Speaker 1: Turning off the fire hose of information that comes at
Speaker 1: you on a daily basis. That has to be a choice.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Shriny Row, the host and founder of the Unmistakable creative podcast.
Speaker 1: He has written multiple books, including the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: bestseller The Art of Being Unmistakable and his latest book,
Speaker 1: Unmistakable Why Only is Better Than Best. Shriny is the
Speaker 1: creator of the sixty person conference called the Instigator Experience,
Speaker 1: and he has an economics degree from the University of
Speaker 1: California at Berkeley and an MBA from the Pepperdine University.
Speaker 1: If you value the content we put out each week,
Speaker 1: then we need your help. As the show has grown,
Speaker 1: so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash Support and make a monthly donation.
Speaker 1: Our goal is to get to five percent of our
Speaker 1: listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the five
Speaker 1: percent that make a contribution and and allow us to
Speaker 1: keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need
Speaker 1: your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again,
Speaker 1: that's one you feed dot net slash Support. Thank you
Speaker 1: in advance for your help. And here's the interview with
Speaker 1: Shriny Raw. Hi, Shriny, Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Yeah, thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: You and I talked before. It was a great conversation
Speaker 1: and our hard drive failed and I lost the interview,
Speaker 1: so I do appreciate you being willing to come back.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to. We'll get into your podcast and your
Speaker 1: latest book, Unmistakable Why Only Is Better Than Best? Will
Speaker 1: drive into all that. But let's start like we usually
Speaker 1: do with the parable There's a grandfather who's talking to
Speaker 1: his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. It's funny because I've heard
Speaker 1: you asked that question to so many people, and I've
Speaker 1: heard so many interesting answers to that question. And you know,
Speaker 1: to me, I think the evil one, really, I think
Speaker 1: stems from ego and this need for all sorts of
Speaker 1: external things like validation, um, approval, and you know, those
Speaker 1: things come in a lot of different forms. But when
Speaker 1: you look at those things, I think what we fail
Speaker 1: to realize. As much as it is wonderful to say,
Speaker 1: you know, have your book hit the New York Times
Speaker 1: best seller list or have you know people listen to
Speaker 1: your show or any of the things that you know.
Speaker 1: I think we all seek like everybody. I think when
Speaker 1: they start out there, like I want an audience of
Speaker 1: millions of people, and I want to be like the
Speaker 1: next oprah Um. But I think the thing that we
Speaker 1: fail to realize is that the process itself contains so
Speaker 1: much joy and that there really is no moment of
Speaker 1: arrival necessarily. And I guess to me, the good wolf
Speaker 1: is when the work itself is is something that you
Speaker 1: do for its own reward and not I mean wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that there's no value to external rewards
Speaker 1: and there's no point setting goals which we can talk about,
Speaker 1: but I think we have to be careful because the
Speaker 1: problem with that approach is that it actually detracts from
Speaker 1: the work itself while you're doing it. Like you really
Speaker 1: can't be thinking about you know, your name and shining
Speaker 1: lights your book on a shelf and all that while
Speaker 1: you're actually writing the book, because your job at that
Speaker 1: moment is to write the book, and when you're present,
Speaker 1: that's when you do your best work. That's something that
Speaker 1: I've talked about on this show a lot, and wrestle
Speaker 1: with is sort of the intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, you know,
Speaker 1: the intrinsic motivation being doing it because I love doing it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very hard to get to a
Speaker 1: place of being pure, like I only do this because
Speaker 1: I love it, because it's hard to ignore yet that
Speaker 1: external stuff. But what I've find is what I start
Speaker 1: to focus on the external stuff, I tend to get fearful,
Speaker 1: and like you said, it's constricting. And when I go
Speaker 1: back to why am I doing this and and what
Speaker 1: I love about doing it, I feel totally different about it.
Speaker 1: And so it's really useful for me to turn back
Speaker 1: to that very regularly and remember, like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what I set out to do, and by the
Speaker 1: standards I set to start, I'm succeeding wildly because I
Speaker 1: love what I'm doing. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I can tell that to you, and I am
Speaker 1: telling you that because it's mainly a reminder to myself
Speaker 1: than anything else. And there's this very strange paradox with
Speaker 1: intrinsic and extranergic rewards. It's that the more intrinsically awarding
Speaker 1: you find something, the more likely it is to become
Speaker 1: extrins of the rewarding as well, whereas the vice versa,
Speaker 1: you know, is not true. Yeah, absolutely, the vice versus
Speaker 1: definitely not true. So you host podcasts, it's been around
Speaker 1: a long time, You've had amazing interviews, the Unmistakable Creative Podcast,
Speaker 1: and then you've written a few books. But your most
Speaker 1: recent book is Unmistakable Why Only is Better than Best?
