] then three. And it gets progressively
[01:12:34] simpler over time. If you look at the
[01:12:36] first one, you've seen that image,
[01:12:37] right? The first one, the second one,
[01:12:38] the third one. And the first one's What
[01:12:40] is this? It's some crazy contraption.
[01:12:42] There's all of these different And you
[01:12:43] get down to the final one, and it's this
[01:12:45] sleek design. Super simple. He had to
[01:12:47] learn the rules before he could break
[01:12:49] the rules.
[01:12:50] Break the rule Because how do you know
[01:12:51] to get to the how do you know what is
[01:12:53] surplus to requirements if you haven't
[01:12:56] put everything in and then eliminated
[01:12:58] individually? Yeah.
[01:13:00] You know, talking about rules,
[01:13:02] you
[01:13:04] you talk a lot about men, right? And
[01:13:06] their way of dealing with the world and
[01:13:08] loneliness and stuff like that. There's
[01:13:10] one rule which
[01:13:12] men have been taught, and this is I
[01:13:14] believe everywhere around the world, is
[01:13:16] to not be a woman.
[01:13:19] They're not taught mostly about how to
[01:13:21] be a man.
[01:13:22] >> Right. They're usually taught about not
[01:13:24] to how not to be a woman.
[01:13:26] >> Yep. So, every time you ask a man,
[01:13:28] what does being a man mean like, uh
[01:13:31] or does it feel like, they just talk
[01:13:34] about strength and not crying and, you
[01:13:37] know, everything which is not woman. And
[01:13:40] you ask a woman about what is about
[01:13:42] being a woman and they start mentioning
[01:13:44] the qualities.
[01:13:46] What do you think? What does
[01:13:49] What happens to a brain of a man when
[01:13:51] they are just perpetually trained to be
[01:13:53] not something, not to be something?
[01:13:56] Well, it makes them very confused. It's
[01:13:58] very confusing if you're defined around
[01:14:00] what you are not. And in the modern
[01:14:01] world, at least in the West at the
[01:14:02] moment, I don't know how it is in India,
[01:14:04] men are told
[01:14:06] actually by much of
[01:14:08] the contemporary advice that if they
[01:14:11] were only less masculine,
[01:14:13] they would be better.
[01:14:15] Right? Your main problem, men, is your
[01:14:18] masculinity. If you were more like the
[01:14:19] women if you spoke more about your
[01:14:20] emotions, if you were softer, if you
[01:14:22] were less concerned with conquer and
[01:14:23] mastery and emotional containment,
[01:14:26] you'd be fine.
[01:14:28] So, what you're right to say that Do you
[01:14:31] feel that true?
[01:14:33] I It certainly is in terms of the advice
[01:14:34] publicly. I don't think that it's true,
[01:14:36] but that's what men are being told. Uh
[01:14:39] and
[01:14:40] Yeah, it it it's tremendous. Like this
[01:14:42] it opens up all of the doorways for guys
[01:14:45] to feel confused
[01:14:48] without any of the solutions. And then
[01:14:50] it blames men for not knowing what
[01:14:53] direction to go in. And then it says
[01:14:55] that they're in a position of privilege
[01:14:57] for being part of a patriarchy they no
[01:15:00] longer feel a part of.
[01:15:03] And they're cut adrift with no advice.
[01:15:05] And they're told that the main problem
[01:15:07] that they have is with their
[01:15:08] masculinity, which was poorly defined to
[01:15:09] begin with.
[01:15:11] It's confusing. It's confusing time to
[01:15:13] be a guy.
[01:15:14] I'm glad that I'm old uh I'm glad that
[01:15:17] I'm older because uh it was less
[01:15:20] confusing when I was growing up. And
[01:15:22] that means that even though it's still
[01:15:24] confusing now, I've I had a little bit
[01:15:27] of time before it became insane.
[01:15:30] Tell me because you said
[01:15:32] because you said oh be more like women
[01:15:35] and that's the way to be and etc. etc.
[01:15:37] So, let's boil it down to be vulnerable.
[01:15:40] Is that
[01:15:41] vulnerable?
[01:15:42] Vulnerability. Yeah. Right? So, the
[01:15:44] That's the word?
[01:15:46] Do you think it's good to show
[01:15:47] vulnerability or no?
[01:15:49] I do, personally. I think that
[01:15:51] >> You don't. I do. Uh you do.
[01:15:53] >> I think I think vulnerability is the
[01:15:55] only way that you can have true
[01:15:56] strength.
[01:15:57] I think if there's nothing on the line,
[01:15:59] if you're not risking anything,
[01:16:01] then there's no such thing as courage.
[01:16:03] Courage is not not being scared. Courage
[01:16:07] is being scared and doing it anyway.
[01:16:10] It has to be.
[01:16:12] Like there's no bravery if there's
[01:16:13] nothing risked.
[01:16:16] Because you just didn't feel anything.
[01:16:18] Like if if if I say to you, we're going
[01:16:20] to toss a coin.
[01:16:22] Like and you can just pick. And so, what
[01:16:24] bravery is involved in just picking? But
[01:16:25] if I said we're going to toss a coin and
[01:16:27] it's for your entire net worth, like
[01:16:29] hell. Well, you might say it's
[01:16:30] just
[01:16:30] uh delusion at that point, not not
[01:16:32] bravery. Um
[01:16:34] we're going to run into that house and
[01:16:36] everybody's got Nerf guns with foam
[01:16:38] bullets. You go, how much bravery do you
[01:16:40] need for that? Not much. We're going to
[01:16:42] run into that house and everyone's got
[01:16:43] real guns. You need a lot because
[01:16:46] there's something on the line.
[01:16:47] Without any risk, there can be no such
[01:16:49] thing as courage. And vulnerability to
[01:16:51] me is
[01:16:54] speaking your truth even when it's
[01:16:56] scary.
[01:16:58] If it's not scary, then what does it
[01:17:00] matter? I think that I think that
[01:17:02] vulnerability
[01:17:04] it depends on what your definition is. I
[01:17:06] think a lot of people see vulnerability
[01:17:07] as
[01:17:08] crying, oversharing emotions
[01:17:10] unnecessarily.
[01:17:11] And it's not. It's saying what's true
[01:17:13] for you
[01:17:15] regardless of how scary it feels.
[01:17:19] At what point did the strength
[01:17:21] and what at what point it becomes
[01:17:23] weakness?
[01:17:25] Uh well, we praise suppression as
[01:17:28] strength.
[01:17:30] Right? That's not the same thing.
[01:17:31] Suppressing your emotions is not the
[01:17:32] same thing as being strong. Like
[01:17:34] strength is feeling your feelings and
[01:17:36] doing it anyway.
[01:17:37] Moving through them, embodying them,
[01:17:39] allowing them to become part of you, and
[01:17:41] continuing.
[01:17:42] Uh
[01:17:43] it is not
[01:17:45] it is absolutely not suppressing what
[01:17:48] you feel.
[01:17:51] But
[01:17:53] you know how a lot of people actually
[01:17:56] I mean, that's what they say that
[01:17:58] if you if you show a lot of weakness, or
[01:18:00] not weakness, if you show a lot of
[01:18:02] emotions, if you show a lot of
[01:18:03] vulnerability,
[01:18:07] people start like people stop relying on
[01:18:10] you too much. People stop seeing you
[01:18:13] in a very strong
[01:18:15] way. That's true. Yeah, I mean, if you
[01:18:17] look, it's it's not just necessarily
[01:18:19] showing emotion. If your emotion was
[01:18:21] excitement,
[01:18:23] people probably don't see you and what
[01:18:25] what you're talking about is a lack of
[01:18:27] emotional containment. Right? That your
[01:18:29] emotion has come up at the wrong time.
[01:18:31] >> Yeah.
[01:18:32] Right? There's a big difference. Like
[01:18:33] emotional leakage, that's what I
[01:18:34] thought. Yes, of Of
[01:18:35] You know, and yeah, I think so. If
[01:18:37] you're the leader of a military platoon,
[01:18:41] now is not the time to cry
[01:18:43] in the middle of a war.
[01:18:44] But when you get back and you're with
[01:18:46] your group, I I don't know. Maybe you're
[01:18:48] right that
[01:18:50] you get less respect if you get back to
[01:18:52] the base and you
[01:18:54] show emotion about how much that meant
[01:18:56] to you.
[01:18:57] But there's very specific situations
[01:18:59] where this is true and I think that far
[01:19:01] fewer of them are true than people
[01:19:02] think.
[01:19:03] I'm
[01:19:05] There are very few situations when done
[01:19:07] at the right time, when more emotion
[01:19:10] contained, appropriately, not out of
[01:19:12] control,
[01:19:13] more openness,
[01:19:15] more emotion, more openness about
[01:19:16] emotion. I think we're in an
[01:19:18] increasingly autistic culture.
[01:19:20] Right? It's one that fears emotions or
[01:19:23] or demonizes them. Um
[01:19:27] So, I'll give you this.
[01:19:29] A lot of guys, especially, and
[01:19:32] hard-charging ambitious people,
[01:19:35] use the mantra, "Fuck your feelings,
[01:19:37] just work harder."
[01:19:39] To get them to push aside their emotions
[01:19:42] in order to keep on with the mission.
[01:19:44] That's great. And I think that that is a
[01:19:46] huge step that lots of people can take.
[01:19:48] But that's only level one.
[01:19:51] If you pray at the altar of "Fuck your
[01:19:53] feelings, just work harder."
[01:19:55] how can you be surprised when you
[01:19:57] achieve but you don't feel?
[01:20:01] Think about that for a second. "Fuck
[01:20:02] your feelings, just work harder."
[01:20:04] Then you reach the top of the mountain
[01:20:06] and you complain about the fact that it
[01:20:07] passed through you.
[01:20:10] Well, you have cause and effect
[01:20:12] happening right in front of your eyes.
[01:20:15] Of course you do. The very fuel that got
[01:20:17] you here is the thing denying you your
[01:20:19] satisfaction once you arrive.
[01:20:23] "Fuck your feelings, just work harder. I
[01:20:24] don't feel when I achieve."
[01:20:27] That's the same thing, dude.
[01:20:28] So, what are you doing it for? If If the
[01:20:31] only way that you can achieve success is
[01:20:33] to deny yourself the one reason that you
[01:20:35] did the success for,
[01:20:38] I don't know, man. Like it
[01:20:40] feels like an overly complex solution.
[01:20:43] And
[01:20:44] I'm just I'm way less impressed by
[01:20:46] somebody that's
[01:20:48] successful now.
[01:20:49] I'm way more impressed by somebody who
[01:20:51] is embodied in the success.
[01:20:53] Like who feels it.
[01:20:55] Like
[01:20:56] just
[01:20:57] all that success is is
[01:21:00] appropriate strategy, good timing, and
[01:21:02] consistency
[01:21:04] for a significantly long enough
[01:21:06] duration,
[01:21:08] largely anybody can achieve success
[01:21:10] through that. Yeah, there's limitations,
[01:21:11] blah blah blah blah blah. Right. Okay,
[01:21:12] not everyone's got the same head start,
[01:21:14] etc.
[01:21:15] But to do that
[01:21:17] and feel it
[01:21:19] is way rarer. Way rarer. So for me now,
[01:21:22] I'm much more in interested and and
[01:21:24] impressed by people who have managed to
[01:21:26] do it and feel it, not just do it. Yeah,
[01:21:29] I agree. You know, I've found myself
[01:21:31] living in this duality.
[01:21:33] Like I'm I'm
[01:21:34] I'm sort of
[01:21:36] in different context it changes, right?
[01:21:38] I am
[01:21:39] when
[01:21:41] when there's some happening in my
[01:21:42] team,
[01:21:44] uh you will never see me panicking. You
[01:21:47] will never see me showing any emotion,
[01:21:48] even though like inside I'm burning.
