Speaker 1: If success is this lagging indicator of commitment, Now, how
Speaker 1: can you be sure that you are paying your dues?
Speaker 1: Best selling author on the Post the number one health
Speaker 1: and well iness.
Speaker 2: Podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 3: health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
Speaker 3: one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier,
Speaker 3: and more healed. Today, I'm talking to a guest who
Speaker 3: I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I think I think
Speaker 3: this is the fourth or fifth time that I'm getting
Speaker 3: to sit down with him, probably the person I've interviewed
Speaker 3: the most in my entire interviewing career, and it's because
Speaker 3: he keeps putting out incredible work and incredible books that
Speaker 3: I hope you're going to read. I'm talking about Ryan Holiday,
Speaker 3: who's one of the world's best selling living philosophers. Ryan's books,
Speaker 3: like his new One Discipline Is Destiny, which is available
Speaker 3: right now number one New York Times best sellers multiple
Speaker 3: some of my favorite ones, The Obstacle is the Way,
Speaker 3: Ego is the Enemy, the Daily Stoic, and they've been
Speaker 3: translated into over forty languages and sold multi millions of copies.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to talk to Ryan today about this
Speaker 3: new book, The Power of Self Control. I know it's
Speaker 3: been out for a bit, but this is a topic
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by. If you don't already have this book,
Speaker 3: go and grab it. If you have on, go and
Speaker 3: grab one for a friend. Ryan, thank you for being
Speaker 3: back on the show. Yeah, it's always great, man, it's great.
Speaker 3: I remember when I first met you. It was such
Speaker 3: an inspiration for me because seeing you uncover stoicism for
Speaker 3: the modern world definitely was parallel to how I felt
Speaker 3: about what I wanted to do for Vedic knowledge and
Speaker 3: Vadic wisdom. And it's been exceptional to watch end and
Speaker 3: I love that. I hope there's more.
Speaker 2: I don't know. This is the end of the series, right.
Speaker 1: This is two and a four book.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, good, okay, okay, yeah, you keep finding a
Speaker 3: way of doing that. I need to figure that out.
Speaker 3: But no, it's great we're talking about this, and I
Speaker 3: love that you chose what I think today is considered
Speaker 3: as such an unsexy topic and I don't if you
Speaker 3: see it that way.
Speaker 1: Discipline, I mean, I do, I mean, especially because the ancience,
Speaker 1: the word they used for discipline was temperance, which sounds
Speaker 1: even less like discipline, at least like that there's like
Speaker 1: a kind of a coolness to it. But temperance feels
Speaker 1: like the opposite of fun. Right. It feels like you're
Speaker 1: telling me what I can't do, all the things I
Speaker 1: have to avoid or all the things I have to
Speaker 1: stop short one. And people don't like that, even though
Speaker 1: when you actually think about the people who do whatever
Speaker 1: they want all the time. Yes, actually some of the
Speaker 1: most unhappy, miserable people in the entire world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's funny you say that now because I
Speaker 3: started thinking back to Vde acknowledging the word is tapa tapa,
Speaker 3: and and it means austerity. That's the closest translation. And
Speaker 3: the idea that discipline is often compared to austerity, right.
Speaker 2: And austerity.
Speaker 1: The purpose of that is not deprivation of austerity, is
Speaker 1: to be not corrupted, to be sustainable, right, to avoid
Speaker 1: what is superfluous or unnecessary. And it's not even about
Speaker 1: a thing, it's not even about avoiding pleasure altogether. Like
Speaker 1: in the agent world, the big in the Western asient world,
Speaker 1: the big dispute is between the Epicureans and the Stoicism
Speaker 1: and the Stoics. And you think Epicureans are the lovers
Speaker 1: of pleasures and the Stoics are the haters of pleasure,
Speaker 1: But even the Epicureans believed that any pleasure taken too
Speaker 1: far becomes a source of pain or suffering. So it's
Speaker 1: what we're really talking about. Then it comes down to
Speaker 1: this idea of temperance or balance. What is the right amount?
Speaker 1: Some things, the right amount is zero, but for most things,
Speaker 1: the right amount is some sort of moderate or midpoint.
Speaker 1: And you have to have wisdom and self control toude
Speaker 1: not only figure out what that is, but then to
Speaker 1: stop at that line.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the hard part because I feel like
Speaker 3: society has gone in the direction of becoming addicted to pleasure, yes, well,
Speaker 3: pleasure seeking. Where from the Stoics perspective, why did we
Speaker 3: even ever go down that road? Like why did we
Speaker 3: leave wisdom and self control or did we never have
Speaker 3: it at toll and we've always been trying to balance it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the big question, is
Speaker 1: like why do we take something that we like too far? Right?
Speaker 1: So the Epicureans would say like, look, drinking is great,
Speaker 1: but if you have a hangover the next day, was
Speaker 1: it actually so great? And so you know, if you
Speaker 1: push or the pleasure too far, it becomes not pleasurable.
Speaker 1: But in the moment that feels very far away, right,
Speaker 1: like in the moment you want the thing now. Obviously
Speaker 1: sex is this thing for people. It's like the thing
Speaker 1: you're attracted to in this moment. You're not thinking about
Speaker 1: the shame or the regret or the consequences or the
Speaker 1: pain or the loss or the greed. You're not thinking
Speaker 1: of all those things. You're just thinking of right now.
Speaker 1: So I think a big part of this this where
Speaker 1: the wisdom comes into the ability to step back. So
Speaker 1: what am I going to think about this after I
Speaker 1: get it? What am I going to think about this later?
Speaker 1: And realizing that your mind is very good at tricking here.
Speaker 1: Just as your mind often tells you like stop, you're
Speaker 1: too tired, you can't go any further. You actually have
Speaker 1: a lot less left in the tank, your mind also
Speaker 1: tells you you need this thing, you won't regret it.
Speaker 1: It's a you know whatever, And it's really good at
Speaker 1: putting those blinders on. And so part of I think
Speaker 1: any meditative practice, any philosophical practice, any journaling practice, is
Speaker 1: being able to argue with yourself a little bit, to
Speaker 1: step back and have that conversation about, well, is what
Speaker 1: I think about this true? Is the story I'm telling
Speaker 1: myself about this true? I think nowhere is this more
Speaker 1: important than for like ambitious people who have told themselves,
Speaker 1: I will be happy when I accomplish X. Right. Like
Speaker 1: all the things we need to be most disciplined about,
Speaker 1: ambition is one of them because it tells you this live.
Speaker 1: After I become in your time as a seller, after
Speaker 1: I make a million dollars, after I get a gold medal,
Speaker 1: then I'll be good. My parents will be proud of me,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy. Then I can relax. And you have
Speaker 1: to have the perspective the wisdom to go has that
Speaker 1: ever been true ever in my life before? Has that
Speaker 1: ever been true in history? And then go, oh, okay, no,
Speaker 1: I can't tell myself that lie. That doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: don't work really hard to do stuff, but you're not
Speaker 1: doing it under the false pretenses that it's going to
Speaker 1: be conditional to your happiness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's a part of us that and I
Speaker 3: love what you're saying, but there's a part of us
Speaker 3: that always believes that we are the exception, that we
Speaker 3: will know how to spend money better, that will know
Speaker 3: how to have love in our life better, like we
Speaker 3: won't be the one who fumbles off the ende of
Speaker 3: a cliff, Like we're smart, don't all our friends, even
Speaker 3: if we don't say that we're wiser than the people
Speaker 3: who came before us.
Speaker 2: And that's and that's ego is the enemy.
Speaker 3: But of course, like that, that idea, I think is
Speaker 3: what misleads us so much.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's it's like, Okay, you're on the metal standing,
Speaker 1: just won the gold medal, and you're not feeling happy
Speaker 1: for yourself. You're thinking, well, I could have done a faster.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, oh, I gotta do it again. Right even
Speaker 1: in that moment, you're not able to think I'm doing
Speaker 1: it to myself right now, what I will be doing
Speaker 1: to myself in the future. And that's this sort of
Speaker 1: insidious thing. And you can understand why from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 1: it drives the species forward. You can also see the
Speaker 1: immense personal cost that it inflicts on us because it
Speaker 1: never allows us to be present or content or happy
Speaker 1: with what we have in that moment, and so I
Speaker 1: think again, people think discipline is the I always push
Speaker 1: myself to do better, do more, discipline can also be
Speaker 1: curbing that very impulse, right, Like ordinary people, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about discipline, what we're talking about is getting off
Speaker 1: your butt, working out, resisting eating candy and eating nutritious food.
Speaker 1: Instead it's you know, managing your screen time. But I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of more disciplined people, or for
Speaker 1: people who have tasted the rewards of discipline, you have
Speaker 1: to learn how to be disciplined about discipline, which is
Speaker 1: maybe the highest level of the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Now we're I guess now we've started talking about discipline
Speaker 3: as a tool to achieve daily or weekly, monthly, yearly tasks,
Speaker 3: But you're actually saying that we need to go back
Speaker 3: a bit, like how would you unpack that for how
Speaker 3: you're defining discipline there?
Speaker 1: Well, it's like what's the number one cause of injury
Speaker 1: for athletes? It's overtraining, right, So like, yeah, you're ordinary person,
Speaker 1: it's like you're not training enough, you're not working hard enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then at an more elite level, at a more
Speaker 1: accomplished level. Actually, the trouble is, hey, the racism for
Speaker 1: six weeks, Like you do you want to peak now,
Speaker 1: or do you want to peak at the right moment
Speaker 1: right or this is just a practice session you don't
Speaker 1: have to go out, or you know it's a long season,
Speaker 1: or you prepared for that, and so you know, discipline
Speaker 1: has to be balanced with sustainability, with rest, relaxation, recuperation, recovery,
Speaker 1: all these other things. And that requires kind of a
Speaker 1: spiritual discipline, not just hey, I can run an hour
Speaker 1: without getting tired, but like, can I stop myself from
Speaker 1: doing that? That's not what I should be doing in
Speaker 1: this moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what I like about that is that I
Speaker 3: feel there's different phases and stages, Like in the first
Speaker 3: two years of my career, where we would have met
Speaker 3: in New York and we went on a walk once
Speaker 3: as well, I think, and we were walking around the
Speaker 3: city and I remember talking about a few of these themes.
Speaker 3: But it was at that time in my life I
Speaker 3: was working probably eighteen hour days, sure, because I had
Speaker 3: to in order to kind of break through that first level.
Speaker 3: I was still disciplined in the sense that I would
Speaker 3: make time to eat to some degree, and meditate, and
Speaker 3: I would make some time to do a few things
Speaker 3: of rest. But generally I was working seven days a week,
Speaker 3: eighteen hours a day, and I'm very grateful.