Speaker 1: Can you explain that subtitle, why is only better than Best? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think we have to to kind of take a
Speaker 1: few steps back to sort of talk about how I
Speaker 1: drew that conclusion, so where it really started. And I
Speaker 1: think it's fitting that, you know, we're using podcasting as
Speaker 1: an example. But I kept seeing this pattern online and
Speaker 1: you know, I jokingly said the alternative title to this book,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure my publisher would hate me saying, could
Speaker 1: have been titled Everybody as full of Shit? Um, And
Speaker 1: of course they don't mean that at all. But what
Speaker 1: I kept seeing was this pattern. And you would see
Speaker 1: somebody who was very successful do something. They would talk
Speaker 1: about the result that they had gotten from doing that thing,
Speaker 1: and then everybody and their mother would go out and
Speaker 1: try to do that exact same thing and produce the
Speaker 1: exact same result with nowhere near the same degree of success.
Speaker 1: So you look at something like humans of New York,
Speaker 1: and of course you know everybody knows what humans of
Speaker 1: New York is, But what you might not know is
Speaker 1: that if you do a search for humans of on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you'll find a humans of project for dozens of other cities,
Speaker 1: and none of them have been me where as near
Speaker 1: as successful. And this is very personal to me because
Speaker 1: that's exactly how I started. Like, there's a girl named
Speaker 1: Jamie Verone who started this project called Twitter Should Hire
Speaker 1: Me back in two thousand nine, and Twitter Should Hire
Speaker 1: Me was really successful. I mean we're talking national media attention,
Speaker 1: tons of job offers, even though she never got one
Speaker 1: from Twitter. But the interesting thing is there's so much
Speaker 1: demand for her work that she started her own company.
Speaker 1: And I was just at the tail end of graduate
Speaker 1: school and I read about her story and I tried
Speaker 1: to create a website called one hundred reasons you should
Speaker 1: Hire Me, and I couldn't come up with a hundred
Speaker 1: reasons why anybody should hire me. So the project was
Speaker 1: like I got to about ten and then the reasons
Speaker 1: were all nonsense. They were just the bullet points on
Speaker 1: my resume and blog form, like they didn't really make
Speaker 1: compelling cases for people to hire me. And I realized
Speaker 1: at that point why I got a much bigger problem
Speaker 1: than trying to come with a unique way. I can't
Speaker 1: even come up with a hundred reasons why somebody should
Speaker 1: hire me. Maybe I should go get some reasons. So
Speaker 1: that temptation to look at something that works and to
Speaker 1: copy it, I realized was not unique to me. In fact,
Speaker 1: I saw more and more of it over the years,
Speaker 1: and I think it really comes down to this notion
Speaker 1: of instant applause. Right, because you live in a world
Speaker 1: for the first time where we have access to instant aplause,
Speaker 1: and that's really only happened in the last ten years
Speaker 1: or so, you can easily do something like put a
Speaker 1: picture of yourself with a cute baby on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. I know because
Speaker 1: I've tested this theory multiple times. And you know, when
Speaker 1: I put a picture of myself with a cute baby
Speaker 1: that belongs to one of my friends or one of
Speaker 1: my cousins, I get like a hundred likes or two
Speaker 1: hundred legs, and that's the sign of okay. Instant applause.
Speaker 1: But you can't build a sustainable career by putting up
Speaker 1: cute pictures of babies on Facebook. And what bugged me
Speaker 1: was that You've got all these very unique and very
Speaker 1: interesting and very creative people, and yet their temptation was
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, I will look at whatever this person,
Speaker 1: who is a so called guru says, I will copy
Speaker 1: you know what it is they're telling me to do,
Speaker 1: and I will produce the exact same result. And this
Speaker 1: is sort of the great fallacy of authority and influence,
Speaker 1: and that is that if you do exactly as some
Speaker 1: person in a position of authority tells you, you will
Speaker 1: get the result that they have promised. And so what
Speaker 1: I realized was that in a world with so much
Speaker 1: noise and so many things competing for our attention, being
Speaker 1: very distinctive, so distinctive in fact, that nobody else could
Speaker 1: do what you do in the way that you do
Speaker 1: it was an incredibly powerful thing. And I saw it
Speaker 1: with a handful of people where you know, you could
Speaker 1: take one look at what they have done and you
Speaker 1: would instantly don't know, there's nobody that could do it
Speaker 1: other than that person. So a perfect example of this
Speaker 1: is um our visualist illustrator um and special projects artist
Speaker 1: Mars Dorian. So if you follow Mars Dorian on Instagram
Speaker 1: or Facebook, you could walk into a room if pictures
Speaker 1: were hung that were done by Mars and you didn't
Speaker 1: know his signature wasn't on there, you could instantly if
Speaker 1: you knew who Mars was from having seen him on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you could take one look at it because there's only
Speaker 1: one person who could have done that, and that smart.
Speaker 1: And so you know, when you become the only person
Speaker 1: as opposed to the best, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your competition becomes irrelevant because nobody else can do what
Speaker 1: you do in the way that you do it. Like
Speaker 1: when we want something done by Mars Dorian, there literally
Speaker 1: not a single person that we can hire to replace him.
