Transcript
00:00:00Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It is episode 1100, and that is a number that I
00:00:07did not think that I would get to. I don't think I've done 1100 of anything apart from these
00:00:11podcasts. As is tradition, I've put together a list of lessons that I've learned from the show
00:00:16and from writing and reading and life over the last six months since the last one of these that
00:00:21I did. I'm going to go through them today. So let's get into it. First up, I started thinking
00:00:27about obsession and why no one understands obsession. I think literally no one understands
00:00:33why obsession is the way it is. Discipline, motivation and obsession are three words that
00:00:38get thrown around quite a lot. And I think most people misunderstand all three. Because of that,
00:00:44they miss some very big lessons about how life actually works. So here's the simplest way to
00:00:49separate those three out. Discipline is I will make myself do the thing. Motivation is I want
00:00:56to do the thing. And obsession is I can't not do the thing. So all three produce the same outcome,
00:01:04right? The thing gets done. But the internal cost couldn't be more different. And the difference
00:01:09is primarily around friction. So discipline is friction accepted. You don't want to do the thing,
00:01:16but you do it anyway. You lean on effort, willpower, routines and environment and design and past patterns
00:01:23and habits and drag yourself over the line. It's mostly under your control, which is why it's so reliable.
00:01:29If you're willing to pay the price, discipline will always show up. But the problem is that the price
00:01:35is high. Discipline is really expensive. It burns energy, creates resistance, feels heavy. It works,
00:01:42but it's a grind. Motivation is friction reduced. You want to do the thing, so the resistance drops.
00:01:49You still need effort, but you need less of it. Motivation comes from desire, the circumstance,
00:01:56novelty and identity and community and emotion. And you can try to kind of manufacture it with
00:02:03goal setting or visualization, community support and celebrating micro wins or me and Alex Hormozy
00:02:10compilation videos and heavy metal music. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. Motivation is
00:02:17unreliable because it's kind of downstream of how you feel. When your mood dips, motivation just
00:02:24fucking evaporates. It's useful fuel, but you can't build a life that depends on it. And obsession
00:02:30is friction inverted. So remember, we've got discipline, friction accepted, motivation,
00:02:37friction reduced, and obsession is friction inverted. You don't need to make yourself do the thing.
00:02:43You can't avoid doing it. You don't push. Instead, the work sort of pulls you toward it. It invades your
00:02:51thoughts. It follows you into the shower, into the car, into bed. And when you're tired, it doesn't
00:02:56disappear. Obsession is kind of like motivation's poltergeist big brother who just never stops haunting
00:03:04you. And because you can't switch it off, that's why obsessions with negative pursuits like politics
00:03:10or porn or a toxic ex can be so destructive. The reason that obsession is so powerful is simple.
00:03:18It's basically permanent free motivation and discipline. You get output without negotiation and
00:03:24you get action without having to tap into any willpower to the fuel source equivalent of hitting
00:03:31a superstar in Super Mario. So this is why obsession produces such disproportionate results in a short
00:03:37window of time. And people look at the output and assume superhuman discipline when in reality,
00:03:46if you're obsessed, the work felt almost unavoidable. People admire discipline and envy motivation,
00:03:53but very few understand obsession. And because they don't understand it, they waste it.
00:03:59So here, I think, is the part that people miss. Obsession isn't a personality trait. It's a state,
00:04:06which means that it can't be summoned on command. You can't decide to be obsessed. It appears when
00:04:14curiosity, identity, reward, and meaning sort of all accidentally align some weird celestial bodies. And
00:04:23when it appears, it doesn't last forever, which is a tragedy. Obsession is a non-renewable fuel source.
00:04:30When it leaves, you don't get it back on demand. In future, it will take you so much more effort to get
00:04:38even partially close to this obsessive level of output. So use your free fuel while it's available.
00:04:46Which is why the correct response to a positive obsession isn't to suppress it or balance it or
00:04:52apologize for it. It's to surrender to it. So if you're currently obsessed with something positive,
00:04:59my advice is to kind of let it crawl inside of you and wear your skin and stare out through your eyes.
00:05:06Like, if you can't stop watching lifting videos and spend all of your time thinking about diet and
00:05:12training, now isn't the time to be balanced in the gym. Or if your sleep is wrecked because you're
00:05:18ruminating about a business idea that you can't wait to launch, this isn't the time for you to seek calm.
00:05:24You're allowed to go full on demon founder mode with it. Serial obsessives, as far as I can see, move
00:05:32from intense project to intense project, making huge progress while the tide is with them so that when the
00:05:40obsession inevitably fades, something important has happened already. The rails for their future behavior
00:05:47get laid down. So by the time that your obsession wanes, you have built the patterns and routines and
00:05:53skills and habits that allow you to keep going when the fuel is no longer free. So I started going to
00:06:00the gym when I was 18 because I was obsessed with gaining muscle and I researched protein shake
00:06:06formulations and dreamt of going to gold's gym in LA and skipped nights out partying to stay in my bedroom
00:06:11and read the misc forums on bodybuilding.com. Like the most autistic excuse for not going on a night
00:06:17out ever. Nearly 20 years later, I'm still training and not really even because I'm that disciplined
00:06:26or motivated now, but just because an old obsession of mine fossilized into my identity. And being honest,
00:06:33this is true for my meditation habit and my research for podcast guests and the productivity systems that
00:06:39I've got and my desire to build businesses. What once obsessed me has now just simply become me.
00:06:47What often looks like discipline today is just the echo of someone's past obsessions. This is a quiet
00:06:56reframe that people basically never say out loud. Discipline sometimes isn't the starting point.
00:07:04It's just the residue. So it's what remains when obsession cools down and settles into routine.
00:07:12So if you're lucky enough to be obsessed right now, I think you can stop trying to moderate it into
00:07:18something respectable. You can stop worrying about whether it looks excessive and you can stop
00:07:23pretending whether you're supposed to feel balanced. Balance is what you can enjoy later and obsession is
00:07:32what you get to embrace now. Basically, as far as I can see it, most people never get an obsession worth
00:07:39anything. So if you have one, don't waste it. And the more that I think about this and I look at a lot of the
00:07:47guys that I've met who appear to be super disciplined and they're absolutely crushing it in life and
00:07:52they've got the systems are so dialed and you look from the outside and think, holy shit, this person is
00:07:59just a machine. What you don't realize is that in the past, they had no choice other than to do that
00:08:05thing. They were completely obsessed with it, consumed their life. And now the like the cooled heart of the
00:08:12dying star that's leftover, the brown dwarf of their previous huge furnace is the life that they still have.
00:08:21The thing that obsessed them became their identity. And yeah, sure. I said you can't engineer obsession.
00:08:28I do think that's true. You can certainly lay the ground, the foundations for it. But the other thing is
00:08:35some people are more obsessive than others. I, that's something that I've been blessed or cursed
00:08:41with. I have a slightly obsessive personality, not wash my hands all the time, obsessive,
00:08:45but struggle to switch off obsessive. And I'm going to guess if you're watching the show that you do too.
00:08:50What that means is you are going to probably like a serial monogamist, you're going to bounce from
00:08:57obsession relationship to obsession relationship. And if you dampen it down too much, if you don't fully
00:09:03allow it to kind of take over your life, at least to whatever level is healthy, or even maybe a little
00:09:09bit beyond the level that's healthy, you're going to miss out on free motivation and free discipline.
00:09:14And then at the end of it, because this isn't going to last forever, right? Obsession isn't going to,
00:09:19it's a non-renewable fuel source. You can't bring it back when you want to. Once that's cooled off,
00:09:24if you haven't allowed it to kind of take over your life fully, what you end up with is a world where
00:09:30you fought against the thing you wanted to do to stop it from being so all encompassing
00:09:38or like unrespectable. And then once it's finished and you don't have it anymore, you didn't gain
00:09:43the momentum and the identity that allowed you to kind of flow through it afterward so that it then
00:09:47became the way that you show up. I'm just a guy that goes to the gym. I'm just a guy that builds
00:09:51businesses. I'm just a guy that meditates or whatever. So yeah, I think that's a, I just,
00:09:58I love this. I love this idea. I love the fact that obsession gets a really bad rap. And in many ways,
00:10:04it can be horrible, especially when it's pointed toward politics or porn or your ex. But if it's
00:10:09pointed towards something that's actually good, you should allow it to kind of take over your life.
