#200 Sahil Bloom – 5 Steps To Improve Your Health, Wealth & Relationships

You can't do any of that if you don't actually have anything of value that you can provide the world . I don't think that you should go out and say like , hey , everyone should get married , everyone should have children . If you don't wanna have children , don't have children .

If you don't feel like you can be an incredible parent to a child , or if you don't feel like you can be an incredible spouse to someone , then don't .

What's up , people ? Before we get into this video , please make sure to subscribe , like and comment down below so we can get bigger and better guests for you every single week . Let's get straight into the video right now . Yes , my man honestly my son , thank you . So where I wanna start is around the great lies that you have exposed .

Right , and the money is the only type of wealth , but in reality there are five types of wealth , so financial , social , physical , mental and time . Now the pain comes from the wisdom often , and what was the realization for you ? That there was like five types of wealth ?

My dad's a professor at Harvard , my mom is Indian and if you know anything about Indian culture , it's like very like performance and doing the thing your family wants you to do is deeply ingrained in the culture . And so , like becoming a doctor , like my mom's still just like , oh , are you sure you don't wanna become a doctor , mom ?

I think it's a little late for me to do that . That was always just hardwired in me , that , like you follow the kind of the safe , the neat , the path , and it's not always the path that you have consented to . In a lot of cases it's like the path that you're supposed to follow . It's the path that people , other people , think you should follow .

And I had done that right , I had gone to the great school , graduated , got my degrees , got my master's , went and took a job in finance , which was like , again , the kind of prestigious role that you're like supposed to take , you're supposed to go do that .

And I was marching down that path basically with my eyes closed and I think a lot of people can probably relate to that feeling of you blink and it's been five years and you're like , oh my God , what did I do ?

And the thing that started to terrify me was the idea that you could blink again and you could wake up in 50 years and say , what the fuck did I just do with my life ? And I didn't have an opt out , like there was no way to step off that path , because the gravity of it accelerates with time . Like every year you stay on that path .

It's harder to step off because you have more responsibilities , like you have a wife , you're making more money , you have a mortgage , you have bills to pay , you got kids , maybe , like there's all sorts of things that make it harder and harder to step off the path and to go do the thing you actually wanna do or the thing that you're inspired by .

For me , I got very , very lucky in that COVID was like the chaos that got inserted into the system and it forced me to take a step back and like , if I think about my own life , if you were to run out 100 scenarios of my life , I think in like 97 of them I would have wound up waking up in 50 years and saying what the hell did I do ?

I would have stayed on the normal path . I would have just continued to do that . I would have made a lot of money , probably because I was on a path that was quite lucrative , but I would have been pretty miserable and wondered how the hell it happened .

Covid was that thing that threw everything into a lurch and for a lot of people out there Me included , and that was the first time that I had to step back and actually think about like okay , I have time , what do I actually wanna do with my life and what are the things that are out there and that coincided with a realization around time with people I love

in particular . That really changed my life . So in May 2021 , I had a conversation that completely changed my life . I went out for a drink with a friend , an old friend , who I hadn't seen in a while , and we were talking about life and he asked how life was and I said things are great , but I don't see my parents all that often .

I was really , really close with my parents growing up and he said well , how often do you see them ? I said about once a year . He said how old are they ? I said about 65 and he looked me in the eyes and he said okay , so you're gonna see them 15 more times before they die . And I remember just feeling like I got hit with a punch in the gut .

You don't think about that , right , like you don't do that math in your head of how many times are you gonna see the people you care about before they're gone . But it's just math . If they're 65 years old and the average life expectancy is 80 and you see them once a year , you're gonna see them 15 more times .

And that was like the wake up call that I needed in life to just step off the track that I was on . So the next morning I woke up , I told my wife that I wanted to move back to the East Coast to be closer to my family , and within 45 days I had quit my job . We had sold our house in California and bought a place on the East Coast and moved .

And if not for doing that , like , just like , straight up , rip the bandaid off , go , make this massive change I don't think I ever would have discovered this entire other side to life that went so far beyond just making money .

You can see the guys and who they are , even in the tech space . Right Like came from a tech finance tech background too , but it seems like that people are nearly reluctant to get off the wheel , to go off and under directions , and it's almost like you convince yourself that this is the right part , right ?

In a lot of ways , it's the best marketing tool in the world for keeping people doing the same thing , because you can look I mean , I can go and see on a daily basis where I measure up in the world . Like the Forbes list , whatever . Every year they publish the richest people in the world .

Like there is a list there and you forget the fact , by the way , that if you look at the Forbes the top 10 richest people in the world I think like nine of them are divorced . And so you like look at the scoreboard and you're like , wow , those guys are winning . And you're like , yeah , their wives and children hate them . Is that really winning anymore ?

I don't know . I mean , for me it's not . I don't want to be on the Forbes 10 list if it means that my wife hates me and my kids don't want to hang out with me . And so what I think is that we need a new scoreboard , and that's what I write about broadly is like let's redefine how we think about what a wealthy life looks like .

That's what my book is going to be about . That's what all of this is really about to me , because if you don't , if you don't question it , if you don't start scraping away at those assumptions , you default into the scoreboard that society gives you .

And it was David Foster Wallace in his speech at Kenyon College his commencement speech that this is water speech . It's a very famous speech . He talks about the fact that we have default settings .

We have things that we default into , and my whole concept is a riff off of that , which is we need to live by design rather than by default , and the default is to think about money . The default is to measure your worth and your self-worth on the basis of how you're doing on that one scoreboard .

And so you're working at Goldman Sachs and you're like well , my self-worth for 2023 is based on what my bonus is at the end of the year . And they tell me I got a million dollar bonus and I'm so excited until I find out that Joe down the hall got two million . And then I'm pissed Like why the hell did he get two million and I got one ?

Well , I should have been happy , right , I got one . That's more than last year . Things are good . But now I'm comparing myself and suddenly my happiness is contingent on something totally out of my control . I can't control what Joe's bonus was had nothing to do with me , but you can feel that Anyone listening to this you know that feeling . I knew that feeling .

I had been there . And so stepping off that treadmill and opting out of it and questioning those assumptions that actually create that feeling within you , I think is the most important journey that we can all be on and take , because then again , like you , all of a sudden now are in control of your own happiness . It's not contingent on someone else .

