The Real Reason You Feel Empty (Even When Life Looks Good) with Musician Mike Posner

If at some point, you've looked at your life—your job, your relationships, your achievements—and thought: “is this it?” This episode is for you. Mike Posner had that moment at 30. His life, by every external measure, was extraordinary: he had hit songs, Grammy nominations, millions in the bank. He was a pop star… And he was miserable. What followed was one of the most honest reckonings we've ever heard on this show. Mike walked across America, survived a rattlesnake bite, climbed Everest, and came out the other side with something no amount of success had ever given him: peace. Mike Posner is a multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated recording artist, songwriter, and producer. But the reason you should listen to this conversation has nothing to do with any of that. It has everything to do with where he was and his incredibly human journey getting to somewhere better, more peaceful, and more meaningful. He even wrote a song about it—a follow up to his hit song “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” called “I Went Back To Ibiza.” In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why achieving your biggest goals can leave you feeling emptier than before you started ➡️ The difference between real vulnerability and broadcasting your pain online (and why intention changes everything) ➡️ Why comfort (not failure) might be the thing quietly hollowing out your life ➡️ What walking across America actually taught Mike about who he was and who he wasn't ➡️ Why self-improvement taken too far becomes selfishness ➡️ The one pursuit more valuable than success, grit, or getting to the top You don't need a Grammy nomination to relate to this conversation, you just need to have ever wondered if the life you're building is actually the life you want. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + Watch A Bit of Optimism on Spotify! If you’re subscribed to Spotify Premium, you don’t get any Spotify ads on my video. If you want to watch Mike’s new music video for “I Went Back To Ibiza,” check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDL6SEW4xKU You can find “I Went Back To Ibiza” wherever you stream music. + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Real Reason You Feel Empty 00:06:51 Art as Alchemy: Turning Pain into Beauty 00:18:12 The Asymmetry Between What We Have and What We Give 00:20:32 Walking Across America: Getting Out of His Comfort Zone 00:24:54 The Snake Bite: When Attention Came From Pain 00:30:13 The Problem With Avoiding Discomfort 00:33:47 From Fraud to Peace: Mike's Transformation 00:36:31 Walking Each Other Home: The Purpose of Art and Life 00:38:56 The Pursuit of Peace, Not Just Hardship 00:48:48 Getting to the Top of Everest: Only Half of the Journey + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Live Online Classes: https://simonsinek.com/classes/ Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that that pain is a teacher.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  I realized that I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I've got a few hits, got a few million dollars. And I'm just sort of looking around like, is this it? Because I got all the stuff I was supposed to. There was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world. And I said, if I keep following that script, I know I'm never going to close the gap.

• 0:36Simon Sinek?

  I have to admit something. I am not a millennial. I also don't listen to a lot of popular music. And so if I'm really honest, I didn't really know who Mike Posner was when we booked him on the podcast. Turns out, he's a multi-platinum Grammy-nominated recording artist and producer. But my team knew exactly who he was, because they're millennials. And for them, Mike's hits were more than just songs, they were anthems for their generation. Songs like "Cooler Than Me" and "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" became part of the zeitgeist. But I'm really glad that Mike came on the podcast. Whether you know his songs or not, whether his songs captured your feelings or not, his message actually matters to all of us.

• 1:21Simon Sinek?

  By every external metric, Mike was hugely successful. But no one prepared him for life once the party ended. Mike spent the past decade trying to find himself again. He walked across America, he almost died of a snake bite, he climbed Mount Everest, and here's the thing, it worked. He learned something beautiful about himself: self-acceptance. Mike will freely admit he is now a different person from the guy who needed to chase external validation. And his new song, "I Went Back To Ibiza," tells his new story. It turns out, whether you have a Grammy nomination or not, whether you're famous or not, the lessons Mike learned apply to all of us.

• 2:03Simon Sinek?

  Because his journey is a very human journey. This is a bit of optimism.

• 2:16Simon Sinek?

  You know, it's funny, they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22Simon Sinek?

  And your career, your story, your presence, it seems to have shown up at the right time for the times we live in. The challenges that people are dealing with, the journeys that people are on, your story, your message, your inspiration would not have worked in the, you know, 20 years ago.

• 2:47Simon Sinek?

  So I don't know if you feel that.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I don't know. I haven't really contemplated it before. I've toyed with this idea that God gives teachers pain.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  And if you learn to overcome that pain, you can teach others to do the same. And the teaching then is imbued with, you know, sort of like a gravitas that it wouldn't otherwise have. Teaching from experience rather than a conceptual like reading of some book that you've never gone through. So I guess, thank you.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  I guess, thank you. But you're right. You go through certain, certain

• 3:34Speaker 01

  trials and tribulations and challenges, we could just call them that, that maybe the ones that I've overcome or, you know, figured out some kind of rhyme or reason to how to get through them. Maybe they were like, yeah, five, 10 years before a lot of other people are undergoing the same ones. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to share and help people where I can.

• 3:58Simon Sinek?

  Did you want to be a musician or a teacher?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Depends what age Mike were asking.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I think at sixteen, I just wanted to be cool and have some girls pay attention to me. You know, it was probably as far as I had planned out. Definitely, definitely not a teacher.

