67: Choose Yourself

have James Altature on the show. James the self empowerment blogger and author of sixteen books, including the Amazon bestseller Choose Yourself. He's also host of the James Altature Show. The New York Times called him quote, perhaps the world's least likely success guru. Thanks so much for John with me today, James, which, by the way, the writer wrote to me on that and he said, I didn't want to use the word guru. I know you didn't want to.

That word grew used. Was somebody in the marketing department or whatever. That's right, because later in that article you do say like, I don't want to be viewed as a but it's almost like that's what people have viewed you as. Whether or not you wanted to be viewed as that. As such, why how do you think that happened? I don't know, because all I talk about is messing up, I know. And then I talk about what I did

to get out of the hole. So let's say I was broke, bankrupt, and divorced, which happened more than once, and then I write about how I get out of this and kind of succeed again, let's say, build another business starting from scratch or whatever. People then can say, well, maybe I can do that too, and maybe they can, maybe they can. I kind of give the very exact specific details of what I do over and over again

in all these articles and books and so on. And I always say, advice is autobiography, So I never give advice, and I specifically say that, but I to say my autobiography and people could do with it what they want. I really and more interested in having impact with a story and sort of telling people Okay, successes could happen

or might not happen, but it's okay to fail. It's okay to have moments that are difficult, and people almost need permission to have that because we're sort of trained from birth while school, then job and marriage and family than white picket fence, then retirement, then cruise line, you know, tours, and then death and when you break out of that, you feel bad, like because we're programmed not to break out of that. So yeah, I really believe in these

shows of having honest discussions about things. I've noticed that a lot of actual self people who they even call themself self gurus, self help curus, there's a similar pattern with all of them where they will talk about how they fail. They once you know, we're a lose. They would say, I'm a loser, whether it's like losing weight, right, And then there's this arc and they say and it's almost like that's used as almost a marketing ploy, as a way of like saying like, but now I was

once you, and look what you can become now. When I meet you, when I read your stuff, I get a level of genuineness that I don't necessarily get from other A lot of other people in this kind of space that have that sort of arc. That right about that arc when you were going through it, like I would love to you to walk me through like the early days, like when you were failing things, did you ever think to yourself like I'm going to get out of this hole and I'm going to inspire others. Was

I a no? I mean, let's say I could pull from any number I have, like kind of a repertoire of failed moments. But when it happens when you're on literally on the ground, and you're like, oh my god, I just did it again, like I just went broke again, or I lost this relationship that was important to me, or you know, I'm not going to be able to feed my kids. You know, you feel really bad now.

I'm also saying this totally acknowledging from a point where I've been really blessed too that I've had successes and failed from them and had successes again. But when you're in that moment of failure, it feels just enormously stressful. It almost hurts to go down. I mean, if I stay down, that maybe I can deal with, but to go for I've gotten from like real big success to totally pressure one of the lowest, like one of those points.

I mean, I think it's started like bringing back these memories. Yeah, like no, it's okay. It's like I think sometimes I can't tell if it hurts the first time or the last time, because the first time you don't realize, oh my gosh, I actually can fail. Like you know, I had a very you know, middle class upbringing, nothing special in either direction, and then I just kind of I had ups and downs, but nothing too horrible. And then I started a business. It was successful and I sold it.

I made a lot of money. And then there was one summer where I figured, Okay, well I did it. I can't possibly fail. Now I've made enough money. I'm just going to do whatever I want and it doesn't matter. And I was so stupid. I basically lost everything, including the home I was living in. You know, I lost millions of dollars. I ended up well. I remember one time I checked my ATM machine. I had one hundred and forty three dollars in my bank account after having

millions just a few months earlier. Like I was just stupid, Like it was. It wasn't on paper, it was cash and a lot of lose that quickly. Yeah, I was stupid. It's hard to lose that much money. I'm very talented at that. This goes to your topics of research. This I proved the talent and being stupid in certain areas but I felt like, oh my gosh, I had won the lottery and I'm never going to get this chance again. And that was it for me. I should be dead.

And I had little babies at the time, and I figured, look, they're never going to remember me as a father. But one thing I have left is this big life insurance policy. And I would start, I would start using search engines, figure what's the best way to kill myself that were it won't hurt and yeah, and it turns out there really is no way, Like what's the answer. Well, to be fair, I think I found an answer, but I can't find proof of it on a search andg and so it might not it might just be an old

wives tale. But every normal thing you could think of, I found counterexamples. So like, for instance, shooting yourself in the head or shooting yourself in the mouth, or taking a lot of pills. There's a bigger than I wanted chances of just ending up, you know, staring at a ceiling for the rest of your life, paralyzed and completely aware so, or being or having some dysfunction that is beyond Like I was willing to die, but not willing

