If MrBeast Is More Unhappy Than Happy, What Hope Do the Rest of Us Have? | Ep 123

I've had this a few times with podcasts before , and some of you have probably graduated off of me as well and the ones that are here . Thanks for still being here , or thanks for being here , despite the evolution that people have gone through . You are the next , you're the next . What do we call it ? Cohort of people to listen that need this ?

Of course , because when I first started this podcast four years ago , not everyone that's single then is single now , myself included .

So you might have found yourself in a relationship , you might find yourself married , and so you're here because you're looking for something that's going to help you with the concept of single life , and I've obviously expanded it a bit because we're not just talking about single life , but this podcast . It brought me back .

I kept seeing a lot , a lot , a lot of little trailers for it , which , which is classic . That's what a trailer does , and I'm not in any way swayed by MrBeast . I obviously know of his achievements , know that he is the biggest YouTuber we have around , I know that a bunch of kids absolutely adore him , but I don't know so much about him .

I've very rarely consumed his content except for , more recently , the beast games more , because it's basically the squid games , but with no deaths included , of course . And then obviously as a result of that , things have popped up and he smashed a ton of world records to the point that it felt like they'd made up records to be smashed just for him .

Like it's like they're just some of the categories that existed . You were like , oh , does that exist or has that just existed ? Now that he's done it , it was a bit weird , but on the episode , in at least part of it , it's definitely on the trailer . I'm sure I've heard the bit where he's talking about it as well .

Where he talks , he's asked by Steve Bartlett , are you happy ? And Mr Beast replies more unhappy than I am happy . And that really struck me , because we have this tendency in society to believe that someone that is as successful as that should be happy . Look at it , he has an empire , an absolute empire in terms of money .

He has this group of people that work incredibly hard with him on his project and they work together intensely to achieve what he has achieved . He gets to do what he loves because that's why he's continued to do it , by his own acclaim , every single day . So in what world is this guy at all unhappy ? How can it be ?

He's got the friendship , he's got the , the admiration , he's got the success , he's got the money , he's got the wealth , he's got the legacy . He can do what he wants . He can literally . He doesn't have to think about any kind of monetary elements , like he does not have to worry .

And so how can it be that someone like that that has all of those things , then answer the question that I'm probably more unhappy than I am happy ? And it's this kind of thing that I wanted to bring up , because we can have this obsession with where we are in life .

We can sit and compare ourselves to the wonders that are Mr Beast , and even if you go , it's not Mr Beast . I mean Mr Beast is one of a kind . He's been working on it since he was 11 , 12 , kind of zone , and he's 26 now . You know as much as he's young . He has had years in this industry , much to your dismay , probably so .

At the time we were all studying and having a great time at uni . He was tapping away trying to make YouTube videos even better than they already were , and he does enjoy what he does , but there's an element to it and a side to it and there's something to it that doesn't make him happy .

It can often be seen that we compare ourselves to these big figures or just those figures in front of us , and you never really truly know what can make you happy . There's that stat that goes about that says you know , you only need to earn £70,000 .

And after that the money doesn't make a difference , and I mean it's probably slightly more now because that number's based on something you know , a price , a value from a fair few number of years ago . So inflation needs to go up . But it goes to show that these material things aren't happiness , because this is not just Mr Beast . We've seen this in .

We have seen this time and time and time again with celebrities . We've seen it happen . Where they have these successes , they have these wonderful experiences , whether they're in television shows , film , music , whatever it might be .

Yet they turn to other alternatives to try to be happy and we've only got a look at the case of someone like Liam Payne , who I would be speculating about in terms of what I thought , but we know he had difficulties with substance abuse , alcohol , drugs .

There have been reports of other elements that you would use to be happy and despite that , despite the success that they had as One Direction , as much as that needed to come to an end , as much as any experience , you know them just splitting up , them growing older , had a child and , yes , split from the mum of that child , but had that child , and my

understanding from my reports was that it was not like a a bad , it was amicable , he saw him . There are these things that trouble people , despite what they have , and having is thinking that having is going to solve your problems , whether it's having money , having a relationship , having a house . There are things that they can reduce the symptoms of .