Speaker 2: I did that. I don't look back and go, oh,
Speaker 2: I wasted two years. It was brilliant.
Speaker 3: But then in the last couple of years, I've taken
Speaker 3: my evenings back and so I don't work after six pm.
Speaker 2: It's just a rule.
Speaker 3: I don't want to work. I don't want to be
Speaker 3: on the phone. And I was talking to a friend
Speaker 3: and it's exactly what you said. He was saying to me.
Speaker 3: He was just like, well, don't you get less done?
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, I get more done. Sure,
Speaker 3: because I know how much I have to get done.
Speaker 3: I'm far more attentive and focused. And then I'm not
Speaker 3: working at nine pm when I can rest and recuperate,
Speaker 3: and now the next day I'm better for it. And
Speaker 3: so I hear that idea that that is also a discipline,
Speaker 3: or they could be seen as you're being lazy in
Speaker 3: the evening.
Speaker 1: And I think it's the question is it easy for
Speaker 1: you to do that? Yes? Or no? Right, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's actually harder for you. I imagine to say I'm
Speaker 1: stopping at six than it is to say I'm going
Speaker 1: to work all night till I fall asleep at my desk, right, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if my wife's not around, I can work every
Speaker 3: weekend and evening.
Speaker 1: And also it's realizing that you have multiple things that
Speaker 1: you're trying to do simultaneously. So yeah, sure, working, continuing
Speaker 1: to work eighteen hour days may help you continue to
Speaker 1: advance in your career. But if one of the also
Speaker 1: the other things you're trying to work on, is to
Speaker 1: stay married or to have a happy marriage, or you
Speaker 1: have children, or you have your health or whatever you
Speaker 1: were telling me before we recorded it. You like you
Speaker 1: got in at three am last night. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: a person who always wakes up very early, Like I'm
Speaker 1: a person who wakes up early. Yes, But then I
Speaker 1: also have to understand that sleep is a discipline. And
Speaker 1: so if some changes outside my control mean that I
Speaker 1: didn't go to bed to a certain time, the fact
Speaker 1: that I wake up at five, that's bad idea, and
Speaker 1: it actually requires it. You wouldn't think that sleep discipline
Speaker 1: would be a thing, but in the military they talk
Speaker 1: about that sleep discipline. You got to get your hours
Speaker 1: because you make bad decisions when you are not rested,
Speaker 1: and other people bear the consequences of those decisions. And
Speaker 1: so deciding hey, I'm going to skip this thing that
Speaker 1: feels comfortable to me to do that feels natural for
Speaker 1: me to do that, I feel like I'm letting some
Speaker 1: part of myself down by not doing I actually have
Speaker 1: to be the bigger, more self controlled person and say
Speaker 1: in this moment, I'm not going to do that right.
Speaker 1: And I think at the end of the day, self
Speaker 1: discipline is the ability to have an emotion and instinct
Speaker 1: of feeling to do a thing and then to catch
Speaker 1: yourself and go, is that actually the right thing to do?
Speaker 2: Yes? Or no?
Speaker 1: And sometimes it is. Sometimes it's hey, it's cold outside
Speaker 1: and it's five am and it's still dark, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to get up, but I have to get
Speaker 1: up because I've made these commitments I'm behind blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And other times it is to stay in bed right
Speaker 1: just like you know, sometimes you feel that surge of
Speaker 1: temper coming on and you have to go, no, that's
Speaker 1: not a good like it's always the ability to step back,
Speaker 1: put the emotion, the instinct the opinion to the test.
Speaker 1: And I think you learn this in meditation. I think
Speaker 1: you learn this for soicism in the journaling of going like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, and I can choose it or not.
Speaker 1: I can choose to identified or not. It is not me.
Speaker 1: The Stokes have this word assent right, not like ascent
Speaker 1: up a mountain, but as s e nt.
Speaker 2: Do you assent to the.
Speaker 1: Feeling or not? Do you agree to it, rubber stamp it,
Speaker 1: approve it, go along with it or not?
Speaker 2: Do you subscribe?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what discipline is is about what do you
Speaker 1: assent to and what you not assent to?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder I want to go with a tangent.
Speaker 3: I want to come back to that because I actually
Speaker 3: really like that point. But a few words ago, there
Speaker 3: was something that you sparked for me. Sometimes I feel
Speaker 3: like with work it's doable. Sometimes with even our partner,
Speaker 3: with friends, it's possible to say no.
Speaker 2: To be disciplined.
Speaker 3: I find like, and I want to ask you this
Speaker 3: from your perspective, what about a sense of dad guilt?
Speaker 3: Like we talk a lot about mum guilt, and you know,
Speaker 3: if it was speaking to mom, i'd ask about mum
Speaker 3: guilt in this scenario, but from a dad guilt point
Speaker 3: of view, like you're a dad, I you know, and
Speaker 3: I see you wanting to be a good dad and
Speaker 3: you're very involved to do kids. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: you're a writer and you're in a bookstore and you're
Speaker 3: doing activists like this.
Speaker 2: There so many things that you do.
Speaker 3: Do you ever feel like that's like the hardest place
Speaker 3: where discipline because it's like even if a dad comes
Speaker 3: home at three am and the kid once in at
Speaker 3: four am, Like does the dad stay out there?
Speaker 2: What does the dad do? How does he work?
Speaker 1: Well? It's so insidious. What we do is we go like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this for my family, right, and it's like
Speaker 1: are you or are you doing it for you? Are
Speaker 1: you doing it for the money? How can you be
Speaker 1: doing it for your family if you don't see those
Speaker 1: people as a result of what you're doing. Someone told
Speaker 1: me many years ago, they said love is spelled time,
Speaker 1: and I think about that all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I always have things that take me away more
Speaker 1: than I would like them to be. I suppose I
Speaker 1: could do nothing, but that would also leave me unfulfilled.
Speaker 1: That would not be me setting the example. I want
Speaker 1: to set for my kids. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, realizing that everything I say yes to also
Speaker 1: means saying no to someone or something else, And in
Speaker 1: some ways I try to use that dad go a
Speaker 1: little constructively. I try to go, Okay, this person's asking
Speaker 1: me to do this thing, and this person's offering me
Speaker 1: money to do this thing, or this is some cool
Speaker 1: opportunity they want me to go Hella skiing and British
Speaker 1: Columbia or something, and I go, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say no to this cool opportunity. I don't want to
Speaker 1: miss this memory. I don't want to hurt this person's feelings.
Speaker 1: And I go, But I am hurting a person's feelings.
Speaker 1: I am saying no to a memory, like I am
Speaker 1: taking something away from someone, and that person is a
Speaker 1: five year old and they're going to feel it far
Speaker 1: more deeply. Someone else will take my spot on that
Speaker 1: plane to British Columbia. No one will spend that time
Speaker 1: with my kids. And so I try to use that
Speaker 1: guilt constructively in the sense that I'm reminding myself always
Speaker 1: that's saying yes to one thing means saying no to
Speaker 1: something else, and that conversely, saying no means saying yes, right,
Speaker 1: and then I always as much as I can. I
Speaker 1: want to be saying yes to the things that actually
Speaker 1: matter to me, and I want to be putting my
Speaker 1: money my mouth is. It's like if someone looked at
Speaker 1: your calendar, you say you put your family first, You
Speaker 1: say family is important, blah blah blah. But then if
Speaker 1: I looked at your calendar, what would it show, right,
Speaker 1: if there was a custody hearing, or you know, if
Speaker 1: you were being investigated, if you're being audited, what would
Speaker 1: the receipts show? Do you actually value them? Do you
Speaker 1: put them first? And like it should be pretty pretty
Speaker 1: obvious whether that's true or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I have an exercise in Think like a
Speaker 3: monk where asks people to do their time audit for
Speaker 3: the week, and it's literally that where it's like, and
Speaker 3: it's against your values because someone's values may be different.
Speaker 3: But the idea that your bank statement and your schedule
Speaker 3: show your values more than what you say yes, right,
Speaker 3: The words that come out of our mouth are not
Speaker 3: actually our values. There are aspirations. Those are the values
Speaker 3: you wish you had, but the values that actually go
Speaker 3: what do you spend your money on? And what do
Speaker 3: you spend your time on? Like that's far more what
Speaker 3: your real values are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think about that.
Speaker 1: I saw this interview with Jimmy Carter many years ago,
Speaker 1: and he has this sort of crisis of faith and
Speaker 1: he goes like, if I was put on trial for
Speaker 1: being a Christian, would I be convicted? Right? So it's
Speaker 1: not what you say, not what you think, not what
Speaker 1: you wish, but like what are the action show? And
Speaker 1: I think about that with Mark Srelis, who I write
Speaker 1: a lot about the Stoic Emperor, like he never identifies
Speaker 1: explicitly as a Stoic, and one of his translators says,
Speaker 1: you know, he never even says the word stoicism like
Speaker 1: in his writings, but he's considered this philosopher emperor. And
Speaker 1: he probably still would have been even if his writings
Speaker 1: had never survived.
Speaker 2: Because the deeds are there.
Speaker 1: There's a Latin expression acta non verbal like deeds not words.
Speaker 1: And so you have to always think, not what do
Speaker 1: I write about, what do I think about? What do
Speaker 1: I want to be true? But what are the action show?
Speaker 1: And no one is perfect, and I think anyone auditing
Speaker 1: themselves is going to be there's going to be some disappointments,
Speaker 1: but you want, like the big statements of priority to
Speaker 1: be there and to go back to the idea of
Speaker 1: guilt when you're looking at it, you shouldn't like whip
Speaker 1: yourself and feel but you should be like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is not the painting the picture that I want to paint,
Speaker 1: and that you're lucky enough in that moment to catch
Speaker 1: it now, not when you're eighty, you know, not on
Speaker 1: your deathbed. You're you're you've caught it now. And so
Speaker 1: what changes are you going to make? Yeah, to get
Speaker 1: closer between the ideal and the reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And something that's interesting that's coming out from me here
Speaker 3: is that pretty much everything we do every day can
Speaker 3: be defined by thinking, feeling, and doing. But I think
Speaker 3: we're living at a time where we're stuck in the
Speaker 3: feeling generation. So we do things because we want to
Speaker 3: feel a certain way, but then when we feel things,
Speaker 3: we don't know what to do with it. So I'll
Speaker 3: give an example of what I mean by that. If
Speaker 3: you if we feel guilt, most of us don't know
Speaker 3: how to shift from that feeling into thinking and doing
Speaker 3: something different in order to not feel that guilt again. Yes,
Speaker 3: and if we want to feel happy, we just try
Speaker 3: and feel happy, not realizing that you have to change
Speaker 3: your thoughts and what you do in order to feel
Speaker 3: happiness or whatever it may be. What I'm trying to
Speaker 3: get at there is like that to me sounds like
Speaker 3: a discipline too. But we've gone so into feeling because
Speaker 3: I think for so long thinking and doing what the
Speaker 3: only things talked about, and we didn't feel enough.