to be dysfunctional. So so ultimately argument against suicide. That is a good argument against suicide. It's not the normal argument against suicide, but I think it's no. I mean, look, people shouldn't kill themselves because it will hurt the people around them. That's the main argument. But the flip side, which I will say, is that suicide will end that extreme pain you're in at that moment of failure, except

there is no way to do it. And I also was unsure of the law in terms of the life insurance policy because the other thing I looked at is can they discover in all these obscure ways if you killed yourself? And the answer is yes, they can no matter what, they will figure out if the cause of death is suicide. Right, Well, you're kind of like the poster belief for the field of post traumatic growth that

we study in our field, you know, positive psychology. There's a certain amount of people who have post traumatic stress disorder who take these kinds of dramatic situations and don't ever really recover from them. But there's a certain proportion that take it and use it as and you boyd, I mean, do you use it? You use it full of your whole being well used it right. Well, now let's talk philosophically for a second. When you experience a lot of stress, there's two ways to get out of it.

One is to say, well, I'm never going to that was that I'm never going to succeed again, I'm just gonna drift away or whatever, and that's kind of this negative way to relieve stress. And then there's a positive way to relieve stress, which is, Okay, now I'm going to start coming up with ideas for new things I can do, and I'm going to do that today, because today's the first day. You know, today's the best day

you can change. And that's the philosophical approach. And I think now many years later, when I fail now, which because failure never really ends, I try very forcefully to remind myself that that's the approach I need to take, and it works and I do it. But I think initially, the first couple of times when I was reached this kind of devastating moment, I didn't know what to do. I just thought, this is the worst feeling possible and

I'm never going to get out of it. And it was only when I kind of using myself, as you know, there's all these you know, scientific studies. Here's what's positive, here's what's negative, Here's what's you know successful people do, here's what unsuccessful people. That doesn't work. When you're actually on the floor, you're your own. You're a sample size of one, and you have to make it work. You have to do a study that works for the sample

size of one. And so I had to look at myself eventually and say what kept working when I went up and what kept failing on the way down. And finally, I can't say finally, because it's not the story is not over yet. But I think I've figured out, at least for myself, what boxes I need to check whenever things are going bad. One other thing I'll add, you said,

like post traumatic stress. I definitely have now. Before I never realized that I could fail at anything, you know, But now, even if I have just a slight blip, I start to get really anxious and I have to kind of go check through my boxes to deal with it, or else I'll stay up all night, I'll have nightmares. It's the worst thing. Yeah, So you actually have given in some of your ranks some tips for how to overcome anxiety. Rights some of that for yourself. Can you

maybe like, what's the alien trick? Do you still do? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I do that every day. So I when I wake up, or even sometimes during the day, but mostly when I wake up, I picture that I am an alien from outer space that has just It's kind of like Quantum Leap, the old TV show. I've just landed in this body. I have to now figure out what this body is and what mission it needs to accomplish today because tomorrow I'll be gone. So that means I don't have to

worry about the results of my actions today. Not that I'm going to go crazy, because I have to aim for positive consequences because I'm on a mission. And but I don't have any baggage from the past, and I don't have to worry about tomorrow. I just have to make positive actions today without even considering it all the past or the future. Cool. What other tips are things have you found to help reduce anxiety. I take lemon balm for instance. What's what's lemon bom I have in

my bag? Actually, we can take it right like you put it on it to drop it in water. It's just you know, it's a natural herb sort of thing, and it calms your muscle. Reaccent is lemon in general like that? Well, I think lemon balmb extract is particularly good time. Try that. Look up a dropper in her water right now? If you want to do all? Right, you have I do. It's in my bag, but Jay get it. That's the audio. See we can see for

like more relaxed or something. But I think also it's very important is taking positive actions in like, at the end of the day, I'll ask myself each day, did I take positive actions? And that really just means a couple of things. One is was I creative today? So? Did I write down ten ideas a day to exercise

my idea muscle? Okay, here's the lemon bomb. So I asked myself, did I make a list of ten ideas for either businesses or books or articles or ways that can help somebody else or podcast ideas or whatever I'm involved in. I try to be as creative as possible each day. I also try to be around friends each day.