[01:21:50] Like
[01:21:51] the world's ending and I want to cry out
[01:21:52] loud.
[01:21:53] >> job of a leader. Yeah, like nobody will
[01:21:55] ever get to I'm this feelings and work
[01:21:57] harder kind of person, right? And always
[01:21:59] like work work work work work work.
[01:22:01] And I almost like
[01:22:02] the price to pay for that is because I
[01:22:05] don't feel
[01:22:06] paranoid and I don't get I don't panic
[01:22:09] at the time when everything is breaking,
[01:22:11] I don't enjoy the high. I don't
[01:22:13] celebrate. Yeah, you have to feel it
[01:22:15] all. Yeah, so I I don't do either.
[01:22:18] But then when I'm back home,
[01:22:20] uh when I'm with my family or with my
[01:22:22] girl and like just I become this baby
[01:22:25] and I'm crying like a Good. I'm crying
[01:22:27] like a kid.
[01:22:28] >> Good.
[01:22:29] I think it's good, dude. I think it's
[01:22:31] good. Don't don't show the guys. Don't
[01:22:33] [laughter] show the guys. It's
[01:22:34] important.
[01:22:34] >> But sometimes I I question myself. I'm
[01:22:37] like, which part of me is
[01:22:40] is true? Because
[01:22:41] No, I don't think I I think that that
[01:22:43] you can be a professional.
[01:22:45] I think you're allowed to be a
[01:22:46] professional.
[01:22:47] Uh you know, there are times for you to
[01:22:52] show emotion and there are times for you
[01:22:53] to show up and do your job.
[01:22:55] And
[01:22:56] sometimes those things can cross over,
[01:22:58] but sometimes they shouldn't. There's
[01:23:00] this great uh book called Endurance by
[01:23:02] Alfred Lansing, and it's about Ernest
[01:23:04] Shackleton's crossing of the Antarctic.
[01:23:06] And it's a
[01:23:07] For the people that haven't read the
[01:23:08] book and don't know the story, it didn't
[01:23:09] go well. It was a real challenge. For a
[01:23:12] long time, they were stuck in
[01:23:14] Antarctica. And uh what you find is that
[01:23:18] Shackleton, who was the leader of the
[01:23:19] expedition,
[01:23:21] publicly all of his team only saw him as
[01:23:26] competent, contained, he always had a
[01:23:28] plan, he knew what he was doing, he was
[01:23:30] confident about what was going to go on.
[01:23:32] But you read his diary, and he's
[01:23:34] drowning in self-doubt. He's permanently
[01:23:37] self-pitying him He
[01:23:38] I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't
[01:23:40] know if this is going to work. And then
[01:23:43] closes the book, goes outside, does his
[01:23:45] job. He's a professional.
[01:23:47] Same thing for you. And how cool? Is
[01:23:49] this not what a Renaissance man is?
[01:23:51] Somebody that's able to fully feel the
[01:23:53] fear
[01:23:54] privately and then step out. Because
[01:23:56] again, if you didn't have the
[01:23:59] soft side,
[01:24:01] where would the glory be
[01:24:04] on the other side of it? And that's not
[01:24:05] to say, look,
[01:24:06] people have varying levels of emotional
[01:24:09] depth, varying levels of emotional
[01:24:11] exposure.
[01:24:12] There's nothing less about being someone
[01:24:14] who feels less.
[01:24:16] But you are going to live a less rich
[01:24:17] life. Like there are types of experience
[01:24:20] that you will have access to, a sort of
[01:24:22] resolution. You can see the world in 4K.
[01:24:25] Other people kind of see it in 720p.
[01:24:28] And this is a blessing and a curse. It's
[01:24:30] a double-edged sword of feeling things
[01:24:32] deeply.
[01:24:33] You You get to do the thing. That's
[01:24:35] great.
[01:24:37] Man, it's going to hold you back and
[01:24:38] you're going to feel it.
[01:24:40] But I I don't know. It seems like a good
[01:24:42] deal to me.
[01:24:45] Talking about being a man, we were
[01:24:46] talking about it and I If you left the
[01:24:48] thread open,
[01:24:49] if I if I have to compare
[01:24:51] India versus the Western world, okay?
[01:24:55] In India,
[01:24:57] a boy becomes a man because he goes
[01:25:00] through certain rituals.
[01:25:02] Okay, it's like
[01:25:03] you're almost told that you have to take
[01:25:05] care of the family. There are
[01:25:06] responsibilities. In some parts, there's
[01:25:08] a proper ritual where you're being
[01:25:10] handed over like you're the man of the
[01:25:12] house now, right? And
[01:25:13] it's almost like
[01:25:15] your path is paved. You have to walk a
[01:25:18] certain place. That That's a society
[01:25:20] pressure. There's
[01:25:21] responsibility. In the Western world,
[01:25:23] nothing's like that. You're not being
[01:25:24] told to do certain things. You don't
[01:25:26] have to
[01:25:27] maybe follow a strict way of religion,
[01:25:31] of family responsibilities. It's not
[01:25:33] It's much more lenient here, right?
[01:25:36] Which one do you think is better? Like
[01:25:38] knowing a path
[01:25:40] where you're going to be become a man or
[01:25:43] a boy or whatever
[01:25:45] versus I think that I think that
[01:25:47] definitely helps. I think that
[01:25:49] >> Like knowing a path Yeah. I think
[01:25:50] coming-of-age rituals are really useful
[01:25:52] and it's a shame that we don't have them
[01:25:53] in the West anymore.
[01:25:55] I think it I think it would have made me
[01:25:56] happy
[01:25:57] to have had
[01:25:58] a little bit more of an understanding
[01:26:00] about the path that I was taking and and
[01:26:02] the route that I would go down.
[01:26:04] What do you think can be one ritual?
[01:26:07] Oh, that's good. Um
[01:26:11] I think something around, you know, 14,
[01:26:13] 16, 18, some
[01:26:17] transitionary moment, something
[01:26:22] that okay, childhood is over. Adulthood
[01:26:25] has begun.
[01:26:27] I think that's kind of important. You
[01:26:28] know, in the West, what's the closest
[01:26:29] thing we've got? Getting a driver's
[01:26:30] license, maybe?
[01:26:32] That's like it, you know?
[01:26:34] Uh there isn't an equivalent. And I I I
[01:26:37] think it would help a lot of
[01:26:39] young boys realize that they're supposed
[01:26:41] to take on more responsibility earlier
[01:26:43] and feel pride in it. Right? As opposed
[01:26:45] to obligation or this weird
[01:26:49] I used to have fun doing this and now I
[01:26:51] can't sensation, you know?
[01:26:54] Like oh,
[01:26:55] this is
[01:26:56] I've arrived and I should behave as
[01:26:59] such.
[01:27:00] >> Yeah. There is in in India there is that
[01:27:03] moment in every household.
[01:27:04] >> When? In their
[01:27:06] different age groups, different people,
[01:27:08] different backgrounds, different
[01:27:09] financial freedom levels.
[01:27:11] But at some point in your house
[01:27:14] you're made to
[01:27:15] >> realize either by a ceremony or by just
[01:27:17] making you sit down amongst the other
[01:27:19] group of like other family members that
[01:27:22] you're going to be next and your time's
[01:27:24] coming and it's now you better start
[01:27:26] behaving. Good. I like that. I think
[01:27:28] it's good. Yeah. And then almost like at
[01:27:30] at the time when you're
[01:27:32] when the head of the family like if your
[01:27:34] father or grandfather, somebody dies,
[01:27:36] then there's a ritual called pagri which
[01:27:37] is like a turban, right? It's it's like
[01:27:40] a hypothetical turban. It's like it's
[01:27:41] turban's been given to you that now
[01:27:43] you're the head of the family. So like
[01:27:45] 20, 50, 100 people, whoever you consider
[01:27:48] family, now you are the caretaker of
[01:27:49] that.
[01:27:50] So from that point a boy becomes a man.
[01:27:52] >> Responsible.
[01:27:53] I like it. Yeah. So what do you think?
[01:27:56] If there are if you had to pinpoint one
[01:27:59] ritual or experience
[01:28:01] which turns a boy into a man, what would
[01:28:04] that be? I don't know, man. I mean, I'm
[01:28:05] I'm
[01:28:06] I'm constrained by
[01:28:09] the culture that I grew up in. There
[01:28:11] wasn't one. There wasn't Is it the first
[01:28:12] time you have sex?
[01:28:14] Is it when you get your driver's
[01:28:15] license? Is it Is it when you move out
[01:28:17] of the house?
[01:28:18] Is it when you get your first job?
[01:28:20] Or a first bank account?
[01:28:22] There wasn't a demarcation. There wasn't
[01:28:25] a line.
[01:28:26] Uh I I I honestly don't even know what
[01:28:28] that would look like. I honestly don't
[01:28:30] know what it would look like.
[01:28:32] But what do you think it would look
[01:28:33] like? Think Think about it. What What
[01:28:34] experience can If you feel like like,
[01:28:37] okay, maybe this pain, this suffering,
[01:28:38] this particular thing Look, what do you
[01:28:41] do a Misogi? Like a Japanese Misogi
[01:28:43] where you've got 50% chance of success?
[01:28:45] Are you thrown out into the wilderness
[01:28:46] for 40 days to fend for yourself? I
[01:28:48] think it I I think what you guys have
[01:28:49] done there it seems like a good start
[01:28:51] because it needs to be done socially. It
[01:28:53] needs to everybody else sees you as
[01:28:55] different and treats you differently. I
[01:28:57] think that seems to be a clever idea.
[01:29:00] But uh I mean, you know, you could do it
[01:29:02] on an 18th birthday and have somebody
[01:29:07] call out, "This is who you are now." in
[01:29:10] front of all of your family and friends
[01:29:12] and for you to feel that and take on
[01:29:14] that
[01:29:16] new identity. I think that'll be a good
[01:29:17] start. I grew up in India,
[01:29:19] which means
[01:29:21] I've grew [snorts] I've grown up with
[01:29:24] colonial hangover.
[01:29:26] All right? There are There are so many
[01:29:27] things in our head, in our history
[01:29:29] books, which has just taught us that
[01:29:31] Britishers [snorts] came over, they
[01:29:32] ruled us hundreds of years. So, we grew
[01:29:35] up with almost
[01:29:36] there's a sense of
[01:29:39] dislike, hatred, revenge, avenge, a lot
[01:29:43] of
[01:29:44] a lot of societies and sociology and my
[01:29:47] my thinking
[01:29:48] and everyone everyone's thinking around
[01:29:50] me,
[01:29:51] it's shaped by either
[01:29:54] hating Britishers or pleasing
[01:29:55] Britishers.
[01:29:57] Right? Because a lot of the rules that
[01:29:59] you guys set, I mean, the Britishers
[01:30:00] set,
[01:30:01] ended up becoming where we wanted to
[01:30:03] just please and we just played the rule
[01:30:05] because we thought that's the ultimate
[01:30:06] supremacy and you know that's it. And
[01:30:09] exactly opposite is like revenge. Like
[01:30:11] how the like
[01:30:13] we're not going to follow anything that
[01:30:14] these guys do, right? So we grew up with
[01:30:16] that.
[01:30:17] I want to understand when you grow up in
[01:30:19] a country
[01:30:21] where that country has colonized
[01:30:23] everybody. You're the colonizer. Your
[01:30:25] history is you literally taught that you
[01:30:28] are the supremacist. Like you are you
[01:30:30] guys went ahead
[01:30:32] set the world order, structured things,
[01:30:34] right? Do you Do you grow up
[01:30:36] differently?
[01:30:37] Good question. I I got to say I didn't
[01:30:40] ever grow up feeling like British people
[01:30:43] owned the world. I felt like Americans
[01:30:45] owned the world. You know, I was born in
[01:30:48] '88 and most of my school time when I
[01:30:51] would have learned this would have been
[01:30:52] the '90s and the early 2000s.
