Proof That The Lonely Chapter Works - Jett Franzen

Jett Franzen is a writer and YouTuber. What holds people back? Is it their mindset, environment, or circumstances? One overlooked factor is the ability to be alone. Solitude can build clarity and resilience, but too much can be destructive. So when is being alone a superpower, and when does it become dangerous? Expect to learn the pitfalls of taking too much medication, why being lonely and/or isolated for a period of time is a superpower, why the most dangerous are ambitious but lazy people, the mentality that is keeping people stuck in a terrible mindset, how to escape the hedonic treadmill, why the incel community came after Jett and much more… - Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get up to 20% off Timeline powered by Mitopure (now at a lower price) at https://timeline.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com - 0:00 Why You Need to Confront Your Shadows 10:09 Make It Until You Believe It 22:19 Why Success Demands Real Work 34:36 Can Anyone Go From Nothing to Something? 39:19 Don’t Let Empathy Hold You Back 52:39 Are We Addicted to the Next Win? 56:31 Progress vs Position: What Matters More? 01:08:59 Why Happiness Comes From Acceptance 01:14:05 Escaping the Victim Mindset 01:19:54 Protect What Makes You Unique 01:29:40 How to Use Ego As a Strength 01:36:57 Don’t Let the Fear of Having Self-Belief Hold You Back 01:51:31 Does True Authenticity Really Exist? 01:58:00 Where to Find Jett - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spotify.modernwisdom.com or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.modernwisdom.com Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  I'm sorry it's taken so long, but merch is nearly here this Friday, the 31st of July at 12:00 midday Central Time or 6:00 PM UK time. The brand new Modern Wisdom merch goes live. Head to nwmerch.com now to sign up. You'll get first access and once this is sold out, it's gone, never to be printed again. You've only got six days to be able to buy, so head to nwmerch.com now. I just did a seven day silent meditation retreat. And one of the pitfalls that people tumble into when you're doing that much meditation, like multiple, multiple, like big sits per day for seven days without talking is when difficult emotions come up, they use the releasing technique inside of meditation to not engage with the emotion as opposed to embodying what they call conductivity.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  Conductivity is allowing the emotion to move through you. And if it makes you wanna laugh, if it makes you wanna cry, if it makes you feel great, if it makes you feel horrible, like if it arises and then you sort of release it from you by kind of, it's a kind of pushing away, it's a sort of prophylactic. That's, I'm sitting, I'm working on my mind. This is me being with my thoughts. I'm not being distracted. It's like, yeah, but there's still little pernicious ways that you can use even the most positive habit as a coping mechanism to get away from something.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Carl Jung. And I just think every person needs to read some of his work at some point in their life, but specifically about like sort of confronting yourself and, you know, your own shadow. And I think that's kind of related to what you're saying because Carl Jung was, was believed that for a lot of people, the, the real danger in humans was not the evil that they're capable of, but the evil that they're denying in themselves. And evil is kind of, there's kind of like an ambiguous meaning there in the sense that evil could just be a bad habit. But if I go to the gym, that is allowing me to steer myself away from that bad habit or it's, or it's becoming a mask and it's, this is all happening subconsciously.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  So it's very hard to diagnose it. But I think one of the most important things that people need to go through in their life is constantly confront themselves. Like I very, very recently in trying to start this and it's almost like psychological suicide in a way. That's why it's so scary and dangerous is because you're basically trying to expose yourself to yourself, which potentially is harder than exposing yourself to other people.

• 2:26Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And you're like, yeah, X, Y and Z issue. Now, how am I trying to avoid addressing these issues? And it's like, if you can't confront that shadow and then embrace that shadow, then it's gonna control your life subconsciously. You won't even realize it.

• 2:41Chris Williamson?

  Think about how uncomfortable it is to have done something that you have praised yourself for, that was hard to do, to then have to face the realization that that was maybe a very sophisticated coping strategy.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Like it's not a surprise that people don't really, really wanna face it. I had this conversation last night, you know, you ask people, what's your why? Why do you do, why do you work so hard? Why do you build this business? Why did you start to do content? Why, why, why, why? And there's always a kind of PR answer. There's like a publicly acceptable one. It's usually quite positive sum. It's, uh, even if it's negatively, uh, origin, it's got a positive outcome. It's like the underdog story.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24Chris Williamson?

  But for a lot of people, it's like, I didn't feel love as a kid unless I performed. And I now fear that people are going to abandon me if I'm not working as hard as I can all the time.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:38Chris Williamson?

  Or I was terrifying, terrified in my loneliness. And I realized that if I'm useful, that's kind of the same as being loved because people want me, they don't need me.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51Chris Williamson?

  They want me and that's a good, good enough proxy. So even in your whys, you can kind of get to a level of awareness, which is like, ah, you know, I, I like to do this thing and I felt this way in school and now this is what I'm doing with my life. You go, okay, what if we take it just a level or two deeper than that? The same thing about going to the gym. Why'd you go to the gym? But almost everybody, I think, that when you look at someone who is an extreme in anything, an extreme in terms of wealth, an extreme in terms of beauty, an extreme in terms of competence, an extreme in terms of smart and intellect.

• 4:22Chris Williamson?

  I would guess that almost in every situation, the reason that those people have developed that is because they feel the opposite. The person who's made themselves very beautiful feels ugly on the inside. The person that has made themselves very wealthy always feels like they're not enough. The person who's made themselves very competent often feels like they're powerless. The person who's created all of this skill and these connections often feels like they're alone.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:45Chris Williamson?

  Like you are that shadow and it just, some people turn it into something beautiful and alchemize it. And obviously they get praised by everybody externally and they can kind of kid themselves. And also, as you said, it's psychological suicide. Like who wants to, it's like, dude, I'm living in fucking bliss. You're telling me I already overcame this thing that fucking sucked and now I've turned into something that's great.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:06Chris Williamson?

  You're asking me to like go deeper, reveal this fucking veil from myself to now make this thing that is undeniably and objectively good. My physique, my money, my intellect, my beauty and the way that I bring my skills to the world.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  And you're asking me to go deeper and kind of completely remove that comforting, like disbelief.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a story as old as time with you projecting the opposite of what you are in the sense that, oh, if I lack this thing, I must let everyone know that I have that thing. And it's interesting because I don't even, I don't know if it was on your podcast, but Naval Ravikant was talking about, you should live life like a lion. You know, lions, when they're hunting, they are 110% effort, really viciously going after it. And then when they're not, they're, they're resting, they're not really doing it, they're kind of lazy for lack of better terms. And the interesting thing about that is I think that's what a lot of viciously ambitious entrepreneurs or whatever endeavor you have in life, that's what a lot of people are doing.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  It's like you have the one side that is the, it's like yin and yang, balance of the world. Like we, different cultures over time have sort of established this sort of reality of the world that we live in where, you know, it's stark contrast. So there's certainly a psychological aspect of that. And it's just so, the, the problem is with everyone is it's so hard to, to go deep into your subconscious and like really grasp what you believe. A thing that I talk a lot about on my YouTube channel is the concept of self-belief. I think self-belief is perhaps the most important thing, especially for a young person, when they're trying to pursue whatever goal they have in life, whatever career, even in finding romantic partners, in friendships, whatever it is, you have to believe in yourself because

• 6:58Speaker 01

  if you don't believe in yourself, no one else is gonna believe in you. And the problem is you're trying to convince yourself when you're the one that is the most critical of yourself. So you are the most aware of all your flaws and all of a sudden it's like, now I need to almost brainwash myself into, I'm capable of doing X, Y, Z. I really like Alex Ramosi's advice on that where it's like, self-belief is not gonna just spawn out of nowhere, right? You have to do something which creates evidence, which then not tricks your brain, but convinces your brain that you're the type of person that's capable of doing that. Once you establish the identity, once you actually have the identity, that's all the momentum that you need. Like with me, with social media, it's really straightforward.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  You start it, you suck at it. I posted 1,162 videos before I got 1,000 followers. I sucked. The month after I got 1,000 followers, I got 100,000 followers. So it was just this huge, like I was really a student of the game. Like I was genuinely trying and the problem was, it was like, didn't have that identity, didn't have that identity. I'm like, I just gotta keep throwing stuff at the wall. That's my only, that's the only thing I could think of at the time. So I keep throwing stuff at the wall. All of a sudden, you know, it's law of averages, chance, something's gonna hit. Okay, that hits, okay, maybe it's somewhat possible. Then slowly but surely things start to hit, they hit at a higher percentage. All of a sudden I'm like, wait, I'm the type of guy that could go and record a video in my parents' basement and it gets hundreds of thousands, millions of views and that just changed my identity.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And now I'm like, oh, that's, I can totally do this now.

• 8:28Chris Williamson?

  The interesting thing is people want to speedrun the first thousand videos that get no plays. Same thing on the show. It took 400 episodes and three and a bit years for us to hit 100,000 subs.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:44Chris Williamson?

  And then in the next 400 episodes, we did like three million subs.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exponential growth.

• 8:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And everybody wants to just get to the point where the growth is already exponential. Something I've kind of come to realize is the opportunity, you don't want the opportunity before you're ready for it and you're ready for it far later than you think you are. I got to go on Rogan's show the first time, the back end of 2022. And I think I'd done about 600 episodes at that point and we were maybe at. Million and a half subs, something like that. And I was saying for a long time to myself, like you deserve to be in the room with the big boys. I think that this show adds something to the world that's really beautiful. I think that you're having conversations that aren't being done elsewhere. You should be in that room, but I shouldn't have been.

• 9:35Chris Williamson?

  And if I'd been given the opportunity, before I was given the opportunity, I wouldn't have been ready for it. And the desire for people to want to speedrun it and to not have what Jack Butcher calls latent leverage, like you've just accumulated, accumulated, accumulated. And that skill that you do, like staying ready, meaning that you don't need to get ready. That is what unlocks it when something finally hits. Cause if it hit thirty videos in and your next video was at the quality of someone that had done thirty one videos, like that was your chance.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:04Chris Williamson?

  You blew it because you weren't ready.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  This is a good point.

• 10:07Chris Williamson?

  Speedrunning that, interesting point on the, I guess, like fake it until you make it ish approach.

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  I had this idea for a while that I'm kind of the poster boy for imposter syndrome. And there is a fake it until you make it thing, but there is an alternative, which is make it until you believe it. And that is just developing the stack of proof so high that no matter how much you don't believe in yourself, it just crushed under the weight of evidence.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:40Chris Williamson?

  Does that make sense?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Well, I think those things go hand in hand. I don't think it's one or the other. I think you do, you're faking it till you make it. You're just trying to get up so many shots to then create the evidence. The whole goal is to transition nothing to something. And you're like, can I do this? I don't know if I can do this. And you just show up every single day. Something has to hit. Eventually it has to hit. You know, I was helping some people try, I was trying to encourage my friends and people that I met online that were smaller creators, like I'm not any giant creator by any means, but I was like, well, this is what I learned. It's that you're not going to know what you're doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, but you start to pick up the pieces. It's kind of like Socrates philosophy. I know that I know nothing.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  You have to accept that there's so much that you don't know, but then you also need to accept that there's so much that you'll never know. That's just the human condition. So I'm going to try the best that I can anyways and see what happens. And then all of a sudden the winds start to pile up and all of a sudden, like you said, you're just crushed by the weight of it. So in a way you are faking it till you make it. And in a way you are making it until you believe it.

• 11:46Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  It's kind of, it's kind of like both in.

• 11:48Chris Williamson?

  You're, you're right. I think the reason that I wanted to say it, I said it the day that I did the biggest live show I've ever done, which was the event in Apollo in London. That was three and a half thousand people and I was shitting myself. And before I went on, this guy at the meet and greet that we do beforehand for VVIP ticket people said, do you ever think that you would be here?

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  Like, no, like I'm just the poster child for imposter syndrome. But the reason I wanted to, that felt quite exposing to me as I was about to like supposedly go out on stage and be the guy that's got it all together. And the show went amazing and standing O and all the rest of it, like it was brilliant. But I feel like for some people, believing that you need to have self belief stops you from actually just doing the thing. And it would be easier for you to go, I can just show up with no self belief.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Chris Williamson?

  I can do it when I'm tired, when I don't know what I'm doing, when I'm sure that it's going to go wrong, when no one around me believes in me, when everybody's mocking me for trying it, like I can just show up and do it anyway.

• 13:03Chris Williamson?

  And eventually the winds come.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think at some point, the, the self belief, when people are like, you need self belief. I think it's true, but it's not, doesn't have to be true at the beginning. It's a journey. It's a character arc. Every TV show, movie that you watched, every book you've ever read, always starts with the main character in somehow, some way, being a little bit shaky with their confidence, not knowing what's going on. And then over time, they just develop into that. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on destiny and fate? Like, do you think that you have sort of a, a path that you're meant to follow and that you're gonna get there? I'm, I'm always interested to hear people's opinions on it because I've heard people that are religious, people that are not religious, people that have grown up in different cultures.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  And it's, I can't really find a trend or like a pattern there where, oh, I'm religious, so I don't believe in fate, or I'm not religious, I do believe in fate. I'm always curious. So what do you think about that?

