to limit social media that\'s coming into your head

Introduction To Get Ahead of the 99

if your goal is to climb the ladder of success you have to avoid the common traps that devour most people laziness

drugs and alcohol porn nihilism and things like Doom scrolling that take your time but give nothing in return

you're not going to stumble upon the path to success you're going to have to hack your way through a jungle of

potentially life-destroying behaviors that will grab at you on your way to developing discipline to help in that

fight Robert Green and I are going to discuss the best path through this

 

Desire Is The Answer

 

Minefield a lot of people are feeling hopeless right now and they are

gravitating towards alcohol porn Netflix Etc but nobody is coming to save them if

they want to get out of that hole they're going to have to do it themselves so what is it that people can

do and quite honestly avoid doing if they want to stop being aimless and make

their dreams a reality

 

well um sometimes you have to

get deep enough in that hole that you really really want to get out so the key factor in life is motivation is desire

is the energy that you bring to it so if you don't believe in yourself if you

only half-heartedly are reading my books or listening to Tom or listening to me and you go yeah I kind of want to change

it won't matter it won't change anything you'll just go back to your old habits right because habits are very powerful

you're a product of the cultural moment it's very hard to resist it it's very hard to swim against the tide of the

times that we live in so if you don't have the motivation, if you don't have the energy, if you don't have the idea

that damn it I'm going down fast if I don't turn this around, you know

you're only alive once it's you know YOLO and um it goes past really fast I

can tell you that now, as I get older faster than you think, you've got to be desperate you've got to tell yourself

 

I've got to get out of this I've got to change my life life I've got to swim against the tide of the times that I live in I have to change my ways because

if not when I'm 32 when I'm 35 all of my hopes all of my horizons

will narrow so much that it it's going to look very very Bleak right so the

younger you are the better and you have to have that desire you have to look yourself Square in the eye and the

number one thing to think of is you have much less time than you imagine right it

goes B passed really quickly your 20s will go past faster than you could

imagine suddenly you're 30 go whoa what am I going to do then you're 40 it's too late you know okay so just

realize you don't have as much time as you think you have now the other thing

you have to realize is um what builds strength what builds

character is resistance right so if you're trying to

make your body physically stronger you need resistance you need weights because weights are are natural resistance you

need to swim water is resistant you need to run you know gravity is resistant Etc

that resistance builds muscle builds strength builds aerobic power etc etc

life mentally it's the same thing the times that you live in are providing

incredible amounts of resistance towards success towards power towards a sense of fulfillment they are flooding your face

with all kinds of qualities that you have to resist and to the degree that

you're aware of these qualities and to the degree that you resist them you will build inner strength you will build the

kind of life skills that are necessary to survive in a and thrive in a very

very tough world so one of these resistance factors is social media is

the level of distractions that we're all facing right there never ever ever been

so intense and you have to realize

 

you don't let everything into

your body you don't eat all this sugar I hope at least you don't eat all the

pizza that you think is great for you you understand that you have to limit your diet to be healthy particularly as

you get older you have to limit your sugar intake among other things Etc

 

okay

you have to limit the amount of stuff that's coming into your head you have to put your head on a diet you have to go I

can't be distracted I can't absorb all of this information the human brain we

can only retain so much in our short-term memory let alone our long-term memory you're flooding it with

too much and what happens is you're losing the ability to focus on simple things right so to be successful you

have to have primarily the quality to focus to concentrate and that begins on

small banal tasks like I mean this is this is you know a simple example but if

you're playing the the piano or you learn want to be a chess master you have to learn the basics you have to learn

the moves the different games you can play you have to learn how to do scales etc etc you have to be very focused and

attentive to it so if you're trying to learn scales and learn how to play the piano and your mind is in 20 different

places you'll never Master it you have to develop the ability to concentrate to

focus and the times that you were living in are making it increasingly so difficult for you that it's splin during

your brain and your attention into a thousand different pieces to the point where you can't even focus on your body

on yourself on who you are on what makes you strong so you got to put your brain on a diet and that means you got to

limit how much social media you let into your life you have to limit how many different sources you're listening to

you can't be listening to a hundred different podcasts every week although you should be listening to Tom's podcast

right so put yourself on a diet and say what is it that matters what is important and then that brings you to

the second question which is tied to the first one which is by far the most

important step in your life with all of these things coming at you that are creating resistance that are going to

make it hard for you which is who are you what makes you unique what makes

what were you born to achieve in this world you have to be aware of that and

to be aware of that you have to be able to focus you have to have introspect introspect inection is a is a skill it's

not given to you the ability to tune out things and to look at yourself and go

Inward and go this is what matters to me this is what I hate I realized early on

I've said this before I hate politicking I hate office politics I hate working

for other people they annoy me I I feel like I can do a better job than they can

so I hate that therefore Robert you need to be an entrepreneur you're not not meant in this life to be working for

other people so you have to be attuned to yourself you have to look in and go this is what I hate this is what I love

and you have to be honest because you can fool yourself you can think that you love rock music and that you're meant to

be a rock star but it's only that's because of the culture that you're living in what your friends think is cool that isn't necessarily who you are

you have to look at yourself you have to focus deep you have to go through a process being honest and going what

excites me what do I feel like makes me unique and what the the the power that

you have in life is minding that uniqueness minding that individual quality in whatever field you go into

even in business or being an entrepreneur and so you can't have that

self-awareness if you can't focus if you can't concentrate if you can't be bored

and take a notebook and start writing things out about your childhood about who you are about what you love and what

you hate if you can't do that I'm sorry but there's there's no hope for you there's really no hope for you so you

have to be able to put yourself on that information diet and go into that introspective

process that that's really heavy and I think a lot of people are going to they're going to hear that there's no

hope for them that's going to feel right and before you and I started rolling you said um things really are bad for them

and if I grew up in their generation I would probably be in the same boat why why is it bad right now what

what is it that's creating the sense of hopelessness well we live it in a very nihilistic culture and I find it in our

entertainment you know so the idea of having a set of principles that guide

you in life man that seems so oldfashioned that seems so fussy so no man I'm just going to be who I am you

know and and the the values that are implanted in in in entertainment are

completely nihilistic they give you no Focus they give you no Direction They Don't tell you what actually matters in

life right they give you all of these false these Illusions about what life is

about and so some of it stems from the kind of fractured society that we live

in so fractured in what way well most cultures up until the 21st

century had a kind of cohesiveness to it there were certain myths that people

ascribe to that that set the boundaries this is what unites us all these are the

things that are good these are the things that we hate these are the values that are good these are the values that are bad now sometimes those cultures

those conventions those myths were not good but then you had something to rebel

against so me as a product of the 60s and then in the 70s when I came of age

you know and I'm in college I didn't like the culture culture that was there the kind of

monolith the myths and things I wanted to Rebel but I had something to rebel against what are you going to rebel

against now you don't even know what to rebel against now because there's nothing it's just pure chaos I can't

point my fig finger to what are the guiding myths of our particular cultural moment maybe in a hundred years they'll

be clear but I think a lot of our myths come from technology you know so my study of

history is every cultural moment has a kind of guiding metaphor for it

something I'm writing about right now and so like in the 18th century The Guiding metaphor was theater life is

like theater we're all actors we're all playing roles early in the 20th century it was the unconscious and Freud and

discovering the unconscious and exploring that which had a huge impact on culture there were other myths but i'

point to those today it's technology it's AI it's it's all those other things

right and so but that is like that kind of devalues the human element so I

recently um gave a a couple of talks with a conversation with Ryan holiday

and uh you can look at these on YouTube it was like an hour and a half here in LA and in Seattle and Ryan asked me my

thoughts about Ai and I went on a kind of a ramp I'm not a lite I understand and I use

technology Etc but my point was instead of fetishizing AI and chat gbt which I

admit I've seen it it's powerful how it goes like that whoa It's like magic

fetishize the human brain fetishize human powers fetishize our sociabilities

our theory of Mind theory of mind is what makes humans human and what that

means is we have have the ability to put ourselves in the minds of other people

to imagine what they're thinking what they're doing that's what makes us a preeminent Social Animal which is the

source of our power what is your power your power is your ability to be social

is your ability to navigate difficult social environments your second power is your brain and all the incredible things

it has one of them is the ability to focus one is the ability to learn it's the plasticity of the brain so the