There was this amazing thing that I read recently I think it was Josh Weitzkin , or Josh Weitzkin rather , on , I think it might have been on the Tim Ferriss podcast , and he talked about how a lot of people with their children use the language of saying like the weather is bad or the weather is good , and they would say like we're not gonna go out and play

today because it's bad weather out , or we're going to go out and play because the weather is good , and his whole point was you're making your enjoyment of the day contingent on something external , something you cannot control , and so his point with his child was we're never gonna miss a storm , we're gonna go out every single day because every day is beautiful ,

because we can control that . We can control how we feel about the day . It has nothing to do with whatever the external conditions are , and I loved that so much because it's true . When you actually take power of that , when you realize that you actually have the power to choose your own conditions . It's not externally created .

You all of a sudden are in power and in control of everything within your life .

So it's funny because you can put it into things that are useless and pointless and political and controversy on Twitter , or you can reallocate it .

And one of the most overarching elements I've seen in your life is the fact that when you discuss this kind of balance and blended life and the lifestyle design , it's not as if you do this without having your business sorted and your writing and your investments and as an entrepreneur now .

So it's even more admirable that you've been able to balance it , too , really effectively . And if someone looks at your adventures , if you looked at your LinkedIn , for instance , you know it's like writer , you've SRB ventures , you've SRB holdings that have been pretty successful in their own right . How have you been able to balance it too ?

And basically it looks like you've like unlimited time right , because you have a well-ratioed life of all the different factors .

You might put 10 units of input because you're working a ton and you're generating 10 units of output . The ultimate goal is for one unit of input to generate a thousand units of output . Everyone talks about leverage . What does it mean ?

It's that it's dislocating your inputs from your outputs , but you need to figure out how to do that and where you can actually do that . My perspective is the first 10 years of your career should be spent figuring out where that is , like where in your life can you deploy one unit of input and generate a thousand units of output ?

And the next 30 , 40 years of your life should be spent exploiting those areas . Like , just go deep on that , because that's where the goal is . And so when I think about my own life now , what I'm trying to find is what are those asymmetric opportunities ? Where are the places where I can do a little bit and it generates a massive asymmetric upside .

Content is an unbelievable form of that . I can create the same newsletter today that I wrote two years ago , but two years ago it went out to 5,000 people , now it's going out to 600,000 people , and so it's a totally asymmetric opportunity on the same amount of time . The same thing applies to how I think about investing .

Like you're generating leverage on other people's capital . Investing in interesting opportunities , leveraging a platform to drive scale of a business is a hugely asymmetric opportunity . And then the same thing applies to your personal life , because time and energy are not the same thing A lot of people think about .

You're like okay , time with my partner is really important , and if the time with your partner is sitting watching a TV show , not talking to them , that's not particularly high leverage activity for most relationships .

You're not generating a depth of connection with that person in spending 30 minutes or two hours , whatever , netflixing and chill , whatever that might look like for you .

What might be really high leverage is 15 minutes where you're truly present , asking the person how they are , what are the unlocks in their life like , what are the ways where you can develop a depth of connection and too few people lose sight of that .

So you conflate time and energy there and you think that just because you're spending time with the person that you're really giving them your energy . But if I'm spending , time with you right now and we're having a conversation and I'm sitting here on my phone actually like scrolling Twitter or I'm looking at emails or texts while we're talking .

I could spend two hours with you doing that . Would you feel connected to me at all ? I ?

there .

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When I heard this , I put down my phone , because I live with my girlfriend and I have my office at home and we have our other dogs around , which makes it really hard . By the way , Exactly too and again looking at it from a time perspective we spend a lot of time together .

But then this is when you know you've questioned a lot of my tall process , all my actions , and that's why I love this conversation , because I started to put my phone down .

And when we're having food , we're having conversation , we're engaged and I'm trying to understand and , like , learn her perspective and then be able to make evaluations of what I should do based on her own opinion , right . So , for instance , what I would often ask is like how can I help you ? Is there anything I can help with today ?

Because sometimes she could be over burdened . She has her own work . There's a few different factors . So that small instance has been like hugely helpful for me . And again , it's the looking at the non-linear opportunities .

I've taken that back a second before into the relationships , but looking at it from an input perspective , If you're looking for non-linear opportunities , do you look for it in the skills aspect or mainly even the opportunity or the business aspect ?

Because for someone like me , it's become like media , it's become the podcast and I guess the skill will be communication . The skill will be like my ability to network or something like that . How do you think about that ? Because a lot of younger people that's where they're running into issues is finding these actual definitive terms ?

What's the skill that you can actually bring to the table ? What's the evidence that you can present to me ? Like , when people ask they wanna come work for me on something , what are you gonna do ? Like , what's the skill ? Are you a video editor ? Are you a copywriter ?

Like , what is the thing that I can plug you into where I know you're gonna create value in what you're doing ? And so I think those early years when I said the first 10 years , are spent figuring out where the opportunity is . That's skill building . Like that's go create some skills that differentiate you from the marketplace .

There's plenty of high value skills out there today . You just have to go build them . And then , once you build them , the opportunities start coming to you . It's like this whole idea of the four types of luck too . There's this idea that there are four types of luck and the first type is blind luck , which is what we think of as luck .

That's like the chance occurrences of the universe , acts of God , et cetera . The second type is luck from motion , which is hustling . It's like you're going , you're meeting people , you're getting out in the world , you're creating connections and collisions that create luck .

The third type is luck from awareness , and luck from awareness is basically this idea that , like , you become so skilled in a domain that you can actually spot luck better than anyone else around that .

And then the fourth type is luck from uniqueness , which is the idea that you are so unique in your weird eccentric combination of skills and ideas that luck actually comes to you .

Those last three types you know motion , awareness and uniqueness all come from actually having skills in the world , from doing things that people find value in , that they're gonna come to you , that you're gonna be connected to interesting people . You can't do any of that if you don't actually have anything of value that you can provide the world .

So you get lucky by providing value to the world with no expectation of return

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It's almost like you were like you had those key skills but then they became like major skills as they went further . Like what were some of those similarities ? Because you've had some like handbrake turns in your career , but there's still so much overlap right In the Vendilogram . There's still so much overlap .

But that's where someone may not be able to see it from a zoomed out perspective .

Not that it's the most valuable combination of skills in the world , but I don't think there are many people who reached the level I reached within the private equity world in particular , and I mean like really there's a lot of people who talk about it , but when you kind of actually ask questions about where they were , what funds , what were they doing ?

Like they didn't actually work in private equity , they were doing something else that they sound good now talking about , I don't think there is really any people that have that background that have now transitioned to building an ecosystem as a creator or entrepreneur , and that is a powerful thing for me because I can think about things very differently than most

creators and then as a business person , I can think of things creatively in a different way because of the skill set there . But I think in the early days of my career in finance I knew I was never going to be the best quantitatively .