00:10:14And then once it's finished, everyone will look from the outside. Oh my God, dude, how do you,
00:10:19how do you train so much? You know, you like really consistent with your training must be really
00:10:23disciplined. You must be so motivated. And you're like, not really, man. Like I just used to be
00:10:27obsessed with this. And now it's kind of who I am. All right. Next one, the paradox of self-awareness.
00:10:33So everyone understands that actions are more important than words, right? You are what you do,
00:10:39not what you say you'll do. And there's this line from Hamlet, "Thus conscience does make cowards
00:10:44of us all." And I never read any Shakespeare. I can barely remember even going through it in school,
00:10:50but I came across this line again and did a deep dive on what it means. "Thus conscience does make
00:10:57cowards of us all." This line comes from Hamlet and it's usually misheard as an insult. It's as if
00:11:04Shakespeare is sort of sneering at morality, saying that ethics soften us or thought drains courage
00:11:13from the body. I don't think that's what's happening. Shakespeare isn't attacking goodness.
00:11:19He's pointing at self-awareness and naming its cost. It's in the to be or not to be soliloquy,
00:11:26and Hamlet isn't really weighing life versus death. He's circling a more practical question.
00:11:35Why do humans hesitate to act even when action would clearly relieve their suffering? Like,
00:11:40why do we endure situations we don't want and why do we tolerate lives that we could in theory change?
00:11:47Well, pain isn't the only obstacle. Imagination is. And by conscience, Shakespeare means something
00:11:56more closer to consciousness. It's the ability to think ahead, to judge ourselves, to simulate futures before
00:12:02they arrive. It's to see the consequences coming and experience them emotionally in advance. And
00:12:11unfortunately, that ability cuts both ways because the very capacity that makes you reflective and ethical
00:12:18and intelligent also makes you hesitant. We imagine worst-case scenarios so vividly that we treat them
00:12:26as if they're already real. So courage isn't defeated by fear. It's defeated by simulation. We rehearse
00:12:35embarrassment, loss, rejection, and moral failure in advance. And then our bodies respond as if those things have
00:12:44already happened. Your heart rate rises, your muscles tighten. Avoidance feels sensible, and inaction feels
00:12:51like safety. Hamlet describes what follows. Thought, he says, puzzles the will. Thought puzzles the will.
00:13:00Reflection drains us. Not because thinking is bad, but because it multiplies potential outcomes faster than
00:13:08Our actions can deal with them. I think that's so cool. Thinking isn't bad itself, but it's able to
00:13:14generate more realities than our actions can solve. Animals don't suffer this, right? They just act when a
00:13:22threshold is crossed. Humans linger. And by the time that the moment to move arrives,
00:13:28we feel as if we've already lived through its inevitable failure. So we wait. This is the
00:13:35deeper psychological point that I think Shakespeare is making. And I'm aware that a guy that basically
00:13:41didn't read Shakespeare is just reverse engineering what I think he said. But I do think that this is a
00:13:45cool interpretation, right? Our intelligence doesn't just protect us. It also inhibits us. We learn quickly
00:13:54from mistakes that we make. But we almost never feel the cost of mistakes that we avoid.
00:14:00The humiliation of speaking and failing leaves a scar. But the decades-long erosion of never speaking
00:14:07leaves nothing that you can point to. Which explains why people stay in the wrong job,
00:14:13the wrong relationship, the wrong version of themselves for years. Not because they don't know better,
00:14:20but because action demands stepping into an unrehearsed future. Hamlet names the real enemy,
00:14:26which is uncertainty. Not pain or effort, but just the unknown. Our minds would rather endure a familiar
00:14:36misery than gamble on an unfamiliar freedom. Even suffering becomes tolerable once it's predictable.
00:14:44But people would rather spend years in misery than risk a few days of pain. And this is why modern life,
00:14:51despite being safer than any previous era, often feels more paralyzing, right? Because our nervous
00:14:57systems evolved to avoid death and lions, and now we use it to avoid embarrassment and misjudgment and
00:15:05reputational damage and identity fracture. And here's the final uncomfortable implication Shakespeare leaves hanging.
00:15:14Self-awareness is not a pure good, right? Beyond a certain point, self-awareness actually inhibits agency.
00:15:22Less reflection can mean more peace. Less certainty can mean more movement. Less conscience can sometimes mean more life.
00:15:32Courage isn't about thinking clearly. It's about moving while things are still unclear.
00:15:38You know, there's that famous line, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
00:15:42But a life can be deeply examined and still never lived.
00:15:47This paradox of self-awareness, the fact that the deeper you think, sometimes the less you're able to act.
00:15:54If your mind is able to generate realities more quickly than you are able to come up with solutions,
00:16:01or move through them, you kind of have this weird cost-benefit imbalance.
00:16:06So maybe like a cost-profit, your balance sheet is offset where the overheads are higher than the revenue.
00:16:15And this sort of puts you in a negative equity in terms of your ability to move forward.
00:16:20And that can freeze you in place. You don't want to do something because you think,
00:16:26look at all the ways it could go wrong. And the more ways it could go wrong, the less ability I'm going to have to act.
00:16:32And what if this thing occurs and that thing occurs? And over time, conscience makes cowards of us all.
00:16:41It's weird because most people probably need to be more thoughtful. They need to spend more time, be less rash, act less impulsively.
00:16:51But there is a cohort of people that are the opposite. And the people like me and maybe you too.
00:17:00And they're the people who think more than they should, talk themselves out of more things than into them,
00:17:07and actually move more slowly. They get less done in life due to their thought than more.
00:17:11Now they'll make way fewer mistakes and that's great. But again, the mistake of omission is different to
00:17:17the mistake of commission. So people make commission errors if they don't think enough. People make
00:17:24omission errors if they think too much. Like if you overthink, decide not to go up and speak to that
00:17:29girl that's been in the cafeteria at work for six months, she gets a boyfriend, would have been the
00:17:34perfect partner for you. And you decide to not make the move because you've talked yourself into and
00:17:38out of it so many times. Your mind's ability to show you what could go wrong is greater than your action's ability to
00:17:44fix it in reality. That is an omission error, but we don't see it in the same way because it's not as obvious.
00:17:50For instance, I chose to not bring a number of guests on this podcast in 2024, and maybe that's leaked out of me in a couple of
00:18:02other vlogs or whatever, but I didn't make a big song and dance about it. I basically never spoke about it.
00:18:07I'm never going to get credit for the things that I didn't do. And in the same way, you never pay a cost
00:18:15for the things that you don't do. I mean, look, if you leave a person to bleed out on the side of
00:18:19the street without calling the ambulance, that's a kind of omission error, but it's pretty obvious.
00:18:24A much more quiet omission error is I was scared of building the business because my mind taught me all
00:18:29of the different ways that stuff could go wrong, so I didn't do it. And I'll never know the pain of not
00:18:36fulfilling my dreams, but I avoided the pain of failure. And the pains of failure are much more
00:18:43prevalent in our mind than the pain of, "Fuck, what if this doesn't go well?" So there's this great
00:18:49audio book from Tony Robbins. It's 30 years old. George Mack sent it to me. I don't even know how to
00:18:54find it. I'll try and find it and put it in the links, but it's basically an hour and a half
00:18:58worksheet, Awaken the Giant Within, but it's an audio book. And all he does, it's basically
00:19:03one long exercise to try and front load the pain as much as possible. Look at what this situation
00:19:09you're in now has cost you in the past. Look at what it's costing you right now and look at what
00:19:13it will cost you in the future. And he tries to get you to sit in the discomfort as much as possible.
00:19:18It's a horrible, awful exercise. It's like the mental equivalent of an ice bath. And then he gets
00:19:24you to try and do the opposite. Look at what would have happened in the past if you'd made the
00:19:28change that you want to, that you think is right. If you'd improved this thing, look at what would be
00:19:32happening now and look at what would happen in the future. And he tries to sort of get you to use,
00:19:36he calls it the pain pleasure principle. Motivate your behavior through pain and pleasure. And the type
00:19:42of pain that you can front load with, look at what not starting this thing has cost you in the past and
00:19:51now in the future. You have to be much more conscious. Like the commission errors come naturally to us,
00:19:56but the omission errors are much more hidden. So you need to kind of, you need to do an exercise.
