Speaker 1: What are the things that light you up?
Speaker 2: Success should facilitate you being able to do as much
Speaker 2: of those things as you want to do. If you
Speaker 2: don't have time to do the thing only you can do.
Speaker 1: What kind of life is that? He's the host of
Speaker 1: the Daily.
Speaker 3: Stow of It. His books have sold more than ten
Speaker 3: million copies, and holiday ladies and gentlemen, we're.
Speaker 2: Just piling accomplishments on top of accomplishments. As not the
Speaker 2: way one finds meaning in their life or their existence.
Speaker 2: There has to be some point where you go. This
Speaker 2: stops with me.
Speaker 3: Weird Throw to announce that we've reached three million subscribers.
Speaker 3: We're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you.
Speaker 3: If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to hit that
Speaker 3: subscribe button so you never miss out on any of
Speaker 3: our new releases. We're dedicated to bringing you the content
Speaker 3: you love. Our team carefully analyzes what resonates most with
Speaker 3: you to bring on board the best experts and storytellers
Speaker 3: to help you improve your life. Some of your favorite
Speaker 3: topics are sleep, science, weight loss, physical fitness, navigating breakups,
Speaker 3: habit building, and understanding toxic relationships. Upcoming episodes include one
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Speaker 3: relationship therapist, and your favorite manifestation expert, is back to
Speaker 3: drop new findings. Hit subscribe to not miss any of
Speaker 3: these episodes. If you think of someone who would love
Speaker 3: this episode, send it to them to make their day.
Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Sheety jay
Speaker 1: sheety ly.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 3: health and wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each
Speaker 3: and every one of you that come back every week
Speaker 3: to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today's guest is
Speaker 3: probably our record holder of most times on the podcast,
Speaker 3: which makes me very happy. I was just saying to
Speaker 3: him offline that the doors of On Purpose will always
Speaker 3: be open to him, because when I first kicked off
Speaker 3: my interviewer journey, I had a show at HuffPost called
Speaker 3: Followed Reader. It was on huff Post Live. I would
Speaker 3: be on Facebook Live every single day interviewing authors. I
Speaker 3: was just starting out, probably add like I don't know,
Speaker 3: like one hundred thousand people who are connected to my work,
Speaker 3: and he would always come on, and I think I
Speaker 3: interviewed him twice there and then interviewed him at Nasdak
Speaker 3: when I had a Nasdak Reads show. Then he came
Speaker 3: on my podcast when I kicked off. I'm talking about
Speaker 3: the one and only Ryan Holiday, one of the world's
Speaker 3: best selling living philosophers. Ryan's books include The Obstacle Is
Speaker 3: The Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic Discipline,
Speaker 3: His Destiny, and the number one New York Times best seller,
Speaker 3: Stillness Is the Key, and appear in more than forty
Speaker 3: languages and sold more than six million copies. Ryan's bookstore,
Speaker 3: The Painted Porch, which I've not been able to visit yet,
Speaker 3: but I really want to. It is one of the
Speaker 3: most incredible products he's working on. And his new book
Speaker 3: is The Daily Dad, three hundred and sixty five meditations
Speaker 3: on parenting, love, and raising great kids. I even match
Speaker 3: my T shirt, that's how much I love this book.
Speaker 3: Go and grab a copy. You love Ryan's work, You're
Speaker 3: gonna love this book. And there's someone who is preparing
Speaker 3: and thinking about being a dad at some point in
Speaker 3: his life. I'm really excited for this conversation. Welcome back
Speaker 3: to On Purpose, Ryan Holiday. Ryan, thanks for being here. Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think about that first interview all the time
Speaker 2: because I think my voice failed. If I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker 2: I've been doing interviews for like days and days, and
Speaker 2: then my voice just stopped and there was some sneaze.
Speaker 2: Someone was like crawling on the floor, give me water
Speaker 2: or whatever. But now every time I'm like, I hope
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 3: You got a good mate. That's exactly what happened. So
Speaker 3: we're in this smaller room. Yeah, we weren't in the
Speaker 3: studio that day for some reason, so we booked this
Speaker 3: separate room in the office. And yes, your throat felling,
Speaker 3: you were coughing, and you feel comfortable. And I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the producer going game. Some wames work because there
Speaker 3: wasn't water for some reason. Here we have plenty of water. Today,
Speaker 3: you have your he brought his own everyone.
Speaker 1: That's how much I think about it all the time.
Speaker 3: And you're spot on. The producer literally crawled to avoid
Speaker 3: being in the shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people don't I mean, obviously producers are sort
Speaker 2: of an unsung role, but you don't understand all the
Speaker 2: things that are going on behind the scenes that make
Speaker 2: it not terrible. And yeah, I think she like crawled
Speaker 2: under the floor and sneakly handed me the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Helena, why don't you do that? I've never seen
Speaker 3: you do that because you're well prepared. No, I genuinely
Speaker 3: meant what I said. I appreciate I love talking to you.
Speaker 3: I've always been a fan of your ideas, and you
Speaker 3: know to have I've had so many interactions with you.
Speaker 3: It makes me very grateful.
Speaker 2: So well, sometimes it's good when like something terrible happens,
Speaker 2: I just think about it as like crossing it off
Speaker 2: the list. Like I remember I gave this talk. This
Speaker 2: is maybe like fifteen years ago. I gave a talk
Speaker 2: at Yale. There's this thing called the Master's Tea, and
Speaker 2: you give a talk in the house of one of
Speaker 2: the headmasters at Yale. It's this sort of prestigious thing
Speaker 2: that's really cool. I haven't given many talks. And I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there and you sit on these couches and like
Speaker 2: a handful of students are invited, and I'm sitting there
Speaker 2: and I feel something on my shoulder and then I
Speaker 2: look over and there's someone leaning on my shoulder, and
Speaker 2: what's this? And I realized that one of the students
Speaker 2: is falling asleep while I was talking. And so I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know it'll never be that bad. That's like the
Speaker 2: word you know you Sometimes you want to get the
Speaker 2: terrible things out of the way, and then you're just
Speaker 2: like all right, Like it doesn't matter how much I
Speaker 2: screw up, how bad the podcast goes, It's unlikely my
Speaker 2: voice will completely abandon me ever again.
Speaker 1: And now I can rest to show.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Yeah, I got to have that's crazy. I
Speaker 3: got to have one of those experiences early early on
Speaker 3: in my life. I was like seven or eight years old,
Speaker 3: and we used to do in London school assemblies that
Speaker 3: were dedicated to people's religious holidays at school. So you'd
Speaker 3: celebrate everything from Hannukah to Christmas to Divali, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And so it was Dvali, and coming from an Indian
Speaker 3: background and a Hindu background, I was my mom had
Speaker 3: volunteered for me to perform a peace in my not
Speaker 3: even native language, but scriptural language, dressed up as an
Speaker 3: ancient Indian prince king vibe. And so I go out there.
Speaker 3: The clothes are not flattering, like it's not looking right,
Speaker 3: and there's parts of my body showing. It's almost like
Speaker 3: a toga, like an Indian toga. And I have to
Speaker 3: read this thing, which I'm not very familiar with, and
Speaker 3: I have to sing it too, and I have a
Speaker 3: terrible singing voice. I can't sing to say my life.
Speaker 3: And I start singing, and all my friends are in
Speaker 3: the audience and they burst out laughing, and then I'm
Speaker 3: getting really nervous, and everyone's laughing so much that I
Speaker 3: start crying. And then I forget the lines because I'm
Speaker 3: so nervous. So I look down to read them and
Speaker 3: I can't read them because my tears have smudged the
Speaker 3: words on the page. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: this is the most embarrassing part. My teacher comes on,
Speaker 3: puts her arm around me, and walks me off stage.
Speaker 3: And I didn't live that down. That was my first
Speaker 3: over experience in public speaking. So no, no, I hope not.
Speaker 3: I hope not now. But you know, I'm really excited
Speaker 3: to talk to you about this. Was you just asked
Speaker 3: me a question, and you know, we were just talking
Speaker 3: about this, and I said, let's start recording because it's
Speaker 3: a good, good conversation. You asked me if I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about being a parent, and I was saying that me
Speaker 3: and my wife have always wanted to have kids. But
Speaker 3: it's really interesting because we'd set up a life that
Speaker 3: we thought we were going to have. We bought a
Speaker 3: house right next to her parents, near all our friends
Speaker 3: in London. It was small but wonderful, and we were
Speaker 3: surrounded by the community we thought we had. And then
Speaker 3: my career took off in a very unexpected way, which
Speaker 3: brought me to New York and now to la And
Speaker 3: it's really interesting that as things started to change in
Speaker 3: what we expected of life, our expectations of ourselves changed.
Speaker 3: And that hasn't changed the desire to have kids. But
Speaker 3: what did change was, you know, my wife got so
Speaker 3: immersed in discovering her passion, something that she never even
Speaker 3: thought she'd think about, and having discovered that, we started
Speaker 3: to have Really we've always had really healthy, open conversations
Speaker 3: around not when to have kids, because I think, to me,
Speaker 3: that isn't necessarily the right conversation. To me, the healthiest
Speaker 3: conversation with my wife has been do we know how
Speaker 3: it's going to change our life to whatever degree you
Speaker 3: can know? And are we ready for that change right now?
Speaker 3: And that's kind of the structure that we've at least
Speaker 3: placed for our conversations to have a healthy understanding for
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: I think what you said at the beginning, though, it
Speaker 2: was interesting because so a lot of people talk about
Speaker 2: having kids, but you said, are we going to be parents?
Speaker 1: And I think that's an interesting distinction that we don't
Speaker 1: talk about enough.
Speaker 2: Right, Like having kids is biological or it's legal, right
Speaker 2: you adopt, or you get a bonus kid from a marriage.
Speaker 2: Like there is having kids, like people who live in
Speaker 2: your house. And then there is the decision to be
Speaker 2: a parent. And unfortunately, there are a lot more people
Speaker 2: who have kids than there are people who are parents,
Speaker 2: people who decide to make this a central part of
Speaker 2: what they do.
Speaker 1: Right, having kids is doing.
Speaker 2: The legal bare minimum what you have to do to
Speaker 2: keep child protective services away from your house. And then
Speaker 2: there is the decision to say, I'm going to change
Speaker 2: my life around this thing.
Speaker 1: This is going to be the main.
Speaker 2: Or one of the main things that I do, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to be really good at it. Right,
Speaker 2: Like most people spend a lot of time trying to
Speaker 2: get great at their careers. They want to make more money,
Speaker 2: they want to accomplish all these things. And then parenting
Speaker 2: is kind of this thing that we we just hope
Speaker 2: that we get right, we just win it right, and
Speaker 2: that's a tragic, skewed sense of priorities.
Speaker 3: I think that's a brilliant distinction. I'm so glad you
Speaker 3: raised that. You reminded me of there's this Vedic verse
Speaker 3: that says one should not take on the responsibility of
Speaker 3: being a parent unless they're ready to enlighten their child. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like there's that kind of the idea of what you
Speaker 3: just said, of flipping the script of like when should
Speaker 3: we have kids? Do I want to have kids to do?
Speaker 3: I know what it means to be a parent, and
Speaker 3: that's hard sometimes, Like it's a challenge because I think
Speaker 3: all of us look at ourselves and we go we're flawed,
Speaker 3: normal individuals with trauma, with challenges, and we're like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe I don't deserve to have kids. You can go
Speaker 3: the other way, or I'll never be quality to have kids. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The comedian Tom Segura has this bit where he goes,
Speaker 2: you know, people say that having kids changes you, and
Speaker 2: he goes, that's not quite right. It's that having kids
Speaker 2: should change you, right, So like if you're not ready
Speaker 2: to be changed. That's one of the things when people
Speaker 2: ask me to go, I'm thinking about having kids, what
Speaker 2: should I do? And I go, you have to be
Speaker 2: ready for it to change you, Like, not only can
Speaker 2: you not live and organize your life the same way,
Speaker 2: but you're going to be opened emotionally, physically, spiritually in
Speaker 2: all of these ways that if you're resistant to because
Speaker 2: you liked the way things were before, you're not only
Speaker 2: doing your kids a disservice, but I think you're doing
Speaker 2: yourself a disservice because this is this is a profound,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of shift on a human level, and
Speaker 2: if you're not ready to be changed by it, you're
Speaker 2: probably not ready to do it.
