Are you your own worst enemy? Everything that your life would be so much easier if you could just change your mind about a couple things? Yeah, me too. That's why I reached out to my old friend Derek Sivers. The one person I know who is better at questioning beliefs and changing his mind than just about anyone I know. He's also a bonafide grandmaster at Not Giving a Fudge. A former circus performer and professional musician, Derek went on the found several companies, including CD Baby, which he later sold for $22 million. He then gave most of that money away to
charity. He is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time, has written four books, and is currently working on his fifth titled Useful Not True. In this episode, we're going to dig into the most fundamental aspects of our psychology and happiness, our beliefs. We talk about how to change them, which ones should be changed, and which ones maybe shouldn't, and the wide-ranging effects that these beliefs have throughout our lives. I believe that you're going to get a lot out of this episode. See what I did there? It was like, it's episode about beliefs, and I said,
whatever, just roll the intro. First of all, we've been friends for a long time, and so it's cool to just have my inaugural guest be a friend who I've known forever. But also, if I were to make a top 10 list of people I know who probably give the fewest fucks.
You are up there, sir. You're definitely on that list. You're pretty high on that list, I have to say. Always surprise me every time we hang out, and we never fail to have super interesting conversations. So I'm overjoyed to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on and being my guinea pig. I get that reference. So I want to talk to you. You are currently working on a book at the moment about beliefs, and this concept of useful, not true.
I noticed that it was underneath all of my life philosophies, but never explicitly stated that I don't believe anything I say. I don't believe anything anyone else says. I think that everything I say is questionable. Maybe it's right. Maybe it's wrong. I think it's right when I say it. But we don't know ourselves that well. We think we remember things in the past perfectly, but we don't.
We think we know why we're doing things in life, but we don't really know. And we can talk about some colorful stories around that if you want. But then because I believe the same thing about everybody else, I believe that we live in a mostly social world, unless you're a scientist. And so I just operate through life this way, choosing what beliefs serve me best. Meaning like there are any way, any particular ways you could look at things.
One way just makes you sad and just makes you want to just stay in bed. Another way makes you jump up out of your chair and take action. Well, then I'll choose the way that makes me jump out of my chair. I'll choose the perspective that makes me take action. If it's a useful belief, I'll choose it because nothing's true anyway. I mean, except for some physical realities, almost nothing in our social world is true. Meaning absolutely, necessarily, inarguably objectively, repeatedly true.
So I'm just choosing the beliefs that serve me best. It's funny actually years and years ago I wrote an article similar to this idea. And so many people challenged me on it that I got kind of sick of defending myself. And I think I eventually just took it out of my archive because I'm like, geez, people are right.
It seems to me that there's some sort of practical limit to this concept. Right. So it's like, if I'm a couch potato and I'm feeling lazy and depressed all the time, if I can manage to convince myself that I'm actually a successful person who's just a bad string of luck, that's a very useful thing to believe.
And that will probably help me get off the couch. So I'm with you there. I do think there's probably an extreme on the other end of the spectrum where like, let's say I'm a super ambitious corporate guy working in nine to five and I'm climbing the corporate ladder. I start doing some pretty shitty things to people because I justified myself that I'm superior and I'm more brilliant and I'm better and I deserve to be at the top.
Now that is useful, but it's kind of a shitty thing to believe it will definitely harm my relationships. It possibly might harm my happiness, depending on, I guess, how psychopathic I am.
But there is a territory with this concept that I start to get uneasy or unsure of like where the limitations or boundaries of it are. Where would you say those limitations are in your opinion? I'll tell you, but then I also want to ask your advice because the thing that you just said has been the most common response. No offense.
I tell people that I'm writing this book basically insure their question is, but what about psychopaths? Yes. What about a politician believing they won the election that they actually lost? It's useful not true for them to believe that they won. What about people that believe that their enemy on the other side of the fighting line is subhuman and should just all be exterminated like cockroaches? That's useful but not true.
So so far the best thing I can offer is to say that I'm sharing a tool like a driving instructor can teach you to drive a car, but doesn't have to keep addressing everybody. Now remember kids, don't drive into a crowd of people.
Don't use this to murder. Does everybody teaching everything have to say now remember don't use this for murder. Don't be evil, but I feel that I should address this early. So so far all I've got is basically a paragraph in the intro before the book begins saying just to be clear this is a book about you being the person you want to be this is not a book about other people.
And whatever they do that's the like I like noting it as a tool and there are a lot of things within psychology or self health that are like that like goal setting is a tool right goal setting is ethically neutral Hitler had goals, fallen had goals. He was really good at accomplishing them too.
Goals are very ethically neutral and I think developing this mental skill of adopting beliefs around what's useful rather than true is is also ethically neutral. You can see people who get very good at it and very bad. You can actually probably see that within a lot of the same people you know when I was I was reading some of your excerpts that you posted on your website last night and the person that came to my mind was Kanye West. Have you seen the new documentary about him?
No, I didn't even know there was one. It's called genius. It's on Netflix. It is absolutely fascinating. I would absolutely check it out potentially use him as an anecdote for your book. So basically what happened when Kanye was like 17 or 18 years old and he was still on unfamous like nobody knew who he was.
He met this young filmmaker a guy a few years older him and the filmmaker met him and Kanye was immediately like I'm going to be the biggest rapper in the world. You should make a documentary about me and the guy was like okay sure. And so he started following him around with like a little camcorder. This is back in like 2000 1999 2000. Followed around with the camcorder for like three or four years and sure enough Kanye became the biggest rapper in the world and he like caught the entire rise.
What's so remarkable about the footage is that you see this mindset. It seems to be inherent in Kanye's mind the entire time like there's footage of him walking into record labels and radio stations with his demo disk walking up the people and saying I'm going to be the biggest rapper in the world and they they just flat out laugh in his face.