00:20:00You need to consciously bring omission errors in like, fuck, like I've always wanted to be a stand
00:20:04up comedian. I've always just wanted to do, I've always, I want to do an open mic. I just really
00:20:08want to do an open mic and you've put it off for decades. You never did it. You never closed that
00:20:14loop and you might hate it. Here's the other thing. The thing that you're putting off from doing,
00:20:17you might absolutely hate, but at least once you realize whether you like it or you don't,
00:20:22you go up and speak to the girl in the cafeteria and find out she's got horrible breath and she's
00:20:26an asshole. There you go. Loop closed. You don't need to think about it, but the what if
00:20:31after the fact will kill you, but the what if before the fact is really hard to determine. So yeah,
00:20:38I think this conscience does make cowards of us all. That is my, uh, year seven, uh, fourth grade
00:20:46assessment of Shakespeare. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. A quick aside. Most people think that
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00:21:56All right, next one. The dark night of the soul has a positive side. So there's a quote from Rogan,
00:22:02the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
00:22:07The saddest that you've ever been is the saddest you've ever been. The hardest you've ever worked
00:22:11is the hardest you've ever worked. Shock, horror. But tough times aren't fun in the moment for the
00:22:16same reason that no one ever believes that they're living through a golden era. Right? The golden
00:22:21years, interestingly, only ever seem to exist in the past because it's only with the benefit of
00:22:27hindsight that we know all of our worries were a waste of time. But when you're going through it,
00:22:32all of your concerns are still open loops. They're all things to fear. And in retrospect,
00:22:37you see that you had the ability to handle whatever your problems were and that there was
00:22:41nothing to be bothered about, which suggests that if you've just come out of the hardest period of
00:22:47your life, this seems like a cause for celebration, right? Because you now have a new workload level
00:22:53that's been unlocked. Every new challenge that you go through shows you a new territory that you were
00:23:00scared of, but survived. Each time that you break a new limit, you now know that you have the capacity
00:23:06to handle more than you ever did before. It's kind of like inverse PTSD or workload exposure therapy.
00:23:16And it teaches you, oh, I'd been here before and I didn't die. This is okay. Joe was making some
00:23:26pithy comment about misgendering a blue haired barista and said, if that's the worst thing that's
00:23:36ever happened to someone, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever
00:23:38happened to you. That is a big deal. And it kind of is a big deal. You could imagine some person
00:23:44had been created in a lab and raised by robots and they'd never endured any discomfort and they go
00:23:50outside and they feel the wind on their skin. I mean, maybe it would be nice, but let's say it was a
00:23:54strong wind or maybe it was a strong wind with some leaves in it and sand or whatever.
00:23:57That to them might be absolute agony because their level of sensitivity has been tuned down an awful
00:24:03lot. And I think the same thing can happen psychologically too, to people that, wow,
00:24:10I've not really ever been through much difficulty, that all of this stuff has been snow plowed out of
00:24:14my way and then I've arrived in the world and it's harder than I thought it would be. But the opposite
00:24:20is also true, which means if you're the sort of person who regularly seeks out discomfort or discomfort
00:24:26seeks you out and you have to push back against it, each time that you do something that you couldn't
00:24:33previously believe that you had in the locker. This is a new level that you have just got to that teaches
00:24:41your body. I've been here before and I didn't die. This is okay. For instance, I just came back from
00:24:46this tour in Australia and the opening night was two and a half thousand people in Sydney, which is the
00:24:55second biggest audience I've ever been in front of. And the theater is so fucking huge. It is so scary.
00:25:01This big sprawl. It's like IMAX. Imagine looking out at an audience of people and they're wrapped
00:25:06around you. It's basically, there's no part of my vision that doesn't have people in it. And it's
00:25:11even angled like a fucking IMAX screen. And I'd run the show a bunch of times in Austin, Texas first,
00:25:18but I hadn't done it in front of a big audience. There's a difference between doing it in an
00:25:21intimate 50 person comedy club in Austin, Texas. And in front of two and a half thousand people,
00:25:26you know, maybe one third of which have been brought along as friends or partners of people
00:25:30who love the show. So it's a way colder audience with a hundred foot high ceiling. It's a totally
00:25:36different environment. And I'd never run this show apart from this small comedy club in Austin.
00:25:45James goes out before me and does an entire three minute segment, which is just calling different
00:25:50things gay. And I had to, as opposed to me going out with warm audience, he had really sort of put me
00:25:58on the back foot. All of this stuff was like, fuck, like, this is so hard. They just felt really,
00:26:03really difficult. And that is now the new, I thought this thing was going to destroy me and I got through
00:26:11it. Wow. Well, the next time that I do it, maybe the sound cuts out halfway through at that same show,
00:26:17the sound guy decided to trigger the end of show sequence halfway through. First time that's ever
00:26:23happened to me in New York, the people who came to the New York show, I am the entire venue sound cut
00:26:31out apart from the onstage monitors for like three minutes. That's the first time that that's ever
00:26:38happened to me. And it doesn't matter whether you're on stage or not, but you know, the heaviest weight
00:26:41that you've ever lifted is the heaviest weight you've ever lifted. Each time that you break a new PR, each
00:26:45time that you do something that's difficult, each time that you go through a situation, which is tough.
00:26:49Yes, it sucks. And obviously you don't want to lean into accumulating more of those than is necessary.
00:26:54But especially if it's something around your chosen pursuit, if it's around work, if it's around
00:27:00difficulty, skill acquisition, stuff like that, you know that you have that in the locker, you know that
00:27:05you can survive that and it's cool. And I basically think inverse PTSD workload exposure therapy is a good
00:27:12way to alchemize something that you could see as really toxic and bad and difficult and actually
00:27:20realize, wow, this is kind of a gift to my future self. Look at how hard you can work. Look at how
00:27:25much you can endure. Look at how skillfully you were able to get through this thing. And on the other
00:27:31side of it, that's, that's your new level. You know that you can do that too. All right. Six lessons about
00:27:36choosing a life direction. First one, James Clear. It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something.
00:27:42If you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle,
00:27:48then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result, but not the process,
00:27:53is to guarantee disappointment. I think that is so fucking good. It doesn't make sense to continue
00:27:58wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the
00:28:04lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. So a lot of the time people might think,
00:28:09I want to become a touring rockstar. Okay. You crave the result, touring rockstar. Do you want
00:28:16the process? Do you want the lifestyle to get there? And then the lifestyle of being there too.
00:28:21To become a touring rockstar, you're going to have to play guitar in your bedroom on your own with no
00:28:26one listening and no promise of whether or not it's going to work for like a decade, right? That you're
00:28:32going to have to learn all of the scales. You're going to have to learn to write music. You're going to have to find a
00:28:36bandmates and learn mastering and recording and bouncing tracks and all of this stuff.
00:28:42Do you want that? Do you want to have calluses on your fingers? And then the lifestyle of actually
00:28:46even being there. You're going to be on the road away from your friends and your family for six
00:28:49months of the year, every single year. You're going to be in a smelly tour bus for the first half of
00:28:53your career because you're not going to have made it unless you break through with like Gangnam
00:28:57style or some shit. And then, okay, is that what you want? Is that really what you want?
00:29:03Do you want something or, and are you willing to do what it takes to get it? Because if it's not both,
00:29:09it doesn't matter. Next one, outward complaints aren't a good gauge of internal suffering.
00:29:15Just because someone carries it well, doesn't mean it isn't heavy. Just because someone carries it
00:29:21well, doesn't mean it isn't heavy. This is an Oliver Berkman line. And I often think about this,
00:29:28the challenge of somebody that looks competent, or if you're the responsible one in your friend group,
00:29:35you're the one that is listening to Huberman podcasts and trying to optimize your sleep and
00:29:42maybe you've gone to therapy and you're doing meditation, you're trying to be balanced and
00:29:44regulated and all of these things. Typically to your friends around you, that means, well, you know,
00:29:49like Leanne, she's always got it together. Like Leanne doesn't, she doesn't need help. Like she's,
00:29:53she's always good, but you don't understand if this person is bearing even more weight
00:29:59than everybody else around them, but just carrying it well, holding onto it, not breaking down.
