jordan peterson

four three two one boom and we're live 12 rules for life so without reading
0:09
this so what you're saying is there's only 12 things you need to know
0:15
in life right that's it yeah well yeah this um this interview that you just did
0:20
with this woman uh kathy newman was that in the uk it was channel 4 uk um i just went i i
felt bad but i was
0:28
also laughing i went to her twitter page to read like and in with each one of her
0:33
tweets no matter what she says someone writes underneath it so what you're saying is and
then some ridicul
0:39
but by the way the your fans were mocking her but politely
0:47
non-aggressively there were i didn't read any rude things like there was no there was there
0:52
was no insults or there were well maybe a few insults but there's no swears it was
0:57
just playful mocking of the interview that she did with you because the interview was
ridiculous it was a
1:03
ridiculous interview and i listened to it or watched it several times i was like this is so strange
1:09
like her determination to turn it into a conflict to it's one of the issues that i have
1:14
with television shows yeah because they have a very limited amount of time and they're
trying to make things as salacious as possible
1:20
they want to have these sound bites these click bait sound bites and she just went into it
incredibly
1:27
confrontational not trying to find your actual perspective but trying to force you to defend a
non
1:33
non-realistic perspective yes well i was the i was the hypothetical villain of her imagination
essentially
1:40
well what happened what was interesting too the way it it played itself out because i met her
in
1:45
the green room beforehand you know she was being made up and then they put a little bit of
powder on me and we had a friendly kind of interchange
1:51
and then we went and sat in front of the cameras and for a couple of minutes you know
before before the show got rolling and we had a pretty pleasant
1:57
back and forth and then as soon as the cameras went on she was a completely different
person and i thought oh i see
2:04
what's going on yeah yeah well so so that kind of alerted me to well the fact that there was
2:11
something rotten in the state of denmark let's say yeah but you know this is also why
youtube is going to kill tv
2:17
because television by its nature all of these narrow broadcast
2:23
technologies they re they rely on forcing the story right because it has to happen now it
2:29
has to happen in like often in five minutes because they only broadcast five minutes of that
2:34
interview they did put the whole thing up on youtube to their credit it it it hasn't ceased to
amaze me yet
2:42
i think that they thought that the interview went fine that's the scuttlebutt i've got from
2:48
sort of behind the scenes because i've you know i know some people who know what's
going on at channel four and
2:53
they're shell-shocked by the response you know and and then of course there is the counter
response the guardian the
3:00
next day published a paper or published an article saying that you know the head of channel
4 had to
3:06
call in police security because of threats you know well first of all you can call
3:11
the police in about anything and they never did detail out exactly what the threats were
3:16
you know but then about 20 newspapers picked that up and went for the well kathy newman
is now being harassed
3:22
by an army of online trolls for doing nothing but doing her job which well i and then there was
a
3:29
backlash against that in the press and so it's been a well well someone took an audit of the
the
3:36
actual interchanges that yep between fans and her and there was way more negative ones
3:42
coming your way yes that were seriously negative yeah that's right seriously negative violent
harassing just rude
3:50
there were way more yeah and no one picked up on that at all it was all the narrative was
she's a victim even
3:56
though she was highly aggressive on in this but she's a funny victim it's not like she's
4:02
not successful yeah you know it's like at some point you think you should have to hand in
your victim card
4:07
i think like when you go to an ivy league university it's like right then and there you go yeah
because you don't get to be
4:13
oppressor and oppressed at the same time that's just too much well one of the things that
you pointed out was when you
4:19
were talking about competition for very lucrative jobs and you were saying look what you've
done like you you must
4:26
have had to work here and she proudly was saying how how hard she had to work yeah to
get there i'm like well yes of
4:31
course no one's going to hand this to you no this is why and this is why you were saying you
are opposed to
4:37
equality of outcome i can't imagine anything we could possibly strive for in
4:43
our society that would make it into hell faster than equality of outcome like the historical
4:49
the historical evidence for the pathology of that root is so strong it's like you have to be
4:58
historically ignorant beyond belief or malevolent or resentful beyond comprehension in order
5:03
to think that that's a good idea i argue for that i agree with you but i think that even if you
came into this
5:08
with no knowledge of history but a complete understanding of human beings you would say
well that doesn't make any
5:14
sense and one of the best quotes that i've ever read about it is that if you have real true
freedom you're never going to have equality of
5:20
outcome because with real true freedom you have the freedom to not engage well look if you
look at a guy like jeff
5:27
bezos for instance that amazon guy is worth more money than anybody ever right that guy
works all day yeah i mean
5:34
he's a maniac oh he's acquiring all these different companies and and everything he's doing
5:39
is designed to succeed i mean he's just well that's what gates just said too in a recent
interview and i know
5:45
some guys that are you know they're in approximately the same universe as those two and
5:51
they just work all the time that's all the time and they don't just work they work so efficiently
and so effectively and make
5:58
use of every second in ways you can't even imagine unless you're in that sort of position so
and you know doing that doesn't mean
6:05
that you will succeed but not doing it certainly means that you will fail well you s well not
doing it certainly means you
6:12
will never achieve that level of success and that's what we're talking about we're talking
about a quality of outcome
6:17
i don't want that i don't want to be that guy i don't want to work like that i don't want to do
what he's doing and i
6:23
should have the freedom to not do that yeah as he should have the freedom to do that if
we're going to play this game
6:28
called capitalism which we're all agreeing is probably at least in as far as the models that we
have right
6:34
now is the best one that we have if we're all going to play this game if someone decides to
be the michael jordan of capitalism you can't stop them
6:41
you can't say no no no you're playing this game too well you're playing this team too hard
you're too obsessed with this game
6:46
you're going to have that yeah you can stop them you can try to stop people from winning
crookedly
6:52
which is what you should do and yes you know there's a couple of things that are really
worth delving into with regards to that too because
6:57
there's this sort of marxist notion that all this inequality is generated as a consequence of
capitalism and that's actually
7:03
technically false because if you look at there's a there seems to be something like a law of
nature that's
7:09
described by this statistical model called the pareto distribution
7:14
and it basically suggests that in any creative domain there's going to be a small number of
7:20
people will will do almost all of the output but it doesn't just apply to human beings
7:25
it implies it applies to the heights of trees in the amazon rainforest it applies to the size of
cities and it
7:31
applies to the mass of stars which is something like the more you have the more you get
7:37
it's something you can imagine how that would work with a star as it gets bigger and bigger
and its gravitational mass increases
7:42
it's going to attract more and more matter and then as the city grows well more and more
people are excited to move there because of all the opportunities
7:48
and so some cities start to grow tremendously and others and others don't but this this this
7:56
uh phenomena where a small number of people end up controlling a tremendous proportion
of the resource
8:02
is not only limited to money and it doesn't only occur in capitalist societies it occurs
everywhere it's like a natural
8:07
law so you see the same thing with number of points scored by a you know a spectacular
sports figure
8:14
there's always a tiny proportion of people who are way way the head way ahead on the
curve or people who make records or people who
8:20
sell paintings or people who compose music or people who sell music online it's all the same
it's
8:26
it's the one percent gets 80 percent and so well first we can't blame that on
8:31
capitalism and second we should note that it actually does constitute a problem which is
what the left-wingers
8:37
are always jumping up and down about right like too much inequality starts to destabilize
your society and it isn't obvious how to shovel
8:44
money from the top end maybe the one tenth of one percent who have almost all the money
down to the people who have almost
8:50
nothing in a way that's effective so that they don't get thrown out of the game completely and
so that the whole
8:55
society doesn't destabilize we don't exactly know how to do that it is a problem because
inequality does exist and it does tend
9:02
to magnify across time and then there's another problem too which we haven't figured out is
9:07
imagine that in order to make everyone rich you have to tolerate a certain amount of
9:12
inequality that seems obvious we don't know how many units of inequality you need to
tolerate per unit
9:19
of wealth generated but the answer is definitely not zero it's definitely not zero
9:24
so yeah so it goes back to this equality of outcome yeah yeah and this this thing has
9:31
perplexed me since i've met you and since uh you were involved in this original
9:38
debate over gender pronouns and there was an article that was written recently i forget the
exact
9:44
title of it i think it was something along the lines of why can't people hear what jordan
peterson is saying yeah you are misrepresented more than
9:52
anyone i know in a weird way you are villainized in a weird way
9:57
where um i can't believe that these people are honestly looking at your opinions and coming
up
10:04
with these conclusions i i can't help but feel like what is happening is people are consciously
deciding
10:12
to ignore reality and paint you as this archetypal figure of oppressive white
10:19
male patriarchy ignorance fill in the blank with all the the rest
10:25
of the descriptives that you'd like to use but they've decided to paint you in this way
10:30
like as as a target because they need a target to sort of reinforce
10:36
this idea that transgender people are being victimized and women are being
10:41
victimized and well even deeper that the right narrative is the way that we should view
10:47
the world is victim versus oppressor because that's the basic post-modern neo-marxist
10:52
template it's the right way to view the world is that it's a power it's a power ground it's a what
it's a
10:58
it's a battleground of power interests competing constantly the ones that win are oppressors
the
11:03
ones that lose are oppressed that's the way you look at the world and i think that that's
wrong that's a bad way of looking at the world
11:10
psychologically sociologically politically economically ideologically you name it now it ends in
nothing but
11:17
catastrophe i mean first of all because it puts your group identity as something that's
paramount and i mean that's just not well that for
11:23
that isn't what we do in the west let's say we put your individual identity paramount
11:29
and then well that's just that's just for starters fundamentally and then i
11:34
guess the other reason that people are on my case to some degree is because i have made
a strong case
11:40
which i think is fully documented by the scientific literature that there are intrinsic differences
say between men
11:46
and women and i think the evidence in that this is the thing that staggered me is that no
11:51
serious scientists have debated that for like four decades
11:56
it's that argument was done by the time i went to graduate school everyone knew that
12:01
human beings were not a blank slate that biological forces not parameterized the way that
we
12:08
thought and and felt and acted and and and valued everyone knew that the
12:13
fact that this has become somehow debatable again is just especially because it's being
done by legislative fiat they're forcing it
12:20
to me as a scientist it's just it's just well and in the states too with tight with title ix for
example
12:25
because title ix is sort of predicated on that viewpoint what is title now oh title ix was
12:30
originally just a piece of legislation that um mandated that female sports teams
12:36
were funded to the same degree that male sports teams were funded in american
universities but it's been expanded out so that if there's any
12:42
differences in any areas whatsoever between the genders then the universities are being
taken to court
12:48
and like 200 i mean last i looked about 200 of them were up and and they can have their
funding
12:54
revoked if they violate the title ix provisions so it's become like a vicious weapon for social
justice warrior
13:00
equality of outcome types so it's not just about sports no it's got way way beyond that
13:08
yeah it's it's it's become an equality of outcome issue fundamentally there was an article
13:14
that i sent you um one of them was uh from i think uh like i thought i got it off of digg.com
13:20
but it was um jordan peterson is having his moment and we should ignore him and i send
this to you and there was one
13:26
probably the last part of that might be true [Laughter]
13:32
but one of the things in the article was citing this study that showed very
13:37
little difference oh god it's a pathetic study yeah well i
13:42
said it to you because i was like this this is not right well the thing is like most things it's
complicated yes you know so are men
13:51
and women more similar or more different well it depends on how you define the terms first
but they're more similar well why
13:59
well they're the same species so we could start with that like but the question is what are the
differences
14:05
and how do they manifest themselves and are those manifestations important so here's an
example if you took
14:12
a random woman out of the population and a random man and you had to bet on who was
more temperamentally aggressive
14:19
if you bet on the man you'd be right 60 percent of the time but you'd be wrong 40 of the time
and
14:25
that that's not a walloping difference right 60 40. it's not 90 10 like so there's quite there's a
lot
14:30
of overlap between men and women in terms of their levels of aggression and you think well
they're more the same
14:35
yeah except so then let's say no no let's play a slightly different game
14:42
let's pick the in a hundred most aggressive person from the random population well they're
14:48
all men and that's why all the people in prison are men so even though
14:53
on average men and women most well yeah it's 90 90 90 to 95 right so and often if the
15:00
women are in prison it's because they got tangled up with a really bad guy you know so so
one of the problems is is
15:07
that differences at the extreme are where the differences really start to manifest
15:12
themselves and so you can have a small difference at the level of the average but out at the
extremes it starts to
15:19
make a massive difference so let's say to be a google engineer which is hard right
15:25
because you not only have to be an engineer but you have to be a very good engineer say
well you have to be interested in
15:31
things rather than people that's that's a huge difference in interest like men are more
interested in things generally speaking and women are
15:38
more interested in people generally speaking now there's still a lot of overlap between them
but that's one of the biggest differences
15:44
between men and women it's been demonstrated cross-culturally it's also a very big
difference in the scandinavian countries
15:49
well on average the difference isn't that great even though it's a relatively large difference but
at the extremes it's the
15:56
same thing almost all the people are hyper um what would you call hyper focused on
16:02
things they're almost all men and all the people who are hyper focused on people are almost
all women and so
16:08
how does that play out in the world well in the scandinavian countries it plays out this way
about 85 percent of nurses in
16:14
scandinavia are female and about 85 to 90 percent of engineers are male
16:19
it doesn't mean women can't be engineers it doesn't mean men can't be nurses it also
doesn't have anything to do with
16:25
intelligence but it does have to do with interest and the differences in interest are big
16:30
now at the extremes in particular so when you read a review like that the one that was
pointed out the first question
16:36
is well what do you mean by big and little there's more overlap there's more overlap between
men and
16:42
women than there is difference on virtually every parameter okay fine are the remaining
differences
16:48
significant in how they play out in the world the answer to that is overwhelmingly significant
because you
16:53
you select for extremes so here's another example ashkenazi jews have an average iq of
115
17:01
so in the typical population overall has an average iq of 100. 15 points is about the difference
17:06
between the typical college student and the typical high school student okay so it's not a
massive difference
17:13
but if you go to the extreme say well let's go look at people who only have an iq of 145
17:18
which is kind of where you hit the beginnings of genius level it's like the jews are
overwhelmingly over represented
17:24
so relatively small differences in the average can produce walloping
17:30
differences at the extremes people don't understand that it's not surprising because it
actually requires a fairly sophisticated grasp of
17:37
statistics but when we're talking about things like differential outcome in the workplace
17:43
then you have to take a sophisticated statistical approach to it or you don't know what the
hell you're talking about and
17:48
unfortunately many of the people who are talking about things like gender differences they
have no idea what they're talking about they don't know the literature
17:54
they don't know there is a literature they don't understand biology like the the social
constructionist types the
18:00
women's studies types the neo-marxist they don't give a damn about biology it's like they
inhabit some disembodied universe so
18:08
the review was poorly written at best and did not was showed a very
18:15
poor grasp of the relationship between group differences and economic and practical
outcomes it's
18:20
not just that it's deceptive and there's there's a need in some way
18:27
on that side this side of the debate the anti-jordan peterson side to
18:33
label men and women as being virtually identical when there's so much evidence that
18:39
that's not the case and what you're saying what you've you've never said one is superior one
is inferior what you
18:46
are is a guy who's pointing out the reality of the difference between the various types of
human beings and
18:52
you've been very open about the extremes about you look i'm i'm well aware of the extremes
i deal with
18:58
mma fighters i know a lot of female mma fighters are as aggressive and as tough as any
man
19:05
you're ever going to meet in your life and i know a lot of men from comedy that are meek
little guys who
19:11
they're not nearly as aggressive as some of these female fighters like there's i think one of
the beautiful
19:17
things about freedom is that people get an opportunity to express themselves
19:22
in a way that's genuinely them yep and whether that is like uh our friend alex honold who's a
a free
19:28
climber who is like climbing up these fantastic mountains with no ropes
19:33
or whether it's a female mma fighter like raquel pennington who's just a tank and beating the
[ __ ] out of
19:40
people and that's what she loves to do all of these extremes are available to people because
of freedom
19:46
this is not a suppressive thing no one's anyone's stopping people from choosing these paths
i don't know if you saw the most recent
19:53
slip up by the ceo of youtube i retweeted it today
19:58
um they were talking about why there's not as many women in tech
20:03
and she basically said they both her and the ceo of google
20:08
said exactly what james damore was saying in his memo they completely [ __ ] up they tried
to
20:15
look did you find this look at this this is goddamn hilarious and james damore had this on his
page
20:22
they respond women a lack of tackles could you now go to joe go to james damore's tweet
20:27
just go to the the what i retweeted and what he said so there was a study published a while
20:33
ago about j no jamie scroll back right it's right there it's right there just just make his tweet
larger there you go
20:39
look see it said he's saying did i read this right i don't know how to say her name is susan
what
20:45
i'm sorry i don't know how to say her name w-o-j-i-c-i-c-k-i
20:51
said that women find geeky male industries as opposed to social industries not very
20:57
interesting and sundar cites research on gender well that's that's exactly the difference in
21:02
interest that i just pointed out yeah this is right he this is what james damore wrote in his
memo that got him fired
21:08
and this in my mind if i was the lawyer for james damore i'd be like oh well look who we have
here this is this
21:14
is checkmate yeah you dummies you just said the divorce story is really interesting you know
because
21:20
i think it's such a classic story of of an engineer getting tangled up in politics so
21:25
damore went to this diversity seminar and he wasn't very happy about it because he knew
the literature and so at the end of the seminar they
21:32
asked for feedback well james damore is an engineer so when you tell an engineer
21:38
that you want feedback the engineer thinks oh you want feedback and you and you want like
facts and stuff
21:45
right because that's what feedback would be like so damore went and wrote this like
thorough memo and gave it to them he said well you know
21:50
this is what i think here's some feedback and then it traveled around he got no real
21:56
response from the diversity people and then he posted it on one of these internal boards at
google where people can discuss things
22:02
which people at google do all the time so it was perfectly reasonable for him to post it
because he didn't get a response from the diversity people he
22:08
thought well let's see what other people think and then it was there for a long time until it was
leaked up
22:13
into the outside world it wasn't like damore was trying to expose google for for what it is he
was just
22:20
doing what an engineer type would do when someone asked him to provide feedback
because he's not thinking
22:26
politically he's not thinking oh they just want to hear what they already said he thought they
actually wanted some
22:32
facts anyways i think they picked on the wrong guy because it turns out to be pretty damn
22:37
tough well he's very smart and a very kind guy when you sit down and talk to him he's not a
sexist he's a
22:43
he's a guy that's talking about facts in fact he wrote more than a page and a half i believe on
22:50
strategies for getting more women interested in tech he's not a sexist this is just a guy that
was talking
22:56
about the differences and the choices that people make that's based on just the the
variations that you were just discussing well there's a good
23:02
study done a while ago and unfortunately i don't remember the author but they were looking
at junior high math prodigies and
23:09
they're they're pretty equally distributed between boys and girls but by the time university
came along
23:14
the math prodigy boys they tend to go into the stem fields but the girls wouldn't and it isn't
because they lacked ability
23:20
because they had stellar ability it's because they weren't interested and it turns out like the
interest thing
23:25
turns out to be a big one so with personality alone if you measure men and women's
personalities and then
23:30
you add up all the differences in personalities you could tell with about 75 to 80
23:35
certainty by looking at a full personality readout whether a person is male or female so you'd
be wrong 25 percent
23:42
of the time something like that but if you add interest to that you can get up to about 90
percent and so you know you say well are these
23:49
differences large well individually they're not that big
23:54
they make more difference at the extremes but if you add them up then you can almost
completely
24:00
differentiate men from women so by that token they're they're very large and the interesting
actually turns
24:05
out to matter a lot like it's probably the most important individual difference that has been
discovered between men and women at the psychological level
24:12
it has real decent explanatory power because you might say well men have a slight edge in
spatial
24:18
intelligence and that's why they're over represented in stem fields and women have a slight
edge in verbal intelligence this is debatable
24:24
but literature kind of indicates that and that's why they're overwhelmingly the majority of
fiction readers for
24:30
example is that the reason that there's differential representation in the stem fields it's like no
it doesn't seem to
24:36
be it doesn't look like it's an intellectual issue which is also what de moore pointed out by the
way he never said once that
24:41
this was a cognitive issue but it's a matter of choice matter of interest and women tend to be
24:47
more more people-oriented now the thing is this is also being discovered in
24:53
chimpanzees and other primates like if you offer baby or or
24:58
child chimpanzees juvenile chimpanzees the toys choice between thing like toys like cars
25:05
or people like toys like dolls the males will go for the thing like toys and the females will go
for the people-like toys
25:11
so you see that in primates and you think well is that surprising it's like well no it's not it's not
that surprising
25:16
really i mean women have to take care of infants tiny infants and you have to be really
25:22
people oriented to do that because a tiny infant is an unbelievably demanding
25:28
social relationship and it's a primary relationship for about two years you know and so
women are tilted towards
25:35
the kind of temperament that makes that possible it's like well is that such a shock really
that's such a surprise so
25:43
no it's not a surprise and what what's confusing to me is the narrative
25:49
that anybody that points out these differences is somehow a sexist or discriminatory
25:56
or yeah worse yeah yeah well whatever epithet they can well i think the other reason that the
way
26:01
the left the radical lefties have been going after me constantly is well there's one reason is is
if you
26:06
stand up against the radical radical left you're in a group that also has nazis in it because the
nazis also stand up
26:13
against the radical left so it's perfectly reasonable from a strategic perspective for the radical
26:19
leftists to say well you're against us how do we know you're not a nazi it's like well
statistically
26:25
statistically i'm probably not you know so there's that but but you could say at least the
question
26:30
is open but but but then the next part of it comes is that it's motivated
26:36
epithet slinging because if i'm reasonable and i'm standing up against the radical
26:42
left and they admit that i'm reasonable then there has to be an admission that reasonable
people could
26:48
stand up against the radical left which kind of implies that the radical left isn't that reasonable
26:54
and so while they're not going to go there of course they're not that reasonable they're
unreasonable beyond belief as we saw in
26:59
this situation with lindsay shepard in canada so at wilford laurier university let's talk about
that real quick because
27:06
that was a fascinating thing too and that also had to do with you so she was discussing you
in class
27:13
and you could fill up everybody yeah she's in the communications in the communications
department at
27:18
wilford laurier and they were talking about uh the
27:23
the role of language in communication which kind of what you would do in a communication
class and she decided to show a five-minute
27:30
clip from a program i had done for tv ontario which is a public television station mainstream
27:36
left-leaning liberal television station news program and a good one a good one
27:41
and i had been on there with a number of other people including a professor nicholas matt
from the university of
27:48
toronto who claimed essentially that there were no biological differences between men and
women and that had been the scientific consensus for the last
27:54
four decades so anyway she showed a clip from this and
27:59
well she got hauled in front of two professors and an administrator adria joel who was
28:05
basically hired for that purpose and raked over the coals for daring to show this video and
28:11
she had that wherewithal to tape it and then she made the tape public and in
28:17
that tape they compared me it was it was really blackly comical you know they compared
28:22
me to hitler yeah and but then said well it's hitler or milo yiannopoulos i thought you guys
you're so damn clueless you can't even
28:28
get your insults right it's like you can't say that's like playing a video of hitler
28:34
or milo yiannopoulos it's like first of all hitler and milo yiannopoulos they're actually not in the
same
28:39
category right except that they're both human that's about the narrowness of the
28:45
category and and then milo's uh like a comic provocateur
28:50
and you can hate him or love him or or be indifferent but to put him in the same category as
28:55
hitler just shows how muddle-headed you are and then to assimilate me to that category so
carelessly
29:01
like you don't mess about with epithets like that you know hitler was one of the great
29:07
super villains of the 20th century right i mean he was he's up there with stalin and mao in the
in a in the panoply of
29:14
satanically possessed leaders you don't just toss that around especially not when you're
29:19
torturing your teaching assistant for daring to show a video about language in a
29:26
communication class and so that was a massive scandal in canada it was the biggest sk i
think it was the biggest scandal
29:33
that ever hit a university in canada and it got a lot of international attention and rightly so and
she also turns out to
29:39
be a tough cookie i mean the last i heard she was she'd started a club at wilford laurier and i
think it was last
29:46
night or the night before maybe it's coming up they're going to show the whole video from
television ontario
29:52
at a club meeting and invite people to come and discuss it it's like they they picked on the
wrong girl there
29:57
too so they certainly did she was obviously very smart you could hear that in her discussion
with them and how flabbergasted she was by their take on
30:04
things but this was essentially proof to a lot of people that were on the outside of
30:09
how preposterous some of the dialogue was inside these universities yeah well they couldn't
30:15
have done me a bigger favor than having that scandal because when i made the videos
about bill c-16
30:20
15 months ago i said look here's what's going to happen because this legislation is written in
an appalling
30:26
manner and the surrounding policies are pathological so here's what's going to happen and
and so i laid it out and then people came
30:33
out and said no you're being paranoid it's like that's possible no the bill the legislation isn't
going to have that
30:39
effect no you're not a legal expert what the hell do you know et cetera et cetera you're crazy
you're a bigot you're a
30:44
trans full you know they threw everything but the kitchen sink at me and like fair enough you
know because
30:50
there's always a possibility that i was wrong but the problem was is i read the policies and i
understood them and i
30:55
knew where they were leading but i never imagined that one of the consequences of bill c-16
in its sister
31:02
legislation was that a teaching assistant at a canadian university would be pilloried and
accused of breaking the law
31:08
and then accused of all sorts of reprehensible political beliefs by two professors and an
administrator
31:13
hired for that purpose merely because she showed a video about two people
31:18
talking about the law it's like that that paranoid as i am let's say that
31:26
that exceeded the grasp of the reach of my imagination and then of course it was made
public and people just couldn't believe it and
31:32
then you think okay well what's the defense well they misinterpreted bill c-16
31:37
it's like no i don't think so um they aren't representative of the
31:43
university professor administration well all of pimlot and rambukana's colleagues
31:48
rose to their defense the whole department the university when they apologized did it in a
very mealy-mouthed way
31:55
like there's no evidence that it was an anomalous occurrence so what had happened is they
32:01
overextended the reach of bill c-16 in exactly the way that i said would happen it was
inevitable
32:07
and it wasn't an anomaly it was actually that's actually the way that the universities are and it
is the way that they are
32:14
it wasn't a one-off it was exactly diagnostic and it's appalling it's appalling the
32:19
universities have so much to be ashamed of they're they're well there was an article in the
boston globe this week
32:25
saying the same thing that all of this crazy post-modern identity politics equality of outcome
nonsense
32:32
is not only disrupted the university in a way that might be irreparable as far as i can tell but
32:39
it's rapidly spreading outside into the normal say business world which was
32:45
exactly what you see for example at google well the tech industry in particular seems to be
32:50
like more left-leaning than pretty much any industry there is and i guess it's because there's
so many intelligent people there so many people
32:57
that have spent a tremendous amount of time in universities and they get indoctrinated into
this mindset
33:02
and you're you're seeing that in this the the ceo of youtube's response to
33:07
james damore memo completely misrepresented it they're talking about harmful gender
stereotypes that's not what he talked
33:14
about at all um what what's fascinating to me about all of this is it it just reeks of tribalism
33:22
that these people on the left have decided i mean and i'm mostly on the left which
33:29
is really crazy i mean when it comes to most policies and most thoughts of equality
33:34
and and the idea of just letting people be who they are i mean that's what the
33:40
left used to stand for it used to stand for being open-minded it used to stand for being a
reasonable person it now it
33:47
seems to be all about this very toxic tribal ideology and
33:54
this is one of the reasons why so many of these attacks and you are so baffling to me is
because there's a willful ignorance
34:00
or a deceptive narrative there there's a deceptive description of who you are and
34:06
what you're saying and what you represent and it's this conveniently categorized
34:11
not even convenient willfully willfully deceptively categorized into
34:16
these category categories of homophobia transphobia sexism these are
34:21
reprehensible categories that if they can just shove something that you're saying figure out a
way to push you into this little
34:29
narrow confined then everyone has to disagree with you everyone has to insult you and
everyone
34:36
has to like take that girl into their office and chastise you for even using not even
34:43
speaking up for you right just she said she wasn't yes that's what was more fascinating
34:49
about it than anything yeah then they give her hell for that like all you can't present
something like that neutrally
34:54
that's like presenting something hitler said neutrally or maybe milo yiannopoulos
34:59
it's it's so strange but what they don't understand and this is what's really crazy is that the
world
35:05
is watching and that most people but maybe it's a 60 40 like we were
35:10
talking about before when it comes to aggressive men women versus aggressive men i don't
know what the number
35:16
is i think it's about 50 to one actually like i've been watching the comments on
35:21
youtube and so forth trying to track this it's like i think that like i think that what the radical
35:27
leftists are doing is overwhelmingly um unrepresentative of
35:32
the general population overwhelmingly but they're they're a very well organized and and
verbal
35:41
and prepared minority and they've occupied powerful positions in many many institutions hr
35:48
one of the things i really can't figure out right now and for anybody who's running a company
that's listening they
35:54
should think this through like to let these postmodern neo-marxists into your company
through the guise of human resources is an
36:00
absolute catastrophe you're going to pay for that this the ideology that drives post-modern
neo-marxism this identity
36:07
politics uh what the identity politics movement
36:12
and its insistence on equality of outcome is a powerfully anti-capitalistic it's powerfully
anti-western why you
36:19
would let that into your company is so that you can look good socially let's say is beyond me
it's a big
36:25
mistake i agree with you but i don't think people are aware of it i think part of the problem is
this battleground is largely ignored by the
36:33
general population i don't think most people are aware of what's going on you are because
you're obviously you're
36:38
deeply embedded in the university system in canada and you're you're obviously
36:43
now uh branching out into youtube and podcasts and all these different ways to
36:48
get this information out but the average person that is a ceo of a company or they're they're
concerned
36:54
with their own company they're concerned with their own individual needs they're concerned
with organizing things and keeping their
37:00
bottom line and yeah well they're also concerned with looking fair and making sure that
they're not prejudiced and all of that
37:06
which is laudable and but i just don't think they see the wave coming no they don't they don't
see it
37:11
coming they don't understand it and they're in cautious about it but they're going to pay for it
well google is a good example because now google is
37:17
in court on the feminist end for like being prejudiced against females and also on
37:22
the conservative end for being prejudiced against conservatives it's like well so both camps
are after them and i think well
37:28
why is that it's like well that's what happens when you play identity politics this tribalism now
this is really what i can't stand
37:34
about identity politics and i've been warning about the consequences of on the right wing too
because what i see
37:39
happening is that as the left like let's say the left gets to define the linguistic territory which
37:45
is what i was objecting to in bill c-16 when it came out i said look i'm not going to use these
neologisms z
37:52
and zur etc because as far as i'm concerned they have nothing people who don't know what
you're talking about yeah a bunch of different
37:59
made up gender pronouns yeah to describe people in the non-male or female
38:04
that's right so there's like 70 different categories of non-binary gender something like that
generated now and
38:10
there's lists of pronouns that hypothetically the people who are in those categories can
38:16
choose to be addressed by and now that has the force of law and so and i don't care if they
choose
38:23
to be addressed by those pronouns whatever that's that's that's that's up to them
38:28
and whoever else they can convince or ask or entreat or negotiate with fine as soon as it's
law that's a whole
38:34
different story okay so now i have to use a certain terminology so then i look at the derivation
of the
38:39
terminology i say oh that's terminology generated by the postmodern neo-marxists oh well
38:45
i think those people are reprehensibly murderous so guess what i'm not going to say their
words period
38:51
because i know what they're like i know where that leads okay so but most people think that
38:56
that's a gigantic step to go from saying you don't want to say
39:01
z or zero or any of these made up gender pronouns to these are murderous people the
ideology
39:07
is murderous the ideology being marxism yeah absolutely well jesus how much proof of that
do you need
39:13
most people don't understand marxism like when you when you're saying this like when you
were so adamant about it i had
39:19
to start reading about it myself and i had to start doing a lot of research about it myself and i
think most people hear marxism and
39:27
they think socialism yep they think uh pooling all your money together you know making
39:32
you know making things more even for people yeah like they are in venezuela everybody
has an equal chance to starve
39:37
to death so you know how they you know how the venezuelan government start solved the
problem of kids starving to
39:43
death in hospitals how they made it illegal for the doctors to report starvation as the cause of
39:49
death right wow that's venezuela in a nutshell
39:56
yeah that's everyone's equal there they all have the same number of bones to gnaw on
40:03
yeah that's a horrible thing but yeah it's it's a horrible thing undeniably but there's no like the
40:09
connection between gender pronouns and murder this it's a big leap yeah that's that's
40:15
for sure that's for sure well that's why you have to look at the underlying ideology you know
and you think well what's what level at
40:21
what is the level at which these things should be addressed well is it economic is it political
40:26
is it personal meanings of these this ideology and you understand where the road map leads
you understand
40:31
the x at the end of the road yeah right absolutely well and i think that's why i recommend it to
people continually to read soldier knits in
40:37
school like archipelago so actually there's a set of books that let lay this out perfectly you
read
40:43
dostoevsky's wrote a book called the possessed or the devils and it's a it's a description of
the
40:48
initial breakdown of the of orthodox christian society in in russia in the late 1800s
40:54
and the rise of radical socialist ideas so it's sort of like the pro drama to the russian
revolution it's a brilliant
41:00
brilliant book brilliant book and it concentrates on the personalities that are involved
41:06
and then if you read after that solzhenitsyn's gulag archipelago where he details what he
does in that book is quite remarkable so
41:13
he says look there were tens of millions of people killed from 1919 to 1959 in the soviet
union
41:19
and as a consequence of internal repression and it's so dreadful that words can't do it justice
41:25
i mean it's absolutely dreadful what happened in the soviet union i mean just for starters 6
million ukrainians died in the 1930s because of
41:32
enforced starvation in fact in in in the 1930s here's here's how here's how terrible it was
41:38
so all the food that the collective farmers newly collectivized farmers had produced which
wasn't very much by
41:43
the way was taken from them and brought to the cities so all the farmers starved to death
now here's here's how draconian it got
41:49
so let's say you were the mother of some children and all your grain had been shipped off to
the cities and you thought well i'm not
41:55
going to have my children starved to death i'm going to go out in the field and i'm going to on
my hands and knees and i'm going to pick up the grains that
42:03
are left over that the harvesters didn't count get and i'm going to feed those to my kids that
was punishable by death
42:10
you were supposed to hand in those extra bits of grain so that they could be shipped to the
city as well
42:16
so that was just the beginning of the fun in the soviet union and what solzhenitsyn did was
say look
42:22
this wasn't a consequence of the marxist system gone wrong this was a consequence
42:29
of the marxist system it was inevitable consequence of the axioms of the marxist system and
then he
42:35
lays that out and and it's well i think he got it right and what is that won the nobel prize but
what is the
42:41
connection how much tyranny you have to impose in
42:47
order to produce something like equality of outcome the the and thomas sowells talked
about this a little bit too he said
42:54
what the people who are agitating for equality of outcome don't understand is that you have
to cede so much power
43:00
to the authorities to the government in order to ensure equality of outcome that a tyranny is
inevitable
43:05
and that's right and the other pro another problem with equality of outcome this is also a big
technical problem is
43:11
like well what measure of outcome you know there's lots of outcomes like
43:17
how happy are you how much pain are you in how healthy are you how much money do you
have how much
43:22
opportunity for movement forward do you have what's the width of your social connections
like what's the quality of your
43:29
friendships do you have exposure to art and literature like you know you can multiply the
number of dimensions of
43:34
evaluation between people innumerably right because there's there's all sorts of ways to
classify
43:40
people you're going to get equality of outcome on every one of those measures
43:46
is like everyone going to have to be equally happy in their relationship and if not why not why
why stop with
43:52
economic why stop with pay there's no place to stop
43:58
so and that's that's a huge technical problem because there is no place to stop there will be
no stopping
44:03
it's like nobody can have anything else nobody can have anything that everyone else doesn't
have at the same time that's the ultimate outcome of equality
44:10
of outcome well you think about what that would mean it's terrible well instantly you think
44:16
oh well there's nothing but a tyrannical system could impose that have you ever debated a
marxist supporter have you ever debated someone
44:22
who is pro-equality of outcome no they don't debate me well the only the closest thing i think
44:29
was to that was the debate i did at the university of toronto about the bill c-16 issues but they
didn't actually have a debate
44:35
they had a forum which is the post-modern equivalent of a debate it's supposed to be
friendlier i suppose
44:40
um but no i haven't because people don't do it they don't ask me to do it but what is it about
44:47
that idea or that ideology about marxism that's so attractive to young students
44:55
and to university people well that's a good question i think it goes back to the issue of
inequality and and this is something that has to be dead
45:01
seriously addressed like you might say well why is the left wing necessary let's let's put it
that way
45:08
so and then a subset of that would be well why is the left wing attractive well the left wing is
necessary because
45:13
inequality does spiral out of control and so there has to be a political voice for the
dispossessed
45:19
and you you don't want people to stack up at zero you know where they can't play the game
at all it's a bad idea not only
45:26
do you not if people stack up at zero they're too poor to get ahead at all let's say they're too
poor to open a bank account
45:32
they're too poor to buy enough food like they're stuck at zero and they can't get out of it it's a
really bad scene because
45:37
first of all that's a lot of suffering and that's not so good second of all well at least in principle
45:44
a lot of those people might be what might have something to offer the world or their children
might and you
45:50
want to open up avenues of opportunity to them so that they can succeed but so that
everyone else can benefit from
45:56
their success so and then the next thing is well if the inequality gets out of hand too much
46:01
then the whole society starts to destabilize because if you get enough people stacked up at
zero especially young men you get enough
46:08
young men stacked up at zero they think oh to hell with it we'll just flip the whole board over
and
46:13
it'll settle in a new configuration and maybe we won't be stuck at zero in the new
configuration so it foments revolutionary thinking so
46:20
there's lots of reasons to be concerned about inequality and so you need a voice on the left
to say look we gotta parameterize the the
46:27
tendency towards inequality so that it doesn't destabilize the entire society so that it's
everybody has an opportunity to advance
46:34
like yes right you need that okay so that's the technical reason for the
46:39
necessity of the left and then i think it's attractive because well because young people can
be resentful partly because they're at the
46:45
bottom of the heap so to speak they're not because they're young like look you want to be
46:51
you want to be poor in 18 you want to be rich in 80. are going to choose most people is
going
46:57
to take poor at 18. well yeah especially if you've been rich at 80 and you understand you can
get back there
47:03
yeah well that's the thing you know is that most of the people who are have a million dollars
or more in the
47:09
united states are old well why is that well really do we need an explanation for that it's like
47:15
you've had a lot more time to make money how would that be that's the explanation so that's
one of the big drivers of inequality is just simply age
47:22
but it's not obvious that the old rich people have an advantage over the young starting out
people so so anyways but
47:30
any anyhow maybe you're resentful and irritated because you're young and you're still at the
bottom of the heap and you know you've got other problems too
47:37
it's more difficult for people of your race or ethnicity or gender at least you think it is and so
you say well i want to make
47:44
things fair and then that's also driven by some real compassion because nobody really likes
that
47:49
the consequences of radical inequality like nobody likes the fact that homeless people exist
and have to go to the emergency
47:56
ward you know to get treated and they don't have medical coverage and they have to live in
tents on the street and so if you have some compassion then
48:04
you think well we've got to do more for the poor and dispossessed it's like okay that's that's
an
48:09
understandable sentiment but the problem is is that the people but the problem is is that it's
48:16
that that that desire to help is contaminated by resentment and ideological certainty and then
also by
48:22
something that george orwell pointed out so nicely in his book road to wigan pier it's like the
typical middle class
48:29
socialist this was his diagnosis and he was a socialist by the way his diagnosis was the
typical middle
48:34
class intellectual socialist doesn't like the poor in fact they don't have anything to do with the
poor
48:40
they're contemptuous of the poor but they hate the rich and i think it's even more devious
than
48:46
that because i think who they hate are the successful some of the successful are rich but
48:51
really who they hate is the successful it's it's like cain and abel it's the retelling of cain and
abel
48:57
and so there's some positive motivations for being engaged on the left and there's a lot of
negative motivations as well and
49:02
the people who are really driven by the radical left ideology the real radicals they're almost
all driven by by
49:08
resentment and hatred as far as i'm concerned now the let's look at
49:14
both extremes so back to the idea of the of the ideological and verbal territory
49:21
i said with bill c-16 that i wouldn't speak the language of the radical leftists because i don't
think that that language should define the game
49:27
but let's say it does so here's the game the world is a battleground of groups and the they're
battling for
49:35
power that's it that's the game and some of them win and they oppress those who don't win
49:40
so that's how we're going to view the world okay now the left is say okay well here's the
oppressed people
49:46
the oppressors the patriarchy type patriarchal types they should be ashamed of themselves
49:51
and give up some power the right wingers the radical right-wingers look at that and they say
oh i see so the game is ethnic identity
49:58
is it it's it's identity politics okay we're white males
50:04
we're not going to lose that's the right wing version of identity politics it's like screw you
50:09
if we're going to divide into groups if we're going to divide into tribes and i'm in my tribe i'm
not going to get
50:16
all guilty and lose i'm going to get all cruel and win and that's like then you think well
50:23
there's people in the middle they're kind of looking back and forth which side of the identity
politics spectrum am i going to fall in
50:28
do i want to go with uh do i want to go do i want to be driven primarily by
50:34
compassion and am i going to accept guilt for my historical privilege so that's one possibility
and then i'm
50:40
the oppressor i'm the member of the oppressor group or am i going to say no to hell with that
i'm just going to play to win well
50:46
then i'm going to go to the right it's like well my sense is how about we don't play either of
those games and the reason we shouldn't play them is
50:53
well the soviets played the left-wing game and like killed who knows how many tens of
millions of people you can't even
50:59
count it accurately the estimates range from 20 to 100 million those are pretty big error bars
and the
51:05
maoists may be 100 million certainly 60 million so okay that didn't work out so well
51:11
then there's the nazis like they played ethnic identity politics and racial superiority it's like
what do we
51:18
want to play that game see what i've been trying to do really what i've been trying to do for
the last 30 years is say look
51:26
there's heavy temptations to play those sorts of games but that's not the only game in town
51:31
it's a much better game to play individual it's like get your act together stand up in the world
51:37
make something of yourself stay away from the ideological oversimplifications set your
house in order that's rule six
51:44
in the in the in this book so i have a book rule in there says set your house in perfect order
before you criticized the
51:49
world and it's a very dark chapter about the motivations of the columbine high school killers
and
51:55
this other guy named carl panzram who was a serial rapist and arsonist and murderer and
these he wrote
52:00
an autobiography and the columbine kids also wrote about why they did what they did
they're resentful to the core bitter
52:06
bitter resentful terrible and well i'm suggesting that people stay
52:13
away from that resentment resentfulness and bitterness even though life is hard and and
there's malevolence in the world
52:19
it's like yeah you can you can tell a story where everyone's a victim because we all die we all
get sick you
52:26
know and and and things happen to us that are bitter and terrible betrayal deceit lies
52:33
like people hurt us on purpose you know so it's not just the tragedy of life it's malevolence as
well it's everyone's
52:39
a victim you can tell that story the problem is if you tell that story and you start to act it out
you make all of that worse
52:45
that's the problem and it's so this is why partly i got attracted to christian imagery at least in
part um
52:52
because there's an idea in christianity that you should pick up your goddamn cross and like
walk up the hill and that's
53:00
dramatically that's correct that's the right answer it's like you've got a heavy load of suffering
to
53:07
bear and a fair bit of it's going to be unjust so what are you going to do about it accept it
voluntarily
53:13
and try to transform as a consequence that's the right answer it's the right answer because
the rest
53:18
of it is tribalism and we're we're too technologically powerful to get all tribal again
53:24
what's exciting to me is that i think this is the first time in my life that i've ever seen so much
53:31
communication on these subjects and i think so much recognition about the consequences
of tribal
53:37
toxic tribalism this tribal thinking that everyone seems to be engaged in on the right and on
the left
53:44
i mean in america you need to go no further than going back and forth from cnn to fox news
53:49
to say something's wrong here these are these are supposed to be news outlets you have
two completely different narratives
53:54
and that has nothing to do with what we're talking about with gender politics and and radical
left socialism and marxism
54:01
what what you're seeing in universities though um is a radical departure
54:07
from what i always considered universities great for what i always considered
54:13
universities great for is separating from your parents challenging belief systems and being
54:19
engaged in the the works of brilliant people who you can compare all of their
54:26
findings and their discoveries and and sit down and debate them in class and when i was a
kid when i was in high
54:32
school i went to a very good high school newton south high school in newton massachusetts
and uh one of
54:38
the things that they did is they put on a debate between a guy from the moral majority which
was this uh
54:45
right-wing uh christian group that i don't even know if they're around anymore but there this
was 19
54:51
i was 14 so 81 and uh barney frank who was that congressman is now one of
54:58
the first openly gay guys uh in congress and and uh you got to watch these two people in
55:05
this auditorium debate their points and this moral majority guy had this you know right wing
ronald reagan sort
55:13
of puke point of view and barney franco's kind of crazy he's got busted in some male
prostitute
55:20
scandal and but the gay community that's not that big of a deal and uh
55:25
just barney frank took him apart it was brilliant to watch but it was a real debate it was
fascinating and he got to
55:32
see a a mediocre mind versus a great mind and he got to see this little thing and i
55:39
was like wow this is one of the things that's always attracted me about the
55:45
the idea that two people with differing viewpoints can get together in front of a neutral
55:50
audience and these people can sort of decipher which which way these people are thinking
and why they're thinking yeah
55:56
well and bad as that is and rife with conflict as that is the alternative is to separate as you
56:03
pointed out into two camps that don't talk yes and the thing is the the consequence
56:08
of not talking is that you fight that that's the end game because the only way you can stop
56:14
from fighting with other people is by negotiating with them and you know one of the things
that's
56:19
also interesting and this is partly why silicon valley leans to the left is that a fair bit of your
political
56:25
preference is determined by your biological temperament it's strongly influenced so if you're
a
56:32
creative type who's kind of disorderly then you're likely to be
56:37
on the liberal left end of the distribution and if you're a non-creative type who's orderly and
56:44
especially if you're orderly then you tend to be on the right wing end of things and so and
well why is that why do those
56:51
variations exist well they exist because some of the time your best strategy is to do what
other people
56:57
have done and shut the hell up and just do it run the algorithm right the pathway is already
laid clear
57:02
it works stay in the damn rut and move forward okay so that's the conservative approach
57:07
and when things are going right it's the right approach the problem is is that sometimes it's
57:13
not the right approach because something has shifted and so something new has to emerge
and so then there's a bunch of people who
57:18
are adapted to the new and those are the entrepreneurial and creative types and of course
they dominate silicon valley because it's a
57:24
very entrepreneurial it's a very entrepreneurial what would you call it um geography and
57:31
so they're going to lean to the left but they have to understand people have to understand
that the left and the right
57:36
need each other the liberals and the conservatives need each other liberals start companies
conservatives
57:42
run them and the problem with the conservatives is well they can only run a company in one
direction
57:47
because they're conservative they don't think outside the box but so if the company is
working and the product line is good and everything is
57:54
stable like hire some conservatives because they'll maximize efficiency and they'll move
down that track
57:59
but if the track is no longer going in a good direction because something's changed the
environments change well then you've got
58:05
to bring in the creative people and so we need each other and the only way that we can
survive
58:11
the fact that we're different and the fact that we need each other is by continually talking we
have talked constantly it's like
58:17
well how much of what we're doing should we preserve versus how much of what we're
doing should we transform and the answer is
58:23
we don't know because the environment keeps changing so what do we do about that we
talk oh i was on a cbc canadian
58:30
broadcasting corporation interview a couple of days ago and they took me to task i tweeted
out this uh this invitation to
58:38
the keck boys to fill out this program that i developed called future authoring and it helps
people make a position yeah
58:45
well they're they're an online group they're they're they i know what it is
58:50
it's this fictional polity it's a it's a satire of identity politics essentially we're going to we're
going
58:57
to be our ethnicity highly demonized satire highly demonized right and with good reason for
with some
59:05
individual examples of racism and nazism and you know yeah there's lots of
59:10
misbehavior yeah yeah yeah it's like graffiti it's like online graffiti something like that so um
and and
59:17
the keck boys are the ones who are often using the peppy memes for example and you
know the left regards pepe as a hate
59:23
symbol pepe the frog pepe the frog feels good frog that's right that's right kind of
reprehensible frog
59:29
and so i tweeted out to them i said keck boys seek your 4chan
59:36
rescue yourself from the underworld use code pepe for future authoring so it's free for
59:42
one week so i they had to figure out what it meant and then i showed this picture of michigan
j frog which is the frog from
59:48
old warner brothers cartoon dancing frog that wouldn't perform when anyone was watching it
so cbc hauled that out and said well
59:54
look aren't you aren't you like um appealing to the radical right and i said well no what
1:00:00
i'm doing i said look the these people are attracted by the radical right although they're
satirists and juvenile satirists and graffiti types
1:00:07
and you know they're they're playing a weird sense that's exactly what they're doing they're
they're provoking and i my sense
1:00:14
was well why don't you develop yourself as an individual and get the hell out of the
ideological trap so here's my program which helps you
1:00:20
write about your future and that'll help you decide who you are as an individual because
1:00:25
that's the way out of the ideological trap it's like and that's the way obviously what's the way
out of tribalism first
1:00:32
the way out of tribalism is not to never join a tribe you actually have to join a tribe as you
1:00:38
mature right because what happens is first of all you're an infant and then you have your
parents to
1:00:44
to make a relationship with but then when you move from your parents you have your tribe
you have your group
1:00:49
maybe it's the music you listen to it's the gang you hang around with whatever you have to
be socialized into the tribe
1:00:55
you have to because otherwise you stay a dependent infant okay but now you're socialized
1:01:00
into the tribe well is that where it ends it's like no the next thing to do is differentiate yourself
from the tribe
1:01:07
while still knowing how to behave within the tribe well that's the call to individualism and
that's i think what
1:01:13
the west got right is we figured that out it's like you're more than you're you have to be a
member of a group because otherwise
1:01:19
you're not socialized you're not good for anyone you don't have to be able to play on a team
man you have to have team loyalty okay but
1:01:26
that isn't where you should stop you should take the next step and become a fully developed
individual and
1:01:32
see the problem with being just a group member is that the group it's the problem with
conservatism the
1:01:38
group is a fixed entity it has its rules and its regulations and if you're a member that's all you
are
1:01:44
but the group can go badly wrong so the group needs individuals to keep the group alive and
revivified
1:01:50
so you have to become an individual so you can revivify the group that's the cult that's the
call in the
1:01:55
west to heroism essentially to noble way of living is to develop yourself past your group
identity
1:02:01
so that you can reconfigure the game when that becomes necessary and i think that there's
a very
1:02:08
influential line of developmental psychology uh pioneered by jean piaget that laid that out as
a developmental
1:02:16
what would progression first you're a child then you're a member of a group
1:02:22
then you're an individual it's like get to the individual level that's the solution it's a solution to
1:02:27
tribalism but you have to accept responsibility to do that and this is what your future
authoring
1:02:32
program is basically all about i mean it's it's a wonderful program it's and along with this book
rules and
1:02:38
guidelines for life i think that's one of the things that a lot of young people are lacking is a
structure to how to go about
1:02:45
establishing who they are in the world yeah well that's you know what's really cool and it's
1:02:51
been really quite remarkable i would say is that what i've noticed when i've been speaking
publicly say over the last year
1:02:57
and a half because there's a hole in our culture where there should be a discussion about
maturity
1:03:04
truth and responsibility no one's talking about that okay so now i'll come up and i'll start
talking
1:03:10
about that i'll say look like what should you do with your life um well take care of yourself
1:03:17
but take care of yourself in a way that also means that simultaneously you're taking care of
your family
1:03:22
and that and also means that simultaneously you're taking care of the broader community so
that's kind of your goal so orient yourself towards that
1:03:28
personal success but in a way that your success breeds success because if you're going to
establish a name why not establish
1:03:35
like a really good aim that's a good one it's good for you it's good for everyone else yes okay
that'll give your life some
1:03:41
meaning now adopt make a plan generate a vision that's what the future authoring program
helps people with make a
1:03:46
develop a vision of what your life could be like if if it was worth living despite all its suffering
it's like what
1:03:52
would you need so that you would be happy to be alive you'd find your life meaningful so you
don't get all bitter and resentful and
1:03:58
cruel and hostile and ideologically adult and like murderous and genocidal it's like
1:04:04
none of that you think real hard how would you have to configure your life so that despite its
suffering and the malevolence that's
1:04:10
part of it that you would regard it as worthwhile so that's up to you to develop a vision then
put a plan into practice and so
1:04:17
when i talk to people about this and most of my audiences are young men it's probably about
65 35 more and more
1:04:22
women are showing up but that's about what it is right now the halls are dead silent you
could hear
1:04:28
a pin drop because nobody's said so clearly for like 50 years that
1:04:33
almost all the meaning that you will need to get you through the hard times of your life is
going to be a consequence of adopting
1:04:39
responsibility not of rights and impulsive action impulsive freedom like
1:04:45
fine rights yeah got it freedom no problem even freedom to do impulsive
1:04:50
things fine but that isn't where you're going to find the meaning that keeps you sustained
1:04:56
through the storms of life that's going to be you take care of yourself you take care
1:05:01
of your intimate partner you take care of your damn family you don't run off you take care of
your community
1:05:07
you rescue the wisdom from the past you stand up straight and you be courageous despite
the fact that life is tragic
1:05:13
and tainted by malevolence it's like that's the that's ancient wisdom that's what that is and
1:05:18
understanding that there's structure and discipline and that you know i am in a lot of ways
1:05:24
both of those things you described earlier i'm in a lot of ways my mind is i'm creative and i'm
always
1:05:32
sort of half paying attention to things but i'm also disciplined yeah right and it's one of the
reasons why i think
1:05:39
i'm i so relate to both sides of this issue yeah because i could it's also one of the reasons
you're successful yeah i
1:05:44
could have easily been some hardcore right-wing [ __ ] i'm a competition-oriented person
1:05:50
i've been since i was a child yeah i grew up competing in martial arts tournaments i mean
that's and you
1:05:57
have to be a hard person to do that you have to understand what discipline is but before that
i was an artist i wanted
1:06:04
to be a cartoonist i wanted to do comic books that's what i wanted to do i wanted to be an
illustrator if it wasn't for one bad teacher in high
1:06:11
school that totally shied me away from art i probably would have went into that as a living
1:06:17
when i look at both sides i see myself in both sides yep yep well the other thing i've been
1:06:23
telling young men is that and and this is something i think that you could relate to
tremendously is i read this new testament line well
1:06:31
decades ago and i could never understand it it's the line is the meek shall inherit the earth
and i thought there's something wrong
1:06:37
with that that line it just doesn't make sense to me meat just doesn't seem to me to be a
moral virtue and so i did a series of biblical
1:06:43
lectures this year like 15 of them and that was also a weird little experience that we can talk
about but i was looking through the these
1:06:51
these sayings these maxims and that was one of them the meek shall inherit the earth but
i've been using this site called bible
1:06:57
hub and it's very interesting it's very it's organized very interesting so you have a biblical line
and then they
1:07:03
they have like three pages of commentary on each line and so because people have
commented on
1:07:08
every verse in the bible like to the to degree that's almost unimaginable so you can look and
see all the interpretations and all the
1:07:14
translations and get some sense of what the genuine meaning might be and the line
1:07:20
the meek shall inherit the earth meek is not a good translation or the word has moved
1:07:26
in the 300 years or so 300 years or so since it was translated what it means is this
1:07:32
those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed will inherit the
world and
1:07:38
that's another thing i've been telling you yeah no kidding that's a lot different that's a big
difference it's so great and so like one of the things i tell
1:07:45
young men well on young women as well but the young men really need to hear this more i
think is that
1:07:50
you should be a monster you know because everyone says well you should be harmless
virtuous you shouldn't do
1:07:56
anyone any harm you should sheath your competitive instinct you shouldn't try to win you
know you you don't want to be too
1:08:01
aggressive you don't want to be too assertive you want to take a back seat and all of that it's
like no wrong you should be a monster
1:08:09
an absolute monster and then you should learn how to control it do you know the expression
it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a
1:08:16
gardener in a war right right exactly that's exactly it yeah yeah and that's exactly right and so
when i tell young men that they think
1:08:22
well lots of them are competitive they're low in agreeableness you know because that's part
of being competitive temperamentally it's like is there something wrong with
1:08:28
being competitive there's nothing wrong with it there's something wrong with cheating there's
something wrong with being a
1:08:34
tyrant there's something wrong with winning unfairly all of those things are bad but you don't
want people to win what's
1:08:40
the difference between trying to win and striving you want to eradicate striving what's the
uncomfortable feeling that people
1:08:46
associate with losing when they've personally experienced it they look at losing as their
1:08:52
they've been oppressed or they've been hurt but what they don't understand is that is the
motivation for growth
1:08:58
and one of the most beautiful things that i think a young person can get involved in is martial
arts because martial arts
1:09:04
teach you that in a way that very few things do they teach you it in especially jiu jitsu
because jiu jitsu is so complex
1:09:11
and there's so many possibilities to it that it attracts a lot of really smart people if you think of
jujitsu you would think
1:09:18
of like brutish individuals engaging in this hard martial art you go to a real good jujitsu school
you
1:09:23
see nerds you see a bunch of like really smart kids that really get obsessed with the
1:09:29
possibilities of this physical language this physical language also teaches you the
consequences of
1:09:35
not working hard of not being prepared of not understanding positions of not
1:09:41
doing due diligence and doing the work and it's it's an amazing
1:09:47
amazing scaffolding for developing your life but it also teaches you how to lose yes you
know and that's very important
1:09:52
one definition of a winner is someone who never let losing stop them yes you know and and
the idea that
1:09:58
a single loss in the competition is somehow a defeat is completely insane first of all well let's
say you're a
1:10:04
hockey player and you're a good player and you you lose the tournament it's like well so
what you played the game
1:10:09
you're increasing your skills it's like there's always next time and one of the things that i've
also been
1:10:16
telling people informing people about is the idea that life isn't a game it's a series of games
and the right
1:10:23
ethic is to be the winner of the series of games and part of that means you all you have to
learn how to be a good loser because
1:10:29
you're not going to win every single game but you also have to embrace those losses as
learning experiences and the people that have never lost or
1:10:35
afraid of losing they're afraid of learning you're afraid of that feeling that terrible feeling that
you get from
1:10:41
losing is so beneficial it's aided me in so many ways like it's one of the reasons and also one
of the reasons why i talk
1:10:47
so openly about bombing on stage and i do it with other comedians i i always want to tell
people yeah
1:10:53
i'm an established comedian i've been a comedian for a long time let me tell you about like
when i was two years in or five years in or
1:10:59
or four years ago like can we tell you about some horrible moments on stage where it went
wrong
1:11:05
just so you understand like those things took me to another place because i realized i don't
want to ever feel that
1:11:10
feeling again and so i ramped everything up and then i went back to work and i went over my
notebooks and i went over my
1:11:16
my recordings and i figured out what i was doing wrong and and i tried to improve upon it but
if it wasn't for that horrible sick feeling
1:11:23
that's the same feeling you get when you get tapped out in jiu jitsu class same feeling you
get when you lose a martial arts tournament or anything else
1:11:30
losing is important well you might also say like let's say that you could pick your le you can
pick your level of competition
1:11:36
in life to some degree okay so let's say you pick a level of competition where you're always
winning
1:11:42
it's like well all that means is you've picked the wrong level of competition yes because you
know like let's say you're a
1:11:47
grandmaster chess player and you're all you do is play amateurs and every night you go
home and congratulate yourself on what a
1:11:53
genius you are because you just stomp these people left right and center it's like you're not a
genius you're dimwit right what you should be
1:11:59
doing is playing people who are beating you like well as much as you can tolerate right so
maybe that's 40
1:12:04
of the time maybe it's 60 percent of the time but that way because to be a winner you want to
be disciplined you want to know what you're
1:12:10
doing and then you want to be on the edge where your skills are being developed and if
you're going to be on the edge
1:12:16
where your skills are going to be developed you're you're at a place where where loss we're
losing is always a
1:12:22
possibility because otherwise you're not pushing yourself beyond your current capacity
1:12:27
and so one of the things that i've outlined in 12 rules for life is is a theory of meaning
because meaning
1:12:34
as far as i'm concerned the sense of meaningful engagement is the antidote to malevolence
and suffering essentially
1:12:40
because you want to have a life that's so engaging that you think despite the fact that i'm
limited and that we're mortal and that life is
1:12:46
tragedy and there's evil in the world despite all that this is worth doing and i think that
1:12:53
that there's there's a there's a technical meaning that that that genuinely exists
1:12:59
and that's the meaning that you get when you're in a domain where you have some
discipline and some skill so you're
1:13:05
laying out your competence and and your your ability but you're simultaneously pushing
yourself
1:13:11
to develop past where you are that's really engrossing and what's that do it what that is
doing
1:13:17
is expanding your competence and so life is suffering and betrayal in
1:13:22
in in many senses of the world but you can adopt a way of traversing through life
1:13:28
that is more powerful than the tragedy in the malevolence i agree and i say to many people
that
1:13:35
what what is going on in your life is you have a series of human reward systems that are
1:13:40
in your body encoded in your body in your genetics and it's the reason why human beings
survive to 2018.