And he's like oh okay yeah you don't get it all right you're going to regret this and he like turns around walks out he's not deterred he's not upset he's not angry. Like it's just this very fundamental belief. But what's interesting is the documentary then kind of jumps to present day like the filmmaker comes back into his life maybe five years ago and you see how that mentality is hurting him.
Brilliant and how Kanye just has this overwhelming confidence and belief he's very untethered to reality at this point he's been way famous way too rich everybody's kissing his ass he's got yes men everywhere nobody's looking out for his interest and he just has this overwhelming confidence to do this or record that you can just see how it's getting in the trouble.
It's almost like a fascinating case study of the benefits and perils of overconfidence I would say so my second point aside from I really like the tool thing I think it only works if you're willing to change those beliefs if you have a belief that's useful but you're completely inflexible about it it might help help you for a little while but at some point it's going to fuck you.
And so if you're not flexible in your beliefs and willing to check in on them and switch them out for new ones then maybe that's kind of where that threshold is where it's like it goes from helpful to unhelpful. Oh good stuff here.
The example you used the beginning of the boss I'd say that his beliefs were not useful because you know the difference between shallow happy and deep happy right so shallow happy is eating the ice cream now deep happy is being proud of yourself for not eating the ice cream that's just a dumb example but
on a shallow level we're all about the ice cream metaphors here the boss might be short term happy like yeah I'm just stumping on everybody getting what I want look at me I'm crushing it but that's funny that you said that word like imagine like stomping on like crushing everything around you
crushing it crushing everybody right you could say like this isn't working for you you're yeah you're crushing everybody around you you're you're being bad you're you're making the world a worse place and ultimately you're making your future worse you might be on a short term selfish gain right now but you're on a long term downward path right quick
quick aside when people say what when you say useful not true what do you mean useful yes because yes somebody could use it for short term evil as you know that it to me useful and I do define at the beginning by saying useful means generally being who you want to be it's something that helps you go where you
want to go ultimately be who you want to be it's long term not short term so back to the point of changing the beliefs I'm so glad you brought this up did you ever read the book I think it was a special goldsmith that wrote a what got you here won't get you there never read it great title though the book is written for CEOs you know built their way up to the top so now they are the boss of people
and what he's saying is this guy's been like a corporate consultant for years and he's saying from all that I've observed the skills that it took you to get from say childhood or obscurity to being the boss of a big company were different set of skills that you're going to need now as the boss so you might have made it more about you on your way up but once you're at the top you need to make it about the people around you a tiny
example he said don't add two cents that's the metaphor we use especially like American slang when somebody gives you an idea and they're like you know hey Mark I'm thinking about doing this podcast what do you think you say well here's my two cents you know make sure that you do it outside right go oh good do it outside huh so now you've added your two cents but when people are your employees what you've just done is you've made that idea less theirs because you
added your two cents and because you're the boss you're not just some random due to the bar they kind of have to include your two cents even if you just said oh make that shade of blue a little bit darker well guess what they're going to feel less ownership in that because you added your damn two cents so that was one example where he says on your way up you had a certain set of skills but what got you here won't get you there and that's the only book I've ever heard talk
about this it makes sense though that useful is a moving target right it's like useful believe for Kanye when nobody knows who he is is no longer useful when he's the biggest rapper in the world what's useful when you're starting out of the company is no longer not always useful when you're the CEO I do think a lot of this revolves around really just how you define useful I think the ethical component of like it can't be when lose it needs to be
when when or when when when I that that strikes me as important like useful needs to cast a larger net than just simply like what makes mark feel like a badass today and it's funny because I've always felt like like I dip my toe in the water on this concept and I I never jumped in but I always felt like it there it's a deep pool you can go very very deep on this and there's got to be so much value
down there but I was busy writing articles with fucking the title to explore it's a useful or fucking true yeah use for fucking true wait you know what I just this is a I'm going to change a subject a bit but I've just been like waiting to get this out so you did this really sweet intro to me when you first it recording said hello and we jumped right into things I have to give a tiny reverse intro you do not listen to all of these
podcasts that I do when I'm the guest on other people's podcasts I'm sure you haven't heard them all but at least two or three times people have asked which writers do you admire who are your favorite writers and I go actually I really only got one and I say Mark
Manson just hands down I think is the best writer out there right now because I really dig into the craft writing there are there many many other people that have wonderful ideas and God damn you have to scratch through a bunch of fucking verbiage and examples to get those little ideas right there they're like you know the people with the metal detectors going
through a bunch of stuff looking for a few good coins on the beach I read these 300 page books that have maybe you know 50 good sentences in them but it's worth it to me I read the book for those 50 good sentences when I keep my notes when I'm reading somebody else's book what I do is I I like to paraphrase I put things I take their ideas and I want to save those ideas but I put them into
better words because fuck their words all that yeah words I use ideas all the time and I've done this with hundreds of books basically every book that you can see on my website that I've ever read there if you go to my s i v e dot r s is my website and right there is you'll see the Derek's booklist said last almost 400 books I read that
since I started taking notes in 2007 and every time when I would get to one of your books I said oh that's a really good idea I say okay I'm going to put this into better words and you were the only writer at the 400 something books I read the only person where I cannot change a single word to improve it so there you go hands down you are my favorite writer your belief Derek may not be true but it's
certainly useful it's a recent quite useful for me so thank you very nice deflected naturally I got on your website last night for the first time in a while and I read through a dozen of your more recent newsings and there's so many times where I read your stuff and I'm like I have had similar thoughts to that you really have this see now we're just kissing each
other's ass but you you you have this incredible ability to capture a deeply complex concept in a in a very simple metaphor or story like it's very elegant it's almost like asops fables that's that's kind of what it feels like to read a Derek civors post you know it's 400 words a very simple story about you and your kid or something you did in the music industry and then it just