• 14:04Chris Williamson?

  Fate's an interesting one because the personality trait that I care about most is agency, sovereignty over my own experience.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:14Chris Williamson?

  The ability to choose.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  I happen to life, life doesn't happen to me. But then there's times when you're happening to life, but it feels like you're kind of dancing to the wrong tune a little bit. You've branched off into some other universe that wasn't quite right and things aren't flowing as easily. And your gut and your heart and your head don't feel as aligned in the same way. And there's three areas, I think, that don't remove agency, but are interesting to think about. So victim mentality, life happens to me. Agency mentality, I happen to life. And resonance mentality, life happens through me. And that, like being able to open yourself up to what happens, like it comes with a degree of releasing as well. And I know you talk about having fun with the process.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:59Chris Williamson?

  Not being, not gripping things too tightly. Because I happen to life causes you to take things very, very seriously. And that's great. And especially in the beginning, you need to do a thousand videos, you need to study all of the other creators and be obsessive. But after a while, you actually, because of the accumulation of all of your experience, the tool that got you here, isn't the one that gets you your blue belt or your purple belt, isn't the one that gets you to black belt. And after a while, you actually need to learn to let go. I'm sure you've seen the videos of Harland walking around the pitch.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:30Chris Williamson?

  Just like, like a lion, lazy, like straight up lazy, like distracted, fucking riding rodeos and stuff before he goes on. But when he needs to turn it on, he turns it on. And I don't think you can turn it on that much if you're gripping too tightly.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:45Chris Williamson?

  So when it comes to fate, there's certainly, there's certainly times where stuff happens in life and like, there is no way that I actually made this happen. Like the convergence of, the confluence of all of this stuff is way too serendipitous.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:03Chris Williamson?

  And then there's other times where you go, I need to swim into the stream here. Like I'm brushing up against the grain of life and it requires me to like steel myself and the ability to move between those two, to kind of like dance when you need to. And like, I'm feeling my rhythm here a little bit here and things are sort of moving nicely and I can release a little bit more. And then it's like, I need to batten down the hatches and go in full fucking demon mode. And that balance between the two, I think is, is like, it's a skill. And all of this sounds incredibly fluffy and kind of unobjective. And yet almost everybody has a sense of what it feels like to be in flow with life, to be in resonance with life. So call it what you want. I'm aware that on the internet, it's not as rational and as provable and as derivative

• 16:47Chris Williamson?

  from metrics as you would like it to be.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:49Chris Williamson?

  And yet everybody's felt experience knows that this thing can be true.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, metaphysics are fascinating, but I really liked the way you were talking about agency. I really like what you said about Erling Haaland, because I literally just made a video about, about him and I don't, do you know the Olympic skater Alyssa Lu?

• 17:05Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  She was, she's got like the different colored hair, like the pattern. She went insanely viral over the Olympics. But her whole thing, why everyone was so drawn to her and attracted to her was she's just fun maxing, as they would say, like she literally.

• 17:21Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I remember she, wasn't she the lady, somebody asked her, did she win before? And did somebody ask her, like, how is it going to feel like, do you feel the pressure to win again?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And she was like, I'm.

• 17:31Chris Williamson?

  I'm just lucky to be here.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  She was like, I'm lucky to be here. I'm detached from the outcome, but attached to myself or something. I think I'm, I'm paraphrasing that. But she did figure, I, I think she did figure skating for many years was obviously really high performer. And then she quit. And I think the, the narrative, the narrative online is that she didn't like it anymore. And then she came back to it. And then like within a year or two, goes to the Olympics, wins gold. And in all of the videos, she's just really soaked, like I don't think you can fake her joy. Like she's just enjoying it so much. So I, I just made a video that I'm going to post where Erling Haaland is very similar to Alyssa Lu and like he's having fun. He had an interview and they were like, oh, what, like some question about France.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And he was like, well, I, to be honest, I think France will win the whole thing. And then he, he's like, I'm just happy to be here or whatever. That's not really what you'll hear from a competitor. Normally competitors are supposed to be like, I believe in myself and I'm going all the way. But he's just authentic and he's just like having fun. It's interesting, you talk about. Yeah, gripping, I almost, I call it suffocating the experience to death.

• 18:38Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So when you want something so badly to happen, it's simply not going to happen because what you're doing is, and, and once again, this is getting into that metaphysical, there's not really an objective, it's hard to prove it. But the best way I can describe it is that you're operating from a frequency of abundance. You are not forcing anything to come to you, it's flowing. That's why people talk about the flow state. It's like your brain's on autopilot, you're not, you're not really like, it's not that you're not intentional, you're just not like hyper focused on one specific thing all the time. Cause as you said, you can't be a hundred percent all the time because you have a finite amount of resources, right? So time, energy, effort, mental capacity, whatever you want to call it.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  It's interesting because I used to be, when I started out, I was recording 12 to 14 videos a day. And I would get up, I would do my schoolwork, I would go to gym. And the rest of the day, my goal is, okay, research, read books, figure out what videos I want to make. And I would make videos until 4am and I did this every single, I was so dedicated to it. But the thing that sucked was the more time that would pass, the more I felt like, okay, now I'm growing a little bit, there's more stakes, now I gotta somehow perform better. All of a sudden, there's pressure involved, all of a sudden, I really need to make this work right now. And my videos started to suck a little bit more. And I was like, wow, this sucks. And then one day it's 3am, it's the middle of winter and I hadn't recorded a single video.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I was doom scrolling and I would kind of use the excuse, oh, I'm just trying to find inspiration and research. Yeah. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to go outside because it's freezing and the snow is falling. And I'm just going to record videos because I know I can't stay out there forever because I'm going to have to go with my bare hand. I record eight videos and I'm like, you know, I'm just going to do these in one to two takes tops. Every single one of those videos got hundreds of thousands, most of them got millions of views. And I put almost no effort into it and I was just sitting there like, wow, like this is just sort of undeniable. Like I was like, I just need to hit that quote of getting my 12 videos for the day. And then it just happened.

• 20:41Chris Williamson?

  You do understand though, that people who see that and think, wow, all I need to do is just speak stream of consciousness. That doesn't work unless you've got the reps beforehand.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:50Chris Williamson?

  The only way that you can-

• 20:50Speaker 01

  That's the danger.

• 20:51Chris Williamson?

  You can only break the rules of the game once you've learned them, right? You can't leapfrog the, I need to learn, you understand, do you know what woo way is? You come across this, so it's a Confucian idea of trying not to try, effortless action, right?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:08Chris Williamson?

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• 21:52Chris Williamson?

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• 22:35Chris Williamson?

  He is sitting mat, must always be perfectly straight. All of this rigor and restraint, however, is ultimately aimed at producing a cultivated, but nonetheless genuine form of spontaneity. Indeed, the process of training is not considered complete until the individual has passed completely beyond the need for thought or effort. And the kind of summary of this is the next stage of your development might not be more effort, but more ease, right? It might not need more grind, but more grace. And it sounds great to hear that dude, you can just like stream of consciousness, fucking Michael smoke wellness your way to, like, like, like Yap Max, this stuff. But it's like, if you haven't spent a long time removing your filler words and understanding what sort of ideas work well,

• 23:18Chris Williamson?

  and understanding a good speaking cadence and realizing the sort of flow that you need to have. You're not breaking the rules of the game to level up mastery, you're just not playing the game at all.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  And there's a, an interesting analogy with the, the ice skater lady that you talked about. Novak Djokovic nearly quit this, he did quit the sport. And same thing, too much pressure, didn't enjoy it. And then when asked how he got his passion back, just said, I like hitting the ball. I just like hitting the ball. And that I just like hitting the ball thing only works when you've learned how to hit the fucking ball.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's why I like to say, putting your brain on autopilot, right? Because we'll, we'll, you, we'll, we'll continue the sports metaphor, right? Literally what happens when, if you ever played sports when you're younger and you've gotten really nervous. I played baseball, I would go to the plate and I would just be really tense. And what happens is there, there's a lot of blood flow to your brain. And then it doesn't function as it would if you were just chilling in your couch, on your couch or something. And then you sort of now have to be consciously aware of what you're doing. But the problem is all your training and everything like that, it was developing skills for your brain to run on autopilot. So that's why people mess up or the choke, that's like the art of the choke.

• 24:42Chris Williamson?

  The yips.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're absolutely right. It's like, you need to first develop that skill for it to almost become second nature to your brain to allow it to happen. And it is a very dangerous talking point when you tell people, especially when really successful people, like entrepreneurs that make a bunch of money or athletes that have spent literally blood, sweat and tears for 20 plus years of their life, dedicated to something when they're like, oh, I'm just, Shay, he has this one, the MVP of the NBA, Shay Gildes Alexander. He's got this one, like, I, it's kind of corny because I think he was just trying to be nonchalant, but he's like, I feel like the game's just coming to me, I'm flowing, I'm, it's just all natural.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  But it's like, like you're saying, if you're a kid, that's not just going to happen for you. You have to develop the skills and most people, they don't have that agency to then go and do that thing. A lot of people have asked me, what do you think is the one thing that has differentiated you when you started doing social media? And the truth is, I always told people it was agency, but specifically because a year ago from today, I was literally sleeping on the couch of some guy's apartment in Iowa. Like I was doing, and, and I would get, and I would get up every day and I was doing streaming. I started clipping, I started doing these random things. And it's like, all of a sudden I start to build myself up and I started to realize, okay, I really want this.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Like I, like this is not, I feel like when people say they want something,

• 26:13Speaker 01

  95, maybe even more percentage of the time, it's a bluff. Like sure, every, I want the hottest girl in the world, I want to be a millionaire. But wanting something is being willing to pay the price that it requires to get it. And I realized that I was willing to pay the price. And so that was, it was go mode, like I was constantly, I was doing it so much that my parents were literally begging me not to work. They're like, Jet, what are you doing just sitting in this basement? I got no sunlight, like ever, I was just so dedicated to what I was doing. And then people will see me now and I see hate videos about me every day where it's like, why is this guy Jet? Why did he find a way to like hit the algorithm to do this? Like he's doing the same thing as everyone else.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I was like, you literally never saw, you're not acknowledging the 1,162 videos it took me before I got 1,000 followers. You're not acknowledging the sheer amount of times where I posted something and I was wrong, or I got embarrassed, or what, like all that stuff. And then got up the next day and said, I don't, I don't give a shit, I'm just going to keep doing it again. And what I'm realizing now, especially I just graduated college, I'm realizing that it's talk or action, it's you do or you don't, you know what I mean? There's, there's no like, oh, I'm thinking about doing this because I had, I don't know who said this, but the most dangerous people are ambitious, lazy people, people that will lead you to believe that, oh, I'm down to, to go and start this business idea with you and I'm going to go knock doors to, to get leads or do whatever it is.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I had, I had an old friend of mine who was just like that and he was constantly, oh, I'm down to do this and that with you, Jet. And I'm always like, I'm going to do it. And I'm like, all right, come to my house, let's, let's set up the plan. He would come to our house, he would set the plan and then slowly but surely the conversation goes towards girls, random stuff that, that is not, and, and I sort of fell into that trap because you, you act like the people that you're around. And then I realized, wow, that like, the difference between the people that make it and the people that don't are, you dedicated yourself for a ridiculous amount of time. And, and I'm not even including myself in that category, you know, like I, I have way bigger aspirations. I'm nowhere near where I want to be. But I really saw after I put in the work, I was like, okay, it takes this much to get to that point.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  And I'm only, you know, a centimeter down the, down my path of where I want to be. And so then I look at someone like Alex Ramosi, like a naval Ravcon, I'm like, oh yeah, these guys, they put in their due time for so many years, probably got clowned on. Probably everyone that was in their previous life was looking at them like, what is this guy doing? You know, maybe he's like 25 years old and he doesn't have a, any job or he doesn't have anything going for him. But really behind the scenes, he's relentlessly trying on this entrepreneurial endeavor, he's starting a business. No one really respects you. And so you have to be like, okay, do I have the agency to say, screw their opinion, I'm going to do this and give it a shot or do you not?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  And honestly, that percentage is like, may, it's, it's probably more than 95% of people are on the, they think they want it, but they don't really want it. And then, you know, two to 3%, 5% are like, I'm actually wanting to do it. And, and that's what I realized when I, when I started the whole social media thing. I was like, okay, this is going to have to be a daily thing that I want to do, right?

• 29:26Chris Williamson?

  Before you win, everyone will ask you why you're working so hard. And once you win, everyone will tell you how lucky you are.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:33Chris Williamson?