I always make sure I touch base with friends each day because look, depressed people need to do that, So why shouldn't I do that when I'm not depressed, Like why wait until you're depressed, because we all know friends boosts oxytocin and all these happy chemicals and so on. Another thing I try to do every day is either you know, I try to eat, you know, nutritiously, and exercise and sleep eight hours because physical is that's the easiest hack on your mode possible. You said, don't go

to bed after what time? Do you say, Well, I try to say don't, but I try to go to bed before nine pm. Yeah, so about five. Yeah, yeah, I'll I'll sleep eight hours. I'll sleep between eight and nine hours because I'll go to bed at nine and wake up at like nine the next night. Like I mean, like if I go and bomb out and I get nicely, I don't want to wake up. But maybe because you have a sleep deficit. There you go, you're you know, you're working a school. You have a lot of hours probably,

which is fine. You just have to figure out, you know, there's all sorts of physical benefits of you know, what happens when you sleep that you know cures the mind of all these anxieties and stresses. Exercise, of course, releases a lot of endorphins. How you eat determines how your energy is used by the body and the brain, and so all these things are the These are like easy hacks on anxiety. So so those things and being around friends and being creative are like the greatest hacks. And

then the alien trick is a good quick hack as well. Cool. Yeah, a lot of that gets too satisfying. Some just basic balancing your needs. And look, that's why you know. Some people will charge I don't know, some gazillion dollars for some semin or whatever, but it's really that simple. That's all you have to do every day, and you'll go, I've seen You'll be able to deal with these bottom

or failure situations much better. You start to view them more as experiments or Okay, this didn't work out, but other things will work out, and you start to have more variety in your life because you're so creative from building up your idea muscle and just things tend to work out. Yeah, So you mentioned in your answer that you mentioned a lot of your pillars of happiness. So you talked about the physical, the emotional. I guess emotional

would be like friends. Yeah, like that, mental and mental creativity, creativity, and then let's talk more about the spiritual dimension. So the spiritual dimension is actually solved by the alien trick, because really, what's what's spirituality is forget about all religion for a second, although each religion has huge, you know, spiritual components, So do whatever you want, but it's really about being in the now, so being you know, kind

of surrendering to this moment. So the alien trick is one way of saying, Okay, well here is where I'm at. These are the cars I've been dealt. I wake up in this body, so I surrender to completely to whatever past got me here, and then there's no future because I'm leaving this body in a day. So you surrender to the consequences of whatever you do, and you just you know, you figure out what your mission is and do it for that day. And there's a very big

spiritual component to that. Yeah, do you meditate it? All? I have since I was a kid, but more recently I don't because I just do what I just said, Okay, So I find I find meditation when I did it a lot, particularly when I was really stressed. I almost prefer to call it mad attention because rather than really meditating, what would end up happening is, I'd be just constantly

obsessed with what was going wrong with my life. So now instead I do these more directed ways of you know, almost biochemically hacking myself into a better state so that I could function and do something positive. Absolutely, so, I think a lot of people resonate with you Is. I mean, you have a very distinct style to you, and you know, it just makes me think, what are you if you're not let's say you're not like what you know? I feel like there are lots of different fields you could.

You could probably do a stand up calmic bit too, right, I have done stand up comedy. I'm obsessed with stand up comedy. I mean, of course, because it's truth, right, The truth is funny, you know, almost the more true you are about something, the more funny it is. And you're also if I may say, you know a little neurotic,

I can identify and would that resonate with that? So I have found that like when I'm nervous and or I'm feeling particularly neurotic and I just get out of my system what I'm thinking verbatim, I don't, you know, filter the truth at all? People tend to find it funny. Well, right, inside, I'm crying, right, but like I'm like, I'm glad that you find that so funny, right, but I'm suffering here,

but it almost getting it out actually makes me feel better. Well, if it's therapeutic for you, it's definitely therapeutic because for a lot of reasons. First off, I don't believe in the so called radical honesty where you completely have no filter, because I never will say anything bad about anybody else, but I'm happy to say bad things about myself. That's all day long. So I'll have radical honesty about myself

but not about others. But I think there's a lot of you know, evidence to say, Look, we've all been through bad experiences and we all hide them. So when you're honest about your bad experience is what ends up happening. And when you share it, let's say with your tribe or your scene or your Facebook friends or whatever, what ends up happening is people relate, and so you're bonding, and bonding feels good, and bonding is one way of getting over you know, anxiety and becoming more creative and

so on. Plus, when you tell a story, you get better at telling stories, and storytelling is a two hundred thousand year old tradition for our species, older than any other tradition basically, and you know, that's another pleasurable thing. Getting good at storytelling. And our whole life is one big story we've told ourselves about ourselfs. Well. You even refer to like kind of the self help mythology that

there is this arc of the heroes. First a person's a loser, then they kind of you know, met their mentor and came out of it and met the other people, and then they now they're ready to come back from the journey and teach. So there's this kind of arc of the hero's classic Joseph Campbell's story in the self help genre. So the reason why I don't like it is I feel that many people in that genre a are not honest. I don't want to say that they're

not honest. They don't talk about their failures right now. So it's not like failure only happened a long time ago and then you solve it and then everything's good after that. Like, failure is unpredictable and bad things are unpredictable. Bad things happen every day, so it's just a matter of kind of trying to ride them and being honest about them, like this bad thing happened to me today. I think that's right. I think it's up, sir. Right.