lands and you're like oh I never thought about it that way so you're not too too shabby yourself speaking of your posts though I wanted to bring something up because you did have a post that was I believe it's an excerpt of the new book that I really liked and I think it's a really interesting concept to explore a little bit you were talking about your kid and some of his friends they were like playing a game
they're building pillow forts and all this stuff and basically they're playing make believe you use this as an example of how something could be untrue but useful yeah and you kind of use it as a jumping off point it was one of those thoughts it was like an initial domino that just spread and all these like further dominoes I ended up I looked up a famous Picasso quote he said art is not truth art is a lie that gives us truth
whoa and this got me thinking about the role of art and I'll add that's sorry sorry sorry hold on I I'm not hearing your further sentences I'm still adjusting that one damn that's good so it just got me thinking about the role of fantasy metaphor art fiction I think we've all experienced this to some extent like if you think about like your favorite films
some of your favorite films in many ways they feel more I don't want to say true but like more important or significant than a lot of the events in your own life like it when a movie like really hits you hard it just got me thinking about like the role of art in human culture it is almost an organizing force for true sentiments that we don't necessarily have like they're intangible we can't point to them in reality
so anyway I just want to throw that out there I wonder what the connection is with dreams and I'll just preface to say I know nothing about what I'm about to say but like always do that on a podcast I have no idea what I'm talking about but dreams don't they say that there's there's a theory that the reason we dream is to process yes unprocessed ideas so in a way I think what you're saying is that movies can do that in a way too that it's tapping into something that maybe there's some
feeling of loss that we haven't addressed in our past or something and it's sitting there kind of unprocessed within us as we're going to work and playing a PlayStation looking at a phone or whatever and then a movie can go like vibrate that and kind of bring it up and tap into this thing that's in you that needs to be addressed
well if you think about it the best art is very therapeutic I feel like this is it's somewhere around this it's a piece of fiction it's not true it's a bunch of people on stage playing make believe but depending on where you are in your life and the specific abstract concepts and ideas that are being played with it can impact you in a way that feels way more true than say like sitting and talking to your parents or calling your ex-girlfriend or whatever
yeah is it that it also helps point out something in us that we wouldn't have noticed by ourselves probably it's situations and context that are basically impossible within our own lives right or they're just exaggerated to such an extreme extent like you think about like the godfather it's about a mafia family
and everybody fucking gets shot and dies but at its core it's a movie about family the struggle of balancing commitment and love for your family versus your worldly goals and aspirations I think everybody can relate to that on a certain level so there's like something in the exaggeration of it that makes it feel
extremely impactful and true ooh and maybe they have to do that kind of exaggeration to call our attention to this specific thing the kent has presented a big well-rounded life and expect you to go pluck out the meaning right have to zoom all the way in yeah and I think in a lot of ways that is kind of the role the role of art I believe in that same article you mentioned the role of religion or it might have been in another interview
yeah no that was that one I mentioned it quickly at the end yeah instead of arguing that your religion is true or arguing that someone else's religion is not true and using that as your argument again just put that aside nothing's true anyway just eat think of it is what is it useful or not is this religion useful to you is this religion useful to somebody else well then that's a better
better better thing to judge it by a much better framework to judge it by and I also think it's it's probably a much easier argument to make I mean if you if you really think about it like the whole concept of objective truth is a pretty recent invention in terms of civilization like it's it's only I mean I guess if you go back to the Greeks but like in terms of
like mainstream culture we've only really given a shit about what's capital T true the last couple hundred years so yeah in some ways it is a culture built on thousands of years of
art and history and religion and is in many many ways true or I guess then you know pulling out a measuring tape and saying well no Jesus doesn't fit in that box so not true because I was brought up with no religion at all my parents didn't even mention it I was 11 years old the first time I met somebody that believed in God and I I didn't know that anybody did I thought it was like the Easter bunny I that was the environment I grew up in so I'm coming at this totally naive I'm learning about religion now at the age of 53 I read the Bible last year
Oh wow yeah yeah but now I'm actually open to religion for the first time I'm open to learning more about it whereas I used to just shut my ears like I don't want to hear about stupid religion it wasn't until like three or so years ago somebody told me that all of these things in the Bible were not meant to be taken literally that they were written in a time before science
when this was the way to communicate an idea is to say this thing happened which didn't necessarily mean that you were supposed to actually believe that this thing happened or whatever but maybe you didn't maybe didn't but that was moot it was a way of communicating values and ideas I went oh okay well then if we're not saying it subjectively
absolutely positively inarguably true well then that's really interesting and so that's what's like all right now maybe I'm up for reading this famous book that's affected so much of Western civilization so I read that book page to pay like read it carefully every single page and met have you I mean so I grew up quite religious I grew up in Texas so we have very opposite backgrounds in this regard so yeah I've read quite gotten plenty of
plenty of Jesus throughout throughout my life I'm afraid you get interpreted or did you see that's why I didn't want to hear anybody else's spin on it I just wanted to read the original canon so first of all no I have not read the Bible as an adult I went to I grew up my parents were very very involved in a church and went to church multiple times a week Bible study and then I went to a private Christian high school and so we took theology we had chapel every day
well okay I had no idea yeah I came out of it a little bit resentful and bitter you know I decided I think when I was probably 12 or 13 that I didn't believe any of it that I was atheist and I had a lot of resentment towards it for a while and I remember back when kind of Sam Harris first onto the scene what was his book called in the faith and Hitchens was doing his whole thing I sympathized a lot with those positions
it's funny though because as I've gotten older I've mellowed a lot about it and I've actually I think you and I have kind of very and a very round about manner arrived in kind of the same spot and that the older I get the more I appreciate some of the the usefulness of religion and the usefulness of religion as a social organizer
and as a set of principles that yeah people don't always follow it but at least they aspire to and at least they try and at least they come together regularly and build a community around those principles that are by and large very good principles so I have a lot of respect for it now that I didn't have what I was younger but I still don't believe in it
well that's perfect segue into when I said that there were two surprises for me so first I read the Bible and then watch the whole bunch of little videos around it and I wrote about it somewhere in my blog if you search the word Bible on my blog you'll read my tale of how I read it and my thoughts and which translation you read makes a huge difference