  It's so fucking true, dude. And, and talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources. So you need to allocate yours appropriately. Like literally, if you talk about this, I'm sure you've come across this in neuroscience. If you, if you talk about the thing, it gives you pings of reward in the same way as if you'd done it.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 29:48Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, so few people are operators. Like this is what I learned in nightlife, like club promo. So few people can actually do what you need to do in order to become successful. And that's not some unbelievable level of talent. It's just actually doing the fucking work on a consistent basis. It is so rare. And that's why people tend to be serial successes. And people tend to be serial failures because the transferable skill of here is a thing that needs to be done. Here are the ways to do it. And I show up and do those things. Like when I think back to the start of Modern Wisdom, there was days in 2018 where we did zero plays. Like we'd done multiple weeks of episodes and we had zero, like a full day with no plays.

• 30:33Chris Williamson?

  And then I ruptured my Achilles at the back end of 2020 and constructed a special recording setup where I could have my foot still elevated above my heart. So that I could still, and then a mic that came in like this, so that I could still record podcast episodes with my foot like behind the guest. It's like blowjob camp, like straight from my crotch. And that was the level of, that was the level of dedication that I had to this. I remember I spoke to this girl at a breathwork class back end of last year. And she hadn't seen me since I first moved to Austin, like four years ago. And she said, so great to see you. Are you still, are you still doing those ads? What do you mean?

• 31:16Chris Williamson?

  He says, well, we, we were talking a few years ago and I remember we used to invite you on nights out to, to like come and meet new people in, in this city and country that you'd just moved to. And you'd send me these like photos of some audio software and you were saying, and it was like 11 o'clock at night and you were saying something about ads. And I was like, oh, fuck. I forgot that I recorded a fresh ad read on audio three times per episode for every episode.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 31:45Chris Williamson?

  For 600 episodes. Like before we had dynamic insertion where you can pre-record it and then slot it in.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:51Chris Williamson?

  I did like 2000 ad reads. That was the finished ad read. But think about how many times I failed, like 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral, pro, pre and probiotic, plus all the green super. It's like fucking seared into my brain. And that's because at 12 o'clock at night, even though I was getting invited to go out, I was like, if I want to afford to live in this country that I've said is my dream, I need to do the ads and the ads aren't that expensive, which means that I need to do three of them. And I need to make sure they perform well. So I'm going to re-record them each time. So I keep the sponsors happy. So I have a great relationship with the sponsors and I'm going to do it at 12 o'clock at night because I don't have anyone else to do it.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  It's me, my editor and a Mormon assistant in a Facebook Messenger group chat. And that is like 600 episodes and fucking 2 million subs. Like, okay, that's just what it needs, that's what needs to happen in order to get there.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:48Chris Williamson?

  The one thing that I wish that I'd done, and I know that Alex feels the same, like, like I can give a nod to this, like member of royalty over the far side. I know that Alex feels the same is I, I wish that I'd captured more content in the beginning. I wish that I'd captured more stuff in the first one year, two years. And it's, I guess in some ways it's kind of cool because everything that you make is put out online. That's not the same. Like if you're an artist, like you should have your first pieces of art that were shit. But more of the behind the scenes of what it was like, of what the shitty rigs recording setup and the, like the sleeping on the couch. Because I, you know, Maisy Williams from Game of Thrones, I heard this interview with her and I think she was, uh, Arya Stark at like 10 years old or something in season one of Game of Thrones, super young.

• 33:33Chris Williamson?

  So it was her, basically all of her childhood is her being in this incredibly complicated production.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:40Chris Williamson?

  And somebody asked her, what do you wish that you'd done? And she said, well, I started journaling in season four, but I, I can't remember what it was like in season one, two and three. And I really wish that I had, I really wish that I had that for myself. I wish I had those memories and I also wish that I was able to sort of show other people what it was like in the beginning.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  That's interesting because with me, I do have the documentation. I at least have the documentation of what I post. I didn't document when I would say the same thing a hundred times before I would be cool enough to post it. But yeah, specifically on my, on my YouTube, I have videos that it's funny, while I was making it, I would tell myself I was like 10 years down the line. This is what I'm going to look back and I'm going to be showing people on like a yacht or something like, guys, this is where I started from, you know? Cause like my YouTube videos, they're, they're so like, it's so like, okay, this guy's on the bottom right now, just literally trying to work his way up, being consistent every single day.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's interesting, the cope that people have specifically as it relates to success or, you know, sort of leveling up in life. Doesn't matter what you're pursuing, but I've been, I think that's the, one of the top things I've been getting flack for online is I truly believe if you live in America, it does not matter how far on the bottom you are. I believe that anyone is capable of clawing their way up the ladder. I'm not saying you're going to go all the way to the top, but you can go from the absolute bottom to at least bare minimum middle, if you really have the agency to do it. There's a, there's like an old, I don't know if it's like a news interview with Morgan Freeman. And he, do you know what I'm talking about?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And he was like, the interviewer was, I think it was like a white person telling him something about black people can't.

• 35:26Chris Williamson?

  How oppressed they are.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Like how oppressed they are, like how they can't get to his position. And he, he literally goes bullshit. And they're like, what do you mean? He's like, he's like bullshit. Look at me, like, look at, look at Denzel, look at Obama, look at all these people. And I started to realize I was like, you really have to just be viciously consistent and it's going to take a very long period of time. And granted, I, I was fortunate growing up. I grew up in a working class family, you know, I, I never had to worry about paying the bills. So I 100% recognized the privilege that I've had, but then I was out on my own, sleeping on a carpet, literally not even a couch, a carpet a year, a year ago today. And now I'm on this podcast. Did that happen out of thin air?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Like I'm, I'm a little bit confused there, but I, I do have sympathy for these people. But I think this is a very, it's a pain point that people don't like to be called out on. If you in any way sort of, and for me, it's not even necessarily criticism so much as I believe in them. I wish they believe, would believe in them as much as I believe in them.

• 36:30Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  You know, people are like, I'm not capable of doing this. There's, there's an old study that was done where they took a bunch of women and they said, hey, we want to, we want to test or figure out whether or not that people with facial disfigurements get any type of oppression. Are you familiar with this study?

• 36:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the Dartmouth scar experiment.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. So they basically put makeup on them and they said, yeah, let us know if, if you fell in any way discriminated, discriminated against in this interview you're going into. And they had like high end makeup, they put it on their face and these girls saw in the mirror, they're like, oh, yeah, I have it. And then right before they go in, they're like, hey, we just need to touch it up a little bit. They take it off. They don't know that they go in and, you know, at the end they reported that they felt like they were discriminated against. And more than that, they could, you know, point out a specific thing that the interviewer said that they thought was referencing, you know, the scar on their face. And it really shows you the power of belief. Like, I'm not saying oppression doesn't exist, but what I am saying is a lot of it can be self inflicted for sure. Like people genuinely are told by the media, and this is what's so dangerous. It's so dangerous.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  If everyone in the media is telling you that, oh, because you, you aren't an EPO baby, that you can't make it, you're going to believe that, you're going to internalize that. And subconsciously that's going to dictate the way that you move about the world. And that's such a dangerous talking point. And I understand why it exists because they're trying to be sympathetic and I, I get that. But you, you, once again, you gotta have the agency, you gotta have the discipline to be like, fuck that. I'm going to bet on myself and I think that I can do it. And I wish these people would have a similar view about that. Granted, not all of them. I mean, how many examples are there of people that have gone from nothing to something? There, there's simply too many, at least in America, that you could sit here and say, it's literally impossible. I'm not, it, it's very difficult. I'm not denying that, but you can't say it's impossible.

• 38:18Chris Williamson?

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• 38:59Chris Williamson?

  And you get 30 day free returns globally with global shipping plus a 10% discount site wide. Right now, you can get 10% off everything by going to the link in the description below. Heading to gym.sh/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. That's gym.sh/modernd wisdom and modern wisdom 10 at checkout. If you had disadvantages, I agree with you. You are right. It's harder to be successful if X happened to you. Replace X with gender, race, birth deformity, different language, different country, abuse, et cetera. The main point of the longer conversation is that despite the disadvantage, you only have one choice. What are you gonna do about it? Number one, take action anyway and become proof to other people like you, your people,

• 39:44Chris Williamson?

  also born into or abused into this tragedy that you were, that they too can overcome it. Number two, blame and complain. And to be clear, you can do whatever you want. I support your choice, but only one of those decisions will make you better. And I wish I could say this without getting attacked. But you know who wins by you not being successful? Whoever or whatever you blame. And fuck them or fuck that. You can lead a rebellion of one and blame the one thing that you can control, which is you. In your mind, redefine the word blame as give power to. And when you do that, there's only one person you're gonna wanna give more power to. And that's you. For everyone who's had shitty circumstances, I'm on your side, your long-term side, the side that wants you to win.

• 40:30Chris Williamson?

  So do it anyways with all the disadvantages and still tell them to shove it and win. I wanna be clear again. If you had tough shit happen to you, it sucks and it's not your fault. But now what? Where do we go? My two cents, win anyway and prove that you can win even when the chips are stacked against you or you're dealt a lousy hand. Because we can't get dealt a new hand, we've gotta play the cards that we've got rather than hoping the dealer rules in our favor. So again, what are you gonna do with your shit hand? The only thing possible, you play the best you can. Hormozzi, fucking slammer dude.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  That's almost like, that's almost like a modern day Marcus Aurelius quote. That sounds like.

• 41:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a little bit, it's updated for 2026, but um, I mean, that's, I understand that there is this line that needs to be walked, which is if somebody's been through a lot of shit, not recognizing that feels callous.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Chris Williamson?

  And uncaring and unempathetic. And yet, if you look at what the real world impact of that is, do those people really want to be coddled if they want to get out of this thing? Probably not. And when you realize that there is a self fulfilling prophecy in telling people that because of your X disadvantage, you're not going to be able to do this thing. What is meant as empathy ends up being restriction. And I don't know, I, again, like you, like not salubrious, but perfectly fine upbringing. But no, like given no objective advantages.

• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  The fact that there are people who have had it worse doesn't negate the fact that most people, most people exist in the middle of the bell curve.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:15Chris Williamson?

  Like they didn't grow up with extreme abuse, in extreme poverty, with the birth disfigurement, like most people, and this is what becomes really pernicious. You can use, look at these people at the bottom end of the tail. You're not sufficiently recognizing their level of disadvantage. And that gets like concept creeped out to include earlier parts of the tail as well. And then actually bits of the bell curve in the middle. Does that make sense? Well, like people who haven't had those disadvantages pattern match themselves with the people who have.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:50Chris Williamson?

  And they, they take on board that sympathy as a self fulfilling prophecy of restriction. You're like, oh, that's me. And this is one of the reasons that for a long time, everyone's been real worried about pedestalizing victimhood, because it turns the value system upside down. It says that being the most oppressed is actually the position that you want to try and be in, because success is something that is only achieved through oppression. And victimhood is more noble in some ways.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Chris Williamson?

  Uh, which is, it's incentivizing people in this very pernicious, like presenting as pro-social, but functioning as like a speed governor on a car.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yep. If you're a parent and you have a kid and your kid does something that isn't good, do you say, oh, that's okay, like you'll, you'll get it next time or it's okay, like you're a kid? Or do you tell your kid, hey, that's not how a good human operates? And we need to do better than that. And, and, and do you give them constructive criticism? Well, if you're a good parent, you give them constructive criticism. Now, at that time, is the kid gonna like it when you tell them they can't do it? Absolutely not. But why do parents do it? Because they love their kids and they're gonna do the thing that's gonna make them uncomfortable and maybe they're out in public and their kid's gonna throw a fit. But they have to do it because they love their kids.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  And the only way that you can help someone grow is by unfortunately pointing out a lot of their faults. It's not the only way, but it's essential. And so I look at, it's like, I, I call it, and this isn't my original phrase, suicidal empathy, where people are like, oh, I'm gonna empathize with this person who is, has self destructive habits. And I'm gonna say that it's okay. Why? Because that's the culture, that's the narrative that we live in. Everything everyone does is okay. There, there's, there's nothing that is not allowed, except for you telling me that there's something not allowed. And then all of a sudden, you know, 10, 20 years goes down the line, this person doesn't have the life that they want, they still have these self destructive habits that are causing to some extent their inability to succeed.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  And then they're like, oh, it's the system, it's let me, let me place the blame on everyone else. Again, if you were a parent, you loved your kid, would you not criticize them out of a place of love? I think that you would. I think that you would. And you have to do that as a friend, you have to do that as a peer, you have to do that as a member of society. But the problem is, it's a story as old as time, everyone's gonna hate you. Everyone's gonna hate you, no, everyone wants to live in their own little world that, you know, everybody else is against them. And are you familiar with Nietzsche's idea of resentment, the slave and master morality?

• 45:36Chris Williamson?