I was like I'm fine in math , I'm good numbers , I was going to be okay , but I sort of always knew I'd be a better partner than I was an analyst , because the partner job was much more about relationships and networks and communication and storytelling , and I always knew I had a knack for that , but I didn't know how long it would take me to get to that

point . I knew I would eventually get to that point , but I didn't know how long it would take Transitioning into being a creator and into being an entrepreneur and having the venture fund . Today I sort of still get to leverage some of those business and analytical skills that I developed , but it leans much more heavily on the storytelling side .

When I think about what my days are like now , everything is about storytelling and to me , storytelling is the best meta skill you can have . The best CEOs in the world are not the smartest people in their organizations Hands down , like , if you go look Jeff Bezos , tim Cook , elon Musk they're not the smartest person at their company .

They are the best storyteller . They take tons of data in , they do something inside them that's amazing and then they're able to tell a very concrete , clear , incredibly insightful , distilled story . So it's data in , story out . That skill is the best meta skill that anyone can develop .

The Cybertruck is hideous , like you look at it , you're like , oh my God , this thing , like just on , if it wasn't Elon Musk launching it , I'd look at that thing and be like , wow , that thing is an ugly car Like weird lines , the whole thing is ugly , but it's Elon Musk launching it , so you look at it and you're like , well , I kind of want one .

It could be on Mars . I actually just like , oh no , oops , I slipped and I pre-ordered one . Like you know , it's crazy . What if it's matte black ? Like I can see the vision . Oh , like , maybe I'll drive this thing through a river , I don't know . Like because of the storytelling it really does something magical .

And I mean the fact that they don't do any marketing and they have this unbelievable engine of people . It's all storytelling .

And so when you realize that , you realize that that meta skill applies to anything that you're doing Because when you're storytelling , that doesn't have to be around , like writing and creative work you have to story tell about your own career . When you're applying to a job , You're storytelling . In an interview . When you talk to people , You're storytelling .

When you're dating , Like you're telling your story about who you are as a human and why the person should care about that that's storytelling . All of it comes down to that same thing . And so , building that skill early on if I could go back in time , I mean I would like really prioritize that earlier in my life .

It actually wasn't as daunting when I did it , but it was just more mainly in my head . You know , and looking at your resume and your profile , it seems to get came kind of not easy to you but it came natural to you . So how was that transition for you ?

When you're in a normal nine to five job , everything is structured for you . You wake up in the morning and you know exactly what you have to do because you have a manager , you have a boss , someone that tells you your to-dos . You look at it .

You're like I have to get through these emails today , I have to do these checklists , I have to do this stuff , I have to get this paper , this report , whatever . I know exactly what I'm doing , basically at every single point in the day . That is soul sucking in some ways . It's also amazing in other ways , because I don't have to think about it .

I know exactly what I'm going to do . When you leave that to go off on your own journey , there's no one telling you what to do on a daily basis . You have no one . You have to tell yourself and that is so freaking hard and I had so much struggle with that because my whole life up to that point had been structured .

I had been an athlete at the college level . Everyone's telling you what to do every day . I know exactly what classes I have to go to . I know exactly what my practice schedule looks like . I know everything at every point of my day . Took a job . Exact same way . I knew what I had to do at all points in time . I knew .

When I had to travel , I knew , and then suddenly , like one day , flip a switch . No one's telling you what to do . What do you fill your days with ? No one tells you how to build a company . There's not something like you can't go read zero to one or whatever book and like all of a sudden , be like I know how to build a media company .

No , I have no idea . I still don't know what I'm doing on a daily basis . So that is really challenging and I think it scares off a lot of people in the early going of being an entrepreneur .

For me , what has actually helped the most with that is just getting into a process of time blocking , so figuring out what are the core activities that will drive this forward .

It doesn't have to be the specifics , but what are the core activities and blocking times of the day when I'm focusing on those , and I've tried to align those with like how my energy flows during the day . I know I'm most creative in the morning , so I need to have creative work in the morning .

I know I'm best at like silly managerial tasks in the afternoon when I'm like not feeling creative , so I need to batch those in the afternoon . I know I need to go through my own like health and fitness stuff at some point during the day , so I have a batch time when I'm going to do that .

Figuring that out helped so much because then I can look at my calendar and sort of like breathe a sigh of relief that at any point in the day I might not know this exact thing that I need to work on , but I know the general sort of framing and structure of what I'm going to

be focused on .

I would do outreach in the morning , I would write content half a true today . I would do team stuff in the middle of the day and then finish up and something kind of later in the evening , and it's just imaginary . But it was kind of like the feedback loop was is this working ? And it kind of was working .

It was obviously slow and you have that ramp up period where by you're hitting against a wall and eventually breakthrough .

Like you talk about it with bodybuilding , you knew all your meals were planned out . You knew all your workouts were planned out . You knew what you had to do . Athletes are like that Professional athletes , collegiate athletes everything is mapped out for you . You know what you're supposed to do every day in order to deliver and suddenly that's gone and it's .

How do you fill that void ? And that's really hard . So I mean , it's a thing that entrepreneurs

wrestle with , it's a thing that athletes wrestle with . I think it's like a very universal struggle .

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Thank you , but again , it's about what you really want , right , and when you mentioned around the early days of the pandemic and you figuring out what you wanted , the biggest thing for me was really man search for meaning by Victor Frankel , and that really brought everything back to the fulfillment and purpose and meaning piece . It was hugely influential .

So I think , as time has gone on and ever I've met that wall of resistance . I kind of always reference it , either subconsciously or consciously , because I know that I'm on a path that I fundamentally enjoy and it's like working I just need to do it better and kind of get better right . I want to reference some of your , some of your work .

Throughout this conversation and you mentioned about two different kinds of people people who respond to unexpected failure by sulking , blaming others or be moaning in their bad luck . People who respond to unexpected failure by digging in , getting curious and learning more . Some of history's greatest success stories come from type two .

People who dive deeper into it after unexpected failure be a type two person . If I look at your work , it really displays the type two person , because curiosity chronicles is basically all about you exploring your curiosity , right . Can you help me show this example and different types of challenges you've had that you've had to dig deep into ?

I suck at that sometimes , a lot of the time , and so when I write about something , it's not like I'm saying , hey , I'm perfect at this , so you better get better at it . I'm awesome at it . My point is actually like this is something I am struggling with and I'm trying to figure out how to get better .

I'm wrestling with it and here's how I'm thinking about it . That is from that curiosity . That's like , oh , I'm really bad at this thing and my general model for how I think about creating content is just that , like , what am I really suffering from ? Or what am I struggling with ?

