E17: Marriage, Mental Health, Masturbation

Damn, it's been a long time, this the first episode on my new US journey. In this chapter I explain why an elderly couple made me jealous, debunk a common myth around visualisation and discuss marriage, mental health and masturbation. What a weird ending. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Damn, it's been a while. I've not posted a podcast in the last few weeks because I've moved from the UK to the US. I guess this is a bit of an excuse, but I'm trying to explain my headspace. I've been hyper focused on the new office, my new home, the business, and everything else in between. I've had this immense, immense tunnel vision. However, I've still been scribbling in my diary since the second I left the UK. And the first point in my diary this week actually comes from the plane journey from the UK to the US. Today's podcast marks the return of the Diary of a CEO and the start of the United States chapter of this diary, but also of my life. For anyone tuning in for the first time that

• 0:43Steven Bartlett?

  doesn't really know what they're listening to, I'm 25 years old. I'm the CEO of a global marketing, media and commerce business that employs hundreds and hundreds of people across the world in five different offices. The business started in my bedroom as a broke student dropout. I've just moved to the United States to help grow the business here in this new, massive, challenging market. And this podcast that most CEOs wouldn't share. This podcast is my way of offloading random, deep, dark and indifferent thoughts. And in doing so, in being so honest in a world of fakery, not only does this feel like therapy to me, but I guess the chance of you resonating with something I say is drastically increased. I usually record these podcasts at 3am from a cupboard under the stairs of my apartment

• 1:27Steven Bartlett?

  in the UK. But today, the environment's slightly different. I'm in a suite in Hollywood, near the Hollywood Hills. I'm out here on business for a week and it's 2am in the morning. Anyway, without further ado, I can't wait to get back into this. I'm Steven Bartlett. This is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so the first point in my diary this week occurred on the flight from Manchester to New York. Let me set the scene. I walk on the plane, I go into the business class section, I stow my bags, I sit down, the lady comes over, the flight attendant, she offers me a glass of champagne. I said, yes, I get the menu, I quickly pull out my laptop and I try and get some work done before the flight takes off. I know I've got about 20 minutes. And as I'm doing this, I'm distracted by this sound and this energy over to my left. And I look over and there's this middle aged couple with the biggest smile on their faces, a bigger smile than you've ever seen in your life. Even recounting in my head how excited they were almost gives me goosebumps because it was quite unusual. And I couldn't

• 2:40Steven Bartlett?

  figure out why they were so euphoric. So I sat down and I just thought, no, I'll just listen into their conversations. And as the flight takes off and we go in the air and we start going, I realise that this is the first time they've ever flown business class, but it's also the first time they've ever been to New York. And they are just so happy and so excited. And I'm so happy for them. I literally put a smile on my face. However, the more I sort of started to reflect on it, I thought, I'm also a little bit jealous. The first time I flew to New York, I did. The first time I was able to fly business class, I felt pretty euphoric, to be completely honest. But for some reason, because I go

• 3:20Steven Bartlett?

  to New York every month, and I fly business class every month, I now I'm numb to the excitement and the feelings of euphoria that this couple to my left had. And so I started to read a little bit more about it. And one of my favourite books actually answers the question. I pulled up Google and I just wanted to study once again, why this happens in humans. And it's this whole idea of hedonistic adaptation, which I've spoken about once before on this podcast. The people on my left, this couple on my left, had the same euphoric excitement that 18 year old Steve Bartlett would have had. But because these experiences have become the normal to me, I don't feel the same way about them. I think that's quite sad. And when good things happen.

• 4:03Steven Bartlett?