guiding metaphor if it's all technology it kind of makes us think that you know

with your smartphone you have all of these powers and you can't believe it it makes you so impatient everything should

be like my phone everything should be instant everything should be at my fingertip if my inet service goes down

for a few hours I get so cranky you're like a little baby whining and crying right no what really should matter is

not you don't have those Powers you can't press a button your brain isn't designed that way it takes years

to develop true skill to be a master at something you need to go back to these

Elemental Primal human qualities our sociability so get out of the virtual

realm learn social skills which is what my book the laws of human nature will kind of help you and grind you ground

you in as well as the 48 Laws of Power and you need brain skills you need to

develop skills actual skills that you can use in this world man that's really interesting so

the idea of the guiding myths um that's something that's sort of been in the back of my mind but I hadn't pulled

forward so thank you for that because now that you say that I think one of the biggest issues that I see people

struggling with I would have used different words but it's the same idea um people look at the world they look at

the here in the west they look at the game that we're playing they say capitalism e this is gross like it's

predatory whatever and because they have such a Negative View of the system

because the system right now isn't working for their generation they just want to opt out but it creates this

incredibly cynical incredibly aimless incredibly hopeless Vibe and uh I think

you and I agree that's dangerous now I I I will say for my own sake I think it's

dangerous for them I think the punchline of life is all about fulfillment I think that's what people should be pursuing I

think fulfillment has an evolutionarily um imbued formula and

that recipe maybe is a better word is you're going to have to work really hard to gain a set of skills that you care

about for your own intrinsic reasons that allow you to serve yourself and others if you do that you're going to be

fine if you don't you're going to have a profound sense of disease because people want to check out of the system they are

to your point ask they're throwing the baby out with a bathwater so they're trying to check out of a system which by the way I

think is a phenomenal system and I advise people not to check out of it but anyway even if you want to check out of

that system if you then just dive into uh a any setup that isolates you you're

going to be in for a bad time because we the brain works in a certain way and so I've said many times in the show on my

Tombstone I wanted to read you're having a biological experience and the reason I want people to understand that is

A ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ Is WEAK

because your brain works a certain way there are certain things you can do that will align yourself to Feeling Good

Feeling engaged feeling fulfilled loving communication connection meaning and purpose all that and there are things

that you can do that will lead you exactly away from this and so uh rejecting the system but without a cause

so Rebel Without a Cause style is not going to move you towards

anything that's a pure move away from play and if you're just moving away from something you're going to find yourself

accelerating that sense of aimlessness and so I there's a a compounding

variable here which is people there's a rising sentiment burn it all down and then we'll build Utopia for lack of a

better word in its place and that is people that don't understand the absolute Hellfire of chaos that will

reign if your meaning and purpose becomes destroying instead of building

because if if they really do succeed in tearing down a system uh you don't have

scaffolding left to build upon and and that bad things happen in that vacuum

well first of all also it's not possible to tear things down because the world is larger than just individuals it's larger

than a movement it's larger than your generation I'm afraid to say so you don't even have the power to tear things

down because the world will go into its own kind of system it's on the human

unconscious has moved us throughout history Human Nature has it's going to continue it's beyond it transcends you

as an individual so you don't have as much power to burn burn things down as you imagined so just get over that that

childish fantasy but the second thing I would say is I began by saying what

matters is your level of energy your level of motivation in life right and

when you're cynical and when you're nihilistic it just drains you of energy why do

anything man it doesn't matter you know 10 years down the road it's climate change we're all going to be dying

anyway what matters okay but I'm writing a book right now on the sublime in which

I'm trying to say the world that you live in is not ugly it's not horrible it's not destructive it's insanely

beautiful the fact of being alive is one of the most weirdest things I even have a chapter called awaken to the

strangeness of being alive it's chapter number two and so just the fact that you

are alive now as a human being is an incredibly unlikely set of circumstances

that occurred so the world that we live in is utterly Sublime and utterly weird and a lot of

that interesting stuff comes from science so at the same time that technology is kind of making our brains

into mush scientists are uncovering things that just are so fantastic they're extraordinary what we're

learning about the cosmos what we're learning about the origins of Life what we're learning about Evolution what

we're learning about the brain I mean if you just think about it it's staggering and so being part of that wave of

knowledge that's overwhelming us right now should be incredibly exciting but if

you have no excitement in life if you think it's all just crap and it's better

just to not care and you know what that comes from it's a common adolescent pose

and I probably had it when I was 16 years old man I don't care you let's screw everything you know it comes from

insecurity it doesn't it's not strength being that kind of of rebel without any

reason for against nothing is actually a sign of incredible weakness and you know where it comes from comes from the fear

of failure so if I don't try to do anything if I just say oh it's all going

to hell I'm just going to go in my van I'm just going to tour around the United States I'm just going to take videos and

things I you know what the hell let you know as as King Louis the 14 said a after me the delu I don't care if

that's your attitude towards life you know then that's what that's what you're going to get so um you have so it comes

from a fear of failure it doesn't come from strength because to try something

to try to build a business to try and write a book to try and make a film puts

your you're putting yourself out on the line and you could fail and with failure comes criticism and with failure you're

exposing yourself you're exposing your ambition you're exposing that you weren't up to the task better to not

even try and to just say oh I don't care because then you're not exposing yourself so that kind of pose is is

actually a form of childish insecurity that you need to get over but you need to have a sense of excitement and if you

don't if you think everything is just gray and equal and bad and we're all

heading to Hell in a hand basket then that's that's what you becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so I'm writing

a book to just make you get that energy that excitement again and you know what when you were a child

you had it I don't care if you grew up in this culture now that is kind of I think

deadening things you're a child children have this energy that nothing can can

suppress if you you actually live in a world of Enchantment things are like

amazing to you you want to learn you want to read books you want to explore you want to explore you want to Adventure you had it when you were a

child and you You' lost it you've lost it in adolescence you lost it when you were 12 you lost it because the culture

sucked it out of you but it's there it's still waiting to come back to you but if you don't have that enchantment about

life if you don't see something really amazing about the one life that you have

that can go back go by very quickly then nothing will ever change you you're just going to end up as I said it'll be a

self fulfilling prophecy of Doom how often are you checking your credit score afraid of identity theft or

account breaches we all use the internet every single day for important things like Personal Banking and remote work so

why not protect yourself with our sponsor Aura Aura is an all-in-one cyber security service that keeps you safe

online Aura identifies data Brokers exposing your info and submits opt out

requests on your behalf Ora also monitors your credit tracks your passwords for data breaches and secures

your online activity with VPN and anti malware protection you can try Aura for

free for 2 weeks by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR

code okay I agree with all that it's easy though to step into their shoes and look back at you and say Hey listen old

Your Situation Sucks, Now What!?

man who remembers the late 60s uh that worked because of the time you were in

and demographics are Destiny and the time that I'm born it's just an absolute show uh baby boomers are hoarding

all of the wealth they refus to leave the workforce I can't buy a property you and when you were first getting on the

property ladder it was like $150 to buy a house in Beverly Hills and so yeah it seems great for you and Ops uh I've

taken on $180,000 in college debt it's non-dischargeable even in bankruptcy uh

so you found a way to put me in indentured servitude and I can't expect

my oh I'm not done I can't expect my Social Security to be there when I get there because you won't die

uh so that's how they're going to look back at you what do you say to somebody with

that frame of reference well you know there's obviously some truth to that and I said I understand why people are the

way they are you know but not every time is this sort of golden period in history

you know I liveed through the 1980s which I thought was a really really ugly

period in history I found it very Bleak and very horri horrifying and I didn't

have this kind of golden thing that you might imagine I did not have success

until I was 39 years old I struggled I I was more like how people are nowadays in

that I wandered from job to job I had 60 different jobs I never held a job for more than 11 months in my entire life

okay so I know and I got very depressed I even had moments of being suicidal I lived in a crappy one-bedroom

apartment in Santa Monica I know Santa Monica is very nice but back then it wasn't so nice and so I know what it

means to struggle I didn't have debt but I didn't have any money I was very poor living in many most of my life I was

very poor so it's not as golden as you think for me individually but I

understand the baby boomer scenario and everything that you're facing but so what stop whining stop whining about the

circumstances my parents grew up in the depression it's not that's nowhere near this times are nowhere near what they

had to deal with my grandparents really more but even my parents to some extent so stop your goddamn whining was pretty

awful back then they had faced the stock market crash in

1929 they had to live through the depression of the 1930s then they had World War II you think you have it bad

try having to deal with the nais and the Japanese attacking you both at the same time the