Speaker 1: I think realizing that almost all the things you want
Speaker 1: in life are accidental byproducts of habits, processes, systems, routines. Right,
Speaker 1: So Victor Frankel famously said that happiness can't be pursued,
Speaker 1: it must ensue. It's the result of getting those big
Speaker 1: things right, and then you just feel this kind of
Speaker 1: feeling of happiness as a byproduct. You don't as you said,
Speaker 1: you don't go today, I must feel happy, right, It's
Speaker 1: the result of having meaning and purpose and taking the
Speaker 1: right actions. And so people sometimes look at the books
Speaker 1: that I've written and then like what, like, how did
Speaker 1: you publish so many books? And it's like publishing is
Speaker 1: not what I think about. I think about writing. I
Speaker 1: wake up every day and write, and the accidental by
Speaker 1: product of that is the publishing right, and so good habits,
Speaker 1: good routines, Like you want a happier home life, It's like,
Speaker 1: are you spending more time there?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: How are you setting up systems or processes that the
Speaker 1: result is that outcome? Right? You control what you put
Speaker 1: in that the outcome happens or it doesn't happen. And
Speaker 1: I think so often we just you're right, We just
Speaker 1: want the feeling, and so we try to cheat it
Speaker 1: or steal it, or we feel guilty that we don't
Speaker 1: have it, when really you could start small right now
Speaker 1: and just get yourself closer to it.
Speaker 3: What do you think is the best discipline you've built
Speaker 3: like over time? Like is it writing? Obviously that would
Speaker 3: be the obvious one. But is there another one that
Speaker 3: you think underpins that success. Is there a discipline you've
Speaker 3: worked on the longest.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I think writing is such a sedentary sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: cerebral thing that I try to balance it out with
Speaker 1: like a physical practice. So I try to do something
Speaker 1: hard every single day, running, swimming, biking, I do a
Speaker 1: walk once a day, Like I do something hard every day,
Speaker 1: and part of what that is is transferable back to
Speaker 1: the practice, right, because again, it comes down to the
Speaker 1: you don't want to do it. It's hard, it's not going
Speaker 1: the way you want it, but you've cultivated the muscle
Speaker 1: of being able to push through that. Like, there's lots
Speaker 1: of claims about the health benefits of cold plunges, and
Speaker 1: they may or may not exist. That's not why I
Speaker 1: do it, right. The muscle for me is the cranking
Speaker 1: of the knob of the looking at the cold punge
Speaker 1: at my house and going it is going to be
Speaker 1: unpleasant to get in there, but I have the ability
Speaker 1: to force myself to do that. That's the muscle that
Speaker 1: you want to cultivate. And I think, you know people
Speaker 1: want to be the person on the other side of that,
Speaker 1: but they don't realize that the way you do it
Speaker 1: is by just starting it. Just starting it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so true. I can relate to so much
Speaker 3: of that in my own life. And when you're saying that,
Speaker 3: it's I feel like today most of what I do,
Speaker 3: I'd say I spend a lot. I'd spend like seventy
Speaker 3: five percent of my life outside of my comfort zone.
Speaker 3: I am constantly doing things that demand more from me
Speaker 3: than I believe I'm skilled and able to accomplish, yeah,
Speaker 3: and in a healthy way, in a good sense, because
Speaker 3: I feel challenged, and I feel that challenge forces me
Speaker 3: to grow my skills, which then meet a new challenge,
Speaker 3: and then that keeps growing. But then I find myself
Speaker 3: in my personal life often resorting to comfort because I
Speaker 3: need to kind of cushion the amount of like su
Speaker 3: pressure and stress. And so it's like this for me,
Speaker 3: I'm at that place in my life where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm pushing so much and in my personal life to
Speaker 3: be super like you know, cushion.
Speaker 1: To some degree, it is interesting, right, we will take
Speaker 1: and Seneca points us out on one of his letters,
Speaker 1: like we'll push ourselves. It will take risks to succeed financially,
Speaker 1: to succeed in business, to succeed in our careers, to
Speaker 1: butchers our reputations, But then we don't want to do
Speaker 1: it in the other places where most of us would
Speaker 1: admit it actually matters. Right, my favorite passages and meditations
Speaker 1: Mark Sutis is like a better wrestler, but not a
Speaker 1: better forgiver of faults, a better friend and type places
Speaker 1: he's pointing out how we'll go like, yeah, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to like You'll talk to someone that have this well
Speaker 1: laid out plan for how they're trying to increase their
Speaker 1: back squad or their mild time, or how they're trying
Speaker 1: to to they've got they've they've got these aggressive goals
Speaker 1: for their stock pricer or you know how many copies
Speaker 1: they want to sell this thing, or they have. We
Speaker 1: have really clear financial and professional goals, and then in
Speaker 1: our personal life we just wing it. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that I.
Speaker 2: Didn't Yeah, I didn't mean that, but I know you mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that point.
Speaker 1: And I think the point is like you have to
Speaker 1: be challenging yourself in your personal life, also getting vulnerable,
Speaker 1: you know, getting outside your comfort zone, having the conversations
Speaker 1: that you like. I think it's because our professional stuff
Speaker 1: is so much more quantifiable, and then there's other people
Speaker 1: are looking at it, whereas the other stuff is private,
Speaker 1: and so we we just we hold ourselves to different standards.
Speaker 1: And you think about what that costs us in terms
Speaker 1: of a place you get to in your marriage in
Speaker 1: ten years that had you thought more consciously about or
Speaker 1: put one tenth of the focus on, maybe you could
Speaker 1: have got there in one year and then had nine
Speaker 1: years of enjoying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that I fully agree with.
Speaker 3: Then maybe I didn't clarify when I said comfort, I
Speaker 3: mean more apart from my sleep sked, I have so
Speaker 3: many routines that already set up that I try and
Speaker 3: make my personal life more comfortable because in my individual
Speaker 3: life of my own self care because I find I'm
Speaker 3: pushing myself in so many areas. But I love where
Speaker 3: you took it to because I think that's the critical one, right.
Speaker 3: It's like what you're kind of leaning towards is most
Speaker 3: people will become people they don't want to be in
Speaker 3: order to achieve something, and that external pursuit often does that.
Speaker 3: By the end of building a billion dollar company or
Speaker 3: whatever it may be, you end up going, well, I
Speaker 3: don't even like the person I am anymore, or I've
Speaker 3: lost the person who I thought I was. Whereas the
Speaker 3: pursuit of doing it inwardly with your family, with your friendships,
Speaker 3: the openness that's required, chances are you'll become the person
Speaker 3: you want to be. Like chances are you'll become someone
Speaker 3: that you're proud of being. And I think that's such
Speaker 3: I want to dive into that. That is such a
Speaker 3: powerful way of looking at it, and you're saying it's
Speaker 3: because it's the quantifiability, which I think there's truth in.
Speaker 3: I also think it's the it's harder. It's harder because,
Speaker 3: like you're saying, there's no external reward, there's no number
Speaker 3: that proves you did it, and it's fluctuating way more
Speaker 3: because people's emotions, like anyone in your family and friendship,
Speaker 3: you can't control it. Could you can control or master
Speaker 3: an algorithm or the stock market is some degree, but
Speaker 3: with a person, you can't do any of that because
Speaker 3: you can't set something up and then be like you're
Speaker 3: going to stay this way.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like you get so used to the control
Speaker 1: and the power that you have from the mastery of
Speaker 1: your professional domain. Right like, when I sit down to write,
Speaker 1: I'm in control. I'm comfortable. This is a place that
Speaker 1: I have carved out for myself. When I am arguing
Speaker 1: with my wife or I am dealing with three year
Speaker 1: old who's having a meltdown, I'm not in control and
Speaker 1: I'm humbled by it and I'm struggling with it, and
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I've got it because I have
Speaker 1: so much less. I've literally never done that before. I'll
Speaker 1: and I'll have such a short window where I'll ever
Speaker 1: have to do it right. It's not it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've been in this place in a book twelve times, right,
Speaker 1: Like I've only had one five year old ye, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it's just so much more challenging.
Speaker 2: It's just a.
Speaker 1: Much more multi dimensional, you know, and of one like
Speaker 1: difficult thing, and so it's going to demand more of you.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's like, look, optimizing your
Speaker 1: professional life or maximizing your professional life very unlikely to
Speaker 1: improve your personal life. But if you have optimized and
Speaker 1: maximized and improved your personal life, got in your house
Speaker 1: and order, you're going to be better at what you do.
Speaker 1: What are you going to care less in some degrees
Speaker 1: about things that used to bother you so much? And
Speaker 1: so which one are you going to focus on? Right?
Speaker 1: Because you can get you can be a titan in
Speaker 1: your industry and then be a total amateur at home, right,
Speaker 1: And I think go where it's easy.
Speaker 3: And that's and that's the thing I think discipline often
Speaker 3: gets applied to the titan in the industry, not the
Speaker 3: amateur at home. Yeah, And that's how we think about discipline.
Speaker 3: We think about discipline is what can I achieve through this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: In an external sense. Yeah, and at least today that's
Speaker 3: the language, and you.
Speaker 1: Can get away with so much more if you're really talented.
Speaker 1: You know, you can be a jerk. Right, you can
Speaker 1: demand a lot of people because you're paying these people, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying that there's
Speaker 1: accommodations that are made for you and sort of insidiously,
Speaker 1: the more successful you are, the more needed you are,
Speaker 1: the more accommodations you are. But there's none of that
Speaker 1: in the other area, and so you have to there's
Speaker 1: some humility required, Right, You're meeting equals on an equal
Speaker 1: playing field, and the discipline to say like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to wrestle with that, I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to get better. I'm not going to allow myself to
Speaker 1: do these following bad habits. That takes a certain amount
Speaker 1: of self control and focus and discipline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3: I guess one of the biggest challenges with discipline is
Speaker 3: that we're trying to destroy a habit that we hate.