  No, tell me.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  So Nietzsche basically believed, and, and I agree with him, that like, we'll, we'll apply it to modern day context, poor and middle class people, not all of them, but some of them, they seem to be obsessed with the concept of morality and virtue. And it's not that morality or virtue are bad, but they weren't able to get external success. They weren't able to get money, they weren't able to get the good wife, whatever, the, the nice house. So they don't really have the life that they want. And so what they do is they move the goalpost from external success to internal virtue, which they conveniently get to define. So now I don't have to win in life. Instead, what I can do is I can just say, oh, but I'm a good person.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Who defines what a good person is? You, because it's subjective to you. So it's almost like a free cop out. Now, I'm not saying by any means that you shouldn't want to be a good person or that virtue and character aren't, I feel like my dad's gonna listen to this and he's gonna be like, oh my gosh, yeah, what are you saying?

• 46:35Chris Williamson?

  Like shout out, shout out Jed's dad, dude.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, shout out, shout out my dad. But you have to understand that, like, people are constantly coping, it's subconscious, it's, they're not even aware of it. And then I, for me, I just can't stand these people because they're so obsessed with morality and virtue and they're like, oh, I hate all these people. When it's like, I don't think you're aware that what you're doing is just cope because you couldn't get the external success. I'm not saying external success is everything in life, right? There's nuance to this, of course. But Nietzsche recognized this. He realized that it's like, hey, these people, they're kind of just making up some bullshit to make themselves feel better. And that's what happens. And I mean, I'm a Christian myself, but a lot of Christians do this, where they're like, oh, you know, people online say that Jesus is the personification of slave morality.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  You know, the, the person, they have resentment built up against the people that are successful, then they switch, they, they get to choose what's actually right. But the thing is, is that Jesus is not slave morality at all, because slave morality comes from a place of resentment and Jesus didn't have resentment. So I really hate that narrative online. But it's like, you, you'll, you, I will admit that you see this a lot in Christian communities or whatever, where they're kind of be like, ah, like, you know, it's, it's harder for, surely I tell you that it's harder to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to walk through a needle, whatever that Bible verse is. And they're like, you shouldn't get money, like that's anti-Christian. And it's like, well, you could do amazing things with money. You can help people with money. It's not inherently, yeah, it's cope, it's cope.

• 48:05Chris Williamson?

  It's cope.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  So the problem is, you go online, you say that, you are, it's funny, because I, I've posted a few videos on this over the, over my time on social media. And every time I get stitched a hundred times, everyone's like, you know, fuck this guy Jed.

• 48:20Chris Williamson?

  Out of touch.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's funny because there'll be like, you know, you'll get a comment, he actually thought we were gonna agree with him. No, I, I didn't think you were gonna agree with me. I was just willing to say what needed to be said. But these people are, it, it's just everywhere you go, you see cope, cope, cope. I used to be that guy, that's how I know, right? And I'm not saying everyone does this. I'm not saying everyone that is concerned about being a good person is doing it out of resentment for people that have external success, not saying that at all. But a very large percentage of them surely are.

• 48:47Chris Williamson?

  It's such a cheap shot as well. Like it's so predictable. Before you look at the comment section, you can already see, like, this is out of touch, he doesn't understand, he thinks that the only thing that matters is materialism. And yeah, there's this idea, idea from Isaiah Berlin called the inner citadel. Familiar with that? Very similar to what you're talking about. So he says, um, when the path to human fulfillment is blocked, we retreat into ourselves, into a kind of inner citadel where we're walled off against all of the fearful ills of the world and we make our own laws. So an example of this would be, um, your leg gets injured in a battle and you have the choice to either try and rehabilitate the leg. But if you can't rehabilitate the leg, then you cut your leg off and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 49:34Chris Williamson?

  Like this, we see it everywhere. People that say weight has no bearing on health because they've struggled to lose weight. People who say that jobs are for suckers because they've struggled to hold one down and they turn to a life of crime. People who have been cheated on and found it difficult to get a relationship to work. So they turn to polyamory or they become incels. Like at each of these different.

• 49:59Chris Williamson?

  I guess it would be vol cells. At each of these different junctures, what somebody is doing is saying, the world's denied me that which I want. I'm going to rewrite the rules, retreat into myself so that I no longer need to face the reality that I could get it if I did something different. And again, like this is, there's two very, very unpopular things to talk about online. There's many, but like two that are kind of reliable philosophically. One of them is that, and the other is the arrival fallacy. If you say the view from the top of the mountain that you're climbing up is not going to be as satisfying as you think it is, you sound like a fat guy at a buffet telling someone who's starving that food doesn't taste that good.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:35Chris Williamson?

  Like you suck the engine out of them and the oxygen gets pulled out of the room. It's seen as like bourgeois, it's seen as judgmental, as opulent, and rightly so. You, a person who has the thing that I want, are telling me, a person who doesn't have that thing and wants it, that the thing I want won't satisfy me. But how many people that have got a problem with their self-worth or a scarcity mindset reach some level of success or fame or monetary notoriety and then go, oh man, all my inner problems were solved. It was so great.

• 51:17Chris Williamson?

  Like, so one of two things is happening with that, which is the first one, it is true that when you achieve something, that you try to fill an internal void with an external success, it's not going to reliably work.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Chris Williamson?

  The other one is that everybody that reaches a level of success is part of some weird cult cabal that's all carteling to convince other people to like pull the ladder up after them. So that they, it's like.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  No one else can win.

• 51:43Chris Williamson?

  Exactly, exactly. It's like, oh, it's not that good. I'm fucking idiots.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:47Chris Williamson?

  Like, no, that's obviously not the case. It's obviously the case that people can't fill internal voids with external accolades.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is, like you're saying, it's any time that you'll see an interview with a really successful person, this seems to be a common trend. Well, they'll say, you know, the favorite days of my life were when I was going through the struggle, when I was, you know, building every single day, was unsure whether or not I was going to make it because that made me who I am. Or, you know, they'll say like, wow, like it really was the journey the whole time. I've, I've said this before, I think winning a championship as a professional athlete has to be literally one of the most underwhelming feelings ever because you just worked, however, whatever percentage of your life, this was your main goal, or so, so at least they say.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden you have it, but now you have this thing and it's, okay, my life is the same. It's like, are you familiar with Lacan's theory of desire? So in order to desire something, the object of obsession must be perpetually absent. You can't have that thing.

• 52:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Because the moment you have it, you can no longer want it. This is, this can apply to anything in life. Relationships is the biggest one. This is why it's, people are always talking about, why is it that like, right when I express to this girl that I'm interested or, or tell this guy that I like him, it seems like they pull away. Well, cause now they know they have you and it's not really, they don't have that fantasy in their head. Well, the same concept sort of applies when you have this big goal and you want it and you're convincing yourself like, that's going to be the thing. And it never is. And this is, I, I, I've never really seen an interview where I felt like the successful person was being genuine, where they didn't in some way, shape or form acknowledge that if they were asked. But it all goes back down to Albert Camus has this quote, it's the end of the myth of Sisyphus.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, the struggle towards heights is enough to fill any man's heart. And he's basically said, like, it's literally the journey. It is Sisyphus relentlessly pushing that boulder up. He knows he's never going to get it to the top, but it's the process of pushing that boulder up. That's everything. When you think about life, if you, if your life is a timeline, right? Well, let's say you start going towards your goals when you're 18 years old or maybe 22 when you graduate college. So you have like 22, if you're lucky, you live till 75, 80, but probably you're going to tap out at like 60. So 99.9% of like actual time, the metric of time is going to be chasing the thing.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  And then you're going to get it. So why in the world would it make sense to just be like, oh, I can only enjoy myself once on there? Cause you won the cosmic lottery to be alive, right? It's like one in 43 trillion or something like you're winning the lottery multiple times to just be alive. And so why would you then be like, oh, I'm only going to do what I have to do to enjoy a point 000001% of my life to be like, ah, I did it. And then probably after that, you might be underwhelmed or depressed or something like that. I think you need to enjoy that 99.9% and, and that is enough to fill a man's heart.

• 54:47Chris Williamson?

  From the meditation retreat, one of the biggest takeaways I heard was, for many of us, goals are contracts to self-criticize until we succeed. Like running away from a monster that never gets tired. This contract makes permanent success necessary to avoid being swallowed by misery. Like desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:07Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, you're right. Almost all of your time is going to be in the pursuit. And, and what that means is you are going to be underwhelmed. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their twenties. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover effectively changes, even if your habits stay strong. Mitopure from Timeline contains the only clinically validated form of erythylin A used in human trials.

• 55:51Chris Williamson?

  It promotes mitophagy, which is your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones. In studies, this supported mitochondrial function and muscle strength in older adults. It's not about pushing harder, it's about actually supporting the cellular machinery underneath your training. If you care about staying strong into your 30s, 40s and 50s and beyond, this is foundational. Best of all, there is a 30 day money back guarantee plus free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. And right now you can get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom. And modern wisdom at checkout.

• 56:31Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever seen Scotty Scheffler, the golfer, talk about what happens when he won the championship? That's one of the few pattern breaks.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:40Chris Williamson?

  In somebody winning.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I know exactly what you're talking, I made a video on it. I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 56:44Chris Williamson?

  Fucking awesome. So yeah, I mean, he wins the masters or a grand slam, perhaps some huge illustrious title, and he gets to do the press juncture at the end and sitting down and everyone's going, dude, like, how's this going to be? Like, how, how does this feel? And yeah, he, he has a slightly surprising response.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  End of the day, it's like, I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I don't, I'm not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world because what's the point? You know, this is not a fulfilling life. It's, it's fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of like the deepest, you know, places of your heart. You know, there's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life. And then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world and then they're like, what's the point? And, you know, I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Perhaps if you could be satisfied simply by hitting the goal, you would kill yourself.

• 57:48Chris Williamson?

  That's the most, most Jet Franzen response to that video that I could ever, but you're not far off, right? Like the reason that the arrival fallacy exists and the reason that we have hedonic adaptation is that if the first time you had sex, you were done with sex for the rest of your life. Or the first time that you killed a deer, you would be satisfied with that. You wouldn't be chasing.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:10Chris Williamson?

  The next piece of progress.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Like.

• 58:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. There's this dukkha, D U K K H A. It's this line from the Buddha and a lot of people hear, life is unhappiness. Like is one of the translations of this, but dukkha can actually be translated as unsatisfactoriness. So it's not, sorry, life is suffering. Like life is suffering is the line from the Buddha, but it can also, dukkha could also be translated as life is unsatisfactoriness.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Like, yeah.

• 58:44Chris Williamson?

  Morgan Housel has this story about when him and his family went away on holiday. And he'd been planning this trip for ages and it was the first one that him and his wife had got to do with the kids. And they, they knew exactly where they were going to sit at this resort. They, they, they'd looked at the menu in advance. They knew what drinks they wanted to get. They'd done everything. And they arrived and they sat down the first night and he thought about what the experience was like. And he said, well, the drink was nice, but it was like a little bit too much ice. And I probably should have got it blended as opposed to, as opposed to on the rocks. And like, it was really beautiful. The table that we chose was great, but like, there was some sand between my feet. And that, that sort of was irritating a bit. And I, I, look, the veal was lovely, but the salmon also could have been a little bit better.

• 59:28Chris Williamson?

  And then he walks out onto the balcony and he has this thought, like, as they've arrived, the first day that they're there. And he's like, this is so great. We should come back here next year. Like immediately in the process of enjoying the thing, he's already moving the goalposts to the next thing. The experience is unsatisfactory and the enjoyment of the thing is primarily based around recreating the anticipation of it again. During the experience of it is kind of deranged.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  You know, I was, I, a couple of months ago, I went out to eat dinner and I ordered a steak and they gave me a chicken. And I was happy that they gave me the chicken because I was like, wow, I was like expecting the steak. And I just got a chicken, which is like a curve ball. And I started to realize that this is like your, the ability, my, my, uh, my sophomore year AP US history teacher always had this quote, roll with the punches. You've probably heard that before, roll with the punches, guys, roll with the punches. But truly that's one of the best skills to develop or personality traits. I don't, I don't know if it's, you know, genetic, but your ability to just go with the flow is, makes things so much better. My fa, I come from a very anxious family.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  My family's very anxious. They like to plan everything in advance and love them to death. But like, sometimes it's like, wow, like we're, I feel like, like we're suffocating the experience. And it's one of those things where it's like, if you just kind of let it happen, then you're going to like it more. My brother is not a very anxious person. And I always find that like, being just in the presence of my brother, when you're like going and doing things relaxes you. And it's just like better. It's like, if I could have anybody on a road trip with me, it'd be my brother. Cause he's just, let me just go with the flow. It's not too serious. He just, he's very practical about the way that he approaches things. And yeah, I think life, you just, I don't know, the expectations and wanting something to be a certain way, it kills it.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  And suffering lives, so you have the expectation of how the world should be and which is personal to you. And the reality of the world, the delta between those two points, that's where suffering lives. Because you're like, well, it was supposed to be like this and it wasn't like that. And so in other words, if you can just eliminate the expectations, which in all fairness, you probably can eliminate expectations, but you can at least lower your expectations. You'll be pleasantly surprised a lot of the time.