What is the arrow that's hitting me right now and how can my response to that arrow be better ? How can I learn more about it ? How can I get curious , figure out who are the best people in the world that have talked about this thing , written about it , spoken about it , and how can I learn from that experience that has existed .

There's this amazing parable of the two arrows that I've talked about before . It's a Buddhist parable that says you're struck by the first arrow and it hurts , and the second arrow that hits you will hurt more , but the second arrow is your response to the first one . And so the second arrow is optional , is the idea .

The second arrow is controlled by your response to the first arrow . And so if you respond by getting curious , if you respond by diving in , by trying to learn more and not by reacting with anger , fear , jealousy , contempt , etc . You can send that second arrow just falling into the ground rather than into you .

And so I always try to default to that when I'm struggling with something Default to curiosity rather than to anger rather than to jealousy rather than to fear , no matter what it is . I mean , the biggest ones for me recently that I've struggled with have been the changes in our relationships and in our lives that have come from having a kid .

I think it's the biggest challenge that every relationship goes through . If you look at the statistics survey of married couples , I think something like 80% say that their marriage got worse in the year after having a child and that is a terribly sad thing if you think about it , because having a kid is the happiest , most beautiful , amazing thing in the world .

But it makes the relationships worse for that high proportion of couples and the reason is because it fundamentally changes your relationship with your partner and with your spouse . For eternity . Prior to that , in your relationship , they were your most important person in the world . It was you and them and everything else was external .

And then suddenly this thing comes into the world like literally a thing and it is the most important for both of you . And so suddenly you were in a backseat for your partner , she is in a backseat for you and that's really hard for a lot of relationships . You start losing sight of the like romantic side of your relationship .

You lose sight of the dating , of the like feeling , of the honeymoon period , of , like the lust , the love , etc . All of those things that were so formative in your early relationship are gone .

That has been something that has been amazing in hindsight to navigate , to wrestle with and struggle with , but is really a struggle that a lot of people face and again , just like learning from people that have gone through that , that are smarter than you that have talked about it , that have written about it , learning from people who have built 50 plus year

marriages , going and talking to those kind of people about what they did , how they navigated that . That , to me , is where , like , the greatest joys of life come from , from figuring out those big problems and from really struggling through the mud of them .

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Did you ever hear the example of the high school jock and the cheerleader captain ? It was Dr God said , actually said on Joe Rogan years ago . He wrote in his first book called the parasitic mind I actually interviewed him recently .

He'd be a great guy for you to talk to actually wrote a book called the sad truth of happiness Sad truth , happiness which is all about relationships .

But he made this great point which I kind of was thinking about when you were talking about the evolution of your relationship that there was a high school jock and the captain of the cheerleading team said they're both like no , the two most popular people in school .

They graduate and the cheerleader , the woman , goes on to become a doctor and she's this really prestigious career and she ends up , you know , helping tons of people and she works really hard at it . The high school jock ends up not materializing too much .

He starts drinking , he's working local store , he's not doing much , so they grow out of disparity and then they end up having like resentment in the relationship and eventually break up .

And that can be the case for many people who get into those kind of like early childhood relationships , whereas for you you've kind of had that early instance where you've grown together and really improved . So how's that kind of transition been for you guys ?

And when you get married is the first time when you have to give up your innate selfishness . When you give a piece of yourself to another person , that is 10 X when you have a child and suddenly there is something that is an extension of you that will hurt 10 X more . If they get hurt , you'll feel 10 X more joy than they feel when things are good .

Those two points of your life , it is just giving up your little bits of your selfishness along the way and truly handing that over to other things in the world , and not many people can do that .

Recognizing it , going in understanding that you are giving up your innate selfishness is a really , really important feature and factor , and being willing to struggle and grow through whatever those struggles are with the person is really an incredible thing . I mean . I think about back to like .

Just before we got married , my mom asked me how I knew that Elizabeth was the one my wife and I said because I love doing absolutely nothing with her , and what I meant by that was I can sit on a couch totally dead silent , not talking , and feel connected to her and love doing that for the rest of my life .

There's this tendency we all have to think that marriage and relationships are all about the like Instagram worthy moments , right the like Bali beautiful pool and the jungle photos , and Maldives honeymoon pictures , all of those things .

The reality is that most of life is just sitting around doing nothing , and when you find someone that you are happy sitting around doing nothing with , that is your person . That is someone that you can spend the rest of your life with .

It's not just the honeymoon phase , like that goes away and you have to have different layers of your attraction to someone in order for it to sustain over long periods . You have to be able to grow with them , to struggle with them , to go through and crawl through the mud of whatever inevitable turns life takes .

We've been really fortunate that I met her when , I mean , I was 15 , she was 14 years old when we met . We have had to grow through very different seasons of life to get to where we are today .

I mean , I've known her more than half my life now , been together , more than half my life now , which is a crazy thing to think about , Like when I go back , the first time I met her was in a computer lab in our high school and I was like this cringe 15 year whatever , like acne to face , like trying to go talk to this girl .

I mean it's crazy to think about the different seasons of our life that we've had to grow through , but when you find someone that you can just do nothing with , that is , I mean like

that is just an incredible , incredible thing .

So I've been with my partner for years come up to four years now and when we first met I had largely nothing , so did she , and as time has gone on , I've kind of developed my career , I've developed a few other things , like feeding into some of these factors of like , I'd say like the financial in the world and whatever , and like the status , and none of

that has impacted the relationship . So even when we might get a good win in the company or in a business , it still doesn't change her perspective of me and my perspective of her . Consequently and she like makes that very apparent sometimes she's like it doesn't , she's like it's great and I'm delighted for you , but it doesn't change the relationship .

And she cares much more about how I treat her , of course , and how I treat other people . I wanted to ask you about what you think of like the trend of people not getting married . What's your thoughts on that ?

I think you can feel deeply connected to a religion , a cause . But you have to feel connected to something bigger than yourself in order to live a fulfilled life . I personally think marriage is an unbelievable institution . I am a huge pro marriage fan . I am a big believer in what it does for creating incredible communities .

I think people live and raise children in an amazing way when you have a solid core household to bring up a child in . But that's not for everyone . I don't think that you should go out and say , hey , everyone should get married , everyone should have children . If you don't want to have children , don't have children .

If you don't feel like you can be an incredible parent to a child , or if you don't feel like you can be an incredible spouse to someone , then don't . I also don't think people should settle .

I was having this conversation with a close friend of mine , a woman who's , I think like 30-ish years old , who hasn't found her a person yet , and she was starting to feel nervous about well , I really want to have kids and so I'm like maybe this guy is good enough and this thing , and I'm like you are amazing , you're attractive , you're smart , you're fun .

