Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Today. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: have James Altature on the show. James the self empowerment
Speaker 1: blogger and author of sixteen books, including the Amazon bestseller
Speaker 1: Choose Yourself. He's also host of the James Altature Show.
Speaker 1: The New York Times called him quote, perhaps the world's
Speaker 1: least likely success guru. Thanks so much for John with
Speaker 1: me today, James, which, by the way, the writer wrote
Speaker 1: to me on that and he said, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to use the word guru. I know you didn't want to.
Speaker 1: That word grew used. Was somebody in the marketing department
Speaker 1: or whatever. That's right, because later in that article you
Speaker 1: do say like, I don't want to be viewed as
Speaker 1: a but it's almost like that's what people have viewed
Speaker 1: you as. Whether or not you wanted to be viewed
Speaker 1: as that. As such, why how do you think that happened?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because all I talk about is messing up,
Speaker 1: I know. And then I talk about what I did
Speaker 1: to get out of the hole. So let's say I
Speaker 1: was broke, bankrupt, and divorced, which happened more than once,
Speaker 1: and then I write about how I get out of
Speaker 1: this and kind of succeed again, let's say, build another
Speaker 1: business starting from scratch or whatever. People then can say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I can do that too, and maybe they can,
Speaker 1: maybe they can. I kind of give the very exact
Speaker 1: specific details of what I do over and over again
Speaker 1: in all these articles and books and so on. And
Speaker 1: I always say, advice is autobiography, So I never give advice,
Speaker 1: and I specifically say that, but I to say my
Speaker 1: autobiography and people could do with it what they want.
Speaker 1: I really and more interested in having impact with a
Speaker 1: story and sort of telling people Okay, successes could happen
Speaker 1: or might not happen, but it's okay to fail. It's
Speaker 1: okay to have moments that are difficult, and people almost
Speaker 1: need permission to have that because we're sort of trained
Speaker 1: from birth while school, then job and marriage and family
Speaker 1: than white picket fence, then retirement, then cruise line, you know, tours,
Speaker 1: and then death and when you break out of that,
Speaker 1: you feel bad, like because we're programmed not to break
Speaker 1: out of that. So yeah, I really believe in these
Speaker 1: shows of having honest discussions about things. I've noticed that
Speaker 1: a lot of actual self people who they even call
Speaker 1: themself self gurus, self help curus, there's a similar pattern
Speaker 1: with all of them where they will talk about how
Speaker 1: they fail. They once you know, we're a lose. They
Speaker 1: would say, I'm a loser, whether it's like losing weight, right,
Speaker 1: And then there's this arc and they say and it's
Speaker 1: almost like that's used as almost a marketing ploy, as
Speaker 1: a way of like saying like, but now I was
Speaker 1: once you, and look what you can become now. When
Speaker 1: I meet you, when I read your stuff, I get
Speaker 1: a level of genuineness that I don't necessarily get from
Speaker 1: other A lot of other people in this kind of
Speaker 1: space that have that sort of arc. That right about
Speaker 1: that arc when you were going through it, like I
Speaker 1: would love to you to walk me through like the
Speaker 1: early days, like when you were failing things, did you
Speaker 1: ever think to yourself like I'm going to get out
Speaker 1: of this hole and I'm going to inspire others. Was
Speaker 1: I a no? I mean, let's say I could pull
Speaker 1: from any number I have, like kind of a repertoire
Speaker 1: of failed moments. But when it happens when you're on
Speaker 1: literally on the ground, and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just did it again, like I just went broke again,
Speaker 1: or I lost this relationship that was important to me,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm not going to be able to
Speaker 1: feed my kids. You know, you feel really bad now.
Speaker 1: I'm also saying this totally acknowledging from a point where
Speaker 1: I've been really blessed too that I've had successes and
Speaker 1: failed from them and had successes again. But when you're
Speaker 1: in that moment of failure, it feels just enormously stressful.
Speaker 1: It almost hurts to go down. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: stay down, that maybe I can deal with, but to
Speaker 1: go for I've gotten from like real big success to
Speaker 1: totally pressure one of the lowest, like one of those points.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's started like bringing back these memories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like no, it's okay. It's like I think sometimes I
Speaker 1: can't tell if it hurts the first time or the
Speaker 1: last time, because the first time you don't realize, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I actually can fail. Like you know, I
Speaker 1: had a very you know, middle class upbringing, nothing special
Speaker 1: in either direction, and then I just kind of I
Speaker 1: had ups and downs, but nothing too horrible. And then
Speaker 1: I started a business. It was successful and I sold it.
Speaker 1: I made a lot of money. And then there was
Speaker 1: one summer where I figured, Okay, well I did it.
Speaker 1: I can't possibly fail. Now I've made enough money. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to do whatever I want and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And I was so stupid. I basically lost everything, including
Speaker 1: the home I was living in. You know, I lost
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. I ended up well. I remember one
Speaker 1: time I checked my ATM machine. I had one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty three dollars in my bank account after having
Speaker 1: millions just a few months earlier. Like I was just stupid,
Speaker 1: Like it was. It wasn't on paper, it was cash
Speaker 1: and a lot of lose that quickly. Yeah, I was stupid.
Speaker 1: It's hard to lose that much money. I'm very talented
Speaker 1: at that. This goes to your topics of research. This
Speaker 1: I proved the talent and being stupid in certain areas
Speaker 1: but I felt like, oh my gosh, I had won
Speaker 1: the lottery and I'm never going to get this chance again.
Speaker 1: And that was it for me. I should be dead.
Speaker 1: And I had little babies at the time, and I figured, look,
Speaker 1: they're never going to remember me as a father. But
Speaker 1: one thing I have left is this big life insurance policy.