So I want to ask you a a question, and this might be okay, what is the secret to doing what you love? Well, you know I can ask you the same question because this is like this the focus of your research. I want you to drink my medicine. I've been been sitting on the yes because I feel like if I get more relaxed than you, then it might get a little weird, you know, like I was like, oh, so, James, you know you might already be more relatively, I always

get nervous. Do you ever feel like before a podcast that you wish they would cancel at the last minute? Yeah, I do, because I wish I wish I could cancel it. Yeah. Yeah, Well I feel that way before talks, too, right, you know sometimes you know, I'm like, oh my god, of course before talks, because that's horrible. Giving a talk podcast, I find like this is a little more I have to look at you, right, But like you know, when I'm home, I do most of my podcasts, like I'll

do podcasts. I'm just you know, at a home I'm skyping with someone usually even the video is on, you know, so I can look weird. You know, my eyes can be like Google eyed. Right, that doesn't matter really, no er care about that, you know. But I get I get nervous. I get performance anxiety about podcasts. So but unless like like we know each other, so it's more

of a discussion and stuff. But like if I'm in let's say you were interviewing Barack Obama, you would be nervous right before I would want him to cancel right before the podcast. I'd be so nervous, you know, totally there. There are definitely people. I had Brene Brown on a little while ago, and I was like, I really don't want to see something that's I'm going to make me gonna sound inauthentic, you know what I mean? Like I really want her to, you know, like pick up authentic.

You got to be vulnerable, Yeah, I want to, like right by you don't want to be fake vulnerable, do you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like I want to be authentically vulnerable, you know, just because it's Britney Brown and you want to impress her. You can't like you know, be like, I feel it's so vulnerable, like my heart, and you got to mean it, you know, so she'll sense it. I feel like she's a vulnerability bullshit detector, right, And so I was like, that's why

I was nervous for that one, you know. But anyway, I think that's a good get, though, Brenee Brown, I was good. I'm good. I'm happy about that one. So you're a good get. You're a good gut. Thank you. So So to answer your question, though, I think people, how do you Your question was how do you do? Essentially, how do you do what you love? How do you

end up doing what you love? And I think it's very difficult because there's many, maybe many things that you love doing, and there's also many things that you haven't done yet that you will love once you do them.

So I think the key is a doing these things like staying healthy because you can't do what you love if you're sick in bed, and being around friends because friends expose you to new ideas, and also just writing down ideas every day of let's say you pick a thing to write a list about, like I'm going to write about And this is actually how this started for me, I've always loved games, but you know, I'm not going to be like a professional Monopoly player, for instance, or

even like a professional chess player, which is chess was my favorite game. But I wasn't, you know, at the age of thirty or however old it was, I wasn't good enough to be a professional. But I started thinking, what's a list of games where I could then come up with a list of tips for each game, where I could teach Scott Kaufman how to beat everybody in his family and all his friends, all the casual players, so like an algorithm, or for each game there's tricks.

So like Monopoly, if you own the orange properties, you're going to beat everybody who doesn't know that trick because jail's the most popular spot and seven is the most popular dice roll, so you end on the orange. So people will end up on the Orange properties more than any other property and pay you rent. So that's a minor trick. But I wanted to And then I was saying, oh, I could write a book about this, and then I

could write a series about this. Now I never did any of these things, but I started every day just writing down ideas for things I could do. Most of the time, there were bad ideas, like maybe that book idea would be a bad idea. But once in a while you start to get more and more creative and

you say, wow, that's exciting. You wouldn't have thought of it if you weren't writing down this list of ideas, and you're like, oh, I could do this, and I've started entire businesses, successful businesses that just coming off of a of ideas like that. Yeah, that's one of the ideas. Funny, like writing a book like how to be a Vegetarian for non vegetarians who want to write a best selling

book about how to be a vegetarian or something in it. Yeah, there's all sorts of Like you think about what you loved as a kid and so like I loved games, for instance, as a kid. So but like I said, as an adult, kids play games and adults should play more. But you can't be a professional at it's hard. But I could write a book about it, for instance, or I could write a blog about it or do a podcast about you know, there's your interests that you had when you were fourteen or ten or six. They aged

in different ways as well. You aged and they aged, so you might have aged until I recently got the PlayStation four VR and I feel like a kid again, right, so you love it? So imagine now you see all the blogs out there with the easter eggs in the different games, or the cheats in the different games, and you maybe you can send out a newsletter to your friends who play, you know, on the PlayStation four. Here's all the cheats for the here's all the websites for

the cheats for these different games. And then maybe more and more people subscribe to that letter. Suddenly you have ten thousand person letter and PlayStation sponsors it. Like anything, that's how your age my interest in a professional way. I mean, that's how your interest my age, but in a professional way, as opposed to like, oh, I'm going to be a professional gamer. Yeah no, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm just trying to tie all

this to this idea of choosing yourself. It's obviously very related. Well, okay, in that particular case you become Let's say you send out a list of four friends. You know, you send out an email to four friends and you know they're all into PlayStation and you say, here are all the hidden blogs with the latest cheats and check out these video books, and they're like, oh, send me the next one, and then they get their friends to sign up, and then suddenly you have a big list ten thousand people.