and then I read a book called what everyone should know about Islam and that was really well written it was a really good book that addressed in FAQ format just the basics like here's a whole bunch of stuff about Islam that everybody seems to not understand and just it was a great way to just do the whole thing in FAQ format
then I read a book about Judaism I think it was called like Judaism for dummies so both Islam and Judaism made a lot of sense because they're like a top to bottom here's how you should live your life I'd say that they actually made more sense to me than Christianity because both of them were like a complete how to live manual
this is what you should eat this is how you should dress this is how you should marry this is how you should live your life this is what you should do every day this is how to live I was in college when 9-11 happened and so I took a number of courses I took one course on Islam I took a course on Middle Eastern history and what struck me about Islam there is an elegance and a beauty to like the completeness of it it really helped me understand I think a lot of the mentality of Islam is really good
the mentality of that culture because in Christianity there's kind of a lot of gaps there's like they really care about these things in this lane but if you're over here like they have nothing to say about it whereas Islam is like there's kind of like a complete set it was interesting because there's something very satisfying about that I think there's just an innate thing in human nature that we want stability and predictability we want easily available answers
once I learned about all that I understood the appeal I think and I sympathized a lot with that appeal let me let me bring this back and this actually loosely relit my next question actually kind of loosely relates to religion and that is changing a belief is it's one of those things that it's easy to talk about
but particularly for like deep seated beliefs or beliefs that we've held for a long time or maybe even beliefs that we don't have a ton of awareness around or understand why we believe something I can often be very difficult to dislodge an unuseful belief do you believe do you believe that any belief can be changed or dislodged and two if so what do you think are like the most effective means of doing that
I journal a lot I journal for hours and hours and hours not every single day but especially if I'm going through something or trying to reframe a belief or trying to process something that's really upsetting me you know whether it's a breakup or a major decision in life I just spend so many hours in my journal very deliberately walking through the different ways I could think of this thing
whether it's in the past or the future and after I've been in brainstorming mode for you know what's another way I could think about it okay that was that was really good but what's another I make myself keep going right it's like the brainstorming 101 don't stop just because you had a good idea keep going keep looking at other perspectives
so I'll keep looking at a bunch of different ways to think about something and the certain point one feels like ooh this works I'll find a belief that I can just tell like this hits me like this works for me this is what I needed to believe this is a good perspective I can use
and then I'll just start writing it's like self-talk if this then what right so if this belief then what are the consequences of this belief I just I drown myself in that or I just immerse myself I I bathe myself in this way of thinking until I step away from my keyboard like yeah
all right this is it you know this is my new way of thinking about it and then I try to go make something happen with that belief right wait whether it's a just making a phone call to initiate something signing after something walking up the door and doing something
talking to somebody whatever it is that is the next step in that belief being actuated in your life I like the idea of focusing less on the belief itself and focusing more on evidence accumulation because to your point earlier almost everything in the world is debatable
you could argue almost anything and so the question is we have a limited amount of attention and focus and so I guess the question is is like what are you going to spend your time and attention accumulating evidence for you don't even necessarily need to build like feel something to be true
but if you start focusing on the evidence that supports that belief you can kind of find it you know it's interesting I I quit drinking last year I originally quit for very superficial reasons which was I'm trying to lose weight I'll do 30 days whatever as I stopped it it really became undeniable
like the evidence started mounting right I feel better every morning I'm sleeping better I'm more energy during the week I'm losing weight my workouts are better like everything starts compounding on top of it but it's funny what that really rings true I so I quit smoking in my 20s when I think when I was 24 25 like most smokers I really struggled to quit and I remember the way I finally kicked it is I got religious about it like I reached a point where I kind of told myself
everything bad in my life whether it's true or not I'm going to blame it on smoking nice you know like money problems girlfriend got mad at me whatever it's smoking's fault and then my my brain I would find a reason it was smoking's fault stressed out at work it's smoking's fault don't have enough money to fly home to visit my parents for Thanksgiving it's smoking's
well I spent too much on cigarette like it just it became this like one note song that I just kept playing in my head over and over and I I just developed like such a loathing for the habit that it really became a tailwind the quitting like it it really made a big difference I guess this does tie in the religion right is like finding something you want to believe in and making everything you experience
affirm that even if it isn't objectively true this is kind of like the secret for smart people like this raises a really interesting point and this kind of ties into like the ability to let go of beliefs because I truly believe this is a skill and actually I think psychologists have called this cognitive flexibility that the ability to adopt try on adopt different beliefs or mindsets
and then when they stop working take them off and change them out for something different and I feel like this is something that you are extremely adapt that in fact you actually wrote an entire book I love this book by the way I know I've told you that but how to live 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion it's for people listening it's a book about it answers the question how to live but it's 27 completely different answers and all of them make sense which is the maddening part reading it is is it's a very unique
intellectual experience because it there's like this strange dissonance that starts happening at least when I read it there's a strange dissonance that starts happening in my brain of like wait all these things are true yet they contradict each other and like my brain doesn't know what to do with it it's very interesting but anyway the you know this ability to like set down beliefs pick them back up be rigid if you need to be rigid with them for a while
I think I'm in a place in my life I probably need to be really rigid for a while with alcohol right because yeah I'm coming off of 20 years of drinking a lot so I probably need two three four years of being pretty rigid about it and then I can probably ease off there's some people who have to be rigid for the rest of their lives they can't have another drop the rest of their lives because it just spins everything out of control
so part of me wonders I do think there is there is a skill aspect of this I also think there's a bit of a talent aspect of it as well like I think there are people who are just kind of innately born with a knack for letting beliefs go and being uncertain about stuff sometimes and there are some people that just like that really really doesn't sit well with them and they struggle to do that