Don't settle for anything less than being crazy about someone , and that's hard to hear . A lot of people at around 30 start to think about settling , and my opinion is that the person that you choose to partner with in your life is going to govern all of your happiness or all of your misery .

It is going to be the single most important decision you make , and so choosing someone that you are unsure about is the worst thing that you can possibly do Just for the sake of feeling like you got married or for the sake of making other people happy that you got married . You shouldn't do that . Don't settle for something that you feel like .

Steve Jobs said it in one of his commencement speeches never settle for less than love , and that applied to work in the context that he was saying it . It also just applies to life

.

It's just that full circle that a lot of people will just forget and they'll take it for granted . How do you appreciate the times when you're in them ?

And then there's one and it says seven years two months . And then there's one and it says six years five months . And he starts to get really agitated that this is only children in this cemetery . What a horrible thing . So he asks the shopkeeper why are there only children in the cemetery ? And the shopkeeper explains they're not children .

The way that we measure life in this community is we time the moments of enjoyment on a daily basis and then we add them up over the course of our lives . Because life lived isn't just the time we've lived , it's the amount of time that we enjoyed during the course of our life .

And I thought about that so deeply , of what if we change the way that we thought about measuring our time ? It's not about living 80 years , it's about enjoying 80 years . It's about enjoying the time , enjoying those times on a daily basis and registering when we're enjoying them .

The idea was that in this community , when you're experiencing something joyful , you mark it down and think about how long you were enjoying it for , and then you have to add it up , tabulate it Like what if we lived our lives that way where we had to register those moments of happiness just as a thought experiment , like on a daily basis ?

How many moments of happiness do you just kind of let float by ? You never thought about it ? Wow , that was beautiful , like that smell and the air was amazing on that walk . I really enjoyed that , the peace , the fresh air . I really enjoyed reading that article . That was so interesting . I felt intellectually stimulated .

I really enjoyed that conversation with an old friend that I hadn't talked to in a while . We just don't register those moments , they just pass by , and that's such a shame because those are the moments when we're actually living , we're really , really experiencing that .

From reading your work , I've been literally really trying to implement this and because I'm doing it and my partner's not doing it , I'd feel like that I'm like aware of it and I would try to like let her know and then we can kind of like struggle to appreciate the good times in your inner .

It was like really nice , just really great setup having a cup of coffee and I was really trying to like soak it in , right , but if I wasn't so focal about it it would easy , kind of goes fly by .

If you do that , I guarantee you will feel like an up leveling in the quality of your relationship with your partner . Because one of the things that happens when a relationship atrophies is you no longer feel that there's gratitude for what you're doing . You no longer feel the appreciation for the little things that the person is doing or that you're doing .

And when you just vocalize that to the person , so many of the bad things that you would normally like focus on just melt away . All of a sudden you're focusing on the good . You're focusing on that happy moment , the joy , the like you took out the trash without me asking . It could be the tiniest thing .

You put away the dish , the way that you put the blanket under our son's head , like just the little thing that you're recognizing and vocalizing is so important . The same thing applies to life .

It's like vocalize it when you're walking through Central Park and there's like birds chirping and it's beautiful , vocalize it , say it , even if it's in your head and you're walking by yourself like , wow , this is really nice . There's the . Kurt Vonnegut gave his commencement speech at Rice University , I think in 1998 .

And he tells the story of his uncle who used to stop when times were nice and sweet , and he would look up at the sky and say , if this isn't nice , what is ? I think about that all the time . Just register those moments . Why not ? There's nothing , we're not in that big of a rush .

Everyone seems like they're in a rush all the time , looking down at their phones , running around , whatever , but like you can take two seconds to register when something is amazing , you can change your whole outlook on a day 100% .

But then after now it's been about four years people have really kind of gone off and carved their own way in life and I found that a lot of previous friendships , even with other people just like other people , people , observation can break down due to envy and jealousy and even agreed for some degree of people being very greedy of where they're at Like .

Have you seen that kind of play out in your own kind of face and what's happened in your own kind of life ?

There will be friends rare ones , but amazing ones that will be there throughout all of the seasons of your life , who you know you can count on , like if you're stuck in a third world prison , they're the person you would call to break you out because you know they would just be there and they actually might not be your best friend in the world .

I have a couple of friends who they're close friends . I wouldn't say they're my best friend , but if I was stuck in a third world prison and I called them , they'd literally be there figuring out how to break me out , and those are amazing people to have in your life .

But the vast majority of the friends that you have are seasonal , like they'll be there at times and then not at others , and that's okay . There's nothing wrong with that type of friend fundamentally .

But what I've found personally is that you are going to have if you are an ambitious person , you are going to have people who are no longer well suited for your vision for where your life is going .

And if you have friends who snicker at your ambition , who throw out the subtle digs , laughing at you a little bit , over where you feel like you're headed , over what you want to do , over the big goals and dreams that you have , you need to cut those people out of your life , because every ounce of energy that you give to someone that has not earned it is

an ounce that you cannot get back and dedicate towards the things that matter .

So let's say for you , when you launch your fund , like that's a huge moment in your life , right , huge moment , and it's that celebration and we don't want people patting you in the back 24 , seven , but it's like the recognition as a friend and the mutual respect that you'd have for someone .

It's like in those instances it's not granted even though you could be talking about something that's made me a future tense but it's like , oh , it hasn't been realized yet and I think that's been very like apparent from your writing .

You said if someone tries to put you down your accomplishments or make you feel small , cut them out of your life , I think I'm just at that age where it's kind of like really happening . It's something that's very topical .

If you have that kind of toxic influence , someone that is really just telling you to be realistic , someone that's laughing at you , doesn't believe in you , and it's someone that close to you blood related , a spouse that is really really difficult and I have been highly fortunate that I haven't had to deal with that .

My parents are unbelievable , my sister is incredible , my spouse is unbelievable . But I still think the same rule applies . You don't have to tell a person you're cutting them out of your life . By the way , you don't have to go and say , hey , by the way , I'm not seeing you anymore , cutting you out . I think the first step is to vocalize it to them .

Let them know how their actions , how their words , how their behaviors are actually harming you and impacting you . A lot of people just don't realize they're saying things , they don't realize the impact it's having . So that can be the first layer of defense . People will actually internalize it and then slow it down .

The second layer is just stop giving them your head space . Stop letting them actually occupy any space in your mind . I can be around you , but have a total guard up and you don't have any access to me . No matter what you say , you just have no access to my head space , like I'm effectively , metaphorically on my phone when I'm around you .

And that's the second layer of defense . The third layer is cut them out . You don't spend any time around them if they continue to be toxic , and if that has to be with a family member ,

so be it .