  And we feel these raw positive emotions like excitement and relief and pride and of course happiness. But the problem is happiness just doesn't last. The excitement of that first car purchase wears off. The thrill of the promotion gives way to the anxiety of handling the responsibilities that come with it. I want to know, and I guess this is what I was trying to figure out was, how do I stop that pleasure, those feelings of happiness from dwindling? And so I started to do a little bit of reading. And there's this thing called the satisfaction treadmill, which means that when we experience a new level of sort of happiness or accomplishment or achievement, we continually shift our standard upwards. Once we've reached it, and we're

• 4:48Steven Bartlett?

  constantly therefore running after this new higher standard, which is harder and harder to attain. And there are basically two ways to stop yourself from the satisfaction treadmill, right? Way number one is variety. As we all know, variety is the spice of life, as they say. But it's also an incredible weapon against adaptation, because we don't get used to positive events when our experiences feel fresh and unexpected. When a positive experience is repetitive, when you know exactly what to expect, you don't get the same kick out of it. And so one of the things that I am going to do to sort of increase the variety and the unexpected element of the good things in my life, is when it comes to booking my flights from now on, I'm going to

• 5:32Steven Bartlett?

  book economy on all of my flights. And I'm going to try and upgrade at the counter. That's what, you know, I usually figure out a way of doing anyway. But this means that only 50% of my flights will be business class. They'll be incredibly cheap as well. But only 50% of them will be business class. And I don't know when until I get there. And I think that will be one of the things that will help me appreciate and savour the moment more. The next tool to employ in your life to make sure you don't get, you don't fall victim to this satisfaction treadmill is appreciation. Appreciation in many ways is the exact opposite of adaptation. Appreciation is an active effort, right?

• 6:13Steven Bartlett?

  It's going out of your way to focus on something rather than taking it for granted or letting it fade into the background. And this appreciation leads to a sense of gratitude, a sense of being fortunate for being in your current circumstances compared to others or compared to where you were in the past. And when we appreciate our positive experiences, when we turn our mind's eye towards ourselves, we don't just make our happiness last longer, we kick it up a notch as well. We become happier. You know, human beings spend so much time trying to figure out how to make themselves happy, but not nearly enough time trying to figure out how to make happiness they already have last. The key to wealth, like the key to happiness, isn't just looking for new opportunities

• 6:57Steven Bartlett?

  or new standards, but it's also making the most of the ones we've already been given. That's how I'll learn to be in a permanent state of happy woman sat next to me on the plane.

• 7:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, the next point in my diary is about relationships. I've had a bit of an epiphany. Again, this may just be an excuse, but I think it makes a lot of sense to me about why I'm very, very, very, very almost impossible to date. And that is because I don't want to be your priority. Let me explain. There's this kind of like popular notion that when you're with somebody, you want to be and want to feel like their number one priority. But the more I thought about that, the more wrong that feels for me. If you're going to be in a relationship with me, I want to be your second priority. I want your first priority to be you.

• 7:54Steven Bartlett?

  Your ambitions, your life, your future, you. Because my first priority as an independent person is going to be me. And if you're dependent on an independent person, you'll challenge their sense of independence, which only creates friction, arguments and conflict. It's important to remember that needing a person too much doesn't come from love, it comes from fear and insecurity and being unhealthily codependent. Causes you to completely sacrifice your own sense of identity, your self-worth, and you can become reliant on a relationship, which is literally the single most unattractive thing. So not only in the past have I felt that partners I've had, because they were more dependent on me than I was on them,

• 8:38Steven Bartlett?

  have challenged my sense of independence, but I've also found them less attractive because they've got more needy, right? And so it's imperative that you build your own life. If you want to be happy with someone, you have to be happy alone. You can't be happy together if you're not happy alone. You have to build your own life. You have to build your own social circle. And although it sounds ugly, for the sake of your own happiness, sometimes you have to be selfish. I think this is part of the reason, not the full reason, but part of the reason why I've struggled so much in relationships. I'm horribly independent. And so anybody that becomes dependent on me mentally challenges my sense of independence.

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, I stopped going to school to do my own thing when I was 16 years old. I dropped out of university to do my own thing when I was 18. I'm somebody that's obsessed with personal freedom and independence. And so I believe part of the reason why I've had business and entrepreneurial success is also part of the reason I failed in romantic relationships. Conclusion being, maybe I need to find, date an entrepreneur, somebody as busy as I am, someone who's independent. Maybe I'm wrong.