Speaker 3: Were you disconscious about being a parent before you were
Speaker 3: a parent or is it something that came from the process.
Speaker 2: No, it definitely came from the process. Like you think,
Speaker 2: you think you know and you have ideas, but it's
Speaker 2: not until this thing happens.
Speaker 1: To you that you go, oh, all these other.
Speaker 2: Things aren't as important to me anymore. Right, I think
Speaker 2: I do wish sometimes I think about wishing that I'd
Speaker 2: done it earlier. There's this thing that happens when you
Speaker 2: achieve what you set out to achieve, right, which is
Speaker 2: that you realize it doesn't mean that much.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You write a best selling book, you sell a screenplay,
Speaker 2: you know, you have some number in your mind, and
Speaker 2: then maybe it's winning a gold medal. You do something,
Speaker 2: and then you get it and you go, oh, this
Speaker 2: is like nothing, right, this is this didn't change what
Speaker 2: I thought it would change. It didn't transform me in
Speaker 2: the way that I thought it transformed me. I feel
Speaker 2: lucky that I'd done a bunch of those things before
Speaker 2: I had kids, because then I'd already I was already
Speaker 2: wrestling with the not the emptiness, but I was wrestling
Speaker 2: with the inescapable conclusion that piling accomplishments on top of
Speaker 2: accomplishments is not the way that one finds meaning in
Speaker 2: their life or their existence.
Speaker 3: What do you think it does do? Then? Like, what
Speaker 3: does it do in any goal? And of course some
Speaker 3: goals are have a different scale to others. But the
Speaker 3: idea of becoming a best selling author, or someone who's
Speaker 3: listening saying I want to launch a big podcast, or
Speaker 3: someone saying I want the way I look at it
Speaker 3: is And I remember going on a really long walk
Speaker 3: with you once, like through New York, before I'd ever
Speaker 3: written a book or anything, and it was around the
Speaker 3: time when I first interviewed you. If someone honestly asked
Speaker 3: me when I was doing this type of work offline,
Speaker 3: I actually A never believed it would be big, and
Speaker 3: B was not trying to make it big. So if
Speaker 3: someone would have asked me when I was whether I
Speaker 3: was eighteen or whether I was twenty five, and said
Speaker 3: to me, Jay, what's your goal here, my honest answer
Speaker 3: would have been, I'm just trying to make ancient wisdom
Speaker 3: relevant because I get joy out of that act in
Speaker 3: and of itself, Like the act of studying, researching, and
Speaker 3: simplifying brings me joy, sure, And I love teaching and
Speaker 3: sharing and sharing those ideas with people and hearing what
Speaker 3: they have to say about it. And so I was
Speaker 3: doing that for five to ten people every week, for
Speaker 3: hours every day. I was already happy. Now my life
Speaker 3: changed when scale became possible, when a video by mistake
Speaker 3: went viral, like it wasn't that I thought it would
Speaker 3: go viral or whatever, and then life has changed. But
Speaker 3: so partly my answer to that question, or my reflection
Speaker 3: to the question I'm asking you, is I don't think
Speaker 3: you should ever start something wanting it to be big.
Speaker 3: In the first place. But what what does having a
Speaker 3: goal achieve and what type of goal should we set? Well?
Speaker 2: Lets Stokes talk about attaching your goals only to things
Speaker 2: that are in your control. So if your ambition is
Speaker 2: to be accepted by a certain group, to move a
Speaker 2: certain number of units, to make a certain amount of money,
Speaker 2: to be invited to certain club, you know, if things
Speaker 2: line up, great, but there's also a very significant chance
Speaker 2: that they won't line up. And so the idea is
Speaker 2: that you tie your ambition, your intention, your your motivation
Speaker 2: to the parts of it that are up to you.
Speaker 2: I really like doing it. I get better. Like one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I wrote the Daily Stoke and the
Speaker 2: Daily Dad is that I have become better as a
Speaker 2: person for the meditative practice of having to produce this
Speaker 2: thing on a daily basis. So if it also then
Speaker 2: goes on to be successful, then I get this sort
Speaker 2: of this bonus success of the rewards or the royalties
Speaker 2: or whatever. So it's I think you want to root
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do as much as possible in
Speaker 2: what is up to you. If you only enter competitions
Speaker 2: where winning is up to you, you always be a winner, right,
Speaker 2: And so if you if your goal is to beat
Speaker 2: this other person, right, to be more than this other
Speaker 2: person's other type of person. I remember I talked to
Speaker 2: this author one and he was working on this book
Speaker 2: and he said, I said, what's your goal? And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to sell like two million copies? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: where'd that number came from? And he's like, well, I
Speaker 2: heard somebody had sold a million copies and I doubled it.
Speaker 2: And so the arbitrariness of just wanting to one up
Speaker 2: some other person, it's not only sort of empty and trivial,
Speaker 2: but like, it's not really rooted in anything that's up
Speaker 2: to you, right, And I think the best way to
Speaker 2: think about it is, is this thing up to me
Speaker 2: or not? And what I have found is that when
Speaker 2: you accomplish those things, it's great, but it doesn't fix
Speaker 2: whatever you thought it was trying to fix. It doesn't
Speaker 2: fill whatever you thought it was trying to fill. I
Speaker 2: wish I could give to everyone that understanding as early
Speaker 2: as possible. I do think it's probably something you have
Speaker 2: to experience at some level on your own, but ideally
Speaker 2: you experience it not on your fifth Super Bowl ring
Speaker 2: and you go, oh, it's never you know ideally that
Speaker 2: that comes as early as possible in the process. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that once you figure out you stop doing it,
Speaker 2: you do stop. You can keep doing it, but you've
Speaker 2: just you've broken the connection between like your sense of
Speaker 2: self and these external things that are not up to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that resonates. I feel like for me, growing
Speaker 3: and learning are just such integral components of being alive
Speaker 3: and feeling like there's progress and there's momentum that I
Speaker 3: try and pick goals that I'm challenged by the growth
Speaker 3: I'll have to make. I set goals based on the
Speaker 3: growth I want, not based on the goal. So for example,
Speaker 3: I just finished a nearly forty city world tour. It
Speaker 3: wasn't that I wanted to go on a world tour.
Speaker 3: To go on a world tour, It was like I
Speaker 3: wanted the feeling of can I have I built up
Speaker 3: my health and resilience. Can I go on stage every
Speaker 3: night and deliver? What does it feel like to pour
Speaker 3: love into the people who support my work. I've been
Speaker 3: doing this for seven years online. Yeah, I've pretty much
Speaker 3: never met more than one percent of my audience. If that,
Speaker 3: What does it feel like to build community again? For people,
Speaker 3: and that's the stuff that gets you through it when
Speaker 3: it's tough, because the title or the whatever the external
Speaker 3: reward would be doesn't motivate you. When I fell sick
Speaker 3: in one city and I had to cancel a show
Speaker 3: that night and the next day I had to wake up,
Speaker 3: get on a flight and do two shows back to
Speaker 3: back that day, And the only thing that gets you
Speaker 3: through is I want to do this for my community.
Speaker 3: This means something to me, Like there's this amazing thing
Speaker 3: that I always think about because it blows my mind.
Speaker 3: When Kobe Bryant passed away, his wife Vanessa was giving
Speaker 3: a speech and she said that he was always playing
Speaker 3: through injuries and everyone knew that, but no one really
Speaker 3: knew the reason. And she asked him in a private conversation,
Speaker 3: I believe one night, like why do you do it?
Speaker 3: And he said, it's because someone is saved up to
Speaker 3: watch me play and they might only ever be able
Speaker 3: to afford one time to watch me play, sure, and
Speaker 3: I don't want to let them down. And that's how
Speaker 3: he played through injury. It wasn't that he wanted the
Speaker 3: championship more, or that he wanted the ring more. It
Speaker 3: was that I want to be there for my fans
Speaker 3: who are showing up for me.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: I want to hear your thoughts on the Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean you have.
Speaker 2: You have my book Conspiracy right there, which I saw
Speaker 2: when I came in. And that's my worst selling book.
Speaker 1: It is not that it has.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's not sold well, but it's it's
Speaker 2: the one that, without questions, people ask me what book
Speaker 2: I'm most proud of.
Speaker 1: It's that one.
Speaker 2: And and that's because I grew the most writing. It
Speaker 2: was the most outside my wheelhouse. It was the most challenging.
Speaker 2: It was the one I had the most doubts as
Speaker 2: to whether I could pull off. And it's the one
Speaker 2: that sort of most authentically the interesting to me.
Speaker 1: While I was doing it.
Speaker 2: You love all the projects that you do, but that
Speaker 2: one was just different, you know it was.
Speaker 1: It was just different in so many ways. If you
Speaker 1: can find a way.
Speaker 2: When when the Stokes are saying, if you only enter
Speaker 2: things that we're winning, is up to you, you always win.
Speaker 2: What they're saying is that if it's intrinsically interesting and
Speaker 2: compelling and challenging to you, you're doing it because you
Speaker 2: like the puzzle of it, then you've already won, and
Speaker 2: then everything else is extra. And you know, for basketball,
Speaker 2: if you like playing basketball, and there's a reason it's
Speaker 2: called playing right, if you like the thing, then then
Speaker 2: all the other stuff is extra. But if for you,
Speaker 2: winning is what gets you up out of it, well,
Speaker 2: then what happens if you're drafted by a team that's
Speaker 2: not any good, or what if you are crippled with
Speaker 2: injuries or you know any number of things? Right, winning
Speaker 2: is not up to you enjoying the day to day
Speaker 2: thiss of it, the lacing up of the sneakers, the
Speaker 2: squeaking of the shoes on the floor, the balancing of
Speaker 2: the ball, like the warm ups, you know, the crew.
Speaker 2: If you love all of that, then everything else is extra.
Speaker 2: And you got to figure out how to love like
Speaker 2: the purity of the thing itself and find something in
Speaker 2: it that is fulfilling and wonderful just to you before
Speaker 2: it's ever out. That's the purest place, and I've had
Speaker 2: to do work on that. I've said this before, but
Speaker 2: like probably with my first book, I was probably like
Speaker 2: ninety percent interested in how it did and ten percent
Speaker 2: like proud of what I've done. And I'd like to
Speaker 2: think I've gotten that flipped. I mean, if you don't
Speaker 2: care about it at all, like you're not going to
Speaker 2: keep doing them, and you have partners, and you know,
Speaker 2: you have employees, you have all these things that are
Speaker 2: dependent on it doing well. But ideally, most of the
Speaker 2: success is off the table just from having done it,
Speaker 2: because what if it comes out on the day of
Speaker 2: a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or a printer shortage, Like,
Speaker 2: there's so many things that could happen that could get
Speaker 2: between you and the thing that you wanted. But if
Speaker 2: you enjoyed doing it, then then you've picked all the
Speaker 2: fruit that's up to you to pick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. You reminded me of a statement by George
Speaker 3: Bernard Sure where he said, we don't stop playing because
Speaker 3: we get old. We get old because we stop playing.
Speaker 3: And it's that idea of just you're so right, Like
Speaker 3: I feel out of touch with myself when I'm not
Speaker 3: reading and learning and reflecting, Like that's when I feel misaligned.
Speaker 3: If my life gets too far away from finding new ideas,
Speaker 3: experimenting with them, discovering them, trying to understand them and
Speaker 3: wrap my head around them. If I'm not filling my
Speaker 3: brain up with not just ideas theoretically, but even physically
Speaker 3: trying something new, experimenting with something I've never done before,
Speaker 3: I find that's when I'm misaligned with who I am.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, look, success in your chosen field cannot be
Speaker 1: not having time to do what you like to do
Speaker 1: in said field, right, Like if I don't have time
Speaker 1: to read, if I don't have time to write, if
Speaker 1: I'm not on my routine, on my schedule, what kind
Speaker 1: of success is that I've mortgaged myself for a bunch
Speaker 1: of things that I don't want to do. You know,
Speaker 1: those things might be lucrative, those things might be fun,
Speaker 1: those things.
Speaker 2: Might be rewarding in their own ways, But the main
Speaker 2: thing is like what got you into this?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And if you don't have the time to do that,
Speaker 2: what kind of success is that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It can be very easy to just say yes to
Speaker 2: all the things that are coming in and then you
Speaker 2: wake up and you go it has been weeks since
Speaker 2: I did X, Y or Z, like the things that
Speaker 2: light me up?
Speaker 1: Like what is the things that light you up?
Speaker 2: And success should facilitate you being able to do as
Speaker 2: much of those things as you want to do. Are
Speaker 2: there always going to be administrative things and obligations and
Speaker 2: business of course, but if you don't have time to
Speaker 2: do the thing only you can do, Like, what kind
Speaker 2: of life is that?
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Speaker 3: I know we both feel grateful and have charted our
Speaker 3: own in some way. Similar parts from moving from a
Speaker 3: corporate career to doing what we love today, and I
Speaker 3: know we both feel very grateful to be able to
Speaker 3: do that, But I want to go back to when
Speaker 3: you were there, and even when I was there, I
Speaker 3: think about what really worked for me was so I
Speaker 3: was at extensia, if anyone who doesn't know, I was
Speaker 3: at accentua after I left the monastery because I needed
Speaker 3: to find a way to pay the bills and just
Speaker 3: reconnect with the real world and figure out how I
Speaker 3: fit in again. And the corporate world was what I
Speaker 3: would have naturally done before, so it was where I
Speaker 3: ended up, and I didn't enjoy being a consultant, like
Speaker 3: that is not who I am in any way. But
Speaker 3: at that time I didn't know what was possible, but
Speaker 3: I knew that I could demonstrate my own skills at work.
Speaker 3: So I started to plan these idea days at work
Speaker 3: because that was something that work wanted, where I would
Speaker 3: get to bring in speakers, is to help people be
Speaker 3: more curious and excited. And I remember we had Sali Mishmel,
Speaker 3: who wrote Exponential Organizations, come in one day and my
Speaker 3: mind was blown because I was like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: hang out with this guy, and there's another person who
Speaker 3: was a writer and a speaker. And so I was
Speaker 3: always trying to find ways it work to kind of
Speaker 3: dovetail my career to get me into the things I
Speaker 3: was interested by, and that worked for me as a
Speaker 3: way of satisfying me at work, even though the actual
Speaker 3: job day to day wasn't How were you doing that?
Speaker 3: I know you enjoyed marketing and always have, but what
Speaker 3: would you say to someone who's sitting here going, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you guys are lucky. You get to do what you
Speaker 3: love every day. Obviously, you just have to get the
Speaker 3: percentages right. But I'm stuck in a job that hey.
Speaker 2: Well it's funny. We did have very similar past I remember.
Speaker 2: So I don't believe in this idea that you have
Speaker 2: to like quit your job, blow up your life to
Speaker 2: pursue some sort of thing. I wrote three books why
Speaker 2: I was a full time employee at a large fashion brand,
Speaker 2: and if you are good at what you do, you
Speaker 2: can get leverage at that company to pursue these other things.
Speaker 1: But I remember this.
Speaker 2: Would have been like the summer of twenty fourteen. So
Speaker 2: I'd written a couple of books and I had I've
Speaker 2: gone back to American Apparel, where I was sort of
Speaker 2: consulting in the turnaround of the company. I was getting
Speaker 2: this huge consultant fee. I was making great money. And
Speaker 2: I remember I was running in the morning and I
Speaker 2: got this like alert on my phone that I had
Speaker 2: a meeting, like I had a staff meeting, and I
Speaker 2: something hit me.
Speaker 1: It hit me.
Speaker 2: It was like how many people would kill to write
Speaker 2: books for a living, which is what I wanted to
Speaker 2: do more than anything, And here I am rushing to
Speaker 2: get to a staff meeting because it's paying well, Like
Speaker 2: this life is too short to be cutting short the
Speaker 2: things that you want to do that help you be
Speaker 2: better at what you do, you know, to go to
Speaker 2: some meeting, and so at some point you make the transition.
Speaker 2: But for me, the idea was as long as my
Speaker 2: sort of corporate work was supporting and facilityating me doing
Speaker 2: the other stuff, it was great. And then as soon
Speaker 2: as they were fighting for the same resources that I
Speaker 2: made that shift. But I think some people think that
Speaker 2: it's it's about this sort of bold burn the boats.
Speaker 1: Behind you think, And it can be. I mean, at
Speaker 1: some point you do have to do that.
Speaker 2: But I talk to people and they're like they're quitting
Speaker 2: their job to write a book, but they haven't published
Speaker 2: a single thing online. They haven't uploaded a single video,
Speaker 2: you know, And just start, just start. You can start
Speaker 2: way smaller than you think. And the first thing that
Speaker 2: you put out there in the world should not be
Speaker 2: a screenplay or a book or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like you need.
Speaker 2: You need so much interaction with the audience to find
Speaker 2: out what they like, what you like, what resonates what
Speaker 2: you know. I wrote online every day for something like
Speaker 2: six years before I got paid a single dollar. I
Speaker 2: started my first website in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, and my first book came out in the
Speaker 2: summer of twenty twelve. You know, I didn't hit the
Speaker 2: New York Times but for another five years after that.
Speaker 2: It takes a long time. There's a great law, it's
Speaker 2: called Hofstatters law, and it says that it always takes
Speaker 2: longer than you expect. Even when you take this law
Speaker 2: into account, right like, it's it's gonna take way longer
Speaker 2: than you thought. And so if you quit in this
Speaker 2: sort of dramatic gesture, you know you're not You're not
Speaker 2: gonna have the runway to.
Speaker 1: Pull it off. Right.
Speaker 2: You need like a lot of runway, a lot of time,
Speaker 2: and so that that was certainly my path, is it?
Speaker 1: It took a lot longer than I thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you raised that, and I
Speaker 3: love that tracking back of your journey just now. And
Speaker 3: that law is awesome because it's it's so true when
Speaker 3: it comes to anything in life. And for me, I
Speaker 3: always say that to people because obviously I've been creating
Speaker 3: online work for seven years now, and that feels like
Speaker 3: a very short period of time for most people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I'm like, no, Well, for ten years before these
Speaker 3: seven years, I did this multiple times a week offline
Speaker 3: to groups of five to ten people for three hours,
Speaker 3: four times a week, three times a week, spending time
Speaker 3: with people, coaching, mentoring, working for no money, for no followers,
Speaker 3: for no fame, no success. And then on top of that,
Speaker 3: did seven years of public speaking training before that, which
Speaker 3: my parents forced me to go to after the event
Speaker 3: that I told you about at the beginning, from age
Speaker 3: eleven to age eighteen. So my public speaking communication journey
Speaker 3: started at eleven. I'm thirty five today. That's twenty four
Speaker 3: years of repetition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need a lot of reps. You need way
Speaker 2: more reps than you think that you do. And the
Speaker 2: amazing thing about what social media and internet does is
Speaker 2: that you can reach millions of people with your work.
Speaker 2: The nefarious thing about it is we hear about someone
Speaker 2: who uploads their first thing and blows up, and we
Speaker 2: think that that's how it goes, right, and it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It takes a long time, And I think what you're
Speaker 2: trying to do is build. You know what a flywheel
Speaker 2: is like, you're trying to You're trying to build this thing.
Speaker 2: It takes a long a large number of slow, methodical
Speaker 2: turns before it speeds up and speeds up and speeds
Speaker 2: up and then it starts to really spin and spin
Speaker 2: stuff off. It takes like a long a long time.
Speaker 2: You know, when the obstacle is the way it came out.
Speaker 2: It probably sold three thousand copies its first week. You know,
Speaker 2: it's now sold millions of copies, But that's where it started, right.
Speaker 1: And it took a long time.
Speaker 2: And so when people look at this sort of algorithmic
Speaker 2: success where they just upload a video and there's millions
Speaker 2: and millions of views, they think that that's how it's
Speaker 2: going to go. And really it's about sort of methodically
Speaker 2: building this audience person by person and also building your
Speaker 2: competence like rep by rep, you know, moment by moment,
Speaker 2: so then when you you suddenly do get the audience,
Speaker 2: you're actually ready for it. Like if I had gotten
Speaker 2: the audience that I thought I wanted or deserved when
Speaker 2: I wanted.
Speaker 1: It, it would have been it would have been preposterous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember, I was actually just thinking about this
Speaker 2: because I was just doing the marketing for Daily Dad
Speaker 2: and I was in New York and I did the
Speaker 2: Daily Show and I did CBS Sunday Morning, and I
Speaker 2: did some I did a bunch of shows, and I
Speaker 2: remember thinking back when my first book came out in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, the publicists had me put together a list
Speaker 2: of all of these outlets that I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: and I don't think we got any of them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's not that they did a bad job. It's just
Speaker 2: like we didn't get any of the things as I
Speaker 2: wasn't ready and the media didn't care. And then I realized,
Speaker 2: like on this launch, I did get those things, but
Speaker 2: it took more than ten years longer than I thought
Speaker 2: it would take, right, And now I'm getting it. But
Speaker 2: if I had gotten them, then I wouldn't have been ready.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been able to actually deliver, you know,
Speaker 2: on those at bats. And so you think you want
Speaker 2: it when you want it, but you don't, you know.
Speaker 1: I heard something.
Speaker 2: About the early days of Google where they were like,
Speaker 2: eventually everyone's going to try our product, but if they
Speaker 2: all try it now, we won't be able to deliver
Speaker 2: for them. They knew that, they knew it was getting
Speaker 2: better every day. So actually, from a marketing and a
Speaker 2: promotions and a sort of trajectory standpoint, they wanted to
Speaker 2: backload it as much as possible, not frontloaded, and that
Speaker 2: can be really hard. That requires so much discipline and
Speaker 2: so much patience to go. Actually, I don't want this
Speaker 2: right now. I want it when I'm ready. I want
Speaker 2: it when I'm good enough. You think you're being screwed,
Speaker 2: You think you know other people are getting the shots
Speaker 2: that you deserve, But it's actually for the best because
Speaker 2: you're getting better every single day. Yeah, And so I
Speaker 2: think about that of course with having kids too, Like
Speaker 2: if I'd have kids when I earlier, I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been emotionally ready, you know.
Speaker 1: Like, so it's it's patience is all.
Speaker 3: That's the hard pop about patience, right, because I think
Speaker 3: there's those two sides of the coin, where one's like,
Speaker 3: I believe I deserve it, which we hear a lot
Speaker 3: about and I want to dive into that with you,
Speaker 3: and then the other side of it is the mentality
Speaker 3: of well, no, I'm going to be patient and I'll
Speaker 3: be better when I get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's almost like, how does someone reconcile those two
Speaker 3: things because everyone's told to like believe in themselves and
Speaker 3: like know you're worth and kind of do this thing.
Speaker 3: And I'm more along the lines of you because so
Speaker 3: many things for me happened far more organically than by belief,
Speaker 3: and they happened far more by action than they did
Speaker 3: by thinking something. For me, it was, well, you're saying,
Speaker 3: like when you first came on my show at huff Post,
Speaker 3: It's like I went from having I was live every
Speaker 3: single day with the guests for nine months, five days
Speaker 3: a week, and then I did the Nasdaq thing where
Speaker 3: I was live when I was connected to great authors
Speaker 3: like yourself and other people that I could have on.
Speaker 3: So I before I launched my podcast in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: i'd done at least like two years of being live
Speaker 3: every day and no one like that show wasn't big
Speaker 3: or you know, it was good. It was good, definitely,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't what the podcast is today. And it
Speaker 3: was just like, but I got two years of reps
Speaker 3: of doing interviews.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was telling you, like the caliber of
Speaker 2: guests that you've been pulling on have been insane, right,
Speaker 2: Like you been getting people that don't do podcasts, right,
Speaker 2: And so I'm sure some of them you have tried
Speaker 2: to get on for a while and you would have
Speaker 2: been very excited to get them in twenty nineteen or
Speaker 2: twenty twenty or six months ago. But you're better now, right.
Speaker 2: So you think that you want it when you want it,
Speaker 2: but it's better to get it later because you'll be
Speaker 2: better later, right. And the patience and the confidence to
Speaker 2: be like I don't have to force it. There's that
Speaker 2: expression like don't run to catch trains. You know, It's
Speaker 2: like there's something in that like if you don't need
Speaker 2: to force it, if it's not a fit, it'll come
Speaker 2: back around, right. And the idea that I sometimes think
Speaker 2: that everything I've written so far, everything I've thought about,
Speaker 2: is actually all prologue or preparation for an idea or
Speaker 2: an idea in a moment in time that I can't
Speaker 2: even conceive of yet. Like, you know, Michael Lewis the author,
Speaker 2: Like he'd probably written fifteen books before the Big Short
Speaker 2: came out right when the markets melded down in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. He had written dozens of popular books
Speaker 2: about finance, about sports, about you know, tech entrepreneurs, and
Speaker 2: then that moment happened and he was the person to
Speaker 2: write that book, which sold millions of copies, was turned
Speaker 2: into a huge movie. That was when the man and
Speaker 2: the moment met, right, And I think Churchill said something about, like,
Speaker 2: you know, there comes this time in everyone's life where
Speaker 2: you know, destiny taps you on the shoulder and he says,
Speaker 2: it would be a shame if you weren't ready when
Speaker 2: that happened. And so you know, everyone thinks they're ready
Speaker 2: and they want it now, but you actually you don't
Speaker 2: know what the future holds. And so just this sense
Speaker 2: that like every day I get a little bit better.
Speaker 2: I work on it all the time. I'm putting in
Speaker 2: my reps, I'm following my process. I'm you know, putting
Speaker 2: in the hours and I have this maybe it's a
Speaker 2: little delusional, but I just have this vague sense that
Speaker 2: there's a thing that I haven't even thought of yet
Speaker 2: and that will be the best thing that I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that kind of keeps me going.
Speaker 3: What a beautiful way to live. That's spectacular. And at
Speaker 3: one point I remember sitting with someone and he wasn't
Speaker 3: trying to teach me. He wasn't a mentor. He was
Speaker 3: just I was sitting with him at a wedding and
Speaker 3: he was just telling stories of his life. And he
Speaker 3: did quite a fascinating life because of something that his
Speaker 3: dad did. And he used to just as a kid,
Speaker 3: be following to the daily dad, like following his dad around,
Speaker 3: and he was taken on crazy adventures and experiences as
Speaker 3: a little kid just because his dad had a crazy job.
Speaker 3: I used to listen to him and be like, Wow,
Speaker 3: this guy just has so many stories. They're not achievements.
Speaker 3: They're not like I got an award or it wasn't
Speaker 3: like oh and then I became invited. It was just
Speaker 3: he had a great set of stories he was sharing.
Speaker 3: And I realized that at one point I realized that
Speaker 3: collecting experiences, collecting skills collecting abilities qualities was so much
Speaker 3: more of a better pursuit. And I look at that
Speaker 3: what you just said for me today, it's like I
Speaker 3: chose to be a monk without knowing what it was
Speaker 3: before that. I went to public speaking school because my
Speaker 3: parents forced me to go, not knowing that. I never said, oh,
Speaker 3: I really want to be a public speaker at eleven
Speaker 3: years old. And then I went into the world of
Speaker 3: accenture and learned about business and strategy, which was very,
Speaker 3: very useful. And like today, I put all those three
Speaker 3: things together. Sure, and my career is based off all
Speaker 3: three of those experiences. But I could never have known that.
Speaker 3: And it goes back to that famous Steve Job statement
Speaker 3: of you can always connect the dots. You can't connect
Speaker 3: the dots moving forward. You only can looking backward. And
Speaker 3: so when you're living, it's almost like collect experiences and
Speaker 3: skills and abilities and relationships. When I was interviewing all
Speaker 3: those years ago, I would never have known that we
Speaker 3: would still be friends and we would connect and support
Speaker 3: each other. You've supported my books, but you're just collecting
Speaker 3: that connection and relationship, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my men towards the writer Robert Green, He said,
Speaker 2: one of the great things about being a writer is
Speaker 2: that it's all material. That everything that happens to you
Speaker 2: is material. And so if you just go through your
Speaker 2: life going, hey, I don't know why I got dumped here,
Speaker 2: I don't know why my house flooded, I don't know
Speaker 2: why any of this stuff happened to me. But I'm
Speaker 2: going to choose it as I'm going to choose to
Speaker 2: see it as something that's happening for me as an artist,
Speaker 2: a leader, a parent, a spouse, that this is teaching
Speaker 2: me something. Right, when we say that the obstacle is
Speaker 2: the way, it's not that, hey, this thing happened and
Speaker 2: now as a result, your business is ten x better off. Right,
Speaker 2: Like it, sometimes just shit happens, bad shit happens, but
Speaker 2: you learned from it, or it forced you to grow
Speaker 2: in some way. Just the sheer hanging onness of it
Speaker 2: made you stronger and better. Right, It's not that, hey,
Speaker 2: there's this magical you know, opportunity in this that there's
Speaker 2: this just slightly secret silver lining and then everything's awesome. No,
Speaker 2: it's it's much deeper than that. Yeah, it's that the
Speaker 2: stuff that happens is shaping you. And forming you and
Speaker 2: giving you opportunities to you know, evolve as a human being.
Speaker 1: That's that's what that idea is.
Speaker 2: And so you know, there are things that I've gone
Speaker 2: through my life that end up shaping my writing for
Speaker 2: things that I don't even know. I didn't know until
Speaker 2: I sat down that day that that would come back out, right,
Speaker 2: And so it's just this, Yeah, it's this process of
Speaker 2: accumulating experiences, accumulating insights, accumulating you know, things that you've read,
Speaker 2: and then it all funnels ultimately into the work.
Speaker 3: And what a great way to live knowing that your
Speaker 3: best work is still ahead of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope. So, I mean maybe not right, maybe not.
Speaker 1: I believe it.
Speaker 3: I believe it for you, I believe for me. I
Speaker 3: think that's a great way to live and think. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean your best work doesn't have to be a
Speaker 3: most successful work, of course, that's what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I'm just saying That's that's how I get
Speaker 2: up every day, is that I think, hey, there is
Speaker 2: this thing in the future. Maybe I won't be ready
Speaker 2: for it, maybe I won't be around, but I like
Speaker 2: to think that it's all built in towards something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, and I feel like when I look back
Speaker 3: at some stages in you know, the Vedic tradition and
Speaker 3: even in the Hindu tradition, there were these amazing people
Speaker 3: that excavated temples like old sites that historical things had
Speaker 3: happened at. Yeah, but no one really knew about it,
Speaker 3: so no one would really visit. But today, five hundred
Speaker 3: to one thousand years later, sure pilgrims visit these places.
Speaker 3: And they did that believing and knowing that one day
Speaker 3: this place will be of significance, but not maybe in
Speaker 3: my lifetime. And so they were able to fast forward
Speaker 3: their service in one sense, or their passion, knowing that
Speaker 3: one day this will serve others. One day this will
Speaker 3: mean something to people, even if it doesn't right now,
Speaker 3: even if it's seen as valueless right now.
Speaker 2: No, it's kind of beautiful to go through life and
Speaker 2: go like, hey, somebody planted this tree, so we built
Speaker 2: this road. Somebody created this institution. Somebody fought for a
Speaker 2: very specific way of setting it up or thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Somebody went to prison over this, right, somebody crossing like
Speaker 2: all of us are the lucky recipients of investments that
Speaker 2: people made a long time ago, and there's this Christian
Speaker 2: idea like you've been given a free gift, so you
Speaker 2: have to give freely yourself. And the idea that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we are the we in the present are living in
Speaker 2: a future that other people dreamed of, right, and so
Speaker 2: what is it that you are contributing to the next future?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What trees are you planting? What difference are you making?
Speaker 2: What work are you creating? And again like, yeah, you're
Speaker 2: writing this book and you hope it sells it now,
Speaker 2: but maybe it sells five hundred years from now. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's rediscovered then, like that we consume works of art
Speaker 2: that were totally obscure or unappreciated in their own time
Speaker 2: that we came back around to. And so the idea
Speaker 2: of owing the future something I think is a really
Speaker 2: beautiful idea. There's that quote like the world is great
Speaker 2: when old men plant trees in whose shade they'll never know?
Speaker 2: And what about you? Right, like, what what have you planted?
Speaker 2: What are you contributing? What are you giving away? Is
Speaker 2: a way to measure your own life?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, one of the chapters that step up from
Speaker 3: your book that I love is Cooled. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 3: to pick it up. Oh, yeah, raise a reader.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it stuck with me because I was a kid
Speaker 3: who never liked reading until fourteen, and now I consider
Speaker 3: myself a voracious reader. Absolutely, It's my favorite way of learning.
Speaker 3: And I realized it was because school always gave us
Speaker 3: fiction books, and so we'd get story books and a
Speaker 3: big one we'd get a lot of was Goosebumps. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then you'd read it Roll Dahl and you'd read
Speaker 3: you know, these incredible authors. But fiction just never resonated
Speaker 3: with me. And I remember it took my dad giving
Speaker 3: me like a biography or an autobiography that triggered it.
Speaker 3: And I remembered my first ever books that I got
Speaker 3: really into were David Beckham's autobiography Dwaine the Rock Johnson
Speaker 3: when he was a wrestlers but autobiography, and then the
Speaker 3: biography of like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And
Speaker 3: so it was really interesting to me how my parents
Speaker 3: wanted to raise a reader, but it took them a
Speaker 3: long time to understand what that meant. How are you
Speaker 3: raising readers and what does that mean to you? And
Speaker 3: why is that important?
Speaker 2: It is strange, I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: gets in the way of people falling in love with
Speaker 2: books is that there's kind of a snootiness in it,
Speaker 2: and there's this sense that there's literature, and then there's
Speaker 2: all these other books. It's weird that we tell high
Speaker 2: school that they should read these like sort of artistic
Speaker 2: novels and that this is what literature is, and then
Speaker 2: they go, well, I didn't like The Great Gatsby, which
Speaker 2: is an incredible book, or I didn't like Grapes of Wrath,
Speaker 2: so I'm not a reader. Meanwhile, there's all these books
Speaker 2: about what it's like to be a teenager. There's books,
Speaker 2: there's memoirs from athletes that there's all these awesome things
Speaker 2: that they would actually that would actually reach them and
Speaker 2: speak to them, that could sort of inculcate that that
Speaker 2: identity of being a reader. And so like with with
Speaker 2: my with my oldest son who's six, like, we don't
Speaker 2: read the books that I like that I think he
Speaker 2: would be into. We read books about Minecraft because he's
Speaker 2: obsessed with video games and like, to me, this is
Speaker 2: like barely a book, but you know, but to him
Speaker 2: it's it's a way to learn more about this thing
Speaker 2: that he's interested in, which is what reading is. And
Speaker 2: they've they've done this interesting study of kids reading. Like
Speaker 2: if you remember as a kid, you know you'd have
Speaker 2: to read some like essay or short story or whatever,
Speaker 2: and this is how they would test your reading comprehension. Well,
Speaker 2: they found that if they gave kids, say, a paragraph
Speaker 2: about baseball, they would read it much better than if
Speaker 2: they gave them some weird story about like some girl
Speaker 2: with a cookie or something. Right, And what they were
Speaker 2: finding is that when the kids knew what they were
Speaker 2: reading about or interested in it, they would it would
Speaker 2: resonate with them more. I just don't like the idea
Speaker 2: that we exclude people from this amazing, wonderful thing that
Speaker 2: is reading. You see this even in publishing, where like
Speaker 2: physical books are considered higher than audiobooks and ebooks. And
Speaker 2: I personally don't read audiobooks and I don't like reading ebooks.
Speaker 1: I'm a physical book person.
Speaker 2: But all I want is for people to read, right,
Speaker 2: like I want them to consume it in whatever medium
Speaker 2: they want to consume things. Yes, and so just meeting
Speaker 2: people where they are to me is the main way
Speaker 2: that you raise readers. And it's we just get in
Speaker 2: our own way on these things. Like I've read so
Speaker 2: many books even since I've gotten older.
Speaker 1: Like about where I grew up, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, why didn't anyone tell me, Like like Joan Didion
Speaker 2: is from the same town that I grew up in,
Speaker 2: and nobody told me that. Right, I had to read
Speaker 2: these other novels that didn't resonate with me. But if
Speaker 2: I this lady was from where I'm from, that would
Speaker 2: have resonated with me at such a deeper level, Right,
Speaker 2: And I try to think about what does the person
Speaker 2: want to learn? What do they have a problem with?
Speaker 2: How do we find a book that solves that problem?
Speaker 2: Because that's when the light bulb flips when a book
Speaker 2: solves a problem for you or there's an ROI to it, Right,
Speaker 2: that's what lights of And then maybe you'll go read
Speaker 2: something that's purely artistic, it doesn't have any of that,
Speaker 2: but you really got to find where the book does
Speaker 2: something for someone.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you brought that up because I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people ask me, like Jay, what should
Speaker 3: I read? Like? And my number one question to them
Speaker 3: is what are you struggling with? Like, that's the question
Speaker 3: I have to ask back, And I say I could
Speaker 3: recommend a lot of books, but what are you struggling with?
Speaker 3: Then I find that that's often where someone gets stumped,
Speaker 3: where that's not necessarily how they've been trained to look
Speaker 3: for reading. We've been trained to look for in terms
Speaker 3: of entertainment, which is great and I have nothing against that,
Speaker 3: or we've been trained to be like, oh, it's the
Speaker 3: smart thing to do, or like that's like you're saying
Speaker 3: this elitist mindset of if you're reading, then you're thoughtful,
Speaker 3: which I don't subscribe to at all, and so then
Speaker 3: you actually lose it. Like for me, we were growing
Speaker 3: as a team, my company was growing over the last
Speaker 3: couple of years. So literally all I've read is hiring books,
Speaker 3: culture books, leadership books. That's all I've been reading. And
Speaker 3: it has been the best investment and it has solved
Speaker 3: so many problems and it has solved so many challenges
Speaker 3: or mindsets I didn't have, And I think that's such
Speaker 3: I just want to highlight that point because I feel
Speaker 3: the same way that if you're struggling to know what
Speaker 3: to read, look at what your challenge is, look at
Speaker 3: what your struggle is, look at what problem you're trying
Speaker 3: to solve, and you'll naturally be more inclined and immersed.
Speaker 2: It's important to realize that pretty much anything you're going through,
Speaker 2: someone has gone through before and written a book about.
Speaker 2: Maybe they succeeded and they wrote a book about their successes,
Speaker 2: or they failed and they wrote a book about their failures. Right,
Speaker 2: there are almost no new human problems. People have been
Speaker 2: doing whatever it is that we're doing for thousands of years,
Speaker 2: and to not avail yourself of that knowledge is insane.
Speaker 2: General Maddis was a four star general in the Marines
Speaker 2: who Secretary of Defense sort of this he's known as
Speaker 2: this kind of warrior monk because he's not just this
Speaker 2: war fighter, but he's also this deeply thoughtful sort of
Speaker 2: student of his craft. And he pointed out he points
Speaker 2: this out to like the young soldiers. He says, like, hey,
Speaker 2: people have been fighting on battlefields for as long as
Speaker 2: humans have existed, and the earliest literature is about this, right,
Speaker 2: you know, whether we're talking about Homer or Gilgamesh. You know,
Speaker 2: the idea that you would not avail yourself of the
Speaker 2: lessons they've learned. And he's like it's insane, you know.
Speaker 2: He's like, the mistakes you're making cost people things, and
Speaker 2: so to make a mistake by trial and error that
Speaker 2: someone else has already gone through is reckless and irresponsible.
Speaker 2: And he has this great quote I think about all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: He says.
Speaker 2: He says, if you haven't read hundreds of books about
Speaker 2: like what it is that you do, he.
Speaker 1: Said, you're functionally illiterate.
Speaker 2: Right, illiterate not in the sense that you can't read,
Speaker 2: but a literate in the sense that you haven't read.
Speaker 2: And it's the same thing, right, if you haven't read it,
Speaker 2: you don't know about it, and the fact that you
Speaker 2: could is irrelevant. What matters is have you read about this?
Speaker 2: And so just realizing that whether it's parenting or starting
Speaker 2: a business or you know, being successful or creating social change,
Speaker 2: like people have been through this a long time and
Speaker 2: they have really thoughtful things to say about it. And
Speaker 2: to not avail yourself to that knowledge just go I'll
Speaker 2: figure it out on my own is not only inefficient,
Speaker 2: but it's irresponsible, right, Like you could have succeeded earlier,
Speaker 2: You could have had the impact earlier, You could have
Speaker 2: saved yourself going down this road or that road, but
Speaker 2: you didn't because you thought you were too smart.
Speaker 1: Epicity.
Speaker 2: This is you know, it's impossible to learn that which
Speaker 2: you think you already know. And so part of reading
Speaker 2: is also the idea of humility, the idea of like
Speaker 2: I don't know about this. I want to know about this.
Speaker 2: Somebody knows more about me, more about this than me.
Speaker 2: That's the mindset of a reader that you want to cultivate.
Speaker 2: And we think about this with our kids, like they'll
Speaker 2: ask us questions and we'll like kind of know the answer,
Speaker 2: and we'll start to answer, and then we stop ourselves
Speaker 2: and we go, no, let's go find out about this together, Like,
Speaker 2: let's look this up.
Speaker 1: Like there's this magical thing called Google.
Speaker 2: We can look it up, right, we can read a
Speaker 2: Wikipedia page about it, we can buy a book about it.
Speaker 2: I want to teach them the habit of I'm curious
Speaker 2: about that. I want to go down the rabbit hole
Speaker 2: and figure it out. Just guessing or.
Speaker 1: You know, half ass in.
Speaker 2: It is not is not the mindset that makes you
Speaker 2: So you want to be the person that figures stuff.
Speaker 1: Out and is good.
Speaker 2: It has the tools and the determination to figure stuff out.
Speaker 2: That's what you want your kids to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and are your kids at school now, yes? Yeah,
Speaker 3: So how are you and they're going to a like
Speaker 3: a regular national curriculum, like they're learning, they're learning the
Speaker 3: curriculum that they're teaching the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like with that kind of like how are
Speaker 3: you I guess I find that as parents, it's natural
Speaker 3: to want to save our kids from the mistakes we
Speaker 3: made or protect them from the wrong turns we took.
Speaker 3: I would love to hear your philosophy or your thoughts
Speaker 3: or your approach right now, especially with the Daily Dad,
Speaker 3: on how are you doing that or are you trying
Speaker 3: to limit your projection and onto them, like how do
Speaker 3: you deal with them as fresh humans? But then also
Speaker 3: your thoughts around the world and how school works, and
Speaker 3: how do you navigate the fact that you can always
Speaker 3: think you know what's right for your kids, but most
Speaker 3: of what you think is what is right for them
Speaker 3: is based on what you think was wrong for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I mean I heard an interview with Brian
Speaker 2: Grasier Wants, the movie producer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's been on the pod.
Speaker 2: He's dyslexic, right, and that dyslexia shaped him and formed
Speaker 2: him into being this brilliant creative uh you know, sort
Speaker 2: of producer and cultivator of talent, and so someone asked like, well,
Speaker 2: would you want your kids to go through it was
Speaker 2: so formative in shaping and he was like, are you
Speaker 2: out of your mind? So there is this sense that
Speaker 2: the struggles we went through, if we can spare our
Speaker 2: kids them, that's great. And then at the same time
Speaker 2: we also understand that if you spare your kids all
Speaker 2: trouble and all difficulty, they've become very fragile. And so
Speaker 2: it's this kind of tension between you know, I sort
Speaker 2: of like, if you want your kid's life to be
Speaker 2: good but not easy, right, like so where you can
Speaker 2: prevent needless suffering or struggle or pain you want to,
Speaker 2: and then at the same time, if you do everything
Speaker 2: for them, you're actually making life so much harder for them.
Speaker 2: So that's why I like this idea of like, hey,
Speaker 2: if they think that they can just come to me
Speaker 2: for all answers, they're not developing.
Speaker 1: The ability to figure stuff out for themselves.
Speaker 2: So what I want to do is model like I
Speaker 2: may already know the answer, I may already think I
Speaker 2: know the answer, but I want to figure it out
Speaker 2: with them together.
Speaker 1: That's what we want to do.
Speaker 2: And I sort of think about that as a general
Speaker 2: parent in philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like what you're saying. That big said thing.
Speaker 3: It applies in coaching, it applies in mentorship, it applies
Speaker 3: in a relationship. Like doing things for other people often
Speaker 3: feels like love. Yeah, but actually it isn't love because
Speaker 3: it deabilitates them from learning how to do it, and therefore,
Speaker 3: do things with people is better than doing things for people.
Speaker 3: I if you were to be like, I don't know
Speaker 3: how far the moon is from planet Earth, and you
Speaker 3: went and checked it on your phone and then just
Speaker 3: told your kid the answer is different to saying, hey,
Speaker 3: let's both sit down on Google and let's look at
Speaker 3: the moon, and then let's look at Jupiter and Saturn
Speaker 3: and let's look at the entire you know, solar system,
Speaker 3: and right, that's what I'm totally Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to show them how to figure it
Speaker 2: out for themselves. You want to equip them with the
Speaker 2: tools to do it, because you're not always going to
Speaker 2: be there to do it for them, like they there's
Speaker 2: there's helicopter parenting. People know about that, and there's this also,
Speaker 2: this one they talk about. It's called snowplow parenting, and
Speaker 2: snowplow parenting is going ahead of your kid and clearing
Speaker 2: all obstacles and difficulties out of their path, which again
Speaker 2: feels like a form of love, and yet it's also
Speaker 2: quite cruel because eventually you won't be there and they
Speaker 2: will have to experience those obstacles and if they haven't
Speaker 2: built the skills or the strength, or the confidence, the
Speaker 2: sense of self. It says, I'm a person that knows
Speaker 2: how to solve problems, they're going to be in serious trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that must be so hard. I'm not a parent,
Speaker 3: so that must be so hard because when you see
Speaker 3: this innocent, adorable kid and they're going through some pain
Speaker 3: or challenge in it, and you want to give them
Speaker 3: the skills of how to solve their own problems, which
Speaker 3: I do believe is probably, if we had to debate out,
Speaker 3: it's probably the most useful skill of all time, is
Speaker 3: how do you solve any problem?
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking about this recently.
Speaker 2: There's this singer Morgan Wade, and she has this new
Speaker 2: song and there's a lyric in it. She says something like,
Speaker 2: all of your dreams are a parent's fears, and if
Speaker 2: you think about your own life right, all of the
Speaker 2: things that are good in your life came from risks
Speaker 2: that you took. For me, it was dropping out of college.
Speaker 2: You know, my wife and I, you know, we got
Speaker 2: together super early, we moved in. We did things that
Speaker 2: in retrospect we're crazy and people probably thought were bad ideas.
Speaker 1: I made career decisions that were crazy.
Speaker 2: I did all these risks, and I wouldn't be here
Speaker 2: without the risks. And so one of the things that's
Speaker 2: hard as a parent is realizing that, like more than anything,
Speaker 2: what you want is for your kid to be safe, right,
Speaker 2: And so there's almost this inherent conflict, right, like a
Speaker 2: person wants to be happy and fulfilled and do cool
Speaker 2: things and a parent wants nothing bad to happen. Ever, right,
Speaker 2: And the ability to realize that there is a tension
Speaker 2: there that the thing you want more than anything will
Speaker 2: ultimately smother and deprive them of the thing that they
Speaker 2: want more than anything.
Speaker 1: It's all of it.
Speaker 2: Like when I dropped out out of college, you know,
Speaker 2: my parents took it really badly, Like it crushed them.
Speaker 2: You know, they'd worked so hard, I think so much
Speaker 2: wrongly of their identity was tied up in my sister
Speaker 2: and I's success. Want to be the parents that had
Speaker 2: a kid that dropped out of college because that's weird
Speaker 2: at you know, a party or something to talk about,
Speaker 2: and maybe it was a bad decision.
Speaker 1: Maybe it ended up working out, but maybe it was
Speaker 1: a bad decision.
Speaker 2: And so I did it, but then immediately after, a
Speaker 2: bunch of really bad stuff happened, Like it ended up
Speaker 2: being way harder than I thought for a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 2: And what I really needed then was parents, right. And
Speaker 2: so my parents worried that I was doing this thing
Speaker 2: that was dangerous, didn't support me doing it, and then
Speaker 2: they weren't there when I needed their actual support, right,
Speaker 2: And so it's it's understanding that like what you what
Speaker 2: you need to do is not like be right about
Speaker 2: stuff or get your way, but to sort of show
Speaker 2: them that you're there for them whatever happens, and that
Speaker 2: maybe that's the way that you cut through this tension
Speaker 2: of like we don't want them to do anything that's dangerous,
Speaker 2: but if your fear of that pushes them away, then
Speaker 2: when they are in danger, they're not going to come
Speaker 2: to you, right, And that's what you should fear more
Speaker 2: than anything.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: I interviewed this guy's name was Dave Carrie. He's Captain
Speaker 2: Dave Carry. He was a pow in Vietnam, and he
Speaker 2: said something to me that I think about now all
Speaker 2: the time as a parent. He said, the goal of
Speaker 2: every conversation as a parent is to get to have
Speaker 2: the next conversation, right.
Speaker 1: And I think about that in life.
Speaker 2: In business, it's almost like every decision you make, it's
Speaker 2: it's am I closing doors here? Am I burning bridges
Speaker 2: behind me? Am I shutting things down? Or am I
Speaker 2: keeping things open?
Speaker 1: Right? Life is about options? How many options do you have?
Speaker 2: And just realizing, hey, this conflict, this disagreement, this tension.
Speaker 2: You know, the main thing that you're gonna want with
Speaker 2: your kids in the future is that relationship. And nothing
Speaker 2: is more important than that. And so I think about
Speaker 2: that all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean reflecting on what you're saying. I
Speaker 3: feel like that was something that was so like my
Speaker 3: parents when I did decide to become a monkey, it
Speaker 3: was like that was uncomfortable for them. I never went
Speaker 3: to my graduation ceremony. I graduated, but never went to
Speaker 3: have the picture taken. And that was a big thing
Speaker 3: because everyone's house we'd go to they've had pictures of
Speaker 3: their kids, you know, with their little scroll and the
Speaker 3: hat and all the rest of it. But it was
Speaker 3: the same. It was they didn't support it and they
Speaker 3: didn't block me, and then when I failed at it
Speaker 3: or when it all ended, they were there to catch me.
Speaker 3: I moved back in with them. And those two statements
Speaker 3: you put two of the chapters in the book are
Speaker 3: always be a fan and love unconditionally. And I was
Speaker 3: reflecting on those and I was like, I think my
Speaker 3: parents have always loved unconditionally, Like they've been able to
Speaker 3: have this relationship with me where, yeah, I would totally
Speaker 3: give them credit for that, where they never let me
Speaker 3: feel like they weren't there for me, regardless of even
Speaker 3: if my choices were totally against theirs. And I respect
Speaker 3: them a lot for that because I made it hard. Man.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's beautiful, and kids do make it hard, right,
Speaker 2: and it's it's going to be a challenge. There's a
Speaker 2: story about Jim Volvano, the basketball coach. He realizes it
Speaker 2: like ten or twelve or thirteen or whatever, they wants
Speaker 2: to be a basketball coach, and he tells his dad,
Speaker 2: he says, I'm gonna I want to be a college
Speaker 2: basketball coach and knows okay. And then the next day
Speaker 2: his dad calls him into his bedroom and he says,
Speaker 2: what's going on, And the dad says, see that suitcase
Speaker 2: and the son says yeah, and he says it's packed,
Speaker 2: and he says why and he says, it's packed for
Speaker 2: when you coach in the final four. You know, and
Speaker 2: this idea of like your kid has this dream and
Speaker 2: you don't judge it, you know, tell them that it's unrealistic.
Speaker 2: You don't tell him it's crazy. You don't let him
Speaker 2: know how hard it's going to be. You also don't
Speaker 2: take it over and say, well, here's.
Speaker 1: What you're going to need to do. You just go,
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for you. Is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: And too much of the love that parents have or
Speaker 2: the support is conditional on whether it's going well, whether
Speaker 2: it's socially acceptable, whether it's understandable or not.
Speaker 1: You know, I think a lot of parents want their
Speaker 1: kids to be.
Speaker 2: Doctors and lawyers because they know what doctors and lawyers
Speaker 2: are right, and social media manager sounds made up right,
Speaker 2: even if one pays better than the other, even if
Speaker 2: one is what lights the kid up and they hate
Speaker 2: the other thing where they just want this desire to
Speaker 2: understand gets in the way of just support, which is
Speaker 2: really what it comes down to, this sense that hey,
Speaker 2: these people, these people believe in me. These people really
Speaker 2: believe in me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I feel like with my parents, I probably
Speaker 3: had more of a neutral relationship where I wouldn't say
Speaker 3: they were believing in me or routine for me, sure,
Speaker 3: but they weren't putting it down yes, And so it
Speaker 3: was more a bit like let's.
Speaker 1: Start there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you make your.
Speaker 3: Decisions and whatever, like it's not like we believe in
Speaker 3: you and it's going to be great, and it's not
Speaker 3: like we're trying to hold you back. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of us today though, And I think the difference
Speaker 3: for me was I had such conviction and I always
Speaker 3: have when I've made my choices. And it sounds like
Speaker 3: you did too, obviously in the way you described it,
Speaker 3: where I didn't really care what anyone thought, and I
Speaker 3: still kind of them that way, like I'm like, whatever,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do what I want anyway. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people like want their parents to
Speaker 3: like root for them, and I hear this a lot
Speaker 3: with it, Like people say to me, like Jay, Like
Speaker 3: my parents don't believe in me, and like no one's
Speaker 3: like encouraging me and on supporting me. What do I
Speaker 3: do in that situation? And so it's interesting because we
Speaker 3: also have that inbuilt desire for our parents to root
Speaker 3: for us. But as in your case and as in
Speaker 3: many others, and even in mind in a different way,
Speaker 3: your parents aren't going to be your biggest cheerleaders all
Speaker 3: the time, and most of us didn't have that experience.
Speaker 3: So while you're trying to be a dad who is
Speaker 3: unconditional and a fan, you didn't get that, and majority
Speaker 3: people in the world didn't get that.
Speaker 1: So how no one can screw you up?
Speaker 2: I remember I was I was in business with someone
Speaker 2: and he was doing something kind of crazy. I forget
Speaker 2: what it was, but someone brought up I was like,
Speaker 2: why is he like this? And he goes, if you
Speaker 2: just translate everything he's saying into daddy, daddy, look at me,
Speaker 2: it all makes sense and you realize this person didn't
Speaker 2: get kind of approval or attention from their parents, and
Speaker 2: it drove them to be successful in business, but it
Speaker 2: also made them a liability in business because they weren't
Speaker 2: dealing with the situation at hand. They were dealing with
Speaker 2: this sort of unfulfilled, unmet desire to get attention, to
Speaker 2: be recognized, and that's a really that's a really dangerous thing,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think get the core of it.
Speaker 2: A good number of men are just motivated by wanting
Speaker 2: their dad to be proud of them, and the sooner
Speaker 2: you realize that if your dad wasn't proud of you
Speaker 2: at the beginning, no amount of success is going to
Speaker 2: make you feel that later.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I do think there's this great quote from Marcus Realised
Speaker 2: that that is a really important piece of parenting advice
Speaker 2: that I try to think about. He says, you know,
Speaker 2: things are not asking to be judged by you, and
Speaker 2: he says, remember you always have the power of having
Speaker 2: no opinion.
Speaker 1: So being a fan, being a.
Speaker 2: Supporter, being a cheerleaders, that's where you want to get
Speaker 2: as a parent. But what if you just started by
Speaker 2: not having an opinion, Like, your kid is your kid,
Speaker 2: and they're going to do what they want to do
Speaker 2: and they're going to be who they are. The fewer
Speaker 2: opinions you have about that, the better your relationship is
Speaker 2: going to be. Absolutely, you think back with your relationship
Speaker 2: with your parents, and you think about the arguments that
Speaker 2: you had, the things you fought about, and how in retrospect,
Speaker 2: how small those things seem and how little they mattered.
Speaker 2: Because what matters now is that there is the relationship, right,
Speaker 2: What matters is that there's still the affection and the feeling,
Speaker 2: and that you spend time together.
Speaker 1: And yet there were moments.
Speaker 2: Where it seemed like they were willing to trade that
Speaker 2: to enforce some arbitrary rule or some cultural norm or
Speaker 2: you know, force you into some box that.
Speaker 1: They had for you.
Speaker 2: And the fewer opinions you have, the better, I think
Speaker 2: as a parent, Like your kid likes this video game.
Speaker 2: The fact that you think video games are dumb is
Speaker 2: an opinion that you don't need to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, keep it to yourself. Yeah, And how do you
Speaker 3: deal with it on the other side, Like I find
Speaker 3: that I'm sure a lot of people listening they're like,
Speaker 3: I wish my parents had that mindset right, because they didn't.
Speaker 3: But then how do you still live a meaningful, fulfilling
Speaker 3: life Because so much of who we are is wrapped
Speaker 3: up in this entire relationship, and you find, as you said,
Speaker 3: we are like I'm going to do my own thing
Speaker 3: because I want to control my life. But we're still
Speaker 3: controlled by the expectation of being successful because our parents
Speaker 3: want us to be successful. So we're still trying to
Speaker 3: prove them wrong or right. And so how do you
Speaker 3: kind of what do you do in that scenario where
Speaker 3: someone's lived a life and they're like, well, I'm kind
Speaker 3: of like you Ryan, where my parents weren't my number
Speaker 3: one fan, I didn't have unconditional love, they don't support me,
Speaker 3: and I still find myself trying to impress them all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's realizing that if you didn't get it, you're
Speaker 2: never going to get it, and to try to try
Speaker 2: to continue to get a thing that you're never going
Speaker 2: to get is a fool's errand right, and you have
Speaker 2: to figure out why you want to do what you
Speaker 2: want to do and what's important to you, right and
Speaker 2: that have you ever done any inner child work?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you realize, oh, hey, like my parents weren't what
Speaker 2: I needed to be to this fourteen year old, but
Speaker 2: I need to be what what that fourteen year old needed,
Speaker 2: or I'm going to go through the world as a
Speaker 2: fourteen year old and it's not appropriate for a fourteen
Speaker 2: year old to be in this meeting or in this conversation,
Speaker 2: or to be you know, operating at this life. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to sort of reparent that inner child or
Speaker 2: it's going to pop out a totally inappropriate times and places.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the beautiful things about having
Speaker 2: kids is it does give you a sense of who
Speaker 2: you were right You don't really remember what it's like
Speaker 2: to before, and then you have a four year old
Speaker 2: and you go, oh, this is what I needed as
Speaker 2: a four year old. And so I can't go back
Speaker 2: in time and give that to my four year old self,
Speaker 2: but I can do a better job for this four
Speaker 2: year old. We dropped my four year old off at
Speaker 2: camp yesterday and he really didn't want to go.
Speaker 1: He was really struggling.
Speaker 2: He was really upset, and he was sort of having
Speaker 2: this anxiety attack and he's struggling, was crying, and so ultimately,
Speaker 2: after like thirty minutes, this is dragged on in thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: forty five minutes going and he's getting more and more upset,
Speaker 2: and then without even talking about it, we just decided
Speaker 2: he didn't need to go, and as my wife got
Speaker 2: back in the car and we're driving him back to
Speaker 2: our house and we're going to you know, just have
Speaker 2: a fun day or whatever. All I said was, I
Speaker 2: think we both know that our parents would have handled
Speaker 2: this differently, and you know they would have forced it right.
Speaker 2: And the idea that hey, it's an opportunity to do
Speaker 2: things differently, to stop certain cycles, right, to turn over
Speaker 2: new leaves, to just to just do it a better way,
Speaker 2: and that that that is not only your obligation, but
Speaker 2: it's also healing for yourself to go, oh, this is
Speaker 2: what I needed then, And you can't go back in time,
Speaker 2: but you can write a better future.
Speaker 3: We gave you the intuition in that moment for you
Speaker 3: specifically to know whether to push them to go to
Speaker 3: Campbell where you were like, no, actually, because I remember
Speaker 3: as a kid, I used to get a lot of
Speaker 3: those anxiety attacks as a young kid. And I remember
Speaker 3: even when I was going to high school, I had
Speaker 3: to take exams to get into certain high schools on
Speaker 3: my par want me to go to. And I remember
Speaker 3: like just being so stressed at that time with like
Speaker 3: going to these entrance examinations. You don't know anyone there,
Speaker 3: and you're sitting in this hall and you're doing exams
Speaker 3: at eleven years old, ten years old to get into
Speaker 3: this eleven plus school and whatever. And I remember feeling
Speaker 3: that when there were times when my parents were like,
Speaker 3: it's okay, and there were times when I was pushed through.
Speaker 3: And obviously I only personally remembered the ones who I
Speaker 3: was pushed through that worked out. But naturally, there are
Speaker 3: lots of kids in the world who only remember the
Speaker 3: times when their parents should have let them pull out
Speaker 3: and they didn't. So how did you, at least for yourself,
Speaker 3: reconcile that in a moment like that, Because I'm sure
Speaker 3: sometimes you're like, no, pushing through is good, and you
Speaker 3: know you're not.
Speaker 2: They still say one of the most dangerous things we
Speaker 2: can do is extrapolate, right, because it takes us out
Speaker 2: of the moment we're in, and then we're thinking, well,
Speaker 2: what if it happens again, and what if it happens again,
Speaker 2: and what if it happens again? And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you're living in this future where if you
Speaker 2: let this thing happen over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: your kid is utterly incapable of doing anything for themselves,
Speaker 2: and just going, hey, what is one day of camp
Speaker 2: actually matter right, is what is what is actually at
Speaker 2: stake here? And you realize that almost nothing is in
Speaker 2: stake right right? You know, like your kid's throwing a
Speaker 2: temper tantrum, and you go, this is not an appropriate
Speaker 2: way to act. I don't want to raise a kid
Speaker 2: that throws temper tantrums. I don't want to raise a
Speaker 2: kid that you can't have. And you realize that you're
Speaker 2: not even thinking about your kid anymore. You're thinking about you,
Speaker 2: and what you should be thinking about is oh wait,
Speaker 2: we forgot to have lunch, right, or oh wait they're tired,
Speaker 2: Oh wait they're coming down with something, And you realize, oh,
Speaker 2: this is an individual instance. It is not a reflection
Speaker 2: of their trajectory as a human being. And being able
Speaker 2: to do that to anyone in life is really power.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible gift. To be able to look at
Speaker 2: the moment you're in as not much more than a
Speaker 2: moment that you are in is an incredible thing to
Speaker 2: do for yourself and them. I struggle with that even
Speaker 2: as a writer. Obviously this plant is important, Commitment is important,
Speaker 2: routine is important. But then you have kids and you're
Speaker 2: in this world of unavoidable reality and you have to go,
Speaker 2: I can't do what I wanted to do today. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean the wheels are gonna come off and everything
Speaker 2: is going to collapse. You have to be okay, you know,
Speaker 2: and just that sort of acceptance and to go. This
Speaker 2: is a singular instance, no more, no less. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna do what we need to do. And when I
Speaker 2: think about things that have gone really haywire with our
Speaker 2: kids or in my life, it's because I wasn't in
Speaker 2: that moment. I was in whatever I was extrapolating that
Speaker 2: moment to me, if it happened over and over and
Speaker 2: over again.
Speaker 3: It's a brilliant answer. I love that that resonates so
Speaker 3: stronger than me, because I think we you're so right.
Speaker 3: We just take one moment to be so predictive, yeah,
Speaker 3: of their entire future. Like if I let him quit
Speaker 3: count today, then he's gonna quit this.
Speaker 2: And if I let people talk to me this way,
Speaker 2: then I'm just gonna be this person that gets pushed around.
Speaker 2: And you're like, this is one poorly written email. It
Speaker 2: doesn't mean anything more than that, and that you can
Speaker 2: just let like let it go now. Obviously, if you're
Speaker 2: doing that all the time, for everything. You can get
Speaker 2: in trouble too, but just going, yeah, this is not
Speaker 2: that big a deal. That's a question I try to
Speaker 2: ask myself all the time. Does this actually matter or
Speaker 2: do I just think that it matters?
Speaker 1: Is what other people think? You know?
Speaker 2: Informing whether I think this matters or not? Do I
Speaker 2: actually care about this? And then that just turns down
Speaker 2: the volume, which is really what you need the most.
Speaker 2: You just need to turn down the volume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my favorite one disconnecting from If I ever
Speaker 3: get worked up about something or rout up about something,
Speaker 3: it's because I've let the opinions of others become a
Speaker 3: lens through which I'm seeing the significance of something.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the really screwed up parts about having
Speaker 2: a kid, and I was just talking to someone who
Speaker 2: has a like a.
Speaker 1: Six week old. So you get your kid, take.
Speaker 2: Them home from the hospital, and then you have to
Speaker 2: take them to their first pediatrician visit, and then you
Speaker 2: do this a bunch of times in their first year.
Speaker 2: And you take them to the pediatrician and the first
Speaker 2: thing they do is they weigh them and they measure them.
Speaker 1: Right, and then they give you these numbers.
Speaker 2: They go your kid is eightieth percentile in height and
Speaker 2: fortieth percentile in weight, and they and their head sizes
Speaker 2: the sixteenth percent time. They The first thing that happens
Speaker 2: when you have a kid is they tell you mathematically
Speaker 2: where your kid measures up against other kids.
Speaker 1: And it's like this the whole way.
Speaker 2: They should be walking by this age, they should be
Speaker 2: reading by this age, riding a bike by this age,
Speaker 2: and so you have this data, like if you didn't
Speaker 2: know how other people were doing, you wouldn't care. But
Speaker 2: because they told you, then you want to win that game.
Speaker 2: And the game is the size of your kid's head,
Speaker 2: which you have no ability to influence whatsoever. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to know, hey, your kid is dangerously you know,
Speaker 2: underweight and maybe malnourished. But it's usually it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're eighty seven percent in weight and not ninety four,
Speaker 2: you know, like and all of a sudden, you're thinking
Speaker 2: as a kid, you're thinking back to when you were
Speaker 2: a kid, and you're like, well, I want to get
Speaker 2: an A and so anything above ninety, you know, And
Speaker 2: so it's it starts at the very beginning, this sort
Speaker 2: of comparison game, and the less if you knew less
Speaker 2: you would be much more relaxed and much more kind
Speaker 2: to them and yourself. And it's important to remember that
Speaker 2: you're not raising an average kid. You're raising your kid.
Speaker 2: You're not raising a kid on a spectrum. You're raising
Speaker 2: this person that you were getting, you were given that
Speaker 2: has a unique set of DNA and a unique set
Speaker 2: of circumstances that you have some control over.
Speaker 1: And a lot of things you don't have control over.
Speaker 2: And I think the more you can kind of tune
Speaker 2: out what other people are doing, Like my wife and
Speaker 2: I were like concerned that this kid we know who
Speaker 2: is born like the same day as my son, Like
Speaker 2: he's riding a bike and my son can't ride a bike.
Speaker 2: And we're like, are we screwing up? Are we holding
Speaker 2: them back? Are we bad as parents? And then we
Speaker 2: were talking to them and they were concerned that their
Speaker 2: son couldn't swim and ours can swim like a fish.
Speaker 2: And you just realize, oh, yeah, it's all. It probably
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with anyone. It's just one of
Speaker 2: them is naturally disposed to swimming and the other has
Speaker 2: some brain that makes biping these And if we didn't
Speaker 2: know that some kids were doing this and some kids
Speaker 2: are doing this, we would just be like, well, they'll
Speaker 2: learn it eventually, right, And so I think, of course
Speaker 2: you do. It is important to benchmark and know generally
Speaker 2: when stuf's supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: But just so much of this information it's only there
Speaker 1: to make you feel inferior or insecure or alarmed, and
Speaker 1: that's not going to make you a better parent.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, I'm so glad you went there because
Speaker 3: I feel like that's the exact thing that's on everyone's mind.
Speaker 3: And I think it applies to everything from having kids,
Speaker 3: to getting married, to being engaged, to moving in to
Speaker 3: dating to friends, to how much money you should have
Speaker 3: made by what age, Like, it just goes across the board.
Speaker 3: I wonder. I've spoken to a lot of people on
Speaker 3: the podcast about mom guilt to mothers. Dad guilt is
Speaker 3: a thing too. And you know, as someone like you
Speaker 3: who you said you've had a lot of successes before
Speaker 3: you became a dad, but at the same time you're
Speaker 3: an ambitious, driven individual. I'm sure you know other dads
Speaker 3: who became dads before and after they've had success. Let's
Speaker 3: plain in the scenario, which I think is a common scenario,
Speaker 3: someone's trying to put food on the table, They're trying
Speaker 3: to take care of their family. They don't get to
Speaker 3: be there for bedtime every night, they don't get to
Speaker 3: go to the football game on the weekend. Like they
Speaker 3: can't show up at all these places because of genuine reasons.
Speaker 3: How does that person be a present, loving dad or
Speaker 3: what does it look like for that scenario.
Speaker 2: I do find moms are way harder on themselves than dads,
Speaker 2: And part of that is because dads, I think, historically,
Speaker 2: have been judged.
Speaker 1: On a much.
Speaker 2: More generous or sliding scale, right, And so the fact
Speaker 2: that there is some dad guilt is in a sense
Speaker 2: a sign of progress, right that like, oh, hey, this
Speaker 2: is something that I am expected to be good at
Speaker 2: to take seriously, and that if I'm not good at it,
Speaker 2: someone's not just going to handle it for me, right.
Speaker 1: I think the reason moms feel guilty is.
Speaker 2: They they're like there's no safety net, Like I'm the
Speaker 2: final line of defense, right, And so I do feel
Speaker 2: dad guilt sometimes, and I see that as a sign
Speaker 2: that like, I'm I'm caring about it, right because you
Speaker 2: know who, Like it's like it would be wonderful if
Speaker 2: all parents were concerned that they weren't doing a good
Speaker 2: enough job. But the fact is there's a lot of
Speaker 2: parents that aren't thinking about it at all. They're not
Speaker 2: thinking about it because they're so convinced they're perfect and
Speaker 2: they're not, or they just don't.
Speaker 1: Care that much.
Speaker 2: It's good that, it's good that you're insecure, that you're
Speaker 2: questioning yourself, and then just realize that other than that,
Speaker 2: other than the indicator of prioritization, it's not actually helping
Speaker 2: you be a better parent. Right, whipping yourself Like I joke,
Speaker 2: like your kids are going to hit you enough, Like
Speaker 2: you don't need to whip yourself on top of it. Right,
Speaker 2: be kind to yourself. And that's a great line from Sending.
Speaker 1: He says, the.
Speaker 2: Sign that philosophy is working in your life is that
Speaker 2: you're becoming a better friend to yourself, and so you
Speaker 2: should be a good friend and parent to yourself. But
Speaker 2: there is this sense, I think with dads that like
Speaker 2: your job is to provide, and you go, I'm doing
Speaker 2: this all for my family. If you never see your family,
Speaker 2: are you really doing it for them, you know? Or
Speaker 2: or are you using your kids as an excuse to
Speaker 2: do this thing that you want to do.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that providing is an import and that
Speaker 2: you shouldn't try to be successful at work. I just
Speaker 2: I just think, like, hey, the thing you're your kids
Speaker 2: want more than anything, is you right, that's what your
Speaker 2: family wants you. And so if you go, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: doing this for you. Did they want a new mountain
Speaker 2: bike or did they want to see their dad during
Speaker 2: daylight hours?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, But when they think back to their childhood, they're
Speaker 2: not going to go, oh, I did have a lot
Speaker 2: of cool stuff, right, Like I never saw my parents,
Speaker 2: but I had a lot.
Speaker 1: Of cool stuff. Right.
Speaker 2: It worked out for me. They want you, and so
Speaker 2: how do you find that balance? I mean, when we
Speaker 2: talk about work life balance, what we're talking with. A
Speaker 2: reason that's so hard is we're talking about trade offs
Speaker 2: like that you can't have it all and you're going
Speaker 2: to have to say no to some things. One of
Speaker 2: the things that having kids changed for me is that
Speaker 2: it made it easier for me to say no because
Speaker 2: it illustrated the opportunity costs much more vividly.
Speaker 1: Right Like, if I.
Speaker 2: Didn't have kids, if it's just me and my wife
Speaker 2: or just me, you know, I could always squeeze more
Speaker 2: stuff in, and I couldn't calculate and necessarily feel what
Speaker 2: it was costing me. But when you've promised your time
Speaker 2: to this little person who wants to wrestle or go
Speaker 2: in the swimming pool or play legos, and then you're
Speaker 2: not able to be home because you agreed to some
Speaker 2: dumb conference call or you let someone pick your brain,
Speaker 2: you feel that more right, You feel that more The
Speaker 2: opportunity costs were always there, you just didn't feel it
Speaker 2: because it wasn't personified in a heartbroken three year old.
Speaker 1: So it's helpful. It can be really really powerful.
Speaker 2: I have this sign on the wall in my office
Speaker 2: and just as no, and it's between two pictures of
Speaker 2: my kids, and it's a reminder that when I'm saying yes,
Speaker 2: what I'm saying no to is A and B. And
Speaker 2: when I'm saying no, I'm saying yes to A and B.
Speaker 2: And realizing that that your fear of being rude or
Speaker 2: hurting someone's feelings, well you better get comfortable that because
Speaker 2: you're gonna you're gonna you're being rude to someone, You're
Speaker 2: letting somebody down, you're hurting someone's feelings, and should it
Speaker 2: be this stranger or should it be this person that
Speaker 2: you promised you know you were going to be there for,
Speaker 2: or that you said is the most important thing in
Speaker 2: the world to you, Like the calendar doesn't lie. You say,
Speaker 2: families the most important thing to you? But what is
Speaker 2: your calendar show?
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. I always, I always say, the
Speaker 3: way you spend your money, the way you spend spend
Speaker 3: your time, and the way you spend your energy shows
Speaker 3: your values and priorities far more than what you say
Speaker 3: or think. Yeah, because you're back, Like, what you spend
Speaker 3: money on is showing what you care about. What you
Speaker 3: do to make money shows what you care about. But
Speaker 3: what is your biggest fear or worse quality in you
Speaker 3: that you are so scared of projecting onto your kids?
Speaker 3: Are you aware of that?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you have to be. I
Speaker 2: think I think I've never been glad that I lost
Speaker 2: my temper. It's never made anything better, And so you know,
Speaker 2: kids are frustrating, it's overwhelming. The other the other day,
Speaker 2: my son was in the car and he's sort of
Speaker 2: yelling and he's really upset and sort of look back
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what's happening? And my other son goes,
Speaker 2: you know, I think Jonesy's just really overstimulated right now.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, that's like amazing, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I was like I wish I Like, first off,
Speaker 2: I was proud because you obviously picked that up from us,
Speaker 2: But I was like, I wish I could have that
Speaker 2: kind of awareness because all I was thinking about is like,
Speaker 2: what is this noise?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And he's thinking why is that person making that noise?
Speaker 2: And and so yeah, the things that you get upset
Speaker 2: with your kids about when you lose your temper, like
Speaker 2: it's it's never stuff that you're like that was okay.
Speaker 2: One percent of the time it's like they ran away
Speaker 2: from you in a parking lot and you're so scared
Speaker 2: something could have happened. Uh, and you kind of need
Speaker 2: to get that across. But most of the time, it's
Speaker 2: it's nothing that matters, and yet you are telling them
Speaker 2: that it matters, and you were telling them that they
Speaker 2: don't matter in a way that you would never want, right.
Speaker 2: And so I think I think for me, it's it's
Speaker 2: about temper and and you know, how do you tame that?
Speaker 2: How do you keep it from exploding onto the people
Speaker 2: that you love.
Speaker 1: That's that's the struggle.
Speaker 3: What what have you discovered in that book? Ah, it's hard,
Speaker 3: like you said, it's.
Speaker 1: Hard, It's really hard. It's really hard.
Speaker 2: My wife and I try to get good at going like,
Speaker 2: you're having trouble handling this right now?
Speaker 1: Why don't you step outside? Why don't you go for
Speaker 1: a walk?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Or why don't you guys let this go? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like why does it actually matter that pajamas get on
Speaker 2: by a certain time?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Why are you.
Speaker 2: Forcing this thing? And I think oftentimes the frustration comes
Speaker 2: from when things are being forced, and so stepping back
Speaker 2: is usually the best way to do it. And then
Speaker 2: I also think, like, look, people lose their temper. It's
Speaker 2: a fact of life. My parents lost their temper at
Speaker 2: me quite a bit. I don't ever remember them apologizing
Speaker 2: for it, right, which is something I try to do
Speaker 2: a lot. I try to go, hey, it's stressful for
Speaker 2: me at the airport. I'm trying to make sure that
Speaker 2: we all get to the place that we need to
Speaker 2: get by a certain time so we can go on
Speaker 2: the vacation that, by the way, you want to go
Speaker 2: to more than me, right, But I was just I
Speaker 2: was stressed earlier, Like I wasn't in control of myself earlier,
Speaker 2: and I'm not proud of that. I don't like that,
Speaker 2: and that wasn't good, but I'm owning it out and
Speaker 2: it didn't say anything about you. Right, And so the
Speaker 2: ability to if you can in the moment go hey,
Speaker 2: I'm overstimulated, I'm stressed, can you do it later? At
Speaker 2: least if you can do it later.
Speaker 1: It's not as good, but it's still an improvement.
Speaker 2: And then can you take responsibility for your emotions as
Speaker 2: opposed to dumping those emotions on someone else and then
Speaker 2: making them filter, you know, sort through them in therapy
Speaker 2: twenty years later.
Speaker 3: Right, And thank you so much for coming back on
Speaker 3: the show. It's so great. It's so great. I feel
Speaker 3: like what I wanted to do today was talk about
Speaker 3: parenting but also being a kid of parents who didn't
Speaker 3: read the Daily Dad, And what that feels like is
Speaker 3: an experience because you're trying to be a parent without
Speaker 3: having had parenting training. And one thing you said that
Speaker 3: is going to stay with me for a long time
Speaker 3: was if you don't reparent your fourteen year old self,
Speaker 3: you're still a fourteen year old. And I think a
Speaker 3: lot of us can resonate with that statement very deeply.
Speaker 3: That there's an age that we feel we lived our
Speaker 3: toughest worst year and no one took care of that
Speaker 3: yeah child, or that teenager or whatever age it was,
Speaker 3: and that's something we all need to recommit to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one of the struggles of being a parent.
Speaker 2: You're trying to give stuff that you didn't necessarily get, right,
Speaker 2: and it's even harder for people who didn't have you know,
Speaker 2: a dad or a mom, or you know their dad
Speaker 2: or mom was an alcoholic, or you're trying to give
Speaker 2: things that you didn't get. But that's that's the obligation,
Speaker 2: is to try to do a little bit better, right,
Speaker 2: to try to give them the things that you felt
Speaker 2: that you needed or wanted.
Speaker 1: That's the goal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But Yeah, you open this you said, you know you're
Speaker 2: trying to heal I do. If you leave those things
Speaker 2: unexplored or unaddressed, you're just passing them along. And that's
Speaker 2: there has to be some point where you go this
Speaker 2: stops with me, right, Like, this is a.
Speaker 1: Beautiful senecal line.
Speaker 2: You talk about how we can't choose our parents, but
Speaker 2: we can choose whose children we would like to be,
Speaker 2: and the idea that biology doesn't have to be destiny,
Speaker 2: that it doesn't have to keep going the direction that
Speaker 2: it always went, that you can do it differently, that
Speaker 2: you can decide, Hey, no, my parent and heroes are
Speaker 2: these people that I can borrow from these parents that
Speaker 2: had different tools than my parents, that had more patience
Speaker 2: or wisdom or insight or empathy than my parents, And
Speaker 2: that I can give that to my kids.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3: The book is called The Daily Dad three hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty six Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids
Speaker 3: by Ryan Holliday. If you don't already follow Ryan on Instagram,
Speaker 3: on YouTube, across social media, his podcast. Of course we
Speaker 3: named all the books earlier, Please go and follow him
Speaker 3: across all platforms, ran anything else you want to share
Speaker 3: with the community over here.
Speaker 1: Now, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for coming back, man. We look forward to it.
Speaker 3: Thank you. If you love this episode, you'll love my
Speaker 3: interview with doctor Gable Matte on understanding your trauma and
Speaker 3: how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from
Speaker 3: the past.
Speaker 1: Everything in nature goes only where it's vulnerable. So a
Speaker 1: tree doesn't go where it's hard and thick. Does it.
Speaker 1: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.