Your writing and implementing your frameworks like 30 for 30 was huge for me when we started our business because it was on the side of working in finance at the time and just being able to put in those 30 minutes a day for 30 days was just incredible to get that level of proficiency , just being able to activate and work right .

But how do you stay focused when you have different things going on in the business so different businesses but then you also have a newborn and you have a wife and you have friends and you have your health and you just run a marathon .

It's just like thinly veiled bullshit , right . Like you're like , oh , I'm getting so much done but you're actually not getting anything done . And so now what I do is like there's one thing that I'm doing at any point in time and I know I'm making progress on it because I'm solely focused on that one thing .

When I'm in the cold plunge , I'm in the cold plunge , like when I'm focusing on some piece of writing , I'm focusing on that piece of writing . When I'm with my son , I'm with my son . When I'm with my wife , I'm with my wife , and I'm not perfect , like I said , but now that I'm aware of it , I'm so much better than I was ever before .

So , like that's the biggest piece of advice I have is just pick the thing and if you're doing the thing , be there , be in that one thing . And attention residue is like a huge thing , right ?

It's this whole idea that when you just check your phone or check a notification , a little piece of your brain stays with that notification when you go back to whatever task you were working on .

So if you're working on a piece of writing and then you're like , oh , let me just check social media and you go check and someone commented something , and then you go back to the writing , a little piece of your brain is still thinking about the comment that the person wrote , or thinking about the message , the text message , the email that's stressed you out ,

that someone sent you , and you're not gonna be there , focused on the piece of writing in the same way you would have been if you just focused and so just making sure that you actually block the windows and that you're there on that one thing is the biggest and look , I mean I think you , at the end of the day , everything you want I've just said this like

everything you want in life is on the other side of something that sucks . It's not gonna be fun , like it doesn't have to be fun . Jerry Seinfeld I love this . Jerry Seinfeld got interviewed by the Harvard Business Review and they talked about the fact that he and Larry David basically wrote the whole show .

They did everything and then they basically burned out and had to stop after nine seasons . And they asked him do you think you could have had McKinsey , the consulting company , come up with like a better process for you and it would have allowed you to keep going ? And he said who's McKinsey ? And they were like the consulting firm and he said are they funny ?

And they were like no , they're not funny . And he was like well then , I don't need them Because the hard way is the right way is what he said I'm micromanaged , every single line of that show and that's why it was successful . It was because he did every single thing . It wouldn't have been successful if he had outsourced it .

So that's the whole idea is like the hard way is the right way . You have to go through the hard conversation to build the relationship you want . You have to go through the hard workouts to build the body you want . You have to go through the crappy plain meals to build the body you want .

You have to go through the hours and hours of focus work to build the business you want . It's just the reality . The hard way is the right way . The storm is the way you should be walking , and I think about that with everything I'm doing now . It , just it sticks to me .

What I'm doing is I'm bringing the power of my distribution and of my strategic mind , and maybe of my relationships and networks , to these businesses . That's not getting split across any of them . I can deploy that fully into each of them with very little time actually , by the way .

Like I might spend two hours a week on these ventures and they might make me $10 million next year . Like there is a crazy high leverage on the things that I'm doing now that operating would not be able to provide . I would be a terrible operator if I was trying to operate all of these businesses at once .

It's like the analog if you're a soccer fan , is Lionel Messi on a soccer field Not that I think of myself that way , but like he walks around for an entire match and then when he sprints , it's in the perfect moment , into the perfect space in order to score a goal or assist a goal or whatever it is .

I try to operate in that way where , like , when I sprint , it's gonna be in the perfect spot and in the perfect moment , but every other point in time I wanna kind of just be grazing around . I mean , if you saw me on most days , if you looked at my calendar , you'd be like , what is this guy doing ? Like this guy is super lazy .

He's like walking around thinking . I'm taking my son on walks , I'm reading stuff , I'm thinking about stuff , like I'm not sitting around grinding on Excel models all day . That's not what my life looks like , but that's what allows me to deploy my energy into really really high leverage

ways .

This is something that I definitely struggle with , because your quote on this is never let the quest for more distract from the beauty of enough . Now , my , I guess , fear on this is the fact that when you get to a certain level that's when you're making like half a millennium you feel that it might all collapse if I don't keep going . More .

That's this is like that . It's a scarcity mindset . That's something that I have to wrestle with daily .

To me , the nuance of enough is defining it helps place it into your conscious mind rather than it being something in your subconscious . By doing that , you become a little bit more aware of where you are and whether you need to continue charging and going crazy in the way you are .

If we allow enough whatever our definition is of that to just sit in the subconscious , it will continuously reset , and there have been studies around this . Michael Norton , a professor at Harvard Business School , did a study of high net worth individuals , I think .

He looked at people with like 10 million and above dollars in net worth and asked them where they were on a happiness scale of one to 10 and then asked them what it would take to get to 10 . And all of them , across the board , from 10 million on up to 100 million said basically they needed two to three X as much money to get to a 10 .

So someone that had 10 million dollars said they needed 30 . Someone that had 100 said they needed 300 . It didn't matter . It was always two to three X more than they have today . And that's ridiculous , right Like it's just a hilarious ridiculous thing . But that's how the human mind works , if we allow it to .

And so the point is along your way up , figure out what is your definition of the enough life . What does the enough life look like to you ? I'm already living my enough life , full disclosure . I mean , I have everything I could have possibly wanted when I was a kid .

As long as my son is happy and healthy and as long as my wife is happy and healthy , I don't need anything else in the world today . Does that mean that I'm not driving to try to build more and do more things ? No , I'm doing all of that . I love building things , I love experiencing growth , but it's not grounded around money anymore .

It's grounded around creating impact . I wanna build something big . I wanna create impact in the world . I wanna do things and change people's lives . And if money comes from that , which it will great , but that's not gonna be the primary driver of it .

That's not gonna be the thing , because I know that if that's the primary driver , I'm gonna just feel unfulfilled , because at every stage I'm just gonna be searching for more and more of that

.

And someone got winded us in his army and they went to Central America and he said he was like all driven on gold . It was gold , gold , gold . And he got an army of 175 people , brought him to Amazon . Every one of them got killed or infected or whatever . And then that individual got captured from an enemy and was beheaded and the whole idea was all .

During that process he had time to turn back and rediscover and go on , but all he was driven on was gold and that ended up being the dead of him basically in the end .

And the story from that is the fact that if he knew what the goal was , he didn't need to keep on going because they were already wealthy and they already had enough to survive and they had a good army and everything , and that was the demise of them . That there was no end goal in said and actually the opposite of that happened .

