7 Semi-Controversial Rules For Success - Shaan Puri

Download your completely free Follow-Up Email Template Guide from Hubspot at https://clickhubspot.com/lnx Shaan Puri is an entrepreneur, former CEO, podcaster and an angel investor. Shaan is kind of an anti-guru. He's a self-identified lazy person but also managed to exit multiple companies for millions of dollars. So today, we’re delving into 7 of his most semi-controversial insights and discussing why much of the advice from business gurus might just be useless. Expect to learn why hard work is massively overrated, what the two most understated skills in the word are, how to get out of your head and stop overthinking, why many people learn the wrong lessons from failure, how falling behind might not be the great teacher many think it is, why being a billionaire is a stupid goal, why you shouldn’t follow what most people do and much more… Sponsors: Get $150/£150 discount on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #business #myfirstmillion #hacks - 00:00 Hard Work is Massively Over-Rated 11:27 The Value of Enthusiasm 30:10 Why You Need to Develop Your Storytelling Ability 45:56 If You’re in Your Head, You’re Dead 56:43 The Power of the Midwit Meme 1:02:45 Clarifying Your Principles 1:11:29 Do You Really Learn From Your Failures? 1:21:47 Aspiring to Be a Billionaire is a Stupid Goal 1:34:01 The Life-Changing Benefits of Hiring an Assistant 1:40:48 Where to Find Shaan - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - 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?

  We already did this once. It went well. It went amazingly well. And I was very sad that we couldn't put it out because we had technical difficulties. This time, we're both in our home setup, no technical difficulties, and we're going to run it back from what we got through last time, plus more.

• 0:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, last time I was also very sick. That night after we were, I had recorded a podcast, I did the podcast with you. So two podcasts in a row. And I went home and basically just was in bed with a fever for the rest of the night. So if you thought that was good, great, because I thought it was terrible and I was feeling terrible at the time. I gotta, I gotta do better than that.

• 0:34Chris Williamson?

  Okay, maybe that's just what all guests feel like once they've finished up recording with me. That might be like the, the post-coital, like depression that occurs after you've podcasted. And I'm not, I'm not too sure. I'll have to ask in previous guests. All right. So I want to go through some of your most controversial or semi controversial opinions, which you've kind of become famous for, I think. First one, one of my favorites, hard work is massively overrated. Why?

• 1:02Shaan Puri?

  Well, I'll take a step back. The reason I like these controversial opinions is A, you always look cool if you have some controversial opinions. But B, I'm, I've learned how much of what we believe is just simply stories that were told. This goes from everything, religion to school, to being taught what you should be doing for your career and all this stuff. And so I've actively tried to just deprogram myself and ask and question the assumption. So I actually started with looking at what are the things that almost nobody disagrees with? And are those really true? And one of those that I found that I in practice disagree with was, growing up, I was told, hard

• 1:45Shaan Puri?

  work is what's most important. Hard work is the key to success. Hard work is, and you just hear hard work preached. And it's almost like you'd have to be insane to be.

• 1:55Shaan Puri?

  Anti-hard work, right