Well you have a little media company now, and you could get advertisers, and you could do a podcast, and you could do a four pay newsletter with the action cheats in them, and you know that no one else can find and you could interview the designers of the games, and suddenly you've chosen yourself to be one of the world's experts on you know, aggregating information about some specific games for the PlayStation. Yeah, you chose yourself. There no

one else had to pick you. The PlayStation didn't have to pick you. A tournament didn't have to pick you, you you didn't have to be in some ranking. You just did it. Yeah, there was an Also, there wasn't any pre designed path that you just you're like pick out. You're like, oh, I see that, I want to do that. Instead you decided like I want to be me. Well, but let's even the pre defined paths, So are the gatekeepers are breaking down? So let's just take a basic

example publishing a book. So if you want to go the traditional route. You need these people to like you. You need an editorial as system to like you. You You need an agent like you, need an editor like you. You need a marketing department like you. You You need a publisher or like you, and you need a bookstore purchaser to like you. All those people have to like you for your book to get published. Or you can upload your book to Amazon and publish your book what you did,

which choose yourself? I did and it sold over half a million copies. So and the best selling like independent book ever, you know, for maybe maybe for nonfiction. I mean it's hit number one in nonfiction many times in Amazon, out of all books and nonfiction on Amazon, and that's not typical. No people who are self published. But what's the best selling book in history? Now? Was initially self published Fifty Shades of Gray, So they sold she said

the Bible. I thought you were going to say the Bible. Well, that was probably self published too, Gutenberg's House. But E. L. James uploaded fifty Shades a Great at Amazon, sold about two hundred and fifty thousand copies. And then I think it was Simon and trusta random house. One of them picked it up. Amazon's publishing company didn't pick it up, but one of the major ones did, and I don't know, she sold like two hundred million more copies of her series,

like more than all the Harry Potter novels. Story. I mean, it's this well well deserved, it's a really compelling story. Well, it's interesting though that it was self published and you know quality who knows, but certainly best selling. So she shows herself. So OK, there's another aspect of this, choosing yourself. Probably really like you chose you say, you choose yourself because someone else is going to probably do it for

you and you're not probably not gonna like it. Well, let's look at just if you take any employee situation. Your dream is to keep on getting promoted and high and higher salary until maybe you have a nice retirement nest egg or you become the CEO or whatever, but until every step of the way, you have to basically cater to the agenda of someone else, like your boss and their boss and their boss. So there's a lot of people whose agendas you have to cater to simultaneously.

That's very stressful. It's hard enough to cater to my own agenda. Let alone the agenda of not only my boss, but his boss and his boss and his boss and the customers and so on. So even when you start a business, you have to cater to the agendas of your customers and maybe your investors and your partners and

your employees. But then at least in that case, you choose all those groups and you choose the business you're going to be in, and uh so you have a little bit more control and a lot more control and so on. But I'm not even recommending being an entrepreneur. There's many ways to just work for yourself, an author, or in many cases, you know, an academic with tenure. You know, at that point you basically can make your set your own agendas. But until then it's published or perish.

So you're very much you know, I'm not saying you're not choosing yourself because you chose to be a professor and you enjoy it and has its ups and downs on show me personally. Yeah, well my story is I'm not a tender track professor. Oh, you're chosen myself even even better than so, then you don't have to comply with the agendas of like that's so stressful. Run a nonprofit you know, called the Imagination Institute, and I teach it course at PEN. But I'm not on the tenure track.

I decided I don't want to be. Yeah, I see, I think that's much more. You don't have to get into that whole stressful seven year period where you have to go to all these cocktail parties you don't want to go to, and publish in all these journals you don't want to publish to. You could just write books and do your thing and and succeed. That's right. I mean, you make it sound that makes it sound easy, but yeah,

that's exactly right right now. But failure is going to come also, if you know, if you're trying to do everything on your own, there's a lot more opportunities to fail as well. So but then you can also bounce back because you could have variety in what you're doing. But yeah, that having that freedom and failing is fine,

you know, as long as I have the freedom to fail. Yeah, And variety helps too, to buffer like economic failures for instance, or to even like, well, if you have writer's block one day, okay, no problem, I'll work do something positive on my nonprofit. And you still can feel good on the day, even though you know one thing you care about didn't work out that day. I just have some days where I feel like everything has bombed. But I have days like that too. I had a day like

that yesterday. So it happens. You said that, Yeah, and then you just have to get to the next day. Yeah, you have to understand that. You have to like almost lean into the problem. You have to understand that. Okay, I have felt like this before, and I know one good thing to do is to wait for at least those initial feelings of panic to subside, and then yeah, I got to keep I'm almost done with this, so so we'll see. Okay, maybe I am getting more relaxed.