• 9:48Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, point three in my diary, I've just written, you can't think things into existence. Usually when I write these diary notes, I write a couple of sub-notes underneath it just to prompt me. But this is a point that I'm so passionate about that I don't really need any other notes. I'm just gonna rant for a second. There's this huge sort of global idea that if you think about stuff, it happens. And a couple of, I'd say about three weeks ago, I got in an argument with a- With a girl because I tried to tell her that you can't just think about things and then they happen. And she genuinely came back at me and said, Steve, it's happened in my life. I thought about this thing, then it happened. So I know it's true. That's hindsight

• 10:32Steven Bartlett?

  bias. Okay, that's hindsight bias. Think about all the things you thought about that didn't happen. You can't because they didn't happen. So they're not important to you. You only in hindsight focus on the the connected dots, let's say. Here's the thing. Visualization is a hundred percent important to me. I visualize everything that I think I've become. I visualized movie. When I was sixteen years old, I had this image in my head of running a business in New York City, looking out on the skyscrapers. I'm now twenty five years old. Our office is in heart of Manhattan, looking out onto the Empire State Building, and I'm running the business. Of course, visualization matters. But visualization just sets the direction.

• 11:15Steven Bartlett?

  Execution and hard work take you in it. There's this book called The Secret, which a lot of people have read, which talks about this idea of visualization. And the net impact of that book is that people think if you just think stuff and you wake up in the morning and you say affirmations, things happen. That is bullshit. That is bullshit. Nothing happens from thinking. Okay, visualization sets the direction. Execution takes you in it. Visualization is worth nothing if you don't work your ass off. So my whole life is a process of thinking about who and what I want to become. And then waking up in the morning the next day and giving all of my energy and all of my hard work and all of my smarts and my blood, my sweat, my tears to making that happen. And then I look back

• 12:00Steven Bartlett?

  and I say to myself, Steve, that's exactly what you visualized. And then you did the work and you achieved it. So please don't rely on visualization to take you there. Visualization won't move you anywhere. Visualization alone will waste your fucking time. I'm sorry to swear. This is something that I'm very passionate about. It really annoys me. Execution and hard work and visualization are a killer combination. And that's the combination that you need to create within your own life. And that's the combination that I try and create every single day. One of the things I'm visualizing at the moment, and I'll just share this with you as an exclusive, is a book that I'm gonna write. I've got the concept in my head. I know the sort of synopsis of the book. I know exactly where this book fits in the world and what it will do for everybody's life and my own life. And just by thinking about this book

• 12:44Steven Bartlett?

  idea I've had for so long, I've actually changed much of my life and I can't wait to write it. But just thinking about it isn't gonna do diddly squat. So with the help of my amazing team, I've got three to five meetings with some of the world's biggest publishers when I'm back and I will work my ass off to make this book happen. This will be something that I visualized and then I executed into existence.

• 13:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, point number four in my diary is super, super simple. I've just written sustainable lifestyle is key. One of the things that I think me and many other entrepreneurs are guilty of is creating this idea that you should just hustle your life away. Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, work hard for this achievement or goal or monetary or status, whatever it is, building a company, whatever it is, and then you die. That honestly, the older and older I've got, I've realized how illogical that way of thinking is. You shouldn't hustle your life away. The real success is building a sustainable lifestyle. And that's something that I've really not fully been able to do yet. I will be hustling forever,

• 13:51Steven Bartlett?

  right? I'm going to be building businesses and creating things forever. So if I don't create a sustainable lifestyle now, I'm going to hustle till I die. And then what was the point, right? I didn't get to fully live. How do I create a sustainable lifestyle? This means friends. It means romantic partners. It means health of body and mind. It means charitable giving now. It means spending time with my family now. The real success isn't building a great business and hustling your life away. The real success, as I've come to learn and as my friends who are entrepreneurs, one of my best friends is also an entrepreneur and runs a business, has come to learn very recently, is the

• 14:31Steven Bartlett?

  real success is building a sustainable lifestyle. This kind of goes against the general stereotypical entrepreneurial message of just work, work, work, work, work, work, work. But I'm cool to admit that that's not the right answer. And I've just observed in my personal circle, as my entrepreneurial friends have got older, they've realized that too.