1:13:47
in in order to be happy you have to feed those things you have to feed all of them you have
to feed the one that
1:13:53
wants to uh overcome difficult tasks you have to feed the one that wants to solve problems
you have to feed the one
1:13:59
that wants to be with a loving tribe of people that you care about you have to feed the one
that
1:14:05
wants to procreate you have to feed all these things you have to feed the love you have to
feed the competition
1:14:11
you have to feed the discipline and that to me is the only way to stay balanced or with me
with my body and my mind that's
1:14:18
the only way i've i've been able to stay balanced and when either one any of those things get
out of whack i get out of whack yeah well so so part
1:14:24
of that is so imagine this so imagine that you're this loose collection of all these things that
need to be gratified that need to
1:14:30
be fed it's a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it biologically okay so now you have to
conjure up a mode of being
1:14:37
that satisfies all those necessities simultaneously but then and this is this is a technical
1:14:43
explanation of why the post-modernist insistence that there's an infinite number of
explanations
1:14:49
turns out to be wrong an infinite number of interpretations there's a very finite number of
viable
1:14:56
interpretations so the first constraint is what exactly what you just said you have these inner
demons let's say
1:15:02
all of which need to be satisfied but they need to be satisfied in a very particular way not only
do they need to
1:15:08
be satisfied today but they need to be satisfied today in a way that doesn't interfere with
1:15:14
satisfying them next week next month next year and in a decade so because there's no point
in you
1:15:20
betraying your your future self to gratify your present self right it's a stupid game
1:15:25
okay so you're constrained by the necessity of satisfying yourself but of maintaining that
satisfaction across
1:15:31
time but then it gets even worse that's hard enough but it's like there's an infinite number of
views extending
1:15:38
indefinitely into the future and all of them have to be satisfied simultaneously but then it's
worse because it isn't
1:15:43
just you you have to figure out how to gratify all those internal demons in a sustainable way
1:15:49
in a way that other people not only don't object to but probably help you with and that
1:15:55
benefits them at the same time well then you think you think well there just aren't that many
ways of solving
1:16:01
that problem and we know some of them one of them is reciprocity you know like if you go
out
1:16:06
of your way for me it's incumbent on me to notice that and to attempt in some manner to
1:16:13
to repay you and like if if we're good friends that's what we'll do if we're good
1:16:18
brothers that's what we'll do that's what you do with your wife it's a reciprocal arrangement
and that keeps things flowing properly
1:16:24
across time so there is an there is an ethic this and this is the answer to the
1:16:30
post-modern conundrum it's like well is life meaningless is everything just nihilist is is
1:16:35
nihilism the right answer or maybe you know the what would you call identification with an
ideology as a
1:16:41
counter position to nihilism so nihilism is wrong life is meaningful that and that's what
1:16:47
12 rules for life is about the first meaning of life is suffering and malevolence there's
indisputable realities okay
1:16:55
well what's what's after that well there's a noble way of being that allows you to exist properly
despite that
1:17:02
and also not to make it worse so can your life be meaningful enough so that you what is it
confront chaos
1:17:11
voluntarily establish and revivify order constrain malevolence
1:17:19
that's a good three-part doctrine for life there's things to do and so that's what i've been
talking to the audiences that
1:17:25
i've been seeing over the last year it's like get your act together stand up forthrightly that's
rule one stand up straight with
1:17:32
your shoulders back there's a vulnerable position right because you're open but it's a
powerful
1:17:37
position because it means that you're brave enough to take what's coming and it isn't like
what's coming isn't
1:17:42
dangerous it's dangerous so but your best bet is to be
1:17:48
dancing on your feet and ready for it pay attention and be awake and to treat yourself
properly that's rule two is figure out how to treat
1:17:54
yourself as if you're someone worth coming to the aid of to detach yourself in a bit and say
okay i'm going
1:18:00
to set up my life so that it it's good for me and good for other people as well that's a corollary
to that so the book
1:18:07
is all about all about the meanings of life the negative meanings suffering
1:18:14
malevolence those are indisputable realities and then a motive being that integrates the
sorts of things that you were
1:18:19
talking about these underlying needs with everyone else's and like doing that voluntarily it's a
call to
1:18:25
responsibility and meaning and i actually think it's not the thing that's been so exciting for me
1:18:31
for the last three decades looking into these things is that i believe that there is a genuine
1:18:39
human ethic it's not arbitrary it has to do with reciprocity for example it has to do with
honesty that's another thing
1:18:44
is that speak the truth because your life turns out better if you speak the truth and so does
everyone else's
1:18:51
so in this biblical lecture series i did i looked at the first chapter in genesis and there's a
theory in there it's
1:18:57
really interesting theory and the theory is that there's three parts to being there's chaos and
1:19:02
potential and that would be like the potential you should live up to because everyone says
well you should live up to your potential
1:19:08
it's like what the hell's that you can't measure it or touch it or taste it feel it it's this
hypothetical thing that everyone
1:19:15
regards as real it's like it's like the future what's the future well it's not here yet you can't
measure
1:19:21
it what makes you think it's real well we act as if it's real and that
1:19:27
seems to work there's the so there's potential that's one that's chaos chaotic potential
1:19:32
then there's order and that's the structure that you need in order to to confront the chaos and
and you'd be
1:19:39
born with that biologically and then there's your ability to to call forth from the
1:19:44
potential new order that's what you do with your speech and that's what that's what happens
in the first chapter of genesis
1:19:51
is that god uses god's order let's say uses the power of truthful speech that's
1:19:57
the logos to transform potential into order and that's what people are made in the
1:20:02
image of so there's this theory it's a lovely theory that's laid out right at the beginning of the
bible that says that
1:20:08
if you tell the truth you transform the potential of being into a habitable actuality
1:20:16
that's how it works so say well how do you wanna how do you make the world better tell the
truth because the world you
1:20:21
bring into being as a consequence of telling the truth will be a good world and i believe that's
true i think it's
1:20:27
true metaphorically i think it's true theologically and i think it's true like at the practical and
scientific
1:20:35
level as well i think it's true in all those levels simultaneously so that's been ridiculously
exciting to
1:20:40
to sort through i think this notion and one of the things that you said that i think really
1:20:46
resonates is that there's not a voice out there that is
1:20:52
advocating for responsibility and that is talking about how important this is and i think this is
an inherent principle
1:20:58
that most people are kind of aware of and it feels good to them to hear like it resonates
1:21:04
you feel it you when you when you're saying this clean your room you know put your house
in order people like yeah yeah how come i'm not hearing
1:21:10
this right right i'm not hearing this well it's so funny because one of the things psychologists
have done for the last 20
1:21:16
years especially the social psychologists is push this idea of self-esteem you should feel
good about yourself and
1:21:22
i think why would you tell someone 20 that it's like you should feel good about who you are
it's like no you shouldn't why
1:21:28
should you feel good about who you are it's like you should feel good about who you could
be that's way better because
1:21:34
you've got 60 years to turn into who you go wait a minute are you what your
accomplishments are or are you this
1:21:40
individual going through this journey i mean i don't think there's anything wrong with feeling
good about who you are if
1:21:45
as long as it's tempered by an understanding of potential and what you have accomplished
versus what
1:21:50
you can accomplish well i think but having confidence is a big part of it it is it is and i'm not
saying that
1:21:55
people shouldn't have confidence but like often you take young people say they're 16 to 22
1:22:00
and they're not really feeling that good about who they are right because their life is chaotic
and in disorder and they don't know where they're going and they don't
1:22:07
know which way is up also there could be bad parenting bullying that could be a lot of abuse
1:22:12
going on and i think that's one of the reasons why that resonates with people this idea of be
happy for you about who you are right
1:22:18
feel good about who you're right but but the thing is it has to be stated with precision it's like
yes it's
1:22:24
like you should you should treat yourself as if you're valuable especially in potential but you
should
1:22:31
concentrate on who you should become especially if you're young and so let's say you're
miserable and nihilistic and
1:22:36
chaotic and depressed and all of that now and you have your reasons you know terrible
parenting abuse all of those
1:22:41
things it's like well you should feel good about yourself it's like no no it's not it's not the right
1:22:46
message is that it's more like you should understand how much potential there is within you
to
1:22:53
set that straight and then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and
it will set it straight
1:22:59
and that's better than self-esteem it's like you're you're in a crooked horrible position okay
fine there's a lot of suffering and
1:23:05
pain associated with that yeah you can't just feel good about that because it's not good but
you can do
1:23:10
something about it you can genuinely do something about it and i think all the evidence
suggests that that's the case yes
1:23:16
so i'm telling telling young people look there's no matter how bad your situation is i'm not
going to pretend it's okay it's
1:23:23
not okay it's tragic tainted with malevolence and some people really get hurt by malevolent
people
1:23:28
like you know terribly hurt sometimes they never recover it's really awful but there's more to
you than you think
1:23:35
and if you stand up and face it with with a positive with a with a noble vision
1:23:40
with discipline and intent you can go far farther to overcoming it than you
1:23:46
can imagine and that's the principle upon which you should predicate your behavior
1:23:51
and i think that one of the things that's really nice about being a clinical psychologist is that
this isn't just guesswork like one of
1:23:57
the things we know two things in clinical psychology one is truthful conversations redeem
people
1:24:04
because if you come to a clinical psychologist whose worth is solved you have a truthful
conversation the
1:24:10
conversation is well here's what's wrong with my life and here's what caused it you know
maybe
1:24:16
it takes a year to have that conversation and both of the participants are doing everything
they can to lay it out
1:24:22
properly here's how it might be fixed here's what a beneficial future might look like
1:24:27
and so it's a completely honest conversation if it's working well and all that's happening in
the conversation is that the two people
1:24:33
involved are trying to make things better that's the goal let's see if we can have a
conversation that will make things
1:24:39
better okay so we know that works it does make things better and then another thing we
know is that
1:24:44
well let's say there's a bunch of things that you're afraid of that are in your way so you have
some vision about who you
1:24:50
want to be maybe you have to you know you want to be successful in your career so you
have to learn to talk in front of a group it's like okay well you're
1:24:57
afraid of that it's like no wonder you don't want to be humiliated so okay so what do we do
about that well maybe we first get you to speak in
1:25:04
front of one person and then three people you know for five minutes and then for 10 minutes
like graduated exposure to
1:25:10
what you're afraid of voluntary graduated exposure to what you're afraid of is curative and
that's true it works
1:25:17
the documentation is in it's how people learn so so to to to tell people that if you
1:25:24
confront the world forthrightly if you speak the truth and you expose yourself courageously to
those things
1:25:30
that you're afraid of that your life will improve and so will the life of people around you like as
far as i'm concerned that's as
1:25:36
close to undeniable fact as we as we've got and it also dovetails nicely with the underlying
archetypal
1:25:41
stories the heroic stories it's like go out there find the dragon confront it it's a dragon it might
eat you it's dangerous
1:25:48
but it's worse to cower at home and wait for it to come and devour you go out there confront
it get the gold
1:25:54
share it with the community it's like yeah it's the oldest story of mankind i think one of the
factors and the resistance to
1:26:01
these ideas of discipline and of taking responsibility for yourself and of a lot of the things that
1:26:07
you've been saying in regards to you know all the things that we discussed earlier is people
recognizing
1:26:12
that they're not doing that in their own lives and they get upset and instead of looking
internally they
1:26:18
try to attack the thing that's upsetting them they attack your message they attack the
philosophy behind it
1:26:26
rather than look internally and objectively and having some sort of introspective point of view
where you go okay am i
1:26:33
reacting to this because this resonates like i'm missing this aspect of my life
1:26:38
is this guy does does does this diminish me or is this guy pointing something out
1:26:43
that i can benefit from very few people are willing to do that very few people are willing to
take that
1:26:49
critical moment to look at their own behavior and look at their own thought process and
wonder
1:26:54
if the actual adverse reaction they have to this person's message is because they know that
they're wrong
1:27:00
yeah well it's no well it's there's a couple of reasons for that one is well
1:27:06
what makes you think that you're someone we should listen to it's like fair enough you know
so you've got to be poked a bunch to see if that's
1:27:12
true and then the next thing is um well it's it's painful to understand
1:27:20
how much of what you're doing isn't productive so i'll give you an example so i've done this a
couple of times with
1:27:26
classrooms full of students usually when i'm lecturing about career development say okay
1:27:32
how much time do you waste so then i get the class to vote how many of you waste uh 10
hours a day it's like 10 percent of
1:27:38
the kids will put up their hands and it's interesting because i don't define what constitutes
waste
1:27:43
i just ask the question so they're diagnosing themselves right i'm not saying you're wasting
10 hours a day
1:27:49
i'm just asking it's like given your own attitude how much time are you wasting 10 hours a
1:27:55
day it's like 10 of the people put up their hands well when you get to like six hours a day
eighty percent of the people put up
1:28:01
their hands so then we do the arithmetic it's like because i like doing arithmetic with people
people hate arithmetic but i like doing
1:28:07
it it's like okay six hours a day it's 42 hours a week so let's call that a work week 40 hours a
1:28:13
week so so that's that's a work week let's say what's your time worth your university student
well it's
1:28:19
certainly worth minimum wage because obviously but it's worth way more than that because
if you spend a productive hour when
1:28:26
you're 20 then you gain the benefits of that hour for the rest of your life so there's the
compounding effect of
1:28:32
time spent when you're young so i say well let's assume your time's worth 50 bucks an hour
which i think is an underestimate but
1:28:37
whatever let's call it 50. we call it 25 but we'll call it 50. that's two thousand dollars a week
you're wasting it's a hundred thousand
1:28:44
dollars a year it's like how much better would your life be if you weren't wasting a hundred
thousand dollars a year
1:28:51
it's like what is that over forty years four million dollars it's like you're rich you don't even
1:28:57
know it quit wasting time by your own definition it's like people
1:29:02
shake their heads like i never thought about it that way it's like yeah think about it that way
don't waste your damn life and
1:29:08
then you think why would people be resistant to that message it's like well you really want to
wake up and figure out that you're wasting half your life
1:29:16
and you know when people do that kind of wasting they actually hate it you know and i've
had lots of people
1:29:22
come to my clinical practice who were chronic procrastinators you know and so they're
watching youtube
1:29:28
videos say but but not ones that are good for them although sometimes they will do that but
just
1:29:33
browsing in that kind of mindless way that you do when you're not paying attention and
you're trying to kill time
1:29:38
and people doing that they feel bad they get depressed they feel anxious they can't get away
from it they feel kind of
1:29:44
quasi-addicted what are they doing about social media now it's a huge issue with young kids
absolutely but there's this feeling of
1:29:51
kind of internal rot and corruption that goes along with it it's like yeah well you're wasting
your life it's like so it's painful it's painful
1:29:58
to recognize that then it's painful to think oh my god look how undisciplined i am
1:30:04
i don't know anything i can't use a schedule i can't i can't stick to a calendar i don't have any
aims i don't know
1:30:10
anything about the world right and maybe there's a part of me that's bitter because i haven't
got everything already and i'd like just
1:30:16
like to say to hell with it that's the recognition of the union's shadow it's like that's what
makes you vicious and
1:30:22
and and and untrustworthy all of that no one wants to look at that and no bloody wonder but
1:30:30
hey the alternative is worse so the problem is you say like just saying you stop wasting your
life
1:30:37
like i think that that's not enough i think this is one of the reasons why a book like this is so
1:30:43
important like the idea of discipline in most people's eyes it's like if you're not a disciplined
person
1:30:50
it's uncomfortable it's it's going to be painful it's it's frustrating you you have to
1:30:56
force yourself into these things it's a muscle it's a and it's a muscle that has to be developed
these patterns
1:31:01
have to be developed in in your own mind incrementally yes yeah well with uh so you're right
just telling people not
1:31:08
to waste their lives is not enough and this is another reason why i've so much enjoyed being
a clinical psychologist because clinical
1:31:14
psychologists don't stick with high-level abstractions especially the behaviors they're really
1:31:20
practical it's like okay you want to get your act together it's like well how about if let's say
you're not studying
1:31:26
well and so we do a real analysis of how much you're studying you say well i go to the library
four hours a day it's like yeah yeah okay
1:31:31
how much time do you actually study in the library well you know i waste time i have to travel
1:31:37
there i look at my phone it's like okay well how much 15 minutes half an hour how much is
real studying
1:31:43
well maybe we figure out it's 15 minutes so okay so what you're going to do for one week is
you're going to study for half an
1:31:49
hour that's all you don't get to go to the library for four hours you have to sit down we'll figure
out a
1:31:54
time 10 o'clock in the morning whatever we'll put it in your schedule try to study for half an
hour no more
1:32:00
and then just come back and let's have a conversation about how well that worked and
people come back and they say well you know i managed it four days
1:32:06
and one day i went over and one day i couldn't do it at all it's like okay that's better instead of
75 minutes of
1:32:13
studying you know 15 minutes a day for seven days what is that 15 70 105 minutes you've
managed about 210
1:32:21
minutes so you've already produced an improvement of 50 percent in your bumbling horrible
way you got a 50 improvement in one week
1:32:27
it's like that's deadly it's like so in in the future authoring program
1:32:33
what we ask people to do is well think about your life along six dimensions what do you want
for your so the goal is
1:32:39
this you're going to take care of yourself you're going to have a life in three years that
justifies its suffering
1:32:44
that's the goal so you can invent the damn life but you have to think what you would be
satisfied with so you wouldn't be all bitter and resentful
1:32:51
it's like okay what do you want from your family what do you want from your friends
1:32:56
how are you going to educate yourself what do you want for your career how are you going
to use your time outside of work how are you going to handle drugs
1:33:01
and alcohol and other temptations like that how are you going to keep yourself mentally and
physically healthy these are open questions like you get to
1:33:08
answer them the idea is you can have whatever you want but you have to figure out what it
1:33:13
is it has to be realistic and you have to figure out what it is it's okay so now develop a vision
what's your life going to be like in three to
1:33:18
five years so you write it down then we do something else which is okay um
1:33:23
your bad habits and your resentment and your bitterness and all of that your procrastination
gets completely out of hand
1:33:29
and you auger down and you're in your own personal version of hell in three to five years
what does that look like well everyone
1:33:35
knows that it's like everyone can look into the future and think well if i keep going on this dark
path this
1:33:41
is where i'll end up well then you've got a little hell outline for yourself to run away from
1:33:46
and you've got a little heaven outline for yourself to run towards and then you're motivated
because sometimes you know you're just
1:33:53
hopeful i would like a good thing to happen it's like yeah but you know i'd like to drink half a
bottle of whiskey tonight too it's
1:33:59
like so which is it gonna be well just being hopeful about the future might not be
1:34:04
enough but then you think oh i see like there's that little hell thing that i outlined that's waiting
for
1:34:09
me and maybe i'm afraid of taking the next next step forward because it's demanding and
challenging it's like
1:34:14
yeah i'm afraid of that but i'm way more afraid of where i might end up if i don't get my act
together
1:34:19
and people should be that's why there are conceptions of hell in so many religions it's like
hell is a real place whether
1:34:26
it's eternal that's a whole different question whether it's waiting for you in the afterlife that's a
whole different question
1:34:32
but if you've never met anyone in hell you haven't lived very long you haven't had your eyes
open yeah it's
1:34:37
undeniable that that feeling of total complete misery is undeniable yeah especially when it's
compounded by
1:34:44
the fact that you know you did it to yourself that's the real fun that's the real fun part it's like
i'm having a [ __ ] of a
1:34:50
time and i richly deserve it jesus that's rough man this is another concept that is doesn't have
1:34:56
a voice right now this is another i mean this is a giant part of being a human being
1:35:02
and instead of identity politics and right versus left i think these these right versus left battles
1:35:08
oftentimes what they are is simply the the battleground for the conflicts in your own mind
1:35:14
better to have the conflict in yourself that's another thing i really learned well not not only
from the new testament but
1:35:20
a fair bit from that you know the idea is that well there's evil in the world
1:35:25
of all sorts and some of it's the evil in other people and some of it's the evil in your
1:35:31
brother's heart but the the part of it that you can really do something about that's the
malevolence in your own heart
1:35:37
you can actually do something about that and that's actually way more useful than you think
so because if you can face it in you
1:35:45
then you start to understand it and that also makes you strong enough to identify it and to
fight it when you see it in the external world plus you don't
1:35:52
do any harm it's like like there's lots of people all over the world going out and doing
reprehensible things you might say well
1:35:57
you should go out and protest against them like then sometimes you should but most of the
time you should think
1:36:03
where am i falling short of the ideal my own ideal doesn't have to be one that someone puts
on you where am i less than i should be
1:36:10
where am i bitter where am i making the world the worst place than it has to be like you ask
yourself those questions
1:36:16
you'll be in for a big shock say well what would happen if you stopped doing that that's what
12 rules for life is about it's like
1:36:22
stop saying things that make you weak stop telling lies that you know to be lies stop doing
1:36:27
things you know to be useless and counterproductive aim high adopt some responsibility
and
1:36:33
then see what the hell happens it's like it'll work and that's what i'm hoping people will do
1:36:38
yeah i'm hoping people do that too and i think the if more people live their life in this sort of a
manner
1:36:45
i think we're going to have less differences in terms of our ideologies and more of an
understanding that people have different ways of
1:36:51
looking at things and different ways of living and this this combat between people this this
internal strife that
1:36:59
manifests itself in this combat between ideologies i think
1:37:04
you are much more inclined to let other people live their lives if you're living your life in a
satisfactory manner
1:37:10
that's exactly it that's that i have a chapter in there on raising kids says uh don't like your kids
don't let
1:37:16
your kids do anything that makes you dislike them it's like well that's first predicated on the
observation that you're quite a
1:37:21
monster and it would be better for your kids if they didn't get on your bad side and like again
because i'm a clinical
1:37:26
psychologist i keep saying monster why why do you use that term because i've watched
families
1:37:32
like i've seen families where it's as if every single person in the family has their hands around
1:37:37
the neck of the family member that's close to them and they're squeezing but only tight
enough to strangle them
1:37:42
in 20 years but you're not always using it as a pejorative you you you've also used it you
should become
1:37:48
a monster you should be a monster yeah but that's that's you shouldn't be it shouldn't be
1:37:54
accidental that's the thing what so what do you mean by monster then in a positive sense
1:37:59
like you should a monster oh that's easy a positive monster is somebody who says no and
means it
1:38:05
because when you say no what you mean is there isn't anything you can do to me that will
make me agree to do this why is that a monster because you have
1:38:11
to be because no one will take you seriously otherwise no one will take you seriously like no
1:38:16
means if you keep pushing this something that you do not like will happen to you
1:38:22
that's what no means you don't have any strength of character unless you can put up a fight
you know and to be able to say no to
1:38:28
something is to be able to put up a fight so and you can't do that if you're if you can be
pushed around
1:38:33
you'll just get argued into submission or you'll feel guilty because you're causing conflict or
something like that
1:38:38
but isn't there confusion using those terms as a positive as a negative maybe there's another
word instead of monsters well there is there
1:38:45
is the potential there is the potential for confusion you say well is that something that can be
because i think that monster is a
1:38:51
horrible thing i don't think of it as being like a wall like someone who is just rock solid in
1:38:58
their belief system and rocks out in their understanding well when you when you fight
someone who's
1:39:03
formidable say what do you think of the person that you're fighting like how would you
characterize them
1:39:08
they mean they have a monstrous side because they can they they'll they can they can bring
physical
1:39:16
substantial physical force to bear on the situation and and be willing to do it so they're
1:39:22
not naive and and harmless by any stretch of the imagination right they have a
well-developed capacity for mayhem
1:39:30
they think well is that monstrous it's like well i would say yes i would say fierce
1:39:37
fierce fine let's go with that yeah because someone who's fierce and formidable it's not
1:39:42
necessarily a monster you know just i think of a monster as being just an awful person who's
done
1:39:47
awful things and just you know okay well so but fair enough well so back to the back to the
1:39:53
situation with your kids well you definitely don't want to have your kids act in a way that
awakens your inner
1:39:58
monster right let's put it that way and so you need to you need to organize your family with a
certain
1:40:05
amount of discipline and a certain amount of structure so that you get to do what you want
which is back to back to the point that you made earlier
1:40:12
so that you're happy to have your kids around so that you won't take revenge on them and
so you want to
1:40:18
lay your life out so that well so that it's providing you what you
1:40:24
need to not be bitter and to work for your best interests and for the interests of everyone else
1:40:30
that would be lovely and i think it's attainable you know because the book is very dark and
i'm a very
1:40:35
dark guy in some ways because i've looked at the terrible things that people do to one
another that's the fascinating way
1:40:41
of looking at it you think you're yourself as dark cause i don't oh that's great of you is dark oh
that's good i mean you seem you're a very
1:40:47
friendly guy i think you're you're very serious and especially about these very complicated
issues and i think
1:40:53
that's one of the reasons why you have made this gigantic wave
1:41:00
uh in online discourse and people discussing these very tumultuous times we live in is
1:41:06
because you're a guy that did extrapolate your guy did look at that c-16 bill
1:41:11
and look at marxism and go do you know where this is heading and you were the guy that
had the courage to say murderous
1:41:18
and and people like what the [ __ ] is he talking about that doesn't make any sense and you
had to spell it out and explain
1:41:24
it and when you do you realize why this is so significant to you
1:41:30
yeah well the tribalism issue that you were discussing earlier doesn't seem to be all that what
would you say debatable
1:41:38
that if we degenerate into tribalism the probability of bloodshed becomes vastly enhanced
1:41:43
it's like well that always happens when people devolve into tribalism so when i'm pointing to
a particular kind of tribalism
1:41:49
i guess the darkness is that you know i'm very aware of the terrible things that people not
1:41:54
only are likely to do to each other but do do to each other all the time i mean what it's about
forty percent for
1:42:00
divorce rate right you have to go you have to go through a fairly fair bit of ugliness to get to
1:42:06
divorce canadians are nicer than americans maybe you guys have forty percent maybe
maybe i think we're gonna say yeah
1:42:12
i mean i think i i think actually it's 50 here somewhere around the line but yeah yeah you
have to go through a lot that's yeah
1:42:19
that's really ugly too you know and chris rock had a joke about that he's like 50 of people uh
get divorced
1:42:25
he goes and he goes but that's just the people who had the courage to leave he goes how
many cowards just stay and suffer
1:42:33
and meanwhile he wound up getting divorced a few years later and a horrible divorce so
yeah
1:42:40
true story yeah yeah yeah yeah but it's a good point yeah i think um
1:42:48
we need um more people who are actualized human beings more more people
1:42:53
who understand themselves more people who have gone through adversity both
1:42:59
in real life and personal in terms of their understanding of their own growth of their own
potential
1:43:05
and their own understanding of how they've managed their their life their mind their their
1:43:10
actions and the the more we have people that have personal sovereignty
1:43:16
the better we'll be able to have these these conversations well that that be the hope you
know one of the things i've been
1:43:23
suggesting to people is that they pick something difficult to do i read this this funny little
paragraph
1:43:29
by kierkegaard it was written about 1840 and he was thinking about his role as a student and
writer and he was a student
1:43:34
and writer forever you know he never really had a career apart from that and he said that he
wasn't one of these
1:43:41
people who was capable of inventing something wonderful to make life easier for everyone
like so many people were doing you know
1:43:48
during the industrial revolution he said well maybe i'm one of these people whose benefit to
society will be that i will
1:43:54
make things more difficult for everyone because there will come a time when what people
want not they don't
1:43:59
want ease they want difficulty instead and i think well that is what people want that is what
they want you think
1:44:05
well i want an easy happy life it's like no actually that isn't what you want i think what people
want is things that are difficult
1:44:11
that they can overcome yeah right that's right they want an optimal challenge well there's a
whole different thing when you overcome
1:44:18
something when you do something difficult whether it's i mean i've never written a book but i
assume when you write a book when you're done writing that book there's a
1:44:24
great feeling of accomplishment because it's very difficult to do that feeling of accomplish for
me it's
1:44:29
like when i put together a comedy special or when i you know just anything that's difficult
there's a
1:44:35
feeling like i did it yeah yeah well one of the mysteries is why that feeling exists you know it's
a genuine it's not
1:44:42
a trivial thing that it's to say i did something difficult and that was worthwhile
1:44:47
basically what you're saying to yourself is well there was a lot of suffering attendant on that
along with the just general suffering of
1:44:53
life but it turned out that was worth it that's what you want it's like you want that sense that
you're engaged in
1:44:59
something that's worth it and i say well like i i try to i'm not a
1:45:05
like a casual optimist about these sorts of things i mean one of the things i do in 12 rules for
life is lay out the rationale
1:45:12
that drives people like the columbine high school killers because i understand that rationale
i've studied it for a long
1:45:17
time i know why they did what they did and they have a powerful argument but it's wrong
1:45:23
but you don't there's no sense in showing how it's wrong before showing that it's a powerful
argument
1:45:28
like life is suffering there is lots of malevolence it's no wonder that people want to bring being
itself to a halt they want to take
1:45:34
revenge on it it's not surprising it's the wrong way of going about it the right way is it's
1:45:40
akin to the sorts of things that you were just observing is you take on a difficult task that
pushes you past where you are already
1:45:47
and you you succeed in it and you get this sense that yes that was worthwhile it's like that's
1:45:52
what you want you want to live in that place where things are worthwhile that's paradise on
earth that's what
1:45:57
that is and it isn't some happy little place where you know someone's feeding you peeled
grapes
1:46:02
that isn't what it is it's it's more like it's more like victory on the honorable battlefield or
something like that
1:46:09
yeah the the perception that people have of ultimate success and ultimate happiness is uh
1:46:14
it seems motivated by what they don't have rather than an understanding of what success
and happiness really is
1:46:21
their idea is that one day i'm gonna go and i'm gonna be in my golden years and i'm just
going to be able to sit around and do nothing and
1:46:28
tell everybody to [ __ ] off you won't be happy at all yeah i talked to to one of the people that i
was
1:46:33
working with who had a like a vision for retirement i said well what's your vision for retirement
well i see myself in the beach you know
1:46:39
some tropical country drinking margaritas and i thought uh first that's not a plan that's a
1:46:44
travel poster it's like okay let's let's walk through this all right so you go down to this tropical
country
1:46:50
and you go sit on the beach and you have a margarita it's like okay well how many
margaritas like 10. okay is it going to do that
1:46:57
we're going to do that for six months you'll be dead yeah well you'll be this like pathetic
sunburned like
1:47:02
fat yeah unhappy hungover yeah yeah it's like that's graduated so
1:47:09
how long can you have a margarita on a beach like maybe you can do that once every six
months for like 10 minutes something
1:47:14
like that it's not a vision it's true but when you are working and slaving away
1:47:21
you think about that beach with your feet up and the waiter comes over would you like
another margarita mr peterson
1:47:26
yeah yes i would absolutely like all right right exactly but it's it's like this 16
1:47:32
year old fantasy of paradise it's like well yes and it just doesn't work out so yeah and and the
thing that the thing
1:47:39
is is that the thing that sustains people through life really is the lifting of a worthwhile burden
it's
1:47:46
something like that and it's partly because we're social animals right it's like we're evolved to
be useful to the people around us
1:47:53
because they're much more likely to let us live if we're like that yeah so and and it's been
very fun talking to
1:48:00
especially talking to young men about this it's like well and that's the other thing too is i think
the world the world is full of
1:48:07
darkness let's say and we could say each of us have a little bit of light and if
1:48:12
we release that light if we let it shine properly christ it's too cliche to go on with in
1:48:17
some sense but the world is a lesser place if you do not reveal
1:48:24
from within yourself what you have to reveal and the fact that the world is a lesser place
actually turns out not to
1:48:29
be trivial like if you aren't everything you could be more people will die more people will
suffer more evil will
1:48:36
be unconstrained more tyranny will reign more chaos will remain chaotic and dangerous all
of that do you
1:48:43
mean this by this in the sense of like the old proverb of the wings of a butterfly fluttering
become a hurricane
1:48:48
it's it's it's something similar to that but it can even be more local it's like your family is more
messed up than it
1:48:55
could be if you were less messed up than you are right so if you just got your act together
like ten percent more
1:49:01
your family would be one percent better right it's like well do it and that would ripple off into
the
1:49:07
people that they interact yes yes and it ripples and it ripples fast yes that's the other thing
that's so
1:49:12
cool is that like people think well there's seven billion of us and each of us is just this
1:49:18
separate dust moat like floating in the cosmos and what the hell difference does it make
what you do anyways it's like that is not how we're
1:49:24
connected it's like you're the center of a network and you know
1:49:29
well you know way more people than this but let's say typically you know without you're
gonna know a thousand people in your life well enough
1:49:35
to have an impact on them okay and each of those thousand people is gonna know a
thousand people so you're one step from a million and two
1:49:42
steps from a billion and we are networked technically that that's how human interactions
work
1:49:48
and so when you do something that you shouldn't do it's worse than you think and when you
do something that you
1:49:54
should do it's better than you think and so you think well this is why i've been telling people
clean up your room
1:49:59
it's like well your room is actually networked too it's not that easy to clean up your room to
set it so you want your room to be
1:50:05
set up so that when you walk in there it tells you to be better than you generally are
1:50:11
it's organized it's got direction everything's in its place you try to do that in a chaotic
1:50:16
household you know i've watched people do this because i had students do these sorts of
things as assignments i'd say
1:50:22
look pick a small moral goal clean up your room and just write down what happens as a
1:50:28
consequence so maybe these are students in a chaotic household the whole place is a
bloody mess no one's taking any
1:50:33
responsibility for anything and so they decide they're going to start to clean up their room
and then the people in the household notice
1:50:40
well the first thing they do is get pissed off it's like who do you think you are like you think
you're better than us
1:50:45
like why do you think this is worthwhile who made who died made you god all of that so
1:50:51
just by trying to organize this little part of their life they immediately run into the people
whose actions they're casting
1:50:58
in a dim light by trying to improve themselves to some degree they might have to have like a
thorough war in their household to be
1:51:05
allowed to do something as simple as keep the room orderly they find out very rapidly that a
that's
1:51:10
way more difficult than it sounds and b that the consequences of it are far more far-reaching
than people think
1:51:16
so that's quite fun you know because maybe part of it is is that like everything around you is
full
1:51:22
of potential everything maybe more potential than you could ever possibly utilize and so
maybe all you have is this little
1:51:29
rat hole of a room in some run-down place in the world it's like fix it up there's more there
than you
1:51:35
think see what happens if you fix it up and you'll fix yourself up simultaneously because you'll
have to get disciplined
1:51:40
in order to fix up the room then you have a fixed-up room and you'll be a more fixed-up
person it's like
1:51:46
you think that nothing will happen as a consequence of that it's like all hell will break loose as
a consequence of that
1:51:52
it's really worth trying it is worth trying and it's it's a concept that seems alien to people but if
you think about it it makes sense
1:51:59
well people don't take what they have right in front of them seriously enough it's like the
wasting time thing they don't do the arithmetic
1:52:05
you know and they also don't understand they devalue what they have right in front of them
like another
1:52:11
another client i worked with was having a hard time putting his kid to bed at night and so we
we did the arithmetic it's
1:52:17
like well i'm fighting with my kid for 45 minutes a night trying to get him to go to bed okay so
1:52:22
let's analyze that all right so what does that mean well it means that both of you end the day
upset that's not
1:52:29
so good because why would you want that it means that you're spending 45 minutes fighting
when you could spend 20 minutes
1:52:34
doing something positive like reading to him say means that you don't get to spend that time
with
1:52:39
your wife so she's not very happy with you plus you're annoyed because you don't see her
plus you blame it on the kid because he's the proximal cause
1:52:46
it's like that's pretty damn ugly and then and then let's do the arithmetic it's like seven days a
week 45 minutes a day let's
1:52:53
call that five hours 20 hours a week 240 hours in a year six you're spending a month and a
half
1:53:00
of work weeks fighting with your four-year-old son you think you're going to like him you don't
like anyone you spend a month and
1:53:06
a half a year fighting with it's a bad idea fix it it's important
1:53:12
get them to bed make it peaceful you do it like these things that repeat every single day
that's a motif in this book
1:53:18
too your life isn't margaritas on a beach in in jamaica that happens now and then those are
1:53:24
exceptions your life is how your wife greets you at the door when you come home
1:53:30
every day because that's like 10 minutes a day your life is how you treat each other
1:53:35
over the breakfast table because that's an hour and a half or an hour every single day
1:53:40
you get those mundane things right those things you do every day you concentrate on them
and you make them pristine it's
1:53:46
like you got 80 of your life put together these little things that are right in front of us
1:53:52
they're not little that's the first thing they are not little and they're hard to set right and if you
set them right it has a rippling effect and and
1:53:58
fast too way faster than people think i want to talk about the rippling effect because i know
you got to get out of
1:54:04
here at one but i want to talk about the rippling effect that you have had
1:54:09
on people and how how that makes you feel i mean you were relatively unknown just a year
and a
1:54:15
half two years ago and now you have become i mean for lack of a better term you're
1:54:22
an online celebrity and your your reach is fantastic now
1:54:27
this thing that you were talking about about how your impact can affect the people around
you in a
1:54:33
not very a not insignificant way a very significant way what has that been like for you i mean
what is that adjustment
1:54:39
been like oh i haven't adjusted to it how old are you 55. so for 53 years
1:54:47
you're relatively anonymous outside of universities yeah yeah i had a little bit of you know a
little bit of exposure i did some work
1:54:54
with a public television station in canada and you know i had my little flashes of public
appearances
1:55:00
but compared to oh yeah this is just crazy what you've done on this show mean millions
yeah millions millions of
1:55:07
people have listened and watched each sing each individual episode yeah they're about two
million views each and
1:55:14
and then that's nothing compared to youtube youtube is nothing compared to the audio yeah
so the audio is like
1:55:20
five times that or something yeah so so that's yeah it's completely crazy no i haven't adjusted
to it
1:55:26
it's like i don't know i mean have you adjusted to your status i'm numb yeah so but so what's
it like
1:55:32
when you think about it you wake up in the morning and you think okay i'm i'm going to get a
billion downloads this year i don't think that i
1:55:38
i think i'm going to talk to jordan peterson whatever i want to talk about that's that's how i
handle it it's exactly the same thing for the last
1:55:45
15 months this is what i've done got up in the morning i've looked at the like 25 things i have
to do in a mad rush
1:55:52
before seven o'clock at night i think i'm going to go through them and i'm going to
concentrate on them
1:55:57
do the best job i can then at seven o'clock tonight i'm gonna have a rest i'm gonna take a
look at what i have to do tomorrow and i'm gonna do the same
1:56:04
thing that's what i've been doing and then when i stand back a little bit like when it sort of
dawns on me
1:56:10
you know then it's disconcerting like it's surreal
1:56:15
i can't figure it out i can't understand it but then i but there's no sense dwelling on that
1:56:20
because first of all i don't know how to conceptualize i don't know why it's happening exactly
like i think what's
1:56:26
happened is that two things one is that i said there was something i wouldn't do
1:56:32
with regards to this legislation and i meant it i actually meant it i wasn't going to
1:56:38
use those words under legal compulsion period no matter what and actually meant that so
there was that
1:56:44
but then i think the more relevant thing is that i've been studying these
1:56:49
old stories these archetypal stories for a very long period of time and they have power they
really have
1:56:55
power and they manifest themselves everywhere they manifest themselves in movies and in
books i mean harry potter is a mythological
1:57:01
story and it made roland richer than the queen of england you know these stories have
power and i was fortunate enough to
1:57:09
study a large number of people large number of scholars who knew what that power was
carl jung in particular
1:57:15
and i could make it more accessible to people and so that's a big part of it but what
1:57:21
the overall significance of that is well i just it just
1:57:28
leaves me speechless i mean this kathy newman thing's a good example and i mean so
many things have happened
1:57:34
i've got involved i've been in a scandal of some sort a serious scandal of some sort probably
1:57:40
every three weeks for a year and a half you know and there are things that are just
1:57:45
well the james demour thing is a good example of that like that's a big deal you know that
that explosion that
1:57:52
that emerged around him in the court case that's coming out of it it's a big deal and this thing
with lindsey shepard that was the worst scandal that ever hit
1:57:59
a canadian university and then there was all the protests and and then there was what
happened with
1:58:04
with channel 4 in the uk and it's like i don't know what to make of it i don't
1:58:09
what what i'm trying to do is have a good conversation when i come and
1:58:15
talk to somebody like you where we can have a good conversation try not to say anything
stupid that's
1:58:20
really what i'm trying to do is to not say anything stupid
1:58:25
that's hard or too stupid yeah yeah well it's been high stakes poker yeah you know for it's not
quite so bad
1:58:31
now because especially after what happened with channel 4 and some journalists like
people have been
1:58:37
trying to take me out for quite a long time and it's not it isn't working so far
1:58:44
actually you actually believe what you're saying and it actually makes sense well you know
that's that's not a bad
1:58:49
start it's not a bad start but it's rare in this world this is a especially in these ideologically
charged times
1:58:55
this toxic tribalism that we keep bringing up it's well and i also decided like a long time
1:59:01
ago and and i i think this runs through 12 rules for life is well i believe that people's decisions
1:59:07
tilt the world towards heaven or hell i i think there's no more accurate way of describing the
consequences of each
1:59:14
of your decisions than that you face potential that's what you face that's what you face in the
world is
1:59:20
potential it's not material reality it's potential and every decision you
1:59:25
make you're deciding whether you want to make the world better or worse and if you like the
ultimate better is
1:59:31
heaven and the ultimate worse is hell we know how to make the world into hell we've done
that multiple times
1:59:37
much of the 20th century was that it's like i looked at all that and i thought okay i would rather
that the world didn't
1:59:43
degenerate into hell and i understand why people want it to degenerate into hell they're
angry
1:59:48
they're angry because they suffer they suffer unfairly and they suffer because people
1:59:54
hurt them and so they think this is a bad game i'm not going to help make it better
1:59:59
i'm angry i'm going to make it worse even that's what the columbine kids did you know that's
what all the mass
2:00:05
shooters do they say to hell with this i hate it they're going to make it behind the game they
just want to flip the table over yeah worse than that they
2:00:12
they want to obliterate the game yes and they want to do it with as much malice as possible
just to obtain
2:00:18
revenge and i understand that but i decided a long time ago that i would rather not play that
game
2:00:23
i think it i think that it's possible that we could make the world better i really believe i believe
that too so i
2:00:29
think well so i'm i'm trying to tell people look there's more to you than you think
2:00:35
there's more potential there's more than enough potential to go around there's definite
suffering and malevolence in the world we could fix it
2:00:42
you haven't got anything better to do that's a very big point that there's more potential to go
around more than people understand yeah we're
2:00:47
not going to run out of potential no we're not and this idea of the famine thinking is one
2:00:53
of the reasons why people get upset at other people's success they think somehow another
this other person's success
2:00:58
takes something away from them yeah yeah well there's and it's it's the other thing too is that
i've realized that people actually act like
2:01:06
what they confront in the world is potential it's so funny because whatever potential is it's it's
not materially measurable
2:01:12
but if you tell someone you're not living up to your potential they go yeah well i know that it's
like what is
2:01:18
that potential that you're not living up to and then when you say well there's potential in front
of you you know that
2:01:23
you can walk out on the street you go right or left or straight ahead like you're facing this
thing that isn't
2:01:30
fully formed and you get to decide how it's going to form and you can make it better and so
my
2:01:37
question is like the world's a rough place there's no doubt about it it's a harsh place but my
question is
2:01:44
what would happen if we stop making it worse how good could it be if we stop making it
worse and i don't
2:01:50
know if there's an upper limit to that like it might be maybe we could make it really really
really good
2:01:57
why not and we don't have anything better to do than that it's like aim at heaven
2:02:02
start at home aim at heaven tell the truth let's see what the hell happens you know like
2:02:08
it's it is the case clearly on the facts of the matter in 20 years there wouldn't have to be a
2:02:14
single person in the world that was hungry in 20 years we could get rid of the five biggest
diseases that
2:02:19
currently plague the planet we could straighten things up and god only knows what things
could be like that or we could let the whole
2:02:26
thing degenerate into hell so when each of us is making that decision with each decision
that's the
2:02:32
other thing that i've understood so take a choice you want hell or you
2:02:38
want heaven if you pick hell just remember
2:02:45
you knew what you were doing when you picked it but nobody picked so yeah i just sort of
let it slide yeah
2:02:51
but they do it because they blind themselves you know you know when you do it you say
2:02:56
ah well you know i let that slide then you and then you don't think about it it's like you could
think about it you could think
2:03:02
about it you could know but you don't let yourself know is any of this
2:03:08
all all the pressure and the scandal every three weeks is this uh this is it weigh on you
2:03:14
is it is it difficult uh how are you feeling like when when i'm feeling stressed it's
2:03:21
like yeah it's like it's like simultaneously the worst possible thing and the best possible thing
that could happen
2:03:27
well financially it's been a boom right yes it's which is scenarios as oh well i
2:03:33
think yes i mean the thing that i've i shouldn't say this but i'm going to because it's just so
goddamn funny i can't help but
2:03:39
say it i figured out how to monetize social justice warriors [Laughter]
2:03:45
that is what it is i know it's so funny i just can't believe it the other way it just every time i
think
2:03:51
that well it's just one of the surreal circumstances that characterize my life it's like i'm driving
the social justice
2:03:56
activists in canada mad because if they let me speak then i get to speak and then more
people
2:04:02
support me on patreon it's like that's annoying it's like goddamn capitalistic make more
money off this ideological warfare it's like okay
2:04:09
fine let's go protest so they go protest me and then that goes up on youtube and then my
patron
2:04:15
account goes way up so it's like they don't know what to do and so one of the things they
keep accusing me of yeah they keep accusing
2:04:22
me of uh like hauling in the loot and i think well look here's the situation guys i give away
everything i do online
2:04:30
for free it's free and people are giving me money they're just sending it to me i'm not twisting
2:04:37
there i'm not even asking them for it well i guess that's not exactly right because i set up the
patreon account but that's more complicated than it looks that a
2:04:43
lot of that was curiosity and i thought well i could increase the production quality of my online
videos
2:04:49
was also the potential of you being removed from the universe well they're yes well that and
that was really potential
2:04:54
oh yeah oh and yeah people wanted that yeah they haven't stopped wanting that yes
2:05:00
in in october when the lindsay shepherd scandal broke and it looked so bad for the left-wing
2:05:05
ideologues like 200 university of toronto a community member
2:05:11
signed a petition to get me fired again and i was kind of upset about that and this is what my
life has been like
2:05:17
so my son came over that day and i said jesus julian you know what like 200 people at the
faculty mem
2:05:22
at in at the university of toronto petitioned the faculty association and then they sent in a
petition to the
2:05:28
administration to get me fired it was the faculty association that's my union they didn't even
contact me and
2:05:33
julian said uh don't worry about it dad it was only 200 people and i thought that's what my life
is like it's like a
2:05:40
day where 200 people sign a petition to get me fired as a professor
2:05:45
my son can come in and say well that's not so bad it's like it's only two hundred people that's
how like where the scale is yeah that's right it's so it it's so
2:05:52
surreal because you could say that online and look what's happening and then the
2:05:58
support would be overwhelming from who knows how many people well the administration
times of that
2:06:03
yeah absolutely well in the administration at the university of toronto like that they didn't they
didn't take it seriously at all the call to have me
2:06:10
removed it didn't cause any didn't even cause a ripple now who are these 200 people what
was their motivation
2:06:16
oh well they're hard to say what their motivation is very happy about they read the transcript
or listen to those recordings
2:06:22
yeah how could they possibly be against you based on that oh because they think
2:06:29
that the people who who who conducted the inquisition were right
2:06:34
well that's madness oh yes but look look i mean i mean this formerly
2:06:39
like 20 members of pimlots and rambuchana's faculty that was communications at wilford
laurier
2:06:45
wrote a letter supporting them so that's why it's not an isolated incident it's like no no they
thought
2:06:51
that what they were doing was right it's mass hysteria yeah well there is an element of that
that's for sure
2:06:57
and there's certainly again i hate to bring this term up again but this toxic tribalism thing it's
like they're
2:07:02
they're supporting their own and they understand that their own ideologies have been
completely connected
2:07:07
to the same type of group think that's going against lindsay shepard in that meeting oh yeah
2:07:13
when they tried to paint her as a radical right winger and she certainly isn't of course not
2:07:18
neither are you i mean the whole thing is ridiculous you're not alt-right you're not a neo-nazi
you're not i've read a lot of
2:07:24
crazy things about you and knowing you personally seeing this stuff i'm like this is
2:07:29
this is a fascinating time that's for sure that's for sure yeah and it's been well it's been crazily
well i'm
2:07:36
what would i say crazily stressful it's it's the best way to describe it is
2:07:42
surreal yeah like i'm it's like i stepped outside myself i can't i can't put this in a box
2:07:50
i don't know what to make of it i don't know what to make of the channel 4 interview you
know it's like what the hell really
2:07:57
it's it's it's crazy well it's it's this these conversations are so limited
2:08:04
by what you were saying before that they're trying to get this five-minute sound bite in and
that's what television has become yeah it's a dying medium yeah it doesn't
2:08:11
make any sense it doesn't make any sense to sandwich these commercials in every 15
minutes or whatever they do
2:08:16
none of it makes any sense it's an archaic way of communicating ideas yeah well then i think
that is part of
2:08:22
it too is that like i happen to catch a technological wave well like you did you know yeah i
mean
2:08:29
they're they're television offers nothing over youtube nothing
2:08:37
yeah well exactly yeah and there's no space requirements on youtube so you don't have to
do this twist the
2:08:45
complex event into a short sound bite and entertain everyone right and it turns out too that
there's this huge audience online for
2:08:52
actual content like just genuine conversation because like one of the things that's
2:08:57
happened between you and i when i've come down here is we've actually had a
conversation right we're trying to figure things out
2:09:03
you know we've got our viewpoints and everything but we're basically and i outline this and
there's a chapter in
2:09:09
12 rules for life called uh assume that the person you're talking to might know something you
don't
2:09:14
which is like the formula for good conversations like there's a bunch of things i don't
understand about the world i mean
2:09:20
that's a big book things i don't understand about the world right that's a very thick book and i
can come in here and talk to you
2:09:26
about what's going on and hopefully we both emerge with better understanding we're not the
same people that we were
2:09:31
when we walked in and that's a good thing and then we have those conversations online and
people can participate in that
2:09:37
and i'm trying to do that in my lectures too like when i when i did this biblical series because
that was another thing that was so strange joe was like
2:09:44
imagine i walked into a like a venture capitalist uh um organization i said look i want you
2:09:51
guys to bankroll me i'm gonna do 15 lectures on the old testament and i'm going to try to
attract young men
2:09:56
i'm going to rent a theater like they just laughed me out of there see can you imagine
anything less saleable than that
2:10:04
so but i did that i went ahead with it i rented the theater and then i walked through these
stories and i was learning
2:10:09
a lot because like i knew this first stories in genesis up to the flood i knew them pretty well i
knew kind of understood
2:10:15
what they meant but then all the stories from abraham onward that i had read them but i
hadn't done a detailed in-depth
2:10:22
analysis and so i was learning a tremendous amount walking through those stories and they
had a big like they've had a
2:10:29
big impact man and so i'm going to do exodus soon because i want to do that but
2:10:35
it's just another example of how surreal things have become but also the use the utility of a
good
2:10:40
conversation because like when i'm up on on on the podium say lecturing i'm not
2:10:46
exactly lecturing i'm trying to figure something out and sharing that process with the
audience
2:10:51
which is so different than what is going on in universities that is freaking everybody out
2:10:57
it's what's going on is this indoctrination into this group thing yeah it's like here's what's
2:11:03
right memorize it right it's like my lectures are more like well i don't know what's right like
here's
2:11:08
some things i know and they seem to be working and here's how i use those tools to dig at
this story and
2:11:13
here's what it might mean and this is what i got from it and here's some universal truths
about human beings that seem to be and then i try to
2:11:20
explore that it's like well should we believe this should we like when abraham in the
abrahamic story
2:11:25
for example i mean abraham's an old guy and he's basically lived in his mom's basement
that's that's really the beginning of the story
2:11:31
he gets a call to adventure you know god says well get get away from your family and your
kin get out there in the world
2:11:37
it's the call to adventure think okay fine that's a heroic motif but then abraham goes out and
the first
2:11:42
thing he encounters is like tyranny and starvation and then a bunch of guys who want to
steal his wife
2:11:47
so it's it's been entertaining to take those stories apart and to see why
2:11:52
they're foundational because they are foundational and they're not mere ignorance
2:12:00
that what whatever they are ignorant superstition is not the right category how has this
2:12:06
changed your classrooms well i haven't gone back teaching since
2:12:12
all of this hit because when did you stop teaching well oh no i guess that's not true that's not
2:12:18
true i taught from january to may of of 2016. well the first way it changed it was that i
2:12:25
was like so so shell-shocked when i went to to teach last january that and i was really sick
2:12:31
like i've been really sick this year i had like last january jesus it was just dismal i wouldn't
worship
2:12:38
wish that on my worst enemy i had three weeks where i didn't sleep a wink try that that's
really entertaining one
2:12:44
long day of misery that's three weeks long what kind of a an illness it looks like an
autoimmune disorder do
2:12:50
you think this is because of stress no i don't you don't think it's connected at all well yeah i
think it probably made it worse but no
2:12:56
it's something that i've battled with for a long time and it's something that really both my wife
and i have autoimmune
2:13:02
illness and my daughter got what i mean don't know exactly what it is i don't know what it is
in my daughter
2:13:08
it manifests yes that's what's fixed what what fixed it oh all i eat is meat and greens
2:13:15
that's it no juice no no vegetables no carbohydrates meat greens that's it and that fixed it
2:13:22
that seems to have fixed it yeah that fixes so many people i can tell if you've listened to the
podcast i've
2:13:28
done yeah yeah yeah yeah well i've been following them because my daughter has a blog
too called don't eat that and my daughter had a hair terrible
2:13:34
autoimmune disorder it was awful i detailed that out in chapter 12. she had 38 affected joints
and she had
2:13:41
her hip and her ankle replaced when she was 16. jesus so she walked around on two broken
legs for a year
2:13:46
in excruciating pain she was on extremely high doses of opiates and so she was addicted to
opiates which
2:13:53
she like she just once she had her surgery she just went off them cold turkey and like
suffered
2:13:58
through the withdrawal for two months and compared to what she had been through that
was nothing like what she went through man you
2:14:03
it was dreadful and that was just the surface of it like that was only the beginning of her
illness she had all
2:14:08
sorts of other things that were worse than that and so and we figured she was probably
2:14:14
going to die by the time she was 30 because my cousin's daughter had a similar
autoimmune problem and she died when she was 30.