I don't know. You are, You're getting more charismatic, You're getting there? There? You are? You are? Is it too personal to ask what happened yesterday? I was just feeling like I was feeling stuck on writing. I was feeling a little stuck on getting some guests for my podcast. I'm an active angel investor now, so I'm invested in a bunch of companies, and I was thinking I've not gotten any updates from any of these companies in like

a really long time, which is usually good news. Normally I would think to myself, if you don't hear anything, that's good news. The day colored everything else. Yeah. Yeah, so I was thinking, you know what if it all didn't work out simultaneously, like I started to go down that downward spiral and can't help it sometimes and then you just have to take a break and say, Okay,

I'm going through the downward spial spiral. What I tend to do is I'm going to make an appointment with myself to think about these issues tomorrow, and if I'm still feeling it, then I need to do something about it. Isn't it funny how that downward spiral can of cause us to all us on bringing things that we never even thought about before. And it's like it's like, oh, yeah, you know, she hasn't responded to my email in a week.

I haven't even cared about that till that moment. It's like it's like it starts when once she starts spiraling down, it just sort of pulls in. It just sucks and everything. It's like you're coming down with me too. You're coming down with me too, and you know, but the reverse, the upward spiral can have the opposite effect, is you know, Barbara Frederickson's work is shown and stuff. Yeah, you got to you gotta be careful with both. Both of them

are hot potatoes. Well, bar that's interesting. I'd like you to tell me more that because I my point was I'm okay with the upward spiral where we start pulling in good things. But maybe that just super optimism can be dangerous. Is that you're yeah, Like, I mean, that's how in the past I've at least contributed to let's say, going broke. Is I think, okay, I sold my business, I made, this is the money I made. I'm done

with my experience of improving as a human being. Now I could just do whatever I want, and that begins that upward spiral of optimism. And it's not manic, because I don't get it's very situational, like you know, I'll be very optimistic when good things happen, and that contributes to the upward spile, as opposed to having it be some chemical thing, which is a very serious issue for

some people. So I don't want to say I'm that, but I had a tendency to go into those upward spirals and then go into the downward spirals, and it's just you have to moderate those. But you can't moderate situational ups and downs with medication. You have to know how to recognize them and stop yourself and have habits

in place to take care of yourself. Be interesting, if it SSSRIS moderated the situation, well, I mean, I guess you could temper, you know, with very like for instance, if you're feeling panicked, you could, I guess, you know, drink yourself into oblive in and you probably won't feel panicked anymore. But that's not a healthy way to do it.

Womenbaum is healthy. Yes, I'm seeing that. So you you're also like kind of you can predict the future, but you know, in a way like you're kind of like a few like an amateur futurist, you know, like you know, I say amateur because you don't get paid every deal. We've worked with futures who get paid every day. A

couple of scenarios. But you know, you're kind of a futurest in Since in two thousand and seven and on CNBC you said that Facebook would one day be worth a hundred billion, I watched that clip and they they I don't know if you remember, well, you might not remember, because before the clip, they kept leading in, why do you hear what this guy say? Yeah, And then they would play a clip of Jeff Bezos laughing hysterically because he has a very funny laugh, and then they had

me on. And at the time, Facebook, I think was valued at about a billion, or maybe Microsoft had just offered to buy it for a billion, and I was I had just written in the Financial Times actually that it was going to one day be worth a hundred billion or why do you say that? Because I started using it and it felt so good, like I was suddenly back in touch with my friends from like first grade and high school and college and my first job.

And it's not like I would ever have called my friend from first grade and said, hey, how did your kid do in a soccer game yesterday? But now I get to see it. It just struck me as this phenomenal new thing that was never going to leave my

life ever. And then it seemed like, as opposed to earlier social networks like let's say MySpace, it seemed like this mini organized internet, like a sub internet, and I felt like eventually people would be selling things on here, but in a very organized fashion because every page looks the same, and so you know how to navigate everything very quickly as soon as you go to a public page of a company. This is what ended up happening.