[01:30:55] I didn't feel like we were some global
[01:30:57] force. I learned stuff about how we
[01:31:00] responded in World War II.
[01:31:02] I learned the Battle of Hastings and the
[01:31:05] War of the Roses and you know, our
[01:31:07] history being invaded by Anglo-Saxons
[01:31:09] and the Normans and things like that.
[01:31:11] That was That was what I learned. I
[01:31:12] never learned about Yeah, and then we
[01:31:15] you know
[01:31:16] kind of went and took Australia and took
[01:31:18] India and Canada and we made them
[01:31:21] colonies and then we you know, had a we
[01:31:24] stopped the Atlantic slave trade and we
[01:31:26] started the East India Trading Company
[01:31:28] and all that stuff. We didn't really
[01:31:29] learn about that and I don't know
[01:31:31] whether that's
[01:31:32] the schooling system trying to sweep it
[01:31:34] under the rug
[01:31:35] or if it's just not seen as being that
[01:31:37] important, but I
[01:31:38] I don't know any British person who
[01:31:40] thinks that
[01:31:42] by virtue of their nationality they own
[01:31:45] the world, especially not now. I mean,
[01:31:47] maybe 100 years ago they would have had
[01:31:49] some sort of
[01:31:50] vestige of
[01:31:52] past glory, but the UK is putting both
[01:31:55] feet in its mouth at the moment. It's
[01:31:56] not showering itself in in wonder at the
[01:31:59] moment. It's like the
[01:32:01] a lot of in a lot of ways it's one of
[01:32:02] the laughing stocks of the world. They
[01:32:04] can look at this fallen empire. You
[01:32:05] know, 200 years ago you guys had
[01:32:06] everything and now you can't even secure
[01:32:08] your own borders or you have these
[01:32:12] insane benefit scams going on or you
[01:32:15] have all of this strife internally and
[01:32:17] no one can agree on how the country is
[01:32:18] supposed to be run wasteful spending and
[01:32:20] inefficiency and you know, like
[01:32:23] the UK I love I love the UK. I love all
[01:32:26] of my friends that are there. I'm very
[01:32:27] very grateful for what it did for me,
[01:32:29] but it's not exactly
[01:32:31] It's it's it's not
[01:32:33] in its golden era at the moment I don't
[01:32:35] think and holding on to past victories
[01:32:38] of some sort.
[01:32:40] Apart from World War I never really
[01:32:42] thought about that. But are you guys
[01:32:44] taught like were you guys ever taught
[01:32:47] that you colonized India or Australia or
[01:32:49] stuff like that? Never. No.
[01:32:52] And nobody even talks about that. That's
[01:32:54] interesting.
[01:32:54] >> talks about it.
[01:32:55] And do you ever get to know about like I
[01:32:57] mean at some point you must be knowing
[01:32:59] about it, right? That British used to
[01:33:01] own the world at some point.
[01:33:03] >> To a degree, yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.
[01:33:04] But I mean I think I learned that
[01:33:05] through novels and and and
[01:33:08] historical dramas and stuff like that. I
[01:33:10] didn't learn it in school. Why do you
[01:33:12] think they're hiding this part of the
[01:33:13] history?
[01:33:14] Good question. Maybe shame, maybe just a
[01:33:17] lack of importance. Uh you know, you
[01:33:20] don't have that much time in terms of
[01:33:21] history, right? You've got an hour a
[01:33:23] week, 2 hours a week. There's some
[01:33:25] pretty important cool stuff that we've
[01:33:26] got but
[01:33:28] I suppose one challenge that you have in
[01:33:30] the UK
[01:33:31] is especially England
[01:33:33] we have a thousand years of history,
[01:33:36] right? Unbroken uninvaded history.
[01:33:39] There's a lot to get through. Yeah. And
[01:33:42] for India what might be the most
[01:33:44] important thing
[01:33:45] for us is you know, a footnote as a part
[01:33:48] of a thousand years a millennia
[01:33:51] of learning. Like from 1066, right?
[01:33:55] All the way up to today. There's so much
[01:33:57] stuff to go through. Yeah. This is also
[01:33:59] debatable now in India that this is also
[01:34:02] just a footnote in Indian history
[01:34:04] because our civilization history is the
[01:34:06] oldest in the world. So, we should be
[01:34:09] taught about that not just like these
[01:34:11] 200 years.
[01:34:12] >> There's a lot focused around the sort of
[01:34:14] British colonizer. That's interesting.
[01:34:16] Well, so what you
[01:34:17] >> Because they did the they wrote our
[01:34:18] schooling system, no?
[01:34:20] Really? Yeah. A lot of it is still
[01:34:22] followed.
[01:34:23] >> Do you think that is
[01:34:25] the British trying to indoctrinate
[01:34:27] Indian people into understanding
[01:34:30] we came, civilized this nation, we
[01:34:33] should be held up as some sort of
[01:34:37] glorious What Why do you think they
[01:34:38] would have tried to put that in to the
[01:34:40] So, the So, the version which is most
[01:34:42] known and most people who like most
[01:34:45] people what they know about is
[01:34:47] Britishers tried to build our schooling
[01:34:49] system in a way where we only learn to
[01:34:52] follow orders and learn to become It's a
[01:34:55] message.
[01:34:56] >> get into professions which will serve
[01:34:58] them, not become innovators, not become
[01:35:02] uh
[01:35:03] you know,
[01:35:05] let's say like original thinkers or not
[01:35:07] become risk-takers. So, all the
[01:35:09] professions which are still till date
[01:35:11] being very celebrated by the masses are
[01:35:14] the ones which are in administration.
[01:35:16] Well, like Let's say government bodies.
[01:35:19] People who are in the position of power
[01:35:21] in the government, not the elected ones,
[01:35:23] but the officials who are selected for
[01:35:27] administrating things. That's one of the
[01:35:29] highest uh
[01:35:31] like one of the most chased professions
[01:35:33] in the country.
[01:35:34] >> But, it's inherently kind of servitude.
[01:35:38] You're serving in that way. You're not
[01:35:40] breaking new ground. You're not being
[01:35:41] innovative. See, because see See, all
[01:35:44] our lives we were
[01:35:45] I mean, at least in the schooling books,
[01:35:47] now it's getting changed. We were taught
[01:35:49] that Britishers came here, they ruined
[01:35:52] everything.
[01:35:53] And they were the ones who were
[01:35:54] celebrated.
[01:35:56] >> Yeah. What about cricket? What What
[01:35:58] about it?
[01:35:58] >> Was cricket in India before we came? No.
[01:36:02] Cricket's good. Yeah. We did one good
[01:36:04] thing.
[01:36:04] >> [laughter]
[01:36:04] >> Look, I'm going to I'm going to try and
[01:36:06] to I feel like I'm being I feel like I'm
[01:36:07] got having to apologize for an entire
[01:36:09] nation here.
[01:36:11] Uh but look, I'm desperately clamoring
[01:36:13] for something that we've done that's
[01:36:14] good. I'm going to take [laughter]
[01:36:15] cricket. I'm going to take cricket if
[01:36:16] that's one of the options.
[01:36:17] >> Now we dominate it.
[01:36:19] >> that's true. I don't know So yeah, we
[01:36:20] shouldn't have taught you that. We
[01:36:21] should have kept you in business
[01:36:22] administration so you didn't learn
[01:36:23] cricket so that we would have been able
[01:36:25] to win the World Cup more effectively.
[01:36:26] >> Yeah.
[01:36:26] >> [laughter]
[01:36:27] >> No, that's I was just telling you like
[01:36:29] the kind of stuff that we read, it's
[01:36:31] it's pretty different than what you have
[01:36:33] read. So that's why I wanted I was like
[01:36:35] It's not the same, dude. But it's
[01:36:38] it's nice that
[01:36:40] not nice, like it it's
[01:36:42] fascinating that you guys don't even
[01:36:44] talk about it. No. Never. I would have
[01:36:46] never talked about it in school. Do you
[01:36:47] think people around you, like your
[01:36:49] friends or anyone, like just Britishers
[01:36:51] in general, you've ever felt
[01:36:54] you were privileged and entitled?
[01:36:58] Uh inside of the country? Inside of the
[01:37:01] country. No.
[01:37:02] Never. I'm as working class as you can
[01:37:05] get, right? I come from a a town which
[01:37:07] is famous only for having the highest
[01:37:09] teen pregnancy rating in the UK. And
[01:37:12] then it lost that. So
[01:37:15] uh I did the very unremarkable working
[01:37:17] class northern British town. Nobody
[01:37:19] thinks that they're special. Nobody
[01:37:21] feels like they're entitled at all. At
[01:37:23] all. Everybody in the UK is obsessed
[01:37:25] with class. Absolutely obsessed with
[01:37:27] class and status. We have the word posh.
[01:37:29] Do you know what the word posh is? Yeah,
[01:37:31] okay, so somebody's sort of from an
[01:37:33] upper class background, but not
[01:37:34] necessarily from money, right? In the
[01:37:36] US, you would say rich.
[01:37:39] Right? Or well-to-do. Or uh maybe you
[01:37:42] might even say upper class, but you
[01:37:43] wouldn't say posh. Posh is a kind of old
[01:37:46] money
[01:37:47] way of speaking and behaving,
[01:37:50] but it's all internal. We don't think
[01:37:52] about ourselves. I never ever ever
[01:37:54] thought about British
[01:37:57] culture in relation to other cultures. I
[01:38:00] never thought about a level of
[01:38:01] superiority. It was all within
[01:38:03] the hierarchy of the country. That
[01:38:06] person went to that school. Oh, that's
[01:38:08] an expensive school. They must be But at
[01:38:11] no point was I thinking me or my friends
[01:38:14] or my family or whatever as just some
[01:38:18] random
[01:38:20] little community in England had anything
[01:38:23] over the rest of the world at all.
[01:38:24] Interesting. Where do you think people
[01:38:26] are obsessed with class? Because they're
[01:38:27] obsessed with class in India as well. In
[01:38:29] India? Well, in India you have a little
[01:38:31] bit more of a rigid system. Um
[01:38:34] I think in the UK one of the reasons for
[01:38:36] that was kind of
[01:38:39] the aristocracy, this history for a very
[01:38:41] long time of
[01:38:44] um
[01:38:45] birthright.
[01:38:47] Who are your parents? What do they do?
[01:38:49] Do they own land?
[01:38:51] Another thing is the population density
[01:38:54] of the UK is 10 times that of the US.
[01:38:56] So, we only have 50 million people-ish,
[01:38:59] 50-60 million people. The US has got
[01:39:01] five times more people,
[01:39:03] but in like 50 times more land.
[01:39:07] So, we've got a 10 times the population
[01:39:10] density. It's crazy. So,
[01:39:12] that means everyone's very close.
[01:39:15] There's not really that much room to
[01:39:16] escape. You can see what everybody is
[01:39:18] doing. Uh but it's part of the culture,
[01:39:20] dude. People are obsessed with class in
[01:39:23] the UK. Absolutely obsessed with it.
[01:39:25] Talk about It's a It's status games, but
[01:39:27] it's not I will never not be working
[01:39:30] class.
[01:39:31] I will never not be working class in not
[01:39:33] too dissimilar of a way I suppose to So,
[01:39:35] again, it's just But it What's more
[01:39:38] sneaky about it is it's never spoken
[01:39:40] about. No one would ever say, "Oh,
[01:39:42] you're working class, but they know
[01:39:43] where I went to school, what my parents
[01:39:45] did, where I was born, the sort of house
[01:39:46] I grew up in. Um I've got two degrees
[01:39:49] and moved to America and own a bunch of
[01:39:52] businesses, but I'm still working class.