• 1:01:52Chris Williamson?

  It's only suffering for as long as reality under delivers on your expectations.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:56Chris Williamson?

  If reality over delivers on your expectations, that's, that's pleasure.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Chris Williamson?

  Right. But so, yeah, I mean, low, low expectations are kind of the key to a good life. But also it's a revolutionary thing to say in the modern world, I'm good with that or I'm satisfied. That's good enough for me. Like satisfaction is kind of seen as surrender. And

• 1:02:21Chris Williamson?

  that's again, creating this like inverted motivation.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  It's not biological to us. I'll tell you that much. Are you familiar with the hedonic treadmill?

• 1:02:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  So it's like, I was always, when I found out about the hedonic treadmill, I liked so much of life just made sense to me right there. Because I was like, the moment, like, everything has to regress to the mean, it has to. So think about our ancestors, right? A lot of our ancestors lived in tribes and they would hunt for game to get the food that they would need to survive. Let's say you fought a bear, you and some of the other men of the village went out, fought a bear. This, that's a huge achievement. That's like awesome. You're probably, you probably have, you're high on life at that point, right? You just killed a bear and now your village has meat or whatever. And you're feeling really good. It's like, so what, you're just going to put your guard down now? Like you're just, that's it? And so then you would not care. And then all of a sudden, you know, there's infinite amount of predators out in the world and then they would just.

• 1:03:15Chris Williamson?

  Next back comes a long and fucks you up.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so you, you literally have to regress back to the mean, like so many people, I'm sure people will ask you this. It's like, oh, what's it like having so many followers? And it's like, dude, I don't know why, but when I had less than a thousand followers and I gained two, three followers in a day, that almost felt better than right now where I'm, you know, getting thousands of followers a day. And it's like, that's just how it goes. It, it has to rest in me and it's, you know, the easiest metaphor, whatever you want to call it, is like developing tolerance for drugs. Like eventually you're just, it's not going to be enough. You just need to keep pushing it more and more.

• 1:03:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, the ruthless thing I think about people that are competent and that drive themselves is that every new level of success becomes the minimum level of acceptable performance moving forward. This is the curse of competence.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Chris Williamson?

  Right? If you're good at things and you regularly do well, then success doesn't become a cause for celebration. It's simply the minimum baseline entry that you're allowed to pursue. Like anything less than success would be failure and success itself becomes nothing more than acceptable. Like that. There's a line from a John Bellion and Luke Combs song, which is, uh, if the higher I climb, it's the further I fall, then why love anything at all? And he's talking about falling in love with somebody and opening himself up. But I think the same thing's true for a lot of people in pursuits. And it sounds very morbid, like I'm aware that this sounds morbid, but it's good because you do existentialism and I'm British. So it's kind of the same thing.

• 1:04:44Chris Williamson?

  But a lot of the time, the, I, I, I realized this last year. This podcast is the eighth biggest podcast in the world, eighth biggest in the world. Spotify chart last year, fucking unbelievable, right? Spotify wrapped, I wake up one day, we found out one day before and I'm like, holy fuck, that is.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 1:05:02Chris Williamson?

  Just so fucking insane to be this guy who's not been a part of a network, who's never taken money from outside investment, who started it in his bedroom and still does it with the same editor he had eight years ago. To get to that point is so fucking phenomenal. And that lasted for about half an hour. And then this thought crept in, which was, dude, if I'm, if I'm not in the top 10 next year, I might as well kill myself.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Chris Williamson?

  Like eighth would be just about okay. Seventh would be good, but presumably only for about half an hour before I realized that was the new baseline. And if I'm not in the top 10, then it's a failure.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, that's the same way other people will perceive you as well.

• 1:05:38Chris Williamson?

  Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jimmy Carr's got this fucking wonderful line where he says, trajectory is more important than position. So if you are number 300th in the world, but last year you were number 600th, people are like, wow, dude, you're on the, yeah, things are moving right. But if you're third in the world, last year being first, that is almost toxic. And I think a big part of it is that we have such recency bias. We can only really remember what's going on. We also want to be, someone that's moving in the right direction has to be popular in the moment. And there's always this sense, there's a kind of like nepotism, I suppose, or like inheriting daddy's money.

• 1:06:14Chris Williamson?

  There's this sense that if it hasn't happened recently, maybe the underlying signals that are supposed to be the reliable indicator that you're good at doing the thing. And maybe they've fallen away. I've been fascinated, obviously because of this, this number eight in the world thing last year. And, and that creates a new kind of pressure, a different kind of pressure. But I've been fascinated about the difference between having never made it and having fallen off. The perception of those two things. And the gold medalist syndrome is exactly that. Gold medalist syndrome is having fallen off. And I think, I'm sure you've seen the studies that say, uh, bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Which is just fucking hilarious. Like just about nearly being there and not getting it.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Chris Williamson?

  Is worse than being a few, a few steps away.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. Well, first off, congrats on number eight in the world, bro. That's like ridiculously impressive, especially.

• 1:07:11Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Like you were saying, you started on your own, you didn't take money from outside investors, which is huge. Are you familiar with our author Schopenhauer's, the will to live, the will of life? So the will is basically, it's almost like this metaphysical part inside of you that it creates your desires. He, he argued that you're not the one that creates your desires. It's just created by the will. And then you sort of recognize those desires or, or you realize that they exist. And then this sort of subtly dictates the decisions that you make in your life. And the will is not concerned about you being happy at all. As a matter of fact, he almost argues, he does argue that happiness is a temporary state.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  You cannot always be happy and happiness, even when you do get it, it's, it's very short, short-lived happiness. And it's really because the will just wants more and more and more. And the, the, the desire of the will, it just wants to replicate itself. So that's like drawing you to have sex and reproduce. And basically the will is just telling you, oh, you gotta do all these things. And he just relentlessly pushes the goalposts more and more. And that's why author Schopenhauer is widely regarded as, you know, a pessimist. People say, if you're going to get into philosophy, don't start by reading him. That's a very interesting talking point to me. It seems like the internet hates pessimism, which I understand why. You don't want to be around negativity.

• 1:08:35Chris Williamson?

  It's a boner killer.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they, you, you got to acknowledge that to some extent, there's a lot of truth behind some of the talking points in relation to pessimism. And that's what I tried to, I, I tackled that idea on my YouTube channel. But yeah, even people will be like, oh, Jeff Franz and he's, he's, he's a doomer. He hates all this stuff, even though at the end of my videos, I'll try to, you know, be like, okay, but.

• 1:08:57Chris Williamson?

  Have an uplifting encore.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:08:59Chris Williamson?

  Have you looked at instrumental goods versus ultimate goods?

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:09:04Chris Williamson?

  That stinks of a video that you should do. Uh, that's, I'm putting a request into the DJ for you to do, uh, so instrumental goods, doing something for something.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  Ultimate goods, doing something for, for itself.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Chris Williamson?

  And if you ask the, why do you do that thing for any pursuit? Eventually you get to an ultimate good, right? And typically it's something like to feel peaceful, to feel happy, to be loved, to be enough, to be able to rest. But instrumental goods are, uh, why'd you get up and go to the gym? Well, to have a good body. Well, why'd you want a good body? It makes me feel fit. Well, why'd you want to feel fit? And you just keep on going down, down, down, down, down to something close to an ultimate good. And my concern for a lot of people, including myself, is that we live instrumental lives. Our entire lives are instrumental.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:53Chris Williamson?

  We are doing the thing to do the thing, to get the thing, to do the thing, to get, as opposed to.

• 1:09:59Chris Williamson?

  A radically revolutionary belief, which is maybe I can just sidestep all of this and go straight to the ultimate. Like, what is the, what is the feeling that I'm trying to get? Typically, it's a feeling. And this is another idea that I've been so fucking obsessed with. And it came out of the, it came out of the meditation retreat last week, that

• 1:10:21Chris Williamson?

  if, as a guy, you pray at the altar of fuck your feelings, just work harder, how can you be surprised when you achieve but you don't feel?

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Chris Williamson?

  Like, the route that has gotten you there, the fuel that has arrived you at the destination, has robbed you of the satisfaction of being there.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Chris Williamson?

  And that, to me, is just, it's this game. It's this game that's always going to be played. And what we've done, I'm gonna sound incredibly left wing here, in modern society with the meritocracy and capitalism, is we've encoded, we have like canonized and created an architecture of pushing the hedonic adaptation button as much as possible. It's a, it's an instrumental life. It is an instrumental life. Why do you want the next rung on the job ladder? Why is it that you want that? Or a bigger paycheck and I'm gonna get more respect from people? And it's like, but what are you sacrificing? Oh, I'm gonna be homeless with my kids, my relationship might suffer and I'll sleep worse and my health might degrade. But like, you know, the thing, like, what about the thing?

• 1:11:24Chris Williamson?

  And, yeah, it is radically revolutionary to just go, fuck it. Like, I'm good. I'm good. I like, I like this. I like where I'm at.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  The scariest place to be, and this is what, this is my biggest fear. I, I'm absolutely horrified of it, is waiting all day for 5:00 PM, all week for Friday. You wait each summer for the winter and so on and so forth. It's like, you've probably heard those people say, oh, you know, once I, once I graduate high school, then I'll be away from my parents, then I can do what I want. Oh, well, now I'm in, I just got, I just gotta finish college. I finished college up, and then you know what? I'm gonna go travel the world. But you know what? Then, then they graduate college. I gotta work on my career right now. I just, and it's, there's always something. There's always something. And then you never live your life. And there

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  is a talking point online where people will say happiness is just not wanting any moment to be anything other than what it is.

• 1:12:22Chris Williamson?

  Not wanting things to be different.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're not stuck in the past. You're not anxious about the future. You're fully accepting the moment. If you go outside and there's construction, and it's like really loud, this goes back to what we were talking about before. It's like you had the expectation that there was a world that existed, that there wouldn't be construction. And the fact that there is construction, the delta between those two points, that's where you're suffering, you're getting pissed off.

• 1:12:44Chris Williamson?

  You know what's an interesting indicator, early indicator of this? How much somebody complains? Somebody who complains a lot is basically admitting that they have a poor model of reality.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:56Chris Williamson?

  Why is there all of this traffic? Because reality has traffic.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Chris Williamson?

  And your model of the world was a reality that didn't have traffic. Your model of the world is wrong. Reality is undefeated.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:06Chris Williamson?

  It's a million and O, a million knockouts, right? Reality is undefeated. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why, for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health, and regulates your appetite while also curbing cravings. Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration, so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any

• 1:13:48Chris Williamson?

  reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to drinklmnt.com/modernd wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernd wisdom. There's this little essay that I want to read to you. "Don't Wait. Life is happening right now. I've become obsessed with the belief that life's duties will one day be out of the way, and then you can finally start doing the thing you want to and living your life." It's a myth. It's a lie. Marie-Louise von Franz talks about the provisional life. She says, "There is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being, one is doing this or that. There is always the fantasy that sometime in the future, the

• 1:14:33Chris Williamson?

  real thing will come about." Similar to another idea called deferred happiness syndrome. "The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyl is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death. It's strange. I regularly have this sense of foreboding and guilt about time slipping away, that I'm not making enough of my days, especially when I look back on a week and I know that I've done things and dedicated myself to pursuits and working hard, but I can't fully recall how I spent my time. So I worry that this is just a one-week microcosm of how I look back on my entire life, as time having passed but me not really noticing it, of existence occurring but living not actually having got going."

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Wow. You know, I, when I was in later years of high school, I was trying to save up money for college. So I picked up all these jobs. One of the jobs I picked up was, you know, that stereotypical factory job. And I was in Chicago, it's middle of winter, freezing, I'm working the graveyard shift, so middle of the night. And I worked this job, and I remember I would sit there and I'd be like pissed off, because all my peers, all the people that I knew, none of them were working a fraction as hard as me. And I knew their parents were gonna pay for their college, or whatever it is. They, they were living life up.

• 1:15:59Chris Williamson?