As soon as you go to a public page of company, you know how to navigate it because they're all the same. And so I just felt this, given that the Internet was at this point whereth trillions, Facebook's got to be worth at least one hundred billion. Now it's going to be worth much more because they're that leaders in virtual reality as well. Because you invested so much, does that mean you're like rich right now? Like, well, I didn't

invest in in Facebook. I thought you did. No. No, what I did was I invested in It was too late to invest in. I couldn't really get into Facebook. There was just major venture capital firms. But I invested in social media companies, social media agencies, so agents, ad agencies that were trying to tell companies, hey, get on this new thing called Facebook. So there was a bunch of ad agencies that were starting and I basically invested in all of them and that did do well. OK,

So that worked good? Yes, So despite us, I assume you're rich right now. Oh it's all relative, you know, it's a relative you're richer that I assume you're richer than me. But yet, and I don't know if you still do it, but you decided to massively simplify your life recently and put like just fifteen of the most important things in a bag and even like sleep like not like people's I'll sleep sleep around, so to speak. You know, now are you still doing that? Yeah, you

don't have like an apartment. No, No, I don't rent or own, so I just as of this second, and you're kind of like, holdless, Well, you're a rich homeless man right now. I'm in an AIRBNBA. But before that, I was a friend of mine who was who actually had helped at one point was not staying in his place, and he had a very nice place, and I stayed there for a while and I just didn't want to.

I had been doing a lot of airbnbs all over the country and traveling around, and I realized at one point I didn't miss anything that was in my apartment, and my least was coming up on my apartment I was renting, and I had, you know, forty years worth of accumulated baggage, and like we all do belongings in my place, and so I didn't want to do the Marie Condo thing, you know, her book The Magic Art of Tidying Up, where you kind of hold an object to yourself and if you love it, you keep it

and if you don't love to do that, yeah, I didn't. I don't believe in that. I already knew I had not missed any of my belongings, even photo albums, collectibles, my diploma, computers, beds, sheets, dishes, you know, whatever I had. I had a gazillion things. So I hired a friend of mine to basically take took her two trucks and her whole family, and they just basically cleaned out my place. I said, either keep it, sell it, donate it, or throw it away for everything you decide, and don't call

me during the entire process. But it took her about a week because there were so much stuff. And she called me one said, you sure you want to throw out your diploma? I mean, you worked really hard for that diploma. And I'm like, no, I did not work hard for that diploma. And it was a long time ago. No one's ever asked to see it. So you're undergraduate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I was thrown out of graduate school unfortunately. But I'll have to get to that. But so, yeah, I

throughout everything except the bag I was traveling with. So I had basically only the bag I was traveling with. And that's still all what. I'm still doing that. And you find this greater simplicity of their benefits compare it to your prior life. It's really hard to say. I don't like people say to me, oh, that must feel really freeing, and I don't know if that's if I do feel really freeing about it. I don't. I still

don't miss anything. And now it's it's actually been about a year and a half since I've seen everything since all my I've seen all my longs, and it's been about almost a year since I threw everything out. But you know, the dumpstery throughout and could you go back? No, No, because my friend again probably you know, sould donated you know, to or throw it throughout and uh might be impersonating you with your diployment or that could be. That could

very well be. I mean, certainly I had to trust this friend because she found you know, all my paperwork for everything, tax returns, all that kind of stuff. Because I was keeping around all this. What do you need to keep her on your paperwork for? Like, yeah, you don't need, you know, and you know saw many many things about me, you know, and but you know, that's that's what friends are for, for sure. So let's just

think about some of their predictions for the future. You've talked about how you think it will have more of an employee free society. There'll be a rising wave of solo entrepreneurs and the lifestyle entrepreneurs. Yeah, what is a lifestyle entrepreneur. Well, it's I'll give you a very basic example. You're a personal trainer at the gym. Is a lifestyle entrepreneur. They work for themselves. Uber. If you're an Uber driver employee, yeah, okay,

if you're an Uber driver, you're a lifestyle entrepreneur. And that's what the word entrepreneur is not necessarily correct, but it's you're just doing your own thing and you're not really You've limited the number of people you're reporting to. You're limiting the number of agendas you have to care to, or you have variety of agendas. So you could be an Uber driver but also renting an Airbnb and also selling stuff on Etsy, and buying things in China and

selling it on Amazon. Maybe they're in writing a book, and maybe there's a variety of things you're working on. So, but what's happening is, well, let's take Uber as a great example. The need for cars has gone down and

is going down. So let's say within ten years there's going to just be self driving cars, or you know, some number of years, who knows, five years, ten years, fifteen years, there's just going to be only self driving cars, I mean auto, Yeah, cars that drive themselves, and so ninety percent of the cars on the road won't be