2:14:20
so it was bloody dreadful but she figured out at one point that it was associated with diet and
then she went
2:14:26
on a radically restrictive diet and she christ she she was on antidepressants
2:14:32
she's not she had to take ritalin to stay awake she could only stay awake about six hours a
day and she had to take high doses of ritalin to stay awake
2:14:38
she what is this autoimmune disease well she had her diagnosis was rheumatoid arthritis
2:14:44
right but she didn't have the blood markers for it but she had all the other symptoms
2:14:50
anyway she she figured out this restrictive diet she only ate chicken and broccoli for about
two months
2:14:55
and almost all her symptoms went away and she's pretty much symptom free now
2:15:00
and which is it's a complete miracle and she convinced me to try this diet about a year and a
half ago
2:15:07
and so i lost seven pounds a month for seven months that was the first thing which was just
bloody amazing yeah it
2:15:13
was unbelievable it was unbelie i couldn't believe it you know well you was your diet rich in
refined carbohydrates before that
2:15:19
rich enough yeah rich enough you know um pastas and bread yeah bread bread
2:15:26
bread in particular i eat a lot of bread um so the first thing that happened was i quit snoring
that happened immediately
2:15:33
took took one week and i was snoring quite badly that so that disappeared in a week and
that was amazing i thought oh that's
2:15:39
interesting and then i had gastric reflux disorder that went away and then i lost seven pounds
the first
2:15:44
month i thought oh that's a lot seven pounds i had psoriasis that went away i had floaters
2:15:50
in my right eye which is also not immune problem that went away um i have had gum
disease for 30 years
2:15:57
that went away that went away that's amazing i'm 55 like my gum disease went away
2:16:03
it's ridiculous so i figured all that out so my life in the last year was so so
2:16:10
strange because i'd get up in the morning and i'd think god all these bloody scandalous
things
2:16:16
are happening around me and i have to deal with that and then i think i need a break but i
can't eat
2:16:21
anything i can't eat anything because if i ate the wrong thing it would like knock me out for a
month
2:16:27
so i was trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my diet and i was feeling wretched
and so it was like if i it was like wolves at the back door
2:16:34
and crocodiles at the front door something like that so but but whatever
2:16:40
like i'm down to the same weight i was when i was 25. wow yeah no kidding and i've got lots
of
2:16:46
energy i wake up in the morning and i wake up that's never happened to me my whole life
i've always had to have a shower like took me an hour to wake up
2:16:52
my whole life that's gone i'm not hungry um i don't have hypoglycemia
2:16:58
i have lots of energy um i can't eat anything but so i can't go out for dinner but you can't eat
2:17:04
nonsense you can eat i mean i'm on the same dime i eat meat and greens i don't have a
disorder like you did
2:17:11
in the same regard but i take a day where i have a cheat day you know i
2:17:16
don't even do it every week well i'll have a cheeseburger or something like that yeah but for
the most part that's the diet that i follow as well yep
2:17:22
well for some people it seems like like uh well for a massive amount of people well i
2:17:27
think for far more people than we know i think people are carbohydrate poisoning
themselves like they can't believe yes
2:17:33
and along with all the other things that go along with it insulin yeah you know the high blood
sugar is
2:17:38
not good cholesterol in this this idea that uh cholesterol and saturated fat are the problems
that
2:17:44
people are experiencing it's not true no the real problem is sugar and cholesterol has been
demonized you
2:17:50
know i'm sure you read the article from the new york times about the sugar industry paid off
scientists to lie about the
2:17:56
results yep yep well i know too that two food scientists in the uk resigned about three years
ago they were
2:18:02
they were part and parcel of the organization that had produced the food pyramid they said it
was the worst public health disaster the last 40 years
2:18:08
they pretty much got it backwards yeah and you look around you know you drive through the
u.s it's really obvious in the u.s people
2:18:14
are overweight like mad like yeah like crazy it's crazy ridiculous go to disneyland yeah
exactly it's insane it
2:18:21
is but you know and the reason is as far as i can tell the reason is is that they're
2:18:26
they're poisoning themselves with carbohydrates that's what it looks like and the thought
process is so out of
2:18:31
whack i i um retweeted an article today from nina thai schultz uh she she tweeted it about
um this
2:18:39
trend of eating only egg whites and how terrible it is for you so it's a health disaster
2:18:44
and this idea that cholesterol from the egg yolk is bad for you it's one of the most important
things you can eat
2:18:49
it's and then weight watchers is adjusted yeah see it goes weight watchers diet program now
adjust
2:18:55
their uh pro their uh protocol and they say that eat all the eggs you want it is now a zero
point food
2:19:02
which is [ __ ] incredible yeah yeah yeah so and the way i don't get hungry is i eat a lot of oil
like a lot of
2:19:08
olive oil yes so and that that keeps fats so you're basically burning fat you're on like a
ketogenic
2:19:13
diet yeah yeah so and it seems to be well and that was complex that would have been
complicated
2:19:19
enough to keep me occupied for the last two years especially sorting it out with my daughter
because she well that was quite the bloody nightmare
2:19:26
i can tell you it was really something but i can't believe she figured it out it's amazing it is
amazing and like
2:19:31
she's really she's in pretty damn good shape she just had a baby like five months ago so that
was that's amazing
2:19:37
too yeah we're we're stunned man we're stunned because like it was it was rough well she
sounds like an
2:19:44
incredibly she is quite the tough cookie that girl sounds like it yeah many people are
experiencing the same
2:19:50
revelation that their diet is killing look i was tired all the time i would hit a
2:19:55
net i mean i was always very very active so i stayed lean because of my physical activity but
by
2:20:01
the end of the day i need a nap i would always take a nap before i'd go to jiu jitsu i was like i
have to take a nap or i can't train
2:20:08
yeah and it's because of carbohydrates yeah i had i'd nap about two hours a day yeah and
now i don't nap at all me too
2:20:13
same thing that's not exactly true when i've been zooming around i take like two minute naps
when i'm in the airport or whatever
2:20:19
well that's also you're probably not getting enough sleep yeah right exactly big difference
exactly so yeah it's been it's been
2:20:24
remarkable so so why did you stop teaching oh well i took a sabbatical because of
2:20:31
all this yeah well i told i told my department chair i said look i i had a sabbatical coming up
next year i said look you know
2:20:38
i there's too much going on it'll be better if i take the sabbatical this year then i can
concentrate on my
2:20:43
teaching next year so you take the entire year off yeah so you're about eight months in is
that yeah correct yeah well then i
2:20:48
always teach from i put all my courses from january to march i teach all them in the same
semester and that enabled me to
2:20:54
concentrate on my research and for the rest of the time and so technically i'll be going back
teaching
2:21:00
in january of 2019. technically technically you're not convinced well
2:21:05
well i can't think a year ahead at the moment right i don't know what the hell's going like i'm
not going to go back and teach
2:21:11
the same way right because see at some point the technological transformation means
2:21:17
you have to approach things differently and so now if i do a lecture online whatever the
lecture happens to be
2:21:24
i can get 150 000 people to watch it that's minimum so the first question would be well why
2:21:30
would i teach 300 people when i could teach 150 000. that's just stupid who would do
2:21:35
that those same 300 people also have access to the hundreds well exactly that's right that's
exactly it
2:21:41
and the next thing is well i taped my maps of meeting class and my personality class for
three years running
2:21:47
it's like it's there well i could do it again but why right it's taped right i would
2:21:53
rather lecture about new things so that's what i did this year i did this biblical series which i
hadn't done before
2:21:59
but now if i'm going to lecture again i'm going to lecture about different things because
because the
2:22:05
technology has transformed the landscape we're not in 1990 anymore not even a little bit
right
2:22:11
so and this is something i brought up to brett weinstein and i'm hoping he falls along the
same line same bet weinstein
2:22:19
not steen i make that mistake often sorry brett but same thing brilliant guy restricted
2:22:25
by his university big scandal leaves and i'm hoping he follows the same path
2:22:31
because he has so much to offer and he has so much to offer for anybody who can get
online well and one of the things that's really fun
2:22:37
about youtube that and having my lectures on youtube is that the only reason people watch
2:22:43
them is one reason is because they want to learn that's it right and so it's you might think
well where is the
2:22:49
university well the university is where people want to learn right it's like okay well youtube is
the university because
2:22:57
there's hundreds of thousands of people on youtube maybe millions who just want to learn
it's like fine
2:23:04
i'm an educator i'll talk to people who want to learn because if you're an educator that's what
you do
2:23:10
is that most effectively done in the universities not self-evidently and so now i'm trying
2:23:16
to figure this out you know like i like my job at the university and u of t has treated me well
apart from this
2:23:22
scandal thing but they were kind of taken aback by they didn't know what to do about that
you know it was a new law
2:23:27
and when i made the video criticizing bill c-16 i said i think that making this video is probably
illegal in
2:23:34
and of itself was there controversial moments in your career before that
2:23:39
no wow no i mean it surprised me because i've always
2:23:45
i would say that the content of my lectures has been atypical but it's been atypical in
2:23:51
a good way like the student response to my lectures has always been well extremely good
extremely good i'm
2:23:58
always surprised that i was able to teach what i'm teaching because i always thought that it
was like insanely revolutionary but it was
2:24:06
revolutionary in a really like in a scholarly way you know like i'm a careful scientist i'm a
careful
2:24:12
thinker i think things all the way through to the bottom and i'm really self-critical like when i
2:24:17
wrote maps of meaning which was my first book i suspect i rewrote every sentence at
2:24:23
least 15 times it's probably more than that and i really literally mean rewrite it so i take the
sentence out of the paragraph
2:24:29
put it in another document write like 10 variants of the sentence and then pick the one that
was best
2:24:36
and i did that like it took me 15 years to write i did that over and over and over and so what i
was i'd write a sentence and then i'd think
2:24:42
okay have i got all the words right every single word is that the proper words the proper
phrase is the proper
2:24:49
sentence do i believe that this sentence is true then i'd think like of 10 ways i could attack it
and see if
2:24:56
i could break it apart and find out what it was wrong and i only kept the ones that i couldn't
destroy
2:25:01
and like i was going out full force to destroy them because i wanted to come up with a you
know come
2:25:09
on i wanted to produce a book that i could not break no matter what i did and so i spent 15
years on that and then
2:25:16
that was the basis well it's the basis for 12 rules for life it's been the basis for all the lectures
i've done and so forth and
2:25:21
like i can't see where it's wrong and mostly what i was trying to do was to see where it was
wrong and i can't get
2:25:28
underneath it i can't break it that's what's so fascinating to me about all this stuff and not to
not to
2:25:37
overly exaggerate the significance of this but just to be completely honest about it you're the
right guy for the job and it
2:25:43
sort of found you it's real weird because there's not a lot of people that are that meticulous
about their thoughts and
2:25:50
about their work and about their writing and about their criticizing their own ideas to the point
2:25:55
where they break them down and try to break them try them apart i had a big problem so
when i
2:26:00
when i started to write maps of meaning i thought okay what's the situation this is the cold
war we've divided into two armed tribal
2:26:07
camps and we've decided that settling the difference between us is worth
2:26:13
risking being itself we could we could drive everything into extinction we're willing to take that
2:26:20
chance it's like what the hell is going on so i wanted to know two things
2:26:25
what was truly driving the tribalism of the cold war including its including the generation
2:26:31
of that vast nuclear arsenal because that just seemed to me to be insanity taken to the final
2:26:38
pinnacle so i wanted to know that and i wanted to know okay having figured out why that's
happening
2:26:45
what could be done about it so it would stop and at the same time i was also studying
2:26:50
what had happened in auschwitz and with the nazis and all of that and so it was a very
serious problem and
2:26:57
i actually wanted to have the answer i actually wanted the answer i didn't want to write an
interesting book about it it wasn't even that i
2:27:03
wanted to write a book exactly it was just that writing a book was the best way to figure out
the problem
2:27:08
because it's it's writing a book is so rigorous you know because you think but you can only
remember
2:27:14
so much you have to write it down because then you can remember way more you can write
and then the next day you can go back and think okay
2:27:20
i'm going to take that goddamn argument apart i'm going to see if there's anything about it
that's weak
2:27:25
and so and i think i did figure it out i think i did figure it out so and then when i when i well
and then i
2:27:32
started lecturing about it and the lectures were always unbelievably well regarded like people
the kids in the
2:27:38
classes would always write for the evaluations at the end of the year eighty percent of them
would say
2:27:43
and this happened for 20 years to say this class changed everything about the way i look at
the world it's like yeah that's what happened to
2:27:49
me too and i wrote that book it's like i didn't think the same way at all when i was done i
started to understand what
2:27:55
these ancient stories meant it was like shocking never recovered from it
2:28:00
wow listen you're out of time thank you always 12 rules for life
2:28:06
an antidote to chaos jordan peterson i made a i made a discount for your viewers again
2:28:12
for the future authoring program okay so what do they have to do rogan just use rogan and
how do they
2:28:18
get to the website selfauthoring.com okay yeah yeah and i'll send you a link for that thanks a
lot and also thanks for
2:28:24
everything eh really you were the portal into this weird world that i'm in
2:28:30
and people say that all the time they come up and say look i heard about you on joe rogan
it's like and like thousands of people have told
2:28:35
me that so well it's been it's your fault it's been an honor i appreciate it sir thank you you bet

david goggins
0:00
oh come on let's go
0:08
boom and we're live david goggins your book is [ __ ] fantastic man this has been my
running partner the audio
0:13
version of it has been my running partner for the last week it's [ __ ] amazing man well i
appreciate that thank you well you guys
0:20
are doing something very unusual the book is great i've read i've read it like sat down red red
but the the audio
0:26
book is really interesting right because you and the gentleman you wrote it with
0:31
yeah adam adam schonick adam schonick who who reads it then you come on and
0:37
talk about things in between so it's more than just the book right it's the book plus it's the
book plus like a
0:44
podcast right yeah so how that came to be man is um as i was going through this book for
the
0:49
last year we would go through change stuff up have so many stories man we went through
interviews from people so many stories
0:56
he would come back and read it to me all my changes and when he read i'm like man this
guy has a great reading voice i
1:03
love his reading voice and i started getting these different ideas about doing it like you know
what
1:08
maybe he can read and i can do my podcast thing on the side and he can like after each
chapter in between
1:14
chapters make it real interactive type of thing and that's kind of how it came to be man at the
beginning i gotta be
1:19
honest the beginning i was like who is this [ __ ] talking for david gardens i was gonna call
dave like dick you redo this why don't you do it why
1:26
are you but but it works right it really does work yeah like as as it goes on and
1:31
i got also it's very obvious that you and him are good friends so when you guys are
1:37
talking then i don't mind him reading for you as much for some strange reason right i know it
doesn't make any sense well i want to say we're good friends
1:44
i'm i'm just joking adam that you can hear me right now um he became a pain in my [ __ ]
ass during this process man
1:49
because you know he's just uh he's a real anal guy you know he he helped out a lot you
know i'm a i'm a real raw
1:57
sadistic type of mindset and he uh he helped me put that on paper man so i gave him a lot of
credit for that well
2:03
it it comes across the book is outstanding and you know it's it's it's
2:08
more than just sitting like sitting across you and you telling your story is one thing but this
long detailed history
2:17
of how you became to be the person you became i think it's very educational for people
2:24
because they can realize like oh he wasn't always this guy right this is what's [ __ ] up about
2:29
people like you see a guy who's like you who runs i mean how many ultra marathons did you
run in a row you read some
2:34
insane in a row just stop and think about that
2:40
ladies and gentlemen eight hundreds means eight 100 mile races
2:46
eight weekends in a row a 100 mile race will put you out for [ __ ] six months right you know
when you ran eight of
2:52
them eight weekends what's the [ __ ] it's a [ __ ] insane accomplishment it was nuts you
think about a person like that
2:57
you think of them as in this like static fully formed version right you don't usually get to see
and especially
3:03
someone like you who you went into so much depth about your rise and fall and
3:08
rise and fall it wasn't like a straight linear process between you getting inspired and you
becoming this bad
3:14
[ __ ] no it wasn't like um what's that show called um
3:20
that will smith plays that that black guy who kind of makes it in um in the financial world
3:26
a pursuit of happiness i never saw that yeah it's a great movie it wasn't like pursuit of
happiness man like like with
3:31
a guy who struggles and he and he gets over it and he makes it yeah i feel on my ass i i
thought i got the top mount
3:37
everest and my neighbors just [ __ ] slide right underneath me man i was like god dawg i
start from scratch again
3:42
scratch became my friend literally man so you know that's that's how you put in the book
man just going
3:48
up going down going up just a real raw version of how my life was and it was so in-depth to
go back through
3:54
your life with the fine-tooth comb that i almost got embarrassed even put it out there to
people yeah that's what
4:00
i understand man like even me right now to talk to you i'm in the car for a [ __ ] hour
4:05
getting pumped up cause i'm i'm a shy introverted leave me alone type of guy
4:11
like i'm still that [ __ ] who is six years old you know at a play who
4:16
can't say his line because i know i'm gonna stutter in front of five people so i walk off the
stage that's still me so
4:22
every day i'm fighting that dude so people think oh my god man you're in a podcast look so
crazy so evil no i'm
4:28
trying to be locked into joe so my mind isn't very off saying let's run out the damn door
because people are watching me
4:35
on the [ __ ] podcast i want to open this damn door and get the hell out of here man so that's
the real me so i'm not
4:43
sadistic man i'm focused on what i have to do to stay locked into the game of life and that's
what and that's why i
4:48
tell people man i i go there i go there that's one of the reasons why this book is so good is
because you're so honest
4:54
about your vulnerabilities and how you overcome them and for people that see someone
who's a beast who's done great
5:01
things you just assume that they're different than you right but then you hear about your
insecurities and your
5:06
pitfalls and all the things that went wrong with you and you realized well god damn it those
are the same things that go wrong with me like maybe i have that
5:13
inside of me and i've just never summoned it right and i'll tell you this i started really realizing
that when i
5:19
started overcoming myself i started getting around these real alpha males these hard hard
men
5:25
and i always put people way above me when i was growing up like my god they had to have
a lot more than me to get to
5:31
where they're at and a lot of them did but once you get around the the best of
5:38
the best of the best people you can kind of start breaking them down and realizing man you
you're just as [ __ ] up as me like we all have but all
5:45
you did was you hit it better your your your upbringing your mom and dad your society the
way you were raised
5:52
it hit it better than than mine you weren't the only black kid or there was like five in in a
school
5:58
you know i can't hide going through buzz i was only black you can't hide
6:03
but i started realizing just because i look different than you a lot of you my first cannot either
so it started giving
6:09
me courage to watch some people that were all have a story we all have a jacked up life in
one way or another
6:14
some of us don't have the guts to talk about it though and that's where i found the guts to
talk about mine well there's some there's purity in physical pursuits
6:22
right because it doesn't matter what your social status is it doesn't matter how people
perceive you when it when it
6:27
comes down to how long can you stay in that pool when it comes down to how far can you
run when it comes down to how
6:34
much can you push yourself past the part where you want to quit how far can you keep
going there's a purity in that that
6:40
it did dissolve social order all that [ __ ] all the what people think about
6:45
you goes out the window it's what who who are you right now that's right who are you right
now that's a true
6:50
statement man and i look at it as a psychological warfare and that's where i started learning
that
6:56
that life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself you play on yourself man
7:02
the most important conversation i ever had with is with myself and the [ __ ] i was telling
myself was so
7:08
[ __ ] up it was so wrong it was so misguided and other people start to write that dialogue for
you also
7:14
it starts to be what you say to yourself every single day and i started creating a whole nother
warfare
7:20
a whole nother battle started becoming i was like oh hang on a second coggins you have
these tools
7:25
do you have these tools your life was basically the perfect the perfect grounds for training for
7:32
where you need to go in your life all the beatings all the all the bullying all that you know you
going through uh
7:38
learning disabilities all the struggles it was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go
to where you need
7:43
to go and that's how i start looking at my life versus what was me poopy pants kick a rock
down the street mentality it
7:49
was no god just hooked you right the [ __ ] up he hooked you right up man with the perfect
7:55
place you were training for the first 18 19 20 you were training for this stuff man you have the
advantage of everybody
8:01
else versus my god they're so above me they came from a great family
8:08
mom and dad loved them they didn't have to learn they didn't start they didn't struggle no
man your struggle is what
8:13
made you who you are now so i started flipping this into a whole different i started being a
master of
8:20
what i was scared of i was scared of my mind and i became a literally a master of that mind
and that's what now from now
8:27
on it sets me apart from most people i start diving into that well that is a big part of the story
is when you go
8:33
over your childhood and you know your abusive father and then having this
8:39
great guy that was going to become your stepdad and then he gets murdered it's like right
when you're about to get out
8:44
of it everything looks good boom then he gets murdered it's like these things really did sort of
set you up to start
8:51
from scratch again and just go okay roger that we start from scratch and now you have that
attitude you developed it
8:57
through all of these horrible personal experiences all the trials and tribulations all the evil [ __
] that
9:04
people try to do to you that sort of set you up to be able to deal in a way that a lot of people
can't
9:10
well i used to look at my life from a different vantage point and when you're when you're in all
the
9:16
muck and you're just walking in muck and walking in muck and walking the muck
9:21
you don't see that if you look off to the [ __ ] left of the muck there's a sidewalk brother
9:26
get off get off of it you have your head down looking in this muck once i saw the sidewalk got
the sidewalk
9:32
i got a little break and i got a different vantage point and then from the sidewalk i found a cliff
then i
9:37
found a mountain i got way up high on top of my life and looked back down on it and said
okay i gotta figure this out man
9:43
i'm not going anywhere i'm starting to lie i'm starting like so when you have a messed up
foundation i started lying
9:48
about everything i wanted people to like me i wanted to be accepted in some society of life
some social society and
9:55
i i said man this isn't the right way i messed up here i messed up here i messed up
everywhere
10:00
and so i realized the worst thing that happened to me is i lost myself i never had myself i
never found myself had no
10:06
self-esteem so i knew through working out and through learning because it took a lot
10:12
for me to learn also i started finding self-esteem once i found that that's when doors started
opening up i
10:18
started i stopped caring about people that what they thought being judged wow if i say this if
i started right now are
10:24
you gonna make fun of me i stopped caring about that and that's my life started really
changing for me slowly but surely that
10:30
that's such an important point when you're talking about the working out because a lot of
people when they think about working out they think of it as
10:36
being a physical thing right no no i did it for mental yeah people always
10:41
say my god like no don't don't look at it like i didn't care about losing weight i don't care about
being the fastest person i think
10:47
about i wasn't making the olympics i wasn't going to pros i could barely read and write when i
was in a junior in high
10:52
school i wasn't going anywhere i saw working out as a way for me to build calluses on my
mind
10:59
i had to callous over the victim's mentality so i watched these movies i you know i
11:04
talked about rocket last time i was on here i always equated training
11:09
to mental toughening like it always looked brutal people waking up early and doing all these
11:15
things and look it looks horrible it's like wow i gotta start doing that not to get better bigger
and stronger but that
11:21
is what's gonna build me that looks uncomfortable that looks brutal and getting up early i
don't want to do that
11:27
so i made this long list of things i don't want to do and through that i found myself i
11:32
started like i'm like you guys aren't doing this [ __ ] in high school you guys aren't getting up
at five o'clock in the morning running over here in this golf
11:39
course so i started seeing myself very differently than the average human being i was like
hold on a second
11:45
i have something they don't have and that's when i started to develop these things through
working out it was
11:50
this great never-ending work ethic and through work ethic i develop
11:55
self-esteem now is this something that you learned is this something you learned yourself
from from exercise
12:02
yourself or is it something you had read or heard about like what made you equate this doing
this and doing these
12:08
difficult things physically to mental toughness to being this is the discipline that you need in
order to get your life out of the situation you're in
12:14
so i never read anything you know i i could barely read you know so i wasn't reading back
then
12:20
i just saw i watched a lot of movies and i was really big into visualization
12:25
and um i always equated working out to struggle and i struggled my whole life but i ran
12:32
from it so i started realizing man i got to start facing the struggle and i got to be mentally
strong for the struggle
12:38
so that's why i started coming up with like i i'm training for life mentally i'm training for life i'm
not
12:43
training for like to live 400 pounds and i found out on my own pretty much is that through this
12:49
through through discipline through self-discipline through repetition do tons of repetition the
same thing that
12:55
you don't want to do and that's that's the key thing through repetition of things you don't want
to do you develop
13:01
mental like like an armor for your mind start to armor your mind cause your mind's like okay
we suffer we suffer every day it's
13:09
what we do we do stuff that sucks every day so then when the suck stuff comes you're ready
for it and that's how i
13:16
started coming up you know i just started being very uncomfortable and now it's like just a
way of life it's a crazy thing to figure out though
13:22
it's like that you figured it out and you didn't just figure it out you embraced it like when you
were talking about your senior year of high school
13:28
when you're talking about your your mirror being your accountability mirror like you had a
radical shift like you just decided to
13:35
not be a [ __ ] loser and to start tightening up and start holding yourself accountable and and
get ready for things
13:43
so i had this my whole life i mean i don't know if people believe in god or what i don't care
what you believe in
13:48
there's been this unrelenting voice in my head we all have this voice it's the right or wrong
voice
13:54
and a lot of times that voice guides us into comfort and my voice guided me to comfort a lot
but
14:01
i have this other voice i heard my whole life saying hey [ __ ] what are you doing nah man
we gotta go over here
14:08
we have to go over here to to that rock pile over in the [ __ ] corner where nobody's at that's
that's where
14:13
victory's at were over in that corner so this voice was giving me all these answers not i
14:19
wasn't real smart kid growing up but i had this crazy voice in my head saying over there is
where the [ __ ] answers
14:25
are and i won't listen to it because over there was pain over there was me looking in the
mirror over there was me being accountable for
14:32
all these things that went through my life even though people put them on me it's not mine to
own and i didn't want to go over there by
14:37
myself but i had to and this voice was guiding me there out it's god whatever you want to call
it uh but that's what that's
14:44
what it was in me do you think that's just what you when you separate yourself from your ego
and what you were your
14:50
insecurities and all you like if you were giving yourself advice you would say that's what the
thing is to do so do
14:57
you think that's what it was like your subconscious or though you stripped away from all the [
__ ] when you couldn't
15:02
lie to yourself because it's a voice in your head that's exactly it it's exactly it because it knew
it knew i was a
15:08
character i was trying to find myself through a character i was making different hairstyles and
sagging my pants and
15:14
i was off i was off man i was i was a clown i was a clown and and i
15:20
was like this is not this is not where you're supposed to be in life man it's ugly when you look
in that dirty mirror
15:26
and you're trying to do a new hairstyle to go to school you know i had a hairstyle one time
where i shaved the
15:31
top of my head you know how old men had the hair like leaving their head yeah yeah so i
went to school with hair on
15:38
the side of my head and in my back and i shaved the the whole top of my head i just i went
to school like that you know
15:45
and then i had like what did the kids say i wanted to i don't remember what they said but i
was just a funny dude you
15:52
know so that was my thing i was the funny dude that came into school like criss cross came
out when i was in high
15:58
school so my pants were backwards i seen what i passed backwards sagged down past my
ass crack shirt turned backwards with
16:04
a toothbrush in my mouth with the reverse part the reverse part is your head is shaved and
you have some hair
16:11
on top just a little piece of hair versus like a like a part right through hair the part was on a
bald head
16:18
so it was just i i i would sit at home instead of studying i would think about
16:23
what can i do to impress a [ __ ] at school and that became my life
16:28
and that is it's a long road to hoe to get to the guy who says now you'll never smile on any
16:34
podcast looks so serious i look at that [ __ ] i'm like you [ __ ] have no idea
16:39
who i am who where i've come from to get here today you could have probably been an
entertainer like you probably because
16:46
you were doing all that kind of [ __ ] i have some jokes joe i got some jokes yeah you do so
16:52
what people read in this book can't hurt me it's a sad story it's a horrible story it's a tragic
story it's a story
16:57
that made me who in the day but you have to learn to laugh at yourself too once you once
you go through that
17:02
[ __ ] yeah now so there's a lot of parts in there there's a lot of me against a lot of white
people you know
17:08
and i have a routine that i won't do so people who hire me to speak i'm not going to do the
routine i often do it
17:14
sometimes think about it i was a 36 black guy to go through still training okay no matter how
many people out of
17:21
probably looking at um probably 11 12 to make it through probably 13 000 seals
17:28
i was probably the 36 i was a 36 black guy to make it through and over since like the like
1940s you know you're
17:34
looking at almost 70 years wow yeah so you know you know you know do the math on that
so there's not a lot of black guys and so i take that and i make a
17:40
nice comedy skit out of that [ __ ] you know like like like the first time they tied me up and
threw me it's called
17:46
drown proofing yeah so i'm negative boring as hell you know me too oh i'm related to that big
time yeah she wanted
17:52
a few white boys man they're that negative boy you sit like a rock and that's hard so imagine
them getting
17:57
your hands and feet tying your ass up and throwing in the [ __ ] water and say swim ah it
was like throwing a cat in the
18:03
water with [ __ ] brick on them so i was just losing my [ __ ] mind so it's so many things i had
to get over you
18:09
know and i found humor i found humor in my suffering i was like [ __ ] what are you
18:14
doing out here goggins like this is crazy like you're you're literally trying to
18:19
reinvent the wheel but i was trying to reinvent my mind i was trying to reinvent my mind and i
18:25
used every single tactic possible to do that i didn't want to live you know live in
18:30
this world where i was a fake human being anymore and i was tired of blaming everybody for
where i was at
18:35
my dad beat me this happened i mean my dad ran prostitutes man my dad literally snatched
the soul out of my mom like my
18:41
mom is still battling like after my mom left my dad and that's why i'm talking about in the
book she got married three times for a
18:49
total of six months you know i don't go there and i'm not gonna talk about the guys she
married so
18:54
this woman was she's beautiful she's she's so smart all this stuff man this guy literally
stripped her soul away and
19:01
i was a young kid watching it and i had no soul to begin with and my my brother he has a
story that he
19:07
could write eight books you know my dad just came through and just washed us all clean so
to
19:14
to to come around he died about four years ago four or five years ago not for sure i didn't go
to the funeral but i
19:19
forgave him so i saw my dad through an eight-year-old's eye so so we left when i was eight
19:25
and then at 22 i went back to see him through a grown man's eyes and he was the same
person i remembered
19:30
but i had to you can't live with hate you cannot move forward as much as that
19:35
guy tried to ruin all of our lives that's where i came from i had to figure
19:40
out the origin of where i started from so when i was going back through my life trying to fix
who i am the [ __ ] up
19:46
person i was like if your knee hurts it's usually not your [ __ ] knee that's hurting
19:52
it's something else man like it could be a tight quad it could be the right leg if it's the left leg
you got to find out
19:57
the origin of where all this [ __ ] began and i it was him so i had to go back to
20:02
where you know my roots and the origin of all this happen and it's hard to do that did you
make peace with him i made big piece
20:08
with so we didn't have a peaceful conversation we you know we we we left very animal he's
a he's a he's a vicious
20:15
man he he was a vicious man i mean medieval [ __ ] so
20:21
i had become a medieval [ __ ] at that time i was 22 and i was the big boy and so i was no
longer the guy who was
20:27
afraid it was not like hey i want to kill you type of [ __ ] and we were sitting at denny's
20:33
after an all-night skate or whatever the hell you know he owned bars and skating rings like
that and
20:38
so we were sitting down and we kind of got into it and i just kind of left and but i had to make
peace with it in
20:44
myself i i could not hold on to that hate cause hold on to that hate was half the reason why i
kept falling into the same pattern
20:51
of failing i had to get i had to start dumping off some baggage i had to start figuring out
20:56
me through him and that's all he was there for he was the origin i had to figure
21:01
him out figure out why he was so evil to my mom to me my brother and i had to start
studying him like a lot of people
21:08
have situations where someone does something and we all attack that person like like on the
media if someone does
21:14
something wrong everybody now is [ __ ] perfect and we now judge this guy i don't judge him
i don't judge anybody
21:21
what i do is i start studying them why did they do that not in a judging way i want to learn
21:26
from you and what'd you get out of your dad i got that he was he grew up rough he had he
was very insecure had a lot of
21:33
kids and his insecurities just trickled over
21:38
onto us so yeah he jacked us up real good but he never fixed himself so if you never fix
21:45
yourself the next person in line is going to get the wrath and we were next in line
21:50
you know his his first wife you know killed herself or whatever happened and you know got
burned up in the house or
21:56
something some craziness and there's a lot of stuff that goes on there that i didn't put in the
book because i don't feel like going to court yeah but um
22:02
yeah that's uh it was it was a lot of stuff you know one of the great parts about
22:07
this book is that you you detail exactly what was going through your mind in
22:13
terms of like your weaknesses and how you had failed and and then
22:18
you it's not just one time like you you do the thing in high school where you
22:23
get your [ __ ] together and then you join the military and then you wind up getting fat again
22:30
and then when you go when you have to lose what is 106 pounds in three months yep to to
to qualify for seal training
22:37
yep that's insane yeah because when i realized at that time once again i failed again i
thought so what you're
22:44
talking about is i took this asvab test you know i didn't know how to read and write pretty
much in high school i was like a fourth grade reading level
22:50
and i took that test a few times and i finally passed it and when i passed it i actually drove my
car to the
22:57
to the daggone airport and watched planes take off because i was like i'm gonna be on one
23:02
of those planes one day going to air force boot camp so i i never i always fix the things on
the surface
23:09
so if i couldn't read and write learn to read and write i i would always fix these things on the
surface level and so whenever something
23:17
hard would would like like raise ugly head i didn't have any kind of tools to
23:22
handle it like man i thought i fixed this already man but no i didn't go deep into the dungeon
of my soul to say okay
23:29
what is making you a quitter what is making you a weak man what is making you afraid
23:35
and so that's why i kept on quitting and going back to start or not knowing how to get
23:40
through hard times and that's why i was telling people i'm not a theorist i didn't study like you
know i didn't
23:46
study a [ __ ] book i literally put myself in a fire repeatedly like a sword you put a sword
23:53
in the fire repeatedly and repeat if you keep on doing that you're going to get a nice sword
and you keep on beating it
23:58
you got to beat the [ __ ] out of it and that's what i am yeah i i became that i i said okay we
24:04
can't quit we got to figure out why you are this [ __ ] why are you this [ __ ] man what is
wrong
24:11
with you what's going on here so i kept on putting the sword back in the dagger on fire and i
just beat it harder and i
24:17
beat it harder before i knew i started realizing all right man the brain is starting to
24:24
get hard the brain is starting to get hard i'm no longer a theorist i'm now a practitioner
24:31
i put it in hell i dissected it while it's in hell because you can't dissect anything in a normal
environment you
24:38
can't dissect anything in 72 degree weather you must put it in the [ __ ] freezer and freeze
the [ __ ] out of it and then
24:44
you dissect it dissect it when it's miserable dissect the brain when all this thinking about is i
need to get out
24:50
of here man i want to get out of the [ __ ] freezer open the door and he said nah
24:56
five more seconds man five more seconds in the freezer and that's when you start to pick
that brain apart and that's what
25:02
all this stuff did to me i kept on putting myself back into the freezer or the fire and beating the
[ __ ] out of
25:09
myself mentally and physically before i knew it this is what happened
25:15
wow it's an interesting way to self-teach yes like most people that
25:22
you know you talk to that are disciplined they you know they have something that they
25:27
read that inspired them they have certain people that they look up to
25:32
there's certain you know coaches that taught them there's certain important moments in their
life but for you it's a
25:39
system of failure and and reflection and then rebooting that's it
25:45
repeated failure and people think a lot of times it taught me that i'm angry oh my god you
25:50
sound so angry you cut so much oh my god why you cuss so much why are you so crazy if
you read my book i cannot explain my
25:57
life by saying hey it was a merry [ __ ] christmas man no it wasn't i
26:02
want you i want you to go there with me i'm taking you there with me i'm a storyteller i want
to take your
26:09
ass down paradise where i so the house i lived in buffalo new york that i got my ass beat
every day funny we lived on
26:16
paradise road and it was anything but [ __ ] paradise so i want you to go there with me you
26:23
want to learn from me let me take your ass home let me take you there so that's the whole
thing about it man we're
26:28
scared to dive into our lives what made us who we are
26:34
the beautiful people that we are we're all jacked up in so many ways that's the beauty of us
26:40
that's the beauty of me i'm jacked up but i figured out my own little process
26:45
on how to get unjacked up and how to i'm not gonna get the same you know i'm not gonna
get the same way you're gonna get there you may get there by going
26:50
pointing to point b i might go point c to d to e to f i want to be there the same way you are
just a
26:57
little harder that's how i train my brain so it's just different i'm a different thinker
27:02
when you stop and think about all the different times that you did have to reboot and how
you you you found like
27:09
new goals and you found new inspiration you fired up a new discipline and you became
stronger and harder and you got
27:17
one of the things that people always look for in life they look for a point where they can rest
yes oh i'm going to
27:24
retire you know like people love they love that expression the golden years they love
27:30
that expression yeah they love the they love the idea of struggle as long as it ends and then
27:36
when it ends they're going to have a nice comfortable spot it must end the suffering must
end yeah you should relax
27:42
man you've done so much that's right you've really done so much but this the idea of
reaching this golden year
27:50
is is it's a very flawed idea because it's an idea that you're gonna you're gonna work hard but
then you're gonna
27:56
reach the finish line but there's no finish line no it doesn't exist that's the scary thing about
life my
28:02
friend that is a scary thing right and that's what fatigues me people go man why don't you
ever smile there's no
28:08
[ __ ] end my friend there's no end there's no end i know that you're you're
28:15
you're going to meet cam haynes after this yes sir and listen please if you guys run put a
number of that miles that
28:22
you're going to run and leave it at that do not say let's see who quits because you will both
die because that's a hard man he is
28:30
a hard man cameron haynes is a hard man he will run until you die or he dies he's a hard
man dude he doesn't he does
28:36
those 240s he does ultra he's a sick [ __ ] and see those are the guys i'm looking for yeah
that's a scary do you
28:42
want the two of you guys you need to pick a number i know whatever you get i think you
guys are going to run 35 miles yeah you're gonna do good yeah 35 is a
28:49
good number yeah we've been texting back and forth trying to make it you know trying to
make it sensible you know yeah so we don't go off the chain because if
28:55
one of you [ __ ] wakes up and has a good strong espresso i know [ __ ] it let's do 300. it's
gonna be on
29:02
it's gonna be a long day man no that's it yeah you you know this new race that they're doing
where they're um
29:08
you run for one hour you run like as many and then you have like a bell rings
29:15
and then you sit down for a little bit you know what i mean like you there's like a 4.17 mile
thing yep it's that sick [ __ ]
29:22
what was it the guy's name that created that like i did the barclay marathon yes you're talking
about last yeah yeah this
29:29
is crazy [ __ ] so he had people running for days and days and days he invited me out there
29:34
for this race yeah i actually got into the barclay last year but couldn't do it because of the
book so i'm supposed to
29:39
do it this year but now you know we'll see again how the schedule goes but yeah that that's
a sick
29:44
sick man i've done a couple of his races and like he has one called strolling jim i actually won
that one in 2016. but
29:51
he's a he's a sick man what is this scrolling this is probably easiest race it's like it's like
through the back country of uh
29:57
tennessee it's a 41 mile race on the road it's one of the first you know ultra marathons out
there ever
30:03
and my mom lives in nashville so it's like an hour drive i went up there and it was like when
my first race is back
30:08
after me being all sick and jacked up for so long and i got lucky had a good race and i
happened to want it you know
30:13
you were talking about psoas muscle yeah we have this thing now that we got what does
that call the pro pro so right so
30:19
right have you ever used one i have it also i i saw it in there that that little black contraption
yeah that hard
30:25
plastic thing yeah phenomenal it's evil man yeah yeah it's good it's amazing i
30:30
started getting tightness in that when i was running a lot like i'd never gotten tightness in that
area before yeah it
30:36
seems like that's a running thing right it's a running thing and also a very stressed thing you
know if you're real stressed out man
30:42
like for me like i talked about the origin where like where things start my body was so
wrapped tight i didn't know
30:48
where like where to start yeah so i started with the psoas muscle so that's a real good spot
well the problem with
30:54
these races is pro the problem with people like you that's the problem with these races like if
you get you and
30:59
another you right and they're in there together like you [ __ ] are gonna kill each other it's a
long day
31:04
it's a long day it's a long day it's a long day because if they're doing a last man
31:10
standing type deal right yeah like the first person to quit yeah it's a it's a real long day man i
mean i've been up i
31:16
got a couple hills under my belt man i know how to fail for 130 hours to move yeah and i
know how to self-motivate a
31:22
lot of [ __ ] don't know how to self-motivate man like we like to put the headphones on like
before the big game and listen to the music yeah
31:30
what the [ __ ] did you do when the headphones come off bro it's you in your own mind right i
know how to do that
31:36
that's that's the hard part do you ever listen to music when you run never never i told you
jamie's cheating he has that
31:41
video i got i thought you might have seen it but he talks about like running with music no
what did you say i find it
31:48
find the video we'll play it we might not be able to play it we get is it somebody else's content
i actually um but i did
31:55
during my last pull-up record i listened to you know that song um from
32:01
rocky 1 round 14 when rocky gets knocked down the corner i listened to this two minutes
and 13
32:08
seconds long i listened on repeat for 17 hours christmas [ __ ]
32:17
merry christmas man 17 hours man i went to such a dark dark evil i have a
32:23
picture in my hand in the book i was in a dark i went to this i went to a place man
32:29
that i'm like i can do anything here we gotta live here for a while because i kept on feeling
that wreck i
32:34
go like i don't want to see a pull-up bar again i mean like i did 67 000 pulls man like
32:40
this is my throat i can't i don't want to see no pull up so it's like i'm i'm doing this come hello
high water man
32:45
i broke it out it's just let me hear this let me hear let's play this
32:51
so i never trained with music there's a reason why i don't do that
32:57
the music's not going to always be there the tv the distractions all these external things
33:03
i'm in the gym right now with all this live music people needed to get fired up
33:08
they needed to stay motivated they need to stay in the fight they needed to just go in the
gym
33:14
to do whatever they're gonna do what do you do when you have no external motivation
33:19
it's about the internal what do you say to yourself how are you going to fire yourself up
33:25
what's that flame inside of you that keeps you going let that keep you going not this
33:36
and when you're doing this the whole time you're doing this you're doing some of the hardest
chin-ups you can do you got a chain around your neck right
33:43
folks that are just listening and you're pulling down on ropes you're doing chin-ups on it looks
like taped up ropes
33:49
yes sir that's what it is yeah those are grip that's like jiu jitsu guys do a lot of those yes i was
uh i spoke to the
33:55
university of alabama and they were in there you know most you know most these athletes
man they got to get hyped so
34:01
that music is blaring yeah i'm like man once that [ __ ] comes off and you get popped in your
[ __ ] mouth
34:08
your headphones are on the sidelines brother what's gonna happen yeah you can say to
yourself then so
34:15
that's that's how i train my mind man i i trade my mind i don't get popped in my mouth man
i'm gonna get popped in the
34:21
back of an alley one day man running around doing what i do and there's gonna be no music
yeah you
34:28
better fight you're gonna figure it out i told you jamie's cheating
34:35
when i first started running people said do you run with music and i know running it's
cheating when you have music on it's cheating you're cheating you listen
34:41
to music but now i listen to music all the time but more than i listen to music i listen to books
yeah books on tape uh audiobooks and yours is
34:49
like i said has been the last two weeks has been my running partner well i appreciate that
man you're supposed to
34:54
be phenomenal man it's phenomenal and you're doing this kind of independently right yeah
so what i did man is i pissed
34:59
off a lot of people i was um i so in 2012 i got an offer for my book
35:06
for 30 thousand dollars i said you can go [ __ ] yourself you know what hell i went through
35:12
brother so then everybody was like you know we don't see a market for a black guy ultra
runner fat guy who uh couldn't
35:20
read like uh you know 15 percent of america's black you know i won't see any [ __ ] you
know people buying your book
35:27
they think only black people will buy your book there's some ignorant people out there man
everybody that follows me
35:32
is white i don't have a black i have like three black followers man event was just left he's
furious
35:39
he's a big fan he's black yeah he's like he's like an unusual species out there man like and
so i'm sitting there walking
35:45
around going man you don't even know who like everybody talk to is white like you know it's
the ignorance of the world and
35:51
i'm in these meetings here and this kind of stuff so now 2018 i get a 300 000 offer
35:57
for a first-time author so i'm sitting back you know i'm like my god man you know i used to
36:02
make like [ __ ] sixty thousand dollars a year you know this is the biggest payday yet
36:07
and i started thinking i took that one second i talked about the one second decision a lot
about what i went through my life what i've done
36:13
and i was like you know what i struggled so hard in my life i went through so much that the
biggest trophy
36:18
i own now is that book the biggest trophy i don't know is not the book itself it's what's in the
book
36:25
it's what like i don't give a [ __ ] if that sells one copy honest to god man like like my what i
36:31
did and that's what i hope people understand your life in the journey you put yourself through
there's no there's nothing more than
36:37
that and that's all i want people to do is realize that you have to struggle
36:43
you have to struggle the bigger the struggle the bigger the peace the bigger the suffering the
more peace i'm not
36:49
just saying this because you're here but this book is valuable this book is very valuable it's
valuable to people like
36:54
anybody that you know i mean biographies are very always valuable when you get to see
the mindset of a person who's done
37:01
things that you haven't done you get to understand like that they're overcoming sort of the
same
37:06
sort of situations in their mind that you are same insecurities and pitfalls but yeah
everybody's going through it
37:11
man yeah everybody that's that's something i say i'm blessed that way that
37:16
my story there's no color involved in it it's a human story about struggle
37:22
and i happen to be in so many different situations that so many people can relate to about
struggle
37:28
that i guarantee you mark my word you read that book there will be
37:33
a section of that book that resonates with you hardcore it will make you think if if you're not
ready to think about
37:39
your life and think about you know where you can be and think about what you haven't done
the book's
37:44
not for you if you're not ready to sell to really self-reflect and hold yourself accountable for
where you're at and where you're not
37:51
the book is not for you is real i've read a lot of self-help books and i've listened to a lot of
self-help books on
37:56
tape too and a lot of just some of them that i have to shut off i have to shut off a quarter way
and i feel like
38:02
someone's lying to me i just like you're bullshitting me you're just saying things this i'm not
this doesn't
38:07
resonate with me it doesn't it's not working right like i'll give it a chance i'll give it a chance
but if i'm you
38:12
know a half hour in two hours in it's still the same nonsense i don't feel anything right i'm
getting itchy
38:18
listening to you you know i just want to pull the headphones off and i'll just kill it and i'll stop it
this is the total opposite
38:25
this one man i was i was go i was running extra miles so i could stay with the headphones on
and the
38:31
the thing that i think is going to happen with this book is people are going to get it they're
going to get a hold of whether it's the audiobook or
38:36
their book book and they're going to they're going to recommend it and then it's going to
spread like wildfire this is a powerful book this is a real
38:43
self-help book this is like this is a real one like it's not like uh someone
38:49
orchestrates this whole thing like what i'm going to do is i'm going to become a motivator i'm
going to be i'm going to be a personal influencer i'm going to be
38:55
that guy that goes out there and tells people you can optimize your life here's how you do it
and there's so many of
39:01
those [ __ ] guys out there right yeah that's not me man i know this one dude i ran into him
recently i ran into him at this restaurant he's fat as [ __ ] he's
39:07
got this big old belly and i know he does these these motivational things and i'm looking at
him i'm like what are you
39:14
talking about man like you're weak right look at your body look at your own temple look at
your meat vehicle you're
39:20
carrying around this [ __ ] donut around your waist it's just he was eating shitty food and he
looked soft
39:27
and like wake up [ __ ] so many people are doing that now man how many people are talking
this noise exactly and i see
39:34
them yeah i know them i'm not gonna say names but i know them i'm like man dude you
know why my life is miserable right
39:40
now because i can't go on your show right now your podcast if i didn't get after it this
morning
39:47
so i cannot talk to people unless you're authentic unless i'm authentic because i used to be
the most
39:52
unauthentic [ __ ] on the planet now i have this voicemail saying oh no i'll call you up if i lie to
you about
39:58
something even a white lie hey yo joe guess what dude i [ __ ] lied to you man like that
40:04
wasn't real like it would bother me that badly now you know so another thing i didn't what's
funny about this book
40:10
stuff man i didn't set out to write a book like literally man when i was 24 years old and a
cow's fat spraying for
40:16
cockroaches eating donuts and drinking milkshakes i did not plan on doing this
40:21
all i wanted to do was change the [ __ ] reflection in that dagger mirror this is all just a box it's
it's it's a
40:27
byproduct of of that and that's that's the funny thing about it like everybody's like oh my god
david goggles what you know what
40:32
tell you i'm like what the [ __ ] that's why it works though unbelievable
40:38
it works because you really did do it you really did do all those things and you show how you
did it and you're not
40:44
using any [ __ ] theatrical jargon no you're not you know you're you know you're not saying a
bunch of buzzwords
40:51
can you live the life of an actualized person i can show you how and you look at this guy
talking he's got a neck like
40:57
a pencil and his his body is just frail like you don't even understand adversity you don't
41:03
understand overcoming this is not the secret you know this isn't about the law of [ __ ]
attraction yeah there ain't
41:09
no attraction here brother this ain't no attraction here man this
41:14
book is straight up yeah they love nonsense yeah this is no nonsense man no nonsense this
is a real self-help book
41:21
man this is the real deal that's how you self-help you're self-help by people who've done it
and you learn what they did and you realize there's no shortcuts
41:28
right and then you learn to embrace that no shortcut mentality and enjoy enjoy
41:33
the suffering and the grind of it and what we talked about earlier there's no [ __ ] finish line
doesn't exist you
41:39
know what's funny about that is i have people now so when i was in the worst part of my life
41:45
those people want to bring you back in those people's like like you can see who you hang
out with like when you're in
41:50
your worst and when you're trying to get better with what makes it hard to get better is that
you are hanging around
41:55
people who like let's say you're an alcoholic you hang around people who drink and i say
you want to stop drinking
42:02
those people want to bring you back in like i used to be this guy this guy who was you know
who wasn't worth anything
42:08
now those people who are still there they're 16 17 18 30 years ago they're trying to get you
back there so the hardest part
42:14
you got gotta see who you're hanging out with man you gotta hang out with the people who
you wanna be like the most yeah people
42:20
will definitely drag you they'll jack it down and especially if you around someone who makes
a lot of excuses and they're always failing oh this is just
42:27
like they're they're the opposite of inspiration they're like a vacuum 100 sucking it out of you
why are you doing
42:33
that today man why are you getting up again so early why are you doing this why are you
doing this the people you're hanging around will
42:39
suck the [ __ ] life out of you yeah sometimes just gotta be alone man get your [ __ ] in and
then there's also
42:44
people that are gonna be around that are always failing and they're always [ __ ] up and then
always coming to you
42:49
to try to get you to help them exactly a giant burden yes never look in the mirror and get their
own [ __ ] together
42:56
they're always looking for external help that's right always looking for a storm people don't
want to go in deep man all
43:01
the ants are inside of you it's a very primitive way how like how this book is written it's
primitive
43:07
it's it's very barbarian it's how we all think it's how it's it's how man once
43:13
walked the earth and then we get all soft and all these computers and [ __ ] we start going
away from
43:19
the the most powerful thing we have is our [ __ ] brain it's our mind and we don't use it
anymore
43:24
so you know it's like everything has to be so quick yeah you use your mind when it comes to
certain things right but
43:30
what you're saying is you don't use your mind when it comes to enduring exactly that is it
you can't google that [ __ ]
43:37
right hey let me google how to suffer no that ain't gonna be in there bro
43:44
ain't gonna be in there it could be in there there's no answer it's not in there it
43:49
doesn't exist find some water real cold and what's interesting is that that is a mind thing
43:55
and people think of mind things they think of calculating mathematics literature no no no no
no there's many
44:02
aspects to the mind that's it don't overthink it yeah don't overthink it put your shoes on lace