  That's the temptation of the victim mindset.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so, well, I fell, I was the victim mindset, because I would be, it would be 1:00 AM, and I'm in this trailer lifting heavy boxes. It's like 30 degrees in this trip, because they literally don't have heaters. And I'm like, life just sucks, man. Like, I'm, I'm just like sitting there, I'm like, why, why does this gotta happen? Whatever. And there was, every once, most of the time you'd be alone, but every once in a while, you'd work with another person in this. I became friends with this other guy, and me and him, it was like the double the victim mindset. But he was kind of playful with it, which I liked. He was like, you know, life is so fucked. And then we'd joke about how fucked it was, or whatever. And, you know, I remember like sitting there and I, and I built up resentment, because I was like, man, these other people, they're not working

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  as hard as me. I'm, I'm just trying so much more than them. And yeah, and that went on for, for years. And that wasn't the only job I had. I was working three jobs over the summer. I was just constantly doing stuff. And then we get to college and these people, I had better grades than them, and they would go to a nicer school because they could afford it. And I'm like, ah, man. Man, I really keep drawing the, the short end of the stick. Joe Rogan, he has this, this one clip. I don't think it's like viral or anything, but he's like, he's like, those people that always say, I can't catch a break. He's like, you need to get away from those people. I can tell you as someone who used to be that person, you need to get away from those people. Because like you're saying, if you complain, that this is, all of a sudden, you're just making your life worse. And then I eventually, I ended up, like, it was super cliche, but ended up reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  And I was like, wow, like, this is, this is incredible.

• 1:17:30Chris Williamson?

  The ancient clean your room by Jordan Peterson.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's, so it's like, okay. Um, and then event like, you know, and I, and I sort of was that way for a while. I mean, it was years. It wasn't like I just flipped a switch and boom, now I'm not victim mindset anymore. It was, well, let me take a hard look on my life. I have no friends. I have nothing going for me. I'm just going to school, minding my business, and that's it. Okay, we need to make some, some sort of change. And to amplify this, what makes everything so much worse is that for millennia, the only people you compared yourself to were the other people in your tribe, right? You couldn't, you couldn't know what was going on with Kelsey when she was studying, like, you, you didn't know. You didn't, we didn't have Instagram.

• 1:18:09Chris Williamson?

  What was going on in the fucking valley over?

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:12Chris Williamson?

  A 30-person pod in 150-person Dunbar group. That's it.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so what's happened is, social media just rapidly hit us. Our brains have not psychologically adapted to under, to, to comprehend this. So a guy like you, you get millions, potentially billions of views every month. It's like, all of a sudden, all these people have opinions on you. But more than that, what do you do? You doom scroll. Everyone doom scrolls to some extent, or you're going online. And what does, what does online feed you? The top 1% of everyone. You're, you're seeing the most attractive people, the funniest people, the richest people, the most well-spoken articulate people, and on and on. And then you're like, wow, my life sucks. Like, I, like, I was sitting down there, and it would be like, Andrew Tate starts getting popular, like, like I see the Nelk Boys. Like, everyone just seems to be living this amazing life. And it would really

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  piss me off, because you, you see these degenerates, and you're, and I was, why do they get that? That's not fair. Like, they're not doing anything that's worthy of, you know, making all this money, or having all this attention, and being in the public eye. And I wanted that, and I wanted it bad. And it literally wasn't until I actually let all of that go, that I was like, you know what? I don't have resentment. I can accept that I am who I am. All of a sudden, all those things started to fall into my lap. And it's like, that's really how it works. You, you, I feel like you have to let go, kind of like what we were saying before, because otherwise, in a way, you're paralyzing yourself. You're not gonna take action. You, you're just gonna feel bad about yourself and have pity. And that's, uh, if you carry that on through your twenties, through your

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  thirties, all of a sudden, you're gonna be 35 years old and look back and be like, wow, I wish I would have had the ability to just accept who I am. But you can't really blame, I mean, we're the first generation that's had this, so.

• 1:19:54Chris Williamson?

  Can I give you a bit of advice for what I think's gonna come next for you?

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:19:58Chris Williamson?

  So. You've got yourself to the stage now where the wheels will start to spin on their own. And there will be a lot of opportunities that will come your way, different things. Maybe I'm going to start a business. You've already got an app. Right. Well, I need to run the app. Like, that's important. I need to have a dev team. Like, well, we need to do marketing. Like, maybe we need to take some outside investment. And you'll start to take investor calls and you maybe look at acquisition and you'll start to pay a little bit of more attention to, well, there's a competing app that's just started. And, ah, well, you know, I, I, I need to make a little bit more money because my lifestyle should inflate because I'm, I'm growing up. And like, I worked at this, like, I worked hard. Do you not remember when I was doing the thousand videos and nobody watched? Like, I should start to do some sponsors. You take sponsor calls. Those will begin to rack up a little bit more, but they'll be worth money.

• 1:20:42Chris Williamson?

  And you'll do the just connect with me dinners and you'll start to make more impressive friends. And one of the things that you need to be incredibly cautious of is not doing the thing that got you here. Now, you shouldn't hold on to the working modes that don't serve the principal output. So that's, you don't need to play the game the way that you used to. But there are a few key areas of contribution that if you let those slide, all of the competitive advantage goes and that for you is likely going to be reading. It's like, if you don't protect your reading time, if you're not constantly feeding yourself with new ideas, you're going to become stale and you're not going to have new stuff to talk about. And what it's going to feel like is growth.

• 1:21:28Chris Williamson?

  It's going to feel like growth because all of the objective metrics are going to continue to expand and continue to get better. But what made you differentiated was this very particular kind of obsession with learning interesting ideas, scrutinizing them and then communicating them. Right? That's kind of it. Like, that's the engine. That's the engine that both me and you have used.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Chris Williamson?

  And maybe you'll get some staff. You need to manage the staff. Like, that's kind of be, well, you know, you've got an editor. Ah, fuck, the, the edit wasn't quite right on that thing, so I need to negotiate with him. And like, he needs his motivation jing up, so I'll take him out for dinner. And while the editor needs an assistant, so like, I might as well get him. And before you know it, you've built this very unwieldy spaghetti monster. And that's fine, as long as you protect what the main thing was. And the reason that I say it is I've noticed, as I've sort of swung to and fro on the show, when I've protected the first couple of hours of the day, which is typically when I'll sit and when I'll read, when I'll think about stuff and I might do a little bit of writing. If I just get a few hours, maybe even just one hour of that, like, ah, I'm nourished for the day.

• 1:22:34Chris Williamson?

  I'm continuing to have new ideas. I'm continuing to come up with stuff. Everything feels fresh on the pod. And I've go, oh, that's got fucking Scheffler video. Like, isn't that good? That, that's something to pull out.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Chris Williamson?

  That will be a temptation of growth. Now, it's a strange kind of paradox that the more leverage you have, the more distractions you have. And that sounds great because it allows you to not need to focus on things. But it can tempt you to not focus on the main thing. And the only thing that matters is keeping that, that little flame, that sort of kernel that was the beginning of the inspiration. Like, that's what's important. And if you do that, dude, you're going to continue to fucking rep. But that's the thing that you need to protect. You have to, have to, have to protect your reading time. You have to protect your new idea time.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that that's, makes a lot of, like, you just saying that, I'm like, yeah, I think you're right. And the, the, the reading and, and the researching was, that was what I think has allowed me from the get go. I mean, I'd be, like, I was reading, researching well before I started making videos. And even when I started making videos, I was making more feel-good comedy videos. I wasn't doing philosophy or societal commentary or talking about the implications that X, Y, or Z event has on your life. I was just genuinely a kid that was interested in, in these things, more so classic books, not even necessarily philosophy. And all of a sudden, it's like, okay, I'm going to talk about this. Let's see if people like it.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  And then it happened. And so, yeah, that's definitely my roots. So I think you're right. I definitely do need to save time. And it's hard because I've been, you know, started to make a little higher value friends, started to do a little bit of traveling, not a lot, but I'm like, hey, it's easy for me to no longer read or I'm tired on the flight. So I'm just going to put my head down when that's like a prime opportunity where I can't really do anything else. So.

• 1:24:22Chris Williamson?

  And that's what you would have done in the past as well.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:25Chris Williamson?

  And the limited amount of

• 1:24:28Chris Williamson?

  motivation that you have, which everybody does have, ah, that becomes degraded by having to do things that aren't the main thing.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Chris Williamson?

  But last year I did a hundred thousand miles. So it's like three times around the world. This year, so far, we're not even, we're just about halfway through the year and I've done like 70,000 miles on flights. And like, that was not what I was doing when I first started the show.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Chris Williamson?

  Which means that I need to be even more regressive at protecting some areas of my time at a time when there's more compelling seductions that are going to pull you away. So Alex talks about, you know, the scene in The Matrix where Neo is first brought into it and he's walking down the street and there's a woman in the red dress.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Chris Williamson?

  And Morpheus says, Neo, were you paying attention to me or were you paying attention to the woman in the red dress? And he says, luck again. He turns around. It's Agent Smith with a gun.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Chris Williamson?

  Says, okay, being able to say no, your capacity to say no is not looking at the woman in the red dress. But now imagine, as you get more successful, that it's not a hypothetical 10. It's a thousand hypothetical 1000s.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Chris Williamson?

  Your capacity to say no needs to scale more quickly than your ability to be successful. And if you don't get out ahead of it, you're going to be seduced by all of these new pulls on your time. That's fine. And that's cool. All right. And it affords you the opportunity to go to the Super Bowl and, and, and hang in this special box because someone loves your videos or whatever it is. But if you do that too much, you will lose the thing that kept you sharp. And I think that that's why

• 1:25:59Chris Williamson?

  a kind of monastic lifestyle that you see a lot of sports stars have, like even Harlan, for all of his fun. When it comes to preseason training, I bet that guy's a fucking monk.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Chris Williamson?

  Like, there will not be a stone that's not over, like, that's not turned over and locked underneath. And, ah, if he was having all of this fun, but not looking after his sleep, not looking after his diet, he's loose when he's able to be loose, but he's not distracted. There's a difference between those two things.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Chris Williamson?

  And, ah, yeah, it's, it's another cursive competence. As you get more effective and there are more opportunities in front of you, you need to learn to be able to say no to something that you would have begged to have had the opportunity to say yes to only two years ago. It's crazy.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Chris Williamson?

  It's a trip.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  And, and I've seen, I've gotten a little bit of a taste of it already, you know? It's like, everybody wants to,

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  I don't know, like, leech is not the right word because a lot of these people that I've become friends with are much bigger, much more successful than me.

• 1:26:57Chris Williamson?

  Associate.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's like, they,

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  the moment that people see that you have some sort of momentum, that's very attract, that's a very attractive trait, you know? Everyone, everyone wants to be your friend now, you know? I was very much, I wasn't even, wouldn't even say antisocial because I try to be social, but I never necessarily fit in in my, like, my later years of high school through college. And that has been my biggest advantage ever. I would not be sitting here right now if I did not spend all that time alone just really trying to confront myself, trying to be honest with myself and figuring out what I wanted to do and then having the balls to, to go and start doing it. And that's been my biggest advantage. But now, all of a sudden, this guy that I looked up to when I was a kid slid into my DMs and he's like, yo, let's go hang out. Let's go do this trip.

• 1:27:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, heroes become rivals and then your rivals become friends.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so it's like, wow, okay. But yeah, for me, like I said, I've just, I've gotten so used to being alone that I'm very comfortable with it. But yeah, it's, you're right. It's going to be tempting. If someone's like, Jet, do you want to go to the Super Bowl? Yeah, I want to go to the Super Bowl. Like.

• 1:28:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And that happens to a stage, at a frequency that can end up sapping a lot of what it was that you used to do. But yeah, it's, ah, the, it is one of the

• 1:28:18Chris Williamson?

  reasons for solace that anybody that's alone should rely on, which is you have an opportunity now to focus on developing yourself in a way that you can't if too many people want you. And one of the weird things, talking as a horrendously unpopular kid and an only child and someone that basically started to learn how to become a human at 18 when I moved to university.

• 1:28:42Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether it's giving you the realization it did for me, which is kind of the fickleness of sociality.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Chris Williamson?

  That, well, I'm the same person.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:51Chris Williamson?

  As I was before, the difference is the trappings and the trimmings that are on the outside. And sure, I'm sure you've developed yourself into a more, ah, socially fluid person. You've got interesting things to say and you've become more self-conscious and self-aware.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Chris Williamson?

  That brings a kind of, ah, authentic sincerity and earnestness to a conversation. And that's kind of compelling, right? Like, that's beguiling, like, ooh, like, there's something going on here. That's cool. Which you wouldn't have had before if you were posturing and you were having to play a role and let people kind of have a bit of aversion. So some of it will be the development and some of it will be the understanding and the information. But a good bit of it is, who, Jet's fucking, like, he's ripping it the most. Should we invite, he should come to the thing with, and you go, well, you didn't fucking want me before.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Chris Williamson?

  You didn't want me before.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Chris Williamson?

  Kanye West's got this thing, it's like, there's a Metro Boomin edit, which I've never been able to refine again. But, um, it's Kanye West talking about how

• 1:29:50Chris Williamson?

  people say that they loved the work that I did in the beginning. But they didn't love it back then, though.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:59Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Like, ah, every time, like, I'm cracking you a smile in 2023, but I'm giving you a frown for 2013. And, um, it's just, you know, yay's.

• 1:30:14Chris Williamson?