00:30:08And again, it goes back to the Rogan thing of the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the
00:30:12worst thing that's ever happened to you. If you are carrying a heavier weight than someone else,
00:30:16but you just know that your capacity to lift it is greater, that doesn't mean it isn't heavy.
00:30:21It just means that you're doing a really good job at keeping it quiet.
00:30:25Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler. I think this is such a true rule.
00:30:31Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge, but not complication. So think about
00:30:39it. You probably handle hard things pretty well, but you feel overwhelmed when they become messy.
00:30:47So don't attribute to difficulty something that can be explained by complexity. Your system is designed
00:30:55to handle stress and challenge, but not complication. If you think about the times when you felt very
00:31:01overwhelmed, I'm going to guess that it's rarely because of one pathway of thing being too intense.
00:31:11It's typically because you have one thing that's pretty intense and then your mom gets ill, or your
00:31:18partner has an argument with you, or there's an issue with your house, or the power goes out, or that you
00:31:23lose your job, or whatever. It's the complexity that really wrecks us. You are able to handle stress and
00:31:29challenge, but the complexity, the complication is when stuff gets really difficult. Don't attribute to
00:31:38difficulty something that can get explained by complexity. Obviously, the solution here, the implied
00:31:44solution, is if you're feeling overwhelmed, look at how you can reduce down complexity
00:31:52as opposed to intensity, or if you've got lots of things and it feels really complicated and complex,
00:31:58just attack one at a time. You're not going to be able to fix your relationship and get the power
00:32:04back on in your house and complete that presentation. It's like, okay, I just need to triage this.
00:32:09What is the number one problem? And I'm just going to go through them sequentially as opposed to in
00:32:13parallel. The more that I think about that rule, that your system's designed to handle stress but not
00:32:19complication is the more true it is. So, try and simplify stuff wherever possible.
00:32:25Another one, you need fewer inputs, not more. The answers you seek are in the silence you're avoiding.
00:32:34The answers you seek are in the silence you're avoiding. Shameless rework of the magic you're
00:32:40looking for is in the work you're avoiding. But this is a different pathway. And I don't think that
00:32:48I don't think that it's the same solution. A lot of the time you do need to work harder. And you're
00:32:54trying to dress it in whatever outfit you can so that you don't need to lean in and do the work. And that's
00:33:04great and important and maybe for most people is true. But after a while, once you've got the "I work hard"
00:33:13muscle embedded, you then realize that because you're working so hard, you're not listening to fleeting
00:33:19thoughts. You've maybe pushed your intuition to one side. You're not able to tap into your gut as well.
00:33:24You don't actually know what you like because you're in so much chaos and busyness and complication.
00:33:29It's a little bit hard for you to tap into that in a sense. And that's when you need to use a different
00:33:34fuel source. The answers you seek are in the silence you're avoiding. You'd also say the answers you
00:33:38seek are in the showers you're avoiding. I think shower thoughts underrated, toilet thoughts overrated.
00:33:45I saw a tweet the other day, some guy said that if you sit on the toilet for too long with your ass
00:33:49hanging out that you get hemorrhoids. Don't know if that's true, but no one's ever had a problem with
00:33:56too long of a shower. So longer showers, the answers you seek are in the silence you're avoiding.
00:34:00Another one, don't fall into the trap of mourning a life that you can still live.
00:34:06Don't fall into the trap of mourning a life that you can still live.
00:34:10Basically, if you are the sort of person that's regularly surprised at how well things go,
00:34:18maybe that's a good indication that you're allowed to believe in yourself more.
00:34:23So many people, as far as I can see, have this
00:34:28premeditated resentment for the life that they don't think they're going to be able to exist in.
00:34:36They don't think that they're going to be able to live this life, but they still have the opportunity
00:34:40to. And a lot of these people, the overthinkers, the ones who conscience makes a coward of,
00:34:48they have all of the skills to be able to fix this thing. They can go and get this thing done,
00:34:52but their overthinking, their fear is getting in the way of them believing it. And it's almost like
00:35:00they're trapped inside of a prison. They're the prisoner and the prison guard, and they've got the
00:35:05keys on them at the same time. Like, if things go well, you can probably believe in yourself more.
00:35:10And if you still have the opportunity to live a life, I think it's a really bad idea to get resentful
00:35:18and sad about the fact that you're not living it. Like, it's right in front of you. Just go and do it.
00:35:23And then the final one, simple steps to a better life. To improve your life, focus on what you like
00:35:30instead of what you dislike, and focus on people who focus on what they like instead of what they
00:35:35dislike. And this just becomes more and more true, especially as I get older, which might be me trying
00:35:40to offset the sort of natural entropy toward grumpiness. But I just like being around people
00:35:46that are enthusiastic about stuff. There are two categories of friends, typically,
00:35:51that you spend time with. One are people who want to talk about shit that they're fired up about,
00:35:56really excited. This is something that's so cool. I've got to show you this thing.
00:36:00And then, did you see what ... did today? Did you see that thing? I don't know, man. I just,
00:36:10I really like being around people that are positive. And again, the one tattoo that I have on my
00:36:15body is on the inside of my wrist and it says "smile" because I was trying to remind myself at 23 to
00:36:20stop being such a miserable bastard, which might just be being British. I don't know. However,
00:36:27I like offsetting that. I like being around people that make me more fired up. Maybe there is someone
00:36:31out there who is too enthusiastic and needs to be around a bunch of British people to, you know,
00:36:36bring that down. Come and be my friend. I'll fucking bring you back down to earth. But yeah,
00:36:40I think be around people who talk about what they like, not what they dislike.
00:36:46to make your life better. Also focus on what you like instead of what you dislike.
00:36:49So yeah, there's some lessons about choosing your life direction.
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00:37:50all lowercase. That's shopify.com/modernwisdom. All right, next one. The fuck you family. So
00:37:56I started thinking a lot about why the fathers that I know seem to have a different kind of confidence
00:38:03about themselves. And I think it's because of this concept that I can't unsee anymore. So "fuck you
00:38:11money" is a meme, but it's also a truth, right? "Fuck you money." There's an amount of wealth that
00:38:17you can achieve when the typical restrictions and conventions no longer apply to you. You don't have
00:38:21to suck up to gatekeepers. You don't need to do things that you don't want to do. And in extreme
00:38:27situations, you basically don't even need to follow the law because you can just pay people off.
00:38:30Similarly, "fuck you freedom" is kind of downstream from "fuck you money," but can also be achieved
00:38:37through cultivating a lack of resilience and reliance on other groups. There's no restrictions on where you
00:38:43can travel to and when and for how long. You don't need to show up to work on time or work at all. And if
00:38:50you're sufficiently well-structured, you don't even need to care about the state of the economy or the
00:38:54power grid or the wider world. This is the "I live in dripping springs on a ranch that's got completely
00:38:59independent power with solar panels and a ton of guns." It's Tucker-Max. This is Tucker-Max. I'm talking
00:39:06about Tucker-Max there. But I then started thinking about a different type of "fuck you" liberation,
00:39:13which is significantly cheaper and more accessible and more common and maybe even more powerful.
00:39:19And this is the "fuck you" family. So a lot of the fathers that I've spoken to have told me about how
00:39:26their priorities were completely changed when they started a family. All of the previous status games
00:39:33that they played seem petty. The games that they used to go through in an attempt to impress people in
00:39:39power or those with status seemed juvenile and shallow. Much of their anxiety around whether
00:39:47different people and groups liked them or thought that they were cool just sort of
00:39:52evaporated because the only people they needed to care about impressing were asleep under their roof or
00:40:01in the bed next to them. Because to their kids, these dads were the coolest, richest, strongest,
00:40:09most heroic person on the planet. And that gave them a very powerful type of liberation.
00:40:16It seems to me that much of what young men get up to are surrogate activities until they finally get a
00:40:23family. And this isn't to say that all fathers become placid soy boy hippies or that having kids neuters your
00:40:30ambition. But it definitely seems to open up a new level where they care far less about the opinions of others.