them up
44:09
that's all you got to do my friend don't overthink the process yeah but see
44:14
what because you've overcome and because you've accomplished so much now that even
when you you talk about that moment
44:21
of like embracing that suck like you see the big ass smile on your face like
44:26
you've you've got a total different approach to it than the average person oh yeah the
average person you're
44:31
talking to them about doing chin ups for 24 hours or anything [ __ ] crazy they don't look at
they're like oh
44:37
there's like a a negative a doom feeling that's the thing about it man i talk about my book
open-mindedness
44:43
what separates me from a lot of people is they go into an a daunting task
44:48
and the task is overwhelming like when i heard the pull-up break was 4020 pull-ups and i
was talking about breaking this record
44:54
people are like oh my god i went right to a pen and paper like what are you doing i'm doing
the math
45:00
man what are you talking about i'm open mind to the fact that okay if i do five pull-ups on the
minute for so many hours
45:05
i can get some pull-ups in how much time do i have to rest i was breaking the math down
you have to be open-minded to
45:11
the possibilities that i can do this once you shut your mind down to the possibility that it can
be achieved there's no way it can happen so that's
45:17
why my my eyes and my body light up about things because i know that if you're in a fight
you have to attack
45:25
you have to keep attacking the enemy has to know he is not going to
45:30
give up you must break the soul of whatever the [ __ ] is in front of you that's what i realized i
was never
45:35
breaking the soul of anything in front of me so that's why i came with the thing called taking
souls in my book
45:41
i started to devise ways to break a soul of a human being of an object of
45:47
whatever's in front of me if you keep on attacking something nothing wants to stand in front
of anything
45:53
that is relentless nothing the taken soul part of the book is
45:58
really interesting because uh you talked about like the the mind shift that you
46:03
had when you were in buds yes sir yeah that was that's an intense part of the book it's it is
uh
46:09
that's when a lot of stuff started clicking man i started watching those instructors on the side
you know there's there's
46:15
three shifts there's eight instructors three shifts because you know the guys going through
through hell week they're
46:20
up all day and all night for 130 hours this is the promised land of mental
46:25
hardening for me i love this place and you have the instructors who you know you know
they've been there done that
46:31
now they're instructing you so they do their eight hour shift they have their parkas on it's
usually cold coffee
46:36
drinking their coffee and they're beating the crap out of us and when i started realizing i
started playing mind games and i was like you
46:42
know what i bet these [ __ ] are looking at us judging themselves about when they were
46:49
going through hell week about let me see i'm looking at goggins right now i was better than
him i was bearing that guy
46:54
bearing that [ __ ] over there and i was like okay okay you gotta judge me right
47:02
so it's not gonna do to you so what i started doing was i got my boat crew boat crew too it's
in the book it's a great great story said come here guys
47:08
you can't break boat crude you can't break broke crew 2. so it's wednesday is wednesday
and
47:14
everybody's broken everybody's beat up man and like this you start moving like a robot
everybody's like just kind of
47:19
just trying to get through helbig now and your energy zap and they know wednesdays like
that over the hump i love that you talked about that in the
47:25
book too that they put it in your head wednesday you're gonna be tired oh yeah and that's
another thing they they tell you how you're supposed to feel
47:32
so you are feeling that way i was like ah don't let these [ __ ] tell you how you supposed to
feel no it's day one
47:39
[ __ ] this is hour one so i was getting my broker all jacked up i said we're gonna take these [
__ ]
47:44
souls so when they had us doing this simple thing that guys are struggling with broker two is
just lost in the
47:51
[ __ ] boat near yelling yeah he can't [ __ ] hurt us can't hurt boat crew too and i looked on
the instructor's faces
47:58
and it looked like someone had just [ __ ] with their soul and i looked at my guys my broker
and i
48:04
said hey guess what those [ __ ] aren't [ __ ] tonight because we own space in their [ __ ]
head
48:10
we own space they're gonna think about us tonight they could think about how they're killing
boners that's right
48:15
how how on wednesday are these guys doing this and screaming out you can't hurt
48:20
people too we were we were bringing the fight we were attacking so so when you keep on
doing that guess what people
48:26
start doing i ain't [ __ ] with these guys no more so bro crew 2 got a lot more sleep roku
48:31
2 just became that broke like hey because we just kept charging and we started fueling off of
that we started
48:37
fueling out the fact that man it takes one second of energy to steal everybody's
48:43
and then you have all the energy you need that's all you need you need to look at someone's
eyes you know how this when
48:48
you fight somebody you broke that [ __ ] he's like oh god man i don't want to go back the
next round and
48:53
you feel like my god i can fight all day i can fight all day long that's what taking souls is
48:59
but you have to have the will the heart the courage to go
49:04
that distance when you're exactly jacked up you have nothing left to give and give more
49:11
that is an interesting thing about the mind is that you can find inspiration and when you find
inspiration when you
49:16
get charged up all of a sudden you have energy that's right it's right it's weird i talked about
in the book also is
49:22
about i learned how to control my adrenals
49:28
if you know how you know how you get that fight or flight response when you get to move
real quick yeah and you know
49:33
i i started learning the mind a lot how to get myself jacked extremely fast like in a horrible
49:40
environment when everybody's miserable i learned how to really find strength in the misery
49:45
when everybody's suffering everybody's all poopy past and their mentality's down and
everything i started just like
49:51
my god this is where i shine and i started using all that misery
49:57
for tons and tons of tons of drive and motivation to to then lead people further
50:04
because you can get a lot of power through misery and once people see that my god
cognizance is [ __ ] going
50:10
then everybody says roger that let me get my [ __ ] and go too so i started realizing that if
you can
50:16
just find strength just a little bit longer you'll have a crew of people following you along the
way
50:22
and that is another thing that no one can ever teach you because you you're going to have to
learn that on your own
50:28
you're going to have to figure out how to pull that energy out of your mind on your own
there's not
50:34
there's there's no book you can read now all sudden i have it i've got the technique now i
know how to do it yeah
50:39
no it's it's a a grind that you have to start and finish on your own you have to
50:44
take great pleasure in the fact that no one wants to be with the [ __ ] you're at right now
50:49
great pleasure in that almost makes you know it has to bring a passion out of you it has to
bring something very very
50:55
weird out of you man like you know people don't really understand what that is when you're
in the worst environment possible the worst situation
51:01
possible and everybody's looking like god man i hope this ends and you see that
51:06
time slows down and you see that you're you're feeling that everybody has that look on their
face like god that's got to go i don't want
51:13
to be anymore have you ever gotten rabdo wrapped on my lowest oh yes sir did you get it
yes sir yes sir when did you get
51:20
it i got it on my second pull-up record attempt and i talked about it a little bit in the book there
um
51:25
and i have sickle cell trait and a young kid just died from rhabdo from uh because sickle
cell's not a good
51:32
thing obviously um and rhabdo's a bad thing for having sickle cell you have sickle cell trait
but you
51:38
don't have the disease i don't have the disease a buddy of mine died from it when i was a kid
really yeah
51:43
a guy used to fight with us to train with yeah he was always sick he'd have it get sick his
heart he'll be gone he'd be out
51:50
of the gym for months and he'd come back and he'd just be trying to get his body back in
shape again
51:56
then he went up dying he's a talented guy too when you got it what did you have to do
52:02
so they put me to hospital for a while um that's when my hand got real messed up and my
fluids were extremely low and i
52:09
had done like i think i did 3 000 pull-ups and they're like man your body is
52:14
wrecked up were you just not drinking water while you're doing it i was drinking water but not
enough so i was
52:19
sipping this carbohydrate drink and um my calories were extremely low i didn't
52:25
know how much i was going to burn through and you burn through an awful lot of calories
man doing that many pull-ups so that many hours yeah and
52:31
with the repetition with using the single points of just my hands and my biceps my back
52:36
like my body was swollen like the pillsbury doughboy i mean it looked horrible
52:41
and um so they kept me in there for a while but how long probably about eight hours
52:47
i was about eight hours on ivs and stuff like that so they just it's basically a ton of drinks yeah
52:54
tons of fluid and they sent me home though so i went home that night
52:59
and how long did you wait before you jump back at it i think i was back on the pull-up bar
about a week and a half later
53:07
and then i broke the record six six weeks later i broke the record jesus christ
53:13
so when you when you did get back on the pull-up bar was how [ __ ] up was your body from
53:19
it was bad but what i do is like what i've done through everything it which isn't real smart i
mean it works for me
53:25
so i'm not saying do this is i've trained through a lot of my injuries and i started developing i i
started
53:32
doing that in buds and still training because i instill training you know they know you guys
start from day one or they just kick you out so i started from day
53:38
one enough so my third time going through i was really jacked up well you went you had
pneumonia yeah i had pneumonia and i had really bad stress
53:45
fractures so my stretch fracture so i was literally i would put a sock on and then duct tape my
foot all the way up to the
53:52
top of my or to the middle of my ankle or to my calf and because my stress fracture was so
bad so like the pivot
53:58
point between my ankle and my shin i just cast that all the way up and so i went through for
several months
54:05
for a few months with stretch fractures what was crazy about that is they healed
54:10
by the time i got to third phase my stress reactions were healed wow and i don't even know
how rhyme or reason
54:16
behind it i ran on them a few months later they were healed wow so i don't know what that
means just push through
54:22
the agony and eventually your body just said this crazy [ __ ] is not gonna stop it's true
statement yeah it's weird a
54:29
lot of my injuries i've just pushed through and they've uh i duct tape it up i mean have you
ever had to have surgery on any of them no
54:36
just heart just a couple heart surgeries but um none of my actual physical body and what
was your heart surgery for
54:41
again you talked about this before yeah asd i had a hole in my heart yeah so which is even
more ridiculous yeah
54:47
that's what we talked about that too man they uh they they took me off and studied me for a
while
54:52
so they realized that my god i shouldn't even be in the military i wasn't even qualified to be in
the military at the hole in my heart
54:59
you know let alone being special operations where you jumping on planes and stuff like that
so i was i was lucky how'd they seal that up so they went in
55:05
with a helix patch and um you know through my femoral artery femoral artery and they went
55:11
through put a patch and they realized you know i missed like three or four years of a military
career because this
55:16
heart surgery wow yeah so i was i was off of jump status dive status i was
55:22
just uh so that's what i talked about recruiting so much i i stayed in recruiting for like three or
four years
55:28
and um you know i became like a navy city recruiter when i was uh you know doing this for a
while so i got
55:34
extended there because the heart surgery and other than that you never had to have any
other surgeries
55:39
um no meniscus no nothing no no that's crazy no and i've had some jacked up injuries
55:45
let's see how i grew up you know like i talked about in the book my dad didn't believe in
taking me by the hospital
55:51
like that's just how it was man it was it was barbarian stuff man but you know you learn to
deal with it and
55:58
you live it you're fine you get hurt mris oh yeah get everything checked out matter of fact
man i was terrified mri machine for
56:04
a long time i was claustrophobic i was like man that's
56:10
yeah there's a lot of there's a lot behind that man but yeah i've i've been checked out a lot
i've had uh so like i said like six years ago i
56:16
started stretching out like i thought i was dying i couldn't even get out of bed so all that
stretching out was from
56:22
pretty much all these injuries i had that i never really fixed and my body got knotted up and
more
56:28
knotted up and more knowledge i mean it's going to heal one way or another it's going to
heal and when it heals and i can heal right
56:34
it's going to heal all jacked up and crooked yeah so i'm a crooked jacked up dude man but i
can still get it done
56:41
it's amazing that you haven't had like knee surgeries or anything like that consider all the
running you've done my left knee right now isn't it's no joke
56:49
so like i say origin of pain my right foot is messed up because of my left knee
56:54
so right now i'm i'm i'm taking care of my left knee knees getting a lot better now but don't
worry cameron haynes i will still
57:00
be [ __ ] out there running with your ass i'm not gonna get out of it buddy so if you're
listening [ __ ] i will see you this weekend
57:07
merry christmas all right just so you know brother merry christmas i'll see you soon
57:12
you don't know what's wrong with the knee you have no idea it's from stretching so basically
stretching yeah
57:18
so my whole because my body was in in such bad alignment from just what i did to it
57:25
that now i'm in this huge stress routine and my body's getting back into alignment so your
muscles like i was a
57:32
power lifter man like i i grew these huge muscles and i'm this small guy and i just and from
the stress of my body
57:38
going through three health weeks and also my body scout became one knot so as things
start to open up
57:44
joints start to hurt things start to hurt and i'm like god so it's been this big long process so i'm
faster in better
57:50
shape than ever my organs work better i'm healthier than ever but i have these little tweaks
here
57:56
these little tweaks there from the fact that i am now my body was locked into position
58:01
from these muscles being so tight now what do you weigh now about 182 183 and you were
at like 300 plus pounds when
58:07
you're at your fattest right my fattest when i weighed in for the military i don't know what my
fattest was but when i weighed in
58:13
on that scale when steven sauzio hit that scale on me man it was 297.
58:18
and he's like brother you gotta lose 106 pounds i was like [ __ ] this
58:24
what are you talking about oh how's that possible so anyway it's just you know not a lot of
time that's
58:29
the crazy thing they didn't give you three months to lose that 33 pounds a month is a lot of [
__ ] weight plus a
58:36
few almost impossible and that's what i thought that's what i thought but see you see the
person now i was 175 pounds
58:42
in high school so i was a skinny guy in high school so i made myself big
58:48
i'm a small bone person so it didn't it wouldn't trust me it was hard
58:53
it was hardest thing i've ever done in my life but what did people think around you when they
saw you three months later
58:59
you're 100 pounds lighter my mom couldn't believe it because my mom so i was living in
indianapolis in the end at the time
59:04
and so i was trying to study for this asvab test again that you know i got to take it again going
to the navy and i'm out here
59:11
trying to lose weight and i'm you know working for this company spraying for cockroaches
and all sort of crap and i would lay in her pond
59:17
in [ __ ] november in indiana just lay in her pond i was like i'm going to bust i got to get hard
you know
59:24
so i would lay in the pond get out of the pond and go for a run just all wet cold like my like
the dad
59:29
gone shirt would just freeze up from ice and [ __ ] and i just be out there running said what is
wrong with you man like you
59:35
were that kid who just didn't want to like what's wrong with you so she started seeing the
transformation like you know this guy is obsessed
59:42
with trying to become somebody next thing she knew man my god you actually lost that
much weight that fast i love the fact that
59:49
you did it but what what hurts me is when i hear stories about people that get like stomach
stapling and surgery
59:56
and all that [ __ ] that they do like you just need to just lose the weight right and if you just
did it you just did it
1:00:02
the right way you would have earned it and if you earn it you'll keep it that's the thing about it
man like we like to
1:00:08
take these very quick fixes in life we want the six minute abs approach to life yeah nah man
there's no permanent
1:00:15
in that yeah there's no permanent in that man there's no scarring there must be scarring well
people are
1:00:21
terrified of this thing that you're saying that there's no end that there's no finish line that every
day is a new thing that you have to earn
1:00:28
it still after all the [ __ ] you've done every day you get up and you have to earn it yes you
know what's funny about
1:00:33
that i want you to be scared of it yeah i want you to just give you fuel
1:00:39
it's great motivation and see if you look at that way the reason why
1:00:45
i speak the way i speak because i believe in what i'm saying if i ever shut it down
1:00:51
that's the end of me and whatever my hundred percent will be i don't know what's gonna
happen to me
1:00:56
tomorrow if you can't run i will figure what the [ __ ] i can do and do that
1:01:02
that would be my new 100 you must continue to find your new 100 whatever life throws at
you you must
1:01:08
find what you can do now i may become the best you know scientist of all time who knows
watch
1:01:15
out you know what i'm saying watch out who knows well that is an approach like
1:01:21
this this approach this mental approach you can use that for anything once you get past the
quitting mechanism of your
1:01:28
mind once you get past that thing that this is applicable you can you can take
1:01:34
these lessons that you learn from these grueling runs yes losing 106 pounds in
1:01:39
three months from all these different things of struggle you can take these lessons of
struggle and you can apply
1:01:44
them to anything yes i talk about it in my book here about that race i did that made seal
training
1:01:50
look like a like a child's play in ranger school that that first hundred miler i did write [ __ ] on
myself and all
1:01:56
kind of stuff that 19 hours it took me with no training
1:02:01
i sum it up like this you're talking about struggle how you can put so much of life into struggle
in that 19 hours
1:02:08
i lived five years five years of struggle of happiness of
1:02:13
of depression success failure in 19 hours that's what's great about some of these things i do
you get a a wide range
1:02:21
of life in just 19 hours you know like when you get to like mile 50 in your mind saying we
gotta get out
1:02:27
of here man and then it gets like miles 60. okay we're feeling good you have all these highs
and lows that you have to
1:02:32
manage within this suck fest of 19 hours and that's what i get from a lot of these different
things that human growth
1:02:39
you know growth of the mind without friction there is no growth without friction there's no
growth
1:02:44
there's no growth and there's no satisfaction like there's no real like people want to
1:02:50
sit around and rest but you don't really appreciate rest unless you earned it that's it and
people get they think i'm
1:02:56
the craziest person on the planet you are so far [ __ ] removed from that
1:03:02
statement it's not even funny i was 290 pounds twice in my life
1:03:07
i do not like to do the things i do but to humongous satisfaction from doing it
1:03:13
this humongous has facts from lacing your shoes up saying i don't really want to go for a run
today
1:03:18
and then running and then getting back and saying wow i did it i did it yeah and that's what
1:03:23
it's about it's about these small steps to doing things you don't want to do you know jocko
jocko william i know him yeah
1:03:29
jocko's don't know him great but i know him i i know him pretty well he's he's awesome but
every morning you look at
1:03:35
that motherfucker's instagram he's got a picture of his watch at 4 30. he gets up
1:03:40
at 4 30 every morning and he earns a sunrise that's good stuff it works out like a [ __ ] and
then earns a
1:03:45
sunrise that's good stuff but it's that thing like there's no end no it doesn't end and it's scary
1:03:52
that is scary that's scary everybody wants that holding hands while the sun sets retirement
you're walking off into
1:03:58
the sunset the biggest question i get is so when did you rest
1:04:04
when did you recover yeah and i don't want to scare people
1:04:09
but the truth answer is i don't take any days off
1:04:15
no days no days seven days a week seven days a week what is a normal day normal
1:04:20
day for me a normal day so let's say a light day light day light day is at
1:04:25
least a seven mile run i will every every four every other day so
1:04:32
about four days a week um calisthenics plus gym workout so i don't do any gym workout
without hitting pull-ups
1:04:38
push-ups i call nickels and dimes so like five pull-ups ten push-ups or i'll go you know
quarters
1:04:45
and whatever like it's like 25 pull-ups or in like 50 push-ups so i have all these different
things i messed up so
1:04:50
i will do weights with calisthenics and every single night i stretch
1:04:57
for at least every night i stretch for these two hours two hours every night
1:05:03
every night so you stretch after you're done working out yeah so at night time usually i'll be
either in a quiet room or i'll be
1:05:10
watching tv or a good i love sports be watching the game and i'm on the floor man and that's
what i do
1:05:16
so you just stretch while you're doing stuff i stretch where i do stuff two hours a long ass time
to stretch is this
1:05:21
just because you're trying to correct i'm trying to correct um years of not doing that no years
of just do you ever
1:05:27
[ __ ] with yoga a lot yeah yoga is this [ __ ] what do you do i have my own yoga
1:05:33
so i kind of invented my own little yoga for what my body needs i've done hot yoga several
times yoga is huge yoga
1:05:39
shoes like holding those positions and i'm big and holding them for a long period of time so
that's where my
1:05:45
stretching like people say don't hold stretches for a long time i hold them for a long period of
time because i'm trying to get full range of motion a lot
1:05:52
of people going for like like um like my shoulders all messed up i get surgery on it nah if you
don't have full range of
1:05:58
motion in your body don't go in and get cut on man until you know that your body is actually
opened up you know we start
1:06:04
to get knuckle dragger syndrome from doing these push-ups you never work your back you
know like like i'm like i'm
1:06:10
your rear delts so here you are you start hunching over before you know your joints are out
of
1:06:16
whack you need to get full range of motion before you know how [ __ ] up you truly are so i'm
i'm always working on full range
1:06:23
of motion like a kid they run so effortlessly they're always in full range of motion
1:06:28
as you get older and tighter and sick and more stressed your body starts to get more and
more tight therefore your
1:06:34
shoulders start to get out of balance not a and not a joint not a socket therefore you know it's
popping yeah
1:06:40
it's popping because you're [ __ ] tight open it up first open it up can you can can you touch
your hands behind each
1:06:45
other and raise them up behind you you know it's all these different ranges of motion that i
got real smart on from a
1:06:51
guy and i took it to another level so are you do you work with a trainer or do you always work
out by yourself
1:06:56
everything i do i've never had training my entire life really never not one time do you read
about physiology or exercise
1:07:04
science or anything like that nothing nothing nothing but what about like when they learn
new [ __ ] about new ways to
1:07:11
you know enhance shoulder stability or new exercises you're not interested no i don't i don't i
don't
1:07:19
i don't do it for that reason still this day man still this day to
1:07:24
this day it is for me to become better mentally
1:07:30
how i look has just become like i have thousands thousands hundreds of
1:07:37
thousands of miles on this body running pull-ups push-ups swimming whatever you want to
call it this body is what it is
1:07:43
now it's from repetition it's not from studying you know hey if you hold your plank for this long
[ __ ]
1:07:49
all that [ __ ] i don't i don't care about it i just do it for my mind right i want to
1:07:55
continue to harden because that's the only thing i want that's what i want i want to have that
mind ready for life
1:08:01
but you also want to increase your range of motion oh yeah yeah range of motion make sure
that you're you're you know
1:08:07
you're not causing any additional injuries dude wouldn't you want to like stabilize some areas
that maybe you feel
1:08:12
like you might have weaknesses and find out new techniques to do that have you seen me
with my shirt off no yeah it's stable as [ __ ]
1:08:22
i saw you when you had your shirt off when you first came here i walked in he dave got here
early and uh by the time i
1:08:28
got here he was already doing chin-ups yeah it's stable stable do some pull-ups push-up
smash some stable [ __ ] yeah but yeah but you
1:08:35
you know all that stuff is very important honestly just all jokes aside man full range of motion
getting your
1:08:41
shoulder rotation all that stuff is very important i i learned a lot about that coming up i had a
lot of people i worked
1:08:47
out with that that are real smart about all this stuff i'm a real old-school meat-eater like
1:08:52
bill casmire type of lifter you know i don't look like it back when i was that guy in the back of
the skinny guy that
1:08:58
that's what i did and i got off really big into human performance about the body strength
fitness that's what i
1:09:05
wanted to be i want to be a hybrid [ __ ] a guy that can run 200 miles and then go to the gym
with your
1:09:11
meat head who doesn't even who's scared of running and lift with him so that's my whole
thing in life i want
1:09:16
to be the guy who can run 200 miles with the skinny guys and then go to the gym with the
big meat head and say okay
1:09:22
load it up let's go so that's my whole thing that's a very difficult thing to to tie the two of
1:09:28
them together when you think most people when you think ultra marathon runners or people
that run long distances they're
1:09:33
very thin right very thin guys like when you were talking about the first time you ran 100
miles that you did deadlifts
1:09:40
the night before like that is just [ __ ] preposterous nobody does that no yeah so me and the
1:09:45
guy talk about the book it's silverback gorilla is what i call him in the book that's not his real
name
1:09:51
obviously but yeah he saw me go into my car the night before my first hundred mile race and
you know i was like he
1:09:56
called me out say hey goggins come here you know when the navy still
1:10:02
calls you out gotta put you through three hell weeks you're like you know what [ __ ] i gotta
go to the gym and lift heavy now
1:10:07
so we're doing squats deadlifts power cleans heavy bench presses and i'm
1:10:12
thinking i have to run 100 miles tomorrow but i also knew he was coming out there to
1:10:17
watch me so i was like you know what you put me through three hell weeks you
1:10:22
were my instructor so now it's my turn to educate you on what a human can do because i
know
1:10:28
you could be sitting there thinking while you're watching me with your wife and your kid and
you just worked out with me not before we went real heavy
1:10:35
did the heaviest [ __ ] when we're sore you're you're gonna sit there while you watch me run
around this one mile track
1:10:40
how the [ __ ] is he doing that [ __ ] right now we lifted heavy as hell and he's running
1:10:46
100 miles and never has run past 20 miles in his life i use that for a lot of fuel so that gym
1:10:52
workout mr silverback gorilla there was a lot for my mentality that that brought with
1:10:58
me because i knew i would see you and he came at mile 50 with a package of six donuts
1:11:05
that i chomped up with the quickness so yeah so i used that workout for a lot
1:11:10
of motivation i knew he'd see me i know he'd be thinking about how did you not get robbed
over that day you know what i
1:11:16
don't know what i got that day but i talked about in the book again that when i went home
that night
1:11:24
or that morning that was single-handedly nothing even close i'm 43 years old now there's
1:11:30
nothing even close to that pain i knew for a fact i wasn't going to get out of that tub
1:11:36
i knew i i knew i was done i was talk about dehydrated no nutrition
1:11:42
i was eating rich crackers and my plex that was the worst pain i'd ever experienced in my
entire life i was
1:11:50
pissing coca-cola out of me it was bad it was bad she probably did have rob dog
1:11:55
i guarantee it i i guarantee i'm pissing god cold that's coca-cola no bueno yeah
1:12:01
no brain no son it was bad and my ex-wife was like
1:12:06
[ __ ] and she's you know she's a nurse yeah and she called my mom up and mom had a
her friend there was a was was a
1:12:13
doctor friend of hers said hey you gotta give them to the doctor immediately and i was like
hey you gotta give me that [ __ ] phone
1:12:19
i gotta call up chris kaufman let him know i did 100 miles so i get in the bad water
1:12:24
it didn't go as like you know like i planned but i did get in the bad water after another race but
um but didn't you do a marathon like yes later so
1:12:32
basically i had never run a marathon right i did the 100 mile race first no
1:12:37
training but i had signed up for the marathon because it's the first las vegas marathon
running down the strip of las
1:12:43
vegas so las vegas had you know had a marathon but it's the first time it's going to go down
the strip 2005 like hey
1:12:50
i'm gonna sign up for it i went on to iraq did you know the deployment and i come back i'll be
training for it and
1:12:56
i'll go do this race with my family me my ex-wife and my mom signed up for it so in iraq me
and my boy
1:13:03
sledge in the book we're just working out we're like we're doing crazy workouts and my
cardio was
1:13:11
20 minutes every sunday on the elliptical trainer that's the only cardio i did
1:13:17
so i called myself training for this marathon right so then you know my my boys got killed in
in
1:13:24
that incident that happened long survivor you know the whole operation red wings so that's
what prompted me to do the 100
1:13:30
mile race after the 100 mile race in november it was like two or three weeks later that
1:13:35
marathon that we all signed up for that i didn't train for i didn't train for 100 miles didn't doing
training off of this
1:13:40
like hey i'll drive there with you all because i tried to run the day before like i can't even run
1:13:46
i can't run down the block so i didn't do it so we we're driving to the race i said hey mom my
mom's going to walk it i said
1:13:53
i'm going to walk it with you my ex-wife i said you can go ahead and take off do your thing
run your race i'm
1:13:59
gonna walk my mom that gun went off and something [ __ ] happened
1:14:07
i took i was like what i took up like a jack rabbit gone i was like what the hell so
1:14:14
i re i was thinking the whole time i was like man i couldn't i spent a hundred miles like three
weeks ago like first
1:14:19
time ever my i was peeing blood and pissing [ __ ] on myself i go my body's broken my my
achilles and my tendons and
1:14:26
my feet are broken i go what is this and every time i started running further
1:14:31
in front okay i got to the 10k i'm on boston marathon time because i knew the boston
marathon was like 3 10
1:14:38
59 for my age i'm like hang on a second and then i started using all this external [ __ ] for
motivation like okay
1:14:45
who the [ __ ] can go out here and run a hundred miles no training like i'm broken most
broken i've been in
1:14:51
my life now i'm running a marathon who could do it so i started just feeding myself feeding
myself i get to half the
1:14:56
mile i'm about 30 seconds off the pace i say hang on man your goggins
1:15:02
you can do this [ __ ] man and i started feeding myself feeding myself feeding myself you
can do this before i knew it
1:15:08
man i kept talking to like the last six miles and i was off the pace and i just kicked it and that
next thing i knew i
1:15:14
did like a 308 and change i was like and that was like what the [ __ ]
1:15:19
what have i been leaving on the table right i've been leaving so much on the [ __ ] table
1:15:25
for pain like and that's when i started like going crazy about the mind like
1:15:30
what the hell am i like what is up like open these different doors of like
1:15:36
possibility in like what is humanly possible what are we capable of like you
1:15:41
know people i didn't even know i was just amazed by what i was able to do
1:15:47
by a simple fact of just reasoning and working with pain and pain management and
1:15:52
in my mind just kept on growing from there and it happened in hell week it happened a
hundred mile race happened here it
1:15:58
started just evolving into what it is now to where now i'm like god dawg man of mine we are
leaving so much
1:16:04
on the table but people take me he cusses so much she sounds crazy don't listen all that [
__ ] man just just
1:16:11
cut off the [ __ ] cut the [ __ ] just get to the weeds of that you are you are [ __ ] yourself
1:16:18
up by not examining your brain you're not examining your brain message
1:16:24
it that's done you examine your [ __ ] brain and that takes some hard work and suffering
1:16:29
if you're not willing to do that i'm sorry and it seems like there's no way to do that as a
bystander no you can't
1:16:35
watch it man yeah you gotta get out there like oh this hurts this hurts real [ __ ] bad
1:16:40
i don't think this is smart and then guess what happens the body will adjust
1:16:46
it will adjust anybody goes well then the next question i get but is there a time when it doesn't
adjust
1:16:54
what the [ __ ] i get some of the stupidest [ __ ] man like don't don't take it with a grain of
1:17:00
[ __ ] salt people those questions are people that are wanting to quit yes yes and that's what
i say when should i quit yeah like uh did you ever like feel like
1:17:08
no shut the [ __ ] up stop stop i don't want to like that there's always that next question
1:17:15
no don't take it like go out there and run through a brick wall as many times as you can no
i'm not saying be me don't
1:17:21
run 205 miles at one time i'm not saying do that i'm saying start to learn the
1:17:27
mind is powerful it's powerful man it's it's unbelievable but people need they need a thing to
get
1:17:34
them going right they need a thing right they need a goal they need they need a
1:17:40
like it's sometimes the first step is the hardest like it's hard to take that one million
1:17:45
step too but sometimes the first step is the most there's something about the what do i do
1:17:51
they start going over their phone they start calling people they don't get out of the house right
1:17:57
and there's something about procrastination it's like you know it's
1:18:02
painful you know you should be doing things but you just keep doing it you keep itching that
scab
1:18:07
[Laughter] i procrastinate like a [ __ ] man every day i'm gonna do this [ __ ]
1:18:16
that's what's so funny man people looking like i'm some damn superhero that came down
from the gods from the heavens of earth no man
1:18:23
i don't want to do this [ __ ] i'm looking at my shoes for 30 minutes
1:18:28
sometimes thinking man [ __ ] man people people look up to you goggins [ __ ] them i don't
wanna do this
1:18:38
i'm like i wanna do this [ __ ] man but guess what you do it i'm gonna do it as long as you do
it and that's what i know
1:18:43
about it man that's why i stopped doing i'm thinking oh man you're gonna [ __ ] sit here you
look at your shoes for 30 40 minutes
1:18:49
you go you got to think about it all day long and you go do it anyway and sometimes you
don't have the time to look at issues for 30 minutes no those
1:18:55
are the those are the beautiful days yes because you know you just have to go that's right
and so like there's no room for procrastination and that's when i
1:19:02
was in the military i love my schedule because i knew how to work at seven o'clock so you
better get your ass up at
1:19:08
four o'clock man you get your [ __ ] in brother cause i had to get my [ __ ] in before i got my [
__ ] in right you know
1:19:13
so that was my mentality back then man you know like i i had to get the miles and get
everything in man
1:19:19
and and get to work man i'm uh competing with the alpha males yeah but how much did that
piss other alpha males off that
1:19:27
you were you were imposing a very high bar i
1:19:32
i was a very misunderstood human being when i was in the military the air force guys liked
me a lot the rangers liked me
1:19:40
a lot so much not the seals because they were with you they they didn't like me so
1:19:45
much which is fine you know i i respect them i think a lot of them respect i've have a lot of
friends in the seal teams
1:19:50
a lot of guys that like like-minded mentalities as me and once again i grew up and i got over
1:19:56
it a lot of guys still have you know like a lot of people can't get over the fact of whatever
when i became a seal
1:20:01
recruiter a lot of guys thought i wasn't deploying for a lot of reasons and whatnot and they i
heard a lot i was that guy who grinded
1:20:10
i grinded hard i mean i i grounded hard i was that guy who was up like if we went on an op or
1:20:17
we had a work up let's say we had a work up we're an island we're out there shooting guns
and and doing land warfare and we did it
1:20:24
like one o'clock in the [ __ ] morning most everybody go to sleep
1:20:30
i didn't go to sleep i went to the gym and i worked out or i'd go sleep and i said we'd be up at
1:20:36
five o'clock i was up at four o'clock and got my hour in i made sure to always do that
1:20:41
and i i did it to a point to where i think it pissed some people off because i i want a quiet
person about it
1:20:48
you know i i uh i want the most humble person always you know so when you're around
alpha
1:20:55
males um you're sometimes picking a fight you know all the time and i looked
1:21:00
different i acted different i was different i am different i take a lot of pride in that and so you
know if if you didn't get
1:21:06
after it i didn't respect you because i believe that you know where where i'm at
1:21:12
i i know that human potential is what we have it's all we have is what we the the world sees
us a certain way
1:21:20
and when i saw that people weren't doing that i had a funky ass [ __ ] attitude
1:21:25
and i i own it in my book i come back from ranger school a big time leader i was a big time [
__ ] leader i got
1:21:31
honor man out there i live by example and what i realized a lot of times when you're in these
schools
1:21:38
these schools people want to graduate these schools because they suck they don't want to
ever go back to these
1:21:43
schools those schools became my [ __ ] life
1:21:48
people don't want to see a [ __ ] god that wants to go back to day one week one a [ __ ] navy
still training every
1:21:53
[ __ ] day of your life and that's how i live and it's a disgusting human being that i
1:21:59
can be it is and a lot of people didn't like me a lot of [ __ ] people started some
1:22:05
stupid [ __ ] and started saying this and that the bottom line man is my [ __ ] resume says it
all man
1:22:11
my resume is out there google the [ __ ] you say whatever you want to say about me man i i
i miss some deployments man for
1:22:17
having [ __ ] you know two heart surgeries and people trying to start some rumors [ __ ] on
me man you started rumors [ __ ] on me
1:22:23
man because i [ __ ] got the [ __ ] after it and real hard guys like a guy named hawk i talked
to all
1:22:28
the time yeah he's a great friend of mine when the hardest my first before my heart surgery
my second heart
1:22:34
surgery i went on a 10 mile wreck around before my second heart rate the day of it i went on
a 10 mile work on 50 pounds
1:22:40
i saw that guy he's like what the [ __ ] are you doing out here he got heart surgeon it's roger
that brother
1:22:45
i'm getting it in before i'll be out for about six months after the heart surgery that was my
mentality because i started realizing at a young age
1:22:52
when i was leaving on the table and once i found out what a human being's capable of
1:22:57
i didn't know how to control that i was i was a [ __ ] talk about [ __ ]
1:23:02
savage that's what i was i was a [ __ ] straight up people talk about savage very lightly i was
[ __ ] from the back woods
1:23:09
[ __ ] savage dude you know and and i just i was just i was
1:23:14
i told you what i thought i i had eight chips on my shoulder i um
1:23:21
and a lot of times that wasn't great so is it a situation where like with the seals where once
you've gotten through
1:23:27
buds and once you've gotten through all the physically grueling parts of getting to be
accepted once you're in
1:23:35
then you were imposing standards that they didn't want to they didn't want to keep up with i i
1:23:41
would say some people you know i i had uh i had one platoon that i had a problem with you
know like i like i i i
1:23:48
graduated ranger school and i got in this platoon and i didn't see i don't know i was in charge
of a pt program
1:23:54
and you put me in charge of the pt program it's [ __ ] your ass and the thing about it i didn't
like it
1:23:59
either i didn't i didn't want to do this [ __ ] either man but what were you making them do like
you know like i it was it
1:24:04
was some maybe it was some bud [ __ ] you know we went back to buzz like you know long
peak tees and carrying logs over
1:24:10
the berms and [ __ ] and like i had us do like pull-ups rope climbs pull up like
1:24:15
for like a [ __ ] hour so imagine doing a rope climb then go do like 10 to 15 pull-ups coming
back
1:24:21
and we would do like these they were very hard workouts like there was no like go to the
gym lift some weights
1:24:27
type of [ __ ] and i was imposing my own mentality on everybody these are
1:24:34
grown ass [ __ ] men they know you know they don't want to be what i'm trying to make them
to be and when they called me off
1:24:40
like hey you know we're not in sealed you know we're not in buds anymore goggins it pissed
me off
1:24:46
and i uh and i got a little [ __ ] attitude got my chip and i got my ball and me me and sledge
went ahead and started
1:24:52
to work out together and we developed this like me and sleds work out like [ __ ] girl animals
and
1:24:58
we had this [ __ ] mentality of [ __ ] yeah we're getting answered every day and everybody's
kind of did their own
1:25:03
thing man and i just that's when i started looking at people you know not just but people very
differently man cause i bit into
1:25:10
like you know like to be the special operator you gotta be have broken legs and these guys
all those stories i was the same
1:25:17
guy man i i put people on a pedestal i put people like i could never be them
1:25:23
i could never be that guy man never put anybody on a pedestal that's what happened to me i
put him on a pedestal
1:25:28
once i got up there with him and i saw him and once again not everybody some hard [ __ ]
out there dude period
1:25:34
dot hard [ __ ] i thought every [ __ ] was hard hey
1:25:40
hey uncommon amongst uncommon men that's all it was about for me man and i
1:25:46
took it to another level and i pissed a lot of [ __ ] off and they were trying to find chinks in my
armor then they were they were trying
1:25:53
to find chinks in the armor you know all he does is run all he does is [ __ ] run
1:25:58
that's why you know but once again i don't talk about the military too much like i said the air
force loved me
1:26:04
the army guys i work with love me the ranger school all that stuff love me you know i wasn't
you know it's just what it
1:26:10
is man it's uh i was part of the navy seals i was a i was a team guy
1:26:16
but i wasn't part of the brotherhood and that's just me man that's just me it ain't saying
nothing bad about them i
1:26:22
got a lot of love for a lot of them love them a lot ain't got love for me but i'm gonna talk bad
about them it's
1:26:28
just i'm different that's something i figured out i'm different from everybody in the [ __ ] world
1:26:34
and i had to own that and say you know what man you made a lot of [ __ ] mistakes being it's
uh being who you are
1:26:40
and i should have been more of a leader at times but a lot of times a lot of people should
have been a little bit harder too
1:26:45
so was it that some of those guys just didn't want to work as hard or was it just that they
were they weren't appreciating how competitive you were
1:26:52
you were always against them is that what it was that it didn't foster the sense of
brotherhood because you were
1:26:58
more like come on [ __ ] i i i didn't really call them [ __ ] but you could look at my face and
how i
1:27:03
looked at you and you know you can you can kind of say this you know so what happens i
started developing this like this separation
1:27:11
another thing about me too man i don't go out i don't party i don't hang out with the
1:27:16
guys i don't you know so i was always forming this kind of separation i'm a big time introvert
you
1:27:24
know i do my job and i don't want to see your [ __ ] ass again i'm gonna go home refresh
and
1:27:29
we'll see you again you know you're in a platoon with these guys for two two years
sometimes year and a half
1:27:34
and i would you know we work up do our [ __ ] and i i'm just i'm just a different [ __ ] cat i'm a
different cat man like
1:27:41
i uh you know i just i i think differently i i believe differently
1:27:47
um and i i believe strongly what i believe in well some people must appreciate the
1:27:52
fact that you were self-motivated and that you were pushing the envelope that you were
pushing the pace you were setting a high bar yeah i have a lot of
1:27:59
guys right now within the community a lot of a lot of guys once again this is like
1:28:05
it's like a big soap opera sometimes man when you know when we when you're in a
fraternity like that that's what it's
1:28:11
like man so i had to get a different vantage point look at it and see like you know a lot of
guys did respect who i
1:28:17
was and what i did and um i i brought it [ __ ] hard a lot
1:28:22
and every day but i also rub people the wrong way i'm like that itch you're talking about
1:28:29
i'm like that itch you want to scratch the [ __ ] out my ass no sir you wanna just like [ __ ] this
dude man
1:28:37
i love what you talked about when you ran the marathon you realize how much you were
leaving on the table
1:28:42
because that is um i mean i think the the unfulfilled potential is the
1:28:48
story of most people's lives it is it is it and it could have been the story of mine
1:28:54
and i tell a lot of people people go what's your biggest fear in life and my biggest fear
honestly was
1:29:02
let's say this let's say uh i don't care if you believe in god or not i don't care so this let's just
play a game with me let's say let's say you're god
1:29:08
and we have a big [ __ ] long line of people and i made to heaven 75 years old i'm 300
pounds i made heaven i worked
1:29:16
for ecolab my entire life praying for cockroaches that's what i did but i'm dead i'm in heaven
now and you
1:29:22
are at you're you're judging us all now so we're in line we're all sitting there in line
1:29:27
you have adam brown he has a big board up and you're talking to adam brown about his life
1:29:34
and you rip it down and i'm next in line david goggins i see my name and i see all this [ __ ]
1:29:40
and god goes hey you say read this man and i'm reading this list and i'm seeing
1:29:46
182 pounds navy seal ranger school
1:29:51
motivational speaker changing lives okay man pull up record all this [ __ ]
1:29:57
and i'm like that's not me man and god looks at me and says that's who you were supposed
to be
1:30:04
and my biggest fear i i visualize some crazy [ __ ] my biggest fear is that one
1:30:10
day i want to reach a judgment of my life someone something is going to judge me what the [
__ ] i was supposed to be in
1:30:16
life and what i want now is that whoever's judging me whatever judge me up there
1:30:23
i want them to have a board and them up there right now getting their pin out
1:30:29
because you know this person who judges supposed to know everything supposed to know
from the time you're dead the time you're you know you know time you're
1:30:34
born time you're dead i want this person up there to be like this up there writing more about
me saying [ __ ] i know
1:30:40
i know you could do that i i know you can do that so i want to impress
1:30:45
whatever the [ __ ] is up there whatever's going on in life i want to go up there and not have
anything left on the table
1:30:52
i want to i want to drain my soul of every [ __ ] bit of person i am now how do you plan on
1:30:59
doing that but going forward in the future do you have a plan yeah so what i did i i believe in
going back to scratch
1:31:06
so a lot of us like right now i've i've come a long way in my life i've had to grow up a lot
except a lot of the
1:31:12
[ __ ] things i've done in my life i'd accept a lot i took all this information big database took it
all
1:31:18
so what got me to be where i'm at today is data i collect even more data now which way i
1:31:23
can write this book which i can tell people hey you know i [ __ ] have a lot of faults i have a
mentality that can sometimes
1:31:30
rub people all this [ __ ] so how you get better is so right now i'm way up here now i was way
down here
1:31:37
but what makes you way up here is being from way down here so i love going
1:31:42
back i called so when i was growing up for like three years so from time i was eight to time i
was
1:31:47
like 12 we live in a seven dollar a month place and what i call it is i'm always paying
1:31:53
rent in that seven dollar a month home every day of my life i go back and
1:31:58
revisit that place because that place made me this geranimal that place made me this
1:32:04
hard man and then from that place so that that place is hard work that place is going back to
the
1:32:10
fundamentals of life the fundamentals what made david gaga's david goggins going back in
there going back to the
1:32:16
going back to the library of david goggins studying even more than what i know taking that
out going back to where
1:32:22
i'm at now and then moving forward so i believe in always taking steps backwards to to your
roots we we cannot
1:32:28
forget the roots and what made us the geranimal we can never become civilized isn't it
granite that like little kids
1:32:34
clothes it's a little kid's clothes but i love the word i love his clothes or drinks
1:32:42
i don't know his clothes or drinks man but something like that so when when you when
you're living like
1:32:48
right now like what kind of goals are you setting and how how are you how are you how are
you feeding that beast
1:32:53
inside of you how are you calming all that down stretching helped a lot you know so when
1:32:59
you wire yourself up so much yoga yoga and stretching has really helped me to like
1:33:05
you want to be quiet in your mind to see where you want to go because noise is the ultimate
kryptonite
1:33:12
too much noise in your mind you're not going to be focused on what the task at hand is it's
one of the things that i found like long cardio so the best thing
1:33:19
ever for calming that noise yes we all talked about that all the guys that i did that sober
october thing with the
1:33:24
fitness challenge that like if you work out five hours a day you don't give a [ __ ] no it's it's
amazing i'm like if
1:33:30
you could take that and put it in a pill form how you feel about life after you work out five
hours yep you don't give a
1:33:37
[ __ ] nothing bothers you like nothing you nothing because you've struggled true my fiancee
right now it's like hey i got
1:33:44
xyz i'm like i'll take you she's like what you won't look at shoes i'll take you like what i'm like i
just worked out
1:33:50
for four hours man i [ __ ] sit down this [ __ ] chair all day long son yeah yeah i'm
1:33:56
chill it's different yeah i i get all that [ __ ] out i ring the rag out in the morning time and
whatever you want to do
1:34:04
i'm here man most people never get there though no they always have that chatter always it
was negative anger the guy who
1:34:11
cut you off yesterday oh yeah all day still on your head yep all day long man chatter
challenge
1:34:17
maybe i should do this maybe i should have done that i should never let that guy get away
with that exactly i should have done this i should have taken that
1:34:22
job oh i should have moved i should have stuck with her all that
1:34:28
that was me man yeah that was my people yeah why don't people like me amazing that that
long cardio just calms
1:34:35
that chatter like that though yes like i i never uh until october i've never really done long
cardio every day it
1:34:42
beats that testosterone up man beats everything up yeah that test you're like [ __ ] done
yeah you're cool yeah
1:34:48
you're cool man it's not just that it's like it's i always talk about people's brains that i think that
the the way
1:34:54
people's minds work that we're like a battery that's like leaking out it's like since we don't use
it because we
1:35:01
have all this potential we don't use it like it oozes off the top of the batter and it gets messy
right it's going down
1:35:08
the sides of the battery it's all [ __ ] up but when you just drain that [ __ ] like nature intended
like give you the
1:35:16
potential to run away from predators avoid invading tribes and to fight and
1:35:23
gather and hunt and all the physical potential that your body is capable of when you do drain
it with like a 10 mile
1:35:30
run or right long cardio session long workout session then you can just be you it's the great
1:35:36
purge man the purge it's the purge you purge all that [ __ ] demon [ __ ] out man all the evil
1:35:42
evil can't stay in a 10 mile run bro it's going to get leaked right the [ __ ] out it does it gets
pounded out pound it
1:35:48
out yeah but you could see things clean more clearly and that is only available through effort
i mean maybe it's
1:35:54
available through meditation i don't know but i feel like there's a different thing that's
available through effort because there's also a satisfaction of
1:36:00
accomplishment oh yeah effort's huge man it means everything because you gotta feel good
about
1:36:06
yourself now what do you do you plan out your future i do so i'm very go so i have that
1:36:13
accountability mirror but i also plan on all my small big time you know medium goals all
these things i have to do in
1:36:19
life i'm a big planner i'm a big planner so you know right now i'm going back to
1:36:26
scratch so i'm trying to be wildland firefighter you know i did that for a couple seasons you're
gonna do that now
1:36:31
yeah so i did it for i did it for two not not full season but but two half seasons so this year was
my second year
1:36:36
doing it i had to i had to um stop about two months before it ended because of
1:36:42
this book to start promoting the book and start finishing the book up but i've been doing the
opportunity that's some [ __ ] work man
1:36:49
those [ __ ] guys get after what made you decide to do that the work you know like when
your hands
1:36:55
stop becoming really calloused it's time to get back to work you know like i retired from the
1:37:01
military i did 21 years in the military um the military was my life loved everything about it the
discipline of it
1:37:08
um there's something about going back in the in the money you make is nil it's not about the
money at all
1:37:14
it's just about the hard work i've always been looking for those people like those guys like
you're out there
1:37:19
digging a three mile fire line literally a three mile fire line you're
1:37:24
cutting down these [ __ ] huge ass trees to dig this fire line and the fire line is like 20 to 18
1:37:30
inches for three miles and you get like [ __ ] 12 people digging this [ __ ]
1:37:35
and i'm thinking man this is some of the hardest [ __ ] work i've done in my life and it's that
challenge that you
1:37:41
can't find sometimes by going to the gym or by running you know 100 mile race is
1:37:46
that it's that new challenge of like hey and you get done digging all right you work 17 hours
16 17 hours
1:37:54
you get your [ __ ] little [ __ ] sleeping mat out shack down boom right there on the floor right
there on the
1:38:01
ground get up dig some more you know be out there two three weeks sometimes man it's
doing that [ __ ] and
1:38:06
there's great satisfaction in the kind of work that you do out there no one's watching no one
gives a [ __ ]
1:38:12
it's hard dangerous [ __ ] work and you know you're doing it to help [ __ ] out man you know
how did you get
1:38:17
drawn into that so i got drawn into it because i was always looking for the next challenge and
i was like hey what is there after
1:38:24
the military like what the [ __ ] is there man i'm i'm 43
1:38:29
um i'm getting back in shape you know i'm [ __ ] getting these health issues taken care of
that i had and i started once again google is amazing
1:38:36
[ __ ] hardcore [ __ ] jobs you know pretty much you know hard-ass [ __ ] you know that's i
found the horse you know like
1:38:42
the first race you know hardest races in the world so basically i started finding this
1:38:48
wildland fire fight like what the [ __ ] is wildland firefight started googling that started googling
smoke jumpers you
1:38:53
know i'm like what the [ __ ] these guys do what they jump out of planes and attack
1:38:58
small fires like that's the [ __ ] so i'm like okay okay we could put down a list and okay hot
shots what's the hot shot
1:39:05
dude they go out with you know big fires and they dig fire line they i'm like [ __ ]
1:39:11
with nick from that and i saw a video of it like that [ __ ] looks like it sucks it's hot you know
there's lim you know i
1:39:17
mean you're out there on your own i mean you know you're out there on your own man just
digging a fire line so that's kind of how i found it i'm always
1:39:23
looking for the next challenge i'm never satisfied with oh i did that like you know i became a
seal
1:39:30
i was an air force guy i became a seal i went to ranger school i tried out for delta force twice
you know like i'm always looking for
1:39:38
what is next looking for those uncommon men and women uncommon people because i'm
trying to i'm trying to grow
1:39:45
i'm trying to grow and a lot of times you know you don't be the only person that's making
yourself grow you're looking for those cameron
1:39:51
haynes those joe rogan those people who are like just different people who understand what
the [ __ ] they're saying because a lot of things i
1:39:57
have to say i can't say them all i can't say them all you may not understand them so i had to
really find
1:40:04
a way to communicate with people so they don't think oh my god like what what did you just
say
1:40:09
so these cameron haynes is these joe work these people get it so i go in those little those
little nucleus spots
1:40:16
get get a little more strength get a little more knowledge get a little more tools take those
tools with me put in my tool
1:40:22
shed and i go off down you know down the road on a new journey so that's what i do
1:40:28
well the proof is in the pudding if you're really doing woodland firefighting because there's no
glory in that no sir no there's no fame there's
1:40:36
no there's no one taking pictures of you no and that paycheck is small son
1:40:42
i'mma [ __ ] make you wanna should i eat today yeah wow yeah there's
1:40:48
there's nothing involved in that man they worked their ass off so but you're just doing it as a
challenge that's it
1:40:53
did they freak out when you're there you know what i i think they're wondering why is a 43
year old retired man
1:41:00
you know all the stuff you've done why are you out here yeah and i explain it to them i'm out
here i'm out here you know to to
1:41:06
learn from you all to grow and also to never forget where i came from
1:41:12
you know that's where it starts it's that mentality of i'm gonna pick up
1:41:17
that [ __ ] pulaski and i'm gonna dig this [ __ ] fire line for three damn miles
1:41:22
that's that mentality i never want to lose i never want to get so nice oh yeah
1:41:28
i did it man i did it i did it i'm good that mentality of i'm willing to pick up
1:41:35
that shovel and i'm willing to dig a three-mile line is th there's something about that mentality
that i'm ready to go to work
1:41:41
at any time and that's what keeps me those are the sparks like you know i look at
1:41:46
motivation as just a spark it's like it's like kindling you know how how a big fire starts it starts
with a little
1:41:51
smoke it starts with a little cigarette being thrown in the woods next thing all californians [ __
] burn up
1:41:58
that's what i've been doing my whole life is i find these little sparks and once that little thing
takes off
1:42:04
that's a that's a one hour fuel then you've got 10 hour fuel then you can move that thing to a
10 000
1:42:10
hour fuel these big logs and big trees that burn for days and that's where you want to bring
that motivation that's where you
1:42:17
want to bring that drive so if you have no kingling the kindling is me going out with these
young guys saying all right
1:42:23
[ __ ] you're 43. it's a 20 year old keep up with them that kindling now when i leave those
1:42:29
young guys it has now become that ten hour fuel and now that ten thousand dollar fuel that i
use throughout my
1:42:36
whole life i use that there my whole life man hey this summer at 43 you went out there and
you did that man so you know you're not
1:42:42
giving up yet you're not done yet not today you're not done today that's a crazy choice to
make though woodland
1:42:48
firefighter is a very interesting choice it is it is it's a nasty job man because again
1:42:53
that's that's proof of concept like you're really just doing just for
1:42:59
the struggle that's it is there other things you considered like that um so i will i apply for
smoke jumping
1:43:07
this year so i'll be out smoke jumping this year you know god willing
1:43:12
um that's where it's at now that that right now is my next military
1:43:17
that's my next military and that's it's always about human growth it's not about money it's not
1:43:23
about money human growth that's the biggest like i said my biggest trophy that's why i turn
down 300 thousand dollars
1:43:29
the biggest trophy in life is what i've learned like this brain if i could put this brain in