1960s we had the vietn War I was of the age where I had a draft number my draft

number was so low that I was certain to be drafted but fortunately the draft

ended like six months before my age came of whatever so you know you think it's

the worst ever it's not the worst ever I can point to a hundred other periods in history that were equally incredibly

Bleak the generation that came out of World War I do you know the massacre

that young people faced in World War I that's why we had the 1920s where the flappers because people didn't want they

wanted to drink themselves into Oblivion millions of young men died for a senseless stupid War okay you have no

historic sense you have no sense of proportion just because you live in the 2020s you think that this is the worst

time you don't read history you don't understand that it's not the worst ever so stop your whining there are plenty of

humans that have dealt with things far worse than you've ever dealt with are our ancestors who were Pioneers in the

19th century they F face privations and poverty that you would have no

conception over you have it much better than a lot of other people in the past so stop your goddamn whining people had

it worse in the past a lot of times you don't have it so bad okay you have a lot

of debt all right you have to make a plan you have to be strategic but if you give up if you just say oh it's the Baby

Boomers oh I can't own a home if that's your energy then that's going to be the faith that you have there are always

circumstances that are going to be resistant to you I understand the resistance factors now are very powerful

but are you going to meet them or are you just going to give in and surrender you can make that choice and that's fine

if you want to live on a organic farm in Oregon I have nothing against it and I'm not making fun of it because that is a

good life that could be fine if that's your ambition but maybe you can't make

it that way because it's not that's not an easy life either right so you have to

make a choice do I want something else for myself or do I just want to wallow

in self-pity and blame other people and you can blame other people and there's a

lot of things to blame just as when I was growing up I had a lot of things I could blame but you have to look at it

differently and you have to say that kind of energy is self-destructive how can I get out of that energy I can only

get out of I have to control what I can control I have bad student debt I have $100,000 in debt or I got to make a plan

for the next five years first of all you didn't have to get that $100,000 in debt

so you take a little bit of responsibility for that you know I mean I know they had little things that you

signed that you weren't aware of but for a long time we've been aware of some of those predatory practices in lending so

it's partially your responsibility a little there but okay you have a 100,000 ,000 in debt you make a plan I'm going

to I'm going to have to work it off this way I'm going to have to get a job that pays well but at the same time I'm going

to be building other kind of life skills Etc I'm going to get myself out of this hole I'm going to have hope I'm G to

have energy fine that's that's the alternative path but if you don't have that if you don't think that it's

possible then there's nothing really that I can say I could just waste a lot of words it won't mean anything but

don't think that you have it worse than other people because you have no sense

of History you're living in this bubble this illusion of the present you don't know what people like were living in the

Middle Ages in the 18th century in America in the 19th century World War I the depression the Vietnam War Watergate

era the the recession we had then stop it you don't understand you're not reading

history man I I agree with that very much the way that I think about it because

one uh I have a feeling that even with the like intense energy you say that

from a place of you want to see them do well uh you don't want to see them be stuck and that's certainly where when I

get riled up on this topic it's from that perspective and what I used to ask people that would you know come to me

and say look I've got it really hard for whatever reason and I've worked in the inner city so I've seen poverty just absolutely demolish people it it's

really brutal to see up close and the only question that I can think of is okay you've got 180 ,000 in student debt

uh boomers are sucking up all the oxygen in the room whatever whatever all the bad things terrible economy no way to

get on the property Market all that climate change the the question that

remains is and now what and if your answer to and now what is I give up I

will say that that is not a life frame of reference that I'll I'll refer to it

as that that is going to lead you anywhere neurochem Al advantageous now okay going back to you're having a

biological experience so when I say A neurochemically advantageous uh experience what I mean is you're not

going to feel good it's just going to feel terrible and so it's an incredibly

self-destructive frame of reference to adopt now we all see the world through a distorted lens that's what I mean when I

say frame of reference so your frame of reference is a pair of glasses that you wear and this glasses are distorted and

they do not show you reality they show you a distortion of reality the great news is uh even though it doesn't seem

like it you get to shape those lenses and the thing that worries me is that

people have shape the lens to show them a world that is uh against them it is a

hostile Universe well and let's say that these all these things are real like about the

they're very real I don't deny them and I don't deny the reality of people living in inner cities and I have a huge

readership among people from inner cities who used my books and have helped them a lot and I did a book with 50 c

who's I agree understand it's an exception but he came from the worst part of America and he managed to pull

himself up in an incredible story so I I understand that

but let's say that these are the circumstances that you have and you're young and when you're young you're

idealistic which is part of cynicism is just the flip side of idealism so your

idealism you can't really hold on to so it just flips into cynicism but the two

are very much related and so if you believe that these things that

that are so injust in this world then there's your energy there's where you put yourself there's your cause your

caus isn't to to destroy is to say wow there's a lot of Injustice in this world

there's a lot of poor people that are suffering because there's no opportunities out there Boomers have

created this awful world all right how do I construct a better world how can I create a movement how can I how can I

create um more opportunity for other people how can I start a business that will employ thousands of people instead

of just wasting away and not not contributing at all how can I contribute to helping climate change you know it

kind of ticks me off that there's so much technology in Silicon Valley that goes to entertaining us to masturbating

our mind so to speak with all kinds of trivial things that don't matter life take all of that Brilliant

Energy and do it to solving some real problems that we're facing problems that

we've just outlined here about the lack of opportunities about home ownership

about climate change but pour your energy into something productive if you

feel that way and then contribute a sense of cont contribution you know it will fulfill you in a way as a social

animal the sense of I just didn't whine and give up I actually did something to

help change this world and if you think that's impossible if it's just like Don kote tilting at windmills then fine and

that's that's what end up happening but even Don kote had this illusion that he was actually going to change it so you

need to have those Illusions even if it's not true that you can change this world you least need to believe that you

can kill those windmills with your sword you need to least believe in the illusion and then then your energy will

change so if there's so much against you there's so much Injustice in the world

there's your cause there's your energy there's your hope so if it really is an

illusion uh why would they be better off believing in an illusion than trying to

contact ground truth figure out what is real and how to operate moving forward so that they

can make whatever change it is that they want to change well I'm not sure quite I

understand I mean what I meant by illusion is Maybe maybe you as an individual can't really stop climate

change obviously you can't and it's bigger problem that you than than than

what any of us can really uh tackle but believing that you can make a difference

will give you the energy to create something to do something as I said in human nature change your attitude to

change your circumstances so if you believe in it then you will you will do something towards that and maybe it

won't be enough but if enough people believe that then it will be enough you

know but what was the second part of your question that was it I wanted to know so my thing is it's what I call the

only belief that matters so the only belief that matters is that if you put time and energy into getting better at something you'll actually get better at

it yeah so if like my advice would be very different if I actually thought there was nothing they could do the

reason that my advice is to ask and now what and to come up with a positive vision for their future is that they

really can can make a change I mean there just the litany I mean you've already gone through the Litany of of

people that have had it way worse and they've still managed to do something productive with their time anybody that doesn't know Winston Churchill story it

is truly incredible this was a guy that was watching his City be bombed nightly

he was constantly in danger he was on the front lines of World War I being shot at like this was not somebody who

was tucked away and he had severe bouts of depression indeed and he was he just

always said you know one I'm grateful that I live at such a pivotal moment in history so that we can do something

about this so to your point it's like if you really see a lot of things you want to make change on then it's like okay

what do I need to do in order to make that change so going back to frame of reference if your frame of reference is

cynical and there's nothing I can do it it becomes that self-fulfilling prophecy because only behaviors matter but your

behaviors are Downstream of your beliefs so if you don't get your beliefs right that hey if I engage in this if I go do

something uh if I want to pay off my student loans there is a path to getting this done and it doesn't mean that the

deck isn't stacked against people it doesn't mean that there aren't worse times in human history but at the same

time if you the only way to make a bad time worse is to have a negative attitude about it and I mean look

there's two books written about aitz where that's the punchline man search for meaning and then um the book is

called the choice I forget the woman's name uh she's still alive as far as I know she was doing podcasts very

recently and her whole family is killed in the Holocaust she was in the Holocaust um and she was a dancer and

the Nazis used to make her dance while they were like selecting people to be killed it was crazy just like

unimaginable amounts of psychological torture and she realized I have a choice to make now that I've survived is that

going to be my life or am I going to find a way to find meaning and purpose and and go after something yeah and so

it's I I don't want to adjudicate whether worst time not worst time I just

want to say such is The Human Condition yeah that everyone is going to encounter

difficult things your frame of reference is going to control what you do and what you do will control the quality of your

life I mean aitz I mean who had it worse than that can you imagine and I've read many many accounts of it as somebody who

lost a lot of my ancestry in in the Holocaust um and I I highly can

recommend enough Reading Man search for meaning Victor Frankl it's an amazing book that accounts what he lived through

but also a philosophy of life that will serve you very well in exactly the

struggles that we're talking about so yeah talk to me about Envy life is driven in large part by