Speaker 1: And I would start, I would start using search engines,
Speaker 1: figure what's the best way to kill myself that were
Speaker 1: it won't hurt and yeah, and it turns out there
Speaker 1: really is no way, Like what's the answer. Well, to
Speaker 1: be fair, I think I found an answer, but I
Speaker 1: can't find proof of it on a search andg and
Speaker 1: so it might not it might just be an old
Speaker 1: wives tale. But every normal thing you could think of,
Speaker 1: I found counterexamples. So like, for instance, shooting yourself in
Speaker 1: the head or shooting yourself in the mouth, or taking
Speaker 1: a lot of pills. There's a bigger than I wanted
Speaker 1: chances of just ending up, you know, staring at a
Speaker 1: ceiling for the rest of your life, paralyzed and completely
Speaker 1: aware so, or being or having some dysfunction that is
Speaker 1: beyond Like I was willing to die, but not willing
Speaker 1: to be dysfunctional. So so ultimately argument against suicide. That
Speaker 1: is a good argument against suicide. It's not the normal
Speaker 1: argument against suicide, but I think it's no. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: people shouldn't kill themselves because it will hurt the people
Speaker 1: around them. That's the main argument. But the flip side,
Speaker 1: which I will say, is that suicide will end that
Speaker 1: extreme pain you're in at that moment of failure, except
Speaker 1: there is no way to do it. And I also
Speaker 1: was unsure of the law in terms of the life
Speaker 1: insurance policy because the other thing I looked at is
Speaker 1: can they discover in all these obscure ways if you
Speaker 1: killed yourself? And the answer is yes, they can no
Speaker 1: matter what, they will figure out if the cause of
Speaker 1: death is suicide. Right, Well, you're kind of like the
Speaker 1: poster belief for the field of post traumatic growth that
Speaker 1: we study in our field, you know, positive psychology. There's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of people who have post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: disorder who take these kinds of dramatic situations and don't
Speaker 1: ever really recover from them. But there's a certain proportion
Speaker 1: that take it and use it as and you boyd,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you use it? You use it full
Speaker 1: of your whole being well used it right. Well, now
Speaker 1: let's talk philosophically for a second. When you experience a
Speaker 1: lot of stress, there's two ways to get out of it.
Speaker 1: One is to say, well, I'm never going to that
Speaker 1: was that I'm never going to succeed again, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna drift away or whatever, and that's kind of this
Speaker 1: negative way to relieve stress. And then there's a positive
Speaker 1: way to relieve stress, which is, Okay, now I'm going
Speaker 1: to start coming up with ideas for new things I
Speaker 1: can do, and I'm going to do that today, because
Speaker 1: today's the first day. You know, today's the best day
Speaker 1: you can change. And that's the philosophical approach. And I
Speaker 1: think now many years later, when I fail now, which
Speaker 1: because failure never really ends, I try very forcefully to
Speaker 1: remind myself that that's the approach I need to take,
Speaker 1: and it works and I do it. But I think initially,
Speaker 1: the first couple of times when I was reached this
Speaker 1: kind of devastating moment, I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I just thought, this is the worst feeling possible and
Speaker 1: I'm never going to get out of it. And it
Speaker 1: was only when I kind of using myself, as you know,
Speaker 1: there's all these you know, scientific studies. Here's what's positive,
Speaker 1: here's what's negative, Here's what's you know successful people do,
Speaker 1: here's what unsuccessful people. That doesn't work. When you're actually
Speaker 1: on the floor, you're your own. You're a sample size
Speaker 1: of one, and you have to make it work. You
Speaker 1: have to do a study that works for the sample
Speaker 1: size of one. And so I had to look at
Speaker 1: myself eventually and say what kept working when I went
Speaker 1: up and what kept failing on the way down. And finally,
Speaker 1: I can't say finally, because it's not the story is
Speaker 1: not over yet. But I think I've figured out, at
Speaker 1: least for myself, what boxes I need to check whenever
Speaker 1: things are going bad. One other thing I'll add, you said,
Speaker 1: like post traumatic stress. I definitely have now. Before I
Speaker 1: never realized that I could fail at anything, you know,
Speaker 1: But now, even if I have just a slight blip,
Speaker 1: I start to get really anxious and I have to
Speaker 1: kind of go check through my boxes to deal with it,
Speaker 1: or else I'll stay up all night, I'll have nightmares.
Speaker 1: It's the worst thing. Yeah, So you actually have given
Speaker 1: in some of your ranks some tips for how to
Speaker 1: overcome anxiety. Rights some of that for yourself. Can you
Speaker 1: maybe like, what's the alien trick? Do you still do? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do that every day. So I when I wake up,
Speaker 1: or even sometimes during the day, but mostly when I
Speaker 1: wake up, I picture that I am an alien from
Speaker 1: outer space that has just It's kind of like Quantum Leap,
Speaker 1: the old TV show. I've just landed in this body.
Speaker 1: I have to now figure out what this body is
Speaker 1: and what mission it needs to accomplish today because tomorrow
Speaker 1: I'll be gone. So that means I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the results of my actions today. Not that
Speaker 1: I'm going to go crazy, because I have to aim
Speaker 1: for positive consequences because I'm on a mission. And but
Speaker 1: I don't have any baggage from the past, and I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about tomorrow. I just have to
Speaker 1: make positive actions today without even considering it all the
Speaker 1: past or the future. Cool. What other tips are things
Speaker 1: have you found to help reduce anxiety. I take lemon
Speaker 1: balm for instance. What's what's lemon bom I have in
Speaker 1: my bag? Actually, we can take it right like you
Speaker 1: put it on it to drop it in water. It's
Speaker 1: just you know, it's a natural herb sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and it calms your muscle. Reaccent is lemon in general
Speaker 1: like that? Well, I think lemon balmb extract is particularly
Speaker 1: good time. Try that. Look up a dropper in her
Speaker 1: water right now? If you want to do all? Right,
Speaker 1: you have I do. It's in my bag, but Jay
Speaker 1: get it. That's the audio. See we can see for
Speaker 1: like more relaxed or something. But I think also it's
Speaker 1: very important is taking positive actions in like, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I'll ask myself each day, did
Speaker 1: I take positive actions? And that really just means a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One is was I creative today? So?
Speaker 1: Did I write down ten ideas a day to exercise
Speaker 1: my idea muscle? Okay, here's the lemon bomb. So I
Speaker 1: asked myself, did I make a list of ten ideas
Speaker 1: for either businesses or books or articles or ways that
Speaker 1: can help somebody else or podcast ideas or whatever I'm
Speaker 1: involved in. I try to be as creative as possible
Speaker 1: each day. I also try to be around friends each day.
Speaker 1: I always make sure I touch base with friends each
Speaker 1: day because look, depressed people need to do that, So
Speaker 1: why shouldn't I do that when I'm not depressed, Like
Speaker 1: why wait until you're depressed, because we all know friends
Speaker 1: boosts oxytocin and all these happy chemicals and so on.