Oh , I forgot the name , but it was in around the Bavaria time , roman Empire time . There was an army that took over Central Europe and when they sparked the war between the Bavaria and some area aspects of the Roman Empire , they thought that was going to be the start of Europe going into this massive war .

And when this happened , and when there was a war taking place , and when the war was finished , they thought , okay , this is all going to end . But the guy that was ruling and said , no , this is where we stop , because the goal was this small little fight in this army . We won it .

We don't need to go any further , and it's about understanding when is enough and when to put the brakes on .

Men's egos and ambitions lead to a whole lot of the conflict in the history of the world . It's all like the Icarus paradox . The story of Icarus flies too close to the sun , so the thing that made you successful to escape the island .

You all of a sudden have hubris and you have this ego and arrogance and you fly too close to the sun and then fall to your death .

And I feel that for men sometimes it's good to have a small low hang bit of anxiety or paranoia just to protect your son , protect your wife , make sure that everyone is taken care of long into the future , when I'm gone , long into the future . So that's kind of helpful . But obviously guys just take away too far .

And I wanted to ask you about survivorship bias around this , because you're wildly successful and a great role model for young guys coming true in their twenties or even in their teens , right , and you wrote around survivorship bias and how we read books on the common trait of successful people but fail to consider all of the unsuccessful people who possessed those

same traits . We applaud the beliefs when we hear people . We hear entrepreneurs who took out second mortgages and succeeded , but fail to consider all entrepreneurs who did the same when bankrupt . We celebrate the bed on yourself stories but ignore the casualties of the same mantra , and that's literally .

That's largely feeding into everything we've been discussing too , but how much do you kind of keep that aware in what you're doing ?

And so , like all of this stuff , you need to realize that there's two sides to everything . There's like a , it's like a grid , right , like there's the people that were successful and unsuccessful doing that thing , and then there was the people that did the opposite and weren't successful and unsuccessful .

I think Alex Hormozzi has been good about this , with like morning routines he constantly talks about this where he says , like I don't , you know , I don't get in a cold plunge , I don't do this , I don't do this and I'm still successful .

And so it's the whole point of there's no one size fits all path to success and you can do all the things that all the gurus talk about . You can also not do all those things and be totally successful .

But being eyes wide open about what the actual base rates are of success , the actual probabilities of succeeding in that thing , and knowing how you can actually influence those and what are your actual chances of succeeding at this is really important going in , and most people aren't willing to take hard feedback .

They actually reject it , right , like if you're coming to tell me something I don't want to hear , I'm like , no , I just don't want to hear it , right , I don't want to see it . I suffer from that all the time . It's called Persian messenger syndrome .

So , like in the Persian Empire , they were known at the end of the empire for murdering a messenger who brought them bad news .

So a messenger that would come from the field , about an approaching army or someone waging a war that the Persian Empire was losing , they would kill that messenger and that led to one of the contributing factors that led to the downfall of the Persian Empire . That idea applies directly to our lives .

If we start killing the messenger , the person that is bringing us the piece of constructive feedback that could positively impact us , but we're too afraid to hear , if we stick our heads in the sand and we avoid it , we will have our downfall .

Whether it happens tomorrow or whether it happens a year from now , I don't know , but it will come , because if you're not willing to hear the thing that you don't want to hear , if you're not willing to be wrong in order to find the truth . If you want to be right more than you want to find the truth , you will die in whatever it is you're doing .

I just record a podcast what do I call it ? Daniel Bolton , who knows Hormozzi really well , and he said the closer he got to him , the realize that getting his advice didn't really help him , specifically because he wanted much more of a lifestyle business , to be there with his family , whereas Alex was saying , you know , push , push , push , push , push .

And when he hit the metrics , alex was delighted and was like , oh well , done , you did it , but he'd fall in other aspects of his life . So the kind of idea there was a fact that it was good to get his feedback but it wasn't applicable 100% of the time to his scenario .

Like , if you're paying for a mentor , it's not a real mentor at the end of the day . I think you might pay to get access to someone who then becomes a mentor once you're no longer paying them and you've built a relationship that's genuine . But I think that the genuine relationships are the ones that yield the greatest fruits in life .

Again , that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay every now and then to get access to a room where you might meet someone , or to get access to a conference or to get access to a call with someone . There are certainly cases where I've done that . But if you are paying someone on a monthly basis to be a mentor for you , that's just a transaction .

That's not a true relationship . And honestly , like with all of this stuff , I think about Solomon's paradox a lot .

It's like King Solomon from the Bible , who was known as being extraordinarily wise , like giving incredible advice and wisdom to people that came to him , and then in the background he had hundreds of mistresses , he had terrible relationships with his children , awful health , all of these bad , bad things .

So it's the idea that we're all very good at giving advice to other people , but then when it comes to taking our own advice , we're often very , very bad . And the idea is because we're rational when we give other people advice , we're methodical , we think with logic , but with ourselves we're emotional .

Like when I have to make a decision , I'm emotional , I'm driven by like oh , this and that , and envy or jealousy , all of these things , and that's really hard to deal with . Like you need to think about how to zoom out from yourself and view a big decision you're making in a rational way in order to fight back against Solomon's paradox .

You know , the love and support that he gave my sister and I and the love that I saw him give my mom really influenced how I think about relationships and how I think about what it means to live a wealthy life , and for that I am just infinitely , infinitely grateful .

You know , on a business side , people that have impact I have so many people that I feel like have helped me when it had zero , like nothing in it for them . I met Tim Cook , the CEO of Apple , at the gym in 2014 . He had like recently become CEO . He wasn't nearly as famous as he is today , which I think he bemoans to because he's not .

He doesn't love the spotlight but we developed an amazing relationship and you know he's someone that has given me incredible advice at different times of my life when I was making big , big decisions , who has helped me in weird ways that he never had to do , like I never had anything to offer him in return .

What could I give to someone that's like effectively the CEO of the biggest company in the world ? Like you know , it's just a ridiculous thing . I was like a 24 year old kid , you know , coming out of college , and I will never forget that . You know the people that help you when they had no reason to you . Never forget those people in your life .

They want you to invest in their company , they want you to connect them with someone . They want you to give them a recommendation . Whatever , there's always some transaction . And I actually got to know him for six months . Before I knew who he was , I talked to him at the gym every morning .

He was one of five people that would show up at 4.45 every morning at this gym and I talked to him every morning for six months . He wore glasses . I didn't know . I wasn't in tech , so I didn't know who he was . Like I just wasn't watching the news . I was working 100 hour weeks Like I was just tired .