Speaker 1: And I think that's awesome. I think that is an
Speaker 1: amazing thing, and I think it's much more important in
Speaker 1: the world today. I mean, part of why I like
Speaker 1: what you guys do here at the one you feed,
Speaker 1: you and I were just talking about sort of the
Speaker 1: podcast ecosystem where we're seeing a very similar thing happening.
Speaker 1: So this is what I call the mimicry epidemic. Right,
Speaker 1: And the problem with this sort of mimicry epidemic is
Speaker 1: it leads to a giant echo chamber in which everybody
Speaker 1: sounds the same, everybody's parroting everybody, And the worst part
Speaker 1: is that people deny their gifts and they don't trust
Speaker 1: their own instincts, they don't trust their own intuition. In
Speaker 1: the process, I think they robbed the world of a
Speaker 1: much greater creative gift that they could give us than
Speaker 1: simply replicating what already exists. I agree, it can be
Speaker 1: hard to find that the idea is is sad because
Speaker 1: very few people are ever going to be the best right.
Speaker 1: It's a concept that doesn't have an exact measuring But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have found in my life, the longer
Speaker 1: I've gone on in all aspects of my life, the
Speaker 1: more I've just been who I am and let that
Speaker 1: kind of come out regardless of who and what I'm around,
Speaker 1: the more successful I've been in every area, even areas
Speaker 1: that I used to think like, I do consulting and
Speaker 1: do some other work in the in the corporate world,
Speaker 1: and you know, I thought I had to keep some
Speaker 1: of the stuff button down. But the more I realized
Speaker 1: that I would just be myself wherever I was. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like I was being fake. I was just holding
Speaker 1: part back. And the less I do that, the more
Speaker 1: successful I am, and the better relationships I have, and
Speaker 1: everything goes better. Yeah, I can tell you. So, I've
Speaker 1: gotten on a stage in front of a thousand people
Speaker 1: and told them I've been fired from just about every
Speaker 1: job I've ever been at, and the talks that I've
Speaker 1: been giving on this subject have been incredibly resonant, unlike
Speaker 1: anything I've ever experienced. I think for the very reason
Speaker 1: that you say so, because you're more and more yourself,
Speaker 1: and you know that takes us into a sort of
Speaker 1: what I call the three layers under which everybody's sort
Speaker 1: of essence of what makes them unmistakable eyes and those
Speaker 1: are stories, ables, and masks. Right, So we all wear
Speaker 1: masks in different ways, and we start doing it at
Speaker 1: a very early age, when we're old enough to understand
Speaker 1: that other people have opinions of us, and we want
Speaker 1: those opinions to be favorable. And in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: our entire sort of online persona is a mask. There is,
Speaker 1: you know, inevitably a little bit of a gap between
Speaker 1: who you are online and who you are in person.
Speaker 1: It's just there's no way. It's not because you do
Speaker 1: want to present some sort of image to the world
Speaker 1: that draws people in. You know, obviously you want the
Speaker 1: gap to be as new as possible. But a more
Speaker 1: simple mask is when you try to be cool in
Speaker 1: junior high. You know, when you start to discover that
Speaker 1: there are popular kids and unpopular kids. This is a
Speaker 1: stupid story from when I was a kid, but you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't one of the popular kids. You know. I
Speaker 1: came from a family that didn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: money at the time. And my dad picked me up
Speaker 1: from school one day and I said, Hey, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a fifth grade dance and I need a pair
Speaker 1: of sunglasses. And he said, why need sunglasses for a
Speaker 1: fifth grade dance? It was because then I can look
Speaker 1: cool and I can go and ask the prettiest girl
Speaker 1: in the class to dance with me. So my dad
Speaker 1: bought me the sunglasses. I never asked her to dance.
Speaker 1: I never became any cooler. And that's the sort of
Speaker 1: sim full example. But what we do is we keep
Speaker 1: going through life, and we keep putting on these masks
Speaker 1: one after another, and what you've got at that point
Speaker 1: is you are no longer staring at a pay limitation
Speaker 1: of anything else, but a pay limitation of your true self.
Speaker 1: And to get to what you're talking about requires us
Speaker 1: to let go of masks one at a time. And
Speaker 1: you know this is not to say go out and
Speaker 1: air all your dirty laundry on Facebook and make the
Speaker 1: world wonder what you're thinking. But rather, you know, treat
Speaker 1: every opportunity that you have to do work as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to do for full self expression. So then outside
Speaker 1: of masks, you have stories, right, we all have stories
Speaker 1: that kind of shape and call our perceptions of what
Speaker 1: we think is possible with our lives on our work.