But if you can't find this internal happiness , it will only be temporary , it'll only be there for a bit , and I am speaking on my interpretation of the likes of Mr Beast and Liam and Liam Payne , for example , in that I think when it came to Mr Beast , my first instinct was like it's because he's chasing . He's having to chase and beat nothing .

There is no one even remotely close to what he's doing . So he's at the top . He doesn't have anyone but to beat but himself , which is what we always focus on doing . But his top is now huge . He has a a humongous fall to make . If he falls , you know that's . You're high up . You even got to have a video not do that .

Well , you know it can just do good , which is good by anybody else's standards , but compared to how you've been performing , it is not incredibly amazing because of the hundreds , not even hundreds millions of views and downloads and clicks and everything that that brings .

If your video only again gets hundreds of thousands , it's not there , it doesn't meet it and he's stuck in that . And within that same podcast episode he says like my mental health has to take a backseat , my mental health has to be second to this , which I think he knows . But I don't think that means he stops doing it .

But to me I'd have to be the other way around .

I cannot do something so intensely , no matter what the level of success , if my mental health as a result is being bad impacted in such a way and I am not Mr Beast , but that's why I quit my job and I didn't have like severe mental health issues at all , but what I found was that I wasn't loving what I was doing in the format I was doing in it .

The school scenario had too many constraints . I wanted to be working in a team of incredible people and he mentions this too and I felt like I was working with some incredible people but being brought down by a bunch of people that couldn't care less .

And even on the podcast , mr Beast doesn't cite this as an issue with why he's unhappy , but he does say like I want to work with great people and I can't work with great people . I can't not work with great people . They bring you down .

The C players bring you down and they're obvious , but the B players are the ones that are kind of good enough , but they just they don't motivate and they're not there , and that can bring the A team , the people that want to be doing stuff , down . And that's how it felt . It felt like , yeah , cool , I'm earning a fine amount of money .

I like , yeah , cool , I'm earning a fine amount of money , I can live on this . It certainly pays for my bills , I don't have to worry about anything . I'm not getting anything from this .

I love a couple of people I work with , but really I don't want to be showing up every day doing four lessons of the same thing that I've taught like a hundred times over . I'm bored for one .

Yes , I can do more things and keep doing , but it's a bit boring to do on your own or just with one person and and then it doesn't feel like it was like a personal project , not a school-led project , and I just felt like I had a lot to do . That was the other thing .

You know , that thing where you're good at stuff , stuff , and then other people aren't good at stuff , and then they take the stuff away from the people that can't do and give it to the people that can do , and I'm like we're still paying them the same amount , aren't you like ?

They're still here getting their wage with what they were meant to be doing , but because they couldn't , you've given it to me who can , thus increasing my like hours , reducing capacity to like breathe . No , thank you . No , thank you . I'll leave it .

It's okay , like I don't mind being good , I don't mind having more on , but I just don't always feel like you're fairly compensated for that in particularly in salaried situations , especially in schools . It's it just , it feels like it gets lumbered onto you with no real acknowledgement .

And so , in order to kind of tackle this first , I wanted to bring that to your attention , that this whole idea and I probably bring it back to for some of you it's thinking like I'll be happier when I'm in a relationship , and I've done it too I've thought if I just and it's just plasters , it's sticking plasters over what happiness really means , I made this

error and I've chased various things that weren't for me . It's how I think I got in the scenario that I was in by the time I was 26 , 27 . Like , oh God , I'm here , I've done what you said would make us all happy and , yeah sure , the blueprint had worked for a number of people . It still does for some people . It worked for a number of people .

It still does for some people . It worked for a

number of years . But the problem is people are trying to use that blueprint now that are like in their late teens , you know , early adulthood , and it totally isn't working , really not working , because life has changed so much since then . We are going to see a generation of people who cannot buy their own homes .

So the previous model was do well at work , keep getting your job , buy a house , etc . Right , but what happens when you tell them to do all that hard work and there's no reward of being able to own your own house at the end ?