Speaker 1: Another thing I try to do every day is either
Speaker 1: you know, I try to eat, you know, nutritiously, and
Speaker 1: exercise and sleep eight hours because physical is that's the
Speaker 1: easiest hack on your mode possible. You said, don't go
Speaker 1: to bed after what time? Do you say, Well, I
Speaker 1: try to say don't, but I try to go to
Speaker 1: bed before nine pm. Yeah, so about five. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll I'll sleep eight hours. I'll sleep between eight and
Speaker 1: nine hours because I'll go to bed at nine and
Speaker 1: wake up at like nine the next night. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: like if I go and bomb out and I get nicely,
Speaker 1: I don't want to wake up. But maybe because you
Speaker 1: have a sleep deficit. There you go, you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're working a school. You have a lot of hours probably,
Speaker 1: which is fine. You just have to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of physical benefits of you know, what
Speaker 1: happens when you sleep that you know cures the mind
Speaker 1: of all these anxieties and stresses. Exercise, of course, releases
Speaker 1: a lot of endorphins. How you eat determines how your
Speaker 1: energy is used by the body and the brain, and
Speaker 1: so all these things are the These are like easy
Speaker 1: hacks on anxiety. So so those things and being around
Speaker 1: friends and being creative are like the greatest hacks. And
Speaker 1: then the alien trick is a good quick hack as well. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of that gets too satisfying. Some just basic
Speaker 1: balancing your needs. And look, that's why you know. Some
Speaker 1: people will charge I don't know, some gazillion dollars for
Speaker 1: some semin or whatever, but it's really that simple. That's
Speaker 1: all you have to do every day, and you'll go,
Speaker 1: I've seen You'll be able to deal with these bottom
Speaker 1: or failure situations much better. You start to view them
Speaker 1: more as experiments or Okay, this didn't work out, but
Speaker 1: other things will work out, and you start to have
Speaker 1: more variety in your life because you're so creative from
Speaker 1: building up your idea muscle and just things tend to
Speaker 1: work out. Yeah, So you mentioned in your answer that
Speaker 1: you mentioned a lot of your pillars of happiness. So
Speaker 1: you talked about the physical, the emotional. I guess emotional
Speaker 1: would be like friends. Yeah, like that, mental and mental creativity, creativity,
Speaker 1: and then let's talk more about the spiritual dimension. So
Speaker 1: the spiritual dimension is actually solved by the alien trick,
Speaker 1: because really, what's what's spirituality is forget about all religion
Speaker 1: for a second, although each religion has huge, you know,
Speaker 1: spiritual components, So do whatever you want, but it's really
Speaker 1: about being in the now, so being you know, kind
Speaker 1: of surrendering to this moment. So the alien trick is
Speaker 1: one way of saying, Okay, well here is where I'm at.
Speaker 1: These are the cars I've been dealt. I wake up
Speaker 1: in this body, so I surrender to completely to whatever
Speaker 1: past got me here, and then there's no future because
Speaker 1: I'm leaving this body in a day. So you surrender
Speaker 1: to the consequences of whatever you do, and you just
Speaker 1: you know, you figure out what your mission is and
Speaker 1: do it for that day. And there's a very big
Speaker 1: spiritual component to that. Yeah, do you meditate it? All?
Speaker 1: I have since I was a kid, but more recently
Speaker 1: I don't because I just do what I just said, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I find I find meditation when I did it
Speaker 1: a lot, particularly when I was really stressed. I almost
Speaker 1: prefer to call it mad attention because rather than really meditating,
Speaker 1: what would end up happening is, I'd be just constantly
Speaker 1: obsessed with what was going wrong with my life. So
Speaker 1: now instead I do these more directed ways of you know,
Speaker 1: almost biochemically hacking myself into a better state so that
Speaker 1: I could function and do something positive. Absolutely, so, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people resonate with you Is. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a very distinct style to you, and you know,
Speaker 1: it just makes me think, what are you if you're
Speaker 1: not let's say you're not like what you know? I
Speaker 1: feel like there are lots of different fields you could.
Speaker 1: You could probably do a stand up calmic bit too, right,
Speaker 1: I have done stand up comedy. I'm obsessed with stand
Speaker 1: up comedy. I mean, of course, because it's truth, right,
Speaker 1: The truth is funny, you know, almost the more true
Speaker 1: you are about something, the more funny it is. And
Speaker 1: you're also if I may say, you know a little neurotic,
Speaker 1: I can identify and would that resonate with that? So
Speaker 1: I have found that like when I'm nervous and or
Speaker 1: I'm feeling particularly neurotic and I just get out of
Speaker 1: my system what I'm thinking verbatim, I don't, you know,
Speaker 1: filter the truth at all? People tend to find it funny. Well, right, inside,
Speaker 1: I'm crying, right, but like I'm like, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you find that so funny, right, but I'm suffering here,
Speaker 1: but it almost getting it out actually makes me feel better. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's therapeutic for you, it's definitely therapeutic because for
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. First off, I don't believe in
Speaker 1: the so called radical honesty where you completely have no filter,
Speaker 1: because I never will say anything bad about anybody else,
Speaker 1: but I'm happy to say bad things about myself. That's
Speaker 1: all day long. So I'll have radical honesty about myself
Speaker 1: but not about others. But I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, evidence to say, Look, we've all been
Speaker 1: through bad experiences and we all hide them. So when
Speaker 1: you're honest about your bad experience is what ends up happening.
Speaker 1: And when you share it, let's say with your tribe
Speaker 1: or your scene or your Facebook friends or whatever, what
Speaker 1: ends up happening is people relate, and so you're bonding,
Speaker 1: and bonding feels good, and bonding is one way of
Speaker 1: getting over you know, anxiety and becoming more creative and
Speaker 1: so on. Plus, when you tell a story, you get
Speaker 1: better at telling stories, and storytelling is a two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand year old tradition for our species, older than any
Speaker 1: other tradition basically, and you know, that's another pleasurable thing.
Speaker 1: Getting good at storytelling. And our whole life is one
Speaker 1: big story we've told ourselves about ourselfs. Well. You even
Speaker 1: refer to like kind of the self help mythology that
Speaker 1: there is this arc of the heroes. First a person's
Speaker 1: a loser, then they kind of you know, met their
Speaker 1: mentor and came out of it and met the other people,
Speaker 1: and then they now they're ready to come back from
Speaker 1: the journey and teach. So there's this kind of arc
Speaker 1: of the hero's classic Joseph Campbell's story in the self
Speaker 1: help genre. So the reason why I don't like it
Speaker 1: is I feel that many people in that genre a
Speaker 1: are not honest. I don't want to say that they're
Speaker 1: not honest. They don't talk about their failures right now.