Speaker 1: This is probably the most relevant one. And you know
Speaker 1: you're hearing some of my keynote speech here. But one
Speaker 1: story that we have is I have enough, and another
Speaker 1: story is I don't have enough. So maybe you have
Speaker 1: enough traffic to your website, subscribers to your email list,
Speaker 1: money in the bank account, and maybe you know the
Speaker 1: other stories you don't have enough of any of those things.
Speaker 1: But who's to say what enough is? Like, who determines
Speaker 1: what enough is? That's you know, an entirely made up concept.
Speaker 1: You know. In two thousand fifteen, at the end of
Speaker 1: at end of the year, UM, I decided to create
Speaker 1: this list of a hundred insanely interesting people you should
Speaker 1: know published our medium. And the reason I created that
Speaker 1: list was because every year, when Forbes published its list
Speaker 1: of forty under forty and fast Company published their list
Speaker 1: of the most creative people in business, I was envious,
Speaker 1: like I always felt less than as if the people
Speaker 1: on that list were more important than I was, were
Speaker 1: doing something more meaningful. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to create my own list. And the most
Speaker 1: ridiculous paradox of creating this kind of a list was
Speaker 1: how everybody who was not on the list responded, you
Speaker 1: know where the whole purpose of the list was to
Speaker 1: celebrate this notion that you don't have to get picked,
Speaker 1: and everybody wasn't on the list said I hope I
Speaker 1: am on the list next year, or I wish I
Speaker 1: was on the list. And that's how deep this cultural
Speaker 1: need to be validated to be picked them to be
Speaker 1: approved of runs. And then you have labels. Right, So
Speaker 1: you and I were talking about the fact that podcasting
Speaker 1: is one of the many things that I do in fact,
Speaker 1: I hate the term podcaster because it just sounds so stupid.
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly limiting, like labels limit our capacity
Speaker 1: when we over identify with one particular label. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a podcaster, so suddenly you think that all that
Speaker 1: is possible within your body of work is what's possible
Speaker 1: as a pot caster. Well, that's nonsense. I'm a storyteller
Speaker 1: who happens to use podcasting is one of the mediums
Speaker 1: in which I tell my stories. Another happens to be
Speaker 1: the stage on which I do keynote speeches. Another happens
Speaker 1: to be animated shorts. Letting go of your labels allows
Speaker 1: you to do is to look beyond the medium that
Speaker 1: you're operating in or creating, so you know, underneath all
Speaker 1: of those things is the essence of what I think
Speaker 1: makes every one of us unmistakable. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: to everybody who has donated to the show so far.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it more than you know. If you have
Speaker 1: been thinking of donating, this would be a great week
Speaker 1: to do it. My goal is to get ten new
Speaker 1: donations this week, so please be one of those ten.
Speaker 1: I was thinking earlier about how I listened to I
Speaker 1: don't listen to as much as I did, But I
Speaker 1: listened to public radio and they have those fund drives,
Speaker 1: And from the minute the fun drive starts, I start
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, well, I'm gonna I probably should do that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that, And of course I don't
Speaker 1: do it till the very last minute. So I spend
Speaker 1: that entire time thinking I should do it, I want
Speaker 1: to do it, and then I only do it at
Speaker 1: the very end, and I spend all that time kind
Speaker 1: of just feeling bad or feeling like I need to
Speaker 1: be doing something. So if you're in that boat you
Speaker 1: feel like you should or you want to donate to
Speaker 1: the show, this would be a great time to do it.
Speaker 1: Go to one you feed dot net slash support and
Speaker 1: you can make the donation. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: you are walking or cleaning the house or doing other things,
Speaker 1: so maybe you just make note to yourself on your
Speaker 1: to do list or send yourself an email or whatever
Speaker 1: that reminds you. Go to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash support and give. I released a many episode this
Speaker 1: last weekend, and for people who pledge at the ten
Speaker 1: dollar level, you get a bonus exclusive mini episode just
Speaker 1: for the people who are patrons of the show as
Speaker 1: well as and ask me anything evening where we get
Speaker 1: online and just sort of, you know, shoot the whatever
Speaker 1: for an hour. I appreciate so much those of you
Speaker 1: that have given. If you haven't, this would be a
Speaker 1: great week to do, so please one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash support. We talked about masks and stories. You
Speaker 1: mentioned one more mass stories and labels with the three.
Speaker 1: So you and I talked about this before, but I
Speaker 1: want to explore it again because I think it's an
Speaker 1: interesting concept and it's something that I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time thinking about. And maybe worrying is a strong word,
Speaker 1: maybe fretting is a better word. But you and I
Speaker 1: both put a lot of content out into the world,
Speaker 1: you know, every week we're putting out another person, another idea.