necessary anymore. You'll just say, okay, at eight am, it's the self driving car that's nearest me should pick me up and take me to work, and you'll be able to work on your laptop on the way to work because you're self driving some whatever self driving car that's owned by Uber. You know, let's say maybe Google buys Uber, so who knows how it all works out, and you know, it'll pick you up, it'll drive you to work, drop you off, and now it'll go it'll never be empty,

it'll go to the next person. Right now, we live in a world where all these empty cars are sitting in parking lots at you know, work. That's not it's not going to be necessary anywhere. That's a waste. So if ninety percent of the cars in the auto industry disappear, what happens to the auto industry? All the employees are gonna you know, these companies are going to be there's going to be massive upheaval. I'm not saying this is

bad or good. It could be a bad thing, it could be a good thing, and it's going to hurt some people. It's going to help some people. But it's going to happen, so regardless of whether you think it's good or bad. And so what will that do. That's also going to change the insurance industry because no more

car insurance, no more car insurance agents. It's going to change real estate because maybe you could live further from work because now you could just work on the way to work, or maybe work at home, you know, because mobile is happening, and virtual reality is happening and all these other things. Oh yeah, virtuality is going to get

so real. I was a podcast chat with David Chalmers recently, who he believes we are living in a simulation right now, but he thinks that virtuality will eventually become so really you won't be able to distinguish the real world from virtual reality, because if you think about it, our technological society has only been around, let's say two hundred years, three hundred years, and we're already at the point where a virtual reality could seem so real that we're maybe

like ten years away or five years away from a virtual reality seeming so real, like even to touch in our senses, that we won't be able to tell the difference. So imagine a society that maybe live for a hunt thousand years exactly that we're of course we're at a simulation could be us. Yeah, yeah, you start, you basically just ran the philosophical thought experiment that Dave Chalmers has

been doing, and you came to the same conclusion. Yeah, that's kind of the kind of the standard you know, simulated reality argument that the odds that wear the real world are like one in a gazillion. He actually, he actually you know, says that he puts between like thirty and fifty percent that we are in a simulation, which is really high if you're think of a high percentage.

You know, if you think of that, it's almost like, yeah, yeah, cool, I'm not making that prediction, by the way, Yeah, that's a sort of just a philosophical who knows. Yeah, we'll never know. What do you mean we'll never know? We might someday, Yeah, I mean, I guess there's some there's some mathematicians who are kind of trying to work on theories about it. And you know, maybe the dark matter in the universe is somehow related to the real world.

Some some some entity might tell you someday, you know, we had a lot of fun making your character, right, but given that this reality might be thirteen point eight billion years old, yeah, the odds that it happens in our lifetime that we kind of poke a hole in the reality is like, when you die, could be you find out maybe we'll see that. That could be a

theory too. That's that was my thinking, is that die, you know, because that could actually just mean that, you you know, wake up in a pod somewhere, you know, the alien technique. Yah, exactly. Wouldn't that be the biggest kicker If you do wake up with somebody, you'd be like, no way, I'm going back in So this, I like this quote from you. Creating new income sources is like sex. You only get good by doing it, preferably a lot. Do you mean in a lot of ways? Is failure inherent?

And part of that? Yeah, because you don't really you know, when you do a science experiment, you expect that many experiments won't work out, and that's how ultimately you make your big scientific discoveries. So the classic story of Thomas Edison trying a thousand different filaments before he had the right one for a light bulb? Did he fail those

thousand times? Did he give up? No? He got better at figuring out what chemical you know, what chemicals did the or you know, what elements did the filment need to be made out of? And he got better and better until he came up with a light bulb. He sort of narrowed in on success there. And I think that's what happens. As you learn the language of you know, entrepreneurship and making an income, you learn to speak it better and better. So well, I love that quote. You know,

I have such a bad memory. I honestly don't remember writing that, but it certainly sounds like me. But sounds right, but I totally don't remember it. I don't remember anything. I think I have early on set Alzheimer's. Actually, maybe this lemon bomb is going to help. Actually that believe it or not. That's one of the benefits of it. It helps Alzheimer's. Help is cognitive functioning. I believe it. Yeah, I believe anything. I believe anything you tell. Thank you

your podcast. We're in a virtual reality. Lemon bomb also makes you believe anything. Yeah, so that could be. It's a truth serum. That's the kind of thing. Hey, this has been such a great conference of interview. I don't know if is there any topic you wanted that you wanted to bring up here at the end. You know, I'm I'm good. I've been looking forward to this. We first met a little over a year ago, and I've been looking forward to doing this podcast ever since. Oh man,

I have as well. Thank you for the in lane chat and thank you for being you. Thanks Scott, and I'm looking forward to you coming on my podcast when your next book comes out. So let's just stops. Yes, absolutely, thank you. I would love it. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman I hope you found this episode just as thought for booking and

interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com