This whole concept of everything's going to be owned and we're just going to be renting and you're not going to own anything and you're going to be happier , freaks me out , man . I don't know what that even means . I can't go into much detail because I don't understand enough about it myself .

All I keep hearing is those little rumblings of what that is and what that means , and I think I think we're in trouble . I think we're in deep trouble , and I'm not saying that this house is what defines my happiness .

But I know that having this space a space to call my own , a space that is a sanctuary , it's a backup , no matter what it's here , so long as I keep paying the bills Like it , doesn't bring me happiness , but it brings me safety and comfort and that , to me , is really important , to the point that I would , where possible , I will avoid renting .

Now I don't know how long that's going to go on for . If I could keep paying the bills here and the mortgage rates don't go , you know , insanely high , then sure , this will be the place that I live out my days and I'll always have it . But the idea of moving home , if I ever had to mate , I'm not doing it unless I can buy Absolutely not Now .

Obviously , if I'm in a situation where I have no option , I have no option Because the rental situation is scary . It's what the hell ? It feels like it doesn't feel secure . It feels like you could have the rug ripped from out underneath under the carpet . What's the phrase ?

Anyway , you know , know , I'm talking about the whole concept of you know rent suddenly going up .

That means you can't settle your life in one place in a way that you think I could be here for 10 years , but then the landlord , you know , ups the rent by 10 every year , wildly , let's go with , and that's just unfeasible because nothing else is going up at 10 apart from the cost of everything .

Like , you can't rely on that , you can't plan forward , and that in itself then causes this uncertainty which feeds a lot of anxiety and worry and stress .

So we have these things that we need to feel secure in the first place and then , once all of that is achieved and I do think that's harder if you're in some sort of rental or temporary accommodation of some situation , but after that the happiness level has to then change , the happiness dial and understanding .

Because I have only just got to a point where I'm nearing the same income that I had income , oh , but it's not even adjusted , it's it's , it's grow , not grow . I don't even know the words I've taken that but it hasn't offset my expenses because when you're self-employed you get to adjust it .

So it's on paper , it's not even quite um , and we're not , we're not there . Anyway , we're getting , we're warming up . I've been on a very low income for the past few years , very low , being like is it less than the average , median average , mean , somewhere in the 20s , let's put it that way ? Um , so it's been pretty low and that's been okay .

I've lived , I've survived , I've just about got there . Uh , some of it's been because , you know , business-wise you put a lot of money that you do make back into the business . So in terms of generating money it has been more , but it's gone straight in . So my actual wage has been pretty low comparably .

Now we're starting to move back up towards where it was , but that hasn't changed my happiness . It does sometimes make me go .

Oh , I can treat myself to a soft mocktail , as they called them , where we were the other day at Canary Wharf , instead of thinking I won't have a drink or I'll just have a coke , which sometimes costs just as much as an alcoholic drink .

It feels like , um , I was like I'm gonna have a soft , soft mocktail cocktail and it was the most lovely , uh , pornstar martini with no alcohol in it . To my surprise , it literally tasted exactly the same , which tells me that I've always been right I can never taste alcohol when it's nice , and in a sweet , nice drink anyway . So what's the point ?

But there's core things to me that we need to think about in terms of and these will be different for everyone what actually makes us happy . What actually is it that's making us happy ?

Because if it's not all these people with money saying it's not money to a certain degree , to a degree that you are out of the you know I need safety and security zone then what is it because ? If mr beast isn't happy and he's got everything that he's got , and I think he's recently engaged as well and he's more unhappy than he is happy . What is it ?

And I think he's recently engaged as well and he's more unhappy than he is happy ? What is it ? Because he's got lots of scenarios that suggest he should be happy inverted commas . So if someone , if we went and did everything the same , or our versions of it , and we risked the fact that that wouldn't make us happy , then what's going to make us happy ?

What is it that brings you true joy when you think of it ? Now there's a mixture . There's the values I have and then there's these things that matter to me , like I really value connection in my life , connections in one of my values for a long time , and so I like meeting with friends and I like having good , deep connections with them .