Speaker 1: And yet I believe in a lot of cases, what
Speaker 1: a lot of us need is not necessarily more knowledge,
Speaker 1: but to use the knowledge we have, or to go
Speaker 1: deeper in it. And so sometimes I think about what
Speaker 1: role am I playing in that? And I'm just interested
Speaker 1: to see how you see that. As a person who's
Speaker 1: also you know, doing a very similar thing. Do you
Speaker 1: do you share any of those same concerns or yeah
Speaker 1: I do. Actually, you know, I wrote a piece on
Speaker 1: medium titled why excessive consumption limits your creativity? Weird being
Speaker 1: somebody who is a creator of all forms of media
Speaker 1: and actually somebody who fuels consumption to say something like that,
Speaker 1: I think that we have a really weird sort of
Speaker 1: problem in that, you know, I think as a creator
Speaker 1: you should absolutely be in creating far more than you consume,
Speaker 1: which is clearly what people you know like you are doing.
Speaker 1: That being said, turning off the fire hose of information
Speaker 1: that comes at you on a daily basis. That has
Speaker 1: to be a choice. So I think the notion that
Speaker 1: you and I could control somebody else's consumption habits and
Speaker 1: as a result, their behavior based on what we're creating
Speaker 1: maybe a bit of a stretch. You really have no
Speaker 1: control over somebody else's, you know, I really would love
Speaker 1: it if every single person who listen to one of
Speaker 1: our interviews went out and implemented something they learned in
Speaker 1: an interview. But it's the sort of vicious cycle of
Speaker 1: personal development where you get the people who get a
Speaker 1: result because they'll get a result just because that's who
Speaker 1: they are. You get the people who might change because
Speaker 1: of the thing you created or the thing they enrolled in.
Speaker 1: And then you get the people who are stuck in
Speaker 1: this vicious cycle, and you know, they basically are getting
Speaker 1: high on inspiration and kool aid and they're addicted to it,
Speaker 1: but they don't do anything. You did a podcast recently
Speaker 1: to start the new year and why personal development efforts failed.
Speaker 1: So I'm hooked by that line. Tell me yeah, So
Speaker 1: you know where that came from was a former podcast
Speaker 1: guest named Jim Bunch. It was on our show and
Speaker 1: he talked about this idea of designing environments because environments
Speaker 1: are stronger than willpower. And you know, when you think
Speaker 1: of environment, don't just think about physical environment. But this
Speaker 1: is literally what he said. Everything that you see here, smell, taste,
Speaker 1: or touch is an environment. And that environment is either
Speaker 1: adding energy to your life or draining energy from your life.
Speaker 1: It's either inspiring you or expiring you. And that means
Speaker 1: it's the physical space that you live in, the people
Speaker 1: that you surround yourself with, the information that you consume,
Speaker 1: the food that you put into your body. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing that happens with most personal development efforts is people
Speaker 1: decide that they want to make some sort of drastic change,
Speaker 1: but what happens is that the environment doesn't change, and
Speaker 1: so as a result, the environment pulls them back down
Speaker 1: to being who they were before. So simple example is,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a more prolific writer, a
Speaker 1: good environment is one that is free of distractions. So
Speaker 1: you do something like use a tool called focus at
Speaker 1: will or pay focus, and you block distractions for fourteen
Speaker 1: hours the night before, so that way, when you wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning, there's no option to get yourself
Speaker 1: involved in something distracting. That's a really simple example of
Speaker 1: making a change to your environment. Another example is clutter.
Speaker 1: You know, we all have a lot of clutter in
Speaker 1: our lives, and it's in all sorts of our spaces.
Speaker 1: It might be in your car, it might be in
Speaker 1: your office. But the thing is when you free your
Speaker 1: space of all this stuff. And if you've seen the Minimalism,
Speaker 1: a documentary, they talk about a lot of this, you know,
Speaker 1: Really Minimalism is a documentary about building environments that are
Speaker 1: conducive to the person you want to become, not just
Speaker 1: getting rid of all your stuff. And the thing that
Speaker 1: you'll see is that as you start to basically upgrade environments,
Speaker 1: other environments start changing. So you know, here's another crazy example,
Speaker 1: and this you know as a very sort of New
Speaker 1: age example, but you know, I started reading Marie Condo's book,
Speaker 1: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and I thought
Speaker 1: the notion of okay, do you if does everything you
Speaker 1: own spark joy in your life? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all these books that I don't really care about
Speaker 1: that have been sent to me over the years that
Speaker 1: I bought. So I packed them up and put them
Speaker 1: in a box, and what was left were books by Penguin.
Speaker 1: And three weeks later or a month later, an editor
Speaker 1: from Penguin called and said, hey, we'd like you to
Speaker 1: write a book. And I was like, that's a really
Speaker 1: strange coincidence, but it's the whole I want to go
Speaker 1: to the gym every day, but I don't do something
Speaker 1: as simple as put my bag and my shoes right
Speaker 1: by my bed, so when I wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing on my mind. That's a big
Speaker 1: part of the re in that so many personal development
Speaker 1: efforts fail. But you know, another maybe more relatable example
Speaker 1: is anybody listening to this has probably been to some
Speaker 1: sort of self help seminar. Like you go to a
Speaker 1: Tony Robbins event, you go to a conference, and you've
Speaker 1: probably experienced the sort of thing where you know, you
Speaker 1: come back from the conference and you're high as a kite,
Speaker 1: like you're just you know, ready to conquer the world.