Fueling Success With Envy

Envy how much of that do you think's at play here with social media exacerbating all the comparisons

and yeah well um you know it's been a subject that has interested me for a

long time because I think it is a huge motivating factor that people don't talk about I had a chapter in the 48 Laws of

Power called Never appear too perfect and the dangers of being seeming perfect and greater you're going to attract envy

and then in human nature I had a whole chapter on envy and kind of where it comes from and and how you yourself are

prone to feeling envy and so the first thing you have to realize is these

negative qualities that are embedded in human nature and I think we can all agree that they're seemingly negative

like Envy like overt aggression or passive aggression or

grandiosity or being irrational or being only able to think in terms of the short term Etc all of these qualities Envy

being a very very potent one of them the main thing is to not externalize it and

to say oh people on social media have Envy oh it's this person it's my friend

you have it I have it I feel Envy all the time I know it I sense it in myself

and it's because the human brain is a comparing machine our brains function by

taking in information and comparing it to things that have happened previously so we can say this is familiar this is

unfamiliar if it's familiar I can deal with it if it's unfamiliar I have to be creative I have to think in the moment

our brains compare that part of our brain is now operating in the social realm because

we're social animals we're continually comparing ourselves to other people what they have what we don't have their the

Great Vacations they're taking the incredible girlfriend or wife that they have that's much better than mine the

much the greater income that they're making they're younger you know I've talked in previous podcasts about the

envy that I have for Ryan holiday and it's very real and I'm not joking and I deal with it and and I turn into

something positive because I I love Ryan I admire him but damn it he's younger

than me he's had 20 best-selling books before I even wrote a single book he's

got all this incredible energy and all this he's got a family yeah I could feel Envy towards it I'm honest I understand

that I feel it so that's the first thing to you have to come to grips with you have Envy okay you think that we are so

sophisticated we live in this modern 21st century world that we've that were so Superior to anybody in the past but

when it comes to Envy we are the most primitive animal on the planet because of our

technology right so having Instagram that shows you pictures of everybody's

vacation everybody's fun that they're having in life and man I look at it too

right now you know I go damn it my friend's in Istanbul it looks fantastic why could I why can't I be like that

they're climbing this mountain I had a stroke I can't climb the mountain damn it why do I have to see this it's in

your face it's making you feel Envy all the time it's making you compare yourself to other people and it's

feeding that cynicism and nihilism that we're talking about you know so if you're looking and you're seeing that

boomers are living in these great houses that they own all the companies that they own Amazon although he's not a

boomer you know they own all the wealth in this country etc etc then why bother

man why even try you know you know and anyway I hate millionaires they're they're ugly people they suck you know

kind of thing that's your thinking you know so all that Envy is going to feed into this kind of negative thing where

it's hopeless I can't even do anything it's also going to make you passive aggressive it's going to make you leave

comments on YouTube which believe me I see all the time or or wherever you

you You' go on social media it's infecting you in subtle ways it's draining you of positive positive energy

and you have to come to terms with the fact that you feel envy and you have to turn it into something productive you

have to channel like we were talking earlier about channeling your aggressiveness you have to channel it into something productive which

is instead of trashing people who are better have more than you I'm going to

emulate them I'm going to use them as a role model he's got much more money all

right I'm going to I'm going to make some money I'm going to do so as well he's a better athlete in this particular sport right I'm going to raise my game

you know I'm going to become a better Seducer I'm going to become better at this that or the other instead of feeling Envy the other thing you can do

is you can tell yourself the people you envy don't really have it any better than you do I

talked about how in um in laws of human nature in the 60s not many people will

remember this but there was a man named Aristotle Onasis who was married to Jacqueline Kennedy the Widow of John

Kennedy he was the the wealthiest man at the time one of the wealthiest men at the time he was a Greek shipping magnet

he had Yachts Galore he had every life everything you could dream about and he

had jacqulyn Kennedy you know the most desirable beautiful woman in the world he was the most miserable depressed son

of a you know on the planet at the time he was incredibly unhappy so these

people that you think are so wonderful you're seeing all these images you're only seeing the good side but they're

probably just as miserable as you are inside because they don't have any inner qualities they don't they're just

they're just out there trying to show you the best stuff but they're actually very insecure so these people aren't as

great as you think they are and the other thing is to practice the opposite

of envy and and this is a hard thing to do but it's a very positive trait so

when people have good things you're so let's say Envy is very common among

friends for reasons that I explained in the book I'm not going to tell you about now but it's very very common among

friends so your friend got a better job than you damn it oh God I'm really I'm

going to smile say yeah that's great but deep down oh what a jerk he probably didn't really deserve it he

probably got there by some nefarious means Etc instead of going through that Envy process which you don't admit that

it's Envy you think that it's just because he is a bad person go through the opposite and go train yourself to go

to be happy for other people's success you won't believe what a great relief it

is and how how it'll help you benefit you therapeutically in your mind in general to be happy to celebrate other

people's success it's a very wonderful great human quality that you have to develop because it doesn't come

naturally to us so um just be aware that it's something that lives inside of you

and the worst thing are people who feel Envy but aren't aware of it yeah the inability to control control

one's mind I'll narrow it down to emotions I think one of the things that gets people into so much trouble is they

do not have control over their emotional mind part of that is just lack of self-awareness so they they've never

even taken the time to say what is this thing that I feel and then and this is another thing that I'm ranting and

raving about so if my Tombstone is going to say you're having a biological experience like a little subhead under that that says oh and by the way don't

trust your emotions uh people think if they feel it then they should act on it and it must be true and when I have a

strong emotion I get so skeptical of myself and I have just learned man there

are times where I feel so certain and I have so much righteous indignation only to then be like oh yeah that actually

was stupid uh and I think people would save themselves a lot of pain and suffering if they went hm that's weird I

feel depressed or I feel nihilistic or this all feels like hold on I'm going to check that or I'm mad at that

person they upset me or I'm envious they must not deserve this like all of that

if you check yourself and get goal directed so okay what are you trying to

do what are you trying to accomplish what's the emotional state that you want to exist in um I think a lot of people

don't even have the Northstar in their life so for me the Northstar of not just

my life but any life to me seems like it should be to reduce as much human suffering as possible and to promote as

much human flourishing okay cool well then are the things you're doing believing saying are they in line with

that like is it uh reducing human suffering to lean into

envy and I think if people had that Northstar then they could get into just

a a a question of what's effective and when I do this I get this result and

that isn't the result that I want or when I do this I get that result and that is the result that I want cool if you're getting the result that you want

you're doing the right thing by definition if you don't get the result that you want you're doing the wrong thing by definition so if you don't feel

the way that you want you're doing something wrong if you're not getting the result that you want you're doing something wrong again that doesn't mean

the deck isn't stacked against you just means that given the hand you've been dealt you're not playing the cards right in a way that's giving you the outcome

that you're looking for now I want to get back to this idea of consumption versus creation so Netflix has become