[01:39:54] And I always will be, no matter what I
[01:39:56] do. So. And they will never be able to
[01:39:59] see you in the same light as them.
[01:40:01] I don't know. I don't know. I don't
[01:40:02] know. I mean it it it depends what we're
[01:40:03] talking about here cuz my generation
[01:40:06] is more influenced I think by America,
[01:40:08] meritocracy. You know, you are what you
[01:40:11] do and you are as good as you do it. As
[01:40:13] opposed to you are who your parents are
[01:40:15] and you're as good as your schooling and
[01:40:18] your accent and your place of birth and
[01:40:20] stuff like that.
[01:40:22] >> [snorts]
[01:40:22] >> But not your parents' generation.
[01:40:25] Parents what?
[01:40:26] The parents' generation would still see
[01:40:28] you as working class versus
[01:40:30] >> degree. Yeah. Two degree. Yeah. In
[01:40:33] interesting. So it's diminishing as we
[01:40:35] speak with generation after generation.
[01:40:37] >> I think so. Yeah. The influence of
[01:40:38] meritocracy of people the world becoming
[01:40:41] more globalized, especially the
[01:40:43] influence of America. And why do you
[01:40:44] think it's in terrible right now?
[01:40:46] Like why is it going down?
[01:40:48] >> [laughter]
[01:40:48] >> You're going to you're going to get me
[01:40:49] in trouble.
[01:40:51] I've I've just had to apologize for all
[01:40:53] of the crimes that we committed against
[01:40:54] India and now I'm going to have to try
[01:40:55] and work out why it's in such a
[01:40:56] Um
[01:40:59] There is a
[01:41:02] There is
[01:41:04] Holding on to some of the past
[01:41:06] victories, some of the glories of the
[01:41:08] past.
[01:41:10] Kind of does happen a little bit in the
[01:41:11] UK, but not over other countries, but in
[01:41:14] a sort of
[01:41:17] laziness,
[01:41:18] lackadaisical, taking for granted that
[01:41:22] well, I mean, you know,
[01:41:25] what a what a wonderful heritage and
[01:41:26] history that we have as a country.
[01:41:29] We don't need to maybe be quite so
[01:41:31] efficient. We don't maybe need to be
[01:41:33] quite as well thought out internally.
[01:41:35] Like there's this high-speed train line.
[01:41:37] It's called HS2 and but the country has
[01:41:40] been trying to build this high-speed
[01:41:42] train line from the middle of England to
[01:41:45] London. So the people who work
[01:41:47] way outside, you know, a 3-hour drive
[01:41:50] could maybe get into London in less than
[01:41:52] an hour. HS2. This has had an
[01:41:55] infinite amount of money poured into it,
[01:41:56] like an unlimited amount of money. It's
[01:41:58] not even remotely close to being
[01:41:59] started, let alone finished, and it's
[01:42:01] been going on for decades. The NHS in
[01:42:03] the UK, the National Health Service, is
[01:42:06] just it's a mess. Up until I think 10
[01:42:09] years ago they were using Windows XP.
[01:42:11] They still use fax machines.
[01:42:14] Right, it's just if you have a system,
[01:42:16] this is this is my current working
[01:42:17] theory.
[01:42:18] If you have a system which is very old,
[01:42:22] which our country is, it takes so long
[01:42:24] to just update the systems. And if you
[01:42:26] have that as the mindset, that you the
[01:42:27] US is move fast, break things. There is
[01:42:30] innovation in places like India. We're
[01:42:31] going to we don't quite know how to put
[01:42:33] this together, but we're going to do it.
[01:42:35] We're going to come up with a solution
[01:42:36] that actually makes this thing work.
[01:42:37] The UK's just a bit less
[01:42:43] it's still very spit and sawdust, but
[01:42:45] it's way less innovative. You know, the
[01:42:47] UK has the same number of graduates in
[01:42:50] the out of the top 10 universities in
[01:42:51] the world. The UK has the same number of
[01:42:54] graduates as the US does.
[01:42:56] But graduates from those universities in
[01:42:58] the US become entrepreneurs at five
[01:43:01] times the rate.
[01:43:02] So the US produces five times more
[01:43:05] graduates out of the top 10 unis than
[01:43:07] the UK does, despite us having basically
[01:43:09] the same number of people graduating.
[01:43:11] Why?
[01:43:12] I don't think that there's a culture of
[01:43:13] innovation. I don't think that there's a
[01:43:15] culture of moving fast and breaking
[01:43:16] things. But one of the advantages of
[01:43:18] that is
[01:43:19] the bar is set incredibly low. So if you
[01:43:21] ask somebody who's got some agency and
[01:43:23] some innovation and is able to pick
[01:43:24] yourself up by your bootstraps in the
[01:43:26] UK, you can very quickly make a change.
[01:43:29] You can very quickly rise above
[01:43:31] because the culture is holding everyone
[01:43:33] back. And if you just about manage to
[01:43:35] reach escape velocity,
[01:43:38] you can very quickly set yourself apart
[01:43:41] from everyone else cuz the competition
[01:43:42] is is not as strong as it would be
[01:43:44] somewhere else. You You said like it's
[01:43:46] holding you back. Is it because of the
[01:43:48] will?
[01:43:49] Like people don't have the will and the
[01:43:51] intention to grow? To a degree, the
[01:43:53] influence. I think a lot of people want
[01:43:54] to, but there's very much a tall poppy
[01:43:57] syndrome sense. You do not want to do
[01:44:01] something different in the UK.
[01:44:03] If you do, you stand out, you're mocked
[01:44:05] for it, it's not upheld. In the US, if
[01:44:07] you do something, if you try and fail,
[01:44:10] people in the US will usually support
[01:44:12] you. If you try in the UK,
[01:44:15] you're going to get the piss taken out
[01:44:17] of you.
[01:44:18] Um
[01:44:19] there's a line
[01:44:21] in the US, people want to see you
[01:44:22] succeed in case you take them with you.
[01:44:25] In the UK, people want to see you fail
[01:44:27] in case you leave them behind.
[01:44:29] And I think that that's pretty true.
[01:44:31] It's
[01:44:33] >> [snorts]
[01:44:33] >> It's interesting. I'm thinking where is
[01:44:35] India in middle? India is in middle, I
[01:44:37] guess.
[01:44:38] There are places and states and cities
[01:44:41] and organizations
[01:44:43] where people just want you to go out and
[01:44:46] be disruptors and go out and you'll get
[01:44:48] supported by millions of people. And
[01:44:51] then there are places where
[01:44:52] it seem like UK where you're going to be
[01:44:54] pulled down. But no matter what you do
[01:44:56] because So, there's a saying that this
[01:44:58] is the best like in the world right now.
[01:45:01] The best place to be alive is India
[01:45:03] because it's growing. There's insane
[01:45:05] amount of opportunity. So, even if you
[01:45:07] are little focused,
[01:45:09] there's so many people
[01:45:11] and so many things which are still about
[01:45:13] to come. So, that's why you're going to
[01:45:14] make
[01:45:15] you're going to be more successful in
[01:45:17] this part of the world than any other
[01:45:18] place. And then there's a saying that
[01:45:22] don't try too much because you're going
[01:45:23] to be pulled down because India doesn't
[01:45:26] have like a a part of India doesn't have
[01:45:28] good relationship with failure, which is
[01:45:30] changing now. I'm asking you, is that
[01:45:33] same in UK that because in US what I've
[01:45:35] seen
[01:45:37] you're not being called out if you fail.
[01:45:40] Like they have a good relationship with
[01:45:41] failure. It's like if you're a second
[01:45:44] second time failed entrepreneur, you're
[01:45:46] still going to get a chance for the
[01:45:47] third time.
[01:45:48] >> [laughter]
[01:45:48] >> That's true. You're not going to get
[01:45:49] mocked or
[01:45:50] >> not having a great track record, yeah.
[01:45:52] Um I think you're right. I think in the
[01:45:53] UK
[01:45:54] again, if you're obsessed with uh
[01:45:56] status,
[01:45:58] uh what you're saying by trying to do
[01:46:00] something different is I am better
[01:46:03] than where I am now. And implicitly in
[01:46:06] that is well, my status isn't an
[01:46:08] accurate representation of who I am. But
[01:46:10] we know that it is. We know that we know
[01:46:12] that your status you you really your
[01:46:14] class you're the level of posh that
[01:46:15] you're supposed to be you're working
[01:46:16] class or you're lower middle class or
[01:46:18] you're middle class or you're upper
[01:46:19] class or you're very well well-to-do.
[01:46:21] So I think
[01:46:23] that's part of it and also this just a
[01:46:25] big
[01:46:26] unspoken competitive landscape in the
[01:46:29] UK. No one really calls it out. So
[01:46:31] everybody is competing, but nobody wants
[01:46:33] to be seen like they're competing. So
[01:46:34] one of the benefits that you have for
[01:46:36] this
[01:46:37] is if you can find a pocket of friends
[01:46:39] like I have a lot of my best friends are
[01:46:41] from the UK and have moved no longer
[01:46:43] live there.
[01:46:44] Um
[01:46:46] they
[01:46:48] all of us have done really, really well
[01:46:51] to hold on to each other
[01:46:53] because we found a community, but these
[01:46:54] aren't geographic. These aren't really
[01:46:56] even cultural. They're subcultural. You
[01:46:59] know, they're just a little in It's one
[01:47:00] person from each town or three people
[01:47:02] from each town who maybe meet each other
[01:47:04] or meet people from other towns and go,
[01:47:06] "Oh, you like to improve or try and
[01:47:09] build businesses or work on yourself or
[01:47:11] get in shape or do whatever." I'm going
[01:47:13] to become friends with you because it's
[01:47:14] really hard to find other people that
[01:47:16] are like you.
[01:47:17] And yeah, that's why
[01:47:20] I mean, did you know this. The UK had
[01:47:22] the second highest millionaire exits in
[01:47:24] 2024. Yeah. Number one was China, even
[01:47:27] though they've got, you know, 20 times
[01:47:29] the population, and the UK was number
[01:47:32] two. Like 10,000 people, I think, left
[01:47:34] China. 3,000 millionaires left the UK in
[01:47:37] 2024.
[01:47:39] But we do not have that many
[01:47:40] millionaires. And the founder of Revolut
[01:47:44] left. I think his tax bill is the
[01:47:47] equivalent of tens of thousands of
[01:47:49] normal people.
[01:47:51] And he left because the entrepreneurial
[01:47:52] landscape is not fantastic. Now, dude, I
[01:47:54] I love the UK. I miss my friends in the
[01:47:57] UK. There's lots of things that I like
[01:47:59] about it, but the quality of life is not
[01:48:01] that fantastic. The weather
[01:48:03] sucks. The weather blows. And you get
[01:48:07] taxed very, very highly. Plus, the
[01:48:08] culture is not particularly supportive.
[01:48:10] It's not It's not
[01:48:12] a supportive environment to try and do
[01:48:14] something different or to be an
[01:48:15] entrepreneur. And that is a death spiral
[01:48:17] because fewer and fewer people will try,
[01:48:19] and of the people that do and succeed,
[01:48:21] they leave.
[01:48:22] So, it It's This is why the UK's
[01:48:24] struggling a little bit at the moment.
[01:48:26] And it It's a top-down. They need to be
[01:48:28] more pro-entrepreneurial
[01:48:31] initiatives so that people want to do
[01:48:33] it, and it needs to be bottom-up, as
[01:48:34] well. The culture needs to change.
[01:48:36] People need to start to celebrate those
[01:48:37] that are doing different things, that
[01:48:38] are trying, even if they're failing.
[01:48:41] Interesting. And the same
[01:48:43] something similar this that I also read
[01:48:45] that in Dubai, I was just reading
[01:48:47] specifically about Dubai and UAE,
[01:48:50] the highest number of buyers who were
[01:48:54] foreign, who had never been, like,
[01:48:56] newcomers, were British in 2025.