Speaker 3: Like there's this idea that it just has to break
Speaker 3: and go. Right, if you have a habit that you
Speaker 3: don't like about yourself, whatever that may be, it's like
Speaker 3: you just or released. I've found when I'm coaching clients
Speaker 3: and working with people is that they have this like
Speaker 3: bitter feeling towards this thing that they have and they
Speaker 3: want it to go at all costs. But that almost
Speaker 3: makes you hold on to it harder, like that makes
Speaker 3: you grip onto it sure and wrestle with it more.
Speaker 3: And I remember when when I lived in India, a
Speaker 3: lot of the time, the analogy that was given or
Speaker 3: the metaphor that was given to meditate on because we'd
Speaker 3: see all the time was like snake skin. And the
Speaker 3: idea was that when snakes shed their skin, they just
Speaker 3: slither out. They don't it doesn't like they don't want
Speaker 3: day just go well and they don't even have Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're not like the whole where it's like like snakes
Speaker 3: just slither out and then their skin gets left behind
Speaker 3: and then it you know, they'll grow more. And so
Speaker 3: the idea that it's it's such a natural, organic process
Speaker 3: of if you just slither, if you just move forward,
Speaker 3: you naturally shed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the beauty of process, right, You don't sit
Speaker 1: down anymore. I have to do this right now? What
Speaker 1: do I have to do today? What are the small steps?
Speaker 1: And you get great by minor improvements compounded on top
Speaker 1: of each other day and day out, showing up day
Speaker 1: and day out. And that's the same. Hey, we were
Speaker 1: fighting like crazy six months ago and now things are awesome.
Speaker 1: Why is that they made a change and you made
Speaker 1: a change, and you made a response in a change
Speaker 1: in response to their change, and it compounded and now
Speaker 1: you're here. That work can fall away at any moment.
Speaker 1: You have to rebuild it. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: the Buddhists talk about willful will like almost the more
Speaker 1: intentional you are about it. That's the irony too, is
Speaker 1: we're talking about how you know, being intentional in your
Speaker 1: professional life often pays off. Being intentional having clear expectations, wants,
Speaker 1: desires in your personal life is harder because it depends
Speaker 1: on other people, people who are not like you, people
Speaker 1: who did not sign up for that. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things you learn having kids and then
Speaker 1: also being married is like a scent in that same
Speaker 1: sense of like acquiescing to things, adjusting to things like
Speaker 1: I'm a routine person. Kids don't care about your routine.
Speaker 1: They fall asleep when they fell asleep, and you have
Speaker 1: to adjust like you're no longer the center of the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is such an important thing that you have
Speaker 1: to figure out and adjust and accommodate towards you're the
Speaker 1: master of the universe here, but that you leave that
Speaker 1: behind when you walk through the front door.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I was talking to a Maah from Yes Theory.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know the guys that Yes Theory. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're awesome and we've had them on the show before.
Speaker 3: But I was talking to Ama the other day and
Speaker 3: they just released their project Iceman, I think their documentary
Speaker 3: first time, like the Future documentary. But he was talking
Speaker 3: about this and he was saying that when they built
Speaker 3: Yes Theory, the goal was like, how can we say
Speaker 3: yes to things we would usually say no to? RTE
Speaker 3: Like that was the obvious point and now he's learned
Speaker 3: that it's equally important to say no. But the part
Speaker 3: that really hit me when he was explaining in it,
Speaker 3: I think we both vibe with the idea. He was
Speaker 3: saying that, and it's something you said earlier. He said,
Speaker 3: have to start saying yes to the things I find hardest.
Speaker 3: And so he was saying that today, no matter how
Speaker 3: many marathons he's done, no matter how many crazy expeditions
Speaker 3: they've gone on, no matter how many countries they survive
Speaker 3: with no money, he said, the hardest thing for him
Speaker 3: to do is sit with his thoughts for fifteen minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was like, that's the hardest thing. He goes, I
Speaker 3: don't look forward to doing that.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 3: If someone told me to train for something, he goes,
Speaker 3: I look forward to that. But if someone told me
Speaker 3: to sit down with my thoughts for fifteen minutes, because
Speaker 3: I don't look forward to it. So that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: And he was saying, that's why he's trying to build that.
Speaker 3: And he was like, that's his new definition of seeking discomfort,
Speaker 3: because he said when people come to h and say, do
Speaker 3: you want to build like a million dollar company? A
Speaker 3: billion dollar He's like, I can get excited about that,
Speaker 3: But he goes, I don't get excited about it. Is
Speaker 3: that a good sense of people finding what discipline is
Speaker 3: for them?
Speaker 2: Or how do you see that?
Speaker 1: And I think restraint is the hardest thing, right, Please,
Speaker 1: Pascal the fifteen hundreds said all of humanity's problems stem
Speaker 1: from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Speaker 1: It was hard five hundred years ago, it's harder now
Speaker 1: when you have a cell phone in your pocket, when
Speaker 1: you could get on a flight and travel anywhere you
Speaker 1: want in the world, and there's a limited distractions, opportunities,
Speaker 1: things to get excited about. Like it's hard to hold
Speaker 1: the mind still, to be physically still, or maybe not
Speaker 1: to be physically still, but had the mind still while
Speaker 1: the body is in motion. This requires like so much discipline,
Speaker 1: so much self control, so much self awareness. Right even
Speaker 1: to understand that it's hard for you, that it's something
Speaker 1: that you are naturally averse to or avoid is a
Speaker 1: step in that journey to getting better at it.
Speaker 2: Because a lot of.
Speaker 1: People are just doing, doing, and doing, and they're not
Speaker 1: even aware they're running away from something. They're not even
Speaker 1: aware that it makes them uncomfortable to be still. So
Speaker 1: I think we have to understand it's this journey, and
Speaker 1: hopefully as you go you get more more and more comfortable,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, that's the one
Speaker 1: constant in life. Wherever you go, there you are, there
Speaker 1: you are. As expression goes like you're there, and if
Speaker 1: you can't get comfortable with that, can't get in touch
Speaker 1: with that, you can't see what's there. I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna wake up one day and realize I did all
Speaker 1: of this stuff to get away from something that's been
Speaker 1: inside me the whole time. And that's very, very sad.
Speaker 3: That is That's yeah, that's well, that's that's the inconvenient
Speaker 3: truth of it, right, Like that's the hard part that
Speaker 3: you chased pleasure for so long that you completely missed
Speaker 3: what was it, what was already there? But I think,
Speaker 3: is it that we don't what is your take from
Speaker 3: studying it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Is it that we don't know the benefits enough? Is
Speaker 3: it that we don't like processes enough? It is is
Speaker 3: it that we're just addicted and there isn't a because
Speaker 3: I look at and I do think looking at very
Speaker 3: daily habit changes is the easiest way to build the
Speaker 3: muscle to go.
Speaker 2: I can do this.
Speaker 3: So I always give the example of when I met
Speaker 3: my wife, I was addicted to sugar like I genuinely was,
Speaker 3: and I didn't even know it. I had a sprite
Speaker 3: and a chocolate bar every day without thinking about it.
Speaker 3: It's how I got through college. It was life. When
Speaker 3: I was a monk, I didn't have either of those things,
Speaker 3: but that was more of a suppression and there was
Speaker 3: lots of other interesting things to do or I didn't
Speaker 3: need that kind of energy.
Speaker 2: When I came back, I.
Speaker 1: Liked the convict was sober in prison. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: have access exactly. I didn't have access to it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't. I definitely built a discipline where I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I needed it. But then when I came
Speaker 1: back to the real world, all I wanted was chocolate
Speaker 1: and sugar. And so when I met my wife, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been married for six years now together
Speaker 1: for ten, and she like, at first she would just
Speaker 1: educate me, like she would just tell me because she's
Speaker 1: a dietician in nutrition is this is her job. She's
Speaker 1: laying out all the dangers of sugar. Then she's like
Speaker 1: taking it out of the like home, like it's not
Speaker 1: around anymore, it's not accessible. And then almost like it's
Speaker 1: taken six years, and I would say, now I'm at
Speaker 1: a place where the habit has really transformed. It's like
Speaker 1: a six year journey, and obviously it probably happened like
Speaker 1: halfway through. I'd say like probably it happened three years
Speaker 1: ago where I really started cutting out sugar.
Speaker 3: But he needed a coach. My wife was the coach.
Speaker 3: It needed a obedient or submissive student. I trust my
Speaker 3: wife on this area. It wasn't like I was. I
Speaker 3: didn't have an ego about it. She knows more than
Speaker 3: me about the body. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: it needed a focus in the sense that in my health,
Speaker 3: we kind of did it one at a time without
Speaker 3: even trying, where it's like we took out sugar first,
Speaker 3: we started working out next, like she kind of did
Speaker 3: that even unconsciously. It just took so much, and I
Speaker 3: go and I know, obviously with the stoics we talk
Speaker 3: about mentoring and coaching and there's always this cross learning.
Speaker 3: But I feel like now we're all trying to do
Speaker 3: it on our own.
Speaker 1: We are, and we're also expecting that it just happened.
Speaker 1: That it's just like epiphany. If knowing what to do
Speaker 1: was enough, everyone would be in great shape. No one
Speaker 1: would have any of these illnesses or problems that we have.
Speaker 1: It's so much more complicated than that, and I think
Speaker 1: I do try to remind people that it's a journey
Speaker 1: that you're on your whole life. There's passages and meditations
Speaker 1: where MARKSURREALI is is going. You're an old man and
Speaker 1: you're still losing your temper. You're still worried about what
Speaker 1: other people think. He's like, you're still afraid of death
Speaker 1: and it's almost here. And realizing that if the wisest
Speaker 1: people in the world struggled their whole life with this thing,
Speaker 1: the idea that you, who were lucky enough to hear
Speaker 1: about it in your twenties or thirties or forties, that
Speaker 1: you're just gonna get it. It's naive and it's also
Speaker 1: unfair to yourself. The question is are you getting better
Speaker 1: at it as you go? Right? Seneca says, how do
Speaker 1: I know I'm making progress? And my philosophy says I've
Speaker 1: begun to become a better friend to myself. So discipline
Speaker 1: is not just squeezing blood from the stone. It's not
Speaker 1: just whipping yourself. It's hiring a coach. It's you know,
Speaker 1: setting reachable goals as you go. It's it's stepping back
Speaker 1: and giving yourself credit and saying how far we've come? Man, Like,
Speaker 1: we're doing great?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not just this sort of like in
Speaker 1: your face, like how are you not there yetness? Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a journey and you're not supposed to really
Speaker 1: ever get there. That it's like the horizon, it's always
Speaker 1: a little bit further away. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: think when we hear discipline, I think we think of
Speaker 1: like the marine drill sergeant, Yeah, this is kind of transformative.