This Is Destroying Your Purpose

shorthand for uh you know just sort of a meme life of a guy sitting in a dark

room smoking weed red eyes not going to bed almost sort of staying up out of

spite to like you know you to my boss who I guess controls my day and so by me staying up late I'm I'm

controlling my time but I have a feeling that what's going

on is people aren't in control of their emotions so they're not framing this

hard time that they are legitimately going through they're not framing it in in a way that will allow them to act productively so they then feel the way

they don't want to feel they don't see an outlet through Behavior to fix it so they start consuming consuming consuming

alcohol weed porn Netflix whatever which all of those things can be fun in the

right amounts at the right time um does that seem true to you that this is ultimately them trying to numb out

effectively well um it's very difficult to be a human being let's let's start at a very basic level going back to our

earliest ancestry so unlike animals we are not programmed now animals aren't completely

programmed that's a myth but they're much more programmed than we are by their instincts so a leopard doesn't

wake up in the morning and go what am I going to do today am I going to hunt this animal or that no I think it's kind

of cloud no they don't they don't have that choice we do and that's what makes us aimless that's what makes us wake up

in the morning go man what am I going to do so what that means what that translates into is the human being has

empty has a hole inside of ourselves a hole that we need to fill in some way

because we have incredibly active Minds The the brain if you break it down as I

said earlier we should be fetishizing it if you study the brain in in a larger sense it's absolutely

astounding the powers that it has the amount of neural Pathways that connect

the complexity of it and the activeness of it I meditate every morning as I try

and still my mind whoa thoughts are coming like this you can't believe how active your mind is you're just not

aware of it and but we have this emptiness we don't know what to fill it with this mind is active we're not

programmed we don't know what to do and because of that emptiness we have to fill it with something we're restless

and if we don't know what to fill it with we're just going to consume consume consume consume consume as a way to kind

of deal with that empty feeling as you say to num ourselves we're going to eat eat eat we're going to watch movies

we're going to binge watch we're going to get addicted to porn because it's filling that emptiness it's taking that

AC of mind and it's dumb it's numbing it and it's like you know it seems

satisfying because we don't have to deal with these other things so you have to

be aware that you have this emptiness inside of you everybody does I have it

everyone does but my life the way I go and I don't mean to be put the focus continually on me is I wake every up

every morning now because I've reached this position and I want you to have this this privilege that I have I'm not

saying that I feel so great I want you to have it I have this feeling I wake up in the morning I know what I have to

accomplish I know what my goals are I know what I have to do that particular day I know what I have to do that

particular week these are the things that I can do to fill that and emptiness to program to give myself a purpose to

have that North Star that you're talking about and yes within those parameters I

can waste some time reading about the Lakers on on lakersground.net you know

it's website that I that I lurk in or I can read articles that have nothing to do with my life you know I can go on and

on I can waste time but I have a general parameter I don't have that gnawing

emptiness that has to be continually filled by consuming consuming consuming so be aware that your mind is so active

that you have to have something to fill it but it's your choice whether you're just going to consume mindless stuff or

you're going to actually use that Restless active brain of yours and put it to some incredible function how do

they figure out what incredible function to put it to well that's the million-dollar question and that's why I wrote my my fifth book Mastery um so I

have a chapter one in Mastery called um discover your life's

task and it's not easy and I don't have like a formula for it but I I kind of

lay out the process that could lead you to it so if you're 22 or or

younger then it's it's pretty clear what you have to do and it's not so difficult

if you're 29 30 gets more complicated if you're 40 it's very difficult if you're 50 it's almost impossible so the younger

you go through this process the better and what it entails is figuring out what

makes you unique in life and I don't mean like total weirdness unique I don't

mean that you have to be like some flamboyant rock star etc etc it can be

what makes you unique as an entrepreneur as a business person what makes you unique as a social individual as

somebody who likes to inter interact with people what makes you unique in any

Endeavor right going into looking at your childhood and being honest with

yourself and saying I'm I'm mening this thing now that I'm 22 but it's not really me it's

what my parents want me to be interested in it's not really me because it's what other peers think is cool right now it's

not really me because of blah blah blah blah blah what is really me okay so you

got to Ste away these layers and you got to come at so when you were born I like

into what a seed is planted that seed is your uniqueness because a your DNA has

never existed in the history of the universe and never will exist again okay

it's impossible it's so unique B your parents are not like any other

parents and they're going to raise you in a way that's different from any other paren couple in in the history C you're

going to have early experiences that are not like anybody else that is unique

that is you that is what separates you from the hundred billion I I I narrowed

it down how many humans have left lived in the because I had it in one of my chapters I think it's 100 billion

somewhere around that 110 billion ever This Is What Separates Me from Homo sapiens let's draw that line who have

ever lived before okay and it's real it exists and it's not like a single thing

it's not like oh I was meant to be a fireman oh I was meant to be a politician it's vaguer than that it has

to do with things that attract you whether it's Sports and and your body

whether it's mathematics or music or whether it's words and literature or whether it's social things or whether

it's building building a house carpentry or building a business

Etc what is it that excites me what is it that I'm drawn towards what I call your Primal

inclinations going through that process and figuring out digging up that seat

and figuring out what it is is the most should be the most exciting process in your life because if you do it all the

stuff that we're talking about all the bad circumstances of the world everything you're facing you will

reverse that power you will discover your superpower you will be motivated you will find the energy right you will

know what to ignore it's not worth my time to be watching this podcast or

reading this book it's not worth my time to be wasting my energy doing this that or the other I know what I want

okay when you're 21 or 22 man you could go if you figure that out it doesn't have to be so specific it just has to be

this is the general direction I want in my life these are the people that I want to end up being like even though I'm

going to be myself in that within those param parameters then the world will open up for you and you'll have a little

bit of that radar that will guide you through life okay if you're 30 years old it's

different in the 30 years old you go through the thing of where did I go wrong because you wouldn't be going

through this process unless you went wrong if you're going right then you don't need you can ignore everything

most likely you where did I go wrong why am I in this job why am I unhappy why am I drinking why am I addicted to

this out the other thing my fr frustration my unhappiness is speaking to me it's telling me something it's

telling me that I took a wrong turn all right now go back and figure out where you took the wrong turn and what it was

where you how you can perhaps correct your path how do you solve for that how do you go back and figure out where the

wrong turn was well you're um so often times uh you

choose a wrong path for reasons that have to do with money with what you think is status what

other people think is cool so um look at your first choices like you're 23 years

old and you decided to go work for like a big Corporation and now it's sucking your

soul out and you feel empty and frustrated okay I'm frustrated I'm unhappy well I chose to work in this

kind of soulless environment and I quit when I was 27 and then I started working

as a barista okay okay I went wrong there all right so that's not where I

was meant to go all right what was it out of college that I really wanted to do what was it that excited me what is

the path I would have taken perhaps if I hadn't listen to my parents for I hadn't

followed this I this dumb idea what is it that I could have done and at that

point if you can be have just a tincture a little flash of Enlightenment about that then you can start building on it

and you start going all right I took this wrong path all right now I have to head it in a different direction I'm not

going to give up I'm not going to stay being a barista because that's not going to lead anywhere I have to figure out a

career for myself that I can't give up the eight years I spent out of college

because that's that's useless that's not going to go anywhere you're not 22 anymore all right I have to adapt what I

learned in that time and I have to apply it in a different direction Direction so you're going this way your decision now

isn't to go this way it's to go this way or this way a subtle little deviation

closer towards what you were meant to what excites you and I have people who've written to me about the course

Corrections they've taken they went from being a lawyer to being a writer about legal issues they went from a lot of

podcasters believe it or not have a very similar story they went into the wrong

profession and then they discovered that what they really liked was podcasting and they applied so I just

had a interview recently with Andrew huberman you know one of the most successful podcasters of our era

brilliant man a neuroscientist he was a neuroscientist working for a a

university Etc he was really really unhappy by all

the politicking and he told me that he read Mastery and Mastery had a very huge

impact on him and I I don't want to take credit but kind of to him it saved his

life wow he decided he had to get into podcasting that he loved interviewing

people that he loved the interaction with other people instead of having to do all the research he wanted to be able

to take that research and apply it to his interviews and interview Fascinating People okay it's a very common scenario

among people in the podcasting business but there are other scenarios that people have written to me about who have

made that that course correction in their late 20s I talk about in master I

talk about Paul Graham who was a master in artificial intelligence in the 70s

when it was just a little baby about to be born was just in the first instances and he was a computer hacker

and he didn't enjoy it and he hated working for companies so he went off and became an artist he just studied

painting in Italy he came back to New York he was kind of living in a loft in New York very poor but he was kind of

enjoying it and then he heard an ad on on the radio for this new online this is

1994 mind you this new online world of advertising and marketing and selling

products that was about to happen and he got very excited and he goes well I'm poor I don't mind being