  Vacillated somewhat over the last few years. Uh, but

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, growing up North Chicago, always been the biggest Kanye West fan, always. Like that dude, that his concept of self-belief, I would literally go to, I'm not, I'm not even making this up. It sounds cringy. I would go to sleep with a compilation of Kanye West basically being a narcissist. I just, I just loved it. I just loved the way this guy would talk about himself. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that because man, everybody hates.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  So narcissism, the way that I look at this is that I think everybody's a narcissist, but it's a spectrum. And there's a healthy side of it and there's an unhealthy side of it. And what society calls narcissism are that person's a narcissist. They're specifically referring to the more extreme end of that spectrum where it's dangerous, where you negatively impact other people's lives. But innately, humans are selfish creatures. We always have our own best interests at hand. With the exception of maybe, you know, your parents, so you're looking out for your kids or a loved one. But I've made videos on this, very unpopular, as you could assume. And I just think if you lean into your narcissism in a healthy way, which sounds crazy. But that is the ultimate propeller to where you want to go.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  So imagine you're climbing a mountain and you know, very metaphorically, the mountain is where you want to go in life. You're wearing a backpack. You could either have an empty backpack, which is just having a neutral sense of self. You could have rocks that are put in the backpack, which is self doubt, or any way that you think that maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome. Oh, I'm not, I'm not that guy. Or you could have self-belief, you could lean into your narcissism in a healthy manner. And that backpack turns into a jetpack and then it propels you up that mountain. And so I've recognized that like, growing up, people have always, always been like, Jet, you, you got, you're a little bit of a narcissist. Not that I would ever negatively impact other people, but it was more like you're very self-absorbed, very self-absorbed.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  And I said, well, I have to bet on myself. That's the only workable solution, I think. It's the only workable solution. You have to lean into every aspect of yourself, build up that belief system. Not that you should walk around saying, wow, I'm more valuable of a human than that person. Not, that's not what I'm talking about at all, but you need to just relentlessly try to increase your self-belief. Because everything regresses to the mean in life and the mean is your identity, right? And your, like your self-belief creates that identity. And so I think that you have to figure out, okay, what is, what is the healthy narcissism and how do I accomplish that? Because these people that try to be, it's kind of what we were saying before. The, the really humble ones, a lot of them are coping.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  A lot of them are coping for the fact that they didn't go where they wanted to be. This is a very unpopular opinion within my family. They don't like when I talk about this because my, I, I come from a humble family and I'm not really like them. But you have, you have to bet on yourself. You have to think that you're capable of doing this. I told my, my best friend, when I was going to do the social media thing, I said, I don't know what it is about this. I failed at all the other things that I've tried in my life, but there's something about this. I just, I believe I could, I can do it. I just know if I don't quit, I could do, it's funny. Once I started gaining two to three followers a day. I was a hundred percent certain that I was going to hit a hundred K because I told myself, I literally would not quit until I hit a hundred K. And there's enough days that I'm going to live to hit that.

• 1:33:42Chris Williamson?

  Well, the interesting thing about survivorship bias is that survivorship bias assumes that you die before you win.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Chris Williamson?

  And if you just don't stop, eventually you've rolled the dice enough times to have something that hits.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:56Chris Williamson?

  On the ego humility thing, it's interesting. Ego's quite antisocial and humility is quite pro-social. In a way, in the way that it's interpret, interpreted that um, ego causes people around you a lot of the time to have their own shortcomings and self-criticism thrown into harsh contrast. It also is quite confronting because people think, wow, he's going to go do that thing. That leaves me behind. I don't want him to do that thing if I can claw him back. Or if I can behind his back, so the vent about fucking, who does Jet think he is?

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Chris Williamson?

  Talking about himself like that, dude, that's not even going to work. Like, that's fucking lame or whatever. In the hopes that that might just slow it down. Whereas humility, even performative humility is seen as, oh, he's got his feet on the ground. It's, it's nice that he's not, not got too big for his boots. This is very much a, a British concern that someone who thinks too highly of themselves is really not liked. Like it's very, very, uh, rigid class structure in the UK, you know? It's this ossified country that's not been fucking invaded for a thousand years. Like that's a long time for these power structures to start to drop in. But you can tell, I don't know whether the same thing is true in America. I don't think it is. I can tell just by hearing somebody speak what class they were from, like

• 1:35:19Chris Williamson?

  underclass, working class, middle class, upper class.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Chris Williamson?

  And have a good, a good indication of what sort of school they went to. Because it's, it's had time to like segment out these like stratified, like fucking sedimentary rock or something. And um, it's determined a lot of the time by the way that somebody speaks and the way that they dress and, and stuff like that. But yeah, humility is pro-social because it doesn't, it, it binds the group together by not making anybody be confronted by a differential in the, in, in the power structure. And ego is confronting for the exact opposite reason.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  What's, what's interesting is I, I do believe strongly in the idea that you need to be rootable for. You want to be a person that other people want to see win. A perfect example of this, over the past year or so, Timothy Chalamet went from this guy that everyone was like, I love this dude. And he's so, there's something about him. He's just got that swag. He's in the way that he walks. And then all of a sudden he goes on one of those award shows after he wins and he says, I'm really on the pursuit of greatness, which to me I loved. I was like, I like when, when

• 1:36:28Chris Williamson?

  Fuck yeah, Timothy Chalamet.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, it's like, it, you, you have a goal and clearly you're on the path to do it. So yeah, like go up there and say what you want to do. And I felt like he still did it in a humble way. But you'll find a lot of insecure people or non-confident people, they really don't like that. Even if it like, they don't want to have the nuance, they, people believe what they want to believe. And so if they listen to that, they'd rather believe that Timothy Chalamet is a narcissist than someone that's betting on himself and is like really putting himself out there and trying.

• 1:36:57Chris Williamson?

  Have you looked at ascending in the incel community? Do you know what that word means?

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Ascending, like, like just getting better in life?

• 1:37:05Chris Williamson?

  Getting laid typically, or getting attention from women on the sort of lower end. So if you're inside of some of the incel communities, I think most of them. Ascending would be getting attention from, maybe even as little as the barista in Starbucks, her eyes sort of lingered on me a little bit longer. Then I think maybe she was flirting with me and ascending is, you're seen as persona non grata if you do that inside of the incel community. And the reason that I think that's the case is that if somebody that I saw as my equal, who was afflicted with the same issue that I believe that I have, is able to bring themselves out of this issue.

• 1:37:49Chris Williamson?

  That now makes it the, the potential for hope for me becomes, uh, it's brought into reality. And that means that now maybe the fact that I feel like I'm afflicted with this thing is not a life sentence, but it's actually inside of my control and I have agency over this. And the fact that I haven't gotten out of this problem. So they're seen, they're literally seen as fake cells. As somebody who ascends is say, well, you weren't truly an incel. You weren't like us. So there's an immediate othering of somebody who doesn't comport with the same issue that everybody else has. It couldn't be that everybody has the potential to do this. It has to be that that person wasn't a part of our group in the first place.

• 1:38:33Chris Williamson?

  And uh, yeah, I, I, when you think about the, how much people are held back by the fear of others judging them for having self-belief. I think that far more people fail due to a lack of support than a lack of competence. And if you just had a couple more people in your life that believed in you, you'd probably be able to get 10 times further.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Chris Williamson?

  There's a line from George Mack, my housemate, that says, there is a guy out there with half your talent and five times your self-belief, making 10 times the money.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:05Chris Williamson?

  And it's just, yeah.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  Well, I think. The way that I look at it in the, the support side of things is honestly fuck support. Like it'd be nice, it's nice to have it, but I'm going to go to where I want to go regardless. And all, all those nights, those consecutive nights where I would stay up till 4am just grinding. Whether or not my friend who lives on, you know, my family moved out of my hometown and I don't live, I haven't been to my hometown in years and I don't talk to those people that much anymore. So if they support me or not, I could give a fuck and then I have no friends where I moved. And so it's like, okay, I'm just going to do this on my own because like you were saying, like we were talking about before, it's like optimal game theory. Okay. You got dealt shit cards. I'm not saying I got dealt shit cards,

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  but you're not in the optimal position now. So what are you going to fuss about it? Or are you going to like just do something? And it's interesting. You talk about the idea that, oh, if you see someone else doing it, then it's like, oh, you know, I have agency, I could do it. People really don't want to support you if you do well, because especially if they grew up near you, because you, you, you become a mirror to them, right? If I come from the same place as other people and then more or less got the same opportunities, we go to the same school, but now they go on Instagram, they see that Jet is getting some views. He's getting recognition, get put in the public eye, whatever. That's going to tell them, well, I'm really no different than Jeff. We came from the same place.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  He's there, I'm not. So now they get, you know, pissed about it and they're projecting and they're like, oh my gosh, I hate this guy. Cause you were talking about the incels and I have, I had a YouTube channel. I started it at the beginning of this year and it gained traction pretty fast. I got like 200,000 subscribers in the first two and a half, three months. And I became very popular amongst that sort of underground people that felt like the system was against them community. And a lot of that community is incels. And of course I never went on these, on my YouTube videos and said, oh, I'm an incel. I never claimed that or anything like that, but what happened was

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  long, and in my videos I would talk about, I mean, yeah, like naturally if I have a lot of followers on Instagram, yeah, girls are going to slide into my DMs. I wasn't being cocky about it, but I, there's really no good way to address it because they'll be mad if you don't address it. Cause then they're like, he's lying. And if you do address it, then you're seen as cocky. So you gotta,

• 1:41:33Chris Williamson?

  You know, if you addressed it and had said that there were no girls in your DMs, that would have been fine.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:41:38Chris Williamson?

  It would have been fake. It would have been a lie, but it would have been fine. That would have been like, oh, actually, yeah, okay. I'm not throwing it.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Are you familiar with the term LARPing?

• 1:41:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  So everyone's like, oh, Jet's, Jet's like the biggest LARPer ever. Cause what ended up happening was, and I never, this is what I hate. I never lied about it. I was always truthful about my life. I become friends with this big influencer, very wealthy. I end up going to um, his birthday party. It's on the East Coast. I go there and so I, there were some girls there. I don't know if they were Instagram models or whatever. They wanted to take a picture of me. It was not that deep at all. Goes on social media and then I posted a video where I was like, oh, it was like, kind of like a motivational video. If you work hard at a specific thing, you have to be smart about what you work hard on. Cause if you work hard in corporate, yeah, maybe life is not, you're, you're not going to be rich because you're selling your time for money. You can never get rich off doing that.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  You need, there needs to be the potential for, you know, an increase and an appreciation over time. But I went and I posted that video and you know, my entire community turned their back against me. They, they, they had a, they were throwing a shit show. They were mad about it and they were like, oh, this Jet guy, he's faking it. He's LARPing. He's too good looking to have been socially excluded growing up. It's like, there's not a picture of like, I'll, I'll, I'll give you my life savings right now. If you can find a picture of me going to any school dance prom, I didn't go to graduation. I didn't go to anything. I truly was isolated, but these people could not comprehend the fact that now that I started to level up in life, it's like you either die here or you live long enough

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  to see yourself become the villain. And they just came after me and they were like, this guy, he's six, five, like I never even lied about my height online. I just, when you go online and just feel like you're six, five, that's like, oh, that's cocky. Or they would say online.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  So I was like, so I just like wouldn't mention it. I, I was on a very popular looks max or stream and they were like asking me how tall I was. I was like, I'm six, five. And everyone thought I was bullshitting. Everyone on the internet was like, this dude's not six, five. And then a picture came out with me working out with some fitness influencers and they're like, dude, this guy's six, five. Like there's no way that he has life. It's like, what are you like, so you can't win with these people. But anyways, they really were mad about me. Basically leveling up and they're like, yeah, he always had friends. It's like, so this guy was an influencer. Why would you think that I would be friends with them before I ever started doing content or like, I don't know, but like you were saying about that whole like incel community, it's kind of, it kind of the same thing happened for me, but I've never been a part of the incel community. I've always been a part of the, okay, like male loneliness epidemic.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  That, that was more my target audience.

• 1:44:12Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's the narcissism of small differences, right? If you go to the same school as somebody else and you have ostensibly similar skills, the difference in your outcomes is on them. It's on that, like imagine a split test universe in which one of them, you end up being a real success and then another one, you end up being a real failure. The guy that was the failure would feel really bad because he had all of the raw materials to become the guy that was the success. Like true hell is when the person that you are meets the person that you could have been. And yeah, a lot of the time, people feel like, well, I grew up with that guy and he was no more special than I was. This is one of the things I think is kind of interesting about uh, content creation generally.

• 1:44:55Chris Williamson?

  And the fact that lots of people consume lots of podcasts, YouTube, Instagram. And the issue that you have there is the talent delta is not as obvious as doing something that is more refined, like playing a musical instrument or being great at basketball.

• 1:45:13Chris Williamson?