Speaker 1: You didn't have discipline and now you do. We should
Speaker 1: also think about like having a discipline it is a
Speaker 1: thing you do your whole life, and realizing that that's
Speaker 1: how we should measure this progress.
Speaker 3: I think though, that that's what we're banging a head against,
Speaker 3: is that the mind has been so far removed from
Speaker 3: the idea that things take time, that patience is required,
Speaker 3: that one step at a time, Like we hear those
Speaker 3: things all the time, but there's literally nothing we do
Speaker 3: in our lives that requires us to move one step
Speaker 3: at a time anymore. Like it just doesn't work. And
Speaker 3: we know these examples, like whether you're ordering food to
Speaker 3: your house, or whether you're getting this delivered, or whether
Speaker 3: you jump.
Speaker 2: Into an uber or lift.
Speaker 3: We know that, but I found it really interesting recently,
Speaker 3: Like I just went through a double hernia surgery, and
Speaker 3: it's not life threatening, and it's meant to be routine,
Speaker 3: but it's far worse than the docors make it out
Speaker 3: to be. And the journey back to feeling like I
Speaker 3: can operate normally. It's been two months now and I'd
Speaker 3: say I'm seventy five percent there. I would say that
Speaker 3: the first four weeks were like learning how to walk again.
Speaker 3: And I have never ever moved that slow in life
Speaker 3: in a good way, as in that every movement of
Speaker 3: the body or the mind had to be slow because
Speaker 3: if I moved far, I could potentially relapse. So I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 3: I still can't think anything above like fifteen pounds of
Speaker 3: not allowed. I couldn't for that first month, like walk
Speaker 3: for the first week, and then I had to shimmy
Speaker 3: for the rest of it, and I had to, like
Speaker 3: when I sat down on a chair, I had to
Speaker 3: be so mindful. I was like, wow, I thought I
Speaker 3: was mindful, And having this surgery has made me the
Speaker 3: most mindful person ever. I've never eaten that slow, because
Speaker 3: the digestion was harder and there was pain in this area,
Speaker 3: and so it was the first time in a long
Speaker 3: time I felt that present, and I consider myself to
Speaker 3: be a present person.
Speaker 1: I think that the root of it is this illusion
Speaker 1: we had that we're in control, right, that we're deciding
Speaker 1: how things go, and then we have an injury or
Speaker 1: a problem or something that disrupts it, and we are
Speaker 1: rudely but also kindly reminded how little control we have.
Speaker 1: I remember I was I moved across the country. I
Speaker 1: was writing my first book. The two days before I
Speaker 1: was supposed to start riding my bike New Orleans, I
Speaker 1: get stuck in the street car tracks, like over the handlebars.
Speaker 1: I break my left elbow and I'm left handed, and
Speaker 1: so like all of the way that I was thinking
Speaker 1: about writing this book goes out the window. For like
Speaker 1: six weeks, I couldn't get like the adrenaline or the
Speaker 1: endorphins that I needed just to function as a person.
Speaker 1: I had to go on these like long walks. So
Speaker 1: you know, I get the news and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to work or think
Speaker 1: for like six weeks. This is a total dead loss
Speaker 1: for me. But then I started taking these walks, like hour,
Speaker 1: two hour, three hour walks just around and what do
Speaker 1: you know, I start writing the book in my head
Speaker 1: on these walks. If I had gotten things the way
Speaker 1: I wanted them to go, it would have been far
Speaker 1: less advantageous to me than me having to respond to
Speaker 1: the way they did end up going. So at the
Speaker 1: core of stoicism is this idea that we don't control
Speaker 1: what happens, we control how we respond to what happens.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's this curse, this human frail to
Speaker 1: your weakness, that like, we're not in can but our
Speaker 1: superpower is our ability to respond to that, to find
Speaker 1: good in it, to be made better for it. And
Speaker 1: you go through this thing and you realize, oh, this
Speaker 1: is an opportunity to practice all of the things that
Speaker 1: I ordinarily take for granted I assume I have. There's
Speaker 1: this one Japanese zen master, actually the zen master from
Speaker 1: Zen in the art of Archery, and he's at the
Speaker 1: end of his life. He's dying and he goes to
Speaker 1: urinate in the snow and it's red. He's like bleeding.
Speaker 1: He's dying, and the students are alarmed. He goes this too,
Speaker 1: is practice all of these things that we experienced that
Speaker 1: we didn't want or we thought they should go a
Speaker 1: different way they're actually the opportunity to practice the way
Speaker 1: where the logo says the Stokes would call it in
Speaker 1: the way it's actually meant to do, if we choose
Speaker 1: to be present, recognize it, and take that opportunity instead
Speaker 1: of fighting it or resenting it or wishing over otherwise.
Speaker 3: Even I love that point that you made, that that
Speaker 3: even that was practice. Yeah, that is beautiful like that,
Speaker 3: that's magical, like that idea that even in that worst scenario,
Speaker 3: at the end of all of it, it was still practice.
Speaker 3: And if we could only wrap our hand around that,
Speaker 3: because I think we still think of practice and performing
Speaker 3: practice and arrival practice in the end, we still see
Speaker 3: it as separate and there is nothing that separate. Like
Speaker 3: that tree outside that's huge is still growing and being nourished.
Speaker 3: It's just you don't see it anymore. And I almost
Speaker 3: sometimes what I do with clients is I'll give everyone
Speaker 3: a seed and I'll ask them to plant it and
Speaker 3: take care of it.
Speaker 2: And that's like an.
Speaker 3: Old way of just learning growth, because it's so painful
Speaker 3: to be watering something every day and not seeing it grow,
Speaker 3: only to realize it is growing. Or I remember something
Speaker 3: they gave us in the monastery was like they.
Speaker 2: Gave us this rope.
Speaker 3: There was like this really old rope and it was
Speaker 3: already tied and we were asked to untie it. And
Speaker 3: it's like most of us spent the whole of the
Speaker 3: first day we got it trying to untie it and failing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: only by like day twenty one to realize all we
Speaker 3: have to do is pull it a little bit every
Speaker 3: day and hopefully it would unravel because it was so tight,
Speaker 3: and so even if you sat there all day, you
Speaker 3: would just you'd go mental and you wouldn't achieve anything else.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's the wilful will.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like wanting it a certain way, needing it a
Speaker 1: certain way, trying to force it as opposed to stepping
Speaker 1: back and letting it be what it is. It's like
Speaker 1: the way our mind works. Whatever is happening now you
Speaker 1: will look back on sometime in the future as formative
Speaker 1: to who you become.
Speaker 2: Right, and yet in.
Speaker 1: This moment, all we're doing is trying to make it
Speaker 1: something other than it is. Right, Like, we will look
Speaker 1: back on COVID and see the good in it, the
Speaker 1: lessons that came from it, the reminders that gave us
Speaker 1: the weird experiences we had, the connections, all of that.
Speaker 1: We'll look at that, but in that moment, all we're
Speaker 1: thinking about is when this will be over. Whose fault
Speaker 1: it is? You know what it's cost us, right, Freud says,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, the struggle will strike you as most beautiful,
Speaker 1: but it seems it's such a it's such a shame,
Speaker 1: so unnecessary to deprive yourself of understanding the beauty of it. Now.
Speaker 1: Certainly perspective adds to it, allows you to see it differently.
Speaker 1: But what if you could just not feel guilty, worried, anxious, resentful,
Speaker 1: like you know in the future this will be a story, right,
Speaker 1: you'll have learned, But you could give yourself the gift
Speaker 1: of at least some of that now by accepting it
Speaker 1: and just seeing it as what it is in front
Speaker 1: of you, that it's practiced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And the challenge, I guess is that because we've not
Speaker 3: had an experience, maybe an early childhood or our teens,
Speaker 3: where we saw that where it was like we went
Speaker 3: through a difficulty, we built discipline and we got over it,
Speaker 3: or we learned from as you're saying, I find that
Speaker 3: a lot of people have experienced difficulty, but then they
Speaker 3: were given comfort or shelter, or the difficulty was somehow
Speaker 3: removed or left, so you never got the opportunity to
Speaker 3: build the discipline muscle, if that makes sense. My wife
Speaker 3: will love to talk about like for her, she went
Speaker 3: through a difficulty, like her parents would come and save
Speaker 3: the day. Yeah, right, someone would swoop in and solve
Speaker 3: the issue. Her sister would do her homework for her.
Speaker 3: And so as that happened more and more and more,
Speaker 3: it created this behavior of someone will save the day
Speaker 3: that I don't need to build a discipline around this.
Speaker 1: Obviously saving is coming from good place. The other thing
Speaker 1: we do is we tell it's so bad that that
Speaker 1: happened to you. I'm so sorry you're this victim. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the first year of COVID, they would describe for
Speaker 1: kids that this was like a lost year. And I
Speaker 1: just remember.
Speaker 2: Thinking, like how that language.
Speaker 1: Patronizing but also self fulfilling. That was for kids. Like
Speaker 1: when I would talk to my grandparents or all people
Speaker 1: that lived through the Depression or the Second World War,
Speaker 1: which were by the way, a lot longer than COVID,
Speaker 1: they weren't like, oh it was a lost time. It
Speaker 1: was a transformative, formative experience that in retrospect made them
Speaker 1: who they were. That maybe even if you'd ask them
Speaker 1: if they would have wanted things to be different, they
Speaker 1: would have said no. And we have the power to
Speaker 1: transform whatever we're going through into that thing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: by rescuing someone, you're depriving them of that thing. But
Speaker 1: also by telling them that there's no there's nothing in
Speaker 1: this thing that it's indisputably inarguably bad, is to deprive
Speaker 1: them of the agency, the perspective, the gift that they
Speaker 1: have in front of them, if they choose to see
Speaker 1: it that way. And we should emerge from this period
Speaker 1: the very least, as you said, like if you haven't
Speaker 1: been through stuff like this before, you just lived through
Speaker 1: an event of historic proportions, Like you just lived through
Speaker 1: event that your kids and your grandchildren future generations will
Speaker 1: marvel at, and you emerge unscathed, maybe even improved in
Speaker 1: some ways, Like you, you should emerge from this with
Speaker 1: a real sense of what you're capable of enduring and
Speaker 1: surviving and adjusting towards. And that should give you a
Speaker 1: lot of confidence as you wake up and you experience
Speaker 1: things that are so microscopic compared to that thing, right,
Speaker 1: and you should feel armed with a certain set of
Speaker 1: weapons or tools that maybe you didn't have before, Like
Speaker 1: you've been knocked around and you didn't get knocked down.
