Transcript
00:00:00I'm sorry it's taken so long, but merch is nearly here. This Friday, the 31st of July at 12 midday
00:00:05central time or 6 p.m. UK time, the brand new Modern Wisdom merch goes live. Head to mwmerch.com
00:00:10now to sign up. You'll get first access. And once this is sold out, it's gone. Never to be printed
00:00:14again. You've only got six days to be able to buy. So head to mwmerch.com now. I started thinking
00:00:20about obsession and why no one understands obsession. I think literally no one understands
00:00:26why obsession is the way it is. Discipline, motivation, and obsession are three words that
00:00:31get thrown around quite a lot. And I think most people misunderstand all three. And because
00:00:36of that, they miss some very big lessons about how life actually works. So here's the simplest
00:00:41way to separate those three out. Discipline is I will make myself do the thing. Motivation
00:00:47is I want to do the thing. And obsession is I can't not do the thing. So all three,
00:00:56produce the same outcome, right? The thing gets done. But the internal cost couldn't be more
00:01:01different. And the difference is primarily around friction. So discipline is friction accepted.
00:01:07You don't want to do the thing, but you do it anyway. You lean on effort, willpower, routines,
00:01:13and environment, and design, and past patterns, and habits, and drag yourself over the line.
00:01:18And it's mostly under your control, which is why it's so reliable. If you're willing to pay the
00:01:23price, discipline will always show up. But the problem is that the price is high. Discipline
00:01:29is really expensive. It burns energy, creates resistance, feels heavy. It works, but it's a
00:01:35grind. Motivation is friction reduced. You want to do the thing, so the resistance drops. You
00:01:42still need effort, but you need less of it. Motivation comes from desire, the circumstance,
00:01:48novelty, and identity, and community, and emotion. And you can try to kind of manufacture it with
00:01:55goal setting or visualization, community support, and celebrating micro wins, or me and Alex Hormozzi
00:02:02compilation videos and heavy metal music. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't, right?
00:02:09Motivation is unreliable because it's kind of downstream of how you feel. When your mood dips,
00:02:15motivation just fucking evaporates. It's useful fuel, but you can't build a life that depends
00:02:21on it. And obsession is friction inverted. So remember, we've got discipline, friction accepted,
00:02:29motivation, friction reduced, and obsession is friction inverted. You don't need to make yourself
00:02:34do the thing. You can't avoid doing it. You don't push. Instead, the work sort of pulls you toward
00:02:42it. It invades your thoughts. It follows you into the shower, into the car, into bed. And when you're
00:02:48tired, it doesn't disappear. Obsession is kind of like motivation's poltergeist big brother who just
00:02:55never stops haunting you. And because you can't switch it off, that's why obsessions with negative
00:03:01pursuits like politics or porn or a toxic ex can be so destructive. The reason that obsession is so
00:03:08powerful is simple. It's basically permanent free motivation and discipline. You get output
00:03:15without negotiation and you get action without having to tap into any willpower. It's the fuel source
00:03:22equivalent of hitting a superstar in Super Mario. So this is why obsession produces such disproportionate
00:03:29results in a short window of time. People look at the output and assume superhuman discipline when in
00:03:38reality, if you're obsessed, the work felt almost unavoidable. People admire discipline and envy
00:03:45motivation, but very few understand obsession. And because they don't understand it, they waste it.
00:03:51So here I think is the part that people miss. Obsession isn't a personality trait. It's a state,
00:03:59which means that it can't be summoned on command. You can't decide to be obsessed. It appears when
00:04:06curiosity, identity, reward, and meaning sort of all accidentally align some weird celestial bodies.
00:04:14And when it appears, it doesn't last forever, which is a tragedy, right? Obsession is a non-renewable fuel
00:04:22source. When it leaves, you don't get it back on demand. In future, it will take you so much more
00:04:30effort to get even partially close to this obsessive level of output. So use your free fuel while it's
00:04:37available. Which is why the correct response to a positive obsession isn't to suppress it, or balance
00:04:44it, or apologize for it. It's to surrender to it. So if you're currently obsessed with something positive,
00:04:51my advice is to kind of let it crawl inside of you and wear your skin and stare out through your eyes.
00:04:59Like if you can't stop watching lifting videos and spend all of your time thinking about diet and training,
00:05:05now isn't the time to be balanced in the gym. Or if your sleep is wrecked because you're ruminating
00:05:11about a business idea that you can't wait to launch. And then this isn't the time for you to seek calm.