• 4:18Simon Sinek?

  I guess it also speaks to the role of art, right? Which I'm fascinated by. As an art lover, I spend, you know.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Do you know how rich you sound when you say as an art lover?

• 4:27Simon Sinek?

  Oh, my, really?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:31Simon Sinek?

  Okay, okay, now you're gonna get me, okay. Now this beautiful invitation to have you on the podcast is now gonna change. And I'm gonna pull up my soapbox and I'm gonna do all the talking now. All right? Cause that is such a trigger.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I love art too, by the way, but when you say as an art lover. If you start a sentence like that, as your friend, I want you to know certain people are gonna.

• 4:54Simon Sinek?

  Does it sound elitist to say as a music lover?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 4:59Simon Sinek?

  Right? Does it sound elitist to say as a food lover?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  In the middle.

• 5:06Simon Sinek?

  In the middle? So I think, I think we're speaking to one of the problems with, with art. Right? I understand why it doesn't sound elitist when you say it for music is because music for fourteen ninety-five a month. You have unlimited access to all the music in the world. You know, so it's accessible. But this is the mistake about art, which is art is accessible too. It's the institutions that house the art or sell the art that are the elitist assholes that I hate. I love art and I hate the art world.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Simon Sinek?

  And there are incredibly talented young artists whose work is accessible. You can visit a museum, you can visit a gallery, many of those are free. You can also scroll through the internet and scroll through Instagram and you can appreciate somebody's intensity and creativity all day. And so.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Or you could watch a train go by.

• 5:58Simon Sinek?

  Or you can watch a train go by, and I think you're absolutely right. I have these moments, they're ultra, ultra present moments. And they catch me by surprise, I don't do it on purpose, where. I'm fully consumed by the sights and sound of the thing I'm doing.

• 6:14Simon Sinek?

  So when I'm making coffee in the morning, and it doesn't happen all the time, but I'll randomly, it's like a switch goes, and I'm all of a sudden hyper attuned to the clank of the coffee pot and the swish of the spoon in the coffee and the sprinkle of the coffee into the cup, you know, and all those sounds become my morning music. And everything else is completely tuned out. To your point, we are surrounded by beautiful, beautiful things.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  That wasn't my point. I was just trying to tease you a little bit.

• 6:47Simon Sinek?

  I know.

• 6:51Simon Sinek?

  Do you have to have courage to put so much of yourself and your vulnerability in your work for display? Like, why not just sing about love and happiness and joy? Why sing about loss and pain and hurt? Because most, most art or most music, it's superficial. Let's be honest. The lyricists and the lyrics that are written, it's forced rhymes and silly stories and made up ideas. What is it about your work? Is it courage? Is it naivete that you are so raw?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, thank you for, for recognizing that. As you asked the question, I had this, this riff that our friend in queue sometimes goes on. I know he's been a guest on your.

• 7:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, he's, I loved his episode.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  He has this great riff that he'll sometimes do on stage and he says art is alchemy.

• 7:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're taking pain that you undergo in life and pain is a part of life. We all go through pain. Every single person at some point will undergo extreme stress. Not like, oh, I stubbed my toe, like, man, this person died, like, every single human being gets the privilege of experiencing extreme pain at some point. Artists have this gift. We get to make, if we do our job well, something beautiful out of that pain.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  So our friend Adam in Q, he calls that alchemy. He says, you are alchemizing pain into beauty. Now, someone else like you,

• 8:41Speaker 01

  as an art lover, can go either listen to the song, or hear the poem, or see the painting.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And that imbues you with a sense of fellowship. Okay, going, wow, I too have felt that sort of pain, but it was hard for me to describe. It was hard for me to put my finger on. Maybe because it's hard to even describe in words to begin with. But if you get to play with music, or you get to play with color, then suddenly you can put your finger on this thing that was otherwise ineffable. And then you, Simon, as our placeholder, as an art lover, can say, wow, I'm not the only one. So art is an artist with a capital A. And I agree with you, you know, a lot of the art. And it's not with judgment, because I've done it too, right?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Most of the art, or the music, most of the music, rather, that we have, it is not art, it's a commodity. Most of the artists become brand ambassadors for a picture of themselves that they used to be.

• 9:48Simon Sinek?

  Or it's simply a commercial enterprise, and it's a product, and they choose the product that sells well.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Great, great, and nothing wrong with it.

• 9:55Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  But art, as you asked, with a capital A, it often involves, I haven't thought about it enough to say it always involves, but it often involves this sort of alchemy. And it's somebody saying, the artist saying, hey, this is what it's like for me to be human.

• 10:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  This is the stuff I don't tell other people. Or I don't even know how to, I don't even know how to start telling, but when I sit down at this keyboard, I pick up this guitar. This is what it's like for me to be me. Anybody else?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Does anyone else feel this way?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  And if we do a good job, someone hears it, looks, sees it, and they might not even be born yet. That's the crazy thing. And they go, "Thank you." "Me too."