somebody's head and say here you go merry christmas
1:43:35
they'd be a happy person what i found out is that with no crowds
1:43:41
no one cheering for you no races no finish line it's an amazing amazing thing i've
1:43:47
learned in my mind by no one cheering you on like like what that is is every morning i do
1:43:53
what i do i don't have a trainer waking me up there's no one saying david you have to
1:43:59
do this i don't have to do anything anymore i've done it that's the beauty of all this knowing
1:44:06
that everything i talk about no one even knows what the [ __ ] i'm doing every day and i know
that i am grinding like a
1:44:13
[ __ ] they see a one minute video let me run in or some [ __ ] hopefully it motivates you
merry christmas
1:44:20
dude i'm out there for [ __ ] hours every [ __ ] day and no one sees what the
1:44:26
[ __ ] i'm doing no one it's a great beautiful thing man that is a beautiful thing about it right
1:44:33
that you really are just doing it for the benefits of it that's it that you have to do it that way it's
not for show
1:44:39
like there's a lot of people like you'll see like they have a little video they do on instagram like
[ __ ] you are not
1:44:44
doing that for very long you're going too fast that's it that's it this is not real i got my one
minute on yeah
1:44:51
take now yeah yeah yeah exactly this is so much a
1:44:56
visit for show i do enjoy those videos that you're doing on instagram though we appreciate
1:45:01
these little motivational things i put some of them up on my page i appreciate it we posted it
there's a those are
1:45:07
those are great man like would you are you just like do you just get a thought in your head
while you're out there
1:45:12
running you just want to get it down yeah so what i'll do is i my fiance does all these videos
man so god bless you
1:45:19
it's sometimes it'll be three o'clock in the [ __ ] morning and i'll be working out and i said hey
wake the [ __ ] up i got some [ __ ] and
1:45:25
she's like what like hey man it came to me man i got some [ __ ] for these people man so
that's what happens like usually
1:45:31
when i'm working out i get this great inspiration i some people might think it's [ __ ]
1:45:36
but my my mind works best under extreme pain and suffering like oh
1:45:41
my god i want to be out here and that's when i'm going deep into the cellar of my mind and
that's when all that
1:45:47
gargoyle [ __ ] starts to come up man you know what i'm saying and so she gets called out
all the time like
1:45:53
hey i'll run home and say hey get the car meet me at 17th street because by that
1:46:00
time i have all my [ __ ] together so that's how this happens man it's not like a rehearse thing
that's why sometimes i may post on monday usually
1:46:06
it's like every monday but sometimes it's tuesday sometimes it's thursday you know i and
that's what i do i i'm
1:46:12
trying to now give back to people in a way that's real and authentic and just being me what is
the response been
1:46:19
like like after you did the podcast the first time what was the response like and what is the
response like on social
1:46:24
media what was crazy man is that you are my usher and i'm [ __ ] bieber that's the [ __ ]
response man
1:46:31
so your crowd um for some reason they they resonate with me they they
1:46:37
understand they they they get me and they they love the message
1:46:42
and like so if you put some [ __ ] up on my site i i block and delete your ass
1:46:48
this ain't this ain't a playground like like my site i'm not [ __ ] around with you [ __ ] i want to
give you
1:46:54
some tools that i learned if you want to take them take them if not merry christmas i'll go on
my merry way i don't care so if you go on there you
1:47:00
want to play around and you want to you know whether they called um those people going
inside troll [ __ ] ain't trying
1:47:05
my [ __ ] i'm going gonna block your monkey ass off my [ __ ] quick i want so i i've been
friends jamie yeah
1:47:12
tell them so i've developed like a small community of people who can go in there and it's not
just me talking so people
1:47:19
have now joined in and they're i've seen people lose 150 pounds on my site man
1:47:24
like and they're writing about and they're starting to break themselves down like i broke
myself down they're
1:47:30
like hey i went through this i went through this divorce and this happened and i tried to kill
myself it gets raw
1:47:36
and then people are now going on and commenting on their [ __ ] saying hey keep it up do
what you're
1:47:41
doing it's become like a big [ __ ] like hey it's a community of people trying to [ __ ] get better
and that's what it's
1:47:48
about man this ain't about the david goggins [ __ ] show no man i'm mr kingly
1:47:54
you [ __ ] take this [ __ ] and let the [ __ ] burn also you probably need all these other
1:48:00
people out there grinding two for fuel oh man i want to know that's the thing now like people
go what motivates you
1:48:06
now what motivation now is that there's over 600 some odd thousand people
1:48:11
looking at me saying [ __ ] goggins is somewhere out there he's somewhere out there [ __ ]
getting
1:48:17
after it and i am so you ain't never [ __ ] alone i'm out there somewhere
1:48:23
600 some thousand people there's a chance that when you're working out i don't care if
you're in [ __ ] washington dc and i'm in nashville
1:48:29
there's a good chance at the same time we're getting after it and i want people to know that
and it's the real deal we
1:48:35
are getting after it together not no like happy family [ __ ] but we're getting after it
1:48:41
you know yeah well that is that's giant for people man that the sense of community and to
know that there's
1:48:46
like-minded folks out there that are also trying to improve they're trying to overcome their
own demons get past their
1:48:52
own [ __ ] and squash their own weaknesses callous up their own mind i love that
1:48:57
you know it's not time for some soft [ __ ] it's not time for soft [ __ ] man this isn't a [ __ ]
playground don't
1:49:02
come on my instagram facebook or twitter talking some [ __ ] come on if you want to if you
want to
1:49:08
join the community and get hard and see what you're about don't talk about rest you know
how do you do it no
1:49:15
let's [ __ ] stop thinking so much and let's put the shoes on and get grinding you do get some
of that though there's
1:49:21
some comments that say you know this is terrible advice rest and recovery is the most
important thing god
1:49:31
you ain't all my [ __ ] son you're not gonna last no my sight yeah i wanna hear that [ __ ]
there's a lot of
1:49:37
people looking for built-in excuses they are man they are they're looking for it but then
there's
1:49:42
a lot of people also that are just really interested in personal growth they're they're
1:49:48
interested in really finding out what they're made of they're interested in improving their
ability to toughen up
1:49:54
and discipline themselves and they're looking they're looking for people like you and other
people just add to that
1:49:59
momentum right once you get going it's easier to keep going that's it man once you get
going it's easier to keep
1:50:04
showing up it is it is you have to get past that hurdle yeah and once you get past it man
you're flying and then you
1:50:10
see other people that are doing it too and you realize like this is a this is a movement there's
a lot of other people out there it is a movement yeah it is a
1:50:17
movement well that's the thing that resonates with you i think about the audience of this
podcast that i've had quite a few people on that have that
1:50:24
same message and it resonates with people because we're all trying to improve ourselves
no one's perfect nope
1:50:29
there's no i'm not perfect now i never will be you're not and you never will be but you're
better than you were
1:50:35
yesterday and you're gonna be better tomorrow that's the truth thing right there man that's
that book says i am not
1:50:40
[ __ ] perfect man i had the balls to now finally tell you all i am very flawed but in that saying
that you're
1:50:47
very flawed and saying that you're very perfect you exhibit way more strength than someone
who bullshits and pretends
1:50:52
right someone who puts up some fake ass [ __ ] fake facade of perfection right of moral
1:50:59
integrity and growth and honesty and those people are a real problem because it's
exhausting
1:51:04
how the [ __ ] i did it for a while i'm like i can't hey i'm [ __ ] up
1:51:10
i give up i quit i quit i quit i'm [ __ ] up i'm gonna tell you all i can't do this anymore this is who
i am but the
1:51:16
confidence of you of constantly grinding and constantly putting in that work is what leads you
to be able to express
1:51:22
yourself so honestly oh you're right i i for the first time believe in david goggins and i don't
care who else
1:51:28
believes in me i don't care for the first time in my life man i can tell you all my [ __ ] up [ __ ]
1:51:33
and without lying that's powerful no longer care that's powerful that see everybody could
1:51:39
get to that then you do you don't have any excuses because you don't need any that's right
you don't need anything
1:51:44
none you don't like me merry christmas [ __ ]
1:51:49
kwanzaa keep moving that's it go yeah that's it good luck to you okay
1:51:54
exactly yeah we're all in this thing together yeah you got your own path you didn't want us to
stare at those shoes for 30
1:52:00
minutes every day that's so true man that's so true
1:52:07
so fire jumping and woodland firefighting i didn't expect that i didn't hear that coming yeah
that's
1:52:13
interesting man yep and what did you have any other options that you were looking at before
you dived into those
1:52:18
you know what those are the first that came up because i saw how hard it was you know like
at 43 in these jobs like
1:52:24
like in the military you're a dinosaur time to retire and while in firefighting you know you start
to move into these
1:52:30
desk jobs and that was the challenge of it you know i'm like i'm like a [ __ ] rookie at 43. right
so i'm like being
1:52:36
talked like a little [ __ ] so it takes a lot for me you know i'm like yeah i've
1:52:42
done some things man hang on now but i have to now humble myself again right
1:52:47
it's hard to humble yourself you got some 21 year old little punk ass [ __ ] saying hey pick up
that [ __ ] and come on i'm like
1:52:53
what what the [ __ ] you say i'm like you know but i'm like okay god it's like you're rookie man
like so that's all the training behind the mindset of it all
1:52:59
right is that you can't ever be the point you never learn from people right you know you
1:53:05
have to always humble yourself and go back to that yeah you know like right now there's
people listening this podcast like oh yeah you're great guys
1:53:11
no you ain't [ __ ] goggins and that's the mindset i always want to have not like i'm not proud
of myself
1:53:17
but you have to always keep that like i want to keep that dog in me and i can't always know
everything yeah
1:53:24
well being a beginner at something is fantastic it's amazing being learning new things is
fantastic for everything
1:53:30
else so much growth in that have you do you [ __ ] around with martial arts you know what
1:53:35
i learned a little bit i've i've never gone crazy in it i've never gone crazy i boxed a little bit
1:53:41
where do you live i live in nashville there's a lot of jiu jitsu in nashville you should get
involved in jiu jitsu you
1:53:46
would take like a duck to water i'll find you a spot yeah hook me up i'll find you a spot you
1:53:51
would you get obsessed with that [ __ ] oh god is that so yeah that's a never-ending pile of [
__ ] tangled
1:53:58
bodies and strangled people here we go because it's something that you just get better at all
the time and there's no
1:54:04
hiding right either you get choked or you don't either you survive or you don't now i've been
on a lot of ground
1:54:09
i've been a lot of ground games man but i've never really learned the skill sets yeah so it'd be
nice to do that i'll
1:54:15
hook it up yeah please do i think you would get obsessed with it the same way jack was
obsessed with it same with a lot of other
1:54:21
seals get obsessed with martial arts it would be nice to do it because it's also constant
competition as well i mean you
1:54:27
can get into competition every single night of the week really and yeah absolutely and as a a
guy who's just
1:54:33
starting out you're going to be a white belt you're going to get strangled a lot you want to
choke the [ __ ] out
1:54:39
from the beginning you're going to start from the beginning 100 there's plenty of guys your
size there's plenty of guys that
1:54:45
have been doing it for [ __ ] decades i know a lot of guys like to get their hands on me so i'll
be good yeah oh goggins you're coming huh okay
1:54:52
okay but it's also a good thing to have the kind of cardio and endurance you have too yeah
that's where i get people so i've
1:54:58
i've rolled with a lot of guys who have skills but the thing that i really have and i'm
1:55:04
not gonna brag on it man is i got a [ __ ] up cardio bass man i got a [ __ ] up cardio bass
man and my
1:55:11
mentality is kind of [ __ ] up too yeah so i realized that we're fighting that if you get a big
cardio base and your
1:55:17
mindset's [ __ ] up too cardio is almost everything skills skills are everything because a
1:55:24
lot of guys with skills also have some cardio they have enough to [ __ ] you up right but to
have tremendous cardio
1:55:31
with big skills is everything i see him out there man dying yeah because so many guys
started 100
1:55:37
but three minutes into the fight they're at 80. right you know five minutes into the fight they're
at 60. that's right
1:55:42
and then they recover for a minute they come back but if you're if you are in like a rolling
session like when you
1:55:48
roll you roll for nine minutes straight so you and this guy and you there's most of the time
there's multiple taps right
1:55:55
you'll tap him he'll tap you you tap each other but nine minutes man it is exhausting when
that bell goes off the
1:56:02
last you know the the the bell for 30 seconds and you got 30 seconds left in nine minutes
and then dinging it's over
1:56:09
you're like you're done and then you take a minute off you find a new partner that's good [ __
] get back in there you'd love it it
1:56:16
sounds like a good grind yeah that's the next grind right there you love it yeah you blacked
out hey so long that take
1:56:22
about if i went like this hard at it it's hard to say because uh it depends
1:56:28
entirely upon how much emphasis you put on learning new techniques and rolling and
drilling drilling is gigantic and
1:56:34
that's the thing that people don't like to do because jiu-jitsu is so fun people like to just roll
right because it's
1:56:40
sparring is where it's at like i don't want to do all those practice i want to choke people right
like i knew a few things like do that okay and then i do
1:56:47
this okay let me get in there now you want it's like a lot of uh jiu jitsu schools
1:56:52
they'll start out with like one or two techniques and then you roll most of the class is just
sparring right but the
1:56:58
right way to do it really is to drill way more than you spar okay you should be drilling all the
time and live
1:57:04
drilling too like you start out where a guy has your back ready go and then from there you
got to try to escape and do it
1:57:11
the right thing to try to use the right technique to get out of that position or you'll start out
1:57:16
uh with an arm bar but he's defending and you've got to figure out how to extend it you know
and those live drills
1:57:23
straight drills like technique drills and then live drills are i think even more important in the
beginning
1:57:29
to uh to to your personal development and growth as a jiu jitsu player than even sparring but
a guy like you who's
1:57:36
smart and tough and will go crazy [ __ ] it shouldn't take that long it takes people i mean it
depends on how
1:57:43
much you dedicate yourself to it right right b.j penn got his black belt in three years what
yeah but it's crazy he's bj penn he's up like
1:57:50
the prodigy for a reason right right i had a conversation with him about it though it was really
interesting once
1:57:56
he uh he goes uh he was talking to some other dude and the guy said uh i got my
1:58:01
uh black belt at three years just like you did bj and he's like wow man he goes you must be
good he goes no man he goes
1:58:07
i'm addicted just like you he goes you were addicted you're addicted and he's like i never
thought about it that way
1:58:13
he goes yeah i'm addicted to jiu jitsu it's like you're addicted like it takes over your mind right
it's everything
1:58:19
your days are spent thinking about some guy who triangled you this [ __ ] how do you get
me [ __ ]
1:58:25
like i get that dude i got choked out ten years ago that i think about sometimes when i'm
lifting i'll be tired
1:58:30
and i'll think about a guy who caught me ten years i'm not like [ __ ] yeah just that's what's
great about life man is i
1:58:37
think about not being choked out by thinking about a lot of [ __ ] like that yeah little failures
just keep you
1:58:43
pushing they grind on me like a [ __ ] man and that's what you're talking about earlier too it's
like the
1:58:48
the the mind has these reserves you can trick it and pull them out yes these inspirational
reserves like you did
1:58:54
when when you when you guys were going through buds yes we just found that trigger and
then all of a sudden you throw in that boat in the air the mind
1:59:01
always has the tactical advantage over you why is that it knows your fears it knows your
1:59:07
insecurities it knows where they're hiding you can't hide can't hide from that [ __ ] man
1:59:12
that [ __ ] has a tactical advantage on you son that's gonna get you man it's a beast that
might be your best
1:59:19
lesson right that your mind your mind knows everything you cannot hide from it so don't ever
try don't try you might as
1:59:26
well go ahead and beat that [ __ ] gotta keep going at it that's also what you did in this book
you didn't try to
1:59:31
like paint yourself in a glamorous or flattering way at any point in time you
1:59:36
were honest at every step of the way which i think is just gigantic for people too because
1:59:42
you can tell when someone's stroking themselves or bullshitting themselves and the
message just won't come through
1:59:48
right but this you're you come through in this book you know like you who you are and what
you became and how you
1:59:54
became who you are and who you used to be and why you were the way you used to be all
that comes through it's like
2:00:00
there's no filter this is just your your thoughts like you what you remember
2:00:05
about your life and what you think about right now just all comes out onto the pages hardest
thing i've done my entire
2:00:11
life i'm imagining i have [ __ ] i don't know how people buy this book then i walk up to people
people walk up
2:00:18
to me i'm like what are you thinking about [ __ ] hey thinking about me peeing in the bed
2:00:24
you [ __ ] what are you thinking about oh
2:00:29
that's hilarious i know right like you like are you thinking about me opening it up yeah you
know all about me hey how
2:00:35
about you [ __ ] tell me something about you that's what people love right when they
2:00:42
know some [ __ ] about you you don't know nothing about them i don't know about nobody
that's anonymous trolls that's it man and they get at me they come oh
2:00:49
there's a lot of those but that they're all doing that to themselves they don't even understand
when you do that you're doing it to
2:00:55
yourself right if you are attacking someone because you know that they have a weakness
but you're pretending you
2:01:00
don't have one you are attacking yourself you are chipping away your own personal
sovereignty
2:01:07
chipping away at your own respect so true man can't respect yourself you know you're a [ __
] but that's what happened
2:01:13
though joe to me i started looking at people realizing i know something about you
2:01:21
because they don't want to talk about it right i already know it yeah if you're talking [ __ ]
about me yeah
2:01:26
i know you're [ __ ] up yeah that's what all these cats that come out right now who don't like
me whatever i'm like
2:01:31
really man that [ __ ] happened 30 [ __ ] years ago 15 years ago you still you're still [ __ ] up
about that
2:01:37
oh man i know something about you brother see i get over everything i'm good
2:01:42
it's it's water under the [ __ ] bridge it's a grind it's the the grind does that that's it you're not
grinding harder if if you're
2:01:49
worried about something that someone did to you years ago you're being a [ __ ] to yourself
man not
2:01:55
getting out there and squeezing that [ __ ] soul out every day yeah if you grind hard man i
got time to worry about
2:02:00
your monkey ass i i got to tell me about you man because tomorrow i gotta go back to the
grind
2:02:07
and tomorrow i go back to the grind again and again and again and again i don't have time to
put you into the hate
2:02:12
bank there's no hate it's all filtered out man through the grind people don't get it there's
there's great joy in the
2:02:18
grind the great jordan to suffer it totally cleanses your body out man of any kind of hate
makes you grow up
2:02:25
it's also the being honest about it every step of the way the way you are in this book and the
way you are the way
2:02:30
you talk about things you're not not trying to paint yourself in a flattering way no it it forces
you to continue to
2:02:37
perform right by exposing all the [ __ ] that you used to do by exposing your procrastination
your your slips your f
2:02:44
your fallings you're falling back down and getting fat again all that stuff it
2:02:49
forces you to be consistent like you know you did it today you know you did it today do you
know you're going to be
2:02:55
able to do it tomorrow well you have to you have to know that you have to know and that's
my biggest fear man is that i
2:03:01
know i can slip everybody goes man you're not permanent
2:03:06
[ __ ] no one's permanent almost [ __ ] permanent that's why people that have accomplished
great things and then want
2:03:12
to talk about those great things to the end of time and not do anything anymore no they're [
__ ] themselves that's it
2:03:18
those people that are looking for that golden age they're looking for that holding hands and
walking off into the sunset the credits roll that doesn't
2:03:24
exist it's not tattooed man it's not real i thought it was tattoos i was like [ __ ] i'm slipping
2:03:29
i'm like what i put all this repetition i'm still slipping can't take a day off man
2:03:35
can't take a day off man no days can't take a day off seven days
2:03:42
a week i i get after but see the thing about i do active recovery right okay so what's
2:03:48
what's a light active recovery day you say seven days seven miles is normal an
2:03:53
easy six mile run that's active recovery at a low low heart rate i look like i'm
2:03:59
walking i'm out to like a [ __ ] 9 30 10 minute mile heart rates real low i'm really big
2:04:05
into the heart rate training man it's amazing so it makes you a machine
2:04:10
it makes you a machine man how so it won't work it trains your heart in a way that
2:04:16
the way i was able to run these 100-mile races like i was able to do it was off a heart rate so
if you go at 80
2:04:22
for me for the longest time it's like 100 like 147 heart rate 148 to 152 right
2:04:28
around in there if i maintain that man i'm in that i'm burning that nice fat storage
2:04:35
and that body wants to utilize that and it wants to burn that nice and slow and you're never
getting that heart rate up
2:04:41
or high you can get the heart rate for high it takes a lot to recover from that and the higher it
goes the longer it takes for it to come down when i stayed
2:04:48
at 145 146 147 heart rate for a long time when i get done running it will go
2:04:54
back under 100 within two or three minutes and that's what you want you want that quick
recovery
2:04:59
so quick recovery means that your body's right on point and i look at my at my heart rate in
the morning time it's
2:05:04
using the 30s if it's like 45 46 47 i'm over trained easy day
2:05:10
easy day means zone one zone one means i'm just going real light today so i train every day
because why as a as
2:05:17
my mind and as a human we're supposed to move every day i'm supposed to move and i'm
2:05:22
not saying get after it every day get after me just do something every day right
2:05:27
ride a bike like if you're real tired from working out hard ride an easy bike spin and as you're
spinning
2:05:33
take in your fluids rehydrate your body as you're acting because that's the best way to
rehydrate
2:05:38
your body and like taking a carbohydrate drink it gets all that good carbs you start to
2:05:45
glycogen store your body again for the next day so as you're doing active stuff that blood's
flowing nice active blood flow
2:05:52
the nice active blood flow helps the recovery process along with drinking some some like
2:05:59
endurance drink or some carbohydrate drink it gets all that glycogen through the system
back to the muscles loads
2:06:06
them back up again ready to fight another war tomorrow what do you use for a heart rate
monitor i used to use polar for a long time
2:06:13
um and i kind of still use polar now is it a wrist one or a chest it's a chest strap it's a nice
cheap little chest
2:06:20
strap and now i'm at a point now where i know i only do my heart rate in the morning time i
don't even wear it when i run
2:06:26
anymore do you check it with the strap in the morning or yeah your finger check the strap so
you wake up you just put
2:06:31
the strap on before you get out of bed put the strap on your body you don't first thing you do
2:06:36
put a strap on or do your finger whatever one you can do you don't have a strap do your
finger
2:06:42
know what your average heart rate is you know your resting heart rate and then from there if
it's a little bit high a little elevated you know you can't go
2:06:48
off into that zone three zone four training day you gotta keep it at zone two or zone one
2:06:54
so it's all about the heart rate the the resin heart rate so when you use it uh the chest trap
does it register on an
2:07:00
application on a phone like how do you read it on the watch on a watch is it a smart watch or
is a polar watch it's a
2:07:06
polar watch so it's a watch that shows you the heart rate that's reading off of the strap
exactly that's all it does and
2:07:12
so when you say zone ones this is these are the things that you've created zone ones onto
the no these are like zones
2:07:17
that um that's you know whoever created this like like the heart rate zone training so
basically what i did in
2:07:25
what's helped me out so much is my zone two training runs used to be 8 30.
2:07:31
okay so that was my pace at like uh 140 mile yep 830 mile
2:07:37
through stretching and getting my body opened up my zone two run now is about a seven
2:07:43
twenty one seven eighteen seven nineteen so you cut a minute off just by opening up your
range of motion up my range of
2:07:50
motion wow unbelie at the same exact heart rate so my stride if people look
2:07:55
at videos of me like years ago when i was first doing my first bad water look i was scooting i
had like it was so
2:08:01
tight i looked i was this this very rigid runner now i actually run you know everything was so
tight
2:08:07
everything was like kind of like forming in i was like kind of like like my knees and my joints
just going inward and now
2:08:13
everything's right you know where it needs to be at and i have a nice long nice stride do you
run on the street are
2:08:19
you the most part for the most part i'm always traveling so the best thing you do you got your
running shoes you get your [ __ ] you just
2:08:25
go out and run but i i try to hit the trails you know some dirt as much as possible yeah so this
is really good for
2:08:30
your body but now my body is like [ __ ] it's like [ __ ] like iron i mean it it it can take some
beating
2:08:38
now when you when you run have you ever [ __ ] with those uh barefoot running shoes or
minimalism no no
2:08:43
hell no hell no you know what like look honestly i don't know many people who
2:08:49
have been i just don't believe in it i don't believe in it i've i was born with shoes
2:08:54
wearing shoes my whole [ __ ] life i'm not you know i'm black but i'm not from africa you
know
2:09:00
so i'm not down man i'm not down dear ever read the science behind it yeah the idea
2:09:06
of like using all the muscles on your feet yeah i read the science behind it i also read
sometimes [ __ ] have
2:09:11
broken feet and [ __ ] i read that too but minimalist shoes on trails aren't bad yeah they're not
i'm
2:09:18
not doing it no no no i will break my oh my god man i'm running those things all
2:09:23
the time really so so you like them yeah i it would kill me but i tell you what i
2:09:28
ran in uh fat tires yesterday under armour fat tire which is like a cushiony ass shoe you like it
and i was like it
2:09:34
was so easy it's like it's like those hocus whatever no no uh under armour has these
2:09:40
fat tires it's basically like uh a bmx tire track i think it's even made by a
2:09:46
tire company makes the tread yeah man it's like it's got a mush to it and you you're running
these things man
2:09:53
you could run over see the thing about those five finger barefoot shoes right i like running
those but you got to look
2:09:58
where you're stepping you can't step on any hard rocks game yeah over you'll [ __ ] up your
foot yeah quick because
2:10:04
it's like it's going to go right in your foot it's a tiny little thin so i went from those to vivos vivo
barefoot shoes
2:10:11
that's what it looks like so when you run on those [ __ ] that is a cushiony glorious
2:10:18
padding like when you when you hit the ground it's like smooshy smooshy smush i
2:10:23
had the other ones jamie the ones with the boa it's because it just like got that little click one
that you just
2:10:28
pulled up yeah like those so it's like you twist it with that that's how you tighten it up with that
little boa uh
2:10:34
adjuster thing it's like a got a thread through it so you don't have to lace it or anything like
that you just slip them on and pop that sucker down i like to
2:10:41
feel the ground a little bit when i run yeah you're barely feeling [ __ ] with those yeah that's
clown yeah but i like it it's
2:10:47
gotta be good for your joints my joints didn't bother me at all yesterday which is crazy like
after a good solid run because most of what i'm
2:10:54
running is hills right like pretty steep and it's great my ass and leg's never been what do you
weigh right now 200
2:11:00
yeah you're thick dude man yeah so for me the pounding of the you know the the constant
pounding with
2:11:07
the feet to the ground it is uh it's it's rough on the ankles it's rough on you know the the joints
but i don't feel
2:11:14
it at all with those fat tires it was smooshy like i i got done running i felt like i cheated
2:11:19
i did i felt like wow this is so much easier the cloud shoes yeah this just
2:11:25
real cushioning and cam's always said that he runs with those a lot oh does he yeah he's run
with a bunch of those like
2:11:31
he's like because he runs so many [ __ ] miles he was running a marathon a day like pretty
much every day i did that
2:11:37
for a while bad bad bad i was sh my god i got wired in doing that [ __ ]
2:11:44
man what is this right here so this is this is when i ran um i ran 150 mile
2:11:51
trail race so the year before i did the same race it's 150 mile trail
2:11:56
race i did it in i think around uh 40 hours and i had to walk the last 60
2:12:01
miles kind of i i had pneumonia here we go yeah and then i told the race director
2:12:09
hey [ __ ] i'm coming back here next year and i'm breaking the course record i went back
and then like 32
2:12:14
hours wow same race wow
2:12:21
now no when you 33 hours so when you're running what what shoes do you use
2:12:26
right now i'm wearing brooks and i also wear um asics so it just depends on you know what
kind of train i'm in where i'm
2:12:33
at stuff like that for trails what do you what run for trails i actually for the longest time i wore a
street running
2:12:40
shoe really for trails yeah for the longest time how come because first of all my
2:12:45
body was so messed up the only shoe i could ever wear was this brooks addiction and i hate
even giving brooks
2:12:50
credit right now because back in the day they wouldn't help a brother out i was running so
many miles yeah so brooks i'm
2:12:55
not trying to i'm not promoting brooks right now yeah merry christmas on that one i caught
him up a million times hey man
2:13:01
can i get like a discount or some [ __ ] hang up nobody nothing so but they do
2:13:06
have a good shoe and i uh and i and it was not good pr horrible pr man you know what i'm
saying
2:13:13
like you know so but um yeah i love their shoe the only thing i could wear was that brook's
addiction because my my bio mechanics
2:13:19
was so messed up i tried so many different shoes and and that was a so i can now wear a
neutral shoe so how i
2:13:26
used to run and very few people know this i used to have heel wedges
2:13:32
inserts heel wedges and get compression tape because my body was pushed so far in
2:13:39
from being so tight in my hip flexors that so how i got such bad stress fractures
2:13:44
was my bio mechanical there's a picture of my toe in there because my my toes just jammed
in front of my shoes because
2:13:50
my whole body just got this like bent in so you when you're saying bent in for people just
listening you're
2:13:57
if your hands are flat on a table you're turning the outside of your hands in up
2:14:02
so that your thumbs are going down those are my so yeah so that's those big toes right
going down or going down and into
2:14:09
the shoe and the outside of your foot was up was above it right so what i had to do to run
because i was like god i
2:14:14
got stress fractures all the time and my feet were so [ __ ] up sometimes you see that with
people's shoes like
2:14:20
how they're worn out worn out worn out on the sideways example like a wedge right can you
look at it from behind
2:14:26
this crazy yeah that was my shoe so i had to get a heel wedge to keep my heel from going
down got
2:14:32
severe tendonitis in the back of my ankle actually you had to make it thicker on one side
that's right just to force on
2:14:38
the inside flat right so the inside i had to push up and i had to get compression tape so it was
compression
2:14:44
tape heel wedges and an insert and that's how i ran every [ __ ] day
2:14:50
did you go to a running coach or anything did you i don't know
2:14:56
but didn't you want to know what you were doing wrong you know what man that was part of
that garanimal mindset man
2:15:02
[ __ ] it man i'm supposed to be broken you know but then i got smarter as time went and
said oh
2:15:07
man this is some painful [ __ ] running 100 mile races with this kind of tendinitis and my feet
being [ __ ] up
2:15:13
it was so painful so i was like you know what so then after i started stretching i was like my
god all this was from
2:15:20
having a tight i got so massive my god i was i was in all these different contraptions and now
i just wear normal running shoes
2:15:27
wow yeah so i went from being contraptioned up man like literally contraption up so it's
2:15:34
all just the stretching that opened up the range of motion now when people talk about range
of
2:15:39
motion they don't understand how tight i was like no one understands like when
2:15:44
you repeatedly do what i was doing to myself and you were born with the stress i was
2:15:51
born under like i hate i can't paint a clear it's it's pretty clear in the book
2:15:57
man my life was bad the stress i endured on a daily i had two people
2:16:03
and my body was proof of literally what my life was doing to me it literally was
2:16:08
knotted all my muscles up because i was always under this fight or flight you know my my
dad had made me so [ __ ]
2:16:15
scared of [ __ ] you know to to unwind this [ __ ] man was like
2:16:21
it was it was it was a hard task you know i it was a hard it was a hard task man so it's a lot of
times it's not just
2:16:28
all the hard training no but it's also the mind the mind because think about it man when
you're under stress
2:16:34
that hip flexor that that psoas muscle which is attached to your t12 that that's the only muscle
that
2:16:40
attaches your lower body to your upper body and that's the muscle that's that's your fight or
flight whenever you get nervous
2:16:46
or scared or something like that that [ __ ] was tightened up i mean i mean your whole body
is i lived in that like almost fetal
2:16:52
position in my mind for so many years so i was always on this like tight-knit
2:16:58
tension [ __ ] guy but i walked around like i'm some cool here's my new hairstyle
2:17:05
pants are sagging i'm a cool dude man right but that was another costume the costume wore
every day yeah got tired of
2:17:12
running that [ __ ] man next costume i want you to be in is a jiu jitsu guy with a white belt on
i'm going to send you a picture man i got it i
2:17:18
know you're listening to the picture i know you're gonna cause i already planted that oh my
god i know it's bouncing around yeah it is it is i'm
2:17:25
gonna set it up nashville i know there's some places out there nashville holler at me
2:17:30
oh trust me i'm sure they will we'll find you a spot

a lot of people exercise because they believe it will help them to lose fat one of the biggest debates on the planet
0:05
what advice have you got for me so this is not a well-known fact but Daniel Lieberman he studies and teaches humans
0:11
are supposed to live author and professor at Harvard University exercise disease sleep nutrition he has the
0:18
answers and all of those things that most of us care about we evolve to be very Physically Active working in the fields hunting Gathering
but now we live
0:25
in a world where only 50 of Americans ever exercise and the rest of the world is headed our way cancers depression
0:31
anxiety can attribute that to less physical activity in fact women who get 150 minutes of physical activity a week
 0:37
have a 30 to 50 percent lower breast cancer risks and it's crazy right the problem is that we spend three percent
0:43
of our medical Budget on prevention and yet 75 of the time the disease is a
0:48
preventable disease it's a completely backward stupid system when you started writing this book about exercise was
0:54
there any instant changes that you implemented into your own life strength training the more I study the importance
0:59
of doing weights especially as you age the more I started kicking myself for being lazy about that when people retire
1:04
they're become less active they tend to lose muscle and then that starts off a vicious cycle so would you say we shouldn't retire it's a
very modern
1:10
Western concept and yes we do pay a price for it so how does one go from having a negative opinion towards
1:16
exercise to becoming an exerciser as an evolutionary biologist there are multiple ways of doing that so Daniel
1:23
what are some of the biggest myths within exercise gosh there are so many one of the most common of course is
1:31
Daniel Lieberman he's been to every corner of the world visiting native
1:36
tribes to understand how humans are supposed to live and now he has the answers and all of those things that
1:43
most of us care about on sleep nutrition exercise disease you know on disease he says that 74 of them can be prevented
1:51
and he knows how to prevent them aging running are we born to run he tells me
1:57
the story of a CEO that forces his employees to exercise and the impact that that's had on that company and he
2:03
talks about how as humans we've evolved to either use it or lose it
2:09
so maybe maybe retirement is a really bad idea for many of us one of the most
2:15
thought-provoking pivotal conversations I've had on the show you're really going to take a lot from this one and I
2:22
suspect after listening you'll probably start running too for exercise or from some of the
2:28
decisions you've spent your life making [Music]
Why do you do this research?
2:38
your work is so so incredibly impressive reaches such an incredible depth
2:44
Charter's new territory and it's been
2:49
an unbelievable clearly very passion driven career you had so my first question for you is why
2:55
are you doing this um it's a good question um I um you know I started off being
3:02
obsessed by a human evolution ever since I was a kid I was really interested in human evolution and I spent much of my early career
working on skulls and heads
3:10
and why they are the way they are and then I kind of got involved in public health and issues of health and disease
3:16
kind of through the back door I sort of slowly shifted my research trajectory towards studying the evolution of
3:21
running and then the evolution of physical activity and its relationship to health and disease and and I've
3:27
become part of a movement that's often known as evolutionary medicine which is how to apply evolutionary theory and
3:33
data to issues of health and disease evolutionary medicine I've never heard that term before but I love it
Where has your work taken you?
3:40
where has your work on evolutionary medicine let's call it where has that
3:46
taken you where where has it taken you to learn to research to study you know so much of what we think about
3:52
in terms of health and disease comes from a tiny fragment of the world's population almost entirely like 90 of
3:59
all the medical information comes from people from the United States Canada Europe and Australia so in order to
4:06
study how bodies really work and how our bodies evolve to be you have to leave places like Boston where I live and go
4:13
to places like Africa or Mexico or wherever to look at at other populations and look at how those populations are
4:19
transitioning to to Lifestyles like mine and so we've been working in Kenya for
4:25
the last 15 years or so and I've traveled some other parts of the world as well India you know to kind of
4:31
collect some data but uh but mostly in mostly in Africa after doing all of this work and after taking in all of this
Has your research shifted your perspective on exercise?
4:37
information how has it shifted your perspective on running exercise more broadly what have
4:43
there been any sort of significant cognitive perception changes you know
4:48
yeah um I actually had a I mean it doesn't happen very often but I had kind of an epiphany moment um when I was working in
4:56
Mexico we were collecting data on the tarahumaro very also famous for their long distance running and there was this
5:02
elderly guy he's about 70 something years old and he's famous for his distance running and I was asking him
5:08
how he trained and I had asked this question of a whole bunch of other people and the translator I was working with was always
struggling to ask that
5:14
question because it turns out there's no word for training in in that language the concept of training doesn't exist so
5:20
so she was trying to explain to this guy what my question was um and I could even a translator I could
5:26
figure out just from his tone of voice he was like why would anybody run if you didn't have to and I suddenly realized yeah of course
5:32
exercise is a very weird thing right well if you're if you're a farmer and you're working super hard every day in the
5:39
field without machines and whatever or if you're a hunter-gatherer and you're walking you know you know five to ten
5:44
miles a day and digging and throwing you know doing all kinds of hard work and you're barely getting enough enough food
5:50
why on Earth would you go for a needless five mile run in the morning I mean it's crazy right
The biggest exercise myths
5:55
the most viewed videos of yours in the most viewed moments in those videos address one question do you have any
6:02
idea what it might be no actually the biggest myths in exercise right and I think you actually
6:08
pointed out one there with the um Insight you got in Mexico the way we exercise going to gyms practicing is the
6:16
natural or human but evidently it's it's a consequence of the privilege of
6:21
our lives and the Comfort we have of not having to seek out our dinner every day what are some of the other biggest myths
6:28
within exercise that um you've come across in writing this book gosh there
6:34
are so many I had to actually limit limit it to ten so I think um if you understand physical activity and
6:40
exercise you also have to understand inactivity and I think one of the biggest myths out there is that you need
6:45
eight hours of sleep a night and that sitting is when you're smoking you know that basically and I if you think about
6:50
those two different myths why is it that we're constantly told to sleep more and to sit less
6:56
actually it seems a little contradictory to me right and it turns out that um
7:01
that let's take sitting first so um you know there are all these uh you know these slogans like sitting against
7:07
and you're smoking and it's really bad for you and you know every time you sit in your chair you lose two hours of your life and whatever
uh turns out that uh
7:15
all animals sit right my dog sits um cows sit chickens sit every animal sits and hunter gatherers also sit in fact if
7:22
you some of my students actually put sensors on hunter-gatherers and uh when we're doing some research in Farmers as
7:29
well but they sit just as much as westerners um uh so sitting is there's nothing special about being uh about today's
7:36
life it's sitting so it's that we sit all day long and don't do anything when we're not sitting right so if you and
7:41
and furthermore the big distance difference is not so much how much we said but how how we sit so turns out
7:47
that people who um if you get up every once in a while right interrupted sitting is actually
7:53
much more healthy than non-interrupted sitting okay the same amount of time so in other
7:58
words two people might in the west people sit for an average about 40 minutes at about whereas
8:04
hunter-gatherers for example are farmers in Africa where we work get up every about 10-15 minutes and when you do that
8:09
you actually it's like turning on the engine of your car you don't drive it around the block you're you're you're you're
8:15
um you're turning on all kinds of cellular mechanisms you lower blood sugar levels your all kinds of genes get
8:20
activated and it turns out that that is by far the most important way to way to
8:26
sit so just get up every once in a while just pee frequently make a cup of tea you know pet your dog whatever thinking
8:31
when I'm on planes and I've got a long flight I always sit in the aisle right so I can get up a lot always
8:38
and um what about sleep then so sleep is another interesting one so this idea that you know
8:43
um that you need eight hours of sleep it's been around for a long time it's been around basically since the
8:49
Industrial Revolution um but um if you actually so so colleagues in my field so an
8:54
evolutionary medicine have put sensors on people who don't have all the things that we're told have
8:59
destroyed sleep so think about it we're told that TV and lights and and uh you know our phones and all these things are
9:05
are preventing us from sleeping you know Edison destroyed sleep right uh so so
9:11
when you put sensors on people who don't have any electricity and they don't have TVs and they don't have phones and they
9:17
don't have have any of these gadgetry right electricity they it turns out they sleep like six to seven hours a night
9:24
um and um they uh and they don't nap um so this idea that natural human
9:29
beings sleep eight hours a night is just it's just nonsense it's just not true and furthermore when you start looking
9:35
at the data seven hours if you actually look at if you graph sort of how many hours a night you sleep on the x-axis
9:42
and sort of uh you know some outcome like cardiovascular disease or just How likely you are to die it's kind of a
9:49
U-shaped curve so people don't get much sleep are in trouble but the bottom of
9:54
that curve is pretty much always about seven hours so people actually do better if they sleep seven hours rather than
10:00
eight hours and yet we're told that if you don't sleep eight hours there's something wrong right oh so you can oversleep
10:07
well yeah I mean there's also some complexity of this too because of course people who are ill might be sleeping more and so there's
some there's some
10:13
biases that creep into the how you analyze the data but but basically it turns out that seven is for most people
10:19
optimal but there's a lot of variation right you know teenagers sleep more older people sleep less it's complicated
 10:24
one of the things popular in culture as well is this idea of doing 10 000 steps a day yeah now that's fun you know that
10:31
started because of a Japanese epidemic pedometer um so but right before the the Olympics were in Tokyo in the in the 60s
10:38
they had invented the pedometer and they were in the sitting in a board room and they were discussing what to call the pedometer and
they picked out of just
10:45
out of the blue they picked 10 000 steps because that's apparently an auspicious number and it sounded about right there
10:52
was no science behind it interestingly it turns out it's pretty good
10:57
um if you actually if you look at steps per day and health outcomes your average
11:03
hunter-gatherer walks between 10 to 18 000 steps depends on male or female Etc
11:10
and and if you look at steps per day and and outcomes um
11:16
but around seven to eight thousand steps the curve kind of bottoms out right there's it doesn't seem to be a huge
11:21
advantage to taking more than that per day in terms of you know large epidemiological studies so it turns out
11:28
to be not that bad a goal but it's not a there's no it's not a perfect number like a lot of
11:33
things right it's just a kind of a it's a reasonable it's a reasonable goal to shoot for
11:38
when you um when you started writing this this book about exercise and running on all these subject matters was
11:44
there any instant changes or any real lasting changes that you implemented into your
11:50
own life from everything you've learned I think about that all the time with this podcast I'll have a guest on I have these mini Eureka
moments and then
11:56
something will stick so I'm wondering having studied all of these people all around the world and looked at their
The importance of weight training
12:01
bodies and exercise and physical exertion what have you taken into your own life that has stuck
12:08
I would say that I've become more serious about doing some strength training you know I've always loved
12:13
walking and running and you know endurance kinds of activities and I've always sort of hated doing weights you
12:18
know I just don't like it and I'm I'm a wimp you know I'm not a very well I'm not a very strong person and you know
12:25
people tend to do what they like right you get reinforcement from it and the more I study the importance of
12:31
resistance training and the more I study the importance of doing weights especially as you age um The more I've
12:37
the more I started kicking myself for for being uh being lazy about that so now I try to do a good two strength
12:44
workouts out of every week at least and uh and take it more seriously because especially as you age loss of muscle
12:51
mass can be really debilitating there's a um the technical term for that is sarcopenia Sarco is is the Greek word
12:58
for muscle and penia is loss of muscle loss so as people get older they tend to lose muscle and when you do that you
13:05
become frail and you lose functional capacity and then that starts off a vicious cycle right once that happens
13:11
then you'll be less likely to be fiscally active and then of course when you're less Physically Active your muscles begin to waste away
more and
13:18
it's very debilitating and so I think as we get older and I'm getting older it's more and more important you know to to
13:25
kind of incorporate that so I think that's the one thing that I've I've taken to Heart yeah from what you said
13:30
there it sounds like not doing resistance training not doing not lifting weights as you age almost accelerates Aging in any sort of
13:37
superficial sense but but it also in a physiological sense you're you're increasing the speed of Aging yeah I'm
13:45
not sure if I'd think about it that way but it I think I I kind of reverse it slightly which is that
13:52
you know aging is just the clock ticking on right there's nothing we can do about age but senescence is the way the way
13:59
our bodies degrade as we get older and what physical activity does affection maybe the most important thing about
14:05
physical activity is that it slows senescence especially for certain organs and systems and there are different
14:10
kinds of physical activities so there's endurance physical activities you know like running walking Etc swimming and
14:15
then strength or resistance physical activities and they have different kinds of ways in which they slow various
14:21
properties of senescence which we you know colloquially call aging and all of
14:27
them are important and I think one of the things that's really interesting about humans in fact I think it may be the most important thing
about this book
14:33
and you asked about myths earlier the most important myth I think by far is this idea that as you get older it's
14:39
normal to be less active and that is just not true we evolved to be
14:44
grandparents we evolved to live one of the things that's most interesting about humans maybe is that we evolve to live
14:49
about 20 years or so after we stop reproducing no other animal does that except except orcas maybe killer whales
14:55
but with the exception of killer whales humans have this really weird life history we evolve to be grandparents but
15:01
grandparents in the old days weren't you know retiring to Florida or I don't know where they do but they do in England or
15:07
whatever go to Majorca or whatever and you know kick up their heels and play golf or whatever with carts grandparents
15:13
in the in the olden days right or in many cultures still today are working right they're working in the fields
15:18
they're hunting they're Gathering they're getting food for their children and their grandchildren they're helping with child care and that
physical
15:24
activity is you know that's what their job is to be physically active but in turn that
15:30
physical activity turns on an amazing Suite of of physiological processes that
15:36
counter aging turns on repair and maintenance processes that not only keep our muscles strong but also keep our DNA
15:43
from accruing mutations keep our mitochondria numbers High keep keep our
15:48
the cells in our brain from accumulating Gunk so that prevents Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia I mean for
15:55
almost for every system of the body physical activity has has benefits that slow the aging process and so when you
16:01
stop doing it you accelerate and that's the way in which you it perceive you perceive it as accelerating aging but
16:08
really it's the absence of physical activity which lets aging run a mark in your first book in 2013 the story of the
Why always moving your body is so important
16:14
human body in chapter 12 you said um use this phrase you use it or lose it
16:20
basically we we evolve to use or lose our bodies and I was sat with um someone recently and I was trying to figure out
16:26
why it appears that when people retire or the other instance I've seen is when they're their elderly partner passes
16:33
away it appears as if they don't live much longer yeah it's kind of like kind of folklore or something that once you
16:39
retire your days are kind of numbered yeah yeah and I I was trying to figure out the
16:45
evolutionary reason for that but it sounds like that's kind of what you've explained there well I mean I think part of that is um is
depression right
 16:52
um when you lose a partner I mean grief and depression your cortisol levels go
16:58
up your immune system goes down I mean you know it's it's really tough on your body I mean psychosocial stress plays a
17:05
serious physiological toll but but also as you just pointed out when people
17:11
retire they're become less active and that that loss of activity has enormous effects on every aspect of
17:17
our of our of our body I mean in our brain and our minds I mean physical activity is important not just for
17:22
physical health but also vital for mental health and I think a lot of the problems that a lot of mental health
17:29
issues we have today depression anxiety uh some of them to some extent we can
17:35
attribute that to loss to less physical activity and as people age becoming less Physically Active again
17:41
makes them much more vulnerable to a wide Suite of diseases so would you say we shouldn't retire
17:48
well or if you do retire I mean retiring is again another modern weird thing right nobody retired in the past I mean
17:54
if you're a farmer it's like a subsistence farmer and name it any place right it's not like something you hit 65
17:59
and all of a sudden you no longer have to work in the fields you work in the fields until you're you know until you're dead right and
hunter-gatherers
18:05
don't retire they they continue to be physically active until until they die right or until they get too sick so it's
18:11
a very modern Western concept um and um and yes we do pay a price for it but you of course can replace
18:18
you know work that you do with with with challenging rewarding fun things to do the important thing is just not to not
18:25
to stop being Physically Active one of my favorite studies ever published without a doubt
18:31
um is a is a study done by a guy named Ralph paffenbarger he realized that places like Harvard are fantastic for
18:38
studying aging because um Harvard like other private universities never lets go of their
18:44
alumni so until you the day you die they're asking you for money on a regular basis
18:50
and and so they're um um and so he he got the Alumni Association the Harvard
18:56
development office to let him follow a series of Harvard alumni from several years and can keep asking them
19:03
and questions about their physical activity levels and also their diet and whether they smoked and stuff like that and then you track
them for 25 30 years
19:10
and what he found was that the alumni we have to correct it for every Factor you could think of that as you as the alumni
19:16
got older the effect of physical activity on their health outcomes was bigger and bigger so alumni who are in
19:23
their 20s 30s and 40s for example who were exercising you know four or five times a week they had about 20 percent
19:28
lower death rates by the time they got to their 60s and 70s the alumni who were exercising more had 50 lower death rates
19:36
so as you get older so what and this has been replicated again many times but what he showed was that as you get older exercise
becomes
19:44
more not less important for maintaining your health been thinking a lot about this because I was saying to Jack my dad is
Genetics vs lifestyle
19:51
60-ish but he's very very out of shape very very out of shape and I was in um I
19:57
was in Indonesia and I was with my girlfriend and we went and we were going white water rafting so we had to go down
20:02
this really big hill with all these stairs it was like 300 meters of stairs and I remember just
20:08
thinking my dad wouldn't be able to do this at his age at 60 and I want to be able to go down those stairs when I'm
20:14
his age because at the bottom there was a fun activity with someone I loved and to think that I'll get to a point in my
20:20
life where not so far away in the grand scheme of things um where I won't be able to go up
20:27
or down some stairs because I'm 60 um because of my sort of genetic predisposition as I saw it was quite was
20:34
quite sad but having heard you say that it really feels much more like a choice than it is genetics yeah look we have
20:40
this expression in my field which is that genes load the gun an environment pulls the trigger right some of us have
20:46
genetic predispositions towards being you know more likely to get diabetes or heart disease or this or that or the
20:52
other but our great great grandparents in different environments weren't getting these diseases or they were
20:58
getting them at much much lower frequencies it's not because they were dying earlier it's because these diseases were less common so
I think we
21:06
too often blame our genes for many of these these these diseases um or many of these health problems um
21:12
and it's I'm not in any way denying the role of genetics but that environment is way more important and we have control
21:18
over our environment to some extent and so if you want to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease reduce your risk
21:24
of diabetes reduce your risk of Alzheimer's dementia exercises in a Magic Bullet it's not
21:31
going to prevent you from getting those diseases completely but it lowers your risk quite quite quite substantially and we
21:38
know why too I mean we have an immense amount of data on why that's the case for every single one of these diseases
21:44
we understand the mechanisms by which physical activity has uh you know important mechanistic effects on on
21:51
these diseases so it's this epidemiological data there's mechanistic data there's personal data the problem
21:58
is that it's hard to do right it's it takes willpower to overcome the the the
22:05
inertia of of of of doing what's completely normal which is wanting to take it easy right I was I was just you
22:12
know I just flew yesterday from Denver to Boston and in the in the in the in the airport you know there are these escalators
22:18
right next to the stairway right and and and and and um the escalator and the stair it wasn't
22:24
a huge stairway everybody's lining up to take the escalator and like the stairs are totally free so I being me I of
22:31
course I can't I'm not allowed to take the escalator unless you know I have to right so I run up the stairs but you
22:36
know it's but those people taking the escalator there's nothing wrong with them they're not lazy it's just an instinct or it's an instinct to
take to
22:44
take it easy when you can right because and we now live in a world where everybody can do that right because we have escalators and
and lifts and cars
22:51
and shopping carts and all these wonderful devices to make our lives easier and now you
22:56
have to overcome this fundamental Basic Instinct to take it easy in order to be physically active and that's basically
23:02
what exercise is and so and furthermore if you're out of if you're unfit and you're not really
23:08
you know exercising isn't any fun right it's it's it's it's unpleasant you you know you sweat and you get hot and you
23:14
get cranky and you know um and and it's not that rewarding uh until you get fit
23:20
and so uh people hate it right um and uh and then we blame them for being lazy but they're actually just
23:26
being they're just being normal and I think we need to have more compassion towards towards people who struggle to
23:32
exercise quick one before we get back to this episode just give me 30 seconds of your time two things I wanted to say the first
23:38
thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning in to the show week after week means the world to all of us and
23:44
this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place but
23:49
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23:55
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24:02
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24:08
show as good as I can now and into the future we're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're
24:13
going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show thank you thank you so much back to the
24:19
episode this Basic Instinct to take it easy are we evolved to be lazy take
Have we evolved to be lazy?