00:05:17You're allowed to go full on demon founder mode with it. Serial obsessives, as far as I can see,
00:05:24move from intense project to intense project, making huge progress while the tide is with them. So that when the
00:05:32obsession inevitably fades, something important has happened already. The rails for their future
00:05:38behavior get laid down. So by the time that your obsession wanes, you have built the patterns and
00:05:44routines and skills and habits that allow you to keep going when the fuel is no longer free.
00:05:52So I started going to the gym when I was 18 because I was obsessed with gaining muscle. And I researched
00:05:58protein shake formulations and dreamt of going to Gold's gym in LA and skipped nights out partying to
00:06:03stay in my bedroom and read the MISC forums on bodybuilding.com, the most autistic excuse for
00:06:08not going on a night out ever. Nearly 20 years later, I'm still training. And not really even because I'm
00:06:17that disciplined or motivated now, but just because an old obsession of mine fossilized into my identity.
00:06:24And being honest, this is true for my meditation habit and my research for podcast guests and
00:06:30the productivity systems that I've got and my desire to build businesses. What once obsessed me
00:06:36has now just simply become me. What often looks like discipline today is just the
00:06:44echo of someone's past obsessions. This is a quiet reframe that people basically never say out loud.
00:06:53Discipline sometimes isn't the starting point. It's just the residue. So what it's what remains when
00:07:00obsession cools down and settles into routine. So if you're lucky enough to be obsessed right now,
00:07:09I think you can stop trying to moderate it into something respectable.
00:07:12You can stop worrying about whether it looks excessive and you can stop
00:07:16pretending whether you're supposed to feel balanced.
00:07:21Balance is what you can enjoy later and obsession is what you get to embrace now.
00:07:27Basically, as far as I can see it, most people never get an obsession worth anything.
00:07:33So if you have one, don't waste it.
00:07:36And the more that I think about this and I look at a lot of the guys that I've met who appear to be
00:07:42super disciplined and they're absolutely crushing it in life and they've got the systems are so dialed and
00:07:47you look from the outside and think, holy shit, this person is just a machine. What you don't realize is that
00:07:54in the past, they had no choice other than to do that thing. They were completely obsessed with it,
00:07:59it consumed their life. And now the like the cooled heart of the dying star that's left over the brown dwarf of their previous huge furnace
00:08:10is the life that they still have. The thing that obsessed them became their identity.
00:08:16And, um, yeah, sure. I said, you can't engineer obsession. I do think that's true. You can certainly
00:08:22lay the ground, the foundations for it. But the other thing is some people are more obsessive than
00:08:29others. I, that's something that I've been blessed or cursed with. I have a slightly obsessive personality,
00:08:35not wash my hands all the time, obsessive, but struggle to switch off obsessive. And I'm going
00:08:40to guess if you're watching the show that you do too. What that means is you are going to probably like a,
00:08:46a serial monogamist, you're going to bounce from obsession relationship to obsession relationship.
00:08:52And if you dampen it down too much, if you don't fully allow it to kind of take
00:08:57over your life, at least to whatever level is healthy, or even maybe a little bit beyond the
00:09:02level that's healthy, you're going to miss out on free motivation and free discipline.
00:09:07And then at the end of it, because this isn't going to last forever, right? Obsession isn't going to,
00:09:11it's a non-renewable fuel source. You can't bring it back when you want to.
00:09:15Once that's cooled off, if you haven't allowed it to kind of take over your life fully,
00:09:20what you end up with is a world where you fought against the thing you wanted to do
00:09:27to stop it from being so all encompassing or like unrespectable. And then once it's finished and you
00:09:33don't have it anymore, you didn't gain the momentum and the identity that allowed you to kind of flow
00:09:38through it afterward so that it then became the way that you show up. I'm just a guy that goes to the gym.
00:09:43I'm just a guy that builds businesses. I'm just a guy that meditates or whatever.
00:09:47So yeah, I think that's a, I just, I love this. I love this idea. I love the fact that obsession gets
00:09:54a really bad rap. And in many ways it can be horrible, especially when it's pointed toward
00:09:59politics or porn or your ex. But if it's pointed towards something that's actually good, you should
00:10:05allow it to kind of take over your life. And then once it's finished, everyone will look from the outside.
00:10:10Oh my God. Dude, how do you, how do you train so much? You know, you're like really consistent with
00:10:14your training. You must be really disciplined. You must be so motivated. And you're like,
00:10:18not really, man. Like I just used to be obsessed with this. And now it's kind of who I am.
00:10:23Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance,
00:10:26which is why for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element.
00:10:30Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't.
00:10:35This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar. And I really tell the
00:10:43difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps
00:10:48and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings.
00:10:53Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it
00:10:57and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your
00:11:01money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of
00:11:05Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description
00:11:09below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom.
00:11:17Congratulations, you made it to the end of a clip and the full-length episode is available right here.