• 14:53Steven Bartlett?

  Point five in my diary is living at zero. I've spent my whole life living at zero and I it was only this sort of realization of this that's kind of answered the question as to why and how I've been so happy and I guess in some respects successful at what I've done in my life because I genuinely believe at the very core of me that I am nothing. I have nothing, I am nothing and that I am insignificant. At the same time, which is almost kind of contradictory to that, I genuinely believe I'm really good and I can do anything I want to do and that I can achieve anything. So it's this weird balance of really not thinking I'm special, but also thinking that

• 15:38Steven Bartlett?

  I can achieve anything, which I guess is contradictory. This is part of the reason that I get so numb when people say things to me like, you must be so proud of yourself, because this idea of pride, I think I'm scared will make me complacent or make me feel that I've got something to lose. As human beings, we get insecure, combative and resentful when we believe something is at risk of being taken from us, whether it's our possessions, our pride, our ego or our image, but you can't take anything from someone that doesn't think they have anything to lose. Thus, it's healthier to live at zero. I have and am nothing but my loved ones and the memories I've created with them and nobody can take that from me.

• 16:23Steven Bartlett?

  And this idea that I'm at zero and that I live at zero and that I've not really got anything to lose has also allowed me to take what you would call risks, but I don't see them as risks because I don't, as I've always said to anyone that's ever asked me, I'm not scared of going back to the bottom. I was cool at the bottom. When I had nothing and I was living in Moss Side, I was fine. Life was different. There wasn't any business class flights or anything like that, but a lot of mega buses. I was happy, I was fine. And the belief that you've got something to lose, as Steve Jobs said, is the one thing that will hold you back from ever becoming the most fulfilled, successful version of yourself. Not caring about possessions and not thinking I have something to lose has made me successful. And I really, really, if there's one thing I could could give you from this podcast

• 17:08Steven Bartlett?

  today, it's really that idea that you are nothing, you have nothing to lose, you aren't special, you're not significant. And for me, that's incredibly liberating because I'm not insecure.

• 17:23Steven Bartlett?

  You don't want it, you would just rather have it. I've clearly not really wanted an amazing six pack summer body because I've not really taken the actions of someone that wants it. I would just rather have it. I don't want it as much as I want to sit on my laptop or as much as I want to watch documentaries or eat unhealthy food. I would just rather have it if I could without doing the work. And that is the relationship that most people have with their goals, especially your secondary and third goals. When I say secondary and third goals, I mean outside of your sort of main focus, your career and those types of things. Your secondary and third goals tend to be like your health and your fitness and these kinds of things. They don't really want them, they would just rather have them.

• 18:07Steven Bartlett?

  When you want something, the fear that nothing will stop you from trying. When you would rather have it, nearly anything can stop you from trying. It is so easy in a hectic, fast paced, busy world to get disconnected from your goals. We all do it, I do it as well, right? And Zig Ziglar said, "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily." And the same applies for reconnecting to some of your secondary and third goals and the why associated with them. What I've started to do and something that's had a huge impact on my life is for these secondary and third goals, I will actively write down research, think about why I need

• 18:52Steven Bartlett?

  those goals to come true. I need to realise them because those are the ones that are easiest to become disconnected to, especially when I'm so focused on my primary goals, being my career and social training, things like that. So yeah, those secondary and third goals, take special care of them because they are incredibly important, but they are incredibly easy to forget about.