Speaker 1: That's that's powerful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And in my own little way, it's
Speaker 3: like while I was going through my surgery, it was
Speaker 3: exactly that. It's like I can either sit here and
Speaker 3: think this is the worst, because it did feel like
Speaker 3: the worst for someone who's active, always on planes and
Speaker 3: always traveling, always working, to be completely off and it
Speaker 3: wasn't even RESTful because it was painful, Like it wasn't
Speaker 3: RESTful time. Everyone's like, we didn't work for a month,
Speaker 3: it must have been amazing. I was like, well, no,
Speaker 3: I was in pain.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the idea that my mind at the time was like,
Speaker 3: this is the worst. I hate this, and when's it
Speaker 3: going to be over right, which is the same as COVID,
Speaker 3: which is the same as anything like those are the
Speaker 3: three thoughts that go through I had pretty much, whether
Speaker 3: it's surgery covered or anything else that's going on. And
Speaker 3: having to reframe those thoughts in the moment made it
Speaker 3: become a really beautiful process at the time, and now
Speaker 3: a sense of gratitude for it having moved on. But
Speaker 3: that's what I'm hearing from you, is like you will reflect, well,
Speaker 3: hopefully you'll reflect afterwards, but there is a bit of
Speaker 3: reconfiguration that has to happen at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a story about Phil Jackson when he's the
Speaker 1: coach of the Lakers. He gets this back surgery. He's
Speaker 1: super bad back surgery, and he can't stand on the sideline.
Speaker 1: He has to sit in a chair, and the way
Speaker 1: they had him sit it's like a row back. And
Speaker 1: so suddenly all the things that he's comfortable with as
Speaker 1: a coach are not possible. He's not able to pace
Speaker 1: the sidelines, get up in people's faces, intervene, direct people,
Speaker 1: just to sit back is to watch. It's like the
Speaker 1: antithesis of his coaching style. And yet he's a sort
Speaker 1: of a Zen buddhiska stage guy. He realizes that this
Speaker 1: is practice that he realizes that now the team's having
Speaker 1: to come to him. Now the team's having to solve
Speaker 1: some of the problems. He's having to explore a different
Speaker 1: way of communicating. He's having to communicate verbally better than physically.
Speaker 1: It's a way to change adjust he's forced to do
Speaker 1: it differently and thus learns some things he wants to
Speaker 1: continue doing differently. Now realizes he was taking for granted
Speaker 1: certain things that are actually super important. Right, and so
Speaker 1: you can always take from this like it's this forced
Speaker 1: lifestyle experiment. Just see it as that, right, Like COVID
Speaker 1: the biggest forced lifestyle experiment in human history. Things that
Speaker 1: people said were impossible had to become possible, remote work,
Speaker 1: you know, e commerce, all these things, And then you
Speaker 1: want to throw that away by saying I can't wait
Speaker 1: for things to go back to normal. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: normal is what caused this, Right, Normal was you before
Speaker 1: you learned the things that you learned in that intervening time.
Speaker 1: And for COVID, for Phil Jackson's back surgery, insert whatever
Speaker 1: disruptive event you're undergoing in your life. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want things to go back to how they were. You
Speaker 1: want them to go to a new place where you
Speaker 1: have the old perspective and the new perspective fused into
Speaker 1: something new. When Marx realis is the impediment to action
Speaker 1: advance is actually stands in the way becomes a way.
Speaker 1: The Zen expression is the obstacles the path same East
Speaker 1: West coming to the same idea. It's like, this thing
Speaker 1: has opportunities inside it to make you better, should you
Speaker 1: choose to accept them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I like. It's not the simplistic
Speaker 3: idea of and I'm aways trying to address this. It's
Speaker 3: not the simplistic idea of look for the positive in
Speaker 3: the negative, right, Like, that's not what we're saying here.
Speaker 3: This isn't the idea of like, oh, there's a beautiful
Speaker 3: side to this. That's not the point. Let's get into
Speaker 3: that a bit, because I feel like people kind of
Speaker 3: simplify and go, oh no, that just yeah, we'll just
Speaker 3: look for the silver lining, which is not what we're saying.
Speaker 1: Would you know? The Stockdale paradox. So James Stockdale, he
Speaker 1: studies Stoic philosophy and then he shot down over Vietnam
Speaker 1: and he's taken prisoner. It's been seven years horribly tortured
Speaker 1: in this Vietnamese prison camp. Afterwards, he's speaking to Jim
Speaker 1: Collins wrote who writes good to Great, and he formulates
Speaker 1: what becomes known as the Stockdale paradox. Jim con says,
Speaker 1: who has the worst trouble in the prison camp and
Speaker 1: Stockdale says, Oh, that's easy. The optimists, right, the people
Speaker 1: who thought I'm going to be out by Christmas, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be out by the spring. This isn't going
Speaker 1: to be hard. When Stockdale's parachuting into this camp, he says,
Speaker 1: I am leaving the world of technology and entering the
Speaker 1: world of Epictetus. He says, it's going to be seven
Speaker 1: years at least, But he said, he said, the first
Speaker 1: step is I had to unflinchingly accept the reality of
Speaker 1: my situation, which is that I might not get out,
Speaker 1: which is that I'm probably going to be tortured, which
Speaker 1: is that I'm not in control, which is that there
Speaker 1: is so much unknown pain and suffering ahead. I have
Speaker 1: to accept that this is not gonna be fun. This
Speaker 1: is not gonna be easy, he says. But simultaneously, I
Speaker 1: said to myself, if I get out, I want to
Speaker 1: have transformed this into something that in retrospect I would
Speaker 1: not have traded away. That's the paradox of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Stuff happens. Life gets in the way. You
Speaker 1: lose someone, your company goes bankrupt, the market shifts, you know,
Speaker 1: a natural disaster. Your life can get flipped upside down
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice. You have to unflinchingly accept the
Speaker 1: reality of that situation, the unfairness, the unexpectedness of it,
Speaker 1: your blamelessness or your blame worthiness for it, and then
Speaker 1: simultaneously go, Okay, I'm not saying this is wonderful, that
Speaker 1: I'm glad it happened, but I can make choices now
Speaker 1: that derive positive benefits from this that make me better
Speaker 1: for having gone through this. And I was at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic, in the middle of opening this bookstore.
Speaker 1: I'd sunk my life savings into opening this bookstore that
Speaker 1: by the time it was ready, it was impossible to open.
Speaker 1: It was looking like this enormous failure mistake, you know,
Speaker 1: like albatross around my neck. And I wrote this note
Speaker 1: card to myself, and I have a picture because I
Speaker 1: I wrote it to myself. I was thinking about every
Speaker 1: day and I took the picture in front of the bookstore,
Speaker 1: and I just wrote to myself, I said, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: is a test will make you a better person or
Speaker 1: a worse one. Right, I have no idea whether the
Speaker 1: bookstore will work. I have no idea where things are going,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what life is going to look
Speaker 1: like what I control inside that is to I emerge
Speaker 1: from it a better person, right, more community minded, a
Speaker 1: better spouse, a better thinker, a better writer, more patient,
Speaker 1: more self aware. Those are the things I control within it.
Speaker 1: And so when we say the obstacle is the way,
Speaker 1: we're not like, oh it's great, this terrible thing happened
Speaker 1: to me, but you're saying what I took from this
Speaker 1: terrible thing, or maybe you're trying to strip the labels altogether,
Speaker 1: but you're saying what I took from this was positive
Speaker 1: I made from it. That's the paradox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great breakdown.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you went into that, because, yeah, I've
Speaker 3: heard the example in the same way of when there
Speaker 3: were soldiers who said we'll be home by Christmas, their
Speaker 3: hope were shattered because they weren't home by Christmas. And
Speaker 3: whereas the people who said, we'll figure out a way
Speaker 3: to get home, and if we get home, we'll see
Speaker 3: our family, and that person was more likely to be
Speaker 3: able to deal with the fact that it didn't happen
Speaker 3: by this time. And I think I think that's become
Speaker 3: Our obsession with controlling time is partly where that comes
Speaker 3: from where it's like, we want this done by this time,
Speaker 3: and then whether it's positive or difficult, when it doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: we're completely demoralized, right Like, it's almost like it's all
Speaker 3: over just because it didn't have happened by an arbitrary date.
Speaker 1: We're setting yourself up for disappointing or frustration or resentment
Speaker 1: or despair by attaching to an outcome that's not yours.
Speaker 1: If you get lucky, sure you'll feel wonderful. But if
Speaker 1: you work for years on a book and success or
Speaker 1: failure of it was did it win awards? Did it
Speaker 1: sell lots of copies? Did your parents read it? You know,
Speaker 1: those are things that are not in your control. But
Speaker 1: if it was, I understand that's better than when I started.
Speaker 1: I am more confident than I was when I started.
Speaker 1: You know, Like I said something I got on the
Speaker 1: page what I thought only in my head at the beginning,
Speaker 1: right Like, when you move the outcome or the goal
Speaker 1: to something that's up to you, you'll always win. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what wise people do. It's not that
Speaker 1: they're not ambitious. They are ambitious, but their ambition is
Speaker 1: things that are up to them and So when Marcus
Speaker 1: is saying better wrestler as a part to better philosopher,
Speaker 1: better friend, whatever, he's shifting from like this external, societal
Speaker 1: driven thing to this internal thing that he controls that.
Speaker 2: He gets to judge the success.
Speaker 1: Or failure on. And it's not so quantifiable either, It's
Speaker 1: something deeper, more human, more connected. And so as you
Speaker 1: shift that, not only do I actually think you do
Speaker 1: better work, but you are increasing your chances of feeling
Speaker 1: good about yourself at the end of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think the challenge Ryan, though, is that today
Speaker 3: we want both right. We want the feeling of I
Speaker 3: did something that was true to me and it resonated
Speaker 3: with a lot of people or whatever that means, right,
Speaker 3: And I feel like that's where everyone kind of gets stuck,
Speaker 3: because it's like, you know, especially when people watch people
Speaker 3: do what they love and it gets received, well, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: well I want to do that too. Where do you
Speaker 3: think people go wrong in that journey? Because like what
Speaker 3: the mistakes we make on that path? Because I feel
Speaker 3: like that's pretty much where people are headed.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean I think we're sometimes not honest
Speaker 1: with You're like, I'm just I want this album to
Speaker 1: be true to who I want to be my artistic expression.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. That's why you made all these sort
Speaker 1: of individualistic decisions. But deep down you have this sort
Speaker 1: of secret lie, which is that you're actually judging yourself
Speaker 1: on where it lands on the billboard.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Right, so that's the worst of both, right, because you're
Speaker 1: not going, well, what do I need to do to
Speaker 1: be commercially successful, and I'm consistently judging myself on whether
Speaker 1: it was commercially successful or not, you set yourself up
Speaker 1: for maximum disappointment. But if you can say, look here,
Speaker 1: my goal is to do my absolute best. My goal
Speaker 1: here is to get to the truth of what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: to express what's true inside here. And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to focus on. And I'm not going to waste
Speaker 1: any time on these other things. I actually do think
Speaker 1: I'm sure you found this that that does make better work,
Speaker 1: It makes truer work, makes more authentic work, more relatable work.