[01:48:58] >> Doesn't surprise me. Doesn't surprise
[01:49:00] me.
[01:49:00] >> And Dubai is like for Indians,
[01:49:03] it's like a hub. Like, it's We almost
[01:49:05] call it it's a part of India. Yeah.
[01:49:07] Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's so
[01:49:08] close to us. Like, there's a joke that
[01:49:10] the most expensive city in India is
[01:49:11] Dubai. Brilliant.
[01:49:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even after that, the
[01:49:15] newcomers, people who are coming for the
[01:49:16] first time and buying their houses and
[01:49:18] living there, were highest with
[01:49:19] Britishers. So, they are like just
[01:49:21] moving all around the world now.
[01:49:22] >> I think I think Dubai took the highest
[01:49:24] number of millionaire exits from the UK,
[01:49:26] I think of one country. Dubai's not that
[01:49:28] big, dude. It's basically a very large
[01:49:30] city. Yeah.
[01:49:31] >> It's one very large city. True.
[01:49:33] >> And then It's not even large. Well,
[01:49:35] yeah, that's right. And and some desert
[01:49:36] around it and the sea. So, yeah. Yeah.
[01:49:40] Crazy. Coming back to our UK, US, India
[01:49:43] conversation, okay? Like I really love
[01:49:44] that.
[01:49:46] What do you think is this
[01:49:50] So, okay, let let me just point out
[01:49:51] things that you said. You said there are
[01:49:53] people in US
[01:49:54] who
[01:49:56] who think that they're entitled to be
[01:49:58] some, you know, Sometimes I think I
[01:49:59] don't There are people like some adults
[01:50:01] who want something because they thought
[01:50:03] as when they were growing up, they were
[01:50:05] promised the world. Now, they're not
[01:50:07] being given that world. Also, just to
[01:50:08] add another wrinkle in that is if you
[01:50:11] live in a meritocracy, especially a
[01:50:13] capitalist meritocracy, which the US
[01:50:15] absolutely is, if the people who win are
[01:50:18] worthy of their successes,
[01:50:20] what does that say about the people that
[01:50:22] lose?
[01:50:23] They're worthy of their losses.
[01:50:25] Right? You are completely in charge of
[01:50:27] the outcomes that you get in life.
[01:50:28] And that means that if you don't get the
[01:50:30] outcomes you want in life, it feels like
[01:50:32] a personal insult.
[01:50:34] It feels like you are not enough. You're
[01:50:36] not good enough. You should have been
[01:50:37] better. And if only you'd worked harder
[01:50:39] or done something else,
[01:50:41] you could have become that. Whereas in
[01:50:43] the UK,
[01:50:44] your path is kind of predestined
[01:50:47] a little.
[01:50:48] And I think that that restricts what
[01:50:51] people believe and hope, but it also
[01:50:53] makes them kind of take the hands off
[01:50:55] the wheel somewhat.
[01:50:57] You know, you know how how high could I
[01:50:59] climb?
[01:51:00] How high could I climb? For instance, I
[01:51:02] remember this.
[01:51:03] When I used to play cricket when I was
[01:51:05] uh 11 or 12 years old, so you'll know
[01:51:06] this. Do you Do you have the term thanks
[01:51:09] for coming in India when you play
[01:51:11] cricket? It's called a TFC, thanks for
[01:51:14] coming. And it's when you don't bat and
[01:51:15] you don't bowl. Okay. And the captain
[01:51:17] The captain at the end of the game
[01:51:18] shakes your hand and goes, "Thanks for
[01:51:19] coming, mate." Because all you've done
[01:51:21] is field, right? And um I remember that
[01:51:24] I used to sometimes have this weird
[01:51:26] sense of
[01:51:28] satisfaction if I had a TFC because I
[01:51:32] knew that I didn't have the opportunity
[01:51:33] to fail.
[01:51:36] You know, I didn't bat, so I couldn't
[01:51:37] get out or score low. I didn't bowl, so
[01:51:40] I couldn't have bowled a couple of overs
[01:51:41] and got taken off cuz I bowled badly or
[01:51:43] something like that. Got hit for 18 in
[01:51:45] two overs or something and then the
[01:51:46] captain's like, "Sorry, mate. Take a
[01:51:47] Take a spell." Um and that, I think, is
[01:51:51] partly, you know, fear, it's avoidance,
[01:51:54] it's certainly a bit of me. I'm not
[01:51:55] saying that British culture's got that
[01:51:57] much to do with it, but I certainly do
[01:51:59] see
[01:52:00] uh
[01:52:01] people in the UK inoculating themselves
[01:52:04] from failing publicly by assuring their
[01:52:07] failure privately, by not even engaging,
[01:52:10] right? If I don't try, I can't fail, at
[01:52:12] least publicly. And remember when status
[01:52:14] is such a big deal and if trying and
[01:52:16] failing is this huge big catastrophe,
[01:52:19] you don't want to try and fail.
[01:52:20] It'd be easier just to not try. Yeah.
[01:52:22] Yeah, I agree. This is same in India, by
[01:52:24] the way.
[01:52:25] But
[01:52:26] shame, embarrassment attached to
[01:52:28] failure. Yeah. I came off a a moped in
[01:52:31] Bali 10 years ago. So I'm It's just the
[01:52:33] most
[01:52:36] garden-variety, standard-issue, stupid
[01:52:39] white tourist thing to do. I rent a
[01:52:41] moped for 50 cent a day, okay? And I'm
[01:52:44] riding down the street, truck pulls out
[01:52:46] in front of me, I pull both of the
[01:52:47] brakes. The back brake is completely
[01:52:49] gone because the bike was worth 50 cent
[01:52:52] a day. The front brake goes, the bike
[01:52:54] slides out from underneath me. You'll
[01:52:55] have remember when you were riding a
[01:52:56] pushbike as a kid, you pull the front
[01:52:58] brake, the bike goes. And uh I come off
[01:53:00] the bike and I the whole side of my arm,
[01:53:03] up on my shoulder, the outside of my
[01:53:05] knee, the top of my foot, just me versus
[01:53:07] Balinese road in a tiny pair of swim
[01:53:09] shorts and a vest. I lost, right?
[01:53:11] Balinese road won. It was a
[01:53:12] TKO.
[01:53:14] The first emotion that I felt as I stood
[01:53:17] up having just come off this bike,
[01:53:20] bleeding, covered in grazes and scrapes,
[01:53:23] and you know, no skin left on one side
[01:53:25] of my body, the first emotion that I
[01:53:27] felt was embarrassment.
[01:53:28] The first emotion that I felt was shame.
[01:53:30] It wasn't fear for my own life, my own
[01:53:32] health, whether or not I'd going to get
[01:53:34] infected, how am I going to deal with
[01:53:35] this, can I get home safely. It was
[01:53:38] ah
[01:53:39] this sort of British
[01:53:41] >> [sighs]
[01:53:42] >> Are people seeing? Are they laughing at
[01:53:43] me? That was the first emotion that I
[01:53:45] had.
[01:53:46] But isn't that good?
[01:53:48] Because that actually motivates you to
[01:53:50] become better.
[01:53:51] I think so.
[01:53:52] >> Let me let me be more specific with the
[01:53:53] shame question on this.
[01:53:55] Do you think if a society if you're born
[01:53:58] in a society where
[01:54:00] you're motivated or demotivated by shame
[01:54:03] and you attach your sense of worth
[01:54:07] by the fact how much shame you're going
[01:54:08] to uh
[01:54:09] be experiencing in in the eyes of
[01:54:11] society.
[01:54:13] Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
[01:54:15] Well, it certainly makes sure that
[01:54:16] people behave in a prosocial manner.
[01:54:20] Right? The judgment of others, people
[01:54:22] don't want that.
[01:54:23] So, that's good.
[01:54:26] I don't like shame as an emotion. I
[01:54:28] don't think it's a powerful tool. I
[01:54:29] think that you're better off trying to
[01:54:31] get people to do what they should do
[01:54:35] through incentivizing them as opposed to
[01:54:37] punishing them. I think punishment
[01:54:38] largely is, especially in the modern
[01:54:40] world, unless somebody's broken the law
[01:54:42] or done something, you know, like
[01:54:43] genuinely unethical.
[01:54:45] Like, well, you get shamed for trying
[01:54:46] and failing.
[01:54:48] Really?
[01:54:49] Really? That's the middle you I felt I
[01:54:52] felt the fear of shame of bowling and
[01:54:55] bowling badly or of batting and not
[01:54:57] scoring well.
[01:54:59] Or of coming off a moped and it being
[01:55:02] because of my skill on a moped, which it
[01:55:04] wasn't. I mean, I also don't have great
[01:55:06] skills on a moped, but it was
[01:55:08] because I got a bike that I hadn't
[01:55:10] checked the brakes off fully. I didn't
[01:55:12] think that in
[01:55:13] you would be able to rent a bike where
[01:55:15] the back brake didn't work.
[01:55:17] Okay, but is that really worthy of
[01:55:19] shame? I don't think so. So, look, shame
[01:55:22] can be useful, but
[01:55:24] it needs to be useful around very
[01:55:25] specific things. Does it incentivize
[01:55:27] people to work harder? Kind of, but I
[01:55:29] would rather encourage them to work
[01:55:30] harder than punish them to work harder.
[01:55:33] Do you think that people should become
[01:55:34] shameless?
[01:55:35] No. No, you need your shame. It's very
[01:55:37] important. This is where I will stand up
[01:55:38] for my British heritage. It's very
[01:55:39] important to have shame, right? Because
[01:55:41] without shame, you can become a very
[01:55:44] antisocial psychopath. You can start to
[01:55:46] use people in ways that are unethical.
[01:55:48] You can hurt people and do things that
[01:55:50] you shouldn't do. So, I think shame's
[01:55:51] important.
[01:55:52] >> So, let me make it easy for people,
[01:55:53] okay? To because I like this
[01:55:55] conversation and a lot of people would
[01:55:56] relate to it because we've all felt
[01:55:58] embarrassed and shamed uh shameful
[01:56:01] in some part or some situation of our
[01:56:03] lives, right?
[01:56:05] Give me some sort of framework or
[01:56:07] something to think about in what kind of
[01:56:09] situation I should feel shame and in
[01:56:11] what situation I should not. Hm. Okay,
[01:56:14] that's interesting.
[01:56:19] I think shame is useful.
[01:56:22] Shame is certainly useful when your
[01:56:24] actions have
[01:56:25] damaged or hurt other people, not just
[01:56:28] you.
[01:56:29] You know, if I uh bat badly,
[01:56:34] yeah, I guess it's influenced the team,
[01:56:36] but really shame around that. Did you
[01:56:38] try? I think another thing is did you
[01:56:40] try to do this? Good example. I was I
[01:56:42] was thinking about you should feel shame
[01:56:44] if you said to your captain that you're
[01:56:45] going to turn up and play,
[01:56:47] but you didn't.
[01:56:48] You just didn't want to and you didn't
[01:56:49] tell him and he played with 10 men. Or
[01:56:51] had to get his uncle who doesn't play
[01:56:53] cricket.
[01:56:54] Uh you shouldn't feel shame if you set
[01:56:57] off on time but hit traffic and got
[01:56:59] locked up in some insane traffic jam on
[01:57:01] the way there. You'll feel the same, "Oh
[01:57:03] my god, I've let my captain down." But
[01:57:06] in one of those, you could have done
[01:57:08] differently and didn't, and in another
[01:57:10] it was kind of out of your hands. Also,
[01:57:12] if you do something that's just on you,
[01:57:14] where you did something that's brave and
[01:57:15] courageous and kind of aligned with what
[01:57:17] is generally pro-social values, good.