I was going to the gym and six months in , someone said , do you know who that is ? And I was like that's the guy I talked to in the gym .

They were like that's Tim Cook , the CEO of Apple , and I mean it says a lot about the type of person he is that he shows up at the freaking gym at 4.45 in the morning when he's the CEO of the biggest company in the world , worth a billion dollars at the time .

Like that work ethic is the reason that he's been able to get to this level unbelievable , principled individual who actually practices what he preaches . But I think that was a big piece of it . Like I had talked to him for a long , long time . There was never any ask , there was never anything and I wasn't looking for a job .

The other piece is like I just think it's hard to find friends when you're in that role for that same reason that you always have to wonder and I start to wonder it now at times , right , like I'm 100th of a percent as well known as someone like that .

But when people approach you and know your platform or whatever it is , you wonder like okay , is there going to be some ask , is there something ? Or is this genuine ? Is this someone that actually wants to get to know me ? And it's hard to find real friends at some point in your life when you've achieved a level of fame and success .

I think it's a reason that a lot of those famous people . They're friends or they're people that have been friends with them since before . They were that right , like they could be friends with all the celebrities .

But they're real friends , are the people that were with them way , way back in the days , the people that you've like kept your OG circles , cause it's really hard to be famous and well known on that level . It's very , very difficult .

So , like cause , that is very , very difficult , even the position you're in right now , right , if you're getting tons of emails from people , they generally just want something from you , right , and they kind of know that going into it , you know that receiving it , so they kind of know that it's not going to be a friendship as a result , right ?

But there's a transaction involved in that , and my personal perspective on life is that the best things come from creating value with no expectation of return . The best relationships I've ever built , tim Cook included no expectation of return . I would talk to him for six months .

He was just a friend at the gym , alongside the other people that I was friends with , by the way , who I also still am in touch with . That is where real gold is made in life is when you're just creating value with people and you're building genuine , long-term relationships .

It's not going and handing out a thousand you know business cards at some networking event so that you can like flex on your number of LinkedIn connections or whatever right . It's genuine relationships that are being built that'll last for a hundred years .

If you take an a hundred year time horizon on a relationship , you will treat that person very differently than if you have a , you know , two week time horizon on that relationship .

And you're like I just want to know about you . If I'm going to know you for a hundred years , like if you were going and getting on to a spaceship with the person , you were going to be stuck there with them for the next 25 years of your life going to Mars , whatever what would you ask them ?

Well , you would talk to them very differently and that's like a cool little proxy for thinking about how to build relationships . It's like you're going to be stuck with this person .

What do you actually want to learn about them ?

And I was like I don't think that's a good idea , I don't think I should just like mess that person , be like , hey , you want to come on the show . And he was like why ? And I was like , because I'm not playing the short term game , like if we eventually record in the future and like serendipity happened , that'd be amazing .

But I feel like that younger people like in my age group are very hesitant or very quick to do the short term thing . They'd be like , okay , hey , hop on , hop on a quick podcast . And they're not thinking like longer term and that doesn't even mean like deviously long term .

But it's like we're fundamentally not doing this for a short term , like I feel like you'll be writing in 10 years , in 20 years , in 30 years , Because it's like a fundamental principle of your values and of your identity now as a writer , and I think a lot of younger people need to kind of detach from the idea that it's if we don't make it happen today .

It's never going to happen . Right Before we finish up , I want to reference your 10 year college reunion , which there were so many great points , but I pulled three main points from this that I wanted to reference . So your daily habits show up on your face after 10 years Now . Looking at you , you look at your very young dude .

Insecurity tells , confidence shows . Again , it's everything you do . Freedom is rare , but incredibly apparent . I think the three of those factors really kind of sum up your change and your career and your life philosophy and everything well .

And you realize that the daily habits these people had over the last 10 years were showing up on their face . If you treated yourself like crap every day , if you drank , you didn't sleep , you ate like crap , you didn't work out , it shows up on your face at the end of 10 years .

And on the other side , if you treated yourself well , if you treated your body , your mind , like a temple over those period , at the end of that you look amazing and you look young and you feel young , you look vibrant . And now you think about what that looks like in 20 years and 30 years and 40 years .

I mean it's scary to think about and you are entirely in control of it . So like that is the amazing thing about it . It should be empowering that the daily things that I'm doing , the tiny little daily habits that we have , really do show up on us physically on the back end . Yeah , the insecurity tells . Confidence shows one .

It's just something I think about all the time . The like the conversations you have with people at your tenure reunion the person that is quickest to tell you how much they are crushing it in life is very rarely crushing it in life , and this applies to online too .

Like the person that is constantly shouting about how much revenue they're making and millions and millions I'm doing this , I'm doing that , I have all your 10,000 revenue , income streams , all this stuff very rarely actually crushing it . You can almost assume it's like some tiny fraction of what they're actually claiming as like a razor for cutting through the noise .

The person who doesn't say anything about themself and who asks you about yourself first , that person is usually crushing it Because that confidence that shows right , Like it's this confident air that they have , that they're asking you about yourself . How are you doing ? What are the things you're excited about ?

So it's something to make sure you embrace in your own life . Don't be that insecure person that just constantly is like shouting out about things .

And then there's more the other I would say nearly like deceptive part of it whereby if you even do feel you're above someone , which you shouldn't ever feel then you should be quiet anyway , right . And that goes back to the 48 Laws of Power which , by you know , you should be speaking less anyway , right .

You don't need to be this vocal individual who's trying to I think you're only saying that to try to put other people down , right ? And that's the unfortunate issue with the online world too .

It's not by talking a lot and by being the loudest in the room . That's not how you do it .

There's this story I think it was , I think , as Leonardo da Vinci wrote this story of an oyster that , like oysters open their shell at a full moon and they , like are wide open and crabs come by and basically like throw a rock in or throw seaweed in so that it's kept open , so that they can go back and eat it later .

And the whole idea is like when you open up and when you're constantly talking and being loud , you're opening yourself up to being eaten . In that way , like if all you're focused on is talking and if you're not thinking about other things and listening and thinking , you open yourself up to being eaten , just as the oyster did .

For him to play baseball , sure , but if he decides he loves drama or ballet or whatever the thing is , I just want to be there to support him in whatever he gets excited about , and I felt like my father did that with me .

No matter what it was , he was there just cheering for me , and when I had to quit baseball because of an injury , I called him and I was so nervous to call him because so much of our relationship was connected to sports and he just said , like I don't care , I'll , I'm thrilled to cheer you on and whatever the next thing is in your life .

And that's what I want to do . I want to be there to support my son and to hopefully enable him to live happily in whatever it is that he chooses .