And what does that mean ? It means that we can talk openly and freely and pretty non-judgmentally , that people are there for one another when they need to be and that the friendship isn't pressured in any way . You know , it's very easy .

Some of my friends I see once a week , some of my friends I see more like once a month , every couple , but we keep in touch , we know what's going on . But alongside that something to me is experiences , having experiences together .

So one of these friends I do see fairly regularly once , once a week , once a fortnight , something like that for you know know , an hour or two each time

or so . So nice , proper catch-up , not happy to just fill everyone in on what's been going on for the last six months , but something changed the other day significantly . Like we've done that for a long time now , like over a year , and it is lovely , we look forward to every week , it's great .

But then just just recently we took the children when I say the children I mean Jason's children and her children to Adventure Island and I didn't realise how important that was to me until I did it , because I realised it wasn't that I just like to spend time with this person , it's that I wanted to share my life with this person , and not in a romantic way .

But we often hold these things of sharing your life with the person that you love , that you end up in a relationship with , and of course I want to share experience with Jason , obviously . But actually I want to share more experiences with other people and so if I put myself in the shoes of Mr Beast , I would try to where possible and it may .

I'm making lots of assumptions and lots of presumptions , but my focus on where my happiness would come from would be from in my values , and I probably , I think , what my I don't know what his values are at all I couldn't even pretend .

I just mean what I would think of and what I would focus on is that I get to do something that is incredible , that that I do love subject to , like I don't .

I wouldn't love making the videos that he makes , but if I was doing an equivalent like doing this , like my dream would be to do things like this with a team of people that care as much about these kinds of issues and those people be people that I absolutely do love care for , and we do it together as a group , as a a team Like that , to me , is the

kind of thing , and it doesn't have to be work based , but the idea that , oh , like people that I've got kids with not that they're my kids , but people that have got kids can be brought together to go and do these activities .

Going to Adventure Island , it was weird because I felt like I hadn't even spoken to the kids at all at Adventure Island , which is so odd because normally it feels very intense being around the children . Yet because there were more children , they entertained themselves . It was fantastic . I , honestly , halfway through the day , or even longer , I went .

I don't feel like I've spoken to the kids at all . My friend said to me I went no , you probably haven't , because we're talking , but they're all talking , you know . Know , they're having a good time , they're doing this , they're talking to one another , they're entertaining themselves and jason's kids are very good .

Anyway , you know they're they're they're wonderful kids , very , very curious , lots of questions , always questions , which is fine . Don't always have the answers , but actually I was like , oh , my god , yeah , and we've been able to talk and I've been able to go on the big ride for once .

Normally we don't always have time or we have to manage waiting around and like , what's it when it's just those two , as siblings , waiting around ?

They're good , they don't misbehave , they're great children , but even so , it's not fun , whereas the fact that they had somebody else to be around and they were playing with them whilst I went on the big ride wasn't a big thing , you know , and it's having these experiences .

I think the focus should be on where's the quality time you get with people and not just the superficial , not just the catch-ups with people where you literally have to give . It's almost like interviewing everyone , isn't it ? You go around the table and everyone's like , oh , so what have you been doing ?

And you have to give and hear Like the version of your life for the last three to six months in 20 minutes if you're lucky , and for some people it's been great and it's been fun . It's , you know , light-hearted and exciting to hear .

And other people have been going through really difficult times and that's very hard for them to bring up , to summarize in 20 minutes and to not feel like they're bringing the group down and that's not . It's really difficult .

I would love in my life to have more of what I just described and you can probably tell from the body language , if you're watching this , the difference in how I talk about it , that I'm probably more closed when I was talking about that scenario of having to recall your life versus the expansive hand gestures that were coming out .

When I'm talking about experiences and yes , money can help with being able to do experiences , I mean we're very savvy with money where possible . Adventure Island is an absolute steal the children's tickets when I bought them were £20 for the year .

They don't have as good a deal for that , but if you do have kids or if you know anyone that's got kids , if this goes out in time , I don't know if it will be available . But if you don't get it , this kids , if this goes out in time , I don't know if it will be available , but if you don't get it this year , watch out for it next year .

Adventure Island in Southend always do an annual pass . It's now £80 , but their flash sale is £40 . I'm not in any way endorsed by them , we just definitely go to this . We got the original ticket for £20 . And I think we've now gone six or seven times . Every single time , I believe . Every single time . The soft play itself costs like six , seven quid .

You know you add that up and it's free to enter . If you're an adult , you get to go on with kids that are under 120 . So Azalea always has someone going on with her , so we don't always have to pay for one . But we both happen to have annual passes this time around .

I don't know if we will in the future , if we'll just do pay per ride or something , but either way , absolute steal . And then , when it came to food , we bought some snacks with us . Uh , because we were doing it for Rupert's birthday . Um , he had .

They did have treats for food for once , but normally we'll just bring a pack lunch , um , and we head to the the seafront sometimes , go along there and do stuff , um , you know it , you can do things in a different way and , and I think the idea of like the difference in your 20s and 30s , I think and I haven't done it yet , I haven't achieved it but I

think the emphasis should be on doing things with each other and , as kids have got , you know , come about bringing children on board a bit more difficult when you don't have a kid or child , to kind of contribute to that situation , I think , because the people with kids don't have a kid or child , to kind of contribute to that situation , I think , because the

people with kids don't think you want to be involved with it , but make yourself involved with it and say let's go , I want to come to the zoo with you guys , or I want to go and do this . I think another shift can very much be the , especially in current circumstances , that you don't have to go out for this anymore , that you can invite people around .

Maybe you have invested in your home , maybe this is a safe place for you and you're lucky enough to have it , and if you are renting , you can still have made the place as beautiful and wonderful for you . But actually just invite people over , I don't do it .

Uh , it is a very small , limited space , I will be honest , but I could definitely have one person over on their own , or one person and a baby do you know what I mean ?

Like they can come over , they can come and see you , and if this is a limitation ie it's an expense and thus you don't have lots of extra expenditure then to me , things like that are important . Now , you may feel particular pulls to your parents or your family and you want to .

That's what brings you may feel particular pulls to your parents or your family , and you want to . That's what brings you happiness . Then make it that . Make it that you're doing the roast and you're every . All of you are doing that roast dinner ritual on a sunday , but you take it in turns as to who does it .

I think we have to move past these statuses , these state I don't know what the plural is there and think if it's not money that makes people happy , if it's not having everything , then what is it that makes people happy ? What is it that's going to make me happy ?

And you don't have to agree or say that you agree exactly with what I've said at all , that the definition of that happiness is for you and I appreciate that . I say that now as someone that's in a relationship . I get to have those experiences with someone dedicated and it's very easy to then go do you wanna do this ?

But you know he's got financial constraints too . Everything I wanna do is not so simple . So I have my own experience of that in the business and that's to me . That's another thing and I wonder if that would be the same kind of thing .

Even though he doesn't see that as happiness , I do think that's probably where some of his happy comes about the challenge of it . I love the challenge of entrepreneurship . I love the challenge of having to get better , of being pushed , of growing to a point I don't hold myself there . One thing I'm very good at is not comparing myself to other people .

Competition wise , I'm competitive , but only with myself . So if I'm going to do a running competition 5k , 10k , half marathon like , yes , there's hundreds of people that are going to beat me . There's nothing . It will motivate me less if I pick someone out and say I've got

to beat them . The say I've got to beat them . The key is I've got to beat myself . And this comes from knowing yourself . It comes from knowing your values . It's one of the main exercises I've always done in the work that I've done with people , which is to know what matters to you , to know what really makes you happy .

Because if we've got people out there who have it all saying that they are unhappy , then if you are working on the operation that , because you don't have it all , you'll be happy when you have it all , we are in deep trouble Because those ideas are going to be shattered the minute you inverted commas , get to having it all and realising it didn't make any

difference in the first place . Let me know what you think of this . It's a big topic , it's interesting , it's got lots of ways you can look at it and everybody's going to think slightly differently about it . But drop me a DM or let me know in the Facebook group and until next time , keep sparkling .