• 19:12Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so this is one of my favourite points I think I've ever written in my diary. And I've just written, "The happiest people are those that ask why the most." We live in a society which has given us a model of how things are meant to go. You're meant to go to school, then you're meant to go to university. Then you're meant to get a job so that you can pay your bills, then you're meant to get a mortgage, then you're meant to quickly find someone to date before you're thirty, then you're meant to get married between thirty and forty, you're meant to have two kids with that person, and then you're meant to shift your focus to your kids before you're meant to retire. And then finally, the last step, which isn't hypothetical, the step

• 19:52Steven Bartlett?

  you can't control, happens, which is you die. You end up living the life you were meant to live. Not the life that makes you happy, not a life suited to you, a model of life that was created hundreds and hundreds of years ago in a completely different world for a completely different generation. In order to figure out the best model for your life, we've got to first agree upon the ultimate objective. And I think we can all agree that the ultimate objective from life is happiness, right? So is it crazy to think that most of the things you're meant to do are no longer valid? Maybe they were never valid. Is it crazy to think that there might be a different model for your life that will

• 20:34Steven Bartlett?

  make you happier? Is it crazy to think that because everyone's different, the model for our lives should also be different? I know from dropping out of university and going off the path I was meant to take, that it's so much easier to conform. It's hard to search out and create a different blueprint for your life because it's risky and people will criticize you and they'll think you're weird and there's no case study, so it might not work. But in dropping out of university, I was going in the direction of what my heart told me would make me happy and fulfilled. I wasn't going off a blueprint. Not conforming to society's unwritten rules of how life should be led me to my own happiness. What if the same applies for everything else? Let me take one example, which I guess is

• 21:19Steven Bartlett?

  kind of relevant, which is marriage. We're told to get married because everyone does, and the untold assertion is that if you don't get married, you'll be unhappy and lonely. This weekend was obviously the royal wedding, which I'm sure cemented the idea in most people's brains that you have to get married. But let's look at the fucking numbers. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.

• 21:42Steven Bartlett?

  That doesn't mean 50% of people are happily married and 50% aren't. It just means half of them actually had the energy, guts, resources to actually separate legally. Many of those still in marriages live in separate rooms and separate houses. They hate each other. And I think in some way, this is kind of the story of my parents. My dad told me when I was, I don't know, seven years old, that he didn't love my mum anymore. Marriage as a concept is broken. The stats say for the majority, the model of marriage doesn't work. So why the fuck are we doing it? We're doing it because everybody does it and that's what society says. And because we're scared to find an alternative and the unknown blueprint scares us more than the less than satisfactory known blueprint. Another example, university.

• 22:28Steven Bartlett?

  For the majority, university, I've said it before, I'll say it again, is a total scam. If you're spending tens to hundreds of thousands on a degree to increase your employability, for the majority, you're being ripped off. Experience generally matters more for the majority of professions. A one-year internship at a good company will make you drastically more employable than a three, four, five-year degree in most cases. Of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that we've employed at social chain around the world in the last three years, in every role, including design, marketing, legal, finance, sales, HR, data, business, and even our chef, the number of people have asked about their degree is zero. The number of people have asked about their prior experience is 290 people.

• 23:12Steven Bartlett?

  And people will come back to me and say, well, you can't get experience without a degree. Yeah, because that's partly true, but that's just because the system's broken. And the other argument is, but my doctor needs a degree. That doesn't make scamming the majority acceptable. The majority winning doesn't mean that the same model should be cast upon the majority. The majority of workers say that their job did not require a degree. The majority of business owners don't have a degree. The majority of people with a degree say their job is unrelated to that degree. The model is a scam, just like marriage. It doesn't work for the vast majority, but just like marriage, we've built a system around it. So not only is it almost impossible to change, but many People are too scared to seek out the alternatives.

• 23:54Steven Bartlett?

  So I guess my conclusion is to ask why more. In your own life, I'm doing it in mine. This is what I've always done and what I will always continue to do. Ask why things have to be the way they are. Not only could you get closer to your own happiness, but you could also be instrumental in creating a better world for future generations. I really don't think I'm going to get married. Why would I?

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  This is the most bizarre point I've ever talked about in my podcast and I just don't care. I'm really excited to share this with you because I think for some people it'll make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Okay, so I just wrote in my diary, what is real? I was reading some stuff online and it resonated a little bit. And it's this really interesting phenomenon called, I think it's called post ejaculation syndrome, P E S. And basically, when the male ejaculates, he loses his horniness, he loses his feelings and he loses his desires. This is part of the natural male sexual response and they call it the refractory period.