• 10:49Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I have so many thoughts bubbling. I have talked about this publicly, that we have misinterpreted vulnerability and broadcast. That going into a room by yourself with your phone, turning on the camera, and crying and talking about how you're a loss is not really vulnerability, but it is broadcast. And it's actually more difficult to say those exact same words to a friend in person, in private, than it is by yourself in your room with your phone, right?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:25Simon Sinek?

  But, this is where I need your help. What's the difference between the broadcast of my feelings by myself in my room with my camera, and you sitting by yourself, writing down your lyrics, strumming your guitar, recording the album and putting it out there? Why is one art and designed to be a mirror to make others feel not alone in that pain, and the other seems to kind of like, I know it feels different, but it feels to miss the mark? Like, because they're similar, what makes them different?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Well, it comes down to intention. Because, you're right, you know, going alone in the guitar, like, I got my microphone right here. You know, I could be alone in this room. This is where I do my music. If I just sit here and I write a song from that exact viewpoint, which is not to create a human connection and fellowship, but is actually to get attention. And NQ Riffz on this, he said, "That's not alchemy. That's turning pain to pain."

• 12:29Simon Sinek?

  The equation would be then, if you're broadcasting, and the likes and the follows are the thing that alleviate the pain, you miss the point.

• 12:41Simon Sinek?

  Because the album sales, the downloads of your song are not the thing that relieve the pain, but the album sales and the downloads are a recognition that others may either appreciate the music superficially, or feel not alone when they share your pain.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Perhaps, perhaps, you know, they could be.

• 13:00Simon Sinek?

  Because you didn't write the song and say, this is gonna be the hit.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  No, I'm always surprised by those. You know, I've had, I think it's five songs that you could air quote, call hits in my career. Two have been that I sing, and then the other three have been songs I've written for other artists.

• 13:20Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  That I don't perform.

• 13:22Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  But people ask me this question. Sometimes they'll be like, you know, because I've made albums my entire adult life. I think I have 12 now. So almost one a year for like the last 15 years.

• 13:37Simon Sinek?

  I just thought you were a guy who wrote a song.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Right. So people ask me this question. They say, but listen, the context in which I live now is like, my last hit song was, I don't know, like nine or 10 years ago, like really popular song. So people will say to me like, when are you gonna write another song? Like, I've written hundreds of songs since then, all in the context of, for whatever reason, I'm always shocked by which of my songs have become popular.

• 14:08Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I, I feel like I meet and work with and no other recording artists who can sort of like, sit down and go, hey, we're gonna make a big one. And then they do, and then they say, this is the big one. And then you promote it, and then it's the big one. I always put these on, like, man, surely this one's gonna be, this one's gonna be very popular. It never works out. And then I'll write something like my most popular song so far is called, I Took A Pill In Ibiza, right? And this song is like, I finished it and I loved it. It felt true to me. It felt like territory I hadn't already trodden as a writer.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  But I also thought surely this will never become popular because it's got a drug reference in the title. It's like this will never be on the radio. And lo and behold, it became quite popular. So I never know.

• 15:08Simon Sinek?

  I want to go back to something that we said before. I said, there were lots of thoughts. And there's another one that I had, which is you had the courage, and I call it courage, to put your feelings, your hardships in a song for all to hear. But do we live in a world right now where people, and I'll skew younger, you know, the younger people, well, maybe old people, not to be ageist, are afraid of discomfort. And the reason I see younger people is because I think, you know, they didn't live through the war. They didn't live through civil rights, you know? Arguably, there's a lot of discomfort these days. There's seems to be a lot of upheaval and discomfort these days for all kinds of reasons. Are you

• 15:53Simon Sinek?

  teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that that pain is a teacher. But are we learning the lessons? Are we learning the lessons of pain now? Or are we just avoidant and putting up barriers and walls and, you know, creating boundaries? I put it in air quotes, because the pain is just too much. Scott Galloway talks about this, like, go screw something up. Go fail. Go humiliate yourself. It'll be more valuable to your life than none of those difficult, hard and uncomfortable feelings.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I wouldn't.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  You know, I got a degree from Duke University in sociology, but I haven't really kept up with that in the last 20 years, Simon. I'm vaguely familiar with the archetypal stereotypes of Gen Z and millennial, all this stuff. But I wouldn't be so bold as to say, hold generations this way or that way. I could say, in my own life, many of the things that you just referenced are true. That things went relatively well. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. There was no capital T trauma in my childhood. I got really good grades. I went to Duke University, all the while sort of developing this skill as a musician. Before I graduated from Duke

• 17:15Speaker 01

  University, I Won myself a record deal. My career had started to take off. I was becoming famous.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Flash cut forward, now I'm thirty years old. And I've got a few hits. Got a few million dollars in the bank account. And I'm just sort of looking around like,

• 17:39Speaker 01

  is this it?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Cause I got all the stuff I was supposed to. When it comes to like the American society or like what's the pinnacle? It's like president, rock star, you know? It's like, which one would you rather be? At least for our generation, I think now it's like Instagram influencer is up there for kids. But for people my age is like, I was a pop star, man. You can't go that much higher than that. True, I think pop star is even higher than movie star.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Maybe, perhaps. I think then there's levels to each, you know? I realized that I was thirty years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I was living in West Hollywood and I just thought, you know, this can't be it. This can't be it. And there was this feeling, Simon,