Speaker 1: So it's not like failure only happened a long time
Speaker 1: ago and then you solve it and then everything's good
Speaker 1: after that. Like, failure is unpredictable and bad things are unpredictable.
Speaker 1: Bad things happen every day, so it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of kind of trying to ride them and being honest
Speaker 1: about them, like this bad thing happened to me today.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think it's up, sir. Right.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you a a question, and this
Speaker 1: might be okay, what is the secret to doing what
Speaker 1: you love? Well, you know I can ask you the
Speaker 1: same question because this is like this the focus of
Speaker 1: your research. I want you to drink my medicine. I've
Speaker 1: been been sitting on the yes because I feel like
Speaker 1: if I get more relaxed than you, then it might
Speaker 1: get a little weird, you know, like I was like, oh, so, James,
Speaker 1: you know you might already be more relatively, I always
Speaker 1: get nervous. Do you ever feel like before a podcast
Speaker 1: that you wish they would cancel at the last minute? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, because I wish I wish I could cancel it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well I feel that way before talks, too, right, you
Speaker 1: know sometimes you know, I'm like, oh my god, of
Speaker 1: course before talks, because that's horrible. Giving a talk podcast,
Speaker 1: I find like this is a little more I have
Speaker 1: to look at you, right, But like you know, when
Speaker 1: I'm home, I do most of my podcasts, like I'll
Speaker 1: do podcasts. I'm just you know, at a home I'm
Speaker 1: skyping with someone usually even the video is on, you know,
Speaker 1: so I can look weird. You know, my eyes can
Speaker 1: be like Google eyed. Right, that doesn't matter really, no
Speaker 1: er care about that, you know. But I get I
Speaker 1: get nervous. I get performance anxiety about podcasts. So but
Speaker 1: unless like like we know each other, so it's more
Speaker 1: of a discussion and stuff. But like if I'm in
Speaker 1: let's say you were interviewing Barack Obama, you would be
Speaker 1: nervous right before I would want him to cancel right
Speaker 1: before the podcast. I'd be so nervous, you know, totally there.
Speaker 1: There are definitely people. I had Brene Brown on a
Speaker 1: little while ago, and I was like, I really don't
Speaker 1: want to see something that's I'm going to make me
Speaker 1: gonna sound inauthentic, you know what I mean? Like I
Speaker 1: really want her to, you know, like pick up authentic.
Speaker 1: You got to be vulnerable, Yeah, I want to, like
Speaker 1: right by you don't want to be fake vulnerable, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: I want to be authentically vulnerable, you know, just because
Speaker 1: it's Britney Brown and you want to impress her. You
Speaker 1: can't like you know, be like, I feel it's so vulnerable,
Speaker 1: like my heart, and you got to mean it, you know,
Speaker 1: so she'll sense it. I feel like she's a vulnerability
Speaker 1: bullshit detector, right, And so I was like, that's why
Speaker 1: I was nervous for that one, you know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good get, though, Brenee Brown, I
Speaker 1: was good. I'm good. I'm happy about that one. So
Speaker 1: you're a good get. You're a good gut. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So So to answer your question, though, I think people,
Speaker 1: how do you Your question was how do you do? Essentially,
Speaker 1: how do you do what you love? How do you
Speaker 1: end up doing what you love? And I think it's
Speaker 1: very difficult because there's many, maybe many things that you
Speaker 1: love doing, and there's also many things that you haven't
Speaker 1: done yet that you will love once you do them.
Speaker 1: So I think the key is a doing these things
Speaker 1: like staying healthy because you can't do what you love
Speaker 1: if you're sick in bed, and being around friends because
Speaker 1: friends expose you to new ideas, and also just writing
Speaker 1: down ideas every day of let's say you pick a
Speaker 1: thing to write a list about, like I'm going to
Speaker 1: write about And this is actually how this started for me,
Speaker 1: I've always loved games, but you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be like a professional Monopoly player, for instance, or
Speaker 1: even like a professional chess player, which is chess was
Speaker 1: my favorite game. But I wasn't, you know, at the
Speaker 1: age of thirty or however old it was, I wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough to be a professional. But I started thinking,
Speaker 1: what's a list of games where I could then come
Speaker 1: up with a list of tips for each game, where
Speaker 1: I could teach Scott Kaufman how to beat everybody in
Speaker 1: his family and all his friends, all the casual players,
Speaker 1: so like an algorithm, or for each game there's tricks.
Speaker 1: So like Monopoly, if you own the orange properties, you're
Speaker 1: going to beat everybody who doesn't know that trick because
Speaker 1: jail's the most popular spot and seven is the most
Speaker 1: popular dice roll, so you end on the orange. So
Speaker 1: people will end up on the Orange properties more than
Speaker 1: any other property and pay you rent. So that's a
Speaker 1: minor trick. But I wanted to And then I was saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I could write a book about this, and then I
Speaker 1: could write a series about this. Now I never did
Speaker 1: any of these things, but I started every day just
Speaker 1: writing down ideas for things I could do. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, there were bad ideas, like maybe that book
Speaker 1: idea would be a bad idea. But once in a
Speaker 1: while you start to get more and more creative and
Speaker 1: you say, wow, that's exciting. You wouldn't have thought of
Speaker 1: it if you weren't writing down this list of ideas,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, I could do this, and I've
Speaker 1: started entire businesses, successful businesses that just coming off of
Speaker 1: a of ideas like that. Yeah, that's one of the ideas. Funny,
Speaker 1: like writing a book like how to be a Vegetarian
Speaker 1: for non vegetarians who want to write a best selling
Speaker 1: book about how to be a vegetarian or something in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of Like you think about what you
Speaker 1: loved as a kid and so like I loved games,
Speaker 1: for instance, as a kid. So but like I said,
Speaker 1: as an adult, kids play games and adults should play more.