  Most people, I mean, if you sat anybody down with two microphones, they have technically recorded a podcast, no matter how big of a car crash that could be. If you give somebody a saxophone, they cannot reliably make a note come out of it, especially if they're untrained. So because the expertise, skill delta doesn't feel as inaccessible, the small differences become even smaller. Like very few people are looking at Steph Curry and going, fucking Steph Curry dude. Like the only reason that he got that is because his dad was in the NBA. It's like, no, the dude's a generational talent who literally changed the points game of NBA, of, of, of basketball. The way that that game's played, regardless of whether his dad was great or not, which he was,

• 1:45:55Chris Williamson?

  but Steph went and did his own thing. No one's looking at that and saying, the only reason that he's got that, because no one can do what he does. The more that people think that they can do what you do, the less respect they have for you doing it. Does that make sense?

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Because I, I've seen so many videos. Yeah. This one guy made a video and it got like 300,000 views and he, you know, said he was going to sexually assault me in a more graphic, using more graphic terms.

• 1:46:23Chris Williamson?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  And he, he literally like video is a statistical outlier on his channel. You know, all of my haters are going to go watch that video. And then he makes another one, another statistical outlier, and he's not really making any points. He's just like, I hate this guy. And then eventually he makes a video and he goes, you know, the real reason why I hate this Jet guy is because I make the same content as him. And he's like, I do the same. And it's like, you go, it's not the same, this guy is completely delusional. It's, it's object, like he's recording on it. It's like an Android from like 2010 or something. I'm like, first off, your camera quality sucks, but he's like, yeah, this guy, he, he, he's just has basics as everyone else. He just has a better face. So that's why everyone, and it's like, oh, okay. First off, holy cope. But second off, it's like,

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  if people assume that they can do what you're doing, but you're getting big off it, they're hating you more. Like you said, do you know who the streamer Rakai is?

• 1:47:18Chris Williamson?

  Oh, is that the dude that did the beast thing and was kind of the villain? He was like the, the, he's like a bit of a villain dude.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Mr. Beast?

• 1:47:26Chris Williamson?

  No, Rakai. He did a, a hundred streamers compete for cash. I swear, he's like kind of a bit of a nuisance.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  He is. Well, he, okay. I don't, I don't know. I'm not like super familiar with him, but he's very young, very young. I don't even think he's graduated high school yet and he's just kind of.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Hollow headed, trying to find like, he's, he's, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. And, but he just, he acts crazy. He doesn't really speak English. So he, he like, he speaks English. That's his language, but you can't understand him. And that's the joke about him online. But anyways, this kid is, he has a

• 1:48:01Chris Williamson?

  It is the one that I meant. Streamer, Akai, participated in the highly publicized Mr. Beast, one million dollars streamer challenge video. His intensely competitive, aggressive play style and interaction to the creators made him one of the most talked about and controversial figures in the event. Yes, I do know what you mean.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this, so this guy is one of the most hated people on the internet. And just the reason to sum it up, and people are, they don't understand, they don't understand this. They don't consciously know that this is why. But this guy doesn't even talk good English. He doesn't

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  do anything necessarily exceptional, but so they look at that and they're like,

• 1:48:34Chris Williamson?

  I could do that.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  I could do that, but not only that, I could do it better. I'm smarter than him. But yeah, you, I, I have feel no negative way towards that guy. I'm not trying to knock him in any way. But yeah, of course. So people are like, oh, I can, I can easily be that type of guy. Like with the streamer stuff. I have a, I have a friend of mine who is trying to make it as a streamer. And the thing about it is all these underground streamers, these people that are trying to come up. It's just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. And I was telling him, I was like, respectfully, how in the world are you ever going to make it if you are the product and there's no product differentiation? How in the world are you going to make it? You know, he went to streamer university. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but Kai Sanat, one of the biggest,

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  not even just streamers, content creators in the world, does this thing once a year now where he invites out all these streamers to this like, school for like a week or something. And it's like class and it's just an entertainment thing. It's nothing too serious. But people literally quit their jobs. They drive across the country to go to these auditions. But the thing is Kai Sanat only lets in already known people. And all these other people, it's like you, you, you watch the videos and the footage and you know, the cops had to shut it down. It's just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. These people have the same personalities. And I was telling my friend, I was like, I'm, I'm obviously going to support you. And I've always been like, hey, you need to keep doing this thing. But it's like, if you're doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, how do you, how in the world do you think?

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  At some point, there's going to be like a, a switch that's flipped because back in the day, you could record, you could get three viral videos and all of a sudden you're a known person on Vine. Nowadays you record 50 and you're still, and then you don't drop something for a week and you fell off. So like things have to, you just have to keep on relentlessly getting these viral clips. But what makes clips for the big people go viral is the fact that it's the big people in the clip, not that they're necessarily entertaining in and of itself. So you have to put your time in the game. And yeah, people are just really mad because they're like, I don't understand why I can't be where I want to be. Well, you have to find a way to product differentiate. And you know, maybe the, the reason that you're not succeeding as much as me or as much as someone else

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  is simply because you're, you're not that person. Like you, you didn't do, like you think you are, but you're not that person. And that's the biggest issue. Everyone is just projecting, oh, I deserve to be X, Y, and Z. When I was at the bottom, I would, when I, when I had, you know, less than 10,000 followers, I would find other creators in a somewhat similar niches me that had around a little bit more followers than me. And I would literally look at their videos and be like, that is shit. I would be like, I am so much, but like, I would convince, I'm like, my videos are so much better. And slowly but surely I start getting past them. And then I'm like, all right, then who's the next one? Who's the next one? And like we were talking about before, that goalpost never ends. There's always someone else.

• 1:51:21Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  But I was like, I would get, I would get mad at it and I thought I was better, but I didn't really do nothing about it. I did something about it. And that's sort of the difference.

• 1:51:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, the differences between simulating what somebody else does and learning inspiration that can help you improve, right? The, the best that you can hope for, if you're trying to be somebody else is to be the second best in the world.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Chris Williamson?

  Right? At being them.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:47Chris Williamson?

  And you are the zeroth in the world at being yourself.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Naval Ravikant, he said, you escape competition through authenticity. And what's, what's that? There's, Peter Thiel has a quote where he's, what is it? I made a video about this. I'm trying to think about it. He, he said, um, competition is for losers. And so in other words, you're a loser if you're not being authentic. If you, if you correlate that with what Naval Ravikant said, because you know, you're like, you beat competition by being authentic. So you be, being a loser by being authentic. And so I, I was like, wow, that's just, it's such a basic, simple thing, but people don't really internalize it. They don't understand it.

• 1:52:27Chris Williamson?

  Authenticity is an interesting one because what everybody likes the idea of is seeing a person who is just being themselves. There's no filter. They're not playing a game. They're not trying to perform. They're not trying to finesse me into believing that that's something that they're not, or pretend that they're not something that they are. But there's kind of a, there's like a, a, a window of tolerance that people are prepared to live inside of. And as soon as you get outside of it, what you realize is that the internet is desperate for authenticity, but it's allergic to sincerity.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hmm. That's interesting.

• 1:53:03Chris Williamson?

  Like if you are genuinely sincere, genuinely earnest about something, like you go through a hard time and you talk about it in, with some beautiful montage over the top. And it's sort of all fluffy and bubbly at the end. It's the whys question, right? Like how deep do you go with the why? Whereas if you see a dude do an Instagram video and he breaks down crying in it, you go, oh no, that's too much sincerity. I didn't, I wasn't that, I have an aversion to that. And this kind of just goes to show how limited the internet's preparedness for empathy is, and also how narrow most people's tolerance for an emotional window is.

• 1:53:45Chris Williamson?

  It's like you're allergic to somebody genuinely showing their emotions, especially when they're out of control. If it doesn't seem like they are in control of the way that they're operating anymore, that seems like a lack of congruence, a lack of competence. Yeah, yeah. Internet is desperate for authenticity and allergic to sincerity.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting. Robert Greene says that authenticity is bullshit and it doesn't exist. And I was thinking about that and

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  I think when people say authenticity or that person is authentic, it's like, let's say there's a spectrum and they're closer to their genuine self than the average person. And then you're like, oh, that person's authentic, but they're not truly, if you take it in the absolute sense of the word, they're not truly authentic because I think that would probably be social suicide. Right? Like if you really just say what you believe, listen, I was, when I was in high school, this was the whole thing. I wasn't very well liked when I was in high school and kind of the reason was because I was, part of it was, I was resentful. I started reading a lot of books and, and I got smart and it's like the Dunning Kruger effect. I thought I was, I was a lot smarter than everyone else. When in reality, I really didn't know much. But

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  a big thing was I really thought that honesty was completely virtuous and just being as raw and as honest with someone was like the best thing you could do, which now is just not true. Like now I know that to be not true. To give you an example, this is going to make me, this, this sounds crazy and I do not, like anyone that's listening to this, do not do this, but we were at a, uh, one of those football games on a Friday night. And I went there and this girl probably, I think she was under the influence. And she was like, she, she just straight up asked me, do you think I'm pretty? And I'm like, here we go with this like fishing bullshit. Like I was, I was like, I was like, no, but I didn't say it in a mean way. I was just like, no, in a very neutral way.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  And she's like, what do you mean? Do you think I'm ugly? And I was like, yes. Which is insanely immature, but that was how I felt and I thought that that was okay. And also I wouldn't go out of my way to say that to someone ever, but she asked me, so I thought it was right away. That didn't go over well. So that didn't go over well. I got a, a bunch of pushback and I remember I would go home and I'd be like, oh my God, these, these people, yeah, pushback for whatever that means in high school.

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, and yeah, I mean, no wonder these people didn't like me. I think they were totally valid for not liking me, but I would go home and I would be like, I was in the right there. I was in the right, but it's like, okay, what do you like? This is such kindergarten, like this is such psychologically infantile type of activity. I don't know.

• 1:56:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It, I mean, look, have you ever read Sam Harris's essay, lying? It's an hour long book. He wrote it, he wrote it with his wife. It's fucking great. It's like a, a, a 60 page treatise on why you should not

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Wait, is this the one where he says, if your wife is pregnant, she asks you if she looks good? Oh yes. I, I read that a long time ago.

• 1:56:46Chris Williamson?

  It's pretty good. People should, people should revisit it. I think you can get it for free online and there's an audible version too. It's like basically a long podcast. It's just an essay and he wrote it with his wife, interestingly enough.

• 1:56:57Chris Williamson?

  There is definitely a like philosophical underpinning where you can say any lie, including a white lie at any time is a bad idea. Like the Anne Frank in the attic thing. It's like, just go up and get her, no worries. But functionally, it can put you in situations like this, right? And I think that you can have a kind of decorum. You can be classy in the way that you sort of show up. Like you can say things that don't fully, it's like, look, there's a, a type of girl for everyone and I'm sure that I'm not for you. But you know, I, I, I don't think that we'd make a great couple. And you're like, whatever the fuck. And then you're like, okay, I managed to get out of that because you got scot free.

• 1:57:36Chris Williamson?

  But there is like, if you take the like, the autism pill and decide like, I am going to completely fucking tell the truth at all times.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:44Chris Williamson?

  You end up in situations like this where a girl that's drunk on a Friday night at a football game, just wants to hear from some boy that she's like cute or whatever. And what she gets is like a existential kick in the nuts. So dude, you're fucking awesome. I think everyone should go and subscribe to your channel. Where should people go to check out everything you've got going on?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Uh, Jet Franzen with J E T T two Ts on social media with Instagram, Tik Tok. And then, yeah, if you just search up my name on, on YouTube, it should show up. I think it's got like a, some other bullshit in the name, but just search up Jeff Franzen and you'll probably get a 50 videos of people shitting on me. So that's

• 1:58:27Chris Williamson?

  I searched you and it seems to be your content and your stuff rules. I think you're great, man. And uh, keep going. I'm going to be, I'm going to be

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  Hi there. I am fully charged and here to tell you Toy Story five is now on Disney plus.

• 1:58:41Speaker 04

  It's been too long cowboy.

• 1:58:42Speaker 03

  Woody, Buzz and Jesse are back for a brand new adventure with some seriously cool new tech. What? Holy butterscotch. You said it, Jesse. So save your batteries and watch the global phenomenon at home. And the best part, it's perfect for the whole family. Power up your movie night and watch Disney and Pixar's Toy Story five, now streaming on Disney plus, rated PG.

• 1:59:04Chris Williamson?

  And I'm going to be supporting from the sideline. Shout out your dad as well.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shout out my dad. Thank you so much for having me, bro. This is honest. This is an honor. Seriously.

• 1:59:11Chris Williamson?

  He crushed it, man. He crushed it. All right. Goodbye, my beauties. See you next time.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Bro, yes. Fucking yes, dude. Same. Well done.

• 1:59:19Speaker 04

  Dude, I enjoyed that.