• 18:31Speaker 01

  that maybe you'll resonate with. And I'm willing to bet

• 18:38Speaker 01

  more than one person resonate with listening. There was this feeling like

• 18:44Speaker 01

  there was more inside me

• 18:48Speaker 01

  than I was expressing. Like I had more to give inside my soul than my actual life reflected. There was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world. And I couldn't figure out how to close that gap. And people would say to me at the time, but you've done so much. You're the guy that sang cooler than me. You did, I took a pill and a bees or like, you got nominated for a Grammy. What like, what do you mean? You've given so much to the world. But it wasn't about the external. It was this just internal knowing like something is off. And I remember like for years, I felt like,

• 19:29Speaker 01

  man, I was just like one supplement away or like one new biohacking trick away or one change in my diet away from feeling.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Peace from feeling like my life was the way it was supposed to be.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And

• 19:49Speaker 01

  at age thirty, I said, I don't know how I'm gonna close this peace gap. But I know if I just keep doing what I'm doing, like, because I was on a trajectory. I was supposed to make albums, then go on tour, then make another album, then go on tour. Man, make another album, then go on tour. I was supposed to basically do that until I died or became so irrelevant that it was no longer a business that that that a multinational corporation could count on. So I I said, if I keep following that script, I I know I'm never gonna close the gap. That's a recipe to not close the gap. So to Scott Galloway's point, like, I have to try something else. So that's when

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I chose to do this crazy idea, which was to walk across the the United States. I wanted to start walking on the East Coast, the Atlantic Ocean, New Jersey, and walk all the way to the West Coast. It is some strange effort. I was trying to lose myself and find myself at the same time. And I only tell this whole wild story because at age thirty, I made the decision to go. And then I actually started when I was thirty one. It's a funny change of numbers because I grew up Jewish. And Judaism, you're supposed to have a bar mitzvah when you're thirteen, and that's when you're supposed to become a man. But now I wasn't thirteen, I was thirty one, and I realized, hey, you know, I'm not a man.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Why am I not a man? Because I haven't gone through hard stuff. Life's just kind of worked. And there's been hardship internally, but you know what? Instead of trying to make myself more famous, more money, so I can get more stuff, make my little box inside LA more comfortable. I'm gonna make it as uncomfortable as possible. I'm gonna do something I don't know if I can do, and it's gonna be physically hard. It's actually gonna be dangerous. And it's gonna be so divorced from what I'm supposed to do that it might actually risk.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  The work that I put in the last 10 years of my life to become a pop star. And that's when my agents and managers told me, they said, you're gonna ruin your whole career by doing this. Okay, let's go. And for me, that was my real bar mitzvah. That was my real

• 22:13Speaker 01

  starting to become an adult. I think there's a lot more to that. So I agree with you. You know, a lot of what mental health is supposed to be is actually mental weakness. And it's like, I'm gonna take up time off. I'm gonna make boundaries. I'm gonna shield myself from stuff that's challenging or difficult. That's not mental health. That's weakness. That's you can't deal with, things that are challenging. No, you actually wanna become inoculated. Choose hardship. And I realized like, maybe some people listening to this are thinking, oh, this is absurd. You know, Mike Posner, you're like a healthy, young, white guy who has a lot of money, saying choose hardship. And I'm saying, yes, you're right.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I had a life that didn't have so much hardship. In fact, it was so devoid of hardship that it was empty.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  We need hardship. We pretend that we don't want any challenges in our life. In actuality, we crave them. We crave challenges. Because even though our intellectual minds tell us, hey, let's make life as comfortable as possible. The only way to grow, the real way to grow, is through challenges. Challenges come, and we ask, what are we supposed to learn from this?

• 23:39Simon Sinek?

  Who were you when you set off in New Jersey? And who were you when you arrived in California?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Well, I can remember when I arrived in California, I looked at my friend and I said,

• 23:51Speaker 01

  man, before I started this, I was such a bitch.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  You know, you learn. There's a through line of me and all of us, I think, never changes. But there's a lot that we can change, more than we give ourselves credit for. We gotta be real careful when we start saying, I'm this kind of person. I'm an introvert. I'm an avoidant type of person. I'm an anxious type of person. No, you're not. You have avoidant tendency. You have avoidant habits, patterns. You have anxious habits, patterns. A lot of stuff we can change, we don't give ourselves credit for. So to your question, what changed? A lot of things didn't change. You know, a lot of things didn't change. I didn't learn to become a better person in relationships. I didn't become somebody that somebody else would want to marry.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I didn't find joy in fulfillment. But what did change? I found a freaking tougher part of myself, man, that was never gonna come out West Hollywood. Because I almost died on the journey. I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake and spent, I think it was three nights in the ICU. And my legs swelled to the size of an elephant trunk and and when that happened, I got really famous. I got a lot of attention. You got picked up by mainstream media and TMZ and my Instagram followers went up. So I was getting all this attention after I got hurt.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And it was a crossroads moment. Because I was either gonna go back to living my life based on how much attention I could get from other people. This goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Or I was gonna finish this thing. Because the more I, more I was hurt, that's the more attention I got. And when I was walking, I didn't get that much attention. So.