Speaker 1: But you can't be a professional at it's hard. But
Speaker 1: I could write a book about it, for instance, or
Speaker 1: I could write a blog about it or do a
Speaker 1: podcast about you know, there's your interests that you had
Speaker 1: when you were fourteen or ten or six. They aged
Speaker 1: in different ways as well. You aged and they aged,
Speaker 1: so you might have aged until I recently got the
Speaker 1: PlayStation four VR and I feel like a kid again, right,
Speaker 1: so you love it? So imagine now you see all
Speaker 1: the blogs out there with the easter eggs in the
Speaker 1: different games, or the cheats in the different games, and
Speaker 1: you maybe you can send out a newsletter to your
Speaker 1: friends who play, you know, on the PlayStation four. Here's
Speaker 1: all the cheats for the here's all the websites for
Speaker 1: the cheats for these different games. And then maybe more
Speaker 1: and more people subscribe to that letter. Suddenly you have
Speaker 1: ten thousand person letter and PlayStation sponsors it. Like anything,
Speaker 1: that's how your age my interest in a professional way.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how your interest my age, but in
Speaker 1: a professional way, as opposed to like, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a professional gamer. Yeah no, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. And I'm just trying to tie all
Speaker 1: this to this idea of choosing yourself. It's obviously very related. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: in that particular case you become Let's say you send
Speaker 1: out a list of four friends. You know, you send
Speaker 1: out an email to four friends and you know they're
Speaker 1: all into PlayStation and you say, here are all the
Speaker 1: hidden blogs with the latest cheats and check out these
Speaker 1: video books, and they're like, oh, send me the next one,
Speaker 1: and then they get their friends to sign up, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly you have a big list ten thousand people.
Speaker 1: Well you have a little media company now, and you
Speaker 1: could get advertisers, and you could do a podcast, and
Speaker 1: you could do a four pay newsletter with the action
Speaker 1: cheats in them, and you know that no one else
Speaker 1: can find and you could interview the designers of the games,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you've chosen yourself to be one of the
Speaker 1: world's experts on you know, aggregating information about some specific
Speaker 1: games for the PlayStation. Yeah, you chose yourself. There no
Speaker 1: one else had to pick you. The PlayStation didn't have
Speaker 1: to pick you. A tournament didn't have to pick you, you
Speaker 1: you didn't have to be in some ranking. You just
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, there was an Also, there wasn't any
Speaker 1: pre designed path that you just you're like pick out.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I see that, I want to do that.
Speaker 1: Instead you decided like I want to be me. Well,
Speaker 1: but let's even the pre defined paths, So are the
Speaker 1: gatekeepers are breaking down? So let's just take a basic
Speaker 1: example publishing a book. So if you want to go
Speaker 1: the traditional route. You need these people to like you.
Speaker 1: You need an editorial as system to like you. You You
Speaker 1: need an agent like you, need an editor like you.
Speaker 1: You need a marketing department like you. You You need a
Speaker 1: publisher or like you, and you need a bookstore purchaser
Speaker 1: to like you. All those people have to like you
Speaker 1: for your book to get published. Or you can upload
Speaker 1: your book to Amazon and publish your book what you did,
Speaker 1: which choose yourself? I did and it sold over half
Speaker 1: a million copies. So and the best selling like independent
Speaker 1: book ever, you know, for maybe maybe for nonfiction. I
Speaker 1: mean it's hit number one in nonfiction many times in Amazon,
Speaker 1: out of all books and nonfiction on Amazon, and that's
Speaker 1: not typical. No people who are self published. But what's
Speaker 1: the best selling book in history? Now? Was initially self
Speaker 1: published Fifty Shades of Gray, So they sold she said
Speaker 1: the Bible. I thought you were going to say the Bible. Well,
Speaker 1: that was probably self published too, Gutenberg's House. But E. L.
Speaker 1: James uploaded fifty Shades a Great at Amazon, sold about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand copies. And then I think
Speaker 1: it was Simon and trusta random house. One of them
Speaker 1: picked it up. Amazon's publishing company didn't pick it up,
Speaker 1: but one of the major ones did, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: she sold like two hundred million more copies of her series,
Speaker 1: like more than all the Harry Potter novels. Story. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's this well well deserved, it's a really compelling story. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting though that it was self published and you
Speaker 1: know quality who knows, but certainly best selling. So she
Speaker 1: shows herself. So OK, there's another aspect of this, choosing yourself.
Speaker 1: Probably really like you chose you say, you choose yourself
Speaker 1: because someone else is going to probably do it for
Speaker 1: you and you're not probably not gonna like it. Well,
Speaker 1: let's look at just if you take any employee situation.
Speaker 1: Your dream is to keep on getting promoted and high
Speaker 1: and higher salary until maybe you have a nice retirement
Speaker 1: nest egg or you become the CEO or whatever, but
Speaker 1: until every step of the way, you have to basically
Speaker 1: cater to the agenda of someone else, like your boss
Speaker 1: and their boss and their boss. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people whose agendas you have to cater to simultaneously.
Speaker 1: That's very stressful. It's hard enough to cater to my
Speaker 1: own agenda. Let alone the agenda of not only my boss,
Speaker 1: but his boss and his boss and his boss and
Speaker 1: the customers and so on. So even when you start
Speaker 1: a business, you have to cater to the agendas of
Speaker 1: your customers and maybe your investors and your partners and
Speaker 1: your employees. But then at least in that case, you
Speaker 1: choose all those groups and you choose the business you're
Speaker 1: going to be in, and uh so you have a
Speaker 1: little bit more control and a lot more control and
Speaker 1: so on. But I'm not even recommending being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: There's many ways to just work for yourself, an author,
Speaker 1: or in many cases, you know, an academic with tenure.
Speaker 1: You know, at that point you basically can make your
Speaker 1: set your own agendas. But until then it's published or perish.
Speaker 1: So you're very much you know, I'm not saying you're
Speaker 1: not choosing yourself because you chose to be a professor
Speaker 1: and you enjoy it and has its ups and downs
Speaker 1: on show me personally. Yeah, well my story is I'm
Speaker 1: not a tender track professor. Oh, you're chosen myself even
Speaker 1: even better than so, then you don't have to comply
Speaker 1: with the agendas of like that's so stressful. Run a
Speaker 1: nonprofit you know, called the Imagination Institute, and I teach
Speaker 1: it course at PEN. But I'm not on the tenure track.