[01:57:20] Keep going.
[01:57:21] If it's not, like you know what I mean?
[01:57:24] You do some crypto pump and dump rug
[01:57:26] pull thing, like yeah, feel a ton
[01:57:28] of shame. You should do. That was a bad
[01:57:30] thing to do. Get this to like let us
[01:57:33] extrapolate this particular insight to
[01:57:36] s-
[01:57:37] speaking out freely. Mhm. Should people
[01:57:40] be shameful without when they say
[01:57:42] something with their which they're
[01:57:44] thinking about and probably can be
[01:57:47] not aligned with the societal values. I
[01:57:50] guess it depends on what they say. You
[01:57:52] know, I mean
[01:57:53] >> And but it's so subjective because
[01:57:54] freedom of speech
[01:57:56] is so subjective.
[01:57:57] >> it is.
[01:57:58] >> In in like some countries you can be
[01:58:00] jailed for saying one thing, in another
[01:58:01] country it's completely fine.
[01:58:03] >> Well, look, So should people be feeling
[01:58:05] shameful? Well, it depends what you say.
[01:58:08] And it very much depends what you say.
[01:58:09] >> So how do they actually put out the
[01:58:11] filter? Wisdom. Right? This is what
[01:58:13] taste the difference between good and
[01:58:15] not good. That's what we're looking to
[01:58:17] try and achieve here. And this is why as
[01:58:20] people get older, they tend to become
[01:58:22] wiser because it takes experience. You
[01:58:24] can't speed run this stuff. It's going
[01:58:26] to take you time to work out
[01:58:29] how do I have a difficult conversation
[01:58:30] with my partner in a way that doesn't
[01:58:32] hurt them and that seems genuine and
[01:58:35] honest and gentle but firm and it holds
[01:58:37] a boundary. That's very skillful. Very,
[01:58:40] very skillful. How do I hold this bat
[01:58:41] correctly? How do I play a nice cover
[01:58:43] drive? But okay, it's going to take a
[01:58:44] little bit of time to do and it's
[01:58:47] accumulated one step, one day, one
[01:58:50] interaction, one iteration at a time.
[01:58:53] Do you think it's important to have that
[01:58:55] kind of experience to learn wisdom?
[01:58:57] Yeah. Yeah, you can I don't think you
[01:58:59] can speed run wisdom.
[01:59:00] Do you think it's important to actually
[01:59:01] also suffer in order to get there?
[01:59:04] It's certainly useful because when
[01:59:06] things go badly or when you suffer,
[01:59:09] you assess your actions with a level of
[01:59:13] dexterity and resolution
[01:59:16] that you don't when things are going
[01:59:17] well. When you're brushing up against
[01:59:20] the grain of life,
[01:59:23] you look at your actions so much more
[01:59:25] closely as opposed to when you're just
[01:59:26] going with the flow. When things are
[01:59:28] going well, well,
[01:59:29] you know, like I'll assess how stuff is,
[01:59:31] but I don't really need to look at it
[01:59:32] that closely. But if you've just gone
[01:59:34] through a breakup or you've lost a
[01:59:35] parent or your business has gone under,
[01:59:39] you're going to try and work out why
[01:59:40] that happened and you're going to try
[01:59:41] and make sure it doesn't happen again.
[01:59:43] And that's why you assess things very,
[01:59:44] very closely. And I think that that's
[01:59:46] great periods of growth. There's
[01:59:48] wonderful line, adversity is a terrible
[01:59:50] thing to waste.
[01:59:52] Adversity is a terrible thing to waste
[01:59:54] cuz during your toughest moments, that
[01:59:56] is when most growth is available. But
[01:59:58] not everybody is catalyzed by adversity.
[02:00:00] Some people are crushed by it. And it's
[02:00:03] a case of asking how are you going to
[02:00:04] respond? Life has kicked you in the
[02:00:06] nuts. How are you going to respond?
[02:00:08] Who do you think are the people who
[02:00:10] actually
[02:00:12] come off better out of adversities
[02:00:14] versus people who don't?
[02:00:19] Uh people who were able to alchemize it
[02:00:21] into something good.
[02:00:23] People who were able to say
[02:00:24] that situation was very difficult to me.
[02:00:28] I'm going to keep going. I mean, it's
[02:00:30] definitely not the people that give up.
[02:00:31] I can guarantee that the one way to
[02:00:34] ensure that you fail is to give up when
[02:00:35] you face adversity.
[02:00:37] That feels a lot like victim blaming,
[02:00:39] right? You don't know how hard it is. I
[02:00:40] dude, I get it. Break up and lost a mom
[02:00:43] and broke a leg in the same week. Phew.
[02:00:46] That's rough.
[02:00:47] But
[02:00:49] you do have two choices when this
[02:00:51] situation happens. Like either give up
[02:00:54] or not.
[02:00:56] And for me, I think the not is always
[02:00:58] the way to go.
[02:00:59] Are you just wired that way or somebody
[02:01:01] taught you this? Wired that way and I
[02:01:04] want to be that way.
[02:01:06] Because I want to be that way. More. Are
[02:01:08] they two different things?
[02:01:10] I think so. Uh I think there's a
[02:01:12] difference between what is my
[02:01:13] disposition or predis- disposition
[02:01:16] and where do I want to be? Like your
[02:01:18] predisposition might be to be fat and
[02:01:20] out of shape.
[02:01:21] But I don't want to be that way. I want
[02:01:23] to train. I want to be in good shape. I
[02:01:24] want my health to be good for me so that
[02:01:26] I can operate well, so that I can enjoy
[02:01:27] life, so that I can have a long, healthy
[02:01:28] life, so that I can support my family,
[02:01:30] pick my kids up and my wife and da da da
[02:01:31] da da.
[02:01:33] Okay? That's not your disposition,
[02:01:35] right? [clears throat] That's not your
[02:01:36] traits.
[02:01:37] But it is what you've trained yourself
[02:01:39] into doing.
[02:01:41] And self-authorship, self-determination,
[02:01:44] agency, they're very, very important to
[02:01:46] me. Very important. Do you think people
[02:01:48] who change and come off better, they're
[02:01:50] always operating from the point of I'm
[02:01:52] not enough? It's a great question. So
[02:01:56] there is
[02:01:57] certainly a limit to how much personal
[02:02:00] development you should rabidly do.
[02:02:04] Right? If you're in your late 60s and
[02:02:07] still operating from the not enough
[02:02:08] energy,
[02:02:09] I get the sense, especially if you've
[02:02:11] been doing it for a long time. If you've
[02:02:12] just entered the world of personal
[02:02:13] development in your 60s, sorry, dude,
[02:02:14] you got to pay your dues, right? But uh
[02:02:17] I think there's a period, usually as far
[02:02:19] as I can see, between sort of 5 and 15
[02:02:21] years,
[02:02:22] where people work off of the not enough
[02:02:24] energy.
[02:02:25] Uh I need to change myself in order to
[02:02:28] be worthy, loved, belong, to matter.
[02:02:32] And then after a while, you realize
[02:02:35] I'm really glad that I made these
[02:02:37] changes, but I don't like the place that
[02:02:40] that motivation is coming from.
[02:02:43] And that is the next stage that you tend
[02:02:46] to get into.
[02:02:48] Uh
[02:02:49] I certainly think that you can generate
[02:02:51] a lot of growth through shame.
[02:02:53] Right? But after a while it just becomes
[02:02:55] toxic fuel, and it's sapping you from
[02:02:57] enjoying the one thing that you were
[02:02:59] here to do in any case, right? The
[02:03:00] reason that you wanted me to grow
[02:03:01] ultimately was so that you could enjoy
[02:03:03] life.
[02:03:03] >> Yeah.
[02:03:04] And if you're making yourself miserable
[02:03:06] in the pursuit of the thing which is
[02:03:07] supposed to make you happy,
[02:03:09] what are you
[02:03:10] What are we doing here?
[02:03:12] Right? You have to at some point begin
[02:03:14] to congratulate yourself at least a
[02:03:16] little bit.
[02:03:17] And what's that point? Again, it's very
[02:03:20] subjective, but
[02:03:22] typically it's when people have
[02:03:25] done a lot of the things that they
[02:03:26] thought they needed to do.
[02:03:28] Got themselves in shape, they fixed
[02:03:29] their attachment system, they've done
[02:03:31] some therapy, they've built a business,
[02:03:32] they've got some kind of financial
[02:03:34] freedom, they found a partner and
[02:03:35] related to them in a really deep and
[02:03:36] meaningful way.
[02:03:38] Okay, I've done a lot of these things,
[02:03:40] and I've got a meditation practice, and
[02:03:41] I learned that skill, and I got myself
[02:03:43] in shape.
[02:03:44] All right, I I've done these things.
[02:03:48] At what point do I feel like I've
[02:03:50] arrived? There's this idea called the
[02:03:52] arrival fallacy, which is we are
[02:03:54] constantly running toward goals like a
[02:03:56] man running toward the horizon. Every
[02:03:58] step that we take toward it, the goal
[02:04:00] moves one further step away.
[02:04:03] And if you have dedicated a good bit of
[02:04:06] time to trying to really make yourself
[02:04:09] into the sort of person you want to be,
[02:04:11] eventually you need to actually enjoy
[02:04:13] it. Or else this is just going to be a
[02:04:15] perpetual run toward the horizon, but
[02:04:17] you're not running toward the horizon,
[02:04:18] you're running toward your grave. And
[02:04:20] you will fall [snorts] into that grave
[02:04:22] looking back on a series of miserable
[02:04:24] successes as opposed to, "Wow, I really
[02:04:27] did that. Isn't that cool? I look at how
[02:04:29] much I changed myself, and I helped the
[02:04:31] people around me, too. That's good." And
[02:04:33] you need to congratulate yourself, dude.
[02:04:34] I don't think people congratulate
[02:04:35] themselves anywhere near enough. Another
[02:04:37] thing which like, which is India versus
[02:04:39] the West because we are talking about it
[02:04:40] and I'm going to end in this way only,
[02:04:43] right? Couple of questions on this.
[02:04:45] It's
[02:04:46] Do you know about the concept of
[02:04:47] arranged marriage? Yes. Yeah. So,
[02:04:50] in our part of the world, arranged
[02:04:52] marriage is
[02:04:54] most popular.
[02:04:55] Here or the love marriage, which one do
[02:04:56] you think? Because you I read your
[02:04:58] newsletter, like they're all about men,
[02:04:59] women, dating, and all that stuff. What
[02:05:02] do you think is better? I mean, the
[02:05:03] successes of arranged marriage seem
[02:05:04] pretty high. So, if you're just looking
[02:05:06] for an outcome I mean, I don't know how
[02:05:07] happy everybody is. They seem pretty
[02:05:09] happy. I don't know. Indian weddings are
[02:05:10] epic, dude. They last for like 5
[02:05:12] weeks. [laughter]
[02:05:12] Your guys's Your guys's weddings last
[02:05:14] for months. Um
[02:05:17] See, happiness level they both
[02:05:19] if you talk about
[02:05:22] both parts of the world, people aren't
[02:05:23] happy.
[02:05:24] Uh
[02:05:25] it's just here you can file for a
[02:05:27] divorce, there
[02:05:28] probably if 100 people want to file
[02:05:30] divorce,
[02:05:31] maybe 0.1% people. No one. But because
[02:05:34] rest of the people, they have been told
[02:05:36] to compromise and be in a broken
[02:05:38] marriage because societally it's a
[02:05:40] society According to society, it's a bad
[02:05:42] thing. It's a bad sign. So, you have to
[02:05:44] live under that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[02:05:46] You're being ostracized if you decided
[02:05:47] to do it.
[02:05:50] I I don't know, dude. I mean, look, the
[02:05:53] the success of marriage at the moment in
[02:05:54] the West is not fantastic.