Speaker 1: It actually does make a better product, but only if
Speaker 1: you are fully and honestly and deeply committed to doing it.
Speaker 1: It can't be like I'm making the charitable donation. I'm
Speaker 1: doing it anonymously. But I still hope everyone sees how
Speaker 1: wonderful I am. You know what I mean. It's you
Speaker 1: can't have your cake and eat it too.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. And I think it goes back to what
Speaker 3: you were saying a few moments ago, where it's like
Speaker 3: you have to accept the reality, which includes your own intention.
Speaker 3: Like I know that I like creating things that are
Speaker 3: true to me but are commercially successful. That is important
Speaker 3: to me, is a value of mine. And I'm okay
Speaker 3: with that, yeah, because I don't want to lie about
Speaker 3: those things to myself at all.
Speaker 2: Because I enjoy.
Speaker 3: The idea of creating thoughts and ideas that can affect
Speaker 3: lots of people like that. That is something that gives
Speaker 3: me a sense of feeling that I've understood an idea
Speaker 3: and been able to communicate it well enough. I guess
Speaker 3: what I'm saying is that it comes back to what
Speaker 3: you were saying at the beginning, that I don't set
Speaker 3: out to write a commercially successful book or launch something
Speaker 3: commercially like that isn't what you set out to do.
Speaker 3: Set out to understand, articulate, communicate with myself and write
Speaker 3: an incredible book. And then that leads to that but
Speaker 3: at some part of that process you have to think
Speaker 3: about the sharing of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. And I've learned a lot from you
Speaker 1: in this regard, like you're not helping yourself or your
Speaker 1: ideas by rejecting what makes them accessible or shareable or
Speaker 1: turning your nose up at this tool or that tool.
Speaker 1: Like look like, when I want to learn about an idea,
Speaker 1: I want to read long form books about it. That's
Speaker 1: the medium that I'm comfortable in. I don't think TikTok,
Speaker 1: but millions of people do think TikTok or Instagram. And
Speaker 1: to turn your nose up or close your heart off
Speaker 1: to those people because they're not like you. It's not
Speaker 1: just snobbish, but if you actually care about the ideas,
Speaker 1: it's selfish.
Speaker 2: And so I don't think.
Speaker 1: They're mutually exclusive. But I also think if you're on
Speaker 1: those platforms and you're letting the algorithm decide what you
Speaker 1: do and don't do, you are sacrificing the whole reason
Speaker 1: you became a creator in the first place.
Speaker 3: Correct, Absolutely, And I think that's the balance, right. It's
Speaker 3: like there's people who just completely sell out for the algorithm,
Speaker 3: and then there's the selfish creator or the snobbish creator
Speaker 3: on the other end, who thinks they're too cool. Like
Speaker 3: it's kind of like this badge of honor where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't need to do that, like I don't care
Speaker 3: about and I'm like, that defeats the whole point, because
Speaker 3: I'm hoping this book was a compassionate expression of service, hopefully,
Speaker 3: and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just was a selfish,
Speaker 3: arrogant move of professing your ideas. And that's like the
Speaker 3: best thing about it. And so you have sellouts on
Speaker 3: one and you have selfish on the other end. And
Speaker 3: to me, like service is kind of in the middle
Speaker 3: where it's like service means I understand people's needs and
Speaker 3: interests and concerns and where they are, but I always
Speaker 3: have to than what's most beneficial?
Speaker 1: What's if you meet people where they are and like
Speaker 1: there's almost agreed to it. It's like, well, I wrote
Speaker 1: in a book, if you want to hear it, you
Speaker 1: can buy it, right. Well, what if they're not ready
Speaker 1: for that, What if they're too busy for that? What
Speaker 1: if they already did buy it, but they just need
Speaker 1: a reminder of it, right, And so there's different just
Speaker 1: in the way that like, look, I also read in English,
Speaker 1: that's the only language that I speak. But I don't
Speaker 1: turn up my nose that all these different translations. I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a process. These ideas get translated in those languages
Speaker 1: and they reach people who otherwise wouldn't have consumed it.
Speaker 1: And understanding that different people have different native languages. Some
Speaker 1: people like audiobooks, some people like podcasts, some people like
Speaker 1: this social network or that social network, and that by
Speaker 1: thinking that you know one is superior to the other,
Speaker 1: in fact, you should be translating or working all these
Speaker 1: different areas long form, short form, audio, video, text, what
Speaker 1: you should be everywhere that's possible. And understanding that the
Speaker 1: win is that the ideas are reaching people and helping
Speaker 1: them in their life. If some of those things translate
Speaker 1: to sales or followers, great, But like I always think about,
Speaker 1: like again, what is success at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: Like if you think sold zero copies, but it changed
Speaker 1: the world, you'd be like that was that that was
Speaker 1: a win? So why don't you just do the stuff
Speaker 1: that changes the world and trust again, trust the process
Speaker 1: that you'll probably be able to make a living.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and most things that do change the world or
Speaker 3: have an impact started non commercially right, like in that
Speaker 3: sense of especially creational ideas. I mean, maybe not businesses,
Speaker 3: but the ideas. Like when I started creating content, even
Speaker 3: the first few interviews I did with you, like, I
Speaker 3: didn't I mean that Na's that that whole NASA. I
Speaker 3: never got paid for that whole series. I was interviewing
Speaker 3: authors every week because I was fascinated by the idea
Speaker 3: that I get to sit down with people that I
Speaker 3: find interesting.
Speaker 1: You're also putting in your hours, y'are getting good at
Speaker 1: this again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and you getting good at it, You're
Speaker 3: enjoying it. You get to meet awesome people. And even
Speaker 3: even when we did the show a HFF post, it
Speaker 3: was like I was leading the show of what kind
Speaker 3: of show we wanted it to be. It wasn't like
Speaker 3: it was already set up. And so yeah, I look
Speaker 3: back and I think like all stuff that had an
Speaker 3: impact and grew was always from that deep intention, pure
Speaker 3: intention of I want to create something that will hopefully
Speaker 3: help people have these conversations. And that was what it
Speaker 3: was for me. I felt when I started creating content,
Speaker 3: there weren't there were so many people who had deep
Speaker 3: thoughtful conversations offline, but there was no spaces online really
Speaker 3: to have those, or there wasn't a piece of content
Speaker 3: you'd send to your friend and be like did you
Speaker 3: see this? Like have we talked about this? And I
Speaker 3: wanted to create an excuse for people to have more meaningful,
Speaker 3: thoughtful conversations based on ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's like, you create a lot of value and if
Speaker 1: you can capture a small percentage of it, you're good, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think about Craigslist, Like the vast majority of
Speaker 1: stuff on Craigslist has been free since the very beginning it.
Speaker 1: Craigslist still makes up million dollars a year in revenue.
Speaker 1: Like when you create a lot of value, I create
Speaker 1: so much content, and like the only part that is
Speaker 1: not free are the books, right, And the books fund
Speaker 1: that work, and then that work also funds the books.
Speaker 1: It's you're creating kind of a flywheel of stuff. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about one of my books that hasn't sold
Speaker 1: as well as the.
Speaker 2: Other books, which one is it.
Speaker 1: Lives of the Stoics is different than my other books.
Speaker 1: But I personally used and then also have reused stuff
Speaker 1: that I learned while writing that book almost every single day.
Speaker 1: So like the monetization, you know, to use that word,
Speaker 1: the value creation, there was a personal one. And the
Speaker 1: book is done extremely well by like any standard, but
Speaker 1: like the primary beneficiary was me. Yes, And again, if
Speaker 1: whatever you're doing, you can say, look, the primary beneficiary
Speaker 1: of this is me having gone through it, changing, developing, learning,
Speaker 1: And then the byproduct is that I paid my rent
Speaker 1: or that like you know, this happened that then you've
Speaker 1: won and all the stuff that's out of your control
Speaker 1: is the extra. Yes, that's where you want to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can agree more. And that requires just
Speaker 3: so much. I think that requires refining of the intention.
Speaker 3: It requires having a sense of belief and confidence. I
Speaker 3: think for me it was the other and for you too,
Speaker 3: from your journey that we've talked about before, Like I
Speaker 3: spent ten years doing this without any followers or without
Speaker 3: any commercial edit to it anyway, because it was all
Speaker 3: offline and it was speaking to rooms of five to
Speaker 3: ten people if they showed up, and so it was
Speaker 3: like for so long I was doing it without any
Speaker 3: care of how far it went because.
Speaker 2: It was just so powerful, It was so beautiful to live.
Speaker 3: In that world of even if I had one meaningful
Speaker 3: conversation with someone after an event that would make my day,
Speaker 3: like I'd talk about it for weeks.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. I've been thinking about it lately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing now or that I'm doing now,
Speaker 1: is the result of work you did a long time ago.
Speaker 1: It's a lagging indicator of sacrifice and commitment and study
Speaker 1: and practice from however long ago. Sometimes what keeps me
Speaker 1: up at night and as I go, but ten years
Speaker 1: from now, fifteen years from now, am I putting in
Speaker 1: the work doing this stuff now that will pay off then?
Speaker 1: And how do you know? How do you know if
Speaker 1: success is this lagging indicator, or growth is this lagging
Speaker 1: indicator of commitment? Now? How can you be sure that
Speaker 1: you are paying your dues?
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm so glad you said that, because I literally
Speaker 3: just I've been talking to my team about a few
Speaker 3: things that we're doing. I've literally asked us to find
Speaker 3: three new coaches, Like I've literally gone. I've always learned
Speaker 3: through one to one coaching on mentorship, like that's my
Speaker 3: favorite apart from books, that is my favorite way of learning,
Speaker 3: and especially when it comes to self transformation. So I
Speaker 3: love ideas through books, but when it comes to me
Speaker 3: actually changing, I'm better when I'm working with one person
Speaker 3: and getting mentorship of coaching.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking about who are you who are your
Speaker 1: teachers to get you to the next level level you
Speaker 1: might not even know exists.