poor but maybe I could make some money and and still have my life and so he decides he's going to take all his

computer skills and he's going to combine them with all that learned in art and he's going to design a very

aesthetic a very pleasing a very userfriendly site for selling products

on the internet it ended up turning to something that Yahoo bought for $5

million back then and then he became a billionaire on and on and on he made a

course correction kind of thing so it's possible it's very common scenario when

you're 29 30 years old it's not so common when you're 40 but I have heard some stories it's pretty much I've never

really heard it when you're in your 50s so tell me about that so what is it that makes it impossible

is it just the people can't muster the will because they don't think they have enough working years left is nothing is

impossible so I overstated the case but it's unlikely first of all you're is it unlikely due to a character flaw or well

as you get older you get rigid you think you know all the answers you're used to you have habits my life isn't at all

what I thought it would be I'm 50 years old but I know all the answers yeah that's terrifying yeah uh um I I have

habits is you're not aware of it but you're not so fluid you're not so flexible you think you know what you

know what what the the right path is you're not willing to admit your mistakes because then that throws open

when you're 30 you go okay I made eight years of mistakes when you're 50 I made 28 years of mistakes man that's a

painful realization we don't like to have painful realization what's your advice though to somebody like that

because let me tell you if you and I are friends I'm dangerously close to 50 as it is but if I get to 50 and I'm like

hey uh made a lot of mistakes picked the wrong path I I want you to kick me in

the ass make sure that I don't just resign what would you say to somebody in that position well it's it's actually

not so difficult because you have accumulated hopefully a set of skills

maybe one skill maybe two skill maybe three skills if it were in the case of you it was creating a product marketing

it then being a podcaster then creating this this Animated World then this

educational stuff you've got four five sets of real skills there but you're not

satisfied how can I take these skills and a package them and move in a different direction that is a new

frontier for me that excites me that builds on what I have so it's actually

an advantage in a weird way but the disadvantage is you're rigid you're set

in your H in your ways you think you know the answers you're not so fluid anymore you're not willing to make a

change in your thinking to going it's 2028 whenever you turn 50 I'm just

speculating and uh the world is really different now it's not the way it was in

2012 when I was building my Empire etc etc am I willing to now face 2028 and

the altered landscape which means altering how I think and how I adapt and

not not being so said in ways like Robert Green is about AI maybe AI is a fantastic tool you know I realize my

limitations I know I'm an old man I know I'm a dinosaur I'm aware of that but am

I willing to shake myself up and go it's 2028 the world is different people are

young they don't think the way I think anymore it's a whole new generation I have to I have to be sharp I have to

alter my game I take those skills that I have I adapt it to this new world to this new AI Frontier I hate to say it

kind of makes me nauseated but okay I have to adapt myself to this new frontier can I do it because when you

get older it's hard to do that it's hard to say I'm dealing with a new generation

I'm dealing with a new landscape I'm dealing with my own obstacles in my set

ways of doing things can I overcome them you know kind of thing you can reboot your life your

health even your career anything you want all you need is discipline I can teach you the tactics that I learned

while growing a billion- dooll business that will allow you to see your goals through whether you want better health

stronger relationships a more successful career any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact

Theory University join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things tap now for a free trial

and get started today okay so if I did all that calculus

Mastery Is More Than 10,000 Hours

and I was like yeah no I'm uh I'm done I don't I don't have any to keep going

um what would you say well um you have to find energy and

love in life and so maybe um there's something that

you're doing that maybe isn't going to be so thrilling like this new career path that

I'm saying but it will be more energizing you have to challenge yourself so a lot of um feeling stale

and lifeless is you've run out of challenges you've conquered you've done

with certain things but now it's it doesn't it's not you don't need to rise

to the occasion anymore you've kind of reached this Plateau you need to create a challenge for yourself so within the

business that you have that you've been doing whether you're working at a in an office for someone else or you've

started your own business I'm going to do something a little bit bold I'm going

to start a new Venture that's just like my old Venture based on all the same skills but is a bit of a risk to take a

risk to shake yourself up a little bit you know it's not a similar thing but

with me in my books I never try and do the same book

over right because I know if I did I'd be bored as hell I need challenges my

mind is so active I can't even describe it's terrifying sometimes and if I am

bored I don't have the energy and I get frustrated I get depressed so each book

has to be different has to challenge me it has to go you've never done this before you might fail you might not make

it what you thought you did you better you better be up to the challenge it excites me so if you're stale you need

challenges doesn't mean you have to make a career change but you have to take some kind of risk if you come to me

after this next book which I'm sure will be amazing and you even half reach

towards the I'm tapping out Bell uh if you're just done and retired and you're

super passionate to go travel or something like that cool I'm going to clap and I'll help you ring the bell but if you're doing it because some part of

your spirit has been broken I'm going to be Hey listen this

is an identity problem right now you are allowing yourself to be uh cowed by a

terrible set of values and you need to right now decide what ought someone do with their life like what

should you be doing with your life and this is where everybody hates moralizing but I think people need to

moralize in their own life people need to have a sense of like what should life be like when we look at the landscape of

a life well- lived what what ought it be for me you should be trying to bring every bit of potential out of your life

so cool maybe your last book bored the out of you fine do something totally new I'm here for it but find

something that's going to make you feel alive I have done jobs that made me feel the exact opposite and I would give up

up Creature Comforts I would give up money I would give up just about anything to feel alive and so when I

watch people live lives of quiet desperation most men lead lives of quiet desperation thorow whoever said that so

it's like hey no way like that is crazy people need bright lines in their life I

I will never get addicted to drugs because I just would tell myself there's a bright line you can't do whatever substance more than twice a week three

times a week whatever the second I'm doing it more than that I know that I have a viol and I'm going to immediately address it

it's like if I'm feeling I'm not going to allow myself see how many people I

can piss off with this I'm not going to allow myself to sit in depression I may not be able to stop myself from getting

depressed but I'm not just going to allow myself to sit and wallow in it this goes back to I'm not going to trust my emotions I'm going to ask myself what

my value system is is my value system that hey if you're suffering you just sit in it no so it's like people need to

address this stuff so having a biological experience there's something going on in in my brain in that case or

gut and I need to address it and so figuring out what exactly that is and

then making sure that I'm making changes based on value system frame of reference

beliefs to ensure that I'm moving towards my North Star and I can only

imagine if somebody doesn't know me and they're hearing this for the first time this is going to sound so paana

everything in my life is because that's how I respond to everything every time

I've had just a grotesque challenge uh yeah Jesus Christ the number of things

that I've been through in 20 plus years of business uh is crazy and inevitably

you hit hard times brutal times soul sucking times whatever whatever and I

have realized that all of my SE success is predicated on one simple thing I never quit and I don't quit because I'm

able to recharge Myself by going through the process that I just walk through

should you come to me and say that yeah some part of my spirit has been

broken well I don't think that'll happen you're not talking about me personally no I'm just saying like this is

obviously at the end I'm talking to myself and all of this as a reminder to how I'd want to react but I really do

try to frame episodes around okay there is a person watching the show they are in this case uh they're feeling hopeless

they are being consumed by this moment in time and the realities of their life

because I the most horrible thing about excuses is that they're valid and so

people have valid reasons to feel hopeless but and now what like what are

you going to do and so if people just allow themselves to sit in that that that is a value system problem you have

to build a frame of reference that moves you towards your North Star and unless

hopelessness is your North Star there's clearly a problem yeah yeah so um to me that

Northstar is a sense of purpose which makes everything else kind of fold into

what you're talking about and fit so you don't need anything else so when you have a sense of purpose when you know

what makes you unique when you know what your calling is in life then if you hit

a moment where you want to quit you know all right I'm not going to quit I just need to go a slightly different

direction here because I know that that this is what I was meant to do these are my strengths these are my good qualities

Etc and you know I'm I don't like talking about myself so much but here I here I go talking about myself again

um when I was in my mid-20s I was you know in my journalism

career I was very unhappy it wasn't working for me I was depressed so I go

and I leave and I go to Europe and I travel Europe and I had a heck of fun I was seducing I was seeing incredible

things I was learning languages I was trying to write novels but I was poor

and I was starting to get older and I was going God this isn't working and I got very depressed and then I came back

to Los Angeles and I go I know I'm going to become a screenwriter it's Hollywood hooray I'm going to make money but I'm

going to write it's going to be fine I like theater it's going to be exciting I start going in I hate Hollywood soulless