Speaker 1: You know, everything seems perfect, and then a week later
Speaker 1: everything is back to normal. Now, there are some people
Speaker 1: who basically think, Okay, I need another conference just like that,
Speaker 1: and they just keep going to conference after conference after conference,
Speaker 1: but nothing changes. And the reason for that is you're
Speaker 1: coming back to your own environment, and that is really
Speaker 1: the core of of this nine percent of personal development
Speaker 1: efforts fail. Again, this sort of idea that I'm sharing
Speaker 1: with you is not mine. It came from an episode
Speaker 1: of The Unmistakable Creative and a guy named Jim Bunch.
Speaker 1: So I want to make sure I give credit where
Speaker 1: credit is due and you can learn more about his
Speaker 1: work at the Ultimate Game of Life. Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: true though, environment and the outside influences play such a
Speaker 1: role in that. I recently did a ted X talk
Speaker 1: and that was one of the things I talked about
Speaker 1: was that when we're trying to change things, one of
Speaker 1: the things that most of us completely leave out of
Speaker 1: the equation is how do we get support from the
Speaker 1: people around us. It can make such a big difference
Speaker 1: if you've got people who are on your side versus not.
Speaker 1: And that's one example of an environmental thing. You you
Speaker 1: mentioned some physical ones, but you combine all that stuff
Speaker 1: and your chances go way up in these areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, they're so simple, and yet people don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we don't like simple because it's
Speaker 1: not sexy. Yep. It's not one of the things that
Speaker 1: you say is just because it's the best practice, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's best for you. I love that line,
Speaker 1: and we we touched on that briefly before, but expound
Speaker 1: on that a little bit more. Yeah, in the business world, um,
Speaker 1: you've basically seen, you know, people go to conferences where
Speaker 1: they say, you're gonna learn best practices. So it's the
Speaker 1: business version of if you do this thing that this
Speaker 1: person has done, you will get the result that they
Speaker 1: have gotten. And of course that's nonsense because there's one
Speaker 1: giant variable that throws off that equation, and that's you,
Speaker 1: you know, like did not take into account the variable
Speaker 1: that is the most dynamic is ridiculous. So we see
Speaker 1: this across the board. Even you see it with people
Speaker 1: who do diets right, people like, oh, you know this
Speaker 1: keto diet or this diet or that diet or the
Speaker 1: paleo diet. And I just talked to a food blogger
Speaker 1: and a neuroscientist named Daria Rose, and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: science is really great for telling us what works on
Speaker 1: a sort of massive level, but on an individual level,
Speaker 1: it's really shitty because you're not really, you know, taking
Speaker 1: what works for you. And that's really I mean that
Speaker 1: the notion of best practices might be a best practice,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily mean it's best for you. Is
Speaker 1: something that I think, you know, applies not just a
Speaker 1: business but life. Right. So it's like everybody should go
Speaker 1: to college. No, not really, that doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: at all. There are plenty of people who shouldn't have
Speaker 1: gotten to college who did go to college, And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of people who didn't go to college and
Speaker 1: made a brilliant choice not going to college, and I've
Speaker 1: probably become much wealthier because of it. So that's practice
Speaker 1: has often become these very blanket statements. Another example, the
Speaker 1: notion that everybody should start a podcast. That's stud But
Speaker 1: that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Um one of
Speaker 1: the dumbest things I've ever heard. That's like saying everybody
Speaker 1: should be a public speaker, and that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that people shouldn't do those things, but
Speaker 1: the notion that everybody should is ludicrous. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think that brings up a lot of things for me.
Speaker 1: I do some exclusive episodes for people who support the show,
Speaker 1: and the one I did recently was about like, what
Speaker 1: do we really know? Like there's so many scientific studies
Speaker 1: about everything these days. You know, eggs are good, eggs
Speaker 1: are bad, fats good, fats bad, all these different You
Speaker 1: should do this for three minutes, you should do that
Speaker 1: for five minutes. And I kind of arrived where you landed,
Speaker 1: and maybe not as eloquently, which was you've got to
Speaker 1: try this stuff for yourself. You've got to know what
Speaker 1: actually works for you because you're different. And I also
Speaker 1: think you have to do what you're comfortable with. Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great advice about how to grow
Speaker 1: and sell and do things on the internet that I
Speaker 1: would feel very foolish doing them, and so I don't
Speaker 1: do them. But I think it's you know, sort of
Speaker 1: knowing yourself and what's important to you and how you work,
Speaker 1: and and testing things and trying them. Yeah. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean I think life is just one giant experiment basically.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you talk a lot about in
Speaker 1: your book is this idea of being ready. Tell me
Speaker 1: more about this idea of being ready and how it
Speaker 1: gets in our way. The idea really, I think came
Speaker 1: from surfing, right is it really came from an experience
Speaker 1: I had when I first started learning how to surf.