I don't know if you you look like you disagree that's a classic not true and not useful thing to to blame too much on innate it's heels everybody pulls out the same dumb example of basketball players well you know if you're five foot two you just can't be in the NBA
okay great you found one example saying that either you have it or you don't you're just good at you're not you're just born with it or you're just never going to be born with it and that's that to me that's one of those not useful beliefs
that you're just choosing something unless you're unless useful to use defined by your tranquility because what you really want to just sit on the couch for the rest of your life and do nothing then great you've found a useful belief that will help you do nothing but I think from most of us you've got to try to catch yourself I think of this holding the beliefs at arms length and to see that there are different ones that you can choose
I think that whole idea starts with thinking that you might be wrong that just because everything in your instincts are telling you that this is so if you can believe I might be wrong that's the first step then you can say if I was wrong then or if I might be wrong what other way could I be thinking about this whether that's innate in some people who knows but I do think it's something that everybody can develop like everybody can learn to sing even if you've gotten a knowing speaking voice
and I think everybody can learn cognitive flexibility and holding beliefs at arms length and adopting one that works for you and putting it aside when it's not I agree with you and I also agree that it's not useful and not true to believe so and just a quick response to the NBA example yeah people always say that they're like oh if you're five or two you'll never play in the NBA but you can still be a fucking good basketball player you don't need to be in the NBA but like nobody's in the NBA
so I think the useful and true belief that is related to this is that you can always improve at any skill no matter what sort of disadvantage you're at I'd still say that that's useful but not true like you can always improve if there's any counter argument then it's not
absolutely inarguably objectively true and it's like but hey but it's really useful to believe that but that's a that's a classic one to I'm sorry that's that's cool to catch yourself in these things that even though I'm writing this book I still catch myself saying things whether it's New Zealand is a great place to live or I just can't do such and such I have to go oh I just did it didn't I I'm saying something that's not true as if it's true so to the point about being willing to be wrong
or questioning if you're wrong I think this is why people often experience the most change identity change after tragic experiences or extreme negative experiences in their life you know they lose a job or a relationship ends or they have a falling out with a family member those sorts of experience tend to precipitate very large identity shifts because you take something very very dear and personal to somebody you pull it out from under them
and it's something that they either took for granted or assume was true and was always going to be there you take it away from them and then it kind of forces them into that mindset of I thought this was a sure thing but clearly it wasn't so what else in my life
do I think is a sure thing it might not be and they start asking questions do I actually like my friends do I really want to live in this city do I want to go here or there it's interesting in that hardship makes this process easier in some ways I think
or at least creates opportunities probably creates more opportunities to ask these questions whereas I think success you can often when everything's going right you can kind of delude yourself into you know you don't want to fuck up the gravy train so you don't
start asking if you're headed headed in the right direction or not Louis C.K. said that when his marriage broke up he was devastated first and then Andrew Dice Clay was talking with him in the parking lot outside a comedy club and said you know he said you might what he looks so glum he said I'm I look like my marriage is done he goes oh congratulations he said what do you mean congratulations and he said nobody ever leaves a good marriage I mean oh and he said that idea just bold me over I've
thought about that ever since that nobody ever leaves a good marriage nobody ever leaves a good relationship or a great relationship so really anytime somebody has a breakup you should be saying congratulations to them and by the thing that you just said which I think is so insightful and wonderful that whenever somebody has some kind of terrible tragedy in their life you know my parents just died like wow congratulations you know like oh my god you're about to have an
amazing transformative experience you're going to be letting go of some habits that you've been doing that weren't rewarding you're going to be letting go of some people in your life right coming up you're going to be taking on some new things that you were putting off before like there are a lot of things you're about to change for the better in your life because of this death is always a tricky one because I do think most people experience some sort of growth after
somebody close to them dies but then there's always this awkward almost guilt of like well I don't want to be happy that they died even though good things happened as a result of their death I think that's a very common experience
among people I think we should all see a New Orleans funeral where they celebrate people's death New Orleans cultural funeral is to play sad music at first while they're carrying the coffin on the shoulders and at a certain point somebody in the band knows when to do it
and it's like it turns into a celebration of that person's life so it's nice to remember the even a funeral which we think of like objectively well you know now there's one thing that's entirely negative there's nothing positive about a death but you can just see the death
whether you're religious or not and you believe that they run to a better place or you just want to say this is a great moment to acknowledge how wonderful this person's life was speaking of parents who are going to die you have a kid and he has a parent that's going to die
I'm in the last third of my life oh Mark that's a useful belief for me right now by the way not necessarily true I'm in the last third of my life that helps me make a lot of decisions I was not affected you oh I that is the procrastination killer
I love it I love how it simplifies things I love how it makes me evaluate what new things to take on or whether I should be wrapping up some things like maybe some things deserve to be wrapped up and some things to be open up and but most of all it's a procrastination killer
I really like this idea it's a it's exciting positive idea to me that I'm in the last third of my life what would you say are the most impactful belief changes you've made say in the last ten years so we ran across a tiny little article where a woman said we are all temporarily able
and I don't know much about the I don't know anything about the author but I got the feeling that she's physically disabled in some way and she said let's not forget that all of us are only temporarily able at some point every single one of you reading this is going to become disabled in some way
whether it's the final five minutes of your life or the final half of your life or maybe it's tomorrow so like most of us I procrastinate exercise I know I should be exercising more that one idea that we are temporarily able that gets me out of my chair immediately
all of the other ideas of why I should be exercising don't work as much on me yesterday it was a blue sunny day I had tons of work to do I like right I'm stopping this right now I am temporarily able damn it I'm doing this while I can even lifting weights
so like right here next to me like three feet to my left outside this recording booth is a squat rack and I go to it when I remember how lucky I am that I can lift these weights right now because someday soon in the future I'm in the final third of my life someday soon in the future I won't be able to lift these weights so fuck yeah I'm lifting them now what would you say to the most useful beliefs period?