Speaker 3: Yet, correct, And so I'm trying to identify those people
Speaker 3: right now. So when I was a teen, I was
Speaker 3: reading Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs right like,
Speaker 3: well Steve was a bit later actually, but Matin, Luther King,
Speaker 3: Malcolm X, like, That's who I was reading at sixteen
Speaker 3: years old. They were hugely formative in my ideology in
Speaker 3: so many ways. And then in my twenties, obviously I
Speaker 3: lived with the monks, so that was hugely that and
Speaker 3: then when a public speaking school when I was eleven
Speaker 3: years old. So that has that has lasted far too long.
Speaker 3: It needs to be refined again. And so yeah, I
Speaker 3: completely agree with you. I look at all the skills
Speaker 3: I have today and I go where do they need
Speaker 3: to be refined? And then I look at, well, what
Speaker 3: are the things I'm missing out on? Because I'm not
Speaker 3: exposing myself now, I do think that I do find
Speaker 3: having the podcast very fortunate because I do get to
Speaker 3: sit down with a lot of people that I seek
Speaker 3: mentorship from in an informal sense, and then I could
Speaker 3: be like, oh, I'm really going to do a deep
Speaker 3: down on that person's book, or like Gable Matte was
Speaker 3: just yeah, he's amazing, like you know, and people have
Speaker 3: known about him for a long long time. This was
Speaker 3: the first time I interviewed him. But I'm like now
Speaker 3: doing a backwards reading of all of his books.
Speaker 2: Sure, and so I love that, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like what rabbit holes are you falling down?
Speaker 1: What sort of new It's like a great athlete. It's
Speaker 1: like on am My addings my game this off season totally,
Speaker 1: and like how do you not get complacent and coast
Speaker 1: because you could be coasting for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not real if your lost skills, your skills or your
Speaker 1: speed is slowly decreasing before it and then it's it's
Speaker 1: too late.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's such a good point. And I think the
Speaker 3: thing that hit me there with what you just said
Speaker 3: is just it's also, what skills do I need that
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to see the results now? Yes, Like
Speaker 3: what is something I'm happy to let kind of simmer
Speaker 3: and build and just organically grow, rather than like I'm
Speaker 3: going to learn this skill because next week we're going
Speaker 3: to launch this thing. Like that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, all the things you were talking about that made
Speaker 1: you who you were, those were never means tune in
Speaker 1: because the end was inconceivable, right, none of it didn't
Speaker 1: even exist. But somehow it was the perfect like training
Speaker 1: montage for who you became. And how do you make
Speaker 1: sure the montage is continuing as opposed to this once
Speaker 1: in a formative thing. And then you know, every once
Speaker 1: in a while, do a talk and like it's the
Speaker 1: person before me. You're like, oh, you've been doing this
Speaker 1: a long time the exact same way, and you stopped.
Speaker 1: You stopped, and you don't you don't want that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And I think partly that's also me allowing myself,
Speaker 3: at least for me, and I'm only talking about myself,
Speaker 3: but I think this is helpful for people. I think
Speaker 3: you have to allow yourself to become different things and
Speaker 3: giving yourself permission to follow that bliss, as Joseph Tumble
Speaker 3: would say, because right, for example, when I wrote think
Speaker 3: like a Monk, that was the kind of end and
Speaker 3: beginning of a new journey in my life, Like I
Speaker 3: was kind of encapsulating what I've learned of the last
Speaker 3: fifteen years, and then it was like, well, now I'm
Speaker 3: in a new space, like I'm a married man, now
Speaker 3: I'm I'm a business person, I'm so many more things.
Speaker 3: And so it was almost like me saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to put this rapper on this right now.
Speaker 3: And now my next book's all about love. And there's
Speaker 3: loads of people going Jay, like, why are you writing
Speaker 3: about love?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 3: And I was like, because I'm fascinated by love, and
Speaker 3: I'm okay with answering that question of why love. I
Speaker 3: don't want to continue to write books. I mean, by
Speaker 3: the way, the Love Book is full of wisdom I
Speaker 3: learned during my time as a monk, of course it is.
Speaker 3: But the point is that I don't want to be
Speaker 3: defined by that, and I don't want to limit myself
Speaker 3: to any human experience because then now I'm basically saying
Speaker 3: I have to be this, and that's what performers do.
Speaker 3: I have to play this character for the rest of
Speaker 3: my life, and then you get type cast in your
Speaker 3: own life and you don't let yourself, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: maybe my next book will definitely not be about love.
Speaker 3: I know that for a fact. My next book's not
Speaker 3: about love. But I'm okay with that. Like I like
Speaker 3: the idea of I'm letting myself go in the direction
Speaker 3: of whatever I want to become, because why would I
Speaker 3: limit it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Well, we talked about like you know, cranking the shower handle.
Speaker 1: That that's a muscle. My first book was about marketing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could have sold my next book about marketing, my
Speaker 1: next book about market I could be still doing that.
Speaker 1: I could still be speaking about that first book. And
Speaker 1: when I went to my publisher and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to write about this obscure school
Speaker 1: of ancient philosophy, they were like what you know? They
Speaker 1: were like, how's half sound? You know, they give me
Speaker 1: half what I got for my first book. But that's
Speaker 1: that muscle. I was like, I don't care. This is
Speaker 1: what I want to do. And so when you cultivate
Speaker 1: the ability to do that hard thing, the challenging thing,
Speaker 1: the different thing, the investing in, like being bad at
Speaker 1: something to get good at something, to think about tiger woods,
Speaker 1: He's changed his swing three or four times, from the
Speaker 1: ground up. That's the real muscle that prevents you from
Speaker 1: sort of ossifying or declining. It's the ability to go like,
Speaker 1: just because I'm here doesn't mean I'm going to stay here.
Speaker 1: I want to try and do something radically new or
Speaker 1: different that I hope will work commercially, but I know
Speaker 1: personally I will emerge bet right, Like, let's say that
Speaker 1: the book doesn't work. Sure it will. Let's say it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, but you're like, hey, my marriage is better
Speaker 1: as having done it. It's a win from top to bottom, right,
Speaker 1: And then you know, you take that with you as
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 3: For me writing it, I wrote a completely different book
Speaker 3: than the one I thought I was going to write.
Speaker 3: And I wrote it three times. And the first time
Speaker 3: it was too raw and probably too like, it was
Speaker 3: probably too tough to read. And the second time it
Speaker 3: was too shallow, like it was totally like not what
Speaker 3: I would want to do. And then the third time
Speaker 3: we got the balance right. Yeah, it's funny what you
Speaker 3: said about earlier, like the discipline of trying to get
Speaker 3: out of doing things wrong, but the discipline of ambition.
Speaker 3: Once you've had one success in anything, most people grip
Speaker 3: onto it because now you've had a taste of it,
Speaker 3: and now you're scared that if you don't be that person.
Speaker 2: You will lose it.
Speaker 3: And I just wouldn't want to live that way because
Speaker 3: then you are just acting and not being.
Speaker 1: It's like what you think that having the success proving
Speaker 1: yourself should make you more courageous, less risk averse, because
Speaker 1: now you've done it, But in fact the opposite is true. Right,
Speaker 1: This is where courage and discipline are related. It's the opposite.
Speaker 1: Now you have something to lose. Now you don't want
Speaker 1: to change go in a different direction because the expectation
Speaker 1: is set with the first one. So you imagine how
Speaker 1: scary it is Tiger Woods. You're like, you're the best
Speaker 1: swing in golf, and you're like, but I think it
Speaker 1: could be better, but I'm going to have to go
Speaker 1: have a bad swing for months to get to the
Speaker 1: other side of that. And so the ability to say
Speaker 1: I decide whether I'm successful or not not the external results.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm willing to go down this detour
Speaker 1: or try things differently, do this. That is that sort
Speaker 1: of key. Skill and courage and discipline have to be related.
Speaker 1: They compliment each other. And yeah, like it was come
Speaker 1: from my first book came out, it debuted on the
Speaker 1: bestseller list. It was controvert. But if who I would
Speaker 1: be today, if I continue down that road, would be
Speaker 1: a caricature of that first person, because I would have
Speaker 1: been been a copy of a copy of a copy
Speaker 1: of a copy. Instead, I went towards something that was
Speaker 1: interesting to me, which opened up another thing that was
Speaker 1: interested in and that, like, I wouldn't be who I
Speaker 1: am had I done this safe thing. And so all
Speaker 1: they say, all growth is a leap in the dark, right,
Speaker 1: you have to continually take that leap. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I hope you learn when you do that is,
Speaker 1: first off, it's not as scary as you thought. But
Speaker 1: then sometimes like it doesn't work and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: but I feel great about it. And then it decouples
Speaker 1: external recognition from the internal process and then you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just do what I want. I do where it
Speaker 1: takes me, and a lot of times it works out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it doesn't. But it's called being a creator for
Speaker 1: a reason. You're making something. You're the leader, you're not
Speaker 1: a follower.
Speaker 2: Well, I said, Ryn, this has been so much fun.
Speaker 1: The best thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were talking for ages.
Speaker 3: I had no idea where the time went, but it's
Speaker 3: been such a joy, just always like just getting into
Speaker 3: with you. And I hope that everyone who's been listening,
Speaker 3: I hope you go and grab a copy of Discipline
Speaker 3: is Destiny, The Power of Self Control by Ryan Holiday,
Speaker 3: and of course any of the other books that we've
Speaker 3: recommended before on the show. If you love this episode,
Speaker 3: you can go back and listen to a ton of
Speaker 3: other episodes with Ryan. And again, I hope today's episode
Speaker 3: I tried not to do for everyone who's listening, and
Speaker 3: you know I've been trying this more recently. I tried
Speaker 3: not to do a systematic conversation of breaking down how
Speaker 3: to build discipline and which you know, I've been avoiding
Speaker 3: that kind of hack kind of conversation recently, which I
Speaker 3: think you've been really resonating with because I think sometimes
Speaker 3: the penny that needs to drop isn't the how too.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the churning of the idea in
Speaker 3: your own self of coming closer to what it truly
Speaker 3: means for you and making sense of it. So that's
Speaker 3: been my attempt at least, and I hope that's coming through.
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoyed this, please do give me feedback
Speaker 3: on Twitter, Instagram, tag Ryan and I both with your
Speaker 3: greatest insights the nuggets of wisdom, and we'll see you
Speaker 3: on another episode of On Purpose.
Speaker 2: Thank you everyone.
Speaker 3: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with
Speaker 3: doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by
Speaker 3: changing your brain.
Speaker 1: Everything in moderation, which is the gateway thought to hell.
Speaker 1: It's the gateway.
Speaker 2: Thought to cheating.
Speaker 1: As soon as you hear someone say everything in moderation,
Speaker 1: they're going to do something bad for their brain.