I'm not very good at it I start getting very depressed probably the most depressed I've ever been in my life at

that point in my one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica as I said I probably had moments where I was slightly suicidal I

know I did I'm not wasn't slightly I was I was depressed and I was like God damn

it what am I meant to do in life and then I had a fortuitous encounter with a man who produces books he asked me for

an idea for a book and I kind of improvised the 48 loss of power and it all fell into place but my lesson is my

long my long-winded story is I got depressed I got down on myself but I never gave up I kept saying I'm meant to

write I'm a good writer I have away with words I'm undisciplined I have flaws I'm

not good at anything else but I can write I have a message I have something to say and it kept me going it kept me

going after all of these circumstances in which I think a lot of people would

have given up at that point and I didn't give up because I had that inner voice

saying you're meant to write you're you're good at it you've developed skill

don't give up keep trying keep trying keep trying it picked me up every single time and so when I look at people and I

go they don't have that and I understand that it's very sad because if they face

situation like that they do they give up and then they they go funnel down a dark tunnel a dark path in life and

so that's why I wrote Mastery I don't want you to get into that that downward syndrome I want you to see the fact that

you have an overall frame an overall purpose that gives you that radar so

when things are bad you don't give up you just say I need to make a slight course correction to where I'm going in

life yeah it's interesting I think people have a really hard time building out the roadmap I think that uh to be

nearly 40 for things to not have worked out I think as you well know that's a very hard place for people to be in I

think the scarier thing is to want to be a writer but you're not a good writer

and I can imagine there's a lot of people that finally figure out okay this is what I was quote unquote meant to do

but they actually suck at it it's very true and people have presented that to

me as if it's like maybe a kind of a flaw in my Theory and I and I and I knock my head against it and the only

thing I can say is if you were young if you were three or four years old or five and you

decided that you wanted to write then you would have built the

right skill you would have known that because you had a flare you had a love of language and you realized it because you

were reading books and you just were attracted to words and you would have

built those skills would have developed them but the reason you're a bad writer is you chose writing when you were 10 12

15 years old because you thought it was cool because you read a book you thought H this would be something you thought it

was easy you thought I I write everybody writes I can become a writer I think you

chose a false path now maybe I'm justifying that to myself but I think if you had a true love of words you would

have found yourself a niche to where you would have mastered you would have spent lifetime developing those skills like I

spent 18 years more developing writing skills I was terrible I failed again and

again but I was developing skills you weren't developing those skills because you were kind of half-ass about it and

that's why you failed it wasn't what you were meant to do and you know somebody once said Robert you talked about 10,000

hours which some people dispute is actually valid Theory blah blah blah which I think is but I've been

painting since I was 18 years old I'm now in my

50s I've put in my 10,000 hours and I'm not Leonardo da Vinci what are you talking about well I go you put your

10,000 hours in over 33 years if you had put those 10,000 hours from the age of

18 to 24 and starved because you couldn't make a living instead of becoming Insurance Brokers which what

you are you would have developed those skills in that year you would have put the 10,000 hours in a condensed period

of time but you didn't because you really heart wasn't into it your heart was into making money and being

comfortable because to be an artist you have to be willing to starve to be a rider you have to be willing to be a

failure and you have to be willing to be alone do you know how lonely it is to be a rider you're not out there having

drinks with friends going to parties you're in your goddamn office alone alone without any distractions you have

to have a stomach for a loneliness for facing a blank piece of paper it's not

easy and if you're not truly into it you won't make the effort to get over that

mountain and develop the real skills so that's why I think people generally become like a mediocre writer 40 they go

man Robert Green is wrong I I don't this isn't meant for me blah blah blah

it's interesting I think all of that is true the only thing I disag agree with is I don't think anybody's meant for

anything I think there are definitely things you're going to get a disproportionate return on but I'll give you an example of a uh no longer super

young man that I know uh who went to film School graduated thought he would

get the three picture deal he didn't he went into business as a way to get rich so that he could build his own

studio uh thought it would take 18 months it took 15 years and in the end

he realized oh my God I spent 20 years plus now at this point uh this he is me

um it's you oh yeah I always knew I wanted to be a Storyteller but I got to

my mid-40s before I actually was able to put time and energy into doing it and so

for you could certainly say that I made a whole series of bad choices it's hard to cry about it recording this in my

fancy house uh but the reality is if I had to do it over again I would

certainly do it differently and but the way that I approach it is that now I

just need to get good at the thing so what I worry about is that what people

are really doing is measuring themselves against the financial yard stick or they're measuring themselves against oh

that person has a bestselling book and I don't and my thing is okay you're asking yourself the wrong question the question

people think they're supposed to ask themselves is what would I do uh if I knew I couldn't fail terrible

question what you should be asking yourself is what would I do and love every day even if I were failing because

hey the odds of you failing are very high but if you're pursuing something that you actually love and care about

then it's like cool pour yourself into getting good at it value yourself for the sincere Pursuit maybe you never get

there but man if you actually value yourself for the sincere Pursuit and you're pursuing something that you

actually enjoy the doing of which is the only part of it I can guarantee because no one can guarantee success then cool

you I won't say you can't lose but I will say that man that do you take the sting out of that loss by being like

I've really enjoyed this so for instance when I first founded impact Theory the number of people that offered me

ownership in a company come run this new uh food company or whatever so I had so

much credibility in that space and I turned them all down and they were why and I'm starting a media company I'm going to beat Disney and everybody was

like well that's dumb because you don't have any experience in that area you just had a historic exit from a food

company you should be doing food and that would have made me more money but that would have also made me

miserable and so I had to figure out what do I value myself for because if I build myself

self-esteem around money success accolades whatever I'm going to be miserable but if I build my self-esteem

around the sincere pursuit of something that makes me feel alive cool now now we're in but you have to be very

thoughtful about what you value yourself for okay a couple of things um so it's very

hard to keep at something if you get no validation for it so if you want to

write and I know this from personal experience and you never get anything published and or you get it and only a

few people read it and you get bad reviews it's very hard to keep going

it's very difficult to keep pushing and pushing and pushing right and so if you

I actually believe that if you spend the time that apprenticeship phase and you are earnest

about it and you're self-aware and you're looking not just at yourself and what you love but you're aware of what

the world is and what the market is for books that you will find an audience that you will find a niche but you

somewhere went wrong and where you went wrong was you didn't pay deep attention

you didn't pay deep attention to your to where your business was going to to the times to your audience and you failed in

that way so it's not just a matter of the 10,000 hours it's also being aware

of the cultural moment that you're living through and being just aware in general of how things are changing and

what your audience is and what will feed the public right now as it is and so you failed at that and and if you

hadn't guarantee that you'd be a successful author now as far as your

story is concerned I have a much different take on it but I'm not you which is nothing you did was wrong

everything you did was right and it and it was a link in a chain that led you to your mid-40s or you're about to have

fantastic success so if you were 30 and you went through a different process and

you go I'm just going to go right ahead into animation I'm not going to do this other stuff that's that distracting me I

don't I don't know if I'm going correctly into your story but something else would have happened something else

would have turned wrong but everything fits into place Amor FTI everything has

a purpose You Were Meant To Go off into these side roads and discover yourself

and you're tougher for it and you're stronger and you've learned incredible lessons that are now going into what

will be a mega successful business I have that attitude because I think it's the best attitude to have no regrets

everything what I learned from so even my bad jobs and I've had do you know how

many bad jobs I've had I've worked in in construction in Greece a miserable job I

worked in a hotel I worked in a detective agency which might sounds like fun but it was very depressing I was a

waiter I had a whole string of crap jobs I know what that's like you know but I

learned from every single one of them I learned about human nature I learned about how horrible can people can be

which went into the 48 Laws of Power I learned how manipul people can be which went into the 48 Laws of Power I learned

how to observe people I learned what I didn't love everything my motto in life

on my Tombstone is everything is material everything is wood for the fire

as to quote Marcus aelius it's all going into that fire and it's all for a reason

and a purpose and maybe it's not true but it's the most beautiful philosophy you can adopt in life it's interesting