00:40:37And ultimately, what's the point in having "fuck you" freedom if you never say "fuck you"?
00:40:46I really think that the aggressive, business-chasing, capitalist, meritocratic society thing, which I'm
00:40:53all in favor of and have benefited from, obviously, and love, is playing off the fact that the longer
00:41:01people put off having a family, the more they find activities that replace that same dynamic inside of them.
00:41:09It's the obsession with body or aesthetics or sport or business or wealth creation or status or travel or whatever.
00:41:18That's not to say that any of these things can't be good, obviously. But if you were to have the family,
00:41:25I think that you would find a lot of those. It would be like going around trying to eat a shit ton of different foods
00:41:31that were all nutrient sparse when there was a nutrient dense food that you could go to
00:41:38that would satisfy a lot of those ambitions more quickly. Does that make sense? It's basically
00:41:44the source that you could go to, the most pure version of this, the condensed, concentrated,
00:41:52weapons-grade version of a lot of what you're looking for, to me seems to be on the other side of a family.
00:41:57I mean, look, is this hypocrisy? I don't think it's hypocrisy. It's closer to dreaming, right?
00:42:05I am totally open to the fact that I might be completely wrong and I'm going to have a family and
00:42:10my drive is going to go up through the roof and maybe I'm going to be more miserable and maybe I'm
00:42:16going to care more about the opinions of others and what a fucking amount of humble pie I'm going
00:42:21to have to eat if that's the case. I'm just going off what I've seen with other people. I'm going off
00:42:26what I've seen with the fathers around me and stuff. Maybe I've done a post-mortem incorrectly. Maybe I will
00:42:32live to eat my words, but I don't know. Maybe this is just a fucking pipe dream. Maybe it's
00:42:37a pipe dream for me that there's some level of personal development available on the other side
00:42:41of kids. Also not saying that you should only have kids as a selfish way to bypass the work that you
00:42:50need to do to care about the opinions of others. Just intriguing thoughts. I'm like a sommelier.
00:42:58I'm just offering you some, just some intriguing thoughts for you there. Or maybe just totally
00:43:04wrong ones. I don't know. All right. Next one. I fucking love this idea. I absolutely love this idea.
00:43:14The curse of psychological strength. Everyone has a limit, right? An end to the amount of discomfort
00:43:22that they can cope with. And this is obvious physically. Some people can lift more and run
00:43:27further than others. But how much emotional pain or upset or disappointment that a person can endure
00:43:35is subtler, harder to detect. It's not apparent in the size of someone's arms, but in the capacity of
00:43:42their nervous system. It's not a weight that you can see on a squat rack. It's their ability to carry
00:43:48a heavy emotional load. And this psychological strength can be a good thing because you're able
00:43:54to handle more than most. You don't bulk at pain. You keep pushing through regardless of how you feel.
00:44:01But too much strength can be a weakness. And high performers are particularly vulnerable to this trap.
00:44:09Psychological strength is rewarded almost everywhere. In the gym, it's discipline. In business, it's grit.
00:44:16In public, it's composure. You become the person who can handle it. Who doesn't complain. Who pushes
00:44:22through when others would quit. Basically, your ability to ignore how you feel and keep moving
00:44:28forward earns admiration, builds your career, and creates momentum. But what you are praised for in
00:44:34public, you often pay for in private. Relationships don't reward endurance. They require attunement.
00:44:43And if your default strategy in life is to absorb discomfort and override warning signs, you will do
00:44:50exactly that when someone repeatedly hurts you. You'll rationalize it, reframe it, decide that it's your job
00:44:58to make it work. And the stronger you are, the longer you can stay. What looks like strength from
00:45:07the outside becomes self-abandonment on the inside. You've trained yourself to believe that struggle is
00:45:15noble and difficulty is meaningful. So when love feels destabilizing, it doesn't register as a warning.
00:45:23It feels like a challenge. And challenges are your thing. But a relationship isn't a marathon to be
00:45:32endured. It's a place to feel safe. And the qualities that make you formidable in the arena
00:45:40can quietly make you miserable in your own living room. Let's say that you're dating and you feel
00:45:46like a side character in your own relationship. You put them first. They put you sixth. The rupture is
00:45:54regular. The repair is absent. Lower resilience, less stubborn people would have broken long ago and said,
00:46:01I'm out. But not you. You're the David Goggins of psychological suffering. Forget carrying the boats.
00:46:08You'll carry the whole fleet forever. In these situations, you're faced with a much tougher problem.
00:46:15Not how much can you tolerate. But how much do you want to tolerate? Perhaps this is what you had to do
00:46:24as a child. If your needs weren't noticed, your sadness gets ignored, or your feelings didn't matter,
00:46:32then you became accustomed to pushing through disconnection in order to make those relationships
00:46:38function. If child you learns, I need to work hard to be loved, then adult you believes,
00:46:47if I'm not loved, I just need to work harder. You achieve 10,000 hours of ignoring your own needs.
00:46:56You can't tell people how you feel without first worrying about how it will make them feel. You
00:47:02unconsciously believe that suffering is the price of connection and that silent subjugation is noble.
00:47:09You basically think, I should be able to tolerate the intolerable in order to make this work.
00:47:16And when you try to connect with someone who doesn't see your needs, you don't notice this person isn't
00:47:23attuned to me. Instead, you sense, hmm, this relationship pattern feels familiar.
00:47:32This must be what love is. You have been trained at your core that your needs don't matter.
00:47:39So you always must work to prove your worth. And importantly, if you don't have to work for it,
00:47:48you think that you can't trust it. So you push away people who are easy, ready, and open,
00:47:55and instead you pursue those who are distant, difficult, and disconnected.
00:48:02I have to prove that I'm worthy of loving is a theory that becomes addictive and completely disorienting.
00:48:11The psychological strength that once enabled you has now entrapped you. The capacity to endure emotional
00:48:19pain without protest is what happens when your nervous system learns that discomfort
00:48:26is safer than confrontation. And in totality, this obscures your ability to understand what you do
00:48:33and don't want to tolerate. Perhaps your ego doesn't want to admit defeat. And shame spirals in this way.
00:48:41If you believe you are the problem, you also have to be the solution. So you stay, you tolerate,
00:48:50you try harder. But just because you're suffering doesn't mean that you're noble.
00:48:58It just means that you're suffering. No one is going to congratulate you on your deathbed with a
00:49:04medal for never making a fuss. No one is going to thank you for quietly lifting weights that should
00:49:13have never been yours to carry. And the answer isn't less resilience, but less denial. Because
00:49:23a boundary isn't an intellectual decision. It's an emotional limit. And if you can't feel it,
00:49:31you can't enforce it. Psychological strength doesn't always make you strong.
00:49:39Often it just makes you stay too long. And you risk one day waking up in a life that you built
00:49:46entirely around what you were willing to tolerate. And then you finally break.
00:49:53I think this is so important, especially for hard-charging, type-A, insecure, overachiever,
00:50:01thoughtful, reflective, empathetic-y people. The assumption that if this isn't working,
00:50:07it's my job to fix it is noble. It's a good thing. You should take responsibility. You should try to
00:50:12help other people. You should try to work through things as opposed to just quitting. But there is
00:50:16a limit. And what you're praised for in public, you pay for in private. This kind of psychological
00:50:24strength. I had Andy Stumpf on the show and he told me this story about how, as a Navy SEAL,
00:50:30he had basically built his entire identity around being someone who never quits.
00:50:36And that caused him to stay in a marriage that sounded really destructive for a decade longer
00:50:43than he should have done.
00:50:46At the same time, that r/relationshipadvice subreddit just leave them went from, I think,
00:50:5510% or 15% to 50%. It doubled or tripled in the space of a decade and a half. Go to therapy,
00:51:02we ticked up a little bit, but try to work through it, explain your emotions,
00:51:05all of these things trended down. So two things are true at once. That some people are pulling the
00:51:11ripcord and unable to go through discomfort. I just don't think that that's you. If you're
00:51:17listening to this show, if you're into the wisdom verse, modern wisdom-y stuff,
00:51:21I don't think that's you. I get the sense that you're the sort of person who
00:51:28holds themselves in emotional situations far longer than they should do, that always has this sense that
00:51:33someone's mad at them, that they could be doing more, they should be doing more. They take responsibility
00:51:38and carry weights that aren't theirs to bear. Walking around with everybody else's luggage
00:51:48and then wondering why your shoulders hurt all the time. I just love this idea. It's one of the best
00:51:56things that I've seen. I'm particularly interested in things that are advantages that we pay a price for.