probably the meta belief that you can choose your perspective everything can be seen from multiple perspectives you can choose any perspective that you want and you are already choosing a perspective the one that feels true to you is already a choice that maybe your environment
your parents the place you live helped shape that choice for you instead of choosing it deliberately but that everything is negotiable somebody says Mark you can't sell 10 million copies of Oak that's ridiculous nobody sells 10 million copies and you're like I think I can the people that left it Kanye you know there's a way that people will tell you that's just not true you know you're a 17 year old kid from Chicago there's no way you're going to be the world's biggest rapper
just you've got to face reality that's just it's you know you don't have powerful connections in the music industry you don't have famous parents in Hollywood you're not going to make it you need to just accept that and people say these things like they're true but there's so many things like that in life for all of us even a more mundane examples of what you know you're in your late 50s you can't learn French now these things come up all the time they don't even have to be all self-help
they can even be as simple as you know look at you why would that girl ever be attracted to you you know you're no good at math you were never good at math in school you can't learn computer programming I'm sorry I'm picking all of these you can't do this you can't do that once but I'm sure there are others that my brain's just not going there right now you could put them all in a bucket and just label a bucket
anything is possible yeah okay so that's a good meta belief that anything is possible Americans come to that belief more easily than other people but yes it's a very it's a very cultural belief for us I would kind of add as a corollary or like a sister belief of that is that improvement is always possible so this kind of ties back into the the genetic thing which is can always get better always I just reread a book called you can negotiate anything by Herb Cohen it was written in the 70s
and I read it in the late 80s oh my god I read that book so many times in the 90s and I just re-bought it and reread it and it's so good because I forgot how meta he gets about saying look this is really important you need to understand that everything in life is negotiable everything that people tell you is written in stone is not and that was so beautiful I didn't really remember that he got that meta but I think it's such an important lesson so I started asking you about fatherhood earlier
yeah what's interesting though is that whenever I hang out with you in person it's very clear how much you prioritize your kid in terms of time, attention, care, how much thought you put into it it's very admirable but it's funny because it's your public facing identity you never really go there and so I guess my first question is why is that just out of curiosity really and then too would you say fatherhood is deeply affected any beliefs of yours or changed your worldview in any way
okay so the reason I didn't talk about it much I'm starting to more is a shallow reason you've noticed that there are some subjects if you talk about them online to the general anonymous public the kind of the quality of conversation that's going to come from this and we or just you're just going to get a bunch of dumb emotional reactionary stupid gut level lizard brain comments even though I wrote a post saying here's how I read the Bible like if you decide to do this here's my tips
I got no less than 50 different questions over the next month going all asking the same thing which is will tell us your thoughts on the Bible please give us a post and I'm like nope I will not doing that absolutely not because the kind of conversations that would spark or not the conversations I want to have I have no interest in starting that so I felt that with parenting that it's like oh god everybody's got everybody's got
everybody's got everybody with a kid or got everybody even without a kid has their fucking opinion and like I just don't want to have those conversations so like no this is this is my offline life this is my personal life I'm not going to bring that into the public but then I wrote one little post in 2015 taking the angle that I felt okay taking which is to say I have this kid I do a lot of things for him but ultimately I'm doing these things for me these things benefit me
so I wrote that one post and a lot of people liked it and the comments were nice they were not evil so then I felt kind of confident to do a couple more posts about it but I don't want to be a parenting blog or I think that would be really off putting because I know that before I had a kid I didn't have a kid till I was 42 and thought I was never going to so anytime somebody started talking about let me tell you about my kids
again my ears would just shut up like I don't I can't relate I don't want to hear about your kids I don't want to make that my main subject but I am bringing it up a little more now it also just seemed morally wrong for me to force a kid online without his permission to take a baby that doesn't understand what online is and just put them online and show them to the world and even telling the world their name that just felt morally wrong so I felt like he'll put himself online when he wants to
and until then I'll just speak about him abstractly from my point of view like how this how having a kid has affected me or something like that so I am talking about it more but that's why I didn't Fair enough totally totally respect that it's funny too I remember I was at a party once and I forget how it came up but there was a woman I was talking to a woman she had a teenager she was having trouble with them and she kept asking me for advice
and I kept saying like well I don't have a kid I like pre-empted everything I said with well I don't have a kid and finally after three or four times she told me she was like stop saying that she said I'm asking you for a reason because if I ask other parents I won't get an honest answer I'll get
I'll get the answer that makes them feel morally supported and makes them feel like a good person Exactly she said I only ask for parenting advice from people who don't have kids because they're objective about it Wow smart you had a second after that question which is like how it's changed me and honestly my answer is a bit surprising that it really hasn't The most common answer people say is oh my god having a kid changes everything suddenly you're not the middle of the world anymore
It's like life is about someone besides you I went through that already before I had a kid it's like to me starting CD baby was like that when I started CD baby I was 29 years old I was the center of the universe and then I had this little hobby that was to help musicians And suddenly my life ship happened there which was for the next 10 years of my life I made them my everything I was like you know what I don't matter anymore
And they're just like well what don't you want to try to make the company as profitable as possible I was like nope I want the musicians to have it all I don't need anything for this is about them not me it's like let's do an article about you I was like no please turn your attention over here
This is not about me I am just here to support these musicians I did that for 10 years and that's where that mindset shift happened to me That's where I became not the center of the universe so having a kid didn't change that for me but that's the usual answer you'll hear from people Yeah for me the the thing that you said like hanging out in person and what a big deal he is for me I tend to have one top priority in life for years at a time