• 25:51Simon Sinek?

  There's an irony in it, isn't there?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous.

• 25:54Simon Sinek?

  There's an irony, which is if you just walked across the country and not get bitten by a snake.

• 26:01Simon Sinek?

  You would have learned your lessons, you would have had your hardship, you would have come out and said, I was this, I'm now this. And, you know, different because you got bitten by a snake, but you know, you would have had your lessons of humility and all of the rest of it, right? But walking across the country for the rest of us is boring. You know what I mean? Like, hearing about a guy walking is boring.

• 26:22Simon Sinek?

  Not for the person doing it.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 26:24Simon Sinek?

  And so there's an irony that the very thing you're trying to escape is the thing that doubled because of the event of the drama. The near death, because it's newsworthy. Right? And this is where I find this whole conversation, quite frankly, difficult.

• 26:42Simon Sinek?

  Because it's all true.

• 26:46Simon Sinek?

  Hardship builds character. Hardship teaches you things about yourself you would never learn. We don't learn anything when things go well. We learn things when things go badly. All the lessons are in, in, in the difficult. Everything you're saying is true. Challenging ourselves, getting out of our comfort zones. All of this is good advice and makes great posters with, you know, dangling kittens. All easier said than done in practice. You know, somebody who says, I'm going to walk across the country. And then you hear about you getting bitten by a snake, you're like, ah, you know? It sort of only adds the risk. The reason I struggle with the conversation, I'm even struggling in being articulate about why I'm struggling with the conversation.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's get to it.

• 27:25Simon Sinek?

  It's because, like, there's two kinds of hardship. Right? There's an event. I got bitten by a snake. That's an event. That's a one kind of hardship. You know, I lost somebody I love. That's a hardship. My relationship collapsed. That's a hardship, right? And there's a different kind of hardship, which is sort of like. I'm trying to change my lot in life. I started my own business. I've decided I'm gonna live a life without a corporate job. And that hardship is more ongoing and more extended. Where I'm trying to get to is like.

• 28:05Simon Sinek?

  Are we talking about either one? Are we talking about both? Because some hardship we can create for ourselves, you know, it's called risk. Another hardship just happens to us, whether we like it or not.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 28:17Simon Sinek?

  Take a breakup, for example, right? Someone's not in a relationship, and they're so afraid of being hurt that they keep their walls up so high and are so incapable of vulnerability that they'll never actually get the relationship. And they spend their life angry that they can't be in a relationship, not recognizing that they're the ones that have built this wall around them out of fear of losing. Or you can actually be in the relationship.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait. Have you read my journals from ages 20 to 34? What's going on?

• 28:44Simon Sinek?

  Or you can be in the relationship and so afraid of losing it that you become a pleaser to the other person, manipulating your own self into points of quite extreme discomfort just to ensure the other person's happy for fear of losing the relationship, which, by the way, will probably shorten the life of the relationship because you're not being yourself.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Simon Sinek?

  And

• 29:12Simon Sinek?

  this is what vulnerability is, right? Vulnerability is the risk to lose the thing you hope you don't lose. Vulnerability is stepping into the thing that absolutely could fail.

• 29:28Simon Sinek?

  And we're not talking about being blind. There's a difference between jumping out of a plane and jumping out of a plane with a parachute.

• 29:34Simon Sinek?

  You know, they both have the same thrill, but one has certainty and one does not of failure. And when I make the blanket, broad comment about, you know, afraid of being uncomfortable, we see it exhibited, which is, I'm so afraid of breaking up with you, even though we've dated for six months. You know what I'll do? I'll just ghost you. It's easier for me. Nothing personal. I know it's traumatic for you, but it's just easier for me because I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation, break up with you. Or I'm just gonna quit my job. You know, it's not going great, but instead of talking to my boss, I think I'll just quit because it's easier for me, you know? And that's what I'm talking about, which is, it is the discomfort,

• 30:20Simon Sinek?

  even when it blows up in our face, that the lessons will happen.

• 30:26Simon Sinek?

  Because you and I have both walked into things, sometimes blindly and sometimes consciously, that did not go well. I would argue went extremely badly. And I can be blaming, be like, they did this, they did that. And some of that might be true. But it also gives them the opportunity to be like, how did I show up? What did I do to pour gas on that fire? Whether I started or not is irrelevant.

• 30:52Simon Sinek?

  And I can't learn that without screwing it up. And so if we avoid making mistakes, if we avoid feeling humiliated, if we avoid discomfort, pain, just because it's easier for me right now, you know? Then, to your point, that hollowness perpetuates. And now, we're living lives of running away, avoidance and fear.

• 31:24Simon Sinek?

  It's getting very philosophical, Mike.

• 31:31Simon Sinek?

  And so I think the problem I have with these kinds of conversations is

• 31:39Simon Sinek?

  the discussion is so academic.