00:52:05Psychological strength is something almost everybody wants more of, but look at how it can be damaging
00:52:12and destabilizing because you can't turn it off. Fuck your feelings, just work harder is a great
00:52:19philosophy if you want to do it in the office or in the gym. It doesn't matter if I'm tired. It doesn't
00:52:25matter if I'm sick. It doesn't matter if I don't feel up to it. I'm just going to get through it,
00:52:29right? Unless you're obsessed, obviously. The same thing isn't true around your kitchen table.
00:52:38Like your capacity to withstand emotional discomfort and just keep moving
00:52:46should be domain specific at different levels. In the gym should be very, very high.
00:52:53In the office should be very, very high. In your relationships and your friendships should be lower.
00:53:01Maybe with your family should be a little high, you know. I think it's a consideration that a lot of
00:53:06people need to need to think about because we praise this as such a universal good, which it almost
00:53:12certainly is. I'm trying to find the situations where it shouldn't be used or it gets used too much.
00:53:20So I think that's one of them. Before we continue, I wish someone had told me five years ago to stop
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00:54:41All right, next one. I've been thinking about the dark side of monk mode. So monk mode has grown to
00:54:47huge popularity over the last few years as a self-improvement strategy, especially for men.
00:54:52Maybe on the internet, you have seen these videos about monk mode retreating from the world to focus
00:54:58on the three I's of introspection and isolation and improvement. And it's been talked about since 2014,
00:55:06was the first time I read of it, on the Illimitable Man blog. He says, "Monk mode is a temporary form of
00:55:13men going their own way by cutting yourself off from the rest of the world for a while so that you can
00:55:17fine-tune your focus and calibrate your direction and confront yourself. You acknowledge your weaknesses,
00:55:23and then you formulate a plan of action to deal with them." So the focus is on minimizing your time
00:55:28contribution to social obligations and junk activities, because these consume so much of
00:55:34your time while yielding little to negligible increases toward your social market value, right?
00:55:40Monk mode is a serious commitment that shouldn't be half-assed. You're either doing it or not.
00:55:44And it'll be a struggle in the beginning, but once you've fully engaged it, it becomes a beneficial,
00:55:50productive, and dare I say, even addictive lifestyle. So that's from the original blog post in 2014.
00:55:56And look, for all that I can criticize it, I've gone full monk mode tons of times throughout my life
00:56:03with really great success. All of 2017, all of 2018, mid-2019, basically straight through COVID until
00:56:132021 when I moved out to America. I've cut out alcohol for 2,000 days in the last eight years.
00:56:19I've done 500 days without caffeine, over 2,000 sessions of meditation, five years of daily gratitude
00:56:25journals, over 300 sessions of yin yoga, 500 hours of Stu McGill's big three to try and rehab my back.
00:56:32This just sounds like the recipe for a very autistic breakfast, I'm aware. But this is all done as well
00:56:37in a bedroom in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK, sat on my own, usually first thing in the morning, okay?
00:56:46I've done the monk mode thing, right? Those are my credentials. And almost all of the most important
00:56:54progress that I ever made was facilitated by a concentrated period like this.
00:57:01However, monk mode's reliable effectiveness, especially for men, especially for men that are
00:57:07prone to a bit of introspection and isolation creates a huge problem. And the dark side is the
00:57:13final two words from that blog post that I read, addictive lifestyle. The problem is monk mode justifies
00:57:23a retreat from your life, a retreat from risk-taking and adventure and repackages it as self-development.
00:57:30It makes you feel noble in isolation, but it does that so effectively that it can become
00:57:38hard to bring yourself back out. And that means if you already have a tendency to live a sheltered,
00:57:44routinized, unsocial life, you are encouraging yourself to sort of abscond further away from
00:57:53ever building a real-life support network, which is actually the thing that you need most in the long
00:57:59run. The reason that you're doing all of this work, the isolation, the introspection, the improvement,
00:58:04is to reintegrate to society and be effective. But it's so addicting that a lot of the time,
00:58:09people who do monk mode just never reintegrate. And I saw this with a friend like 15 years ago,
00:58:16who was competing to go into a bodybuilding competition, and he already was introverted
00:58:20and socially shy. And then his upcoming fitness competition justified 8pm bedtimes and militant
00:58:26routines and rejecting all social invites. And the competition came and went, but the routine didn't
00:58:33change. And it took years for him to re-venture out into some sense of normality. This is largely a
00:58:42personal reflection too, right? The allure of perpetually working on yourself is very high.
00:58:50And improvement is rewarding. But if you're not careful, you can spend the rest of your life focused on
00:58:57isolation, introspection and improvement at the expense of the actual reason that you did monk mode
00:59:03in the first place, which is to be able to show up in the world in a better way. Bill Perkins says,
00:59:11delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. With monk mode, you practice in private
00:59:20so that you can perform in public. But private practice in the extreme results in no public
00:59:27performance. So basically, don't obsess for too long in solitude for personal growth, or you'll
00:59:33struggle to reintegrate. And the solution is, I think, periodize. Set a deadline for your monk mode
00:59:40to end. Three to six months is a really good sweet spot in my experience. You can do longer if you've
00:59:44never done it before. You can do shorter if you're sort of more developed on your journey. But yeah,
00:59:49man, I really fucking earned my stripes, right? Doing the isolation, the introspection and the
00:59:54improvement. The more that I did it, the harder it was to integrate, which I guess is the fourth
01:00:05eye. Isolation, improvement, introspection. But then the fourth one, which is the one that you're
01:00:10actually here, is integration. Like, how do I bring what I've learned in private back across into the
01:00:15public? I am trying to make myself a better person so that I can function more effectively in the world,
01:00:21be more successful in my business, move along in my career, make better friends, find a partner that
01:00:27I love, you know, just function in the world in a better way. But it does repackage isolation as
01:00:36nobility. And again, if you've got that predisposition, if you're the sort of person who tends to spend time on their own
01:00:42already, this is going to push you in a direction that you're already moving in. It's going to
01:00:48exaggerate your predispositions as opposed to correcting the imbalances. And yeah, look, I love
01:00:54monk mode. I think it's great. Just no one that's either done a video on it or tried to create a
01:00:59fucking course on it has talked about the challenge of reintegration publicly because it's way less sexy.
01:01:05And this is the fucking problem with almost everything. All of the different things that
01:01:08I've talked about today, psychological strength, self-awareness, everybody will want to extol the
01:01:16virtues of why it's great. And it is given that I'm basically trying to dispel comforting myths
01:01:25about commonly held personal development strategies. That's basically what this,
01:01:29this like lessons episode is. I'm sorry if I've fucking ripped the rug out from underneath you.
01:01:35This is also why when I talk about this stuff, especially on the internet, it doesn't ever
01:01:40happen at the live shows. I think because people that able to see it in totality whilst they're
01:01:46focused and not at four times speed, or maybe they're just too scared to fucking criticize me. I don't
01:01:50know. On the internet, people hate having their comforting illusions pulled out from underneath
01:01:56them. So there will be a ton of criticisms about my criticisms. Easy for you to say, you've already
01:02:05I'm like, Hey dude, I'm not saying that these things, psychological strength, being self-aware,
01:02:11the opportunity to isolate yourself and work on yourself. I'm not saying that these things aren't good.
01:02:17I'm warning you of some of the side effects that come along for the ride that no one wants to talk
01:02:23about. The reason no one wants to talk about it is it's anti-memetic. It's inherently unmotivating,
01:02:28right? To talk about the fragility of obsession is an anti-memetic idea because people want to believe
01:02:36that their obsession will carry them through or that discipline and motivation will be all that they
01:02:40need because they can't engineer their obsession. I'm, I'm just here to tell you in my experience,
01:02:46that's not the way it is at all. And I'm sorry. And if I could change it, I would.