24:25
escalated Riders well I wouldn't use the word lazy but we are evolved to take it
24:30
easy to to rest whenever possible right so we've now got ourselves into a bit of a comfort crisis here because everything
24:36
has in our lives is optimizing us for convenience and ease right right and well it's also it's it sells right I
24:43
mean Comfort I mean I mean who prefers to sit in economy as opposed to business class right nobody right Comfort is nice
24:50
right who prefers shoes that are uncomfortable right we we you know comforts comforts you know we love
24:57
Comfort right but since when is Comfort necessarily better for you right I mean our comfortable shoes actually better for you than going
Barefoot or the
25:03
comfortable chair is better for you than we're taking the the lift better for you than taking this it is a short term or at least it appears to
be today right
25:10
yes because we often value the short-term benefit over the long-term cost right um that's hyperbolic discounting is the
25:16
technical term for that but but um so we you know we live in a world where where we we you know we pay extra
25:23
for for Comfort or and we'll prefer it but um but now we also live in a world where we have to now go out of our way
25:30
to be physically active because it's no longer necessary and so again I go back to my original statement which is that
25:35
people evolved to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons only when it's necessarily rewarding when we
25:40
don't make it necessary we need to figure out ways to make it rewarding and and that's hard it's very hard
We should be preventing diseases, not medicating them
25:46
making it rewarding so one way that you might make something rewarding is by looking at the stick and then the other
25:52
side is maybe the carrot but just looking at the stick then you were going through a series of diseases a second ago Alzheimer's
25:58
um high blood pressure all of these kinds of things cardiovascular diseases I almost think we've come to assume that
26:05
these are inevitabilities of Life yeah we'll get cancer yeah one of us will get yeah someone in here is going to get Alzheimer's and that's
the way we live
26:11
so we're we're preparing to meditate when that day comes that's right I get good forbid diagnosed with something
26:18
that's absolutely right in fact that's what medical students today are taught right if you go to medical school today
26:23
you're taught that as people get older their blood pressure goes up I can tell you that's just not true it's in the
26:29
western world where people are physically inactive and eat crap diets that their blood pressure tends to go up but there are plenty of
people I'm
26:35
actually one of them right who don't have high blood pressure as they age and guess what's the best way to prevent
 26:41
getting a high blood pressure as you age it's um you know it's not like a broken record but we have this idea that as you get older yes
you're are gonna you're
26:47
and we're lucky right you know because we don't die from smallpox when we're 30. we're lucky to get cancer when we're
26:52
60 right what we've done is we've confused diseases that are more common with aging with age being a cause of
27:00
those diseases in the first place and they're not inevitable inevitable diseases and many of them are
27:05
preventable and and the problem is that in our society we we don't value
27:11
prevention very much we may talk about it but we don't really put our money where our mouth is right in the U.S
27:16
which is arguably one of the worst Healthcare Systems it is the worst Healthcare System among the
27:21
industrialized Western World we spend approximately three percent of our
27:26
budget our medical Budget on prevention And yet when people walk into a doctor's office 75 of the time the disease is
27:34
according to the Center for Disease Control of preventable disease so we essentially spend nothing to prevent
27:40
diseases that overwhelm our system and cause enormous amounts of misery it's a completely backwards due stupid system
27:47
and so and and the good news is it's not that hard to prevent a lot of these things um it takes willpower and takes
27:54
education and it takes access to to good quality food and whatever um but um so in the one sense it's very
28:01
depressing on the other hand The Optimist in me says you know we really can do something and people even if
28:06
without even if they're not wealthy or whatever I mean they're simple things that everybody can do to improve their
28:12
health outcomes these diseases we we encountered today as we age and just generally in our society when you look
Do hunter-gatherers get the same diseases as us?
28:17
at hunter gatherer hunter-gatherer communities where you look at certain tribes around the world maybe in Africa do you see the same
28:25
um the same types of diseases in the same um
28:31
occurrence level of occurrence or is there some diseases which just don't like I'm wondering if like if because
28:37
you know cancer seems to be so popular for as the disease and Alzheimer's and these kinds of things so I Wonder has
28:43
that always been the case throughout human history and is that the case in other parts of the world that's such a good question so first
of all some of
28:49
these some of these diseases are really hard to to measure in non-western populations because we don't have the
28:55
diagnostic tools so nobody really knows how common cancer is in in a lot of
29:01
parts of the world right there's just the data don't exist that said when you make estimates and you do look at the
29:06
studies that are out there and even if you look in in historical records and in places like Europe where people have been keeping track of
this there is no
29:13
question that cancer rates have been rising and that cancer rates are much much more common in the western world there's a strong
association between
29:19
Cancer and wealth and that's because cancer is basically a disease of energy right when your cells because cancer is
29:27
basically natural selection gone awry in the body it's when cells start competing with each other either in ways that that cause basically
and
29:35
start you know going you know multiplying and dividing out of control right it's a kind of natural selection
29:41
and what is it that those cells are doing they're competing for energy and when you have more energy
29:46
like when you're eating more and being less Physically Active you can you basically feed those cells
29:51
so um so cancer so a high levels of insulin insulin is highly uh related to cancer
29:58
High insulin levels are carcinogenic um high levels of a body of energy you
30:05
cause women for example to increase the the amount of estrogen and progesterone that they produce men produce more
30:12
testosterone these are and these are these are hormones that of course are
30:17
for good for reproduction but they're but again we have we evolve to be to have as many babies as possible Right
30:23
but that doesn't mean that translates into Health right so more estrogen more progesterone increases risks of say
30:29
breast cancer or testosterone increases the risk of prostate cancer so if you look at most diseases right people are
30:35
more physically active they have lower levels of estrogen progesterone testosterone they have lower levels of insulin they have lower
levels of blood
30:42
sugar all of these depressed cancer rates and on average people who are Physically Active have much lower rates
30:48
of almost every single kind of cancer that you can think of women who walk 150 you know get 150
30:55
minutes of physical activity a week have on average about 30 to 50 lower lifetime breast
31:01
cancer risks than people who are sedentary and yet for some reason this is not a well-known fact
31:07
um and we underst we have we have epidemiological data we have mechanistic data we understand how and why it works
31:13
and yet and that how often do you hear about cancer prevention we talk about treating cancer which is all important
31:20
if I get cancer I would like it treated too thank you very much but why don't we spend more energy and activity and and
31:26
have more education about how to prevent cancers in the first place
31:31
physical act I don't mean I've never had that before so that's that's really helped me um
The truth about sugar
31:36
to add more value to exercise in my mind you're talking there about insulin levels and how that has there's
31:43
a link between your insulin levels and your chances of getting cancer sugar
31:51
glucose inflammation bad yeah I mean I mean look if you want to
31:57
if you want to take like the three things you should you know if you really care about your health don't smoke right that's kind of obvious I
think everybody
32:03
knows that get some exercise I don't think you need me to tell you that right and and cut
32:09
down on sugar and foods that are high in sugar and low in fiber right that you know what we call high glycemic foods
32:15
those are the foods that elevate your your your your blood glucose levels your your insulin levels shoot up and Insulin
32:22
insulin the basic function of insulin is is it's what we call an anabolic hormone
32:28
it's its job is to is to store energy glucose
32:33
glucose but also fat okay all right okay so what insulin does is to get energy
32:39
into cells so it's like a taxi it's like an Uber it's like a taxi yeah
32:44
well I mean it it's not attack it's like a it's telling other cells to do that so insulin for example binds to other cells
32:51
that are the actual taxis so it's like it's like calling the Uber I would I can maybe right um and um and insulin is is you know
32:58
it's the fundam so when you when you eat food insulin levels go up because its job is to store that energy and when you
33:03
exercise insulin levels go down because because you want to then use that energy right so so uh so when cells get more
33:12
energy they're more prone to going out of control basically and and and and inflammation is caused by
33:20
basically by getting you store so much fat in your cells that those fat cells
33:25
start to swell and when those starts to swell like anything right they start to rupture they get damaged and that damage
33:31
attracts the immune system and the immune system gets turned on and that causes inflammation so so too much
33:37
adiposity too much fats you know over swollen fat cells is the is a primary
33:42
cause of systemic inflammation and inflammation is like the slow burn in our bodies that causes widespread damage
33:49
to pretty much everything you can think of and it turns out that so the two ways to deal with inflammation are one to
33:55
prevent it right so don't eat foods that are pro-inflammatory like anything with a lot of sugar basically
34:02
right I mean that you know the sugar is highly inflammatory um or trans fats are highly inflammatory
34:09
but also turns out many people don't know this but you also want to turn down your immune system right you want to
34:15
turn the dial down and I don't know just give you one guess what it is that does that exercise exercise and the and and
34:22
the way it does that is that when you when you're physically active you're using your muscle cells it turns out
34:27
muscles are also an endocrine organ your muscles are producing a molecule called
34:33
interleukin-6 il-6 that in low levels is pro-inflammatory but at high levels it's
34:38
actually anti-inflammatory it turns down inflammation and your muscles because a third of your body is muscle right when
34:45
you go for a run or or swim or bike ride or whatever you're producing a ton of this stuff and it turns down levels of
34:52
information so people are Physically Active even if they're overweight are actually controlling and regulating
34:57
their inflammation we never evolved to regulate inflammation because in this way because we never evolved to be
35:04
physically inactive until recently nobody was physically inactive until unless they were dying right so so so we
35:10
never evolved an alternative mechanism to regulator inflammation other than physical activity
35:15
and we didn't live in a world with this much sugar we never lived in a way I mean it's astonishing you pay more money
35:23
for Foods today that have less sugar added right I mean that's just ridiculous right because it's so cheap
35:28
and sugar is you know we love everybody loves sugar I mean I've um I've gone hunting with um hunter-gatherers you
35:35
know you know foreign and um and I can tell you that they're honey addicts right I mean I've gone out with
35:41
these guys and they go from you know if they if they fail on their hunt like by 10 or 11 if you haven't killed an animal
35:46
you know that's it for the day right and then it comes it turns from being a Hunting Expedition to a honey collecting
35:53
Expedition and they'll go from hive to Hive to Hive get smoke burn out the bees
35:59
and just Gorge themselves on more honey than I could possibly imagine to eat except these are a lean Physically
36:05
Active hunter-gatherers and they they handle it just fine um but it's you know it's the it's the
36:10
Paleolithic equivalent of you know eating Mars Bars all day long but they've been out doing physical activity for how long yeah I mean
the average day
36:18
is about 15 kilometers of of walking with some running yeah so so so they're
36:24
you know they can they can they can cope with it how many hours is that oh that's two to three hours probably
36:29
okay so from that I have garnered that I need to do 15 kilometers a day
36:35
for two or three hours every day well remember it's not a prescription right so that's a kind of like the Paleo
36:41
fantasy sort of naturalistic fantasy that if you live like a hunter-gatherer somehow your your world will be perfect
36:47
right that's basically what the paleo diet is sort of all about right and that's not true either
36:53
yes we need to be physically active but it turns out that a certain amount you know if you're any any physical activity
37:00
is better than none right and if you look at the kind of any curve of any output any health health outcome like
37:07
how many years you live or whether you're likely to get cancer or heart disease or whatever you know any little
37:13
physical activity your curve starts to fall quickly right your likelihood of cardiovascular disease that's just you
37:19
know a few minutes a day of exercise has big benefits but eventually that curve flattens out right and it flattens out
37:25
well before the hunter-gatherer level so you don't need to be a hunter-gatherer in terms of physical activity to get the benefits
How would you redesign our society?
37:31
this is a I've asked a few people this question I don't think everyone's anyone's really answered it um but I suspect you might be able to if
if you
37:38
were responsible for redesigning the nature of our modern world to make it
37:45
more matched and less mismatched what are some of the first things you would do to help Society benefit in terms of
37:52
our happiness and our health I I think about this all the time
37:58
because we don't seem to be turning around we seem to be hurtling in a direction kind of unconsciously towards
38:04
artificial intelligence and moving less and being more sedentary and taking pills more to fix everything
38:10
lonelier than ever before you know if we were to redesign it blank
38:16
canvas piece of paper that's a tough question because
38:22
um we've essentially given ourselves what we want right I can go
38:29
into a supermarket and I mean I can do something that's unimaginable until recently I can have I
38:35
can have basically anything I can eat better than the king of France you know a few Generations ago I can I can I mean
38:42
here I can New York there's like every Cuisine possibly available to me I I don't ever have to climb the stairs I
38:48
can take elevators I mean we've we've we've we've made our world so convenient and comfortable and yet
38:55
there are consequences to the many of the things that we crave and want so
39:01
in an Ideal World you don't want to you don't want to REM I mean you have to you
39:07
have to honor and respect people's um um desires right I'm not a I don't
39:13
believe in in preventing people from taking the elevator right or or forcing
39:19
them to you know eat eat a whole grain bread as opposed to white bread right
39:24
but if you banned white bread and you banned elevators other than for those people that need it for accessibility reasons Etc they would
do better over
39:32
the long term they would be healthy and happier they would right so it's really a balancing act between between
39:40
um um respecting people's Liberties and choices and educating them and helping
39:46
them so in my world I would I would do more to nudge people right
39:52
um I would instead of banning sugar I would tax it more um instead of
39:58
um pushing uh all kinds of foods on people
40:03
I would push I mean why don't we why don't we advertise healthy foods the way
40:10
we advertise unhealthy Foods right I mean when's the last time you saw an ad for just how amazingly healthy asparagus
40:17
was right but that doesn't get the part of my brain going does it no it doesn't but um but
40:24
we could do more to to nudge and encourage and help people right you don't have to like ban sugar and cookies
40:29
right otherwise some people but but but simply promote um and help people help themselves right
40:36
most people want to eat healthier food most people want to exercise um but they live in a world where it's
40:41
hard to do it and they live in a world where um there are very few incentives I would make it such that healthy food would be
40:48
as as inexpensive as as unhealthy food and make sure that that people had
40:54
incentives and and make it also fun to be physically active like for example
41:00
um every I mean who doesn't like to dance right every culture in the world has dancing right dancing is a form of of
41:06
physical activity it's social it's fun it's engaging why don't we have uh why
41:12
doesn't every every town in America sponsor dancing right
41:18
um you know it would probably do an enormous amount for people's physical health and their mental health I mean we could do that I
mean that's just one
41:23
example right so I would I would um I would I would I would and and why is it that in medical schools doctors don't
41:30
learn about I mean they don't they don't study nutrition and they don't don't study exercise and they don't learn
41:35
um because that's because in our medical system is designed to treat people after they get sick rather than prevent people
41:41
from getting sick so so we need to you know reverse how we fund health care
41:47
right and so schools of Public Health are these kind of little marginalized places where you know where where great
41:53
ideas go to die right and and medical schools where all the money is right and doctors aren't
42:00
I mean their entire fields of medicine that don't have the word preventive associated with them I mean you've ever
42:05
heard of preventive Orthodontics or preventive uh you know Optometry or preventing you know the preventive
42:10
Orthopedics I mean it just doesn't exist right so we we could do a lot more
42:16
um and and have enormous benefits chapter 11 of this book you talk about someone who has taken their own approach
Should organisations force people to exercise?
42:22
to getting people moving and exercising um in their own business that's the
42:27
bjornberg company I love that Bjorn ball company can you tell me about that yeah so I was um
42:34
so I was I was curious about this idea of how to get how to help people be more physically active right and again
42:40
you know my my fundamental hypothesis is that we evolved to be physically active either when it's necessary or rewarding
42:47
and so I was curious if there's any any companies in the world that have made physical activity necessary in other
42:53
words what if we force people to be physically active and I found one so far I think there's only one company in the
42:59
world that I know of maybe there's some others but this is the only one I've ever found so far and it's the bjornborg
43:04
sports company in Sweden where the CEO of the company is this crazy sort of exercise addict and he um he requires
 43:12
every member of the company to to exercise they have sports hour every Friday at 11 o'clock so I actually
43:19
um when I when I was searching around and I was thinking you know I write working on the book I actually you know got I found an
article about them and I
43:26
you know I clicked on the on the company website and you know how every most companies have a little contact us so I I clicked
43:33
on the contact desk and I wrote a little note saying you know dear bjornberg company I'm a researcher an evolutionary
43:38
biologist I'm interested in exercise and I'm and I'm fascinated by how your company requires people to exercise can
43:44
I learn more and the next morning there was a an email from the CEO of the company saying why don't you come and
43:50
visit us so so I hopped on a plane a few a few months later went to Sweden and
43:55
they they let me he was so nice he just let me just go anywhere in the company and I went to sports Tower and I I
44:01
talked to employees throughout the company and it was fascinating I mean um a lot of the employees of the company
44:07
first of all a bunch of people apparently left the company when he took over a CEO and required this but it
44:14
doesn't matter who you are you could be working in the mail room you could be the CEO you could be a visiting board member whoever
you are if you're there
44:20
on Friday you have to go exercise with them and they have this pretty serious kind of exercise thing and apparently
44:25
some people quit but um but but pretty much everybody else said you know it's actually a pretty
44:31
damn good thing do you agree with that approach well yes and no um every University in the world used to
44:38
require in every school right supposedly requires exercise right I'm sure you had physical exercise you know physical some
44:44
kind of phys Ed required in your school those standards are slipping around the world and more and more kids are doing
44:51
less and less in school universities were no exception it used to be that all universities required
44:57
some degree of physical education mine was no exception in fact Harvard was a leader in that back in the you know 100
45:03
something years ago and over the uh since basically the 1970s that's basically disappeared
45:11
although most students if you ask them they think yeah it's actually a pretty good idea so I don't know maybe we can
45:17
bring back exercise as a and and the thing is that if you get used to it
45:22
right when you're young you're more likely to do it when you're older right because you set those are the that's the age in which your
habits become become
45:30
about your habits become your habits right and so at this a certain age where where if you can keep keep you know get
45:38
that making it make it a habit you're probably more likely to continue doing it for the rest of your life we kind of
45:43
see it as overreach don't we I was thinking about if I was to announce one of my companies that everyone is now
45:49
required to exercise it would seem like like tremendous overreach if I announce that everyone is required to read a
45:55
certain book they do it it'll be fine and it might be seen as a positive thing right it might be a representation of
46:00
our values that we are Learners and we're innovators and we keep you know nourishing our brains but we turn around to your team and
said this thing we're
46:06
all acquired to you're all required to go for a run every day or something people would it just feels personal yeah
46:13
like that's not the responsibility of an organization to tell me to go for exercise but we have we have
46:19
company you know Retreats I mean we do all kinds of stuff where people are required to do it so I don't know I challenge you try it what
we do and what
 46:26
we've always done we even do it with this team the driver SEO team is about 30 people so we have a fitness channel
46:31
in the company um slack channel the communication channel that we use and in that channel
46:37
um and we did this at my previous company as well where we would enable and facilitate so we
46:45
someone started a women's football team so we enabled it and promoted it someone started a men's football team so we enabled it
and promoted it and this this
46:52
also applies to non-physical sort of exercise related clubs like someone starts the reading club and we enabled
46:58
it and promoted it um and we also paid for it if they need to if they need new kits for example when the women's football team needed
47:04
wanted to have their own uniforms we paid for it because we saw a huge value in terms of Staff retention connection
47:11
community and all those things that actually lead up to staff retention if we could have more Social Clubs
47:16
outside of the office you know if you're thinking about leaving a job there's a number of things you weigh up to pay the
47:22
job whatever but you also weigh up how the community like the group of people I love and how much they bring to my life
47:28
and I actually think in the remote Working World um it's something that CEOs and leaders have really not paid enough attention to
47:35
that if they really want to retain their team members they should have them together as much as they can even outside of the office
bonding in a world
47:42
where screens are on the rise and pubs are on the decline in social activities and churches are on the decline there's
47:47
less sort of Institutions that connect to socially work has a big opportunity to do to do that so one of my big things
47:54
always in my head is like how can I get the team members and my companies to hang out more and a multiplier to that
48:00
is how can I get them to hang out more and move their bodies more because then they'll feel better right well well think about it it's play
right play yeah
48:07
exactly and I mean and play is what is another thing we evolve to do right like
48:13
kids play and we're one of the few species that plays as adults right and what is play play is a way in which you
48:19
you learn cooperation you you you build community but you also move your body
48:24
right in the first chapter of your book you say that you went to visit the Native American tribe and I'm going to try and pronounce this the
Tara Huma Tara humara
What did you learn from these tribes?
48:33
and they're famous for their long running yes what did you learn about running from them
48:39
well it's you know they have been famous for well over 100 years I mean many uh
48:44
people have gone to study the taramara and have commented on their amazing ability to run but what I really learned
48:51
from them is that um for them physical activity is spiritual
48:56
um you know there's this book Born to Run that uh that describes their their running and calls them a hidden tribe of
49:03
Supernatural super athletes they're not hidden and they're not super athletes um and um and the one thing that the
49:09
book missed was that the the main impetus for the for their for the running they do these famous
49:14
long-distance races is that it's a form of Prayer it's really very beautiful
49:20
um and um and it's a it's a metaphor for for life and um and and it's also a an
49:26
opportunity to bet in sports and all that it's all wrapped into one and and what I've learned was that this actually
49:33
used to be almost Universal among Native American populations right Native American tribes
 49:39
everybody had long distance races and ball games and and they were all had a spiritual element it's just that
49:46
they've they've retained their traditions because they're in a very remote part of of Mexico that's essentially
49:53
inaccessible we all used to do this all humans used to do this and in fact if you think if you look around the world
49:59
every population has this tradition of endurance during its events some of the subject might you talk about
Why you should do strength training on your feet
50:05
in your book but also outside of your book is is how we used to run um in terms of you know I was at the
50:12
foot doctor what's it called I don't know what they're called podiatrist that's what I said but podiatrist what did I say but I
50:20
went to the podiatrist the other day because I I got this what's it called when you're
50:26
I'm gonna point it on my foot it's part of my foot here started to get lots of pain everything that's it plantar
50:33
officiitis I started to get some plantar fasciitis and it was just this ongoing pain and they prescribed me some insoles
50:41
I stood on a couple of machines some soft stuff and they measured my foot and took this scan of it and said right
50:47
basically you're standing wrong um your arch is a bit too flat take these insoles and wear them in all of
50:53
your shoes and I just I always think in these moments when someone prescribes me something that's not natural I go
51:00
why like where did I go wrong and I think that's the key question
51:05
where did I go wrong who lied to me to the point now that at 30 years old I
51:11
have these bloody insoles that I have to put in all my shoes because presumably that's not natural presumably my my
51:17
ancestors don't have Bloody insoles yeah so
51:23
plantar fasciitis is what I would call a mismatch disease right a disease that's more common or more severe because our
51:29
bodies are inadequately adapted to Modern environments and in your case and as is the case with a lot of people you
51:35
have a weak foot so so we you know you look like you go to the gym looks like you're a pretty fit person right I'll
51:41
make a bet you you strengthen pretty much every muscle group in your body except your feet right no come on right
51:48
well but we don't right one of the reasons is because we we encase our feet in stiff-sold shoes that are very
51:53
comfortable and and the reason the shoes are comfortable is that your your foot muscles have to do less work when you
51:58
was using those shoes right we have shoes that are stiff soles they have arch supports right and your foot has
52:04
four layers of muscles in them and those muscles are supporting your arch and at the bottom of those four layers of
52:10
muscles is this layer of connective tissue the plantar fascia and the problem with the plantar fascia is that
52:16
if it stretches too much it like anything else right it gets inflamed but it's got almost no vascularization right
52:22
so it's very hard for it to repair itself when it gets inflamed to prevent plaster plantar fasciitis the best way
52:29
to preventing it is having a strong foot a strong foot's a healthy foot so the way to the way to treat the disease on
52:35
the long term is to strengthen your foot but if you want to just alleviate the symptoms that's what your podiatrist did
52:43
by giving you an insole right it's basically preventing your muscle your arch from collapsing as much making it more
52:49
comfortable so your your plantar fascia gets stress less and so it can kind of alleviates that that that that that
52:55
stretching and hence the pain right so that's a typical example of what I call dis Evolution it's what what happens
53:03
when you treat the symptoms of a mismatched disease rather than their causes of preventing their causes so
 53:09
podiatrists are a bit like drug pushers in that sense right because they're they're essentially putting your foot in
53:14
a cast right and then and for the rest of your life you kind of have to keep using them unless you strengthen your
53:20
feet so I so so there's nothing wrong with those you know treating the symptoms I mean pain is no fun so where
53:25
are the insoles right to kind of you know alleviate the pain but also work on strengthening your foot and I think
53:31
you'll find that the plantar fasciitis will will disappear and never come back so the plantar fasciitis fasciitis um
53:38
has now healed after about a month of wearing the
53:44
insole um I no longer have the insoles um with me here in New York and I don't have
53:49
them in any of my shoes because I've also taken a bit of time off um running on my feet I was playing a lot of football
53:55
so now I'm at a point where I can go to the preventable stage prevent it happening again and you said to strengthen my foot how does
one
54:01
strengthen their foot good question so there are some exercises and they're kind of foot
54:06
doming exercises and things like that they're you know I can send you some links to videos showing you some good
54:12
foot strengthening exercises so that's one way to do it but the other way is to wear more minimal shoes to wear shoes
54:18
that aren't stiff sold that don't have arch supports go barefoot a lot right and those that will naturally strengthen
54:26
the muscles in your foot because you'll have to use those muscles so you ever gone for like a long walk or run on a beach right and
afterwards your your
54:31
feet are kind of tired right the reason your feet are tired is because you're now working on a compliant surface right
54:37
it's not stiff so your muscles having to work more to stiffen your foot to push you forward
54:43
right jack could you go grab my the black shoe out of my bag I just want to show him something so uh so wearing
54:49
shoes that aren't as stiff sold when they don't have arch supports will slowly strengthen your feet but and this
54:54
is a huge but if you do too much too fast you will your plantar fasciates will come roaring back and you'll hate
55:00
me you'll like you'll never forgive me because um yeah there's a Vivo barefoots
55:05
um yeah I wear the same shoes oh you've got the same shoes on um great shoes yeah those are wonderful
55:12
shoes those are those are the those are the exactly the kind of shoes that will help strengthen your feet these are failing a new addition
in my life yeah
55:18
yeah they and they feel really strange because you can kind of feel the floor yeah it's exactly what you've described is yeah but but you
you can transition
55:25
if you have a weak feet which I'm guessing you do you if you go if you suddenly if that's the only shoe you
55:30
wear all the time you'll probably regret it right so so slowly slowly slowly increase the percentage of time that
55:37
just like anything else if you if you like suddenly decide to lift you know huge weights that you can't lift before
55:43
you'll hurt yourself right the same thing is with your feet so so slowly it does it but you if you do it gradually
55:48
and slowly and carefully you can build up strength in your foot and um and you'll and you'll be a happier happier
55:54
person and this is this goes back to everything else you've said about how choosing Comfort choosing to have a nice
55:59
supportive shoe has actually just kind of deferred a problem off into the future for me it's the same with diets
56:05
the same with avoiding exercise and being sanitary and and all these other things where when you choose the easy Road in the short
term which is this
 56:11
wonderful cushioned shoe I've chosen the muscle hasn't built up in my foot and I've paid the price correct so I need to
56:18
again choose discomfort more in the short term go up the stairs run Barefoot
56:23
to avoid the late the consequences later down the line yeah I mean I don't think you have to run Barefoot but um though
56:30
it can be fun but um um but yeah I mean and I can think of plenty of other examples
56:35
um we love Comfort but comfort's not necessarily good for us when you um when you look at these
Is too much muscle bad?
56:40
tribes are they do you know who liver King is huge massive muscles talks about
56:46
ancestral living um what do our hunter-gatherer ancestors look like in terms of them not like him
56:52
no okay I mean look think about it muscle is really expensive right it's
56:58
actually a super expensive tissue about a third of our body is muscle and it's using up about about you know A fifth or
57:04
more of the calories that we're expending right uh just just sitting there not even using them right they're they're very costly tissues right
and so
57:12
if you have more muscle than you need you're basically adding to your your cost of living right
57:19
if you're if you're a hunter-gatherer or even a subsistence farmer living on the margin of food security having more
57:26
muscle than you need is actually deleterious right remember the only thing that natural selection cares about is how many offspring you
have we
57:32
survive and reproduce it doesn't care if you're strong or healthy or nice or loved or you know fun or whatever it
57:39
only cares about whether you have grandchildren that's it right that's that's cold calculus of selection my
57:45
brain is going if I have big muscles I'll have more romantic opportunities and then I'll have grandchildren well only up to a certain point
right now so
57:52
if more muscles if if they attract the opposite sex and and make them want to reproduce with you yes that could be a
57:58
benefit I'm not so sure how much women are attracted to the liver King but um and
58:04
that's not something I even want to know the answer to but um and certainly shouldn't ask him but um
58:10
um um but but there's a reason we have use it or lose it which you mentioned earlier right because
58:15
when we need when we increase our demand we increase our capacity right when you go to the gym and you work out right you
58:21
build muscle but if you stop using those muscles you lose it and that's an adaptation right because you don't want
58:27
to spend extra energy on muscles you're not using right so you want enough but not too much you want to be economical
58:33
with muscle mass right um and so our if you look at the data from
58:39
hunter-gatherers and people have done that they've done grip strength tests Etc and all kinds of other fun things with like mini Olympics
I mean we've
58:45
done this too um people are reasonably strong but they're not super strong and they're not
58:50
they're not buff and built and bulked and all that sort of stuff they've got enough muscle to do what they need to do
58:55
but no more and the reason why people find muscle attractive anyway is because it's evolutionary signal isn't it of
59:03
uh reproductive value and resources maybe and the ability to go out and you
59:09
know what I mean why why does why does a woman for example find a man with muscles or in good shape attractive in
59:16
2023 when we're not hunting for gazelle well I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a
 59:21
psychologist or or so I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer that but I could I could Venture the guest that obviously
59:28
if you're trying to if you know we pair bond as a species and we have been for for millions of years probably you want
59:34
to pair bond with somebody who's going to because we also have of cooperation and food sharing right you want to pair
59:39
bond with somebody who's gonna be able to you know bring home the bacon literally and figuratively right but but
59:44
bringing home the bacon does not mean looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger at least back in the day Arnold Schwarzenegger back in
the day right
59:50
being bringing home the bacon back in the day meant being a persistence Hunter being able to run long distances and
59:57
being moderately strong so they looked more like a marathoner or or a football player than they did a a weight lifter
1:00:03
right so it's conceivable it's conceivable that someone who is really really big is actually
1:00:11
um less attractive because they wouldn't have been able to hunt and run and Hunt as well as someone who was a little bit
1:00:17
Yeah you also have to you have to feed my you have to feed them more too yeah and that's a you know those are precious
1:00:23
calories so I'm gonna guess that uh look if you look in in non-western populations uh you don't see physiques
1:00:30
like that this is a this is a privilege of people who are able to go to gyms and um and you know eat you know
1:00:38
you know whey powder shakes and all that kind of stuff to kind of build their crazy muscle mass but it's not something
1:00:44
that our ancestors were able to do on a regular basis that's for sure a quick quote on huel as you know they're a
1:00:49
sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company one of the things I've never really explained is how I came to have a
relationship with
1:00:55
Hugh one day in the office many years ago a guy walked past called Michael and he was wearing a heeled t-shirt and I
1:01:02
was really compelled by the logo I just thought from a design aesthetic point of view it was really interesting and I asked him what that
word meant and why
1:01:08
he was wearing that T-shirt and he said it's this brand called heal and they make food that is nutritionally complete
1:01:13
and very very convenient and has the planet in mind and he the next day dropped off a little bottle of fuel on
1:01:20
my desk and from that day onwards I completely got it because I'm someone that cares tremendously about having a
1:01:26
nutritionally complete diet but sometimes because of the way my life is that falls by the wayside so if there
1:01:32
was a really convenient reliable trustworthy way for me to be nutritionally complete in an affordable
1:01:38
away I was all ears especially if it's a way that is conscious of the planet give it a chance give it a shot let me know
1:01:44
what you think there's another myth that are you bust which I thought was really interesting because I think I know a lot of people
Running myths
1:01:50
that have used this as a reason not to run they say it's really bad for your knees oh man that gets me so mad right I
1:01:58
mean I hear this from doctors all the time right oh yeah writing is bad for your knees now it is true
1:02:03
that knee injuries are the most common running injuries um but
1:02:08
arthritis which is really what they're usually talking about it's absolutely definitively not true that running
1:02:15
increases rates of knee cartilage damage and arthritis so arthritis is caused by
1:02:20
cartilage wearing away in a joint right and it's a it's a myth that that running actually increases cartilage damage if
1:02:28
you have arthritis running is excruciating and problematic but if you don't have it running actually if
1:02:34
anything may be slightly preventive because cartilage joints like everything else
1:02:40
benefits from being used right and so physical activity actually helps promote strong and healthy joints we used to
1:02:47
think that it just caused them to wear away but actually you know like cars you know wearing away at their tires but now
1:02:52
we know that actually physical activity promotes repair mechanisms and cartilage just as it does in other tissues in the
1:02:59
body and um and of course the other thing about running is that I think a lot of people
1:03:05
run incorrectly today so uh so that's why we started studying barefoot running Millions you know along a few a bunch of
1:03:12
few decades ago is because if humans have been running for millions of years most of that time we were running Barefoot so we're kind
of curious how
1:03:18
did people run before shoes and what we learned was that today shoes have these cushioned heels
1:03:24
that enable you to essentially run the way you walk right you land on your heel and everybody who's Barefoot sometimes
1:03:29
lands on their heel but people who are Barefoot often more often than not land on the ball of their foot and then let
1:03:35
their heel down it's called a forefoot strike or a midfoot strike and when you do that we worked out the
1:03:41
biomechanics of that and published a paper on the cover of nature showing that when you do that you actually prevent your foot from
crashing into the
1:03:48
ground causing it what's called an impact a collisional force you run lightly and gently so if you were to
1:03:54
take your shoes off and run up Lexington Avenue here I guarantee you you would not be landing
1:04:00
on your heels within a few steps you'd start landing on the ball of your foot because it hurts less and so that's how
1:04:06
we evolve to run we've off to run in a cushion in a way that that doesn't involve you know
1:04:12
he's slamming into the ground with every step and the and that that causes less Force
1:04:19
around your knee um the trade-off though because nothing comes for free everything has trade-offs
1:04:24
is that it's harder on your ankles your calf muscles and your Achilles have to do now a lot more work to let your heel
1:04:30
down and so people who switch from heel striking to forefoot striking often have
1:04:35
Achilles tendon problems they get calf muscle problems they don't do it properly they'll get their foot muscles
1:04:40
aren't strong enough they'll get all kinds of foot problems right so you can't just suddenly become a Barefoot Runner and start forefoot
striking if
1:04:47
you're gonna switch you have to switch gradually and slowly and build up strength and learn to do it properly another thing people do is
they tend to
1:04:53
run like a ballerina high up on their toes that's really hard on your ankles and your calves so you got to do it
1:04:58
properly but if you but it can have enormous benefits and so and we know again if you run that way there's puts
1:05:05
much less force on your knees and again knees are where people get injured the most so I think a lot of knee injuries
1:05:10
come from um from the way in which we run
1:05:16
so would you recommend if you can to run more Barefoot especially if you have those
1:05:23
kind of shoes we just discussed well I think what matters is how you run what's on your feet okay so I would say a
1:05:29
Barefoot style how do I learn to run in a new way though well I mean there's some tricks so one
1:05:34
of them is um first of all I don't know how you run so so maybe maybe you already run just fine
1:05:40
um but a Barefoot style tends to be a high stride rate or high stride
 1:05:46
frequency so 90 strides per minute or 180 steps per minute roughly
1:05:52
you know um 170 180 steps a minute is about right um relatively short strides so you're
1:05:59
not throwing your leg out and to me the most important thing is not what we call over striding you've asked any coach on
1:06:04
the planet they'll say overstriding is bad over strings when you throw your leg out way in front of you and you land and that leg is a stiff
leg so that a stiff
1:06:12
leg means more Force right um and uh and um and it's harder on your
1:06:17
knees um and so if you and so a good runner lands uh with their with their shank
1:06:24
with their tibia vertical so their ankle is below their knee when you do that
1:06:30
pretty much everything will work out properly right um it'll mean that you won't land hard on your heel it'll mean that your your
1:06:37
leg will be acting like an excellent spring you won't produce a lot of braking Force
1:06:42
um it's a it's a it's I to me I think the most important skill in running is not to over stride
1:06:48
um and um so I actually so don't worry about how you're going to hit the ground just worry about your overstride if you
1:06:55
solve your overstride you're more likely to run well what do you think's um
The best cardio workout
1:07:00
what's the best kind of sort of cardiovascular exercise for the promotion of good health because I've
1:07:06
been doing some CrossFit stuff I've been doing some hit workouts um I've been trying not to run because
1:07:11
I've had a few injuries and try not to run as much because it seems to be a little bit more impact than if I'm bullshitting myself there but
um so I've
1:07:18
been doing some like hit workouts every for 30 minutes a day when I leave here well you do it you hit it works every
1:07:25
single day pretty much every day at the moment we track it with a group of friends we have there's 10 of us in a WhatsApp group
whoever's last whoever
1:07:32
does the least workouts every month is evicted and there's a raffle so there's a raffle yesterday on the first was it
1:07:37
the first yesterday yeah for a new member and we do that every month and we've done it for three and a half years
1:07:42
that's good I've been in there I was the first ever member so I've been in there for three and a half years well I think you know I mean the
most
1:07:49
the best exercise the one you like doing but is that one that's like better you know like the you know I think you got
1:07:54
to mix it up there is no one perfect exercise right I mean I think what you do it sounds actually pretty good right
1:07:59
you got a mixture of of of you know low slow intensity some some high intensity
1:08:06
you want to have some strength training you want to have some cardio I mean we never evolved to do one thing and our
1:08:12
bodies are too complex to benefit from just one thing uh mixing it up is is the obvious way to
1:08:19
go right um I think the Bedrock for any kind of physical I mean you've asked anybody right cardio is the Bedrock of
1:08:24
of of of of of of of exercise right it it promotes the most health benefits right and it's good for your good you
1:08:32
know your burning energy it's good for your cardiovascular system it's good for controlling inflammation but but but
1:08:38
there are different kinds of cardio in high intensity versus low intensity and there's also strength training right uh
1:08:44
which is also you know important so you know there's no look we've tried to medicalize exercise right it's like a
1:08:51
like there's a proper dose right you know take this pill this many milligrams this many times per week right exercise
 1:08:58
it doesn't work that way there is no there is no optimal dose everybody's
1:09:04
different it depends on are you more worried about heart disease or Alzheimer's or diabetes or depression or
1:09:10
you know are you previously injured are you fit are you unfit there's it's
1:09:16
impossible to prescribe exercise in this kind of medicalized way it doesn't work a lot of people exercise because they
The best exercise for weight loss
1:09:23
believe it will help them to lose fat belly fat are the biggest debates on the planet it has been a huge debate even on
1:09:29
this podcast I've had multiple people come and say a whole range of things about weight loss and cardio and I'm
1:09:36
kind of I don't know what to believe anymore well anybody wasn't confused doesn't understand what's going on right you
1:09:42
know it's um it's sad that it's such a debate um but um but that's how science works
1:09:50
right so um as you know I wrote about that in this
1:09:55
book um part of the explanation for the debate
1:10:00
is that again what dose are you analyzing and what population in what kind of context right
1:10:08
so though pretty much every major Health Organization in the world recommends that you get 150 minutes per week of
1:10:15
physical activity that's kind of like The Benchmark that's what the you know the wh who the World Health Organization
1:10:21
considers the the division between being sedentary versus active
1:10:26
so and a lot of people are unfit and overweight and struggling to be physically active have struggled to get
1:10:33
150 minutes a week right so a lot of studies prescribe 150 minutes a week of exercise
1:10:38
walking for example a moderate intensity physical activity and then look at its effects on weight loss and guess what
1:10:45
when you when you walk 150 minutes a week which is what 20 minutes a day of walking which is about a mile a mile a
1:10:51
day you're not going to lose much weight you're basically burning about 50 calories a day doing that right that's a
1:10:58
piddling amount of calories compared to drinking a glass of orange juice right
1:11:03
so so surprise surprise those kinds of studies show that
1:11:08
those doses of physical activity are not very effective for weight loss however plenty of rigorous controlled
1:11:16
studies that look at higher doses of physical activity 300 minutes a week or more find that they are effective at
1:11:22
losing for helping people lose weight but not fast and not large quantities so you're never going to lose a lot of
1:11:27
weight really fast by exercising it's not going to happen because you know a cheeseburger has what you know
1:11:33
800 900 calories you have to run you know 15 kilometers to lose that to
1:11:39
burn the same number of calories you're going to be hungry afterwards too so you're going to make some of that back you have
compensation
1:11:45
so so physical activity is a is actually there's just no way around it you have to be a flat earther not to argue this
1:11:51
way but they're you know their physical activity can help you lose weight but it's not going to help you lose a lot of weight fast and not at
the low doses
1:11:58
that often are prescribed but the one thing that we do agree on and I think this would not be controversial is that
1:12:04
physical activity is really important for helping people prevent themselves from gaining weight or after a diet from
1:12:12
regaining weight and there are many many studies which show this one of my favorite was a study that was done in
 1:12:17
Boston on policemen you know policemen are kind of a reputation for you know having too many donuts and being
1:12:22
overweight right and Boston is no exception so they did this great study at Boston University right across across
1:12:28
the river where they got a bunch of policemen on a diet a really severe diet the policemen all
1:12:34
lost weight but some of the policemen were had to diet and exercise some just dieted alone and as you might imagine
1:12:40
the ones who died plus exercise lost a little bit more weight not a lot just a little but and then they tracked them
1:12:47
for months afterwards because most people after a diet the weight comes just crashing back right the policeman
1:12:53
who's kept exercising even after the diet was over and they went back to eating whatever the hell they wanted donuts whatever they're
the ones who
1:12:59
kept the weight off but the ones who didn't exercise the way it came crashing back another
1:13:05
good example would be the have you ever seen the TV show The Biggest Loser uh yes were they are people going to lose
1:13:11
weight yeah so that so there's a crazy show right these people you know this is like totally unhealthy they were confined to a Ranch in
Malibu and he's
1:13:18
got these people lost ridiculous amounts of weight a guy named um Kevin Hall at the National Institute of Health studied
1:13:24
them from for for years afterwards and looked at and most of them regained a lot of the weight that they lost and
1:13:30
there was one person on the show who did not and that was the person who kept exercising right and that's you know
1:13:36
just yet more we said one data point but there's lots and lots of evidence to show that physical activity what its
1:13:41
other important benefit when it comes to weight is is preventing weight gain or weight regain when we talk about dieting
1:13:47
we talk about exercise or Diet exercise or Diet like why is it an or I mean why isn't it exercise and diet
1:13:54
diet is of course the Bedrock for weight loss but exercise also plays an important role and should be part of the
1:14:01
mix on the um police example and The Biggest Loser example I can relate in the sense that when I
1:14:08
exercise when I go through the moments of my life where I'm most committed to exercise I'm
1:14:15
also most committed to my diet yeah because I if I go to the gym I will not
1:14:20
then leave the gym and have a donut or a pizza absolutely not it seems like wasting the effort so
1:14:28
if you look at the sort of correlation between the moments in my life where I eat healthiest they're also the moments in my life where I'm
most most focused
1:14:34
on the gym and I noticed there was a couple of months ago I had a bit of a motivation slump managed to stay in a
1:14:39
little WhatsApp group but coaster down the bottom of the leaderboard for a couple of months on a just like surviving every month by
one
1:14:46
um and through those moments my motivation of the gym had gone down and my diet had gone down the minute I
1:14:54
managed to get in the gym and do a big workout the same day my diet came back yeah of
1:15:00
course right and they co-vary right and and that's one of the reasons why when people do big studies of of you know
1:15:06
what you know you can look at what what people die of right what's on the death certificate you know cancer heart
1:15:12
disease whatever heart attack um and then you look at what caused the cancer what caused heart disease when
1:15:17
people try to do that it's almost impossible to separate diet and exercise because people who tend to eat better
1:15:24
also tend to exercise more they're both in our modern upside down topsy-turvy
1:15:29
world they're both markers of privilege people have money to go to the gym almost have money to buy healthy foods
1:15:34
and um and people who care about their physical activity also tend to care
1:15:39
about their diet so so at that level they're very hard to separate however if
1:15:46
you're studying a particular component of a system and it randomized controls trial in a lab you can separate them out
1:15:53
and so we know that they have independent and also interact of effects
1:15:58
what is the um the most important thing we haven't talked about Daniel I think the most important thing is that we need
Why we need more compassion around exercise
1:16:04
to be compassionate towards each other I mean there's so much shaming and blaming and prescriptions and you know you know
1:16:14
the reason I entitled the book exercised is that people we make people feel exercised about exercise we make them
1:16:21
feel uncomfortable and I'm confident and shamed and and you know here you and I
1:16:28
are having this conversation but I can tell that you you take you know you're you're I mean I know I've listened to
1:16:33
enough of your podcast you care about your your health and your care about diet you care about exercise and people may look at you
and think gosh I wish I
1:16:40
was like him but uh it's just not me you know I can't I'm not I'm not there right and they may feel put off by our
1:16:46
conversation and I think that so often these discussions make people feel feel bad about about what they're doing and I
1:16:53
and I and I and I and I think that what we need to emphasize is that if you put
1:16:59
you know if you put a chocolate cake and an apple in front of me here I would want to eat the chocolate cake and it
1:17:04
would I might eat the apple only because you're there but if you weren't there I would eat the chocolate cake right and
1:17:10
and when I'm in the in the in my building at Harvard my office is on the fifth floor of this
1:17:16
old Victorian building every single day I want to take the elevator and the only reason I take the stairs is that if
1:17:22
anybody catches me in the elevator I'll be a hypocrite it's not that I don't want to take the elevator I do want to take the elevator
1:17:28
right I guess you guys say Lift right um and and we make people feel bad for
1:17:33
taking the elevator right um they should feel bad it's an instinct and so I think we have to figure out ways to help
1:17:40
people without shaming them and without blaming them and without bragging and whatever make you know you know talking about
you
1:17:47
know the marathon they ran or this that or the other make them feel um less uncomfortable
1:17:53
about the topic and realize that you don't have to spend the English Channel or run a marathon or you know join your
1:17:59
WhatsApp group and do crazy hit workouts every day by the way you don't need to hit workouts every day get the benefit
1:18:06
um um instead just you know taking the stairs in your building every day anything is better than nothing and and
1:18:12
you'll get benefits from that and I hope that that's the message that needs to get out right anything is better than
1:18:17
nothing and if you can get started on that on that on that pathway then it'll
1:18:23
it'll eventually become self-rewarding and and that and that leads me to the other topic that we didn't talk about which is that the reward
system of
1:18:29
physical activity you know you and I if we go for like I'm really looking forward to my run tomorrow morning in
1:18:34
the park I love running Central Park it's one of the best places in the world around right a fantastic view from the
1:18:40
top and it's just gorgeous right um but when I run Central Park tomorrow I'm going to get a big dopamine hit I'm
 1:18:46
gonna my body's gonna produce all this dopamine which is the molecule that says do that again right it's a award
1:18:52
gamblers get dopamine hits right people eat chocolate cake get a dopamine hit
1:18:57
right but if I were unfit and overweight I wouldn't get that dopamine hit
1:19:03
and so when people start exercising they don't get the reward that people who are fit and and custom to doing it get and
1:19:10
then they're made to feel bad like you didn't enjoy your run around Central Park well it takes months if not years
1:19:15
before you actually get that reward really yeah because because just like
1:19:20
being overweight causes you to become insensitive to insulin you become insensitive to all kinds of other
1:19:27
hormones in neurotransmitters and dopamine is one of them so so it's not an instant like benefit right it's hard
1:19:34
and so we need to be compassionate again towards people who are struggling to become fit and struggling to get the
1:19:39
reward and also if you're overweight and you run around Central Park it's like [ __ ] if I were carrying weights and running around Central
Park it'd be much
1:19:45
harder right now it's you know it's challenging and so we once you get you know into that state it's hard to get
1:19:52
back to the state of activity and so we we need as a as a society to to to help
1:19:57
those folks rather than judge them those folks that are struggling and I was one of those folks that were struggling for
1:20:02
many many years I was would say to myself every year um pretty much all of my adult life that this was going to be the year that I'd get
fit I try all of
1:20:09
these various different you know fad exercise things by all this stuff I
1:20:15
announced in 2017 that I was going to work out every single day and that lasted for six months and then I yo-yo
1:20:21
back out of that it never stuck with me until 2020 and that's I've been
1:20:27
exercising six days a week since 2020 82 percent of days and um
1:20:34
I reflect and try and diagnose how I went from someone who what was it that
1:20:39
changed and if I can figure out what it was that changed that the most fundamental level in my mindset or my
1:20:44
attitude or my life or whatever it was then I can help other people figure out
What is it that actually gets people exercising?