So from the age of 14 to 29 my top priority was my music I was just all about the music if you were to try to talk to me from the age of 14 to 29 I would not talk about anything but music if you were to tell me about this interesting book you read I had no interest you wanted to try to talk to me about anything else I had no interest all I wanted to talk about was music and pretty much just my music
That's all I cared about and then at 29 when CD baby happened that's when that shift happened to me and it became all about creating this thing that was supporting musicians And so from 29 to 39 for like 10 years of my life all I cared about was CD baby my music was out of the question done gone you try to talk to me about anything else I didn't want to talk philosophy my head was down and focused on this thing for 10 years
And then okay yeah then I sold the company and I had a few years of being a little bit of drift kind of floating in space and not sharing what I'm doing and then at 42 I had a kid
And even that was reluctant I had decided I did not want kids my ex and I had agreed no kids and then oops she got pregnant and I was furious I was like how could you do this to me we had agreed you can't just decide that I'm going to have a kid that's not for you to decide she said it's not for you to decide not to you know
Fuck fuck like oh man this is terrible this is like I've been wrongly sentenced to jail now for 18 years that's really how it felt thoroughly and somewhere along the way when she was like four months pregnant just like resigned to the facts like alright fuck never kid
Yeah and I started reading some baby books it was really the book brain rules for baby by John Medina gets full credit for getting me interested in being a dad he's a neuroscientist at University of Washington and talks about babies and childhood brain development from a scientific point of view and what we've learned and why you should not let them see any screens at all before the age of two and why you should make sure like he said if you take nothing else out of this book
The most important point that all of our research has shown again I like that he's saying this not as his opinion but saying look we just we've done all these tests and these are yeah this is the objective data that the test are showing the most important thing you can do is to help your kid feels safe if your kid feels safe your kid will thrive but it just got me excited so then when he was born I was like okay this is this is interesting this is fun now and that at the age of 42 is when he just be I just noticed in the
hindsight now top priority everything else is secondary money career me everything my plans my dreams all of that is secondary to him but it's not that different from when everything was secondary to my music or everything was secondary to my company
it's just this is my top priority now and will be probably he's 11 now so there'll be a time soon when he's more into his friends than he's into me and he just won't need me around so much and then it'll be time for my priorities to shift again in a few years are you excited about that yeah yeah I'm actually here we are we're this late 2023 I'm just starting to feel it this year he's just having more and more friends that he likes to spend more and more time with
and I just started feeling that like me coming back and it's really nice and in fact even when you were here a couple years ago and you and I were walking in the forest I told you probably that I was planning on having two more kids yeah that's gone now yeah I'm really I'm really enjoying that that's I feel like my time of making my kids my top priority in life is coming to a slow and happy ending
it's really nice to feel my own priorities coming back great I got two more things before we wrap up the first so one of my favorite concepts that I love it's like my hammer and everything's a nail I try to apply it to everything is this idea that the best thing about something or someone is also usually the worst thing my question for you what is the thing about you that you think is likely both the best thing and the worst thing about you probably leads to a lot of your successes
but it also causes a lot of a lot of the problems in your life what do you think it might be one of the things that's very notable about you is this cerebral ability to kind of interchange beliefs and ideas and identities like most people struggle with that most people it's it's a very emotionally draining difficult or
either cognitively difficult like it's exhausting for them or it's very emotionally draining to like let something from their life go let an identity go and try to bring something new in like it can be very exhausting I feel like you have an alacrity with that that most people don't I could see that being an issue with interpersonal relationships because friends family partners they like stability they don't like having to adapt to a new you all the
fucking time and and having to get to know you know new Derek or what you know whatever whatever the thing is that you're passionate about that would be my guess just from the I don't know if that feels accurate to you right on I love that yeah you've noticed the thing that when you use somebody's last name you're talking about the public figure right so I did have just a
little bit of an idea of how to go like how cool Mark Manson is telling me what my problem is it's kind of cool see I don't use that hammer a lot strength is your weakness thing so I hadn't thought about this but my flexibility has another negative side effect that I it's probably actually my next post in fact I was going to
get yesterday I'll probably post it tomorrow so it'll be out by the time this is there is the downside of molding yourself to be what other people need you to be I'm strong I'm flexible I can handle it I'm resilient somebody needs me to curl into a ball I can curl into a ball so many needs me to brace myself and lift them high in the air I can lift them high in the air somebody needs me to flatten out and be invisible I can
do all of these things I enjoy it I enjoy taking on the challenge of being another way but then the problem is sometimes I do that to be with somebody I want to be with and then after a few years or months might be like okay this is really hurting my back now twisting myself into this position that you asked me to be in and I can do it but it kind of sucks
I shake it off and I go back to being myself which is not who they want me to be they want it to be that you know curled into a ball that's super interesting actually I mean I imagine that a lot of people this isn't to say that you you are codependent but there's kind of a
codependent role that often happens in unhealthy relationships where there's one person who's just giving giving giving and there's one person who's kind of taking taking and I could see how if you're just a person who's just very naturally adaptable both mentally and emotionally you could almost kind of paint yourself into a corner by a week by week being like well they seem to need this thing to be happy so
that's pretty easy for me to do so I guess I'll do that and then next week it's something else and next week it's something else and you get eight months in and you're like wait a second I'm like I'm a pretzel over here but I like I can't move that's right yeah that's been my romantic relationship pattern in the past and that is the the weakest