• 31:43Simon Sinek?

  And the discussion usually happens

• 31:47Simon Sinek?

  with people who did it

• 31:51Simon Sinek?

  and are now going around everybody else, you really got to do it.

• 31:57Simon Sinek?

  And you have the credibility because you did it. And people found inspiration in your story and continue to find inspiration in your story. I guess, tell me a story not about you. Tell me a story about somebody who did something because of your art.

• 32:13Simon Sinek?

  Or because of your walk across the country.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I'll preface it by saying one other thing about me, or the old me, which is all the stuff that you're describing of avoiding, ghosting.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Making decisions based on what's psychologically most comfortable for oneself.

• 32:37Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I've done all those things.

• 32:39Simon Sinek?

  We all have, we all have.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying every single worse, worse than that. I mean, who I used to be was not a good guy.

• 32:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  So I don't think anyone should listen to me because I'm so wise or I'm I've done these cool things or, you know, I think they're cool. Walking across the US, a lot of people think they're very stupid. I don't think anyone should should take any credence to to my messages be or my messages. It's like I'm not here to proselytize or preach to anyone. I'm just here to share human to human, but I don't think anyone should listen to me because of those things or where I'm at now. I think they should listen because of where I was, how miserable I was, how many times I thought about killing myself. Not because I hadn't achieved something externally. I I had achieved a lot externally, but because I was doing the exact things you're talking about.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  That I realized somewhere deep down I was not happy. And the point of my whole life until I got into my

• 33:44Speaker 01

  early thirties was convincing the world I was. My life was a fraud and my reason for existence was convincing people that I was not a fraud. And I was good at it. People even found me inspiring back then and on some level I was. But I didn't have what I have now. I didn't have just a peace in in being. I didn't have

• 34:11Speaker 01

  the ability to hold a vision of the future that I'm excited about, but also being content with, hey, man, if this all ends right now, I'm grateful I got to even have a go around. So I'm not avoiding your question. The first guy that that pops into my head, there was a guy named Adam. When I was walking across Kansas,

• 34:34Speaker 01

  this, I'll call him a kid. He wasn't a kid, but he was younger than me. You know, I was thirty one and he was maybe twenty five or something. He just kept showing up. And at that point, I walked twenty four miles a day and he would walk with me twenty four miles a day. And I think he walked like a couple hundred miles with me in Kansas. He was a really quiet guy.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  And I got a message a few years later. And it was from him. And he said, I decided I was gonna walk across America also. And I would like you to walk the last day with me. So I went to Santa Monica and I met up with this guy. And I walked with him and he had this big backpack on and he was like real thin and like, you could tell he'd been through, been through some life. And I watched him dive in the Pacific Ocean and I wouldn't be so egotistical to say it's because I did it, you know, I think probably had some,

• 35:42Speaker 01

  some non-trivial part in like seeding the idea in his head, but ultimately it was his decision to go do that. And I'm proud of him. You know, the other day I was walking on stage and I used to run these community calls every week last year, I don't do it anymore. And I was walking on stage in this nightclub in Austin and someone held up a phone. It's so loud in there and they had written on the phone. And it just said, your calls helped me get clean from drugs and alcohol. Thank you. I get a lot of stuff like that, but it's not me. It's them. You know, he, he, he got himself clean of drugs and alcohol.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Wasn't my call or my song or some magic word I said on a Zoom call, right? Like one of my favorite teachers, Ram Dass, he say, we're all just walking each other home. And I can't tell you how many times Simon, like a piece of art, like to go back to our, the beginning of our conversation, or another human being live, or never on Instagram, but sometimes even a YouTube video has helped me so much, man. Helped me through like real periods of darkness. And.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  If one of my songs or something I I say, or some distinction that I picked up from some other teacher or some book I read and I share it, regurgitate it back and probably, you know, mess it up a little bit, but hopefully don't ruin all the truth of it, can help someone on their journey towards what? Towards themselves? Towards I Believe in God, with a connection to something bigger than them? Towards the life that I think we all deserve, which is a life imbued with meaning, some fun, some joy, some enthusiasm, maybe some laughter and definitely some love mixed in? If anything, I do bring people closer to that,

• 37:45Speaker 01

  like, that's awesome. It comes from telling the truth first. And then, sometimes, sometimes, these are beautiful byproducts can happen. They're moments of grace.

• 38:04Simon Sinek?

  I love the way you speak about peace and grace and moments. You know? And I think you're right. I think if if you're living a life well-lived, if you're leaning into the discomfort in the way that you're describing it, the result is calm. Right? Because the opposite of calm is the anxiety of how many followers, how much money, how much fame, right? That is not calm. That's anxious. Me proving myself to myself, trying to convince myself that I have value relative to someone else.

• 38:48Simon Sinek?

  And I think this, to me, is the ultimate message that I find in your work, which is...

• 38:56Simon Sinek?

  It's not about the pursuit of discomfort. It's not about the pursuit of difficult. It's not about the pursuit of any of those things. It's the pursuit of calm, peace, a restful mind.

• 39:07Simon Sinek?