[02:05:56] Do we go to an arranged marriage
[02:05:58] solution? I'm not sure, but uh
[02:06:01] I certainly think that there's a lot
[02:06:03] There's a lot to be said for
[02:06:08] the prob- the the challenges of
[02:06:10] optionality. Like too much choice is a
[02:06:13] really it sounds like something that you
[02:06:16] want, but functionally ends up being an
[02:06:18] absolute catastrophe.
[02:06:20] Now, if you can always sort of swipe
[02:06:21] your partner away,
[02:06:23] how why why stick about to make this
[02:06:25] work? It's hard. Relationships are hard.
[02:06:28] And if you know that there is an
[02:06:30] infinite number of people coming down
[02:06:32] the pipe. I think
[02:06:33] people
[02:06:34] leave
[02:06:36] marriages and relationships sooner than
[02:06:38] they should. There's a certain cohort of
[02:06:40] people that leave way later or don't
[02:06:42] leave at all and should have done, and I
[02:06:43] understand.
[02:06:44] But, it seems to me like
[02:06:48] a little bit more India would perhaps be
[02:06:52] some more of that social pressure might
[02:06:53] be useful. Mhm. What do you think is the
[02:06:56] single most uncomfortable thing
[02:06:59] which men and women today needs to hear
[02:07:01] about why relationship is failing in the
[02:07:04] world where there it looks like there
[02:07:06] are unlimited options?
[02:07:13] It's very hard to
[02:07:17] force [snorts] desire.
[02:07:19] And this is maybe one of the biggest
[02:07:21] challenges of arranged marriage.
[02:07:25] The The The people that we desire and
[02:07:26] the things that we like are
[02:07:30] not really of our making.
[02:07:33] Like, yeah, being around someone can
[02:07:35] cause you to become familiar with them,
[02:07:36] and that familiarity can lead to desire.
[02:07:39] But, you don't really get to choose
[02:07:41] who you love.
[02:07:43] And assuming that you want to be in love
[02:07:44] with the person that you're partnered
[02:07:45] with,
[02:07:48] you can't really force that. And that's
[02:07:50] both
[02:07:51] magical
[02:07:53] because it means that it kind of comes
[02:07:54] out of nowhere and that feels like a
[02:07:57] blessing
[02:07:58] and terrifying because it can take a be
[02:08:00] taken away from you or be taken away
[02:08:03] from your partner
[02:08:04] without them choosing and really without
[02:08:06] you doing anything.
[02:08:08] You can't engineer your way
[02:08:10] into
[02:08:12] love
[02:08:13] in the same way
[02:08:14] as you can engineer your way into
[02:08:17] a good body or something. Like, yeah,
[02:08:19] there's ways that you can reliably make
[02:08:21] someone more or less likely to fall in
[02:08:23] love with you or more or less likely to
[02:08:24] fall out of love with you.
[02:08:26] You don't get to
[02:08:27] You don't get to force desire in that
[02:08:29] way, and I think
[02:08:32] we we don't like to hear that because it
[02:08:34] makes our relationship feel like it's
[02:08:36] outside of our control.
[02:08:37] Both as the person who may fall into
[02:08:39] love and the person who may fall out of
[02:08:41] love
[02:08:42] uh is that's that's pretty
[02:08:43] uncomfortable. But desire is a tricky
[02:08:45] thing, right?
[02:08:47] Like you just can't operate out of
[02:08:49] desire.
[02:08:51] No, of course not, but it it
[02:08:53] a relationship that has no desire in it
[02:08:55] Yeah, that's also bad.
[02:08:57] >> to be horrendous.
[02:08:57] >> But this the relationship which is only
[02:09:00] built on the foundation of only desire
[02:09:02] It's also not good. No, no, no, you need
[02:09:03] compatibility, you need to have a degree
[02:09:05] of regulation, friendship, like the
[02:09:08] I think that everybody should get into a
[02:09:09] relationship with a podcaster. I think
[02:09:11] that's my that's that's my that's my
[02:09:13] number one piece of advice. And the
[02:09:14] reason is the hold on, I know this
[02:09:16] sounds self-serving.
[02:09:17] Uh the reason is
[02:09:21] a relationship is basically one long
[02:09:23] conversation.
[02:09:25] The sort of person that you're looking
[02:09:27] for is someone you can speak to for
[02:09:28] 20,000 hours and not get bored.
[02:09:31] Because ultimately that's what you're
[02:09:32] going to be doing. You're going to be
[02:09:33] relating to this person.
[02:09:35] Talking.
[02:09:37] Are they do they interest you? Do they
[02:09:39] surprise you with their opinions? Are
[02:09:40] they learning and growing? Do they make
[02:09:42] you become more of you?
[02:09:45] Can you sit in silence and not need to
[02:09:46] fill it? Can you speak without a filter?
[02:09:49] Like these are really, really important
[02:09:50] things. I guess one of the interesting
[02:09:52] insight around relationships
[02:09:56] most the success of most relationships
[02:09:59] is determined by the bad times, not the
[02:10:01] good ones.
[02:10:03] So
[02:10:05] you don't want to judge whether or not
[02:10:07] your partner is the right person
[02:10:09] based on how many peak moments you have.
[02:10:13] You should judge it based on how well
[02:10:15] you deal with the bad ones
[02:10:16] because far more relationships end
[02:10:20] because
[02:10:21] a challenge occurs that you can't get
[02:10:22] through
[02:10:24] than because there are insufficient peak
[02:10:26] experience moments.
[02:10:28] Right? It's the bad times, not the good
[02:10:30] times, that make or break a
[02:10:31] relationship.
[02:10:33] People break up over arguments.
[02:10:35] They don't break up over
[02:10:37] slightly
[02:10:39] subpar holidays.
[02:10:42] You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
[02:10:44] Last two questions. Okay. One is about
[02:10:47] because we're on topic of
[02:10:50] men and women in relationships, there
[02:10:52] was something which I read from your uh
[02:10:55] post or like newsletter I think a while
[02:10:57] ago. I'm loosely paraphrasing it. Okay,
[02:10:59] it's about
[02:11:01] a lot of men
[02:11:04] they they choose their partner based on
[02:11:07] who's going to elevate their status in
[02:11:09] the room, some stuff like that. Right?
[02:11:11] Is
[02:11:11] Is that true?
[02:11:13] Uh I certainly think that people have
[02:11:14] trophy wives and trophy husbands. Yeah.
[02:11:17] So, a lot of people choose
[02:11:19] So, this is a men and women. I'm I'm
[02:11:21] going to let me paraphrase it
[02:11:23] rightly.
[02:11:25] Men choose their partner based on who's
[02:11:28] going to elevate their status in terms
[02:11:30] of looks. Women choose their partner
[02:11:32] based on
[02:11:34] who's the
[02:11:36] probably highest status or highest
[02:11:38] protector or highest like based on
[02:11:40] power. Mhm. So, looks versus power. Do
[02:11:42] you think that's true? To a degree,
[02:11:44] yeah. I would say that uh well, I
[02:11:46] it it it seems to show up in the data
[02:11:50] that men are more concerned with looks
[02:11:53] than women are on average.
[02:11:55] And that women are more concerned with
[02:11:58] resources and status than men are.
[02:12:01] Mhm. Very few guys will say or fewer
[02:12:04] guys
[02:12:05] will say, "Well, you know, she's she's
[02:12:08] not that hot or that cool, but dude,
[02:12:11] she's got a great job."
[02:12:13] And again, that's not to say that lots
[02:12:15] of women would want that relationship in
[02:12:17] the reverse, but it's more likely to
[02:12:19] hear that kind of thing. Again, massive
[02:12:21] generalizations, right right right.
[02:12:23] But
[02:12:24] That's what the data says. Your your
[02:12:26] research like your newsletter also spoke
[02:12:28] about certain data and research around
[02:12:30] it.
[02:12:30] >> Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So,
[02:12:32] yes, I think that
[02:12:34] the trophy wife, trophy husband thing
[02:12:36] tends to be more trophy wives than
[02:12:37] trophy husbands. Why do you think men
[02:12:39] choose looks and women choose more
[02:12:41] power?
[02:12:43] This is evolutionary, I would guess. Now
[02:12:46] it's changing so things should be
[02:12:47] changed right now. We are
[02:12:51] our preferences take a long time to
[02:12:52] update, dude.
[02:12:54] You know, a few million years to build
[02:12:55] us into the creatures that we are.
[02:12:58] But you because
[02:13:00] we don't need the same level of
[02:13:01] resources as we did
[02:13:04] 10,000 years ago when we weren't
[02:13:06] agriculturally developed and we didn't
[02:13:07] know whether or not we were going to
[02:13:08] have a a meal tomorrow.
[02:13:10] Um
[02:13:11] the dynamics that drove us then are
[02:13:12] still driving us now, all right? Like
[02:13:15] men are looking for fertility. Fertility
[02:13:17] is largely in youth. It's in long hair
[02:13:19] and good skin and good nails and
[02:13:22] women are looking for a guy that can
[02:13:24] protect them. Again, like this is the
[02:13:26] ancestral version of this. What is
[02:13:28] money? Like what is money when it comes
[02:13:30] to a mating
[02:13:32] market
[02:13:33] perspective? Yeah, it's
[02:13:35] this person has been able to accumulate
[02:13:37] a lot of spare resources.
[02:13:39] Uh and what are looks? Well, this person
[02:13:41] has got good genes and fertility. Like
[02:13:44] that it
[02:13:46] I was looking at a baby this morning as
[02:13:48] I walked to the coffee shop and
[02:13:50] this kid was so cute. It had this
[02:13:53] the corner of a cinnamon roll and it was
[02:13:55] shoving the cinnamon roll in its face.
[02:13:57] Like the cinnamon roll was this big and
[02:13:58] its mouth was this big. I was
[02:14:01] trying to shove the cinnamon roll in its
[02:14:02] face. I remember looking at it and
[02:14:03] going, "You That is the cutest
[02:14:06] thing."
[02:14:07] But the only reason that I think it's
[02:14:08] cute is because I I evolved to see that
[02:14:12] as cute.
[02:14:13] Some alien from another planet would see
[02:14:15] that baby and me as an equally
[02:14:17] disgusting or cute creature. Right,
[02:14:20] there's nothing special about that. It's
[02:14:22] simply because big eyes, blobby face,
[02:14:25] fat arms, small stature, like boneless
[02:14:28] sort of floppy thing, that's cute. But
[02:14:31] that's cute because it's evolutionary
[02:14:33] advantageous for it to be cute to us.
[02:14:35] And the same thing goes for this. Like,
[02:14:37] we can't go, "Oh, well, you know, babies
[02:14:38] have got daycare, so we don't need to
[02:14:40] find them cute anymore." Well, we do.
[02:14:42] It's the same reason that we find
[02:14:43] symmetrical faces attractive because it
[02:14:45] means that there's a low mutation load.
[02:14:47] Like, why do we find symmetrical faces
[02:14:48] attractive? Because the only way you can
[02:14:50] get a symmetrical face is with a low
[02:14:52] mutation load, which means that the
[02:14:54] Perfect example of this. Do you know why
[02:14:55] most Formula 1 drivers are good-looking?
[02:14:58] Have you ever thought about this?
[02:14:59] Formula 1 drivers, all of them are super
[02:15:01] chads. They're all like models. You're
[02:15:03] Why? Why would that be the case? Well,
[02:15:05] if you're performing at the absolute
[02:15:07] peak of reaction speed and ability to do
[02:15:11] spatial reasoning and and and spatial
[02:15:13] rotation,
[02:15:15] you need to have unbelievably
[02:15:17] slick and well-aligned
[02:15:20] genetics.
[02:15:21] Like, your predisposition has to be very
[02:15:23] very very
[02:15:24] and that means that's going to show up
[02:15:25] in your face.