Speaker 1: I decided I don't want to be. Yeah, I see,
Speaker 1: I think that's much more. You don't have to get
Speaker 1: into that whole stressful seven year period where you have
Speaker 1: to go to all these cocktail parties you don't want
Speaker 1: to go to, and publish in all these journals you
Speaker 1: don't want to publish to. You could just write books
Speaker 1: and do your thing and and succeed. That's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you make it sound that makes it sound easy, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right right now. But failure is going to
Speaker 1: come also, if you know, if you're trying to do
Speaker 1: everything on your own, there's a lot more opportunities to
Speaker 1: fail as well. So but then you can also bounce
Speaker 1: back because you could have variety in what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that having that freedom and failing is fine,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as I have the freedom to fail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And variety helps too, to buffer like economic failures for instance,
Speaker 1: or to even like, well, if you have writer's block
Speaker 1: one day, okay, no problem, I'll work do something positive
Speaker 1: on my nonprofit. And you still can feel good on
Speaker 1: the day, even though you know one thing you care
Speaker 1: about didn't work out that day. I just have some
Speaker 1: days where I feel like everything has bombed. But I
Speaker 1: have days like that too. I had a day like
Speaker 1: that yesterday. So it happens. You said that, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you just have to get to the next day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to understand that. You have to like almost
Speaker 1: lean into the problem. You have to understand that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have felt like this before, and I know one
Speaker 1: good thing to do is to wait for at least
Speaker 1: those initial feelings of panic to subside, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: I got to keep I'm almost done with this, so
Speaker 1: so we'll see. Okay, maybe I am getting more relaxed.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You are, You're getting more charismatic, You're
Speaker 1: getting there? There? You are? You are? Is it too
Speaker 1: personal to ask what happened yesterday? I was just feeling
Speaker 1: like I was feeling stuck on writing. I was feeling
Speaker 1: a little stuck on getting some guests for my podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm an active angel investor now, so I'm invested in
Speaker 1: a bunch of companies, and I was thinking I've not
Speaker 1: gotten any updates from any of these companies in like
Speaker 1: a really long time, which is usually good news. Normally
Speaker 1: I would think to myself, if you don't hear anything,
Speaker 1: that's good news. The day colored everything else. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was thinking, you know what if it all
Speaker 1: didn't work out simultaneously, like I started to go down
Speaker 1: that downward spiral and can't help it sometimes and then
Speaker 1: you just have to take a break and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going through the downward spial spiral. What I tend
Speaker 1: to do is I'm going to make an appointment with
Speaker 1: myself to think about these issues tomorrow, and if I'm
Speaker 1: still feeling it, then I need to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Isn't it funny how that downward spiral can of cause
Speaker 1: us to all us on bringing things that we never
Speaker 1: even thought about before. And it's like it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, she hasn't responded to my email in a week.
Speaker 1: I haven't even cared about that till that moment. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like it starts when once she starts spiraling down,
Speaker 1: it just sort of pulls in. It just sucks and everything.
Speaker 1: It's like you're coming down with me too. You're coming
Speaker 1: down with me too, and you know, but the reverse,
Speaker 1: the upward spiral can have the opposite effect, is you know,
Speaker 1: Barbara Frederickson's work is shown and stuff. Yeah, you got
Speaker 1: to you gotta be careful with both. Both of them
Speaker 1: are hot potatoes. Well, bar that's interesting. I'd like you
Speaker 1: to tell me more that because I my point was
Speaker 1: I'm okay with the upward spiral where we start pulling
Speaker 1: in good things. But maybe that just super optimism can
Speaker 1: be dangerous. Is that you're yeah, Like, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how in the past I've at least contributed to let's say,
Speaker 1: going broke. Is I think, okay, I sold my business,
Speaker 1: I made, this is the money I made. I'm done
Speaker 1: with my experience of improving as a human being. Now
Speaker 1: I could just do whatever I want, and that begins
Speaker 1: that upward spiral of optimism. And it's not manic, because
Speaker 1: I don't get it's very situational, like you know, I'll
Speaker 1: be very optimistic when good things happen, and that contributes
Speaker 1: to the upward spile, as opposed to having it be
Speaker 1: some chemical thing, which is a very serious issue for
Speaker 1: some people. So I don't want to say I'm that,
Speaker 1: but I had a tendency to go into those upward
Speaker 1: spirals and then go into the downward spirals, and it's
Speaker 1: just you have to moderate those. But you can't moderate
Speaker 1: situational ups and downs with medication. You have to know
Speaker 1: how to recognize them and stop yourself and have habits
Speaker 1: in place to take care of yourself. Be interesting, if
Speaker 1: it SSSRIS moderated the situation, well, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you could temper, you know, with very like for instance,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling panicked, you could, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: drink yourself into oblive in and you probably won't feel
Speaker 1: panicked anymore. But that's not a healthy way to do it.
Speaker 1: Womenbaum is healthy. Yes, I'm seeing that. So you you're
Speaker 1: also like kind of you can predict the future, but
Speaker 1: you know, in a way like you're kind of like
Speaker 1: a few like an amateur futurist, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: I say amateur because you don't get paid every deal.
Speaker 1: We've worked with futures who get paid every day. A
Speaker 1: couple of scenarios. But you know, you're kind of a
Speaker 1: futurest in Since in two thousand and seven and on
Speaker 1: CNBC you said that Facebook would one day be worth
Speaker 1: a hundred billion, I watched that clip and they they
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, well, you might not remember,
Speaker 1: because before the clip, they kept leading in, why do
Speaker 1: you hear what this guy say? Yeah, And then they
Speaker 1: would play a clip of Jeff Bezos laughing hysterically because
Speaker 1: he has a very funny laugh, and then they had
Speaker 1: me on. And at the time, Facebook, I think was
Speaker 1: valued at about a billion, or maybe Microsoft had just
Speaker 1: offered to buy it for a billion, and I was
Speaker 1: I had just written in the Financial Times actually that
Speaker 1: it was going to one day be worth a hundred
Speaker 1: billion or why do you say that? Because I started
Speaker 1: using it and it felt so good, like I was
Speaker 1: suddenly back in touch with my friends from like first
Speaker 1: grade and high school and college and my first job.
Speaker 1: And it's not like I would ever have called my
Speaker 1: friend from first grade and said, hey, how did your
Speaker 1: kid do in a soccer game yesterday? But now I
Speaker 1: get to see it. It just struck me as this
Speaker 1: phenomenal new thing that was never going to leave my
Speaker 1: life ever. And then it seemed like, as opposed to
Speaker 1: earlier social networks like let's say MySpace, it seemed like
Speaker 1: this mini organized internet, like a sub internet, and I
Speaker 1: felt like eventually people would be selling things on here,
Speaker 1: but in a very organized fashion because every page looks
Speaker 1: the same, and so you know how to navigate everything
Speaker 1: very quickly as soon as you go to a public
Speaker 1: page of a company. This is what ended up happening.
Speaker 1: As soon as you go to a public page of company,
Speaker 1: you know how to navigate it because they're all the same.