  And you have learned that these challenges that you put for yourself and these acceptances and the difficulties, what you have found is that has been the best route to find that peace, which is counterintuitive, that peace came from stress, not from pretending you're a baller. And it is a deeply personal journey because only we know the stress and the discomfort and the unease that we feel because we can project anything we want.

• 39:43Simon Sinek?

  And there's a deep, deep honesty that has to go with, am I calm? Am I at peace?

• 39:51Simon Sinek?

  And I think that's perhaps one of the reasons that,

• 39:56Simon Sinek?

  you know, as I get older, I'm becoming that person that drove me nuts when I was younger.

• 40:03Simon Sinek?

  Me too. It's really, it's really annoying, you know? Where when I was younger, I thought I knew everything and now I realize how little I know and I actually find it more comforting knowing that I know less, where I thought I had to have comfort by knowing more and proving I could do more. And now just I'm total, a total peace going, I know so little and I'm cool with that. If life goes normally, stuff goes bad.

• 40:32Simon Sinek?

  And so, you know, the benefit of age is not, is not that you get wisdom just because you're older. It's just that the likelihood that you had to struggle a little bit is higher. Some people find those lessons at a very young age, you know, an 18 year old who's had a bad run can have the same wisdom as a 70 year old, you know?

• 40:51Simon Sinek?

  But the point is they lived a little. And what you're talking about is injecting life experience into the system.

• 41:00Simon Sinek?

  Injecting the hardship, injecting it. And you can sit around and wait for it. It'll happen at some point.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yes, it will.

• 41:07Simon Sinek?

  But you have the agency. We can inject it. And nobody's saying, walk across the country, you know. But there are little things that we can do, little risks that we can take in our careers, in our relationships. Somebody recently said to me, "I don't tell you enough how much I love you."

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 41:29Simon Sinek?

  And I, I took that exactly how it was intended. And I felt more loved in that moment from the risk of telling me that I, I don't tell you enough, not because I don't feel it. It's just, I don't know how you're going to receive it. And I don't know if you feel the same way. But I realize I don't tell you how much I love you. And it was better, that one sentence made me feel more loved than the daily acts of kindness. My point is that was an injection. That was a conscious decision to inject stress and fear into the system. It happened to have gone well. It doesn't always.

• 42:14Simon Sinek?

  And that's part of it, which is sometimes we don't get the response we're hoping for. And that's why we avoid doing it again. And that's where I'm struck by your message. I think it's about peace and calm, not about stress or discomfort.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  I agree. And I'm, I'm glad that person told you how much they, they love you, Simon. A lot of people love you a lot. And I think you're quite lovable. Man, I do.

• 42:46Simon Sinek?

  Thanks, Mike.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I do.

• 42:47Simon Sinek?

  Too bad we're doing this virtually. We could hug now.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  A big hug, man. I'll give you a big bear hug. You're right. And thank you for distilling, you know, our conversation further. It's not about doing some crazy thing. In fact, some of the crazy things I've done, I feel like I had to do just to realize I didn't have to do them.

• 43:09Simon Sinek?

  There you go. And that's the problem. That's the problem because we see somebody on Instagram who does this. And now we think it's a cycle. We think that, that if we do this every day and we overstress the body and overstress the mind constantly, that's what's making us stronger. But it's only adding more stress.

• 43:26Simon Sinek?

  And the pursuit isn't strength, the pursuit isn't grit, the pursuit is peace.

• 43:34Simon Sinek?

  A calm mind. You embody everything you talk about and you and I both know that that is rare.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 43:42Simon Sinek?

  And it's a joy to

• 43:46Simon Sinek?

  to be in it with you, you know?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. You know, I'm very much still building the ship as I sail. I sometimes leave the toilets heat up and I'm known for getting my wallet in airports three to four times per year. But all that being said.

• 44:03Simon Sinek?

  And it's not to promote an album. Hey, you can find my wallet at LAX.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Use my credit card for whatever you want.

• 44:11Simon Sinek?

  That's right.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  You can even use it to buy me.

• 44:13Simon Sinek?

  Buy my album with my credit card. Buy one for your friends. That would be a very clever promotion. To find your credit card.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Listen, you're right. Thank you for distilling it down. Because on some level, I thought, you know, it isn't my message to tell people, oh, you gotta go do crazy stuff. This is all nuanced, you know?

• 44:37Simon Sinek?

  But we live in a world of soundbites where there's plenty of people online telling us to go do the crazy things.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I once watched a podcast with two guys who you would know, I'm not gonna say them because I'm gonna say them mean afterwards, but two brilliant men, influencers, and they sat across the table from one another with their big brains. And they like sparred with these witty aphorisms that they had like loaded up like machine gun bullets. What was the example of one? Like I have my own of them. Like I was gonna say one earlier, like, you know, we train for the pain that we don't choose by the pain that we do choose, right? And they they just had like scores of them and they're like, wham. And the other guy's like, he that's all the only way they could even speak, like there was no,

• 45:25Speaker 01

  he's like, well, I think this, bam. And the other guy's like, that's interesting. Bam. And it's like, it was like a conversation of just like.

• 45:33Simon Sinek?