Speaker 1: You know, the instructor who was teaching me how to
Speaker 1: surf was trying to teach me how to pop up
Speaker 1: and it took almost an hour because it just wasn't click.
Speaker 1: And he said, you realize that if you were a
Speaker 1: little kid, a little kid would not want to be
Speaker 1: on land for an hour. They would be like, why
Speaker 1: are we not in the water, because that's where surfing
Speaker 1: actually happens. And it was a really, really good point,
Speaker 1: because what happens is that we have this sort of
Speaker 1: illusion in our mind of what we think is going
Speaker 1: to be the perfect time to do whatever it is
Speaker 1: we wanted at the perfect time to start this ambitious
Speaker 1: creative project, the perfect time to write a book, And
Speaker 1: of course the perfect time never comes because it's just
Speaker 1: this day in the future that is an imagined reality.
Speaker 1: It's just a mythical date, and so basically it's a
Speaker 1: perfect excuse for procrastination when I'm ready. But the thing
Speaker 1: is that there's not going to be any moment when
Speaker 1: you're suddenly perfectly adequate to do exactly what it is
Speaker 1: that you want to do. In fact, it is the
Speaker 1: doing of the thing that gets you ready for it,
Speaker 1: um because without doing it, you don't have the skill
Speaker 1: to even do what you want to do, like, so
Speaker 1: you have to start. I couldn't agree more. I think
Speaker 1: my favorite quote of all time, and I'll get it
Speaker 1: wrong is something along the lines of start where you are,
Speaker 1: use what you have, do what you can. Yeah. Way
Speaker 1: to put it, you right very eloquently about being ready
Speaker 1: in the book. The other thing you you talk about
Speaker 1: is committing to the process instead of the outcome. And
Speaker 1: again we sort of touched on this a little bit
Speaker 1: with the extrinsic versus intrinsic goals, but walk me through
Speaker 1: that a little bit more. Here's the thing. Right outcomes
Speaker 1: are so largely out of our control. You have no
Speaker 1: control over, you know, how an audience is going to
Speaker 1: respond to whatever it is that you've created, or you know,
Speaker 1: the book you've written, the movie you've produced. But what
Speaker 1: is in your control is all the effort you put
Speaker 1: in during the process. Are you working to do the
Speaker 1: best work that you can that you're proud of, you know,
Speaker 1: creating things that you're proud to put your signature on.
Speaker 1: I think, because you know, process is really where you
Speaker 1: spend most of your time. And you know, I've said
Speaker 1: this in my upcoming book, it is out of the
Speaker 1: spotlight with nobody watching, where most creators spend the bulk
Speaker 1: of their lives. Only a small fraction of what a
Speaker 1: creator creates interacts with an audience. And that's true for
Speaker 1: even the most prolific of creators and the ones who've
Speaker 1: had best selling books and amazing movies. So much of
Speaker 1: what they're doing doesn't see the light of day. Like
Speaker 1: you don't see the thousands of hours that go into
Speaker 1: a movie before it hits the screen, all the takes
Speaker 1: that they do for one scene just to get like
Speaker 1: one line right, Like, we don't see any of that
Speaker 1: by the time we experience it. We think that that's
Speaker 1: how it comes out, and that's what, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole experience is. But that is not the experience of
Speaker 1: of that, it's the process where the experience occurs. I
Speaker 1: read somewhere and these are you always read these numbers.
Speaker 1: You're like, where do people come up with these? But
Speaker 1: it was a similar idea that even to the creative
Speaker 1: person themselves, that only a small part of what the
Speaker 1: creative processes is what comes out on the page. There's
Speaker 1: all the germination that's going on inside a person also,
Speaker 1: you know that leads up to that point, which I
Speaker 1: found to be an interesting way to look at it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt. I mean, that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: That's so much more of the process than the work itself.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about the insidious nature of validation,
Speaker 1: and you talk about critics voices, how they can be loud,
Speaker 1: but that probably really the worst voice and the thing
Speaker 1: that holds us back is ourselves. And we all have
Speaker 1: an inner critic that is harsher than probably most of
Speaker 1: our external critics. With maybe some exceptions here and there.