Speaker 1: And so I just felt this, given that the Internet
Speaker 1: was at this point whereth trillions, Facebook's got to be
Speaker 1: worth at least one hundred billion. Now it's going to
Speaker 1: be worth much more because they're that leaders in virtual
Speaker 1: reality as well. Because you invested so much, does that
Speaker 1: mean you're like rich right now? Like, well, I didn't
Speaker 1: invest in in Facebook. I thought you did. No. No,
Speaker 1: what I did was I invested in It was too
Speaker 1: late to invest in. I couldn't really get into Facebook.
Speaker 1: There was just major venture capital firms. But I invested
Speaker 1: in social media companies, social media agencies, so agents, ad
Speaker 1: agencies that were trying to tell companies, hey, get on
Speaker 1: this new thing called Facebook. So there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of ad agencies that were starting and I basically invested
Speaker 1: in all of them and that did do well. OK,
Speaker 1: So that worked good? Yes, So despite us, I assume
Speaker 1: you're rich right now. Oh it's all relative, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a relative you're richer that I assume you're richer
Speaker 1: than me. But yet, and I don't know if you
Speaker 1: still do it, but you decided to massively simplify your
Speaker 1: life recently and put like just fifteen of the most
Speaker 1: important things in a bag and even like sleep like
Speaker 1: not like people's I'll sleep sleep around, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You know, now are you still doing that? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't have like an apartment. No, No, I don't rent
Speaker 1: or own, so I just as of this second, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, holdless, Well, you're a rich homeless
Speaker 1: man right now. I'm in an AIRBNBA. But before that,
Speaker 1: I was a friend of mine who was who actually
Speaker 1: had helped at one point was not staying in his place,
Speaker 1: and he had a very nice place, and I stayed
Speaker 1: there for a while and I just didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I had been doing a lot of airbnbs all over
Speaker 1: the country and traveling around, and I realized at one
Speaker 1: point I didn't miss anything that was in my apartment,
Speaker 1: and my least was coming up on my apartment I
Speaker 1: was renting, and I had, you know, forty years worth
Speaker 1: of accumulated baggage, and like we all do belongings in
Speaker 1: my place, and so I didn't want to do the
Speaker 1: Marie Condo thing, you know, her book The Magic Art
Speaker 1: of Tidying Up, where you kind of hold an object
Speaker 1: to yourself and if you love it, you keep it
Speaker 1: and if you don't love to do that, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in that. I already knew I had
Speaker 1: not missed any of my belongings, even photo albums, collectibles,
Speaker 1: my diploma, computers, beds, sheets, dishes, you know, whatever I had.
Speaker 1: I had a gazillion things. So I hired a friend
Speaker 1: of mine to basically take took her two trucks and
Speaker 1: her whole family, and they just basically cleaned out my place.
Speaker 1: I said, either keep it, sell it, donate it, or
Speaker 1: throw it away for everything you decide, and don't call
Speaker 1: me during the entire process. But it took her about
Speaker 1: a week because there were so much stuff. And she
Speaker 1: called me one said, you sure you want to throw
Speaker 1: out your diploma? I mean, you worked really hard for
Speaker 1: that diploma. And I'm like, no, I did not work
Speaker 1: hard for that diploma. And it was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: No one's ever asked to see it. So you're undergraduate. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I was thrown out of graduate school unfortunately. But
Speaker 1: I'll have to get to that. But so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: throughout everything except the bag I was traveling with. So
Speaker 1: I had basically only the bag I was traveling with.
Speaker 1: And that's still all what. I'm still doing that. And
Speaker 1: you find this greater simplicity of their benefits compare it
Speaker 1: to your prior life. It's really hard to say. I
Speaker 1: don't like people say to me, oh, that must feel
Speaker 1: really freeing, and I don't know if that's if I
Speaker 1: do feel really freeing about it. I don't. I still
Speaker 1: don't miss anything. And now it's it's actually been about
Speaker 1: a year and a half since I've seen everything since
Speaker 1: all my I've seen all my longs, and it's been
Speaker 1: about almost a year since I threw everything out. But
Speaker 1: you know, the dumpstery throughout and could you go back? No, No,
Speaker 1: because my friend again probably you know, sould donated you know,
Speaker 1: to or throw it throughout and uh might be impersonating
Speaker 1: you with your diployment or that could be. That could
Speaker 1: very well be. I mean, certainly I had to trust
Speaker 1: this friend because she found you know, all my paperwork
Speaker 1: for everything, tax returns, all that kind of stuff. Because
Speaker 1: I was keeping around all this. What do you need
Speaker 1: to keep her on your paperwork for? Like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't need, you know, and you know saw many many
Speaker 1: things about me, you know, and but you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's what friends are for, for sure. So let's just
Speaker 1: think about some of their predictions for the future. You've
Speaker 1: talked about how you think it will have more of
Speaker 1: an employee free society. There'll be a rising wave of
Speaker 1: solo entrepreneurs and the lifestyle entrepreneurs. Yeah, what is a
Speaker 1: lifestyle entrepreneur. Well, it's I'll give you a very basic example.
Speaker 1: You're a personal trainer at the gym. Is a lifestyle entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: They work for themselves. Uber. If you're an Uber driver employee, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: if you're an Uber driver, you're a lifestyle entrepreneur. And
Speaker 1: that's what the word entrepreneur is not necessarily correct, but
Speaker 1: it's you're just doing your own thing and you're not
Speaker 1: really You've limited the number of people you're reporting to.