  It's like, it's like chat GPT talking to Claude.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they were clever.

• 45:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  But like, they weren't actually relating to each other, just kind of like slapping their intellectual balls on the table. And I was like, this is unlistenable, you know? I can't believe my brain's gonna explode. The point is that, you know, as clever as any of those aphorisms or quips are, and as far as like they can get any sort of like guys like us on the internet, there's always nuance. Yeah. Like hardship does create challenges, which is like the thing that you were struggling with earlier. But like you push it too far and it becomes totally selfish and it's like rabbit hole that leads to nowhere. And I lived that because after I walked across America, I climbed Everest.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And when I was on Everest, I was like, this is a really dumb way to die if I die here. And thankfully, praise God, I didn't die there. Cause people forget that getting to the top is only halfway. Exactly. Well played. So, and so the point is that I risked my life for self-improvement, literally. I almost died twice exploring myself, which is selfish. Okay, there's a lot of worthy reasons to die. All of them involve other human beings. Yeah. None of them involve exploring yourself. Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  So any of these things, like when pushed the extreme, they kind of fall apart. And what's left is like this moment in our lives, contributing to others, a feeling of love or transcendence, if we can transmit that to another person, like your friend did to you in that moment. Yeah. Like what's left after all this intellectual snobbery and like personal growth of, you know, it's like, we're here walking each other home. We're all gonna die. Yeah. And can we make each other's walk a little more, can we hold someone else's hand?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I'm realizing we just came up with an accidental aphorism, which, you know. Uh oh. Yeah, I know. Woo, sound the alarms. By the way, before, because I get the feeling, maybe we're wrapping up. I want you to know that I wore my grown up shirt today. Why? Because I just felt like this is a serious podcast, man. Oh my God. If you think this is a serious podcast, I have failed. Seriously, I have failed.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  This is a serious business.

• 48:22Simon Sinek?

  I get told this a lot. People like, they're afraid to come on because I'm serious. I mean, that really upsets me.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  No, I didn't say you were serious. I said, this is a serious podcast.

• 48:33Simon Sinek?

  Well, it's called a bit of optimism, which is not the most serious subject in the world. Here's the accidental aphorism that I've now decided I really like as a metaphor. And I'm not gonna try and unwrap it, but I will lay it out and then we'll leave it for you and for everybody else to just go ruminate. When I said, when you get to the top of Everest, you're only halfway, I think that's good life advice. That when you get to the top of whatever mountain you're climbing, career, whatever, relationship, lock that marriage down, you know, whatever the goal is, when you get to the top, you're only halfway. And the only place to go, once you're at the top, is down. And if you thought the goal was to get to the top, you've missed the point.

• 49:17Simon Sinek?

  The goal is to have peace on the journey up and to have peace on the journey down.

• 49:23Simon Sinek?

  That the joy of coming down is as exciting and the views are as beautiful as going up. And all the aphorisms are all about the journey up. And they never tell us that when you get there, you're only halfway.

• 49:39Simon Sinek?

  And no one gives us any advice on the journey down the other side of the mountain.

• 49:46Simon Sinek?

  Like, alright, I got the relationship. Now what? Oh, now the hard work. Now the hard work.

• 49:56Simon Sinek?

  And I just think there's, there's more to unwrap there, that the joy of life is the whole journey. The joy of climbing Everest is not the peak, it's the whole journey. It's the ability to come down the mountain and say, I went up and I came down.

• 50:13Simon Sinek?

  Cause you can as easily die on the way down as you can on the way up.

• 50:17Simon Sinek?

  In fact, you're more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Way more likely.

• 50:21Simon Sinek?

  You're way more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted and you don't think clearly and you make mistakes. And if you spend too much time on the top, you know all this, you run out of time, you run out of oxygen, you run out of all kinds of things. And I like that too. I like that metaphor. That on Everest, you can spend too much time there. The longer you spend up in that air, you will increase the likelihood of death because you spent too long at the top, which is another perfect metaphor, which is if you're climbing up, make sure to keep the humility that maybe you don't need to stay there your whole life.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I love that.

• 51:03Simon Sinek?

  What a joy.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not gonna say any more words. That big brain of yours just came out with that great multi-tiered metaphor. Come on, let's end.

• 51:12Simon Sinek?

  No, okay, we'll end right there. Mike Posner, thank you for climbing Everest. Thank you for walking across America. Thank you for being bit by a snake. Thank you for taking pills in Ibiza.

• 51:29Simon Sinek?

  What a joy. And thank you for writing hundreds of songs for the joy of writing the songs, even though they're not necessarily as famous. I just love the fact you've written 12 albums.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Lot of them, man.

• 51:44Simon Sinek?

  I know. It's the work, but it's the work. This is the work of the artist. You do it not for others, you do it for yourself. And if they're hits, great. And if they're not hits, you're still making music because you love making music.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's the best.

• 51:56Simon Sinek?

  As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to A Bit of Optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. You can also watch A Bit of Optimism on Spotify. And remember, Spotify premium users can enjoy the show ad-free. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts, and if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek.com. Thanks for listening.