1:20:50
that too or at least give them more sound advice or at least be more empathetic whatever's required to help
1:20:55
them you know and I have a platform here where I speak about exercise a lot on these things so what's your suspicion
1:21:01
what's your suspicion on what it is that makes people go from being you know maybe having a um
1:21:06
a negative opinion towards exercise or their ability to be disciplined with it to
1:21:11
becoming an exerciser do you know I've this is a question that
1:21:18
obsesses me in fact we have a big project right now a big Grant to actually study this oh really right now
1:21:23
um because I the more I study it the more I think it's social
1:21:28
the more I think that um um again I think people are physically active in our modern world exercise
1:21:36
for two reasons when it's necessary or rewarding and what makes it rewarding for most people is the social aspect and
1:21:43
that social aspect can take many dimensions it can be running with a group of friends and you know
1:21:49
you might want to go only a mile but your friends convince you to
 1:21:55
run another Mile right and you end up running two miles right or you're feeling bad and crappy and your you know
1:22:00
your friends help you do it or I'm a running buddy right and I often you know meet meet friends for early morning runs
1:22:07
and I can tell you that the evening before it seems like a great idea to meet Aaron at 6am on the corner of Mass
1:22:12
Ave and linnaean the next morning at 6am I want to stay in bed with my wife you
1:22:18
know I don't want to I want to meet this nasty smelly guy you know at 6am and the cold dark but I agreed to meet him and
1:22:24
out I go right now I'm usually glad I did it afterwards or um you know we can go on there are other social ways in
1:22:30
which which but or dancing right I mean nobody thinks of dancing as exercise but it's exercise right
1:22:36
so that's one important social Dimension and the other one though is accountability um I describe in the book I'm there's a
1:22:43
there's a friend of mine in San Francisco who's struggling to just to exercise
1:22:48
so she signed up for a program with this company called stick.com I don't know if you run across it where it's a
1:22:55
commitment contract where you send like a thousand dollars to them and they keep it in their bank account they
1:23:01
probably invest it make a lot of money on it too but you set up a referee and
1:23:06
and you agree that I'm gonna not smoke or this or that or the other or in this case exercise and if you don't do it
1:23:14
and your referee is you know what you know keeping track of what you do you get to choose something negative so
1:23:21
in her case her husband is her referee and if she doesn't walk I can't remember what every day she has to walk a certain
1:23:27
number of miles her husband will will tell her and and or tell the website and it'll
1:23:32
send fifty dollars to the NRA that week oh my God and she hates the NRA with a
1:23:37
burning passion what is the name right and the National Rifle Association they're they're the people who are trying to prevent gun control
1:23:43
legislation in the United States and they have effectively prevented gun control like legislation United States which is now kills more
children than
1:23:49
cars in the United States so if she doesn't exercise sorry she doesn't do it then then money goes to this
1:23:55
organization that she hates so that's a this is a stick if there ever was one as opposed to a carrot and I don't think she's every time I see
her ask her you
1:24:01
know you kept up the walk he says oh no the NRA hasn't gotten a penny right so for her it's been very effective so it's
1:24:07
she's made a commitment contract that that stings right that really hurts now I think I might be a little on the
1:24:12
extreme side and I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to everybody but but she's accountable right she's made
1:24:17
herself accountable in some ways and I think um people can find ways to make themselves accountable to a friend
1:24:24
a loved one a parent you know priest who knows what right
1:24:30
um You might or or hire trainer that's I mean that's kind of what a trainer does makes you accountable right and I think
1:24:36
so so those are again social ways to help people be more physically active so I think there are multiple ways of doing
1:24:41
that and I suspect that is going to be the most effective sort of set of tools
1:24:47
that will help people one thing I actually do is that on the screen saver of my phone it has something that really
1:24:52
inspires me so I see it every day and it's that reminder for me which reinforces my my why across my life it's
The last guest's question
1:24:59
actually my home screen on my iPhone is actually a bit of a mood board for me we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the
last guest leaves a question
1:25:05
for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for and I don't get to see it until I open the book um the question is what is
one
1:25:12
aspect or feature of your life that causes you the most friction
1:25:20
slash discomfort and how can you change or fix it I would say
1:25:25
um it's my tendency to compare myself to others
1:25:32
um uh I you know you know life is short life is precious
1:25:37
we're all experiments of one and uh when I think about when I when I when I
1:25:45
engage in that oh so and so has such and such um that um that's a really bad habit
1:25:50
that's a really bad trade it never leads anywhere good it only leads towards either either I think about how I have
1:25:56
more of something than somebody else that leads to um uh I think unhealthy
1:26:03
uh feelings of Pride or feelings of jealousy um you know so-and-so has this award or
1:26:09
such and such and and uh that's um that's kind of pernicious so I think that's a bad habit that I uh I work hard
1:26:17
to to overcome because it changes your expectations of yourself and that chain takes steals
1:26:23
happiness it steals happiness yeah it steals happiness thank you for the
1:26:29
work you do Daniel very important very very important and increasingly important I think um when we look at the
1:26:35
the health outcomes especially here in the United States of people I mean you actually share a number of them in the
1:26:41
book which I didn't didn't we didn't really go into but they're just horrifying yeah um it's scary out there
1:26:47
especially as it really relates to exercise um there was one in particular that I wrote down because it horrified me
1:26:53
I can't remember it was just all the stats around the current Healthcare only 50 of Americans ever exercise ever
1:26:59
really ever ever and only 20 meet those very minimal
1:27:06
World Health Organization standards where where We're a nation of couch
1:27:12
potatoes and the rest of the world is headed our way but not if they get this book
1:27:19
because it I think it is a real perspective changer and it's a real eye opener and it's a necessary one so thank you so much for writing it
you're
1:27:24
fantastic at what you do and um I'm I'm now a huge fan of your work after delving in deeper and deeper and deeper
1:27:31
um so I can't wait to see what you do next um well thank you and I recommend everyone to go get this book exercised
1:27:36
because um yeah I thought I knew a lot about exercise but uh but from reading that and having that window into a
1:27:43
hunter-gatherer ancestors and tribes and other cultures it really that whole idea of a mismatched life how mismatched my
1:27:49
life is in so many fundamental ways from diet to exercise to socializing
1:27:54
um and these kind of books help to realign well thank you although it seems
1:28:00
that you're doing a pretty good job trying you know I think we're so far from being human though that yeah
1:28:05
there's still a long way to go for all of us so thank you Daniel [Music]
1:28:11
as you know Airbnb are a sponsor of this podcast and I was actually in an Airbnb last weekend when me and my friends had
1:28:17
a reunion in New York and it's from staying in airbnbs over the years that led me to start hosting my own place I
1:28:23
know friends of mine who actually Airbnb their own place in order to pay for the Airbnb they use when they're away on
1:28:29
holiday which is pretty smart and maybe you stayed in an Airbnb before and thought this is actually pretty doable
1:28:35
maybe my place could be an Airbnb it could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your entire place you
1:28:41
could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it whether you could use some extra money to cover your bills or

some of the greatest seducers who are not good looking at all what are the qualities of a great Seducer I'm
0:07
revealing stuff I shouldn't be revealing Robert Greene is one of the best-selling authors in history an internationally
0:12
renowned expert on power strategies and referencing songs by Jay-Z Kanye West
0:18
and Drake written six International bestsellers that have become legendary why did you write a book about seduction
0:23
seduction is in high form of power people will do what you want without ever even realizing seduction is a
0:31
mating ritual you can't just swipe and get it but because of all the dating apps if you are able to understand the
0:38
language of Seduction you're going to have so much more power and success than anybody else one thing about words is
0:43
people can lie but body language it doesn't lie you master that language you can start deciphering all these people
0:50
are giving you it's about psychology and it's about how you carry yourself if you feel confident it will naturally radiate
0:56
through your gestures but what is real confidence and how does one build it confidence comes from
1:02
you've talked about the topic of powers but in 2018 you had a stroke in that
1:07
moment it sounds like your power had been taken from you the left side of my body is paralyzed and that was not easy
1:13
I've got to find a strategy to deal with all this please understand that the ability that you have now to run to walk
1:20
to type you can be taken away from you it's miserable please don't take it for granted
1:27
foreign before we get into this episode just
1:32
wanted to say thank you first and foremost for being part of this community um the team here at the diver Co is now
1:37
almost 30 people and that's literally because you watch and you subscribe and you um leave comments and you like the
1:44
videos that this Show's been able to grow and it's the greatest honor of my life to sit here with these incredible people and just selfishly
ask them
1:51
questions that I'm pondering over or worrying about in my life but this is just the beginning for the day of this year we've got big big
plans to scale
1:58
this show and to every corner of the world and to to diversify Our Guest selection and that's enabled by you by a
2:04
simple thing that you guys do which is to watch so if there's one thing you could do to help this show and to help
2:10
us continue to do what we do it's just to hit the Subscribe button if you like this show if you like what we do here if
Your book & its international success
2:15
you watch these episodes please just hit that subscribe button means the world let's get on with it
2:21
[Music]
2:28
what do I need to know about you and your your earliest years to to understand the life that you went on
2:34
that Journey you went on and the person you came to be well I grew up here in Los Angeles not far from where we are in
2:41
a neighborhoods called Baldwin Hills and then we move to another neighborhood a very nice childhood very middle class
2:48
family my father was a Salesman his whole life worked for the same company for 40 years just sold chemical supplies
2:58
um and you know my parents kind of left me alone a lot I was basically my sister
3:04
almost kind of raised me in a way and and you know I had a very nice childhood kind of left alone sort of an introvert
3:12
books kind of shaped me I became an Avid Reader in early age no knew I wanted to be a writer got
3:20
heavily into drugs I'm afraid in high school because that's that was the time and where I went to school and in
3:26
college had some great experiences I looked very fondly back even on my drug experiences even though they got kind of
3:33
depressing after a while but it kind of shaped me in in some ways
3:38
and you know that was that was me growing up you know and if I had an attitude or a lens in which I looked at
3:45
people from a distance like I was always sort of Obsessed with people wore masks and the way I
3:53
looked at it even when I looked at my my parents and their friends and I said what is really going on behind their the
3:59
masks that they were in all the social nice cities going on what is behind what is really the human
4:06
animal like and so these are kind of the themes that that were make big part of my Me growing
4:13
up from what I read you had a lot of different jobs and a lot of different Industries up until the point
4:19
when you wrote um the first of your many books called the 48 Laws of Power back in 1998 and I
4:26
was looking at all of these different jobs you'd had and they all seem to be completely different from one another so then trying to
understand how you
4:32
arrived at a moment where you then wrote a book on the topic and subject matter of power
4:38
um having not been you know a psychology graduate or seemingly worked in any
4:45
industry related to like human psychology seemed to be really peculiar to me
4:50
yeah and also I never really had a lot of power up until that point so it wasn't like I knew everything about
4:56
being a leader or anything um you know a lot of things that happen in life are kind of by coincidence or
5:03
serendipitous you don't necessarily plan on it which is sort of when you look back on it you can see a kind of an odd
5:10
plan going on like a Destiny or fate but in the moment I didn't feel that
5:15
um I had all of these different jobs as you mentioned some of them completely unrelated you know I worked in
5:21
construction I had a construction job I worked in the detective agency I was a
5:26
tour guide to help write an encyclopedia I taught English in Spain you know on
5:31
and on and on and on and on but I was searching I wanted to be a writer and a writer needs experiences
5:39
I just was hungry for weird experiences you know I never really stuck at any one
5:44
job and by the time you're 37 38 you know my parents are starting to worry about me I'm starting to worry
5:50
about me I'm getting a little bit depressed even have moments for suicidal thoughts are floating in my brain like
5:55
I'm very ambitious I know I could do something well but it's never come together and so here's the Serendipity
6:03
part I'm in Italy for a job one of my 80 different jobs and I meet a man who's a
6:08
book packager there on this particular job we're on and he's
6:14
he's a Dutchman I'm not going to imitate him but he asked me if I had any ideas for a book
6:19
and suddenly all of the painful experiences in my life working in Hollywood all the I've worked
6:26
for all these weird politicking all the manipulative games all the crap that I had seen it just came like almost
6:33
vomiting out of me and I said you know here we are it's 20 this was 19 20th
6:40
century back then here we are in the late 20th century and people don't dress like they did in
6:46
the days of Machiavelli right they don't wear wigs and stuff but it's the same damn thing it's the same bloody battles
6:53
going on the same manipulations the same kind of you know people don't reveal who they are
6:59
and it's a Timeless game of power just the same as Louis xivari Borgia or the people the CEOs in
7:08
the late 20th century it says tout this Timeless thing and I as I'm telling him this his eyes are lighting he's wow this
7:15
could be this could really be a book and you know he said look Robert I'll pay you to live
7:22
while you write half the book and then we'll sell it and as I told you before I was desperate
7:28
it was my get rich or die trying moment I went back to Los Angeles I borrowed
7:33
money from my parents because I was that poor and I wrote a treatment and he loved it
7:38
and that the rest is history that's sort of my long-winded answer to your question that's so interesting it's
7:45
crazy how in life things can just take such a ton out of nothing and you never know
7:52
what that thing is going to be and I mean you say the rest is history there give me an idea of the success of that
7:59
book the 48 Laws of Power because I mean I've seen it everywhere for for as long as I've been looking at books so what's
8:06
the give me some quantify the global success of that book quantify yeah
8:11
well here in the U.S it's it's sold quite a bit over 2 million copies which
8:16
is great and the weird thing is it's selling now more than it ever has sold
8:21
before in other words the the percentage of books that we're selling here in 2023
8:26
is greater than any period before so it's accelerating which is insane you
8:32
know and even my English Publishers having the same uh is telling me the same stuff
8:38
so it's kind of accumulated it it started off a little bit slowly I mean we got press but it became this kind of
8:45
cult thing I've had very little publicity in mainstream media which was big back then it's not big anymore thank
8:52
God but um it was word of mouth it's like if you
8:57
heard about this book it's kind of dark blah blah blah blah it got on a few television shows there was this show a
9:03
reality show with boxers I think it was called the contender in which the finalist held up a copy of the book and
9:09
said this book helped me get to where I am now and it sold like crazy it got into the hip-hop stream you know Jay-Z
9:17
was the first person I ever saw quoting the book in in print and in Playboy interview and then you know 50 Cent and
9:25
all that and Drake and all these people that really kind of set it into the stratosphere so it's it's slowly become
9:32
a bigger and bigger thing and um I had no idea you know I thought it was
9:37
a weird book and it could be successful but I had no idea the journey I was about to begin it's it's weird that
9:45
journey of writing this book has your have your feelings towards the book evolved or changed over time because
9:51
Society moves on you move on as an individual as a human you learn new things you mature and then the book is
 9:57
kind of held in time not really um I I my philosophy in life is is never
10:04
look back regret nothing you know it's it's there I did it it came in a
10:09
particular moment in my life and in in the Zeitgeist and things have changed a
10:14
little bit but I was it was a very serious effort to try and get it something Timeless now
10:21
yes there's a dark side to it and maybe I've moved on from that and I did honestly when I wrote my fourth book
10:28
mastery I was a little bit concerned that young people were getting to were thinking
10:35
that the whole game of life is about politics manipulation so I wrote a book to kind of counter that
10:42
but I I think the book is is true and it's held up I think
10:48
if I look at business what's going on in the business world I kind of got I think
10:53
I hit it on the nail about what goes on in the Dynamics and the power game you know I wrote a book on human nature
11:00
and the idea is we were formed hundreds of thousands of years ago in particular
11:05
circumstances our brains are wired a certain way yes we're very sophisticated
11:11
yes we have the internet yes I'm here being interviewed by you on a podcast it's pretty insane but we haven't
11:18
fundamentally changed the same raw emotions of Envy of aggression of of you
11:25
know worrying about our status about having to disguise ourselves and appear
11:30
like we're saintly and loving that we don't have a shadow which we all have
11:35
none of that has changed so yeah I wouldn't write that book now because I'm
11:41
at a different place in life and and I understand that but I have I don't I'm not ashamed of it in
What is power?
11:47
any way I stand by it and I think I hitted something real what is in your definition what is power
11:54
you know I was really compelled when you're talking about the evolution evolutionary roots of power but like at its Essence what is
power
12:01
it's not what you think it is it's not you know Vladimir Putin or presidents or
12:07
Biden or all these political figures and these big games Power is a feeling it's in essence it's an emotion it's a it's a
12:14
human need and desire and really what power is is a sense of
12:20
understanding yourself and and being able to control yourself so the way I
12:25
look at it I like to look at it not through the lens of great power politics but as an average everyday human being
12:32
here in the United States or in England the feeling that you have with your
12:38
children with your spouse with your colleagues the people who work for you
12:45
the sense that you have no control that you can't influence them with your ideas that you can't get them to maybe you
12:54
know soften some of their ugly Behavior if they if they have that that you can't get them interested in helping you with
13:00
a project or whatever is the most miserable feeling a human being can have Malcolm X out a quote that I love which
13:07
is absolute power corrupts but absolute powerless corrupts even more
13:14
I'm I'm butchering it but that was the gist of it the feeling of powerlessness
13:19
is actually more corrupting than the feeling of having a lot of power you it makes it turns people into being
13:27
passive aggressive into playing all kinds of weird games negative games to get power
13:32
you want to feel that you have a degree of control over events in your life over
13:38
people over your future and that to me is what a power is right and so some of
13:46
that involves these games that I I mentioned in there and some of it goes beyond the 48 Laws of Power which I've
13:53
tried to indicate in my other books but it's the sense that I'm not helpless
13:59
in this world I remember when I first entered the work world as a very naive college graduate
14:06
with all these ideals and things I'd read because I was studying literature and languages
14:12
going man this is weird people are playing all these kind of games I mean over my head I made mistakes I got fired
14:19
for being you know too Brash for outshine the master it was painful right
14:25
and so learning you don't have to abuse the loss of power I don't Advocate crushing
14:31
your enemy totally I hope I don't have any enemies ever that I need to crush ever
14:37
you just need to know these things so that when you enter the work world you're not naive you're not stupid you
14:42
don't make the same kind of mistakes that I made you spare yourself with pain you understand the most fundamental
14:47
thing about human nature people have egos even your boss has an ego you think he
14:54
he or she doesn't because they're powerful they have they're even more insecure than other people you need to
15:00
be aware of these things so that you don't inadvertently make them feel insecure and suffer the consequences
15:07
so um that's I don't know that's sort of my idea of power that I was trying to
15:13
describe there the way you describe it is more of a sort of intrinsic um Force perception of yourself when
15:20
people think of power they think of having control over others or their influence over others but you've kind of
15:26
made it more of a internal Force yeah well if you can't control yourself then you're in a lot of trouble
15:33
in this world right because when you just naturally are yourself doing things you're going to offend
15:39
people you learn early on we're social animals I have to tailor my behavior you know if you go on babbling about all
15:47
about how you feel and think Etc and you just say what's the first thing on your mind you're going to end up having a very very short
career you're going to
15:54
be saying things that are going to offend people you're going to be making a fool of your yourself you'd be saying things that you end up
regretting right
16:01
so you have no self-control and if you see somebody who has no self-control it makes them it makes you
16:09
look like you're not powerful if you can't control yourself how can you control anything in your environment how
16:15
can you be a leader right so you have to learn certain things about about your nature
16:22
about who you are and and not just just be anybody you have to kind of tailor
16:27
your appearances as well because for good or for bad I'm a
16:32
Believer in looking at the human animal without shame and embarrassment just as
16:37
we are right and appearances matter it's the animal part of our nature we we're
16:44
we look at we look we judge people by how they how they how they appear how they dress their tone to voice their
 16:52
body language etc etc it would be in an Ideal World
16:57
we wouldn't judge people by appearances we just judge them by what's inside of them yes I agree with that but that
17:03
we're not ideal we're not descended from Angels we're descended from primates so
17:09
you have to understand that appearances matter and this is part of of the game
17:15
and so you have to control your appearances a little bit you have to tailor it you have to be a bit of actor in this world
17:21
on and on and on you know these are things that people don't like to admit about ourselves we
17:28
like to think that we we're much more have much more idealistic that we're that these things really don't matter in
17:35
the end and I wish it were that way but it's not and so um I'm a bit more of a realist
17:41
when it comes to things like that but yeah as you were talking about this
17:47
need to keep up appearances to some degree in order to survive and to fit into the the tribes that we form in our
17:53
lives it made me think about how many guests I've had on this podcast who work in maybe the entertainment industry or
18:00
other Industries yeah you know they're famous whatever and they report that
18:05
Keeping Up Appearances had a really detrimental impact on their happiness and their fulfillment in life because in
18:12
some cases they you know it meant that they were doing a job as a presenter and had to always be happy when inside they
18:17
didn't feel that and maybe the contrast of reality and um and perception caused them a lot of
18:22
harm or they've built a life around things that they're not interested in I think you touched on some of that in Mastery yeah
18:28
um that's the that's the question I have which is keeping up appearances and the impact that that has on your happiness are you
wearing a mask
18:35
um and happiness what's the relationship I talk about it in the 48 Laws of Power
18:41
where you have to play this this game in life it's a con to me it's a form of wisdom
18:46
which is it's a wisdom that used to exist like in the 18th century I read a book that had
18:54
a big impact on me many years ago called the fall of public Man by Richard Senate
19:00
in which he described like Cafe life in London in the 18th century or France and
19:08
he was saying back then when you entered the public Arena or your Cafe you knew you were an actor you left the house you
19:15
put on the mask and you had fun you know you knew it was like fun it was play you
19:20
know when you're a child you like playing games you like putting on costumes you like playing your parents
19:26
or some character you saw on TV it's part of human nature we like to play these games where role players we're
19:33
actors and he was saying in the 18th century that was just a given in life that when you entered the public realm
19:39
you knew you were an actor and then when you went home to your wife your family or your husband
19:45
or wherever you drop the mask you went you breathe the Deep Side relief go now I can be who
19:51
I am right and and it wasn't a problem it didn't create neuroses it didn't
19:56
create this like what's wrong with me I'm I don't know who I am anymore so people now the problem now is we
20:04
don't have distance from that social realm and so we think that if we're
20:09
acting that's who we are but it's not it's just that's part of being a social animal is playing a role you know I did
 20:17
a book with 50 Cent and he kind of exemplifies a lot of that
20:23
he plays a role in life you know when I met him I I thought uh oh
20:28
I was kind of intimidating I was a little bit afraid you know the thug this is a guy when I met him he was you know
20:34
just a few years away from being shot and all this stuff and I met him
20:39
and he was the nicest person well he was almost kind of sweet he'd hate it if I said that word but he was sweet right he
20:46
was very down to earth he was very calm Etc he's playing a role when he goes out
20:51
and he plays that person he knows it he knows it's like he doesn't take it seriously you know he had this big beef
20:58
with Kanye West back when I was doing the the the book with him and then I met
21:04
the two of them in Vegas when they were there for the awards they were like the best of friends they were joking it was just a game they
were playing right so
21:11
what I tell people is we all are actors humans are born actors we learn at a
21:18
very early age to play that kind of game it's kind of fun sometimes to do that
21:23
you know have it enjoy that part of life but don't think that it don't get confused with who you are in your
21:30
essence that's sort of the dance you're playing between those two things I understand
21:35
what you're saying and a lot of it has to do as you said related to Mastery where people end up in a career
21:42
that doesn't suit them and I look I I think I understand what
21:47
you're getting at or I look at like presenters or people in the news and they have to smile and be so cheerful
21:54
like man what a drag I'd hate to be like that you know that is so false don't you
22:00
feel kind of don't you want to take a shower after you being so cheerful and chatty and all that you know yeah I
22:06
understand that but if if that's the profession you chose and you love it then maybe you
22:12
don't feel that way I couldn't do it personally but you know I think I think it's okay
Learn how to use your enemies
22:19
think of yourself as an actor I don't think there's anything wrong about that um the second very curious lower in your
22:26
book that I uncovered was it was low number two I'm talking about the 48 Laws of Power here where it says never trust
22:31
friends too much learn how to use enemies yeah do you trust your friends
22:38
okay well everything in the book is context so when you take things out of context it's a little harder to
22:44
understand and what I'm trying to say in that I'm talking about in the Work World when
22:50
you're out in the social realm and one of the worst things that people do is you have a job and I've been guilty of
22:58
it myself even after I wrote the damn book you're out in the work world and you need to hire somebody you need to find a
23:04
colleague you need to find some a partner or an employee your mind naturally gravitates towards a
23:11
friend right because they know you you trust them you have a relationship you
23:17
know and you feel comfortable with them and it's a terrible mistake so many of the worst things have
23:23
happened in history are because of that very problem because friends is there's all these
23:30
emotions involved between people right and those emotions confuse the issue so
23:35
what I'm talking about in that law is when you need to get results you need to think when you have a job or something
23:41
you have to think in Practical terms not in terms of emotions not in terms of friendship etc etc
23:49
so you want to keep your work world separate it's not everything about life is having
23:55
to be friends and having nice things and everybody like you sometimes what matters is getting
24:01
results done and sometimes the best person to work with isn't your friend because they don't have all this other
24:07
stuff that we're talking about in fact a very powerful move is if there's an
24:13
enemy out there somebody who you never got along with
24:19
if you say if you approach them and say let's bury the hatchet you know I have a
24:25
job and I'd really like you to work with me I know you're really smart that per the turnaround of emotions is a
24:31
very powerful thing where they're going wow yeah sure that's that's great I
24:37
never expected that and they're all they're highly motivated to now prove that they're worthy of of your of your
24:44
change of mind so it's not about not trusting your friends
24:50
in the realm of friendship in personal relationships it's about being aware
Conceal your intentions & be a strategist
24:55
that the work world is different from the realm of personal relationships the other point I found really curious was
25:01
was put 0.3 about concealing your intentions and yeah I I find this curious because I've never really known
25:07
where to land on this when people ask me for advice on the subject matter about how much of your hand should you show
25:14
whether it's in business or life or whatever there's a there's a group of people that think you should always just
25:19
keep everything you're doing and your intentions totally secret because then people might copy you or they'll attack
25:24
you whatever and then there's another school of thought that says when you're building something when you're doing something when
you have a mission you
25:29
need to share it with as many people as possible because that will Galvanize people to to come along with the journey with you and
they'll want to support you
25:35
and help you so when I read um Point number three about concealing your intentions I wanted to ask you about what what you
25:44
think about that which side do you land on well everything depends on circumstances so the laws are never
25:50
meant to apply to every situation right so when it's with your own team and
25:56
you're trying to inspire them and you're trying to give them a vision you try to get them on your side yeah you share your vision with them
you share this is
26:02
where the group is going this is where I want things to be in three years let's all get together we're trying to do
26:09
something very positive for the world okay here we here's my plan right but
26:14
then there's circumstances where revealing everything that you about what you're planning to do is actually very
26:20
counterproductive right so the business world in the 21st century is extremely
26:27
competitive it's getting worse and worse by the day as more and more people now are entering the power Arena and I think
26:34
it's a great thing where it used to be just a realm where only older white men had power and now it's the doors have
26:40
opened everyone the comp level of competition is that much more intense particularly now even with the internet
26:47
you have Rivals out there you have competitors out there even as we talk right now maybe you're not thinking
 26:53
about them but they are they're going to steal your ideas they're looking to take your business away from you
26:59
etc etc just be aware of that phenomenon and just always saying what you're
27:04
planning on doing isn't always the wisest thing to do sometimes if you're
27:10
in a tricky situation making putting people off the scent giving them a red herring and saying I'm
27:16
planning to do this when in fact you're planning to do that it's very powerful technique it's deception but all's fair
27:23
in Love and War and business I'm I'm afraid so you know there are moments
27:29
where you don't want to lay all your cards out on the table right you want to either create a little bit of mystery so
27:37
that people don't know what you're going to do next and they're wondering what you're going to do next and as they're wondering what
you're
27:43
going to do next they're kind of on their heels a little bit what's the next thing that that Stephen is planning I
27:50
don't really know wow you know it makes it it's a very powerful approach there
27:55
are other times and other experiences and moments in life where you do want to reveal what you're planning to do
28:01
because there's a purpose behind it I'm just saying be aware don't just act in
28:07
this world be aware have a strategic mindset sometimes concealing is what you
28:12
need to do sometimes not concealing is what you need to do it's funny when we have this conversation about power and
28:18
the Darkness and the Shadows that people have in them I think a lot of people listening
28:24
and probably it seems that way because I'm the one asking the questions is if I'm questioning society that I'm not
28:30
part of um they'll think they don't they might think they don't play these games right they might you know so that's the
28:36
question I have is like have you ever encountered anybody do you believe there's anybody out there that doesn't play power games
manipulation have
28:43
shadows have darkness in them no I don't but um so in my War Book uh I I read the
28:51
biography of Mahatma Gandhi well the Saint Louis figures in history right
28:57
and I realized that Mahatma Gandhi was actually a brilliant strategist now I'm
29:03
not saying his use of non-violence and Civil Disobedience didn't come from the heart he didn't mean it he wasn't
29:09
actually he didn't actually believe in the peaceful method he did it was very sincere but he was very strategic about
29:17
it and he planned a campaign several campaigns like the Salt March in the 20s
29:23
where he knew for instance that the English public was very liberal-minded
29:29
they had this idea of themselves as being this very they weren't colonialists they weren't imperialists
29:35
they were doing the best for the world and he deliberately had these marches where he knew that that on they would be
29:42
reading in their newspaper and seeing photographs of Indian people being beaten up by Englishmen and and their
29:50
Indian officers on the streets of wherever it would have a terrible impact on the
29:56
public he thought in terms of strategy okay so there's Gandhi then there's
30:01
Martin Luther King who's somebody I wrote about a lot in the laws of human nature another great icon whom I admire
30:08
who actually was inspired by Gandhi and had campaigns of Civil Disobedience and
30:13
there was a campaign I believe it was in Montgomery or Selma Camp which remember which one
30:18
where um he was getting fed up they weren't getting very far the Civil Rights moved they're reaching a stale
30:24
mate and he was getting very frustrated and um somebody an advisor came to him said
30:31
look we're going to have this massive March and and I I can get a lot of
30:36
Elementary School and Junior High School students to be on this March because they believe in you and they're very
30:42
fervent and I think it'd be great and his advisors go God you can't do that
30:48
you can't have put 13 year olds at risk and Martin Luther King thought about
30:53
Virgin he said no we're going to go ahead and do it because damn it I want the American public sitting in there all fat and
31:00
watching their televisions to see these brutal you know Paul Connor the the
31:05
police chief then I want to see these children being water hosed and beaten and it's going to have
31:12
an incredible impact he was being strategic and his advisors were shocked by it but it ended up proving to be one
31:19
of the most pivotal important moments in the Civil Rights Movement so here you have Gandhi and Martin Luther King I'm
31:25
never and Martin Luther King was a flawed individual as we know right he had a private life that wasn't exactly
31:32
in the same as his public life I don't judge him for that because he was a brilliant man and I admire him I
31:38
love him deeply reading his biography made me even admire him even more seeing
31:43
that he had a human flaw outside to him but these are icons that we set up and
31:49
they reveal what I'm talking about in human nature you can't escape it but yeah maybe there
31:55
was some Saint born in some Century that I've never heard of that maybe got pretty far away from everything I've
32:01
talked about but you know you know we all have this idea like
32:07
in the laws of human nature I write about irrationality Envy aggression we go or narcissism narcissism is a good
32:14
one oh they're a narcissist I'm not a narcissist I'm not self-absorbed but
32:20
they are yeah yeah I don't have any of those traits well damn it every single
32:25
human being has self-absorption traits we can't help it we naturally think of ourselves first yes there are people who
32:32
are much deeper narcissists in life no doubt and there are toxic narcissists but we all have a touch of it I want you
32:40
to be a little more humble in this world and not be so arrogant and not think that you are somehow exempt from having
32:47
a dark side that somehow you were born with a halo over your head that you were
32:53
born different you don't have human nature that you're a saintly person you're much better get rid of your moral
32:59
superiority because I find that deeply offensive we are all Cut From the Same Cloth we all have the same flaws and
33:06
when you look at yourself and when I wrote the laws of human nature I'm going damn it Robert
33:11
you have a dark side you're a narcissist you know I had to come to terms with my
33:17
irrationality my grandiosity my aggressive instincts but it's the only
33:23
way to change yourself is to be aware that you have these issues I have the narcissistic Tendencies now I
33:30
see it all right now when they prop up pop up I can control it better I can say damn Robert you're being too
33:36
self-absorbed you think more about the other person but if you go around in life thinking I don't have any of these
Is it being a narcissist good or bad?
33:42
problems I'm not a narcissist you're never going to have the awareness to stop the fact that you are actually one
33:49
being a narcissist is that objectively a good or a bad thing because when you when you was obviously I know people are
33:56
having a bad thing it's a narcissist cause a lot of harm and that's very true but in the context of the human animal
34:01
and why the human animal develops certain attributes and qualities to to you know maybe further it survival or
34:07
its ability to stay within the social pact is it just a consequence of being a
34:13
human to have these like Shadow traits and to be coercive and manipulative is
34:18
it good or is it bad or is it neither it's neither neither
34:24
um because it just is right um so with narcissism for instance
34:32
um there's a reason why we're narcissists so I explained in the book it's not my own Theory it comes from
34:39
some great psychologists like kahoot the origins of narcissism right so when
34:45
you're have to leave you when your parents have to kind of not abandon you but have to
34:50
not give you as much attention as you used to have and you're three years old or four years old
34:56
you don't remember it but it was very painful like oh they don't love me as much
35:01
what's wrong with me right you know I have to get that love and attention not
35:07
just naturally I have to do things to earn it etc etc and what happens with a lot of
35:13
people in that situation when you're a child is I have to develop my own I have to be my
35:19
own mother or father I have to find a way of loving myself when something bad happens I have to
35:26
retreat Inward and go I'm really not so bad at all I'm actually a decent person
35:31
I like my own tastes I like the clothes that I wear etc etc you're developing
35:37
the shreds of self-esteem right and people who never develop that because
35:43
they were abused or they were abandoned or even if they were suffocated
35:49
never developed that self-esteem and so what happens in life is whenever if you
35:55
don't develop that and you get older and people attack you and yell at you or
36:00
criticize you you can't Retreat inward to that self-esteem that love you have
36:06
the only thing you know is to get angry to get the call it narcissistic rage and to yell at people and say God get away
36:12
from me you're evil etc etc etc right and then the other problems evolve where
36:18
the only way I don't have that inner self-esteem the only way I get people to love me is by being incredibly dramatic
36:24
and overly dramatic Etc et cetera et cetera and always making myself the center of attention that's what creates
36:32
a deep narcissist that's their only way of getting the love that they need so
36:37
children we all need that degree of self-esteem that anchor in our life so
36:43
narcissism self-love is not a bad thing but what happens is as you get older if
36:50
you go too deep into it it becomes a problem and so what I say is you need to
36:55
take that self-love and it's it has a good function and turn it outward slow
 37:01
as much you can and turn into empathy and love and consideration for other people more that's your task as you get
37:08
older in life that's how I approach all of these flaws you can't run away from
37:13
them you can't run away from your Shadow your dark side you can make it work for you can make it positive and productive
37:19
and healthy you can become a healthy narcissist which is a a name that I use
37:25
in the book you can use your dark side for positive purposes
37:31
let's say you have a lot of anger in your inside and I had a lot of anger when I was younger I was a very angry
37:37
young man right channel that into some kind of cause
37:43
like and you know that I have a lot of causes that I believe in very deeply and when I was younger I was like that
37:49
channel that energy into something productive and helpful and put it into something that goes to something that
37:56
helps Society that's using your dark side for positive purposes because the
38:02
Dark Side Of Human Nature has a lot of creativity has a lot of energy an artist
38:07
has to have a dark side you use your dark side because all those dark emotions all the people that shat on you
38:14
in your life they inspire you they create your best work don't run away from your Shadow don't run away from
38:20
your narcissism use it in a healthy way and acknowledge it I think that's the
38:26
hardest thing for people to do right yeah so few people I think including myself like have really fully understood what
38:33
their their shadow in their dark side is I mean doing this podcast has really helped me because I learn things from other people
vicariously and then I look
38:39
at reflect on myself or keeping a diary has helped me to understand that but that first step in someone having the
38:45
self-awareness to understand their dark side I mean there's even a lot of people who confronting their Dark Side would be
38:51
so it feels like it would be so impactful on their self-esteem in a negative sense that they spend their
38:56
life putting up a wall to never go there I mean there's some people who you even mention something to them and they would
39:03
triggers triggers them yeah you know we can all think of those people um
39:09
we can all think of those people that the really interesting thing there is the role that your early years play on your relationship with power
39:15
because when I think about some of the nicest I don't know if this is just a general a stereotype or a narrow
39:22
observation I've had but some of the nicest people I've met in terms of you know being the opposite of whatever and
39:29
toxic narcissist is seem to have really comfortable loving secure safe early
39:38
experiences and then is that is that broadly true in your view
39:44
it's a generalization but there is is some truth to it I mean there's things
39:49
that called attachment theories where uh psychologists have looked at the kind of attachment you had to your parents and
39:56
they categorized it in four different ways and there's the ideal the best one where you have this
40:02
incredibly loving mother and father and they they're they're giving you
40:07
unconditional love but they know also how to give you your Independence Etc it's not terribly common I don't know
40:14
what the percentage would be then there's levels and levels and then as you get to the fourth level it's like the abandonment one where
or abusive and
40:23
abandonment where you basically leave the child alone you don't give it any attention any love and it's very
40:28
crippling right but the thing is children are much stronger than we think
40:36
they are they're very resilient they're very resourceful they're gonna find their love they're
40:42
going to find a way to compensate for it in some way and what's something very interesting when I was doing seduction
40:49
in some of my other books and I look at people who were like very charismatic like a Malcolm X like a Marilyn Monroe I
40:59
could go on and on and on these are people that came from very very bad
41:04
families right they had no love Marilyn Monroe was a was an orphan essentially raised in an
41:11
orphanage you know her whole life was I gotta get people to love me I need love
41:17
so desperately and her way of doing it was to literally make love with the
41:22
camera nobody ever done that before you could sense that she needed it and it was so powerful that you sensed it that
41:29
she drew it to herself great charismatic individuals John F
41:34
Kennedy is someone who had a lot of Charisma he came from a very bad childhood right his father was very mean
41:41
to him Etc some children in the worst circumstances it ends up bringing the
41:46
best out of them they have to find their way in life and some people who have everything
41:52
don't go very far because they don't know how to find things for themselves so life is weird some people who have
41:59
great childhoods do well some people have great childhoods are spoiled and never learn how to get things on their
42:05
own and some people have the shittiest childhoods learn how to be resourceful and and and and and get what they need
The power of seduction
42:11
on their own you mentioned seduction there The Art of Seduction why did you write a book about
42:18
the topic of Seduction seduction is in a high form of power
42:24
because you make people feel pleasure you make them feel excited or interested
42:31
in you and then their their resistance to your ideas slowly lowers and you have
42:37
the ability to influence them and to move them in the direction that you want if you yell at them like how we talk
42:42
about your child and you tell them do this do that they resent it and for good reason
42:47
but if you're subtler if you're more seductive in your approach if you're more indirect
42:53
people will do what you want or go in your direction without ever even realizing it so it was a sub theme in
43:00
the 48 Laws of Power and so I was sort of interested in the psychology of that and why some people are good at it and
43:06
some people are awkward about it so when I finish the 48 Laws of Power I thought this would be
43:12
a natural segue the next book what are the qualities of a great Seducer
43:21
well I like to distinguish between cold seducers and warm seducers a cold
43:26
Seducer is something you don't want to be that's the typical image that we might have of a male Seducer but even of
43:33
a female Seducer like the great courtesy set up or they're just after money or the men are just after sex
43:39
that's not my ideal my ideal is kind of a back and forth quality
43:46
where it's not domination it's sort of like a game that you're playing it's like a mating game it's like a courtship
43:53
ritual where both part people are kind of seducing each other and so what makes
43:58
for a great Seducer is very simple I can summarize it very simply you are outer
44:04
directed so when you meet somebody for the first time or you're on a date
44:10
or whatever it is you're not having that internal monologue going does she like me or does
44:16
he like me am I dressed well am I saying stupid things what can I do to impress
44:21
them no you turn it off and you're out or directed and you're listening to them
44:26
and you're entering their spirit and you're hearing them say things that that
44:32
give you idea of what they're missing in life of what they want of what their needs are of what makes them an
44:38
individual you're absorbing it you're entering into their spirit and then you can reflect it
44:43
back to them you can give them gifts you can take them to places that show that you're attentive to them
44:50
because if you look at how we are in our day-to-day life normally people never pay us attention
44:57
they're always so self-absorbed they're never thinking about us I mean the times where you get the sense
45:03
that people are actually interested in who you are as an individual is pretty rare
45:09
if you give that feeling to someone it's incredibly powerful because we all want to be validated we all want to be
45:15
recognized so what the Seducer is not someone who's all worried about him or herself and
45:22
thinking they're involved in the other person they're absorbed like a sponge inside their psychology inside their
What makes you anti-seductive?