01:02:54But I think that this is a much more important conversation to talk about.
01:02:58All right. That was a bit dark. Let's do some interesting differences between the sexes. So I've
01:03:04been researching sex differences. I found some spicy ones. Your guy friend is attracted to you
01:03:12and he thinks that you're attracted to him too. So a study of Americans finds that in platonic couples,
01:03:17the men are far more likely than the women to find their friend sexy and far more likely to think that
01:03:23she finds them attractive to. Indeed, a man's assessment of how much his female friend fancies him
01:03:30matches how much he fancies her. And it is unrelated to how she really feels.
01:03:39So shock horror, men are prone to wishful thinking. Also, there is a
01:03:46well-understood failure of cross-sex mind reading, the male overestimation and female underestimation
01:03:54of attraction. But your guy friend is attracted to you ladies. And he thinks that you're attracted to him
01:04:03too. Nearly half of your guy friends are trying to sleep with you as a woman. So William Costello polled
01:04:12527 heterosexual and bisexual people and asked the question, are opposite sex friendships ever truly
01:04:19platonic? 81% of women said yes. Only 58% of men said yes. So women were three times more likely than men
01:04:31to say that their friendship was purely platonic. Half of guy friends in the platonic friendship
01:04:42are trying to sleep with you. And this is why dudes, when their girlfriend says, no, he's just nice.
01:04:52I'm sorry, ladies. We understand how that works. We understand how men's minds work. And you understand
01:04:59how women's minds work, right? But not only are guys more attracted to you than you are to them,
01:05:07they think that you are as attracted to them as they are to you. And you don't know either of these
01:05:12things. So that's an uncomfortable one. There's double standards over infidelity. So according to recent
01:05:21polling, both sexes think it's worse for a husband than a wife to have an affair, which is sort of the
01:05:27opposite of the traditional double standard. So 53% of men say it's always morally wrong for a married
01:05:34woman to have an affair. But 61% of men say it's always morally wrong for a married man to have an
01:05:41affair. So 53% of men say it's wrong for a woman. 61% of men say it's wrong for a man. 56% of women
01:05:50say it's always morally wrong for a married man to have an affair. But what's interesting here is both
01:06:02men and women judge men more harshly for infidelity. And women judge both men and women more harshly.
01:06:14Like, what's that? 9% more. So 61% of men say it's wrong for a man. 70% of women say it's wrong for a
01:06:20man. 53% of men say it's wrong for a woman. 56% of women say it's wrong for a woman. So, I mean,
01:06:26women are more sort of enforcing and judgmental on this generally. Might not be that surprising, but
01:06:35I don't know what that says. Spicy. Romantic relationships matter more to men than to women.
01:06:41So this is from Steve Stewart Williams, who's got a new book out. He's coming on the show very soon.
01:06:45Romantic relationships matter more to men than to women. Stereotypes say it's women who care more,
01:06:51but this time the stereotypes are wrong. A new paper in behavioral and brain sciences assessed that very
01:06:57question and researchers found that among other things, men strive harder to establish romantic
01:07:03relationships. They fall in love faster. They benefit more from relationships, depend more on
01:07:08their relationships for social support, are less likely to initiate breakups, suffer more in the
01:07:14wake of a breakup, and take longer to get over their exes. So, I wonder how much of this is wrapped up
01:07:22in the fact that men don't have social support structures outside of their relationship in the
01:07:28same way that women do. Typically, women have a broader and tighter support structure of friends.
01:07:34And a lot of the time when men get married, they get rid of their social support system and just sort
01:07:40of adopt the wife's support system. Her friends and the husbands of her friends become his friends.
01:07:46And then if they get divorced, those friends go with her, not with him. So not only does he lose a wife,
01:07:53he also loses his social support network because he let his atrophy, this is kind of typical,
01:07:58but they fall in love faster, strive harder to establish romantic relationships, benefit more from
01:08:03relationships. I think all of this is pretty normal. If you were to look ancestrally, why not?
01:08:09Women have got more choices, so men need to work harder to do it. Women are always going to be able to
01:08:14get a replacement and men are going to struggle more so. So they're going to take longer to get over.
01:08:18They're going to be more worried. They suffer more in the wake of breakups. They're less likely to initiate
01:08:22breakups because of the chance of them finding somebody else. They depend more on their relationship
01:08:26for social support. All of these things make complete sense, especially when you look at it ancestrally.
01:08:30But anything that denies male privilege is usually treated as kind of abhorrent or blasphemous.
01:08:39And I just think it's cool to highlight some of the ways that maybe things aren't super rosy for guys,
01:08:46or maybe some stereotypes are turned sort of back to front, not calling women bad or men weak or men
01:08:53more moral or anything like that. It's fucking interesting. All right. Married men and women
01:08:59disagree on how much sex to have. Women typically believe their marriages have about the right frequency
01:09:05of sex. Men wished for twice as much sex as they were having. This suggests many couples adjust their
01:09:12sexual frequency to the lower rate that the wife desires, right? Women typically believe their
01:09:18marriages have about the right frequency of sex. Men wished for twice as much more. That means that
01:09:25there is a disparity in what people want versus what they're getting for each partner. But look at which
01:09:32partner it defaulted to. It defaulted to the woman, not to the man. Now, that's not a bad thing, right?
01:09:37You might say it's much better to run the speed of the race at that of the slowest person, as opposed
01:09:46to dragging them along. There's definitely a difference between someone who doesn't get to have sex that
01:09:52they want and someone that has to have sex that they don't want, obviously. But it is interesting that
01:09:58there has to be a negotiation that goes on here and men are sacrificing on average 50% of the amount of
01:10:05sex that they want and it's sitting at around about the right amount that women do want. It would be
01:10:12interesting to see how many of these women would want even less sex but aren't prepared to say it
01:10:19because they know that their partner wants more. That would be really interesting to work out. Also,
01:10:24would be interesting to work out if women want more sex, but they're just scared of telling researchers what
01:10:29they truly believe. Maybe because they think that there's more judgment around women being sexually
01:10:33open or something like that. But more spice.
01:10:38Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in.
01:10:43They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels
01:10:48somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink.
01:10:54And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers
01:11:00inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover
01:11:04effectively changes, even if your habits stay strong. MitoPure from Timeline contains the only
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01:11:55And a final one here, which is actually nothing to do with sex differences, but far fewer people are made
01:12:02for polyamory than think that they are. Polyamory is hilarious because the community is basically 5%
01:12:09genuinely ascended, emotionally hyper-intelligent communication masters who've got nervous systems
01:12:15like a fucking glass lake. And 95% insatiable hungry ghosts who have convinced themselves
01:12:23that they're the former. And this is from Cook Fuchsius that me and George fucking love on Substack.
01:12:29He's so funny. Even just the name is brilliant. Polyamory, 5% like guys on the right with the
01:12:37Jedi master hood up and 95% spiritually bypassed, bead wearing, fedora hat, shawl, burning man,
01:12:49like hungry ghosts. And I think in my experience, this is really true. And the problem is that the
01:12:54people who are in the 95% who can't get it right and aren't built for it and just keep on trying more
01:13:00and more and more and more until in the hopes that that's going to fix the problem, have mistaken
01:13:06themselves for the former and use the success of the people who've got the amazing nervous systems and
01:13:11can handle it as the justification for why they keep going. But they are not the same. Shock, horror.
01:13:19All right. The internet is awash with videos about how to find your true self. But what do we mean
01:13:25when we talk about our true self? I think we live with a quiet superstition that beneath the noise
01:13:31of our habits and our mistakes and contradictions lies a truer version of ourselves to self that's
01:13:37fundamentally good. An alcoholic who gets sober is becoming who he really is. But a sober man who
01:13:44starts drinking again has lost his way. In Scrooge, Dickens didn't just write about a man who swapped
01:13:51stinginess for generosity. He wrote about a man who discovered his real nature. When Richard Nixon fell
01:13:58in disgrace, people said that power had corrupted his real self. But when Nelson Mandela forgave his
01:14:03captors, the world said his true self had been revealed. Or in real life, patients that have got
01:14:10dementia or lose their memory but retain their kindness are often seen by loved ones as still the
01:14:17same person. While those same people who grow cruel are perceived as having lost their essence.