Speaker 1: You're limiting the number of agendas you have to care to,
Speaker 1: or you have variety of agendas. So you could be
Speaker 1: an Uber driver but also renting an Airbnb and also
Speaker 1: selling stuff on Etsy, and buying things in China and
Speaker 1: selling it on Amazon. Maybe they're in writing a book,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's a variety of things you're working on. So,
Speaker 1: but what's happening is, well, let's take Uber as a
Speaker 1: great example. The need for cars has gone down and
Speaker 1: is going down. So let's say within ten years there's
Speaker 1: going to just be self driving cars, or you know,
Speaker 1: some number of years, who knows, five years, ten years,
Speaker 1: fifteen years, there's just going to be only self driving cars,
Speaker 1: I mean auto, Yeah, cars that drive themselves, and so
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the cars on the road won't be
Speaker 1: necessary anymore. You'll just say, okay, at eight am, it's
Speaker 1: the self driving car that's nearest me should pick me
Speaker 1: up and take me to work, and you'll be able
Speaker 1: to work on your laptop on the way to work
Speaker 1: because you're self driving some whatever self driving car that's
Speaker 1: owned by Uber. You know, let's say maybe Google buys Uber,
Speaker 1: so who knows how it all works out, and you know,
Speaker 1: it'll pick you up, it'll drive you to work, drop
Speaker 1: you off, and now it'll go it'll never be empty,
Speaker 1: it'll go to the next person. Right now, we live
Speaker 1: in a world where all these empty cars are sitting
Speaker 1: in parking lots at you know, work. That's not it's
Speaker 1: not going to be necessary anywhere. That's a waste. So
Speaker 1: if ninety percent of the cars in the auto industry disappear,
Speaker 1: what happens to the auto industry? All the employees are
Speaker 1: gonna you know, these companies are going to be there's
Speaker 1: going to be massive upheaval. I'm not saying this is
Speaker 1: bad or good. It could be a bad thing, it
Speaker 1: could be a good thing, and it's going to hurt
Speaker 1: some people. It's going to help some people. But it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, so regardless of whether you think it's
Speaker 1: good or bad. And so what will that do. That's
Speaker 1: also going to change the insurance industry because no more
Speaker 1: car insurance, no more car insurance agents. It's going to
Speaker 1: change real estate because maybe you could live further from
Speaker 1: work because now you could just work on the way
Speaker 1: to work, or maybe work at home, you know, because
Speaker 1: mobile is happening, and virtual reality is happening and all
Speaker 1: these other things. Oh yeah, virtuality is going to get
Speaker 1: so real. I was a podcast chat with David Chalmers recently,
Speaker 1: who he believes we are living in a simulation right now,
Speaker 1: but he thinks that virtuality will eventually become so really
Speaker 1: you won't be able to distinguish the real world from
Speaker 1: virtual reality, because if you think about it, our technological
Speaker 1: society has only been around, let's say two hundred years,
Speaker 1: three hundred years, and we're already at the point where
Speaker 1: a virtual reality could seem so real that we're maybe
Speaker 1: like ten years away or five years away from a
Speaker 1: virtual reality seeming so real, like even to touch in
Speaker 1: our senses, that we won't be able to tell the difference.
Speaker 1: So imagine a society that maybe live for a hunt
Speaker 1: thousand years exactly that we're of course we're at a
Speaker 1: simulation could be us. Yeah, yeah, you start, you basically
Speaker 1: just ran the philosophical thought experiment that Dave Chalmers has
Speaker 1: been doing, and you came to the same conclusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the kind of the standard you know,
Speaker 1: simulated reality argument that the odds that wear the real
Speaker 1: world are like one in a gazillion. He actually, he
Speaker 1: actually you know, says that he puts between like thirty
Speaker 1: and fifty percent that we are in a simulation, which
Speaker 1: is really high if you're think of a high percentage.
Speaker 1: You know, if you think of that, it's almost like, yeah, yeah, cool,
Speaker 1: I'm not making that prediction, by the way, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a sort of just a philosophical who knows. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: never know. What do you mean we'll never know? We
Speaker 1: might someday, Yeah, I mean, I guess there's some there's
Speaker 1: some mathematicians who are kind of trying to work on
Speaker 1: theories about it. And you know, maybe the dark matter
Speaker 1: in the universe is somehow related to the real world.
Speaker 1: Some some some entity might tell you someday, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of fun making your character, right,
Speaker 1: but given that this reality might be thirteen point eight
Speaker 1: billion years old, yeah, the odds that it happens in
Speaker 1: our lifetime that we kind of poke a hole in
Speaker 1: the reality is like, when you die, could be you
Speaker 1: find out maybe we'll see that. That could be a
Speaker 1: theory too. That's that was my thinking, is that die,
Speaker 1: you know, because that could actually just mean that, you
Speaker 1: you know, wake up in a pod somewhere, you know,
Speaker 1: the alien technique. Yah, exactly. Wouldn't that be the biggest
Speaker 1: kicker If you do wake up with somebody, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: no way, I'm going back in So this, I like
Speaker 1: this quote from you. Creating new income sources is like sex.
Speaker 1: You only get good by doing it, preferably a lot.
Speaker 1: Do you mean in a lot of ways? Is failure inherent?
Speaker 1: And part of that? Yeah, because you don't really you know,
Speaker 1: when you do a science experiment, you expect that many
Speaker 1: experiments won't work out, and that's how ultimately you make
Speaker 1: your big scientific discoveries. So the classic story of Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison trying a thousand different filaments before he had the
Speaker 1: right one for a light bulb? Did he fail those
Speaker 1: thousand times? Did he give up? No? He got better
Speaker 1: at figuring out what chemical you know, what chemicals did
Speaker 1: the or you know, what elements did the filment need
Speaker 1: to be made out of? And he got better and
Speaker 1: better until he came up with a light bulb. He
Speaker 1: sort of narrowed in on success there. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what happens. As you learn the language of you know,
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship and making an income, you learn to speak it
Speaker 1: better and better. So well, I love that quote. You know,
Speaker 1: I have such a bad memory. I honestly don't remember
Speaker 1: writing that, but it certainly sounds like me. But sounds right,
Speaker 1: but I totally don't remember it. I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: I think I have early on set Alzheimer's. Actually, maybe
Speaker 1: this lemon bomb is going to help. Actually that believe
Speaker 1: it or not. That's one of the benefits of it.
Speaker 1: It helps Alzheimer's. Help is cognitive functioning. I believe it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe anything. I believe anything you tell. Thank you
Speaker 1: your podcast. We're in a virtual reality. Lemon bomb also
Speaker 1: makes you believe anything. Yeah, so that could be. It's
Speaker 1: a truth serum. That's the kind of thing. Hey, this
Speaker 1: has been such a great conference of interview. I don't
Speaker 1: know if is there any topic you wanted that you
Speaker 1: wanted to bring up here at the end. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm good. I've been looking forward to this. We
Speaker 1: first met a little over a year ago, and I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to doing this podcast ever since. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I have as well. Thank you for the in lane
Speaker 1: chat and thank you for being you. Thanks Scott, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to you coming on my podcast when
Speaker 1: your next book comes out. So let's just stops. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank you. I would love it. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman I hope
Speaker 1: you found this episode just as thought for booking and
Speaker 1: interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the
Speaker 1: show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you
Speaker 1: can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com