45:29
world a lot of this is you know very applicable to romance and dating
45:35
etc etc it fails for whatever reason I you know not necessarily something I've read much about in your work but it
45:40
feels like dating and romance and relationships have become
45:46
much more complicated in the modern world that it's become much more difficult to seduce somebody
45:53
um what is the what are the attributes of someone then that is not good at seducing
45:59
anti-seducer has many qualities I have a whole chapter on the anti-seducer I try
46:04
and Define it uh there there are several of them I can't I don't have them all memorized but one quality that's very
46:10
anti-seductive is preaching and moralizing is like telling people oh that's wrong
46:17
what you just said or your politics are ugly or you're not a really you're not really good at this or something or
46:23
other having a moral superiority a sense of sanctimonious sanctimony in a realm
46:29
which should be about pleasure where should be that kind of equality that kind of dinette back and forth Dynamic
46:35
where you're asserting your moral superiority is deeply deeply anti-seductive the element of preaching
46:41
to people not being generous and I mean not just with money money is
46:48
important but not being generous with your spirit right you want to be open you want to give as
46:55
much as you can to the other person of yourself of your time of your money of
47:00
your energy Etc so being all kind of crimped and I don't want to give I don't want to spend money
47:07
I want to take you to the cheap place to eat I don't want to give you much time is very very anti-seductive when you're
47:15
talking a second ago about the person who goes on the day and they're thinking about themselves and what they you know
47:20
what their hair looks like or whatever else that spoke to an insecure person
47:27
is insecurity a seductive quality or is it a
47:32
anti-seductive quality it is anti-seductive now there is a part of weakness that is seductive
47:40
so I would say vulnerability is seductive but insecurity is anti-seductive and there's a big
47:46
difference why does vulnerability draw people to you because the sense so if I can Define seduction
47:54
in in in simple terms um most of the time we are closed to the
48:01
influence of other people particularly now we have these walls up because life
48:07
is Harsh people are coming at us with their advertisements with their pleas with their wanting money with this than
48:12
the other and we've all learned to be very defensive right and seduction is an
48:18
openness is the opposite of that and you felt it when you were a child towards your parents you felt very vulnerable
48:25
and open and and there was an element of your parents and how they treated you that was very much like a seduction
48:31
right so seduction is about being open to the other person to the extent where
48:36
you can even fall in love you can fall under their spell and the sense of letting go of your ego letting go of
48:43
your defensiveness and letting other another person enter your world is being
48:49
seduced it requires vulnerability if you meet the typical
48:54
um scenarios of a man who's not vulnerable at all he's so
49:00
powerful and in control and everything has no vulnerabilities it's frightening
49:05
you know for a woman it could be very frightening like this he's he's so
49:11
strong he's so invulnerable that there's something wrong about it you know maybe he's a serial killer maybe he's got
49:17
skeletons in his closet something isn't right about that what what seduces you
49:22
about a puppy about a child about an animal is their vulnerability it makes
49:28
you want to hug them it makes you want to help them right the sense which If You Came Upon A a tiger that's there and
49:35
that they don't need that well that's not seductive I mean on your screen it is but if they're there in your living
49:40
room that's not seductive but that puppy is Right vulnerability the sense that
49:47
somebody needs protection or help brings out qualities in us that we don't
49:52
normally have that I think allow for seduction so that is being vulnerable
49:57
that is I can be influenced by that other person I am open to the to their Spirit right
50:06
that's being vulnerable the word vulnerable I hate to sound like a professor so excuse me in seduction it
50:13
comes from the wrong the root of it means a wound vuleness so you have a
50:19
wound inside of you and you need healing and the other person naturally wants to help you right but being insecure is the
50:27
off means I'm so self-absorbed I'm so worried about myself
50:32
that I can't get out of it and we've all had that experience when you meet
50:38
somebody and they and you can sense you can smell their insecurity in them I'm not judging them because we all have
 50:43
insecurities it makes you feel insecure it makes you feel a little bit awkward whereas if you
50:50
meet someone who's not like that who's confident Etc it brings out that quality in you so if you're on a date and
50:56
there's someone who's you smell that kind of insecurity it makes you awkward and insecure it creates a kind of a
51:02
problem so that would be the difference between the two there's going to be a lot of people
51:07
listening to this that are single and ready to mingle
51:13
um what advice would you give them in terms of being great at dating you've talked about the importance of
Best dating advice for single people
51:19
vulnerability there and how that kind of forms connection between humans in a very innate way what else is great
51:25
dating advice for this for the single people out there well the thing is okay there are several
51:31
things so first of all we live in a culture where people think you don't you
51:37
shouldn't have to put effort into something like love and romance you should just be who you are man I don't
51:43
have to put on a rule I have to play a game that's manipulative no I'm sorry
51:50
love and romance is something that is almost biological if you look at animals and mating
51:56
rituals they're incredibly elaborate seduction is a mating ritual and so the
52:02
worst thing you can feel is that this person isn't putting any effort into something
52:08
let's just say it's it's uh it's from the woman's point of view this man he just shows up wearing jeans and his
52:15
usual sloppy outfit he doesn't come's hair etc etc etc
52:20
he takes me to the pub for dinner on our first date you know he's not thinking about me he's
52:27
not willing to put any effort into it if he's not willing to put any effort into it what's it going to be like three months
52:34
down the line when he completely takes me for granted which is what happens in a relationship am I not important enough
52:40
right whereas the ability to have a little bit of effort to think of it as
52:47
kind of theater and drama and that there's nothing evil about it so I'm going to dress nicely I'm gonna I
52:54
just have to be fancy just that I'm gonna you know I'm gonna put some effort into how I look I'm going to take her to
53:01
a place that isn't is you know I'm not talking about candlelights and roses and
53:06
that kind of crap doesn't that you can be creative it can be somewhere that that's scuzzy that's on the wrong side
53:12
of town but it's different and it's appealing to and you put some thought into it there's a reason you're taking
53:18
her there right I have a friend who went on a date and she came back from the
53:24
date and was complaining because the person that she date went on that first
53:30
date with was using a took it to a spot where he had an available valid discount code
53:38
and and talk about anti-seduction there you go why is that anti-seductive in
53:44
that case one might say that male is being you know economically Savvy
53:49
financially savvy that you know if you're not able to let go of your of your kind of tightness
53:57
when it comes to a woman something's wrong with you man just let go spend
54:02
some extra money spend the extra 10 quid that you might need to spend on taking you to someplace different but it
 54:09
signals a kind of cheapness and it's not about money it's about a cheapness in your spirit
54:14
right she's not worth you know letting go okay maybe you don't
54:20
have that much but my God you have enough it's not gonna like if you're that poor then then you know okay maybe
54:27
but probably not you could afford it show that you that it means something to
54:32
you let seduction is a language it's not a language of words it's a language of
54:39
gestures that we're paying attention to we're paying attention to people's body language we're paying attention to their
54:46
actions to the things that they never say so when you signal that
54:53
discounts are so important to you that even on the first date you have to have a discount
54:58
you're signaling that it's not there's something tight about you in your nature and it's not very pleasant I from doing
55:05
this podcast and speaking about topics like love and sex and dating and you know dating apps even one of the um
55:12
comments I saw quite frequently was from young men who are struggling to seduce a
55:21
woman yeah or vice versa um specifically young men that you know
55:27
and then I read some stats I think Scott Galloway came on the podcast and talked about how I'm gonna butcher these numbers but a
55:33
staggering amount of men haven't had sex and the young men haven't had sex in the last 12 months
55:38
um and then when I looked at the comments section specifically on YouTube I saw I kind of saw that energy
55:44
reflected where it looked like young men in particular were struggling to seduce
55:49
a mate a partner in the modern world is is that real in your view is there is
55:57
there something that has changed in society has that always been the case um is there anything we can do if we're
56:03
a young man that's struggling in the modern world because of the internet and computers and this and dating apps and
56:09
well a lot of it is I'm afraid to say is internet porn where you get the idea that you know sex
56:17
is something that should be very easy and quick and that women should have look how that kind of body and physique
56:24
etc etc and that becomes your Norm Etc that can be that can be very
56:29
damaging but the idea that things must come easy and quick is is very prevalent
56:35
and to win over someone like oh say you're a man it's a woman who might be
56:41
reluctant to have sex for good reason or reluctant to have a relationship
56:46
requires some effort it requires some thinking you can't just hack well you can't just swipe and get it you can you
56:54
can have your internet sex but you're not going to get that in real life it doesn't work that way it takes time it
57:00
takes patience you know and you're gonna have to work and you're going to be rejected being with people is a skill being a
57:08
social animal although there's a part that comes naturally if you spend all of your time here you're losing that skill
57:15
of how to respond to people's body language you know half of the thing is
57:20
you're sitting in a bar opposite let's say it's a woman and how she crosses her legs how she
57:28
sips her drink how she looks at you how she touches her hair she's signaling
57:34
things it's a language it's a beautiful language right you have to learn it and
57:39
you're not going to learn it here because you can't you have to be in person it has to be skinned skin you
57:45
have to get a feel of what other people are thinking and feeling and we're actually really really good at that
57:50
humans have that's what makes us human it's called mirror neurons I can sense
57:56
what's going on in your mind I can read your body language you have to get out in the world and you
58:02
have to be put yourself physically out there and try and try and try and have
58:07
rejection and I know it sounds awful but it is a skill in a way where you're learning how
58:14
to like understand and deal with people and and and understand that what they're
58:19
who they are and get inside their Spirit it takes time and effort and patience so
58:24
for young men you have to realize that right you if you think everything has to
58:30
be easy and quick it's never going to work for you and I talk about the actor the Hollywood actor Errol Flynn
58:37
who is perhaps numerically the greatest male Seducer
58:42
ever because estimated that he had seduced close to 3 000 women and he died
58:48
when he was 50 and if I I did the math one day what how can that possibly be
58:54
um and I tried to research what was his secret and it was hard to find out
59:00
finally I found a book written by a woman whom he had seduced another actress and she said
59:06
he was so relaxed and so comfortable it was like being it was like an animal
59:12
type thing and then what I would sit with him it was almost as if I had drunk two martinis just sitting next to him
59:18
his comfort and his security and his confidence his relaxed attitude it just
59:24
made me drunk so feeling relaxed feeling confident and
59:30
not defensive and comfortable with yourself is a very powerful seductive
59:35
quality I mean there are many of them but that's one that I would point out have you ever figured out what builds confidence you earlier
on you were
59:42
talking about how children need to experience things first hand you can't just tell them you can't just tell
59:48
someone for example to be confident preaching doesn't seem to work what what is it in your view that that does build
59:54
that true or you also can't fake confidence no I remember we talked about
1:00:00
rejection a second ago I was rejected by pretty much every girl that I was pursuing between the ages of of 16 and
1:00:08
I'd say 22. really yeah like and I do you know what it was I I was faking
1:00:13
confidence it all changed when I was actually had a sense of security in myself but in the period where I was
1:00:20
like faking confidence I was pretending I was confident um it was like they could they just
1:00:26
could read past it that's almost how I look back on the situation so I came to learn that you can't fake confidence you
1:00:32
can't pretend to be it because there's so many sort of micro Expressions that yeah that you that look that end up
1:00:38
reading more like insecurity than confidence um but what is real confidence and how does one build it in your view well
1:00:44
you've kind of answered your own question there in a way so um you know conf fake conferences like bravado right
1:00:52
and you're putting on an act and particularly women who've had to deal with this for you know Millennia
1:00:59
they can smell it they can sense it they don't have to it doesn't have it's not in your words it's the body language etc
1:01:05
etc real confidence comes from actual um actions from your actual things
1:01:12
you've accomplished right so you know when you're 22 21 it's hard to have that
1:01:19
confidence because what is it based on you know maybe it's based okay maybe you're you're really good
1:01:25
looking if you happen to have that good fortune and you can feel confident about that and you don't have to try so hard
1:01:32
all right maybe that might work or maybe you're really good at sports or maybe
1:01:37
you're a really good dancer or you're a really great singer but it's based on something real you have a skill you have
1:01:45
something that separates you you have something that you can do that you can accomplish because when you're 21 it's
1:01:50
hard to have those you know I look back on myself when I was that age I had nothing no wonder I got rejected you
1:01:57
know um so it comes from what you do in life
1:02:03
okay the the finest sense of confidence is actually creating things and having
1:02:08
success and meeting goals and achieving things and having a record of that you
1:02:15
know and maybe what goes with that is having some money but it's not necessarily because you don't have to have a lot of money and
you don't have
1:02:21
to be good looking to seduce that's a myth that I try to explode in The Art of Seduction some of the greatest seducers
1:02:29
male and female were not good looking at all it's about psychology and it's about how you carry yourself
1:02:35
but the confidence comes from actually what you can do not how you feel or what
1:02:41
you say well it is how you feel but the feeling is based on things that you actually can do skills that you have
Your body language betrays you
1:02:48
that separate you that make you feel really confident you know
1:02:53
so body language yeah I find it fascinating that you know there's quotes and things that say 80 of
1:03:01
our communication is non-verbal etc etc um body language is so interesting to me because again I think that's one of the
1:03:07
things that it's just impossibly hard to fake I was reading you know a couple of books on there was a phase when I was I
1:03:14
don't know 20 probably just after being rejected all the time when I was maybe 22 where I started reading books from pickup artists and
they would obsess on
1:03:22
the topic of body language and one of the things they'd say is and I I was explaining this to my girlfriend a
1:03:27
couple of weeks ago that when when a man is lower confidence when he's desperate he does this thing called pecking in a
1:03:34
nightclub where he'll like lean in and like shout in your ear and when he's higher confidence he kind of leans out
1:03:39
and he'll he'll wait for you to lean in small things like that subtleties like that that intuitively we we're reading
1:03:46
and understanding and communicating and Etc but someone that doesn't have the confidence probably isn't even aware
1:03:52
that they do so when I reflect on my rejection phase I think gosh my body language must have been exuding
1:03:59
desperation and low status and low value low self-esteem what's your thoughts on body language
1:04:04
and well um in my last book human nature I wrote a whole chapter on it
1:04:10
I quoted the figure 95 but who knows what it really is the thing it is that um we evolved for
1:04:19
hundreds of thousands of years before language existed right and our earliest ancestors depended on the group for
1:04:26
their survival and getting along and their powers came from observing other people and their body language you could
1:04:32
read it so it's a skill that's wired into US wired into our brains it's very unique skill that we humans have it's
1:04:40
just that you don't learn that when you're a child when you're two years old you have it because your life depends on
1:04:46
it you you have to see what if your mother is is loving you or is or your father is
1:04:52
kind to you because if not you know you could be abandoned your life depends on it you're great at reading that and
1:04:58
children have are incredibly Adept at picking up body language so if someone is fake
1:05:04
if someone's an imposter they hate being around children because children see through you you know like you know like
1:05:10
radar right because they're so attuned to it you had that skill when you were very young but you lost it because you
1:05:18
became so oriented with words and you became so self-absorbed that you're not paying attention
1:05:24
but it's extremely important right so the whole body is involved in it so
1:05:31
you've got to first stop thinking about people's words so much because the one
1:05:37
thing about words unfortunately is people can lie they can say whatever they want they can say I love your
1:05:43
screenplay that was fantastic you were great in that movie I thought you were great senator they can say anything to
1:05:49
please to flatter to control you but body language man it doesn't lie right so I talk in that book about the eyes
1:05:57
and the fake smile the fake smile is something you see every single day but
1:06:02
you're not paying attention it's like it's kind of tight right it's like
1:06:09
yeah right but a real smile you're the whole face gets animated and
1:06:15
there's a little crinkly thing here as your face as you as it lights up and your eyes light up it's it's hard to
1:06:22
even put into words but it's there you can see it it's real it's not faked knowing the difference between a fake
1:06:28
and a real smile is really important in seduction in business or whatever to know if someone is like yeah
1:06:35
I like that idea you know they don't really they're saying that to please you they actually hate your idea you master
1:06:42
that language you can start deciphering all this people are giving you the face you can disguise it a little
1:06:49
bit actors know that but you know what you can't fake it's your voice
1:06:55
if you're nervous not even the finest actors in the world can fake that your voice betrays so many
1:07:02
things about you it betrays your weakness it betrays your lack of confidence or it portrays the other
1:07:08
quality Etc right so pay really attention to the tone of people's voices
1:07:14
to how fast they talk people who talk fast are very nervous someone who's
1:07:19
talked I know I'm probably talking a little too fast too sorry uh my mind races so I can't do that normally I
1:07:26
don't talk so fast but um you know you talk slowly you have a
1:07:31
certain tone you have a certain intonation that kind of reveals confidence okay body language posture you were talking
1:07:39
about pecking right when you go and look at a meeting of people in in a business
1:07:44
meeting you'll see all the employees kind of leaning forward nervous and you'll see
1:07:51
the boss kind of leaning back arms for us like this you know I'm the powerful one you come to me I'm the leader I'm
1:07:58
the I'm the top dog or she it's a woman I don't need to be like this I'm like
 1:08:04
this body language reveals a lot about leadership qualities etc etc etc
1:08:10
you know if you go you're at a party and you come up to someone that you're
1:08:16
meeting for the first time and they're talking to you and you notice that their feet are angling away from you
1:08:24
that means that they're not really interest they're looking for any moment to try and walk away and Escape they're
1:08:29
not really into you whereas their feet are facing you they're engaged they want to talk to you right
1:08:35
this is a whole art you can learn and you can sit there and you can read it and I talk about I give the story in
1:08:41
laws of human nature of a man named Milton Erickson the founder of NLP and
1:08:47
hypnotherapy probably one of the most brilliant psychologists who ever lived when Milton Erickson was 19 years old or
1:08:53
so he had polio he nearly died his entire body was paralyzed the only thing he can move the
1:09:01
only muscle he could move with his eyeballs now imagine that he was a young man with a very active mind he can't
1:09:07
talk he can't do anything all they can do is move his eyeballs a little bit he was so bored can you imagine how
1:09:14
bored you'd be like that you can't read you can't do anything people would come in to visit him all they could do was
1:09:20
look at them and study them he became the greatest reader of body language
1:09:26
ever in the history of mankind people said it was he was almost had ESP he
1:09:31
could read everything about who they were just by because he ended up recovering he became a psychologist
1:09:37
because his life depended on developing this skill he was going to just die from
1:09:42
sheer boredom if he didn't learn how to read body language he mastered that language much like somebody could Master
1:09:48
French and it's an incredibly powerful language that I I can't emphasize enough
1:09:55
you know we can go about learning the language of body language and I'm sure that will help but
1:10:00
it's such a complex um like VAR there's like a thousand
1:10:07
things with my body language at all times like how I'm speaking my eyeballs why where I'm looking my posture my arms
1:10:13
like am I crossing my arms am I crossing my legs all of these things so the the challenge of mastering all of that feels
1:10:19
a little bit overwhelming am I right in assuming the easiest the easier challenge to master is in
1:10:26
fact just like my sense of self very well put because you know if you
1:10:31
feel confident if you feel secure if you're not all Inward and insecure and worried
1:10:37
about yourself it will naturally radiate through your gestures yeah you don't have to sit there and pay attention to
1:10:43
your fingers your arm your ears your eyes it's just there it's natural so yeah that is the solution so the two
1:10:50
game parts of the game it's your own body language be aware that people are judging you for that right and you can't
1:10:57
as you say be monitoring everything or you'll drive yourself crazy and you'll look very weird right so the best solution is to
1:11:05
feel these certain things that are going to radiate and to not give the fake smile but when you really happy to just
1:11:13
show it and show your emotion that way and the other side which is more is I think really
1:11:20
important is learning other people's body language and that can come from study and is much more a logical thing
Learn the art of mastery
1:11:27
than than constantly thinking about everything that you do
 1:11:32
your next book that I have here mastery why did you write a book called mastery
1:11:40
well to be honest with you it came the idea for it was around the year 2010
1:11:45
2009 I was getting a little worried that people who were reading my books particularly young men who were reading
1:11:51
power and seduction they cut they were thinking that's all I need in life man I just need to be a manipulator I just
1:11:57
need to play political games that's what success is all about and I was worried that you know
1:12:03
if if you don't understand how to make something what's going to be the future of mankind are bridges just going to
1:12:10
fall down our hotel is going to collapse people don't know how to make things anymore we don't know how to use our hands anymore
right so
1:12:18
being able to be good with people is extremely important as a social animal but perhaps higher up in the hierarchy
1:12:25
is being able to do things to be able to have great skill and to be able to
1:12:30
create something and know how to master a subject and to you know build something that can last that's really
1:12:38
important and I'm feeling like because young people this is back in 2010 imagine now
1:12:44
had this idea that everything comes quick and easy because you can click click click and things come to you that
1:12:50
everything in life should be that way that we're becoming alienated from the human brain how the human brain operates
1:12:57
because the human brain requires time if you know how the human brain operates we
1:13:02
have what are called neural Pathways and every time you repeat something a neural pathway is created and strengthened and
1:13:10
strengthened and strengthened it's why we get addicted to things but it's also why we develop skill so if I'm sitting
1:13:18
there shooting free throws day in and day out and day out my brain is wiring it it's learning it it's learning that motor skill that hand mind
thing and
1:13:25
it's getting better and better and better at it it takes time it takes repetition to build those Pathways and I
1:13:33
explain in Mastery that you reach the proverbial ten thousand hours which some people dispute nowadays so it's just a
1:13:40
number it's not it's not a fact you've spent so long learning something
1:13:46
that there's so many Pathways it's like this amazing inner landscape with all these
1:13:52
connections going on in your brain and now you can be creative now you can come up with things that nobody's ever
1:13:58
thought of you can play chess on a higher level you can be Pele on soccer or Lionel Messi making passes that no
1:14:06
one had ever seen before because you're not having to think right you don't have to think anymore your body just does
1:14:11
does what it wants imagine twenty thousand hours which is possible just people sometimes detain in
1:14:17
certain Fields you're almost like a genius you're almost like superhuman right
1:14:23
if you're someone who's so locked into the internet to getting things instantly you can't get past hundred hours let
1:14:30
alone ten thousand you're never going to develop skill and you're going to find life really really difficult for you so
1:14:37
I wrote the book because I was actually deeply worried that we were losing a part of of how the human brain operates
1:14:44
something Elemental part of our wisdom the interesting three line between that
1:14:50
and the subject matter we've discussed in power and seduction is that by learning to master something you build
1:14:56
that sense of self-esteem and confidence that we're looking for um to to be good at the former topics
1:15:02
mentioned but on the topic of um Mastery the first chapter in this book and really the
1:15:08
first question a lot of people ask is this question about finding your passion and I've always had a difficult relationship with this question
because
1:15:14
it sometimes assumes that there's one of them and that you have to go in search of it somewhere in the first chapter of
1:15:20
your book you talk about discovering your life task um why why is it important is it the same
1:15:27
thing is is finding your passion and finding your life task the same thing no I just recorded this yesterday uh on my
1:15:33
own podcast I went on a rant about how it's not about passion it's not about finding your passion I actually don't
1:15:40
like that word passion it kind of makes me cringe because if you think about it passion to succeed at anything requires
1:15:48
time and effort and boredom and tedium so let's just say a simple example
1:15:54
you're learning to play the piano when you first sit down at the piano you have to play these really insipid Tunes it's
1:16:00
so boring you have to learn you know um I forget what they call it a finger exercises and scales on any instrument
1:16:07
you have to learn scales Etc it's tedious man if you think it's got to be
1:16:13
passion forget it you're never going to get far the thrill comes after a year of
1:16:18
playing the piano and you get better at it and better and better and now it starts coming fun then 10 years it's
1:16:25
more fun than 20 years it's fantastic you know I'm not I'm not trying to name drop here
1:16:31
but the other night I had dinner with Stevie Wonder it was the most amazing thing I ever
1:16:36
seen he's absolutely I wish I'd interviewed him from my book speaking of Genius you know and he's blind obviously
1:16:43
everybody knows but I was watching him you perform for us we were they prevented his recording studio I was
1:16:51
watching him play the piano and he's blind right and he's improvising and it's just
1:16:57
absolutely brilliant and amazing as I'm seeing this I'm thinking I could see the
1:17:02
thousands of hours he's been putting in just touching these keyboards and knowing where the where the where the
1:17:08
keys are you know it was just mind mind blowing how amazing it was that is the
1:17:15
power that the human brain naturally has through hours and hours and hours of
1:17:21
effort that's how it works so you know he didn't get there because it was
1:17:27
passion he got there because he was a child prodigy at an age of 11. he was
1:17:32
assigned to a contract with Motown records right he was playing that as he was a kid hour
1:17:39
after hour after hour after hour he had a love for the piano but it wasn't like
1:17:44
every time he sat down it had to be passionate about it he had the patience to put up with all of the boring stuff
1:17:50
okay so you want to discover what you were meant to what you have a connection to what
1:17:57
you have a love for right when you're a child hopefully or when you're 18 or 19
1:18:03
or 20 that's the best time to discover it all right you decide and it doesn't have to be
1:18:10
something highfalutin or or worth uh you know like intellectual you could be
1:18:15
great with your hands you could be great with your body you could be great with images and visuals you could be great
1:18:21
with words you could be great in many different areas okay they're all equal they're all great you as a child are
1:18:29
naturally so there's a book I always recommend for people called the five frames of Mind by Howard Gardner in
1:18:35
which he talks about the five forms of intelligence that humans have the each brain by genetically is wired
1:18:44
in One Direction or the other you want to know that you want to feel it inside of you
1:18:49
it's like a feeling it's not an intellectual thing you feel when you're doing sports that it's it's good it's a
1:18:56
natural thing it's what I'm meant for when you're involved with words like I was when I was eight years old you felt
1:19:03
right it felt like a natural fit I have to follow this path when you're three or
1:19:08
four years old and it's music like Stevie Wonder and you're hearing this in your head wow that's that's it for me
1:19:14
right okay you feel it you feel this connection all right now you fast
1:19:20
forward to when you're 18 or 19 years old and you're having to make a career choice okay so I call that your 20s the most
1:19:28
important phase of your life that's going to make or break you in some way if you spend your 20s trying to learn
1:19:36
skill in something that connects to you deeply right
1:19:42
then things are going to happen to you by the time you reach 30. you've discovered your life's task it may not
1:19:48
be something so specific for me it was writing words but I didn't know
1:19:54
what to write I tried novels I tried journalism I tried theater I tried screenwriting but you know it it gives
1:20:01
you a direction and you try and you try and try and you know that's what you were meant for that's what you were destined for you you
feel connected to
1:20:08
it you feel a love for it and so when it comes time to do the tedious stuff
1:20:13
you're able to do it because you know in the end it'll pay rewards you'll get better and better at it and the
1:20:20
connection is so deep that to not do it would be miserable so
1:20:26
you can't think of everything in life having to be pleasurable and having to be passionate it's going to be boredom
1:20:32
there's going to be tedium how do I deal with it you have to feel a greater love than just mere pleasure or passion it's
1:20:40
got to be something so deep within you that to not do it will make you deeply and happy for me not to write or be a
1:20:47
writer I don't think I'd be alive right now I would have been so miserable I would and so alienated from who I am so
1:20:52
that's what will get you through that's that's what a life's task is when you think about that in the book you talk
1:20:58
about the first phase which is you know your apprenticeship on your journey to mastery when you're in that
1:21:04
apprenticeship phase you know when you're maybe early in your career you're early on your journey to
1:21:09
becoming The Pianist the violinist the podcast the entrepreneur whatever what are the the most important things
1:21:15
to be um selecting for as it relates to the job you take the people you're around
1:21:21
that kind of thing like if there's a 23 year old listening to this that is a you
1:21:26
know an apprentice at a floristry shop making bouquets of flour and they're
1:21:32
being offered five different jobs in the industry of floristry which one should they be looking at if they're in the
1:21:37
early steps of their apprenticeship very easy question to answer thank you um you want to look for the job that
1:21:43
offers you the most possibilities of learning so if you're going to go to a florist shop where there's only one
1:21:50
other person there it's like an entrepreneur who started it and you're going to be like their right hand man or
1:21:57
woman and you're going to learn and the pay is half of what you could get at
1:22:02
this very fancy you could be of working at the shop at some department store where they'd pay you triple take the job
1:22:08
that pays one-third where you're going to learn the most you're going to learn about the business you're going to learn
1:22:14
from the ground up and you note is going to be a level of excitement where
1:22:19
you know we might not survive another few months we've got to work hard we've got to be motivated we're all on the
1:22:25
same page here a lot of people when they're 23 they grab the job with the biggest paycheck and that's a mistake
1:22:31
because if you go to like a large large firm you're kind of lost you don't have as
1:22:38
much responsibility you suddenly have to deal with all the political games the 48 Laws of Power you're not paying
1:22:45
attention you're not developing skills as much you don't have as much responsibility take the job that has one half the
1:22:52
salary but you're responsible you're going to be learning and it's up to you that's that's the most important thing
1:23:00
you can do when you're at that point in your life you say there's three steps in that apprenticeship deep observation
1:23:07
is that what you mean when you say deep observation you mean like being able to observe the job happening would you mean
1:23:12
something else well it means that it also means so most people when they start a job
1:23:18
their whole their first impulses I've got to impress people I've got to make them like me that's that inward
1:23:24
Direction that's so deadly and seduction and it's deadly in life you want to be outer directed you want to observe the
1:23:32
codes and conventions of your field the social codes you know what what's
1:23:37
acceptable behavior what's not acceptable behavior the skills involved the the various heuristics the various
1:23:43
things that you have to learn that create skill you want to be a sponge absorbing what's going on around you
1:23:51
what are the things you need to learn what are the valuable skills what are the things that aren't valuable what are
1:23:58
who are the people you need to avoid who are the people you need to emulate you're a laser you're just observing
1:24:04
everything around you and not worried about yourself that's the proper that's deep observation you talked about skill
1:24:11
there it's all well and good seeing skills and knowing what skills are important but acquiring those skills is pointing two when you're in
that
1:24:17
apprenticeship phase in life skills acquisition and this kind of goes to what you're saying with the working in a
1:24:22
florist shop next to the entrepreneur you're going to be Hands-On you're going to be doing which is also goes to what you said earlier
about parents and
1:24:29
children like putting them in situations where they get to do stuff yeah a lot of jobs don't offer that a lot of jobs
1:24:35
don't offer the difficulty the challenge right Hamilton is that well we call it
1:24:41
learning by doing and you see some things play into how the human brain operates that which that's what you want
1:24:47
I'd give the image in the in the introduction to master the pardon the alliteration here but the brain has a
1:24:53
grain to it you want to work with that grain you don't want to work against the grain because it's counterproductive and one
1:25:00
of the grains of the brain sorry is learning by doing when
1:25:06
you know flashback 300 000 years ago and we're sitting there we're making tools
1:25:12
out of Bones out of wood Etc the way the skill was passed on to other
1:25:17
people and didn't die with with one generation was you watch this person making the tool and then you watch them
 1:25:24
and you learn and you imitated them flash forward to the medieval period in Europe where they had apprentices
1:25:30
apprenticeship schools seven years you're learning masonry you're learning
1:25:35
carpentry you're learning whatever for seven years you're sitting there watching somebody make things and you're
1:25:40
doing it that's how the brain operates you learn by doing not by thinking not
1:25:46
by thinking oh this is how things are fitted in more you know with mortars etc
1:25:52
etc no am I doing it with my hands the human the brain and the Hand have the
1:25:58
most connection of any part of our body because so much of our power as a species depended on our hands we don't
1:26:04
have much of that anymore but learning by doing things with your hands or making things is how the brain is
1:26:12
wired so you want to go with that grain so you want to do things you want to make things you want to be learning
Ads
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through action not through just a lot of talk and you know as you might know the show's not
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it's you know recently when I went to the Jungle in Bali or whether it's when I'm staying here in the UK or going to business in America
but I can also think
1:26:36
of so many times where I've stayed in a host's place on Airbnb and I've been sat there wondering could my place be an
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Airbnb as well and if it could be how much could I earn it turns out you could
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be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing about it maybe you have a spare room in your house that
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A stroke changed my life
1:27:19
by going to airbnb.co.uk host one of the things that um that you
1:27:25
referenced at the start of this conversation I think maybe even off camera was in 2018 you had a stroke
1:27:31
um and that changed your life in a very fundamental way can you tell me what what happened and
1:27:36
how it's How it changed you well it was a terrifying experience
1:27:45
um you know I was in a coma uh I emerged from it and suddenly I'm somebody who's very physical I I
1:27:51
Sports was a huge part of my life I would swim very long distances I love
1:27:57
mountain biking I I was doing all kinds of um hiking it was extremely important
1:28:03
to me I was every single day I did something physical to take my mind off things Suddenly It's taken away from me
1:28:10
the left side of my body is basically paralyzed I have no control over it to this day I still have problems with it
1:28:17
can't swim can't mountain bike can't hike right
1:28:23
I can't take my mind I can't think while I'm taking a hike I can't type for a
1:28:28
rider that's not much fun I had to deal with crap that I've never had to deal with my life I had a pretty
1:28:35
easy time compared to this I had to learn new life skills
 1:28:40
when I'm already 62 years old you know that is an easy stuff I don't want a
1:28:46
whine or complaint because people deal with worse stuff all the time a lot of people get cancer Etc but it's this anybody who's had a
stroke
1:28:54
knows what I'm talking about it's very hard because you can practice and
1:28:59
practice and practice and practice hours and hours of therapy I do over an hour of therapy every day and you hardly
1:29:06
notice any results the frustration you takes you 10 minutes to tie your shoes you can't button your
1:29:14
your thing you have to get other people to do that it's hard to cut food you have to be patient you have to
1:29:22
accept this you have to find another way of loving your life of accepting these things that you took for granted before
1:29:28
and I tell people I look out my window now where I'm writing and I see people
1:29:33
walking their dog and I put myself in their shoes and go God
1:29:38
that must be so great just to walk your dog down the street what a pleasurable thing they don't realize it
1:29:45
you take it for granted now please don't take it for granted understand that the ability that you have now to run to walk
1:29:52
your dog to swim to type it can be taken away from you and just appreciate your
1:29:58
life what you have because the things that I love were taken away from me and I wish they hadn't been so I've had to
1:30:04
adjust myself you know when something like that happens in life when you
1:30:09
when you are the the victim of an of a tragedy or instance or circumstance or
1:30:16
something that happens there's often a degree of unfairness surrounding it when I when I read about that incident in
1:30:22
2018 I've read that it was a bee sting that caused a clot that caused the
1:30:28
stroke yeah I know it's actually I think a wasp
1:30:35
but if that wasp had been like moving the wind a bit a little different and it
1:30:41
would move this way instead of this way may not have had a stroke you know but I can tell you this so
1:30:48
um in May of that year the the stroke was in August in May I'd finished the
1:30:54
laws of human nature which took me five years and when I finished that book I felt like I was near death I was so
1:31:00
exhausted I was so drained you know my wife was really worried about me because I just looked really Haggard slowly I
1:31:08
kind of recovered but then in July I went to New York and I forgot my blood pressure
1:31:14
medication that I'd take so my blood pressure was starting to rise and then I came back to LA and I walked in this
1:31:21
park and the bee the wasp stung me here and my whole chest turned red and it was
1:31:26
like the most unbearable feeling so I went to the hospital they gave me this drug called Prednisone to relieve the
1:31:33
itching prednisone increases your blood pressure and so when I ended up having the stroke
1:31:39
the blood clot it was right where the wasp sting was so the neurologist said probably all this cholesterol was
1:31:45
released from that drugs that from that wasp being here and that's where the blood clot occurred okay but there were
1:31:54
all these other circumstances that kind of led to it a kind of a perfect storm and maybe if I hadn't had that wasp
1:32:01
sting it would have happened four months later under different circumstances and I would have died because what happened
1:32:08
was I was driving my car when I got my stroke my wife was in the other seat she
 1:32:14
saw something really strange going on my face I didn't notice it she forced me to
1:32:21
pull over the side of the road 90 of the time I'm alone I'm swimming I'm hiking I'm driving could have
1:32:28
happened four months from then she wouldn't be there I'd be dead right now so I can't really think in terms of
1:32:36
oh if that wasp had been diverted it would be a good feeling but it's too painful for me to imagine I like to
1:32:42
think of fortunately someone was there who saved my life because it could have
1:32:47
very well happen four months from then because I my body was worn down and
1:32:52
something much worse could have happened that that Journey you described of
1:32:58
having to rebuild and relearn and re redesign your life it's we've talked about the topic of power so much in this
1:33:04
conversation in that moment it sounds like your power to some degree had been taken from you
1:33:11
you know um you you learn like at least for me when
1:33:17
I looked at people I Look to people differently after my stroke I had more empathy for them I'm normally
1:33:23
an empathetic person but I was looking at people in the pandemic who got long
1:33:30
covered who were having Strokes or were having terrible circumstances or when I
1:33:35
look at people who are disabled because I'm essentially disabled now
1:33:40
I understand them I and and also the other thing is when I look at people who are really poor
1:33:47
um who are struggling in life they feel really dependent and helpless
1:33:54
I felt that physically I don't feel that materially because I don't have that problem anymore thank God but I I have
1:34:00
more empathy I understand it not an intellectual way but in a visceral physical way that sensation of
1:34:07
I don't know where my food's coming from I don't know what's going to happen the next day I'm weak I'm dependent I'm
1:34:13
helpless it's miserable I kind of understood that feeling now on
1:34:18
a on a different level on a level that affected me personally and it's a lot different than having it
My struggles and how to overcome them
1:34:24
affect you in an intellectual way the phases in that journey to where you
1:34:30
are today the first phase after the incident you wake up you realize that your your life has changed what's what's
1:34:37
going on in your psychology what's going on in your mind you talked about helplessness and to be honest with you what happened to
1:34:45
me was right afterwards there was the level of delusion in my mind I kept thinking well
1:34:51
in three months I'll be back at it I'll be in six months I'll be swimming in a year I'll be hiking again I deluded my I
1:34:59
wasn't aware of how hard the process was and then six months eight months a year
1:35:04
down the road as I realized I was wrong that's when the depression sat in that's when it really started hitting me I
1:35:11
thought I'd be back here I am four years on I thought it'd be back to my life but I'm not
1:35:18
you know so that's what was the hardest struggle was actually a year in there
1:35:23
and going there's a phase where you kind of plateau where you're not really progressing anymore that's the worst
1:35:29
part of it I'm progressing now again because I have a great therapist but
1:35:34
I had to deal with really bad depression about a year a year and a half in when it started realized this is my life man
 1:35:42
I'm gonna always have this funny arm that's Bowing in I'm going to be walking like this
1:35:48
I I don't I never expected this in my life so I've had to deal with that and
1:35:54
I've had to kind of find a way to not let it get me down to find other pleasures and joys in life Etc which I
1:36:01
have how how do you find a way to not let it get you down I'm thinking now about people that are listening to this that
1:36:06
might be struggling with their own subjective struggles in life they've been they've lost their job they've you
1:36:13
know they've they have a disability whatever it might be what are what are the successful strategies you've
1:36:18
deployed to try and remain I keep that peace of mind
1:36:24
well I don't know how much of it is applicable because I'm at a phase of life where I don't have material worries
1:36:31
you know and I could have had a kind of stroke where my physical element would
1:36:38
have been untouched but my brain would have been damaged which is another part that would have been worse because I
1:36:44
wouldn't have been able to write another book and I have a very active mind um
1:36:49
so for me being able to write another book is my salvation so when it's three
1:36:55
o'clock in the afternoon when I get down to writing it's the happiest moment of my life I feel at peace I'm back to my work and I
1:37:03
love my work and I love what I'm writing about it saved me a lot I do meditation
1:37:08
I've been meditating now for about 12 years I think more more than that every morning it's a ritual I have to meditate
1:37:16
if I don't something is wrong and I've never missed a day I can honestly say and it it just calms me down it just
1:37:25
gives me a strength throughout the whole day so I get up seven o'clock you know the sun's usually
1:37:32
showing because it's Los Angeles and um I'll go it's the morning
1:37:38
I'm greeting the morning I'm greeting the sun it's like I'm in like I'm a you
1:37:43
know somebody four thousand years ago in a tribe here's the sun it's it's a
1:37:49
miracle that there's even something like that the birds are chirping I'm looking at the Ivy the sky is blue
1:37:56
calm myself down intrusive negative thoughts start popping into my mind you didn't do this
1:38:02
you have a podcast today at two o'clock Robert you want to do this that and the other I'd get rid of them I go calm down put
1:38:09
that away ground yourself and it's helped immeasurably the other thing is
1:38:15
always keep in mind that there are people who have it worse than you so I don't want to feel sorry for I don't
1:38:20
like the sense of feeling sorry for myself in fact sometimes I turn it around and I
1:38:26
look at that person walking the dog or jogging they go I actually feel sorry for you because you're not aware of how
1:38:33
precarious life is you're not aware of how this can be taken away from you you're not aware of how precious it is
1:38:39
to just be alive and just to see the sky and the birds so I feel better than you
1:38:45
in a way I turned it around I don't want to feel sorry for myself the things they're people who have it worse I read
1:38:51
in the newspaper all the time you know cancer you're in Ukraine or I was dealing a lot with people in in Iran
1:38:58
right now what they're dealing with I don't have to deal with that kind of crap like being in Iran and dealing with
1:39:04
that daily life how how horrifying you know these are thoughts that take you
1:39:09
out of the moment where you're feeling sorry for yourself and you're kind of grateful for certain things so those are
What have you learnt about happiness?
1:39:14
some of the strategies I've had to kind of create for myself
1:39:20
I find it so um I find it so I guess powerful to hear those
1:39:26
strategies because we all get caught up in a narrow perspective and our own
1:39:33
subjective feelings that we're suffering or that life is against us and then that kind of torments us in many ways as
1:39:39
you've post-stroke in 2018 um is there anything else that you have
1:39:44
learned about the nature of Happiness from from that incident that we that you
1:39:49
might not have known before that incident that I might not fully understand now the things I heard you talk about are
1:39:55
the importance of a sense of purpose how perspective and gratitude are Central to
1:40:02
are feelings of happiness but is there any other observations you've had that I'm just saying this from my own selfish
1:40:07
perspective because I want to know well first of all I don't want to give the impression that I've solved everything so I'm a
1:40:15
work in progress I have moments where I get so frustrated it's almost like I
1:40:21
have Tourette's Syndrome like I can't you know I'm still four
1:40:27
years in and my arm is still like this and I still can't brush my teeth if I want I get very frustrated so
1:40:33
I'm getting better but it's still a work in progress I don't want to give the impression that I've somehow this I've
1:40:39
mastered it because it has mastered me I have a long way to go but I'm getting a lot better A lot better at it day to day
1:40:48
um you know I don't know I think I've kind of touched on everything only in the sense of
1:40:54
what about connection you talked about your wife yes he's helped me a lot
1:41:00
God bless her soul she's had to take care of me you know and I was somebody
1:41:05
who's always prided myself for being independent I was trapped that was another thing
1:41:10
that was taken away from me I was traveling around the world doing book tours going to book festivals doing
1:41:17
interviews doing consulting in various different countries I could still travel but it requires a
1:41:24
lot more so I lost my Independence I had to have somebody help me with food every
1:41:29
single day I need things being done for me and I I feel terrible that you know
1:41:35
she's been put in that position but she's been very gracious about it and she understands she has a lot of empathy
1:41:42
because she knows what I've lost so having somebody in your life if I were
1:41:47
alone I couldn't deal with it man I wouldn't have been able to deal with it it just would have been too much for me
1:41:53
it would have been too depressing that depression that sucks after a year would have leveled me it just I couldn't have
1:42:00
made it so that's an incredibly important aspect just appreciating
1:42:06
the little things in life that I just you know it's a cliche and I hate saying
1:42:12
cliches but um you know I have that feeling almost every day where i'm looking at somebody
1:42:18
going man that must be I'm like riding my bike and I'm seeing somebody just sitting in
1:42:24
a park reading a book on a bench and I'm going God that is so much fun just to be able to do that I can't do that anymore
1:42:29
but I put myself in their body the little things in life that you take for granted are some filled with so much
1:42:36
happiness and joy that you're not thinking about if that person's sitting on a bench reading that book only
1:42:42
realized what this person riding by thinks maybe they wouldn't take it for
1:42:47
granted so some of those little things that you don't think about have incredible importance at least to
1:42:55
me having lost them so I don't know if I'm I wish I had something better but no I
1:43:02
think I could only come from my own experience I can't make it up your books tend to focus on the nature
1:43:09
of The Human Condition what how we are as humans For Better or For Worse and it was it was interesting
1:43:15
because as you were talking over several topics when you're talking about seduction and the full weight loss of power and mastery
1:43:21
it was a part of me that's you know that started to feel a little bit I
1:43:27
don't know feel the darkness that is innate within humans a bit a bit too much maybe that we're a little bit too contrived
1:43:34
and manipulative and conniving and whatever else and I was thinking do I
1:43:39
really like humans you know I'm one of them I don't I'm very conscious of trying to separate myself I hear people
1:43:45
doing interviews when they're talking about society and I always think you are Society I am human I am I'm all of the
1:43:51
things you've described in many many ways but has your journey of learning about humans and Human Nature Made you
1:43:57
personally more loving towards humans more optimistic about the human race or
1:44:03
has it made you the the opposite honestly well it's maybe more loving but
1:44:09
it hasn't made me more optimistic okay um you know there's so many things that
1:44:15
are seem to be going awry in the world today now I happen to be um the form of
1:44:23
meditation I do is Zen meditation and in Zen meditation there's this idea of
1:44:28
what's called the tathagata which means it was it was another name for Buddha and it means things as they are and one
1:44:37
thing you meditate is the world is in good or bad or ugly or
1:44:42
evil or unjust it just is things just are this is just the way the world is
1:44:48
this is the karmic chain the wheel of Dharma that's been going on for thousands of years it just is it's just
1:44:55
the State of Affairs it's you're discriminating your mind it's your mind that creates all of these
1:45:01
things let go of that and you can connect to the way the world is without judging it and it becomes this very
1:45:07
beautiful place and so I a part of me wants to think of this is just the way
1:45:13
things are but a part of me goes this isn't good the way things are and I hope
1:45:19
their change so knowing human nature and knowing how human nature tends to twist things how
1:45:25
whenever we invent a new piece of technology it could be the telephone it could be the television it could be the
1:45:32
internet it could be cryptocurrency or it could be you know AI
1:45:39
it tends to twist and darken and degrade and and pervert anything that was once
1:45:45
maybe in beautiful or interesting it makes me worried about the future
1:45:50
so there I turned pessimistic and I'm worried but then I always think that there's hope with
1:45:56
young people and here I'm spouting another cliche down I'm going to shoot myself after this interview but
 1:46:02
I feel like when I was young I was angry about things I didn't like the way the world was it was Ronald Reagan and
1:46:09
Margaret Thatcher and yuppies and ugly you know values I didn't have and I
1:46:14
thought there's something wrong I was angry and I wanted to change it young people are still like that and I
1:46:20
think a lot of young people gen Z or whatever the next one is whatever they call them I don't know yet
1:46:26
um they're growing up in a world that isn't healthy that isn't right and when you're
1:46:32
young you have all these energy all this physicality and you you don't like it
1:46:38
you don't feel comfortable in it and I know a lot of young people don't feel comfortable and at some point they're
1:46:43
going to Rebel and they're going to say I'm tired of all this virtuality I want something
1:46:49
real I want some I want real experiences that Spirit of rebellion that I see
1:46:56
seeds of and signs of gives me hope and I hope that it continues because I
1:47:01
remember once I had a dream probably the most memorable dream I ever had it was maybe about 15 years ago or so
1:47:07
and I dreamed that I was there in the year 2072 or something like that I was
1:47:13
walking around the year 2072 it was the streets of New York I was going wow everybody looks so happy humans finally
1:47:21
figured out how to do well in this world they figured out how to what matters There's Hope in this
1:47:26
world that was my moment in that dream this is always sort of stuck with me maybe that will happen maybe it won't I
1:47:34
don't know I'm not Nostradamus but you know so this I struggle with that I
1:47:40
struggle with part of me is pessimistic and part of me seeks Seeds of Hope
1:47:45
particularly in young people and I really really really wish they figure it out because my generation Generations
1:47:52
before we've kind of screwed this world over things aren't good right now and I'm hoping that Spirit of rebellion that
1:47:59
young energy will kind of come and kick the Apple card and say screw all this we
Last guest’s question
1:48:04
want a different world we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a
1:48:11
question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to ask it for and the question that's been left for you to
1:48:16
answer is in adult life when
1:48:22
were you most happy and why and then brackets it says are you this
1:48:29
way now and if not why
1:48:37
well I have to say the happiest moment of my life
1:48:43
came at that turning point when I was 38 or so and I was given the opportunity to write
1:48:49
the 48 Laws of Power and it came out and my life had changed and so the
1:48:56
contrast from being in a in a small apartment
1:49:03
rather poor rather desperate where people were beginning to worry about me
1:49:08
and suddenly things were clicking together and I was having fun and I was having all these adventures and I had
1:49:15
reasonable out of money the shift was so radical and so dramatic that it was
1:49:20
extremely exciting you know and it was almost like a drug high it was pretty damn intoxicating
 1:49:28
um I don't have that now because it's 25 years ago and I'm kind of still riding
1:49:35
off of that and and the high is worn off but I can remember in my body how
1:49:43
depressed I was and that feeling and I never lose it I'm very grateful for what
1:49:49
I have because I know it could have turned out very differently so I still feel that initial happiness
1:49:56
because I know if you have success when you're 24 you're not ready for it you don't
1:50:02
realize how evanescent it could be how it can disappear and how important it is I never had that because I struggled for
1:50:08
so long and so many bad jobs so the happiness the Euphoria isn't the
1:50:16
same it's not the same intensity but I'm still riding on that wave because I know where I was before it happened and it's
1:50:25
been an amazing journey you know my wife who's been there for it with it goes can you believe that you
1:50:32
were having dinner with Stevie Wonder when you were 12 years old you told me Robert that was the first album you ever
1:50:39
bought was intervisions and what would you told yourself when you were 12 years old this is what's happening whoa I
1:50:45
would have I would have flipped out it's been an amazing journey I can't I can't complain
1:50:51
my whining complaint card was taken away from me in 1998 when I published that
1:50:56
book and so I'm still feeling I'm still feeling the the last vestiges of that Euphoria from
1:51:03
back then Robert thank you thank you so much I've
1:51:08
um I've been a tremendous fan of your work for what feels like forever in my life and um your your wisdom your your
1:51:17
willingness to confront difficult subject matter that a lot of people would avoid because there is darkness in
1:51:23
laced in a lot of the subject matter that you've written about in some of your books but it is very it's very human important as you say
1:51:30
objectively neutral darkness that just is and for you to confront that over and over again and your work is is it makes
1:51:37
it some of the most important work I think anyone could do because it's the work that a lot of us avoid but your vulnerability and
openness today as well
1:51:43
have been like a shot at my ass in terms of gratitude um and the importance of perception
1:51:51
um as it relates to our happiness and our sense of a sense of self so thank you so much I've really enjoyed this conversation more than I
could express
1:51:56
in words thank you so much Stephen it was a great interview I was telling me that uh I've done thousands of these
1:52:03
podcasts and I know I can tell I've done my ten thousand hours I can tell
1:52:10
a great interviewer from a mediocre interview and you're on that Elite category wow because you ask really
1:52:15
great questions and you're a great listener and it's been really fun so thank you so much I appreciate the
1:52:20
opportunity means a lot to me thank you Robert okay you're welcome
1:52:26
quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans as a sponsor and supporter of this podcast for anyone
1:52:32
that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that allows you to have slick fast good quality online meetings without
any of
1:52:39
those glitches that you'd normally find with other meeting online providers you know the ones I'm talking about and they
1:52:45
have a new feature called Blue Jeans basic which I wanted to tell you about blue jeans basic is essentially a free
1:52:50
version of their top quality video conferencing and that means that you get immersive video experiences you get that
 1:52:56
super high quality super easy and zero fuss experience and apart from zero time
1:53:01
limits on meetings and calls it also comes with High Fidelity audio and video including Dolby voice they also have
1:53:07
expertise grade security so you can collaborate with confidence it's so smooth that it's quite literally changed
1:53:13
the game for myself and my team without compromising quality at all so if you'd like to check them out search
1:53:19
bluejeans.com and let me know how you get on over the last couple of how long
1:53:24
maybe four months I've been changing my diet shall I say many of you have really
1:53:29
been paying attention to this podcast will know why I've sat here with some incredible Health experts and one of the
1:53:34
things that's really come through for me which has caused a big change in my life is the need for us to have these
1:53:39
superfoods these green Foods these vegetables and then a company I love so
1:53:45
much and a company I'm an investor in and then a company that sponsor this podcast and I'm on the board of recently
1:53:50
announced a new product which absolutely spoke to exactly where I was in my life and that is huel and they announced
1:53:57
Daily Greens Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods nutrients
1:54:03
and plant-based ingredients which helps me meet that dietary requirement with the convenience that hewell always
1:54:09
offers unfortunately it's only currently available in the US but I hope I pray
1:54:14
that it'll be with you guys in the UK too so if you're in the US check it out it's an incredible product I've been having it here in La for the last
couple
1:54:21
of weeks and it's a game changer hahaha [Music]

Let this circle represent $1,000,000

0:11
This is what ten million dollars would look like
0:14
This is what one hundred million dollars would look like and this is what 1 billion dollars
would look like
0:29
Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon has a net worth of
0:33
117 times this number and then
0:38
There's you
0:39
You're probably working a job right now one that you got from the degree that you studied for
in university
0:45
you probably don't have much in savings your living expenses seem
0:48
Ridiculously high you feel as though you're not paid enough
0:51
You have credit card debt that needs taking care of maybe your student
0:54
Studying for a degree that you ho can and your job that you hope can bring some good
money
0:58
You probably don't have any savings only a pesky student debt hanging above your head
1:04
wealth
1:05
getting rich
1:06
That all seems like a distant dream. How did they do it you ask yourself seeing all those
millionaires billionaires
1:13
Especially the ones who got there at such a young age
1:16
It baffles you it makes you angry they got lucky they were born into well
1:20
They cheated their way to that money doesn't make them honey as evil and you're not smart
1:24
And I'm just unlucky those dreams you had of buying that mansion your favorite sports car
paying off your mortgage traveling around the world
1:31
They'll forever remain that way just dreams
1:34
Nothing more nothing less. You come to the harsh realization. It's a rigged game
1:39
It's been a rigged game from the start in you
1:43
You're on the losing side of it
1:48
But what if I told you you were wrong
1:53
What if there was a way of getting there an actual equation to wealth a science behind the
way money works
2:00
What if you didn't have to abandon those dreams of paying off your parent's mortgage or
traveling around the world?
2:05
Would you call me a liar for saying so I promise that I'm not and by the end of this video?
2:09
You'll understand there's a side to the coin that you're not being shown but I warn you the
road is tough
2:15
It's filled with struggle. It's filled with ups and downs
2:19
It will need swallowing some difficult roofs of the school system and society
2:22
Haven't told you yet and let me be clear
2:24
There are many of you who will not make it to the end of this road
2:28
But for those of you that do at the end of this road lies wealth beyond what you thought you
could attain at the end
2:33
Of that road lies the freedom of never having to worry about money again
2:38
so
2:39
Are you with me?
3:18
Still with me then let's not waste any more time
Part 1: The Lies You've Been Fed
3:25
What do you really think about money is this something you work for is it earned or is it
inherited?
3:31
Is it the root cause of all evil?
3:33
Are you desperate to have more of it? Have you been chasing it?
3:36
most of your life
3:37
truth is most of what you think about money has been influenced by your upbringing and
3:42
environment if you were born into a family that didn't have much money growing up then
you're more inclined to believe that YouTube will not
3:48
Grow up to have much money
3:49
or perhaps you went on the complete opposite end and decided to make as much money as
you can so that you will never be
3:54
In that position again the fact that your school didn't teach you much about this subject
3:58
Doesn't help things and because of this most of you are going to have false beliefs about
money that aren't going to help you on
4:03
This journey now stick with me here because we're gonna have to change the way you've
been seeing money your whole life
4:10
Hollywood has always had a habit of depicting the wealthy and rich as evil backstabbing
entitled or corrupt individuals
4:21
Question is have you bought into that stereotype a
4:24
Recent report released by Wealth X showed that of the world's ultra wealthy those that had a
net worth of 30 million or more
4:31
68 percent of them were self-made and it seems like every other study backs up this
conclusion Warren Buffett
4:38
self-made billionaire Howard Schultz born in poverty Oprah Winfrey born in poverty
4:42
Jeff Bezos self-made billionaire Elon Musk self-made billionaire Sara Blakely self-made
billionaire
4:48
What is it that these people know that you'd on truth is your equation is all wrong
4:53
here's the
4:54
2-dimensional equation that you've been taught money equals salary earned from a job past
a certain point the prospect of getting a job
5:01
Becomes the sole purpose of your education. So what's wrong with that you ask?
5:05
I'm gonna assume that if you're watching this you want to make money a lot of it and in a
short amount of time as
5:10
Possible if that is your goal. Then this equation for generating money will never get you there
5:15
We all have a precious resource the most important resource for Hall
5:19
And once it's gone
5:20
There's no way of getting it back that resource is
5:24
time in a standard job the amount of money you burn is
5:27
Dependent on the amount of time you put into that job if you earned
5:31
$20 an hour and worked 40 hours a week
5:33
It would take you nearly 24 years to reach a total of 1 million dollars
5:38
But that is without
5:39
subtracting any taxes or any expenses that you will incur over 24 years and let's not forget
that
5:44
Inflation would make your 1 million dollars less valuable the reality. Is that on a salary of $20
an hour?
5:50
You can only really be a millionaire at an old age by living frugally and most of that precious
5:55
Resource known as time has slipped through your fingers. You traded all that time for money
and it wasn't even a substantial amount either
6:02
So again you ask yourself. How is it then that there are self-made millionaires and
billionaires that such young ages
6:08
what makes them so different and the truth is
6:11
They have a better equation than you they have a way of understanding money that you
haven't quite grasped the earth
Part 2: The Truth About Money & Wealth
6:31
Pay very close attention now stop chasing money in a capitalist society
6:36
The rules of the game are as follows
6:38
You are paid in proportion to the perceived value that you have and the people that perceive
your value
6:43
they are the market the
6:45
Consumers of the economy the market is you your friends your family your neighbors
6:49
Your country people complain that football players are overpaid, but for players to be paid
millions
6:54
There has to be a market for the football industry in the first place
6:57
People have to see the value in football in the first place for them to want to spend money on
7:02
matches and merchandise and if the market is a high demand for football
7:07
Guess what happens to the players who are at the top of their game? They are paid
generously for it
7:12
It's not about how hard you work the cleaner that sweating and tiring himself out every day is
paid far less than the accountant
7:20
sitting behind a desk
7:21
Why?
7:21
because the market perceives the value of what the cleaner does to be far less than the
accountant as harsh as it may sound the
7:28
Cleaner can be replaced by anybody. It isn't difficult to learn how to do his job
7:32
And therefore the market will not pay him more than the accountant the guy who spent years
studying numbers
7:37
The guy who has saved his clients thousands on their taxes
7:40
But even so we just discussed how getting a job is in the right equation to amassing a great
amount of wealth in a shorter
7:47
Period of time so then how can we increase or perceived value?
7:50
What is it about people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?
7:53
That makes their perceived value so high the first step to this equation of wealth is quite
simple if you want money solve
8:00
problems
8:01
if you take a second to digest this statement you
8:03
Realize that just about all money runs from this basic premise if it solves a problem
8:08
Money will be thrown at it
8:10
If it's a million-dollar problem, then the solution will make you Millions
8:13
If it's a billion dollar problem
8:15
Then the solution will make you billions think about all the problems that our site like Amazon
8:19
solves the hassle of going to a store that hassle of having to wait weeks for a delivery
cheaper prices and so on not to
8:26
Mention all the other companies that Amazon bones and the problems that those companies
solve
8:29
Jeff Bezos helped solve a billion-dollar problem and also awarded favorably for doing so
8:35
If you've been chasing money, then you've been doing it all wrong
8:38
It sounds almost paradoxical but if you want money
8:42
It isn't money that you should be looking for you should be looking for problems and more
importantly
8:47
Solutions to those problems and once you found that solution make a business around it
8:54
Wait, so that's it
8:55
Just solve problems and money will appear so I'm gonna have to create the next Amazon for
me to be rich or the next Facebook
9:01
Or Google you've got to be kidding me, right? I don't even know how to code
9:04
I don't even have the money to start something of that scale
9:07
I don't even hold on your wants more going into old patterns of thinking start with a problem
always start with a problem
9:13
Listen to the market around you
9:17
What are people saying they don't like?
9:20
What are people saying they wish existed?
9:22
What are people saying frustrates them? What do people think is incredibly inconvenient?
9:26
Is that a problem that you can solve and also is a problem that is worth solving
Part 3: A Problem Worth Solving
9:42
The final step of this equation to wealth is finding a scalable solution to the problem your
solution needs to affect a
9:49
Magnitude of people starring a restaurant that's not scalable
9:53
You're constrained to the local area and the footfall of that area but a franchise now, that's
more scalable
9:59
Is your solution a piece of software then that means once that software has been built you
can scale it
10:04
Infinitely online without needing to worry about things like production or shipping costs as it's
all done virtually
10:10
Good luck finding infinite scale with a job, but be careful does your solution require your time
to generate money
10:16
Let's say you were a yoga teacher that charged $100 per hour
10:20
Congratulations, you only made yourself another job disguised as a business
10:24
There's only a certain amount of lessons that you can feasibly do in one day
10:27
And therefore your income is time-bound, but if you created an online yoga class that ran
10:33
24/7 with lessons you only had to create once now that is scaleable scaling your solution is
critical here
10:39
So do not get lost on this point automation also plays an important role
10:44
systems and processes will keep your business running like a smooth machine if
10:48
Implemented properly if there is something in your business that you can outsource to
somebody else or hire an employee to do it for you
10:54
Assuming it financially makes sense for you to do
10:56
So then do it tasking yourself with everything is a bad thing as much as you may think you're
the best
11:02
There's someone out there that can do a better job than you once you've found a solution
11:06
It's your job to make sure that solution can be accessed by everyone in your market
11:10
It's not about your ego and it's not about what you're passionate about. The market doesn't
care about your passions
11:16
So now that you have your profitable business running with the right systems and processes
in place
11:20
It's time to move on and reap what you sow
Part 4: The Reward
11:37
There are two likely paths you're going to face at this point you either
11:41
Continue your business or cash in and seller
11:43
This is the acquisition the moment someone buys the solution that you spent years building
a business around
11:49
This is Instagram being acquired by Facebook for 1 billion. This is PayPal being sold to eBay
for 1.5 billion of which
11:57
165 million went straight to Elon Musk's pocket and the countless other liquidation events
that happen across the world
12:03
This is where all the effort that you spend into building. Your company comes to fruition
12:07
And if you choose to continue running your business, well, there's a multitude of reasons for
you wanting to do
12:12
So maybe you love the company that you built will want to stick with your baby
12:15
Maybe you think you can add more value to the company and sell it down the line for more
than it's currently worth
12:21
Perhaps that business runs passively in the background so you don't have to do much to
keep the wheels turning
12:25
Or maybe it's a combination of these three things. Either way you did it
12:30
You solved a problem that the market wanted solving and it were awarded you favorably for
doing so and so now I ask you what?
12:38
Was it all for anyway?
Part 5: Your Money or Your Life
12:56
For most of you it was never about the money
12:59
Money is just a piece of paper a number on a screen
13:04
Its value is only backed up by our belief in its value
13:08
From the very start this was never about the money
13:11
Paying off the mortgage buying your dream car traveling around the world never having to
worry about your financial situation
13:18
It's the freedom that you were looking for. Your destination wasn't anything monetary related
13:22
It was a feeling a sensation
13:24
The ability to do what you want whenever you wanted without ever having to cast the
thought towards can I afford this have I used?
13:31
Up all my holidays for the year. How am I going to pay the rent? Will I be able to live off my
pension?
13:36
What dreams will I have to sacrifice?
13:38
Because I can't afford to pursue them the most important lesson from this video was never
about the nature of money
13:44
It was about the one valuable resource that we all have the one resource
13:47
We will never be able to reclaim time
13:50
Is giving up a large chunk of your time towards a job that you probably don't like worth it
13:55
Is your life settled on working coming home watching the telly?
13:59
Sleeping waking up the next day and repeating the same cycle till you retire
14:03
How many more hours of your life do you let slip through because of this pattern?
14:09
Or perhaps you're fine with that reality
14:11
Perhaps you have no other choice but to follow that path for the time being and if that's the
case
14:15
There's nothing to worry about the most you got from this video was a little entertainment
and maybe a change in perspective
14:20
but there are those of you that understand the other side those of you that have the desire to
14:25
Never need to worry about money ever again. And so I feel the need to remind you
14:29
Stop chasing money chase problems and find the solution to those problems
14:34
This is the equation through which all money is found if you desire Liberty through never
needing to worry about money ever again
14:41
Then let's solving problems be the meaningful struggle in your life
14:44
Does it mean you'll be happy at the end of the road doesn't mean you'll feel fulfilled only you
can answer that question
14:49
But if your struggle is meaningful then perhaps it's worth pursuing
Conclusion
15:12
And there is your equation to wealth
15:14
Of course I missed out on a lot of intricacies in this video the topics of business money
15:19
Entrepreneurship are far too vast for me to cover in a single video like this
15:23
But if you do want to get started on this journey
15:25
I do recommend you read the works of MJ DeMarco who heavily inspired me to create this
video and it's also important to come back
15:32
To an original point that I made at the start of this which is that most people will not succeed
for various reasons
15:37
But the most important part is failing
15:40
Failing fast and moving on to the next thing and if you're out there doing something that isn't
strictly related to a business
15:46
But you want it to make money then asking yourself the question of what problems am I
solving?
15:50
Could lead you to find ways of better
15:53
Monetizing whatever it is that you're doing and that also includes a job and a career if you
can solve more problems and find more
15:59
Solutions at your place of employment you have something that you can use to leverage a
higher salary
16:04
But I will end this all on the same message that I have repeated numerous times in this video
16:08
Stop chasing money and start chasing solutions to problems
16:17
Hey, you've arrived at the end of the video and thank you so much for watching, but don't
click off just yet
16:22
I do want to take the time to say thank you very much for watching to the end these things
16:26
Take quite a few sleepless nights to research script film and edit
16:30
So you can't imagine how much I really do appreciate your support
16:33
if you genuinely
16:34
Enjoyed this video then don't be shy hit the like button and if you disliked it hit the dislike
Vaughn twice just to be sure
16:40
And comment down below and let me know why my goal with this channel has been to
create entertaining documentary style videos on business
16:47
finance and life in general
16:49
And if that sounds like something you'd be interested in and you'd want to tune in for more
hit the subscribe on and hit that
16:54
Notification belt make sure all your notifications are turned on both
16:57
All of that being said, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day as per usual. My friends
hand ahead salute
17:21
You