01:14:23Even when fiction tries to make villains irredeemable, audiences resist. Darth Vader is terrifying
01:14:31until he saves his son and proves that there was goodness there deep down. We are reluctant to accept
01:14:38that anyone, even fucking Satan in paradise lost, is rotten all the way through. And our language betrays
01:14:46the bias. Goodness is authenticity while badness is a mask. And psychologists have tested this belief
01:14:53and the results are so consistent. People overwhelmingly identify morally positive changes as revealing
01:15:00someone's true self but dismiss negative changes as surface corruption. I started thinking about this
01:15:07when I saw this unreal study about a man called Mark. So a study about a man called Mark. Mark's life
01:15:12was presented in two versions. In one, he was a devout Christian who believed homosexuality was wrong
01:15:19but admitted he was attracted to men. In the other, he was a liberal who believed homosexuality was
01:15:25perfectly acceptable but confessed to secretly feeling repulsed by same-sex couples. In both cases,
01:15:31Mark was split. Belief pulled him one way while a feeling pulled him the other. The question to
01:15:36participants was simple: which side represented his true self? Liberals almost always said the attraction
01:15:44to men revealed who Mark really was while his disgust at homosexuality was right-wing programming.
01:15:51Conservatives almost always said that his conviction against homosexuality revealed who he really was
01:15:58and his public support was woke peer pressure. Basically, each group looked at the same man
01:16:05and saw their own values reflected back at them. It wasn't that people consistently treated beliefs
01:16:12as more authentic or feelings as less genuine. Instead, they treated whichever side lined up with their own
01:16:19moral compass as the real side. And this has some fascinating implications because it suggests that
01:16:26authenticity isn't something we find inside others. Instead, it's something that we project onto them.
01:16:33What counted as Mark's essence wasn't hiding in him at all. It existed in the values of the people
01:16:40that were judging him. And these fights are never just about evidence. They're about who gets to define
01:16:46authenticity. Interestingly, the whole exercise only works when someone is conflicted. If Mark only had
01:16:53one belief or one feeling, no one would have hesitated to declare, "Oh, that's who he is."
01:17:00Conflict is the playground where we get to impose our judgments about which side counts as the real
01:17:08self. There are consequences to always seeing ourselves and the others that we favor as moral, too.
01:17:14It cushions us from despair because failures can be brushed aside as "not really me," which makes bouncing
01:17:22back after mistakes easier. But it also blinds us to our own cruelty because harmful actions get
01:17:29rationalized as accidents or errors or aberrations. It creates an asymmetry where we forgive ourselves
01:17:37quickly while judging others more harshly. It skews our sense of authenticity because we treat virtuous impulses
01:17:47as real and darker ones as intrusions, which can make us dangerously naive about people who are not
01:17:55conflicted at all, but those for whom malice isn't a mask but it's a pattern. And it fuels this sort of
01:18:02lifelong quest to uncover the good self as though the work of living is not making choices but
01:18:10excavating our own purity. And to add even more complexity to it, notice how unevenly this belief
01:18:17gets applied. If goodness is the truth and badness is a mask, then in theory we should treat all people's
01:18:25goodness as authentic and all people's badness as superficial. But that isn't what we do. With our
01:18:33allies, we assume their virtues show who they really are, while their failures are only slips or distortions
01:18:41or masks. But with our opponents, we reverse it. Their good deeds are dismissed as fake or manipulative,
01:18:48while their mistakes and vices are taken as proof of their true character. And this double standard
01:18:54shows that the rule isn't actually "goodness is authenticity". The rule is "the kind of goodness
01:19:01I value is authenticity". Our side's goodness is treated as essence, while the other side's goodness is
01:19:10treated as performance. And our side's failings are masks, but the other side's failings are revelations.
01:19:17Psychologically, this makes sense. In small groups, assuming hidden goodness on insiders helped to maintain
01:19:25our trust and our cohesion. And it assumed hidden badness in outsiders helped us define the boundary
01:19:32between us and them. But the cost is distortion. We give our friends a free pass while demonizing our
01:19:40rivals, blinded to their real virtues and our own side's flaws. What looks like a rule about human
01:19:48nature, goodness is truth and badness is a mask, actually turns out to be a rule about group loyalty.
01:19:56So, here's a disconcerting idea. What if our true self doesn't exist at all? What if we are nothing
01:20:06but the bundle of drives and beliefs and feelings that show up in the moment? The addict is just as
01:20:13much himself when he drinks as when he doesn't. Scrooge was authentically Scrooge as a miser and as a benefactor.
01:20:21And we only anoint the generous version as authentic because it flatters our sense of what humans ought to be.
01:20:30And in this light, the true self isn't discovered. It's basically invented. The fiction makes forgiveness
01:20:39possible, but it also blinds us to cruelty and shortcomings. It allows us to keep loving people
01:20:45even at their worst, but it also tricks us into underestimating their malice. We say every tyrant
01:20:52or abuser has a hidden spark of goodness, even when sometimes there isn't one. You can see this bias
01:21:01everywhere. Addicts in recovery routinely say "that wasn't the real me" about their lowest points,
01:21:07but no one ever says that sobriety is fake. Childhood stories teach us the frog is really a prince,
01:21:13the beast is really gentle, the happy ending is always framed as the revelation of what was hidden
01:21:19all along. Therapists describe patients getting back to themselves after depression, but it's almost
01:21:25unthinkable to frame it the other way, right? That the depressed version is the truest one. Even in daily
01:21:32life, when a friend lashes out in anger, we soothe ourselves by saying, "That's not who she is." But when
01:21:39they show generosity, we never say, "That's not them." I hope that that's not the truth, right? That there is no
01:21:46authentic real self. But my fear, my philosophical hypothesis that I want to be disproven is that there
01:21:54may be no real you at all. The true self isn't something to be discovered. Instead, it's something
01:22:02that we invent. It's a superstition that we cling onto because it makes forgiveness easier and love
01:22:09sustainable and cruelty bearable. And I started thinking about this when I went through some spicy
01:22:17stuff at the start of the year. And what I realized was, when you're getting criticism, you're being criticized
01:22:23from almost always one side for saying one thing that they don't agree with. And if they say, "Who are
01:22:30you to talk about this topic?", the exact opposite opinion would occur if you were saying something
01:22:36different. So if someone says, "Who are you to comment about the environment?", if they're an environmentalist, and you are
01:22:42saying something which seems environmentally critical. But if you were saying something that was
01:22:47environmentally supportive in their direction, they would want you to say more. So it's not really,
01:22:53"You're not allowed to speak about this." It's, "I have a problem with the direction in which you're
01:22:57speaking." And because of that, I found the next closest association. Like who are you, American person,
01:23:04to talk about the way that Britain is dealing with its immigration problem? Because you're saying
01:23:10something that disagrees with whatever that person's point of view is. But if you were saying something
01:23:15that agreed with them, they would want you to say it more. No one is saying, "Your support is too much.
01:23:20Please stop doing it because you're not supposed to be talking here." They will say, "Your criticism is
01:23:25too much. You shouldn't be talking. You're not supposed to be here." It seems like an asymmetry.
01:23:32You know, men shouldn't be talking about women's bodies. Well, if the men were in support of
01:23:37access to birth control when Roe versus Wade got repealed, I would imagine that lots of
01:23:41women who don't want men talking about women's bodies would have liked men to be talking about
01:23:45women's bodies. In fact, that's the only thing that you can get support with if you want to get
01:23:4850% of the population to get on board with this thing that you think is really important.
01:23:54But if you only want to accept voices from the other side when they're in support of you,
01:24:00you can't expect them to show up if you criticize them when they don't agree.
01:24:04All right, that's it. 1100 episodes. Holy shit. Thank you all. I love you to bits. Thank you for
01:24:10supporting me. Thank you for supporting the show. I'm here in the new studio. This place rules. I've got
01:24:14so many big episodes coming up. Like, subscribe. It really does make a difference. Still now,
01:24:194.2 million subscribers later, it does make a difference. So wherever you are listening or
01:24:23watching, I appreciate you. I hope you have a wonderful day. And I'll see you next time.
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