[02:15:27] That's why all of the Formula 1 drivers
[02:15:28] are good-looking.
[02:15:30] I just thought that was funny.
[02:15:31] >> [laughter]
[02:15:32] >> That's true, though. That that that
[02:15:34] there might be some truth to it.
[02:15:36] >> I think it is. I I think it is true. I
[02:15:37] just
[02:15:38] >> Yeah. don't want to be chatting up a ton
[02:15:40] of Formula 1 drivers. Yeah. Do you think
[02:15:42] then
[02:15:44] do increase your mating value or like
[02:15:46] your value in the market, try Formula 1.
[02:15:49] >> [laughter]
[02:15:51] >> No, just pursuit of power is good?
[02:15:53] Yeah, I think so. I think so as a guy.
[02:15:55] >> That you can be a terrible person inside
[02:15:56] and just
[02:15:57] Well, I think that you I mean, there's
[02:15:58] lots of There's lots of terrible people
[02:16:00] that are powerful and have got into
[02:16:01] relationships. I wouldn't want to be in
[02:16:03] one with them. I wouldn't want to be in
[02:16:04] a relationship
[02:16:05] >> attract more?
[02:16:06] Uh to a degree, yeah. I think so. People
[02:16:09] look at power and
[02:16:12] bravado, and they see it as
[02:16:15] competence, which it's not. All right,
[02:16:17] you can fake competence with confidence
[02:16:19] and and ego and
[02:16:21] slick speaking.
[02:16:23] Uh and again, this is why to me somebody
[02:16:25] that's merely achieved becomes less
[02:16:28] interesting, less attractive to somebody
[02:16:30] who's achieved and has embodied it, has
[02:16:32] felt it, has overcome some difficulties.
[02:16:34] That's they've really got some skin in
[02:16:36] the game. Mhm.
[02:16:37] And
[02:16:38] you know, you can actually make that
[02:16:39] thing about world as well.
[02:16:42] Right? If you depict power,
[02:16:47] you almost win in almost every game, at
[02:16:50] least for short term.
[02:16:51] Yeah, and Like look at the world leaders
[02:16:53] [clears throat] right now.
[02:16:53] >> But, you also don't need to get power in
[02:16:56] a way which is unethical.
[02:16:59] You can accumulate power by being a good
[02:17:01] person.
[02:17:02] Now, it might be quicker or easier to
[02:17:03] accumulate power whilst being a bad
[02:17:04] person,
[02:17:05] but you don't need to.
[02:17:08] Again, I'm not that interested in people
[02:17:10] that have accumulated power. I'm
[02:17:11] interested in people that have
[02:17:11] accumulated power and kept their
[02:17:13] humanity.
[02:17:14] Do you think we should change this
[02:17:15] definition to what you are saying?
[02:17:16] Because
[02:17:20] we just celebrate people who are power.
[02:17:21] We don't care about other human anymore
[02:17:23] or not. Correct. So, I mean, a good
[02:17:25] example here is Kanye West. Kanye West
[02:17:27] just sold out two nights at SoFi Stadium
[02:17:29] in
[02:17:30] California in in in LA.
[02:17:33] Uh
[02:17:33] I think his music's great. He hasn't
[02:17:35] been the best person over the last half
[02:17:38] decade, right? Lots of things that I'm
[02:17:39] sure that he regrets saying. Lots of
[02:17:41] actions I'm sure he regrets taking.
[02:17:44] Sold out SoFi Stadium two nights in a
[02:17:46] row. Everybody just three hours of
[02:17:48] straight bangers.
[02:17:51] If you're successful and powerful,
[02:17:53] people will forgive an awful lot of
[02:17:54] crimes.
[02:17:56] Kanye West.
[02:17:58] So, here is my
[02:18:00] second last question to you, which is
[02:18:03] about on like on the power thing.
[02:18:06] How
[02:18:07] like
[02:18:08] What do you tell to let's say an
[02:18:11] 18-year-old or a 20-year-old who's
[02:18:12] listening to this right now, who seems
[02:18:15] to look around and see that every
[02:18:17] powerful person is being celebrated, so
[02:18:19] that person just wants power?
[02:18:22] Because he sees a powerful jerk in his
[02:18:25] college or school gets to get along with
[02:18:27] the best girls. He sees the most
[02:18:29] powerful
[02:18:31] guy, whether ethical or unethical, gets
[02:18:34] to become the president of the world.
[02:18:36] Like just power is being celebrated,
[02:18:39] being bully is being celebrated, being
[02:18:42] just bravado is being celebrated without
[02:18:44] being human.
[02:18:45] How do we change definition in someone's
[02:18:47] head who's 18? Be like, "Hey, being
[02:18:50] human is
[02:18:51] also good way to celebrate your life."
[02:18:54] People look at powerful people who are
[02:18:56] jerks and assume that the reason they're
[02:18:58] powerful is because they're a jerk.
[02:19:00] But that's not true.
[02:19:01] They're powerful in spite of being a
[02:19:03] jerk.
[02:19:04] And people don't want to be around
[02:19:06] jerks. They do want to be around people
[02:19:07] that are powerful. So, if you're a
[02:19:09] powerful jerk, you've done it in spite
[02:19:11] of your jerkiness.
[02:19:13] It's as simple as that.
[02:19:15] You don't need to be a bad person in
[02:19:16] order to become successful. And then
[02:19:18] what's that line about you sell your
[02:19:19] soul and win the world? Like you you do
[02:19:22] not want to do that. You'll look back on
[02:19:23] a series of miserable successes that you
[02:19:25] don't want to tell anybody about.
[02:19:27] Uh
[02:19:29] Look,
[02:19:30] or alternatively, you're 18, 20 years
[02:19:33] old, like try it. Try Try and accumulate
[02:19:35] power as quickly as possible. Find out
[02:19:37] that it's hollow. Win complete your
[02:19:39] ambitions so that you can be free of
[02:19:40] them. Win the game so you know that you
[02:19:41] don't need to play it anymore.
[02:19:43] And then go and play something more
[02:19:44] important. It's fine. Like if you're
[02:19:46] really, really driven to accumulate a
[02:19:47] ton of power, have a go. Have a go. See
[02:19:49] how it works out for you.
[02:19:51] I need to I don't need to teach you that
[02:19:52] you shouldn't do it. I think it's
[02:19:53] quicker to achieve your ambitions than
[02:19:55] it is to rid yourself of them.
[02:19:57] So, just go and achieve the ambition,
[02:19:59] find out that it's hollow, remember this
[02:20:00] bit of this podcast, go
[02:20:04] Okay, now I've done it, I can be free of
[02:20:06] it.
[02:20:07] Yeah.
[02:20:08] Yeah. What's power for you?
[02:20:11] I don't think about power all that much.
[02:20:12] I really don't. Define power.
[02:20:15] Influence.
[02:20:16] Influence, uh the the the ability the
[02:20:19] ability to do what you want, the ability
[02:20:21] to get other people to follow you when
[02:20:22] needed. Uh
[02:20:25] I don't think about power all that much.
[02:20:26] I want sovereignty. I want not to be
[02:20:28] told what to do by other people. I want
[02:20:30] to be able to determine my own life. I
[02:20:31] want agency. I want to be able to be
[02:20:32] intentional.
[02:20:35] Not so fussed about power.
[02:20:37] But you never achieve complete
[02:20:39] complete agency ever.
[02:20:41] No, not ever, but I'll try and get close
[02:20:43] to it. Thank you so much. I appreciate
[02:20:45] you, man. Thank you. My first Indian
[02:20:47] podcast, we did it.
[02:20:48] >> Yes.
[02:20:48] >> Yes.
[02:20:49] We've recolonized the internet.
[02:20:51] >> [laughter]
[02:20:53] >> I love the fact that you apologize.
[02:20:55] Yeah, I'm so I felt like I was being
[02:20:56] shouted at for a while, but
[02:20:58] dude, I appreciate the hell out of you.
[02:21:00] Um Thanks, dude. It's been really
[02:21:02] lovely. Thank you so much. Appreciate
[02:21:04] you, man.
[02:21:06] All right. How are you? Very good. Good
[02:21:08] to see you, man.
[02:21:09] >> on? Okay.
[02:21:10] Hello, sir. Hello. How are you? I'm
[02:21:12] good. What's up, man?
[02:21:13] >> [music]
[02:21:13] >> What's cracking? How are you? I'm good.
[02:21:16] I'm a little I was talking to the boys.
[02:21:17] I'm a little jet lagged. I think I'm
[02:21:18] more jet lagged than you guys are. But
[02:21:20] you're coming from Emirates. Oh, thank
[02:21:22] you so much. I was hoping that you're
[02:21:23] going to get this.
[02:21:25] You've done a good job with this, dude.
[02:21:26] Well done. Thank you. Turning around a
[02:21:30] simple Airbnb into a uh
[02:21:33] fully fledged studio. Wow, I'm excited,
[02:21:35] man. Thank you for doing this. No,
[02:21:37] you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for
[02:21:38] coming out. I appreciate. It's not
[02:21:39] exactly around the corner, so.
[02:21:42] But it's nothing like your studio, man.
[02:21:44] You're the way you produce is insane.
[02:21:47] >> Thank you. Why do you do that? Like I I
[02:21:48] was just very curious to you as a
[02:21:50] podcaster? I like pretty things.
[02:21:53] I like
[02:21:55] aesthetic stuff, dude. Like I I I think
[02:21:58] um
[02:21:59] podcasting's
[02:22:00] great because it's seamless and anybody
[02:22:02] can do it. Mhm. But I
[02:22:05] I don't know. I think it elevates the
[02:22:06] experience a little bit to look at
[02:22:08] something beautiful
[02:22:10] uh while listening to something
[02:22:11] interesting as opposed to just listening
[02:22:13] to something interesting while looking
[02:22:14] at something a bit ugly.
[02:22:15] >> [music]
[02:22:15] >> You keep changing it. Like you just want
[02:22:17] to make Is that Well, if you're a band
[02:22:20] and and you release a new album and the
[02:22:21] album's got a different feel to it, you
[02:22:23] change the artwork, right? If I'm having
[02:22:25] a conversation that's really dark and
[02:22:28] moody, I don't want to do it in a big
[02:22:29] airy space. I want to do it somewhere
[02:22:31] that feels a bit gritty.
[02:22:32] And then if I'm having a conversation
[02:22:34] that's sort of soft and fluffy with a
[02:22:35] woman, I don't necessarily want to do
[02:22:37] that somewhere that feels really
[02:22:38] hardcore.
[02:22:39] >> [music]
[02:22:39] >> So, I don't know. I just feels like
[02:22:42] But do you have a question then maybe
[02:22:44] then that
[02:22:46] Oh.
[02:22:48] My shoes are the dishwasher. Brilliant.
[02:22:50] We've gotten our BDS now. That's okay.
[02:22:53] Good. Good. Good. [laughter]
[02:22:54] Look, dude. Even I can't open my own
[02:22:55] drinks without exploding them
[02:22:57] everywhere. It's fine. Thank you so much
[02:22:59] for watching this episode till the end.
[02:23:01] Now you have to do three things. Number
[02:23:03] one, subscribe to this channel right
[02:23:05] now. The more you subscribe, the better
[02:23:07] the guest we will be able to get for
[02:23:09] you.
[02:23:10] Number two, please comment and let us
[02:23:12] know what did we do wrong and what did
[02:23:15] we do right because the more you give us
[02:23:17] feedback, the better we will be able to
[02:23:19] make episodes for you. And number three,
[02:23:22] please share this episode with at least
[02:23:24] one person because one conversation can
[02:23:27] change someone's entire life. I'll see
[02:23:30] you next time. Until then, keep figuring
[02:23:31] out.
[02:23:32] >> [music]