• 25:00Steven Bartlett?

  After ejaculation, romantic interest usually completely diminishes. And from a sort of survival standpoint, they think this is probably an adaptation that kept men from spreading all of their seed at once in one place. So they would have greater reproductive chances of spreading it around and creating more opportunity. So as a man, and men listening to this will completely understand, you can literally go from desperately missing someone, thinking about them, willing to book flights to see them on the other side of the world, then masturbating and instantaneously, genuinely not caring about them anymore, instantaneously being over them.

• 25:43Steven Bartlett?

  If you're listening to this and you're thinking, what the fuck is Steve on about? Google it. I'm obviously a man, so I understand these feelings. And a quick Google search will show endless amounts of men trying to understand this as well. But what was so interesting to me isn't how I feel after I ejaculate. That's not what this podcast is about. What what's interesting is this means probably all of our sort of innate feelings, the innate things that get us down, make us happy, horny, sad and everything in between, aren't tangibly real. These are emotions created by chemicals or a lack thereof in our bodies. And I need to be extremely clear here. I am not for a second saying that mental health issues

• 26:24Steven Bartlett?

  aren't real. They are very, very, very real. I'm talking about the natural innate urges and desires we have as humans. What I'm saying is the example that I described above taught me that much of what we feel is due to chemicals in our bodies that are making us feel things in order to get us to, you know, carry out certain actions that are conducive with survival and reproduction. And a chemical imbalance can really make us feel and think anything. Why am I talking about this? For me, the understanding that it's just chemicals in my body making me feel things, for me, was really liberating because I thought much of the sensations and the feelings and, you know, things that I encounter as a human being were like real things. I don't know, things sent

• 27:09Steven Bartlett?

  from some god above, you know, real tangible things. But embracing the fact that most of the things I feel have been created within my own mind for me gave me a real sense of control over them. It took power away from them. And for me, that feeling is amazing. Really, really weird point to end on. But I hope you understand what I'm saying. This idea that I can feel something so immensely that has so much control over me, like, you know, missing someone or this kind of thing. And then you can change the chemicals in your brain or you can do something and instantly you don't care. Both feelings felt so fucking feel so fucking real, like the feeling

• 27:50Steven Bartlett?

  before and after feels so fucking real. What am I talking about? But do you get what I mean?

• 27:58Steven Bartlett?

  But anyway, my grand conclusion to this point, if I haven't been able to make it just yet, is how amazing the human body is and the mind is at tricking us into thinking that we genuinely feel a certain way, when really, there's just a chemical driving that feeling. For some people, this might be terrifying, because breaking your sort of your life and your emotions and feelings down to chemicals for some is really scary and it makes them feel insecure and irrelevant or whatever. But for me, it's so empowering to know that, let's use the example of missing somebody or feeling horny, to know that when I feel like I really, really miss somebody, that's not a real thing. I don't really, really, really miss them, or I'm not really, really horny. Do you know what I mean? It's just

• 28:42Steven Bartlett?

  chemicals. And I'm gonna be okay. And anyway, we'll end the podcast there. What a fucking weird ending. Okay, thank you so much for listening to the Diary of a CEO. I'm gonna be back next week on Monday. This time, I'm gonna be on time, I promise you. If you've enjoyed this podcast, if you've learned anything, if you like it, please leave me a review in the podcast store. If you could possibly leave me five stars, that'd be amazing, and leave your social media handle in the review as well. And I'm gonna try and, as I always do, try and help as many of you as I possibly can. If you can share the podcast and tag me on LinkedIn or Instagram or Twitter, I will be forever indebted to you, and I see every single one of them without fail. So I will appreciate it tremendously. Please

• 29:26Steven Bartlett?

  make sure you subscribe to the podcast as well, because of course, them being so kind of sporadic means that you'll never miss one. So hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening to it. Tell a friend. And thank you for being my therapist today. I miss you and I'll see you again next week.