um we have we are achieving the same outcome but

viewing it incredibly differently so for me I I don't mind being wrong I don't

mind having mistakes and so I don't mind and this may just be how we think about the word regret I don't mind having regrets I don't I don't mind that I

would do it differently if I had to do it over um I can't do it over and I love the way my life turned out and I don't

have a beef with it it's just I don't want to lie to myself and say uh oh no no I did it perfectly everything happens

for a reason I don't think things happen for a reason other than that when it when it goes Ary it is because I am dumb

and did the wrong things uh that that is a reason um but yeah I don't know that doesn't bother me in fact I find it more

empowering to say oh yeah I that up but I learned from it and so that was useful in the end anyway well that's the

same thing that I'm saying that's what I mean we've we've come to like the same conclusion but through a different means okay um because very much I I don't know

why I rebel against the idea of Fate uh I suppose I can quote the mat and say I

just hate the idea that my life is not in my control um so it's far more interesting to me to say oh things don't

happen for a reason there is no net under this tight RPP I'm walking on if I fall I may truly fall to my death things

don't happen for a reason there is no grand plan here no one's coming to save me I have to do this myself and I won't

do it perfectly I will make mistakes and so I'm not going to Value myself for

doing things perfectly that's a suicide side mission but I never said it it's perfect all the twists and turns of my

life weren't perfect they were terrible they led to depression but they happened for a reason they made me stronger I

learned from them so you can have a bad experience and you can could throw your

hands up in the air go damn it why did that happen I should have done something differently or you can go this is what

amorti means I can learn from it it happened for a reason it taught me

something it taught me that this was the wrong thing I should do it taught me that I am intended to do something

differently everything in life is a lesson is teaching me and I do believe

in fate and I do believe in in there do you believe your whole life is on Rails though no this that's mechanistic for me

well there's a great book written by Robert Hillman that I recommend for everybody called the Soul's code and he

explains in modern terms that's not so woo W woo about what that fate can mean

can you Channel it I'm getting tired and it's hard but I'll try um so you have

your genetics okay you don't control your genetic makeup right it's sending you on

a path you think that it's all luck and chance but no you have genetics you have

DNA that is controlling some of your behavior and it's setting you into

patterns of behavior okay some of those patterns can be very positive and some

of them can be negative but what you were what happens in life is kind of

actually under your control and the Fate is saying that because it's something that is sort of inscribed in your

genetic code it was meant for you to to happen that way and you see it and you actualize it and you make it a positive

thing you discover what that seed is what you were meant to accomplish in life you realize your fate so there's a

quote that I use in Mastery by pindar I hope I can remember um see who you are

by becoming who you are so you see what your fate is and you become that fate

and you realize it by your self-awareness so a lot of people don't realize what they were meant to

accomplish in life and then they they're just failures and that's what their fate

is right but I realize what my fate was it guided me it didn't mean I was

destined to work at Esquire magazine when I was 23 years old and and hated

didn't mean that I was destined to work for this director in Hollywood and have a terrible experience it just meant that

I was faded to have paths in life that didn't lead to what I wanted and that I

would realize and go I need to keep doing this it meant I was meant to be a writer and I hung on on to it I'm not

giving Robert Hillman justice as I said I'm kind of tired but that's that's how

I look at it it's not this woo woo thing that everything in life is determined do you understand the difference I do I

feel like um for me it's almost certainly just semantics there might be

some uh real thing that I just don't like cuz clearly Robert your life's

amazing so if that's the way that you have dealt with everything uh then

that's phenomenal and it works for you and the last thing I'd want to I'm not trying to convince you my way is right I'm just um laying out the way that

resonates with me is that I like to remind myself that sometimes things go

wrong because I was stupid and I didn't think about it properly um I'm not it wasn't faded for

me I don't need to love what happened I can just say cool learn from this and so

there is a a self I'm poking myself in the ribs to remind

myself hey if you go on autopilot again odds are you going to make that same mistak so you need to be we're just

arguing over semantics because we're saying the same thing in the end okay maybe I think we are we'll see there

could be second and third order consequences I'm not anticipating but yeah look no I think that we ultimately

get keep getting to the same place through a slightly different means yeah cuz I'm not saying that my mistakes were

perfect perfect I'm just saying that they it's the same thing we're just are we should we should move on here because

I believe we're saying the same thing it's just that I am stupid I have flaws

I make mistakes but I learn from them I realize that they happen for a reason

and they're teaching me something about myself so we're saying the same thing I

believe yeah it's interesting I want to let it go but you use the words it's teaching me and I think it's important

for people to understand it's not going to teach you you're going to have to learn like you have to be the active

participant in this it won't happen by accident anyway we'll stop there with that yeah but if if if you're aware of

what you were meant to accomplish in life you will learn yeah I don't agree with that all right all right so

interesting uh so what's that arante what does that mean that means just

forward in Spanish okay perfect forward we go uh let's let's build people back

up we've talked a lot about the problem we've talked about how you can find yourself in in some pretty Dire Straits

um so for me it would be all right you have to figure out where you want to go you have to know that with with a

Clarity that's terrifying yeah you have to have a set of values and beliefs that

are going to essentially force you to act in the ways you need to act in order to accomplish that um what's your setup

for people if they want to really do something well the problem with with how you laid it out is it sounds kind of

dire it sounds kind of dreary man I have to go through all of that yes that's like man I don't it's not even worth it

I'm just going to give up I'm just going to keep smoking pot it's a lot more fun if that were true I'd leave people alone

I think what I try to appeal to people is it's fun when you figure it out life

becomes thrilling it becomes an adventure you know that okay I'm in my

20s I I can go out and have fun I can waste some time I can have this Adventure but I'm learning from it and

it's helping me grow and I know that I have a sense of direction so you know if you want to be um be a great basketball

player or a chess master in the beginning it's tedious it's boring it's

hell you're frustrated 5 years down the line it's kind of getting easier and better 10 years down the line you're

able to shoot 60% on three-point shots you become a a grandmas or whatever the

step below that is you're having fun it's exciting so

following this path is actually the most thrilling thing you can be on because you're not going to do it if you think

it's all drudgery and pain and I've got to spend so many years self-sacrificing

not being able to no man you're going to have fun overcoming challenges getting

good at something is the greatest high you can have if you want to be an

entrepreneur and you're 23 years old and you go nah I'm not really ready for it I need to go back to business school okay

no you start your business now and it fails and it's painful and you go I

don't know then you go I'm going to do it again because I learned some terrible lessons and you do it again and it

succeeds and this is like seven years later man what a feeling you've overcome

yourself you've mastered your own weaknesses you're having fun people are

admiring you you have the attention that you want women are flocking to you whatever you want to however you want to

say it it's a high it's great so mastering something becoming great

figuring out what you want to do is not painful it's the most fulfilling decision you can ever make and it

involves some tedium it involves a couple some years of

frustration but if you can if you can delay immediate gratification if you can

say it'll come to Something in three or four years if I'm focused if I'm

energized then you're going to reap the rewards I guarantee you because that's how the human brain is structured so I

like to flip the script and make it seem like something that's incredibly fun and that's why I wrote Mastery where the

last two chapters are about being creative and about the feeling of being a master at

something where you have an intuitive feel it's like a superpower at that point and it's an incredibly

intoxicating sensation and I set it up that way because I wanted you to realize

that this is a goal that you can have and it's incredibly it'll give your life a sense of direction so um I just want

you to feel that there's another path even in these miserable times even with

all the problems there is a path that will lead to something so different and

it'll turn your life around and I I mean I know it's hard to convince people with

words and that's why I wrote that book but I honestly believe that what a beautiful description of the very

difficult but so worth it Adventure of doing something great where can people follow you

 

Robert Green well um they can follow me on my Ancient Ancient website called Power

seduction and War the and is spelled out Powers seduction andw war.com it literally dates from the mid

2000s um but on that ancient dinosaur website I have links to all of my seven

books um to my YouTube channel to Instagram to

Twitter to uh Tik Tok to Facebook to everything where everything you need and

all of links to all my books on Amazon so that's the best site to begin in I like it all right everybody if you

haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace check out my intense

conversation with Patrick David about masculinity to truly be free you have to

be strong enough to control your own life and many men today simply do not qualify many of you have been told the

pursuit of power is disgusting you shouldn't do it many of you don't even have a clear definition of what it means