Speaker 1: There are assholes on the internet. But I think the
Speaker 1: thing that you start to realize is that you know,
Speaker 1: and this isn't an entirely original idea, but you realize
Speaker 1: if anybody else talk to you the way you talk
Speaker 1: to yourself, you would never tolerate it. You would not
Speaker 1: allow them to be in your life very long. But
Speaker 1: somehow we're okay with the sort of self abuse. And
Speaker 1: the thing that you learn when you're creating on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, you know, when you're putting out episode after
Speaker 1: episode after podcast, you're writing a thousand words a day,
Speaker 1: you know, for five six years in a row, you're
Speaker 1: putting up articles, is that the only sort of antidote
Speaker 1: to that voice is the actual creative process that if
Speaker 1: you start in spite of that inner critic, it starts
Speaker 1: to sort of lose its power over you. It doesn't
Speaker 1: ever go away. It's always there. There's not a day
Speaker 1: that goes by that I don't get to the end
Speaker 1: of the day and say, oh this is tearle or
Speaker 1: you know, even ten minutes in the writing session like
Speaker 1: why do I even bother um? And that's that's just
Speaker 1: comes with the territory. But the more you create, the
Speaker 1: less that will impact you. Yeah, exactly, we're gonna wrap
Speaker 1: up here in a second. But I want you to
Speaker 1: talk about the idea of longevity. What is the role?
Speaker 1: And you know what is so important about as a
Speaker 1: creator this idea of longevity. The thing is that we
Speaker 1: live in a world that moves so fast that people
Speaker 1: basically want to start a blog today, have a book
Speaker 1: deal tomorrow, and be on the New York Times bestseller
Speaker 1: list by next week. And that's just not how it works, um,
Speaker 1: not for the people. The reality of it is that
Speaker 1: if you look at anybody who has succeeded at anything,
Speaker 1: it takes a really long time, especially to get to
Speaker 1: the level where they're good. You know, there are sort
Speaker 1: of flukes, But the thing is, flukes are what lead
Speaker 1: to one hit wonders. Like anybody remember the Spin Doctors.
Speaker 1: Probably not unless you grew up in you know, the
Speaker 1: early nineties. Um, hopefully nobody who's a member of the
Speaker 1: Spin Doctors is listening to this. For what it's worth.
Speaker 1: I like their music. If you are, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a chance to rebut shriny on air, So just drop
Speaker 1: me a note. You know, you get. The point is
Speaker 1: that it's not you know, one hit wonder that really
Speaker 1: turns you know you into having this really prolific career.
Speaker 1: It's longevity because it takes time to get good at
Speaker 1: the things you want to get good at. We have
Speaker 1: a very warp perception of longevity in the world that
Speaker 1: we live in because of the fact that it moves
Speaker 1: so fast. But like, oh, a year, that's a long time.
Speaker 1: A year is not really a long time in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. When you look at some of
Speaker 1: the biggest things that are a huge part of our lives,
Speaker 1: those are years in the makings. I mean, just read
Speaker 1: the biography of somebody like a Warren Buffett and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: the guys like seventies something years old. That's taken a
Speaker 1: lifetime of work and a lifetime of hard work, not
Speaker 1: just you know, screwing around. So longevity plays a huge role.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, we we underestimate how long
Speaker 1: we think something is going to take the result. We
Speaker 1: don't come it for a long enough timeline. You know,
Speaker 1: most people say, you know that. I think the statistic
Speaker 1: is that most blogs are abandoned within ninety days. And
Speaker 1: you know, I said this in the book. The Internet
Speaker 1: is littered with the digital graveyards of people who spent
Speaker 1: a Saturday afternoon, trying to make a dent in the world.
Speaker 1: And you know, you'll look go look through the podcast
Speaker 1: feeds and iTunes. There's probably a podcast that haven't been
Speaker 1: updated in months. And you know, I've I've even heard
Speaker 1: people I knew of just sort of perfectly. You'll hear
Speaker 1: them say, hey, guys, I know it's been like a
Speaker 1: month since I've been on the show, and you're kind
Speaker 1: of like, dude, you lost all your listeners three weeks ago. Yeah, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: longevity is a big, big deal. I agree. I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that we run into, and I thought
Speaker 1: of it when you mentioned were in Buffett and other people,
Speaker 1: is I think sometimes we see people who are further
Speaker 1: along in their careers where when they do something, things
Speaker 1: happen very quickly for them, Whereas it's the length of
Speaker 1: time that they've put in up to that point that
Speaker 1: that allows those things to sort of happen, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times we sort of lose that. And there's
Speaker 1: also a great Ira Glass thing out there on the
Speaker 1: internet that I saw, which you've yeah, you've probably seen,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, where he just talks about like not only
Speaker 1: in like the gap between you starting something and having
Speaker 1: an audience. But when you start something until you actually
Speaker 1: think you're any good at it is a pretty good gap.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm embarrassed by things we did a year ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I would agree with that completely. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that's a great place to wrap up, Shriny, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show twice now and
Speaker 1: getting them getting the message out once. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the book is called Unmistakable Why Only is Better Than
Speaker 1: the Best? And you can find Shriney at Unmistakable Creative
Speaker 1: dot com and we'll have links in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But it's another great podcast. If you like this show,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love what he's doing. Also awesome. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me. Ye okay, take care
Speaker 1: of fight. Yeah hm. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the
Speaker 1: One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash support