#176 Dr Gad Saad – 8 Secrets For Leading a Good & Happy Life

What my facial symmetry is is what my facial symmetry is , and I can't change that . That's just my morphology . But how assertive I am , how ambitious I am , how good my vocabulary is , we very , very quickly and accurately can judge someone's social status by the first few sentences that they utter .

I was 173 episodes beforehand and you wrote back to me and you said not right now , come back to an year , come back to an year . And three years later , after some persistence , we've got to this point . So I think it's been very it's gone full circle . So I want to ask you how important is battling comfort and seeking discomfort in the pursuit of happiness ?

I always knew that I wanted to become a professor , that I wanted to go into academia , but I decided to go into mathematics because I thought that that would be the discipline that would provide me with the greatest amount of analytical training .

So if I'm going to spend the rest of my life in the world of ideas , then why not get a very , very rigorous training ? And so there I took the path of most resistance , because many people would argue that there's probably few things that are as hard as to study mathematics . And yet I did it . Exactly for that reason , because I wanted to challenge myself .

I ran two marathons . I talk about this in the book . I ran two marathon Actually , yesterday was the Montreal Marathon , and you know , every year it happens and I felt nostalgic because the two marathons that I ran were in 1985 and 1986 .

And I ran them for no other reason than the fact that I said , hey , it would be interesting to challenge myself and see if I can actually withstand such a , you know , rigorous distance . And I did it . And so I think many times in life people seek to take the path of least resistance .

I argue that if you truly want to be successful , not surprisingly you should try to challenge yourself , and even in some cases where the stressors are not of your own choosing . And so I went through the Lebanese Civil War as a child , which was not a very pleasant experience .

And yet , paradoxically perhaps but if you think about it maybe it's not so paradoxical the fact that I went through such a difficult situation affords me a context from which to judge , on any given day , why I might be whining to myself about something Right ?

So if I , if I'm getting down on myself because I've got too much pressure , because I'm traveling too much , because I've got too many commitments , then I can just kind of snap out of it by going back into the well of my memories and say , hey , you , you miraculously escaped the Middle East and you're standing here . Stop whining .

And so , even in cases where the stressors are not of our own choosing , they can benefit us , benefit us .

No matter what situation we're in , you're able to reference that and say things could be worse , and you mentioned that in the book as well how you know whatever scenario where you reference someone who was homeless at the time and that individual was looking , saying , look , it could be even worse than being homeless , and they had that perspective for you that you

know made you even have a better day . Put things in one of the contexts and you're learning from those different endeavors

. I want to ask you about the inverted U curve . So that's very interesting , right , and your approach towards this is , you know , everything in moderation and to be perfectly honest with you , gavin , I looked at this initially .

I initially thought I wasn't going to agree with it because I have a , you know , a background in like bodybuilding , a background in high performance sports and education . I thought more is better , right , we do more the better , the better approach towards it .

But I do see this as a universal truth in terms of when you look at the curve at the very top is when you get your peak enjoyment . Do you think there's any exceptions to this rule ? And let me give an example of if you do have like , say , excessive wealth . You could potentially help other people .

Then from a charity perspective , philanthropy , even investing social causes , is that a possibility ?

Right , if I'm a hedge fund manager and I've made the right decisions so that I now have more wealth than I might have had yesterday , you're exactly correct that I can use that wealth to benefit others in that sense . But what I'm talking about is when it's your willful pursuit . I want to pursue exercise intensity , I want to sample more product information .

I happen to be extremely perfectionist . Maybe I need to be more perfectionist .

So perhaps there are some phenomena that might not adhere to the inverted U , but I think what is absolutely clear is that no curve is as universal as the inverted U , and I mean the whole point of that chapter was to precisely show it in a bewildering number of cases that you might otherwise not have thought of , right ? So I gave the example of perfectionism .

If you're not at all perfectionist , your work will suffer because you don't have any attention to details . If you are on the other end of the curve , where I lay , where you're too perfectionist , then you end up spending an inordinate amount of time obsessing over every detail , when your time could have been better spent doing something else .

So what if your book has one typo or one comma ? Maybe it wasn't worth you spending an extra four days rereading it just to catch that one typo . And so I think for most things . Notwithstanding that , I think you're absolutely right that there may be some cases where more is always better .

So , for example , it is absolutely true that that how much you smoke is not an inverted U . In other words , there isn't some moderate amount of smoking that is optimal , right ? Less smoking is always better than more smoking .

So , yes , you're absolutely right , there are situations that don't adhere to the inverted U , but for almost everything consequential that you could think of , the inverted U will rear its head .

I think it's very interesting how you applied this to elements of performance and stress . So some people look at stress and think , oh , I don't want to be stressed , I want to take the easy part in life . Right , I've actively tried to take the more difficult part , the part that's

taken in my life . But you really have to really point out that stress can be helpful , right , stress can put us under a certain bit of pressure to perform , and we see the best athletes Usain Bolt we see the best football players , the best soccer players . They get all this stuff done under stress .

So how can we actively use this in our day-to-day to benefit us , versus to shy away from stress under pressure ?

When I'm talking about persistence , I talk about how , through the persistence of my daughter , I got to meet one of my childhood musical heroes , the lead singer of the Stylistics , which was a band that was really big in the late 60s and early 70s when I was a very young child , and it was my daughter who kept insisting that I should contact him .

Contact him and then eventually he came on my show and we became friends and so on . But the reason why I mention him because it speaks to your point about stress .

In our chat , which people can go and watch on my channel , this is about five , six years ago I asked him whether he experienced any stress prior to going on stage and I was really hoping and praying that the answer that he would give me was an emphatic yes , because then I would use that example to motivate my students whenever they tell me that they're

stressed to present their projects in front of the class . One of the big , not one of the biggest . The biggest fear that people have is public speaking . Well then , if legendary , world-renowned soul singer can get stressed before performing , well then , hey , anybody can get stressed .

If Messi can get stressed before playing a soccer match he's got nothing to prove , he's the greatest Then we can all afford to be stressed a bit , and luckily he did answer that his legs would almost buckle he was so stressed prior to going on . And so number one feeling stress is a completely human emotion and human reality .

The champion is the one who is able to rein in that stress . So if and again to the inverted you , if you feel no stress , it's probably that you don't care enough about the situation . If you're so stressed that it's completely debilitating , I'm a deer in front of the proverbial headlights and I'm frozen and I can't move .

It has happened once or twice where I've had a student who completely shut down when they were presenting their end of term project . They literally , as if they were having a stroke , they literally could not speak and I sort of have to go up and say look , just breathe deeply , don't worry about it . It's a friendly environment .

So that becomes on the other end of the curve . But some intermediate sweet spot point of stress is exactly what you want . You want it to be enough that it causes you to care , but not enough that it causes you to be frozen in fear . And so , yes , even stress follows the inverted you .

I wasted many years doing this , making it all up as a lot as I go , so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it .

So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess with your podcast , check out the links down below the Pogies University and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast . And it's interesting because at that point you could perform your best . Right Is where a mess . You will go out and score tree goals .

You'll be able to present a big presentation or back a scientific repaper because you can act under that pressure . I want to ask , maybe in relation to

workload , and I like how you link this to happiness , which is quite interesting . It's not just performance , it's happiness . So we've seen entrepreneurs pop up , like Alex Ramosy , who is very famous . He's been a huge influence on me as a young entrepreneur . He gave me a lot of direction and focus . His mantra is like work , work , work .

So it was kind of Elon Musk . Right , it's like more work , Even though he has a really good outcome that he's helping a lot of people . Elon Musk is much more society based , world based , kind of worldview based . Is there kind of a clash there between their volume of work have you reported this ? But actually the detriment of their happiness .

You probably exceeded the sweet spot of how much you should be working . So , like most things in life , in French you say just milieu , the right , middle , right . And you know the Buddhist talked about the middle way , or Aristotle talked about the golden mean . And so to our earlier point about the inverted U being relevant across so many phenomena .

That also applies to how assiduously I work . If I don't work enough , I'm probably going to be an unproductive , apathetic , unemployed person . If I work too much , to the point where my personal relationships will suffer , I don't see my children growing up . That's probably not good .

Very few people will later in life say I regret the fact that I spend too much time with my family . I should have been more at work . It's usually the exact opposite that happens . And so again , you have to find a way to thread that needle . But to the more general point about work .

I do , in one of the early chapters of the book , talk about the two most fundamental decisions that will either impart great happiness or great misery upon us , and those are not surprisingly number one choice of a spouse that you choose to live your life with , and number two , your the choice of profession or job .

I could talk about each if you'd like , or I could focus on job , since we're talking about work . It's up . Whatever you want . You want me to do both .

I was thrown into big tech companies , big consulting firms , and I hate them all life and I worked my way out of it and I've gone a support to build my podcast as a result and build my business around this . But it was the pursuit of something that was more meaningful and more enjoyable that I left right .

And you mentioned about how not following these like trendy topics Now , for me , the biggest influence was Victor Frankel's man search for meaning . I read that book during the lockdown and I completely restructured my brain as I literally maybe reframe the world however you do .

World and that was a big wake up call at 23 years old , and I've seen you mentioned this now is so powerful too , because it reinforces that point . I know you mentioned Victor Frankel

too in your work . So how would you think about the impact of career choices and happiness ?

And now , in the middle between waking up next to that person and going to bed next to that person , if whatever you do for the rest of that time is something that makes you kind of rub your hands in existential glee at the looming day , then you've basically cracked the mystery of happiness , because much of your day is now being spent either with someone that

you appreciate or doing something that you appreciate . So it's not a mystery that those two decisions are so important to our overall sense of happiness . Now let's stick to jobs , and then we could come to to make choice , if you'd like .

I argue that there are two fundamental things that you should try to maximize , if possible , in your job , and I understand that that may not be feasible for everyone , because you know people have real pragmatic constraints . I need to put food on the table . I may not be able to instantiate what I'm about to say , but to the extent that you can .

The two things that you should be thinking about , in my view , are number one anything that allows you to instantiate your creative impulse . So you could be a chef , you could be a podcaster , you could be a stand up comic , you could be an architect , you could be a professor and author .

Each of those professions are very different from each other , but what they share in common is the is the one act of creation . If I'm a stand up , I need to create new material to titillate the audience . If I'm an architect , I create a new building or a new bridge . If I am a professor , I'm publishing new scientific knowledge .

I'm writing a new , a new book . Right , you ? You read a book by Victor Franco that was written many years ago and yet it had a profound effect on your life . That's meaningful . I mean , it doesn't take a fancy psychologist or behavioral scientist to tell you that if Franco were here , hearing you say that , he would probably get a great sense of accomplishment .

I affect I'm speaking now as Victor Franco I affected , you know , many decades after I wrote that book , this , this guy who's from Ireland , who moved to the Far East and I had a positive influence on his life .

Wow , that gives me purpose and meaning , and so the sheer act of creating All other things equal is going to grant you at least access to purpose and meaning , right ?

Whereas you know , if I'm an insurance adjuster and this is not meant as a derogatory thing to insurance adjusters , because we need them and we need bus drivers and we need Anybody who's doing an honest job is doing something dignified , that's great , but probably the insurance is adjusted . Doesn't wake up and say , thank God for the cosmos .

I could have never imagined a better life . This is just the job that allows me to feed my family . But if you're a poet or an artist or a , as I said , an architect or an author , there is an inherent Beauty that comes from the act of creation . So to the extent that you could do that , that's great .

The second thing I would say that really Is something that you should look for in your job is what I call temporal freedom , and so , while I work very hard , I work very long hours every day . To the extent that I have , I can choose , you know , when to do what . That gives me a great sense of existential happiness , right .

On the other hand , on days when every single minute of my day is tied to a specific Responsibility , I get what I call scheduling asphyxia right it's I can't breathe because I can't kind of go Vagabond around . I can't go to the cafe , sit and think about the book prospectus for my next book . That's what I love to do .

I love to sit there , ponder , think , create . And so if now contrast that to , say , someone who works in a factory line where they don't even have the temporal freedom to decide when they can take a food break or a bathroom break , that's mandated at 10 15 you take a bathroom break . At noon you get 20 minutes to eat . Well , all other things equal .

That's probably going to make me less happy than if I can just go about my day attacking Whatever you know moves me , and so if you can do those two things , I think you're well on your way to being occupationally happy .

Now if you can't , because you know you you have to be a bus driver , because you know you have to feed your family , I Would then argue try to pursue those things as leisure activities after work .

So , for example , if you love You've always had a love for glassblowing , you know , in an ideal world you would have become a , an artist immersed in glass blowing , or maybe a ceramics artist .

Well then , when you finish your very Long and tough Bus route as a bus driver , instead of going home and passively sitting and watching mindless TV for four hours , why don't you sign up at the Local high school ? They have an adult Learning program where they actually are teaching metallurgy or metalwork or or glassblowing or ceramics .

So then you could still instantiate your creative impulse in that way . So even if I mean , if you can do it on your job , then you've won the lottery , but if you can't , you can still pursue those goals 100% .

this podcaster , right , I worked , as I mentioned it , consulting initially , but I did this on the side , from 6 am to 9 am , 6 pm to 9 pm . That it gave me enough Freedom to think independently . And it's kind of like when you , when you , you know , start writing in a bookstore , writing in a coffee store , you never want to go back right .

So when you get that freedom , you never go back . And I know you mentioned , like even government constraints , when governments take the freedom from you , they're very ready to give it back right the best of times . I think it was .

The feedback I get , it helps a lot of people .

But I often feel and I get your thoughts on this a lot of these companies you work for they kind of almost like make up the initiative , they make up the mission , like , oh , we're helping these clients achieve this , this ESG score , we're helping these clients like reduce their emissions , but it's almost like they make up that goal so that you become part of

the goal when it's not your goal , right ? So there's a famous well , not a famous writer , but it's a writer called Dan cope and he always says if you don't have a plan , you will be assigned a plan .

So I think that's quite interesting with it , because you know you're young or you're even like old and you're going through these careers and it's kind of like this was never your goal and it was given to you and now it , now it's yours and that's a clash .

Now , authentic could be Meant at the micro level you know , you're an authentic person , you're a real person , you're not fake . But it could also mean , in the grand kind of existential sense , be living an authentic life , meaning pursuing those things that are Closest to being true to your personhood .

So if I and this speaks to your earlier point about , you know , not following the trends on the job market , right , if , if , if I became an accountant because , well , my dad wasn't accounted and his dad had had built a great accounting firm , and if you look at the , the current trends there , there are many , many openings for accountants and I could make a

lot of money . So , okay , that seems as though it's a pragmatically smart decision . Well , now , fast forward . I've been an accountant for 30 years and I've made a lot of money , but I've led an inauthentic life , because what I really wanted to do is to be an artist , I'd always been fascinated .

All I ever wanted to do was to hopefully create art , and now I'm 60 something years old and I look back at my life and I say , yes , I've been successful and I raised great kids and so on , but I didn't lead the truly authentic life that I should have led , and so one of the best ways to forestall or or or remove the possibility of Having that regret

later in life is to , from the get-go , live as authentic a life as possible , again realizing though that I understand that sometimes people have Pragmatic realities , that they , they , they need to get a job that gives them the greatest likelihood of having a guaranteed paycheck , and being a starving artist for 20 years may not be the best way to do it .

So I Understand that . So I'm not sort of living in La La Land , but , again , I have a section in the book where I talk about , you know , the the great regrets that people who are on their death bed share .

It's from a palliative nurse who wrote a book on the other regrets of the dying , and one of the top regrets I mean I'm paraphrasing what it is but is that I didn't live the life that I was meant to live .

That's what people regret , which , by the way , speaks to another concept in in psychology of regret , which actually comes from one of my former Professors of psychology when I was doing my phd at cornell . His name is thomas gilivage . He basically argue that there are two sources of regret regret due to action and regret due to inaction .

Regret due to action would be I regret that I cheated on my wife and that led to the solution of my marriage . Regret due to inaction would be I regret that I never pursued my interest in art and I became a pediatrician . Well , it turns out , over the long run , that the most looming regrets that we face are those of inaction .

That's what haunts us , that the path that we didn't take . And so , to the best of your ability , if you're a young person , keep this in mind as you trace the trajectory of your future .

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Thank you , do you regret not doing the ironman ?

So , for those of you who don't know what Darren's referring to , when I Did my first marathon so 1985 I ran my first marathon and the goal was that I had set in my mind I will run one marathon , at least one marathon , per year , forever more , and that by the age of 35 . At the time I was 20 . By

the age of 35 , I wanted to complete the ironman triathlon , which , for those of you who don't know , the ironman is the longest distance that you have what are called sprint triathlons that are much shorter . This is , but the ironman is something like 112 mile biking a full marathon and something like 2.6 miles Swimming .

So the winners usually completed in eight hours , and so if you are the average person , you typically will double that . So for you to just complete the ironman , it's probably going to be in the order of 1617 hours , and so I thought , okay , that seems like it's going to almost kill me , sign me up , let me do it .

And so I ran the first marathon in 85 . I ran the second marathon in 86 and then 87 came around and that dream collapsed . I didn't run another marathon ever again which , by the way , could have easily been one of the reasons that accelerated my subsequent weight gain . So I put on . I was very , very thin my whole life until my early 20s .

Then I started gradually putting on weight and two , three years ago , you know , I was , you know , probably 7080 pounds Overweight , which I've since lost most of it , and so there is value in facing those stressors . Maybe , had I run a marathon every year , I wouldn't have ended up being over 200 pounds , as I did end up being .

Because while I think I wore it well because you know some people when they wear their excessive weight they'll be very thin but they'll have a massive stomach and they look completely disproportionate in my case I was quite lucky enough that it was kind of spread everywhere so that while I was visibly obviously , you know , much heavier than I look now , I wore it

reasonably well and I didn't so much care about how I looked . I just had a strong sense of self . I was able to attract my very beautiful wife , although at that time when we met , I wasn't quite at 256 . I might have been at around 95 .

I was quite a bit more self , not quite as much as now , but any case , I think what made me unhappy there so to your , to your exact question is this psychological weight that I was experiencing at not being at my optimal health , right .

So so I , one of the reasons why I decided to lose all my weight is that I am someone who is very much of a perfectionist , where everything is , you know , perfectly disciplined . Well , how could somebody who's so perfectly disciplined Allow themselves to slip ? Yes , we're all human , we all have , you know , some somewhere where we screw up .

That's okay , that's understandable . But as I was getting older and you know , you go see your physician and he's like your blood pressure starting to go up . You need to lose weight .

I have young children I said , you know what , that this is not good , and so I started ruminating about , you know , these downstream health outcomes that would not be good if I maintain that trajectory .

And so , in that sense , that looming ruminative you know I'm doing the wrong thing was in me and was making me unhappy , and so , luckily , I took things into my own hands and lost it all .

I used to never , you know , worry about God forbid playing , crashes and so on , but I noticed that as soon as I had kids , suddenly I didn't develop , you know , a clinical phobia of flying not at all , but suddenly it . And what if this plane crashes ? I'll never see my children grow up .

And so children have a way of , as you would expect from an evolutionary perspective , have a way of reframing things for you . And so certainly , so certainly , having children , you know , at least I can thank them for having made me thin again , because I want to live in a possible , to see them grow up to be productive citizens .

the importance of lost attraction and attachment as a long term success of a marriage . So , as someone who's entering the years of soon to be married next couple years how important is that trifecta effect for long-term success of a marriage ?

Yes , of course I mean as I write in the book , it was a quote from Charles Murray , the political scientist , who , when he came on my show , said something to the effect I don't have the exact quote in front of me , but he goes you know , the secret to finding the right person is to marry your best friend for whom you hold a sexual attraction .

Right , and that's exactly true . Right , if you can look objectively at the person with whom you share your life , they truly are your best friend . You know , my wife and I don't have night girls out and you know , guys cave , cave night out , not because we don't have friends separate .

I mean , you know she's got girlfriends , I've got guy friends , but it's that we've never felt the need to kind of take a break from each other . And now it's the night out for the guys with me and it's her night out with the girls .

Once we found one another , we really just love to be around each other and I'd rather be with her more than with anybody else , and I also find her very beautiful . So I won the genetic lottery in that , the marriage lottery . But so lust is not going to carry you though 20 years into a marriage .

That doesn't mean that you're not going to be sexually attracted to your mate , but it's not going to be the same as when you first start out .

There are hormonal stages that you go through , neuroanatomical stages that you go through , and I quote there Helen Fisher , who's probably the person , the biological anthropologist , who's done the most work on this , showing that we go through different physiological faces in our long term relationships .

The butterflies that you get , the ruminative thinking that you get when you first you know are falling in love with someone , the tingling in your fingers that you get Don't expect that 30 years into your relationship . That doesn't mean you no longer find them attractive . It's just because now it's serotonin that's kicking in , it's the sense of contentment .

I feel I could trust this person . I feel that this is a person that's got my back . That's a very different thing than when we first meet , a month into the relationship , where the only thing we're thinking about is how to have sex with each other . Right , so that's fine , that's .

It's perfectly fine to to be lustful towards your partner , but you certainly don't want to be picking a person for whom the only thing you feel is lust . Right , you know , I tell the story in the in the book of .

You know , one of the , the , the behavioral patterns that my then wife to be she wasn't yet my wife exhibited , that said to me wow , this is a really special person . I had been asked to deliver some in-house executive courses in her firm .

That's how we met and roughly , maybe about halfway through the course I think it was I was supposed I was mandated to teach , I think , something like six modules , and maybe around the third one I was suffering from a bronchitis , which at the time I would often get because I used to be asthmatic , so I would cough a lot and so on .

And once I called for a break people to go to the bathroom , go get a sandwich , whatever of her own volition , without me having asked anything , she goes downstairs , gets a hot tea , comes back and gives it to me . She goes . Oh , you seem to be struggling . Maybe hopefully this helped . Well , what did that show ?

How considerate she is , how attentive she is , how kind she is , and so , at that point , her physical beauty which was very evident . She was beautiful that completely took a backdrop . I didn't even I never thought , oh geez , this would be a great woman to marry , she's so beautiful .

But when I saw how kind she was I mean , there were other students in the class , they didn't go and get me the tea , and so there was something very unique and lovely and kind about her doing that very small gesture , and so it's those little micro cues that you should be looking for when you're thinking about the person with whom you're going to be sharing

your life with .

And you write a lot about male-female dynamics and I'm very big on that as well , in terms of gender roles , gender dynamics , and how do you observe that from a male-female perspective , like in terms of , as you mentioned there , your wife was very kind to you . She's very supportive and that's been a huge part in my girlfriend as well .

She's just been with me since day one when I had minus $500 in my bank account to where we are now , many years later . But it's been the same level of support and love versus someone I don't know trying to belittle me , for instance , for trying to progress further on my career . So how kind of important is that as you find the right partner ?

I guess Sure .

And it turns out that if you're trying to maximize the likelihood of having a successful , long-term union , a long-term marriage , then it's overwhelmingly the case that the birds of a feather flock together maxim is the one that you should be looking for . So the next question is flocking on which feathers ?

Is it that we have to have the same eye color , the same hair color ? And of course , the answer is not that it's that we really have to have a complete shared view on our belief systems , our life goals , our fundamental foundational values .

If I am a person who every decision is rooted in my faith and you happen to be a caustic , outspoken atheist , well , it's not going to take a fancy evolutionary psychologist to say that , all other things equal , we're probably not starting on the right foot . That doesn't mean that we can't overcome that difference , but boy , we're putting the odds against us .

And so if we have all of those fundamental , foundational shared values , then it's really setting us up for success .

Now to your specific question about male-female dynamics . Well , there are some attributes mating attributes that are necessities and some that are luxuries . So the necessities meaning that both men and women desire in their prospective partners the two of them are kindness and intelligence . So all other things equal .

Very few people say , well , I'd really rather find an unkind person than a kind person . And very few people say , well , you know what ? What I really want in a long-term partner is someone who's dull and dumb and a dullard that would really trigger my sexual juices . So , of course , intelligence and kindness are universally preferred necessities .

But then there are other attributes which men and women vary on in terms of how important , how much importance they place on those attributes . So we know from evolutionary psychology that the one universal attribute that women care about around the world is the social status of a man .

Irrespective of what the woman's own social status is so she could be a billionaire and a neurosurgeon , she's still going to insist on a very high , if not higher , social status from her prospective mate . And there are very obvious and clear evolutionary reasons why social status would matter from women choosing men . Now , how is that actionable ?

You might say , ok , that's great information , but who cares ? Well , if you are an unemployed , apathetic , unassertive , unambitious male who plays video games in mom's basement all day , then please don't be surprised if there isn't an orderly line of really beautiful women outside your home begging for a chance to have sex with you .

And now , the good news is that those are attributes on which I could put in the effort and improve on . I mean , there are some attributes that I can't alter . What my facial symmetry is is what my facial symmetry is , and I can't change that . That's just my morphology .

But how assertive I am , how ambitious I am , how good my vocabulary is , you know , we very , very quickly and accurately can judge someone's social status by the first few sentences that they utter . Well , maybe I could read more , maybe I could , you know , become more or not .

So there are many , many ways by which , as a young man , I understand that a lot of your audience are young people . So if I am a young man , there are clear ways by which I can improve . I can't change my height , right . I can't if the woman that I'm trying to court absolutely desires someone who's six feet or taller . Well , I've already lost .

But here's the good news For most in most cases and I explained this in the book made choice is a compensatory process , which is a fancy way of saying that I can compensate for some shortcomings by doing well on other attributes . So I may not be tall , but guess what ? I'm not speaking now about myself , I'm speaking generically .

I may be , you know , five foot eight , and you really want a six foot guy . But guess what ? I'm charismatic , I'm hardworking , I'm ambitious , I'm funny , I am good looking , even though I'm shorter . And when you put the entire bundle , then that might make me much more attractive than a six foot one guy who's playing video games all day .

And so because made choice is compensatory , meaning it's an entire bundle on which most people choose their certainly their long term partner , then I can willfully improve my lot in the mating market . Right ?

If it were the case that made choice were a non compensatory process , it would be the following If women were to say I will never mate with anyone who's under six feet , then I can't compensate for my being less than six feet by being charismatic and a neurosurgeon , because I could never match that six foot .

But as I said , for most people it is compensatory , and so get off the the couch and improve yourself , like everything in life , it's multifactorial If you fall down on one side , you can pick up another one .