slice of pie in the pie chart if right you've heard that metaphor right you know you've got the eight different aspects of your life let's cut them into slices of pie you know which one is the strongest which one is the weakest if they're unaligned you've got a wobbly wheel right like that's an old self healthy who knows seven habits of highly effective people kind of metaphor and you're probably looking back at my life
the romantic relationships has always been the weakest and probably because of the things so that was kind of cool that you called that out and nailed it I was going to say that the if we took a totally different angle I think independence I think I could see that as well yeah my always
choosing like the self reliance independence is mostly a strength but it has some downside effects it anytime things get tough in some kind of relationship my feeling to the core I was going to say my first reaction but no it's my first
second and last reaction and all the ones in between are like no fuck it I don't need this I'm really happy on my own so I'm out of here and it's sincere and and it actually has made me happy but then you know you look and I have a long long friendships but the romantic relationships last segment and this is this one I'm really excited about because I didn't know we had segments cool well I mean we're trying that we're trying to build a show here Derek so
all right we're gonna have theme music we're gonna have like a the kiron come up on the screen it's gonna be great do you have a band is there going to be a band do you want to be the band I reboot the music career no we're going to do a segment called fuck Mary kill which are you familiar with this game remind me yes kind of remind me the rules here traditionally it's give you three people and you have to choose which one do you
fuck which one do you marry which one do you kill okay but we'll start easy okay so fuck Mary kill prince David Bowie John Lennon I am or was a huge huge huge prince fan I mean that was my number one dude my own music was imitating prince prince was by far my major
musical hero when I heard what a fucking asshole he is like it really over the top what the fuck would never marry that guy yeah so let's so would he be in the kill category no okay so all right so I don't even know what would it would be to fuck prince but okay I'll just I'm gonna put him in there now John Lennon like he wasn't a massive talent I think him getting killed was necessary for him to be a legend for him to forever have a place in people's hearts as the one
that died too young and kept him special and so I guess I'm gonna have to marry David Bowie which I guess they're worse things I always use David Bowie as an example I contrast him with ACDC for the metaphor example of people
who are just happy doing the same thing in their life and they really have no interest in being anything else than they are they developed a certain point in their teens or early 20s that's it they're just gonna stay right there for the rest of their life until they die that to me I call that
ACDC because musically David Bowie kept pushing himself kept doing different personas and get celebrated for it and say and leave it behind Bob Dylan did that more in the 60 70s Paul Simon kept doing that Madonna used to do that I really admire people that keep
pushing themselves to change maybe because of the thing that you said before so yeah marrying David Bowie there we go okay nice all right next one fuck Mary kill music writing coding music writing coding yeah that that's my trifecta isn't it what does it mean metaphorically for you to fuck something in this game I'm just curious what's your association with the hard hitting questions are coming out I think in my mind when it comes to
like abstract activities like this to me Mary means you can do it for the rest of your life you do it every day for rest of your life fuck probably means every once more like once a year you can kind of binge on it and then kill obviously means you can never do it again all right get I'm glad you said that I think my brain was going other places so okay so music I mean that does kind of work as a rest of your life thing flash in a pen I did it intensely for 15
years it was like if you were to just dissect my brain it was just every single neuron was just doing nothing but music I thought about nothing but music I did nothing but music for 15 years of my 15 very formative years age 14 to 29 nothing but music I have already killed it in my life I even just a few years ago bought a guitar and had it sitting there in the room as I was writing and kept looking at it like I
should do I do the same thing like every every three or four years I'm like I should get a guitar I should start practicing again I should learn some songs and then I will literally play for 30 minutes and then put it away and touch it again for a year oh that's nice to hear okay we didn't talk about this in the when you were here okay that's that's nice to hear yeah yeah because yeah about 30 minutes it's like it's kind of fun to like the old muscle memory like I'm still good yeah yeah
and so what and it's just not my aspiration anymore and some people are so dumbfounded by that like how could you not but there's just a different values I mean I my younger self would have said the same
thing like what has gone wrong with you yeah you were you don't care about music anymore this is a commonality you and I have never really talked about which is funny because it is so formative for both of us but I was reading or listening to one of your interviews last night and you were saying how when you started CD baby your justification for it was kind of I'll do this for a while and it'll pay the bills and then what I really want to do is have the freedom to do my music full time and you
kind of kept that story going in the early years and I had the exact same thing like I I started my first online business because I was like well if I can just get this making a couple thousand a month then I can really do the music thing and then of course you know you end up working 14 hours a day for five years and the guitar just clucks dust in the corner but I would surprise me is that I didn't I
stopped wanting to do it and never came back yeah it's a it's a drive I feel like in a way that it was like almost like a problem I was figuring out for 15 years not it's another not a perfect description but it's I was on the pursuit of the craft I wanted to be great at this thing I was driving every single hour of every day to be the best writer performer recording artist just everything I was just on this drive
to constantly get better every day and then at a certain point it's just it's not your drive anymore to get back to the question fuck Mary kill I'm I have killed music programming by your definition is something to
fuck because it could be a craft for life it's on the verge of that for me but for now I think it's rolling my life is going to be something that I glad I know how to do glad I know how to fuck and I'm going to occasionally do it when I need to solve a problem and use the leverage of technology but
writing is the one that I've chosen to marry beautiful Derek is a pleasure dude happy to be your I don't know how to wrap this up we never talked about how to wrap this up how are we wrapping this up I don't know
you could do the music like you do the thing the musicians do sometimes where they leave in the inter like you know the James Brown they catch him before they hit record because like as my levels run oh good all right let's count it off you know I don't know what the fuck we're doing like and subscribe and all that shit I don't know whatever don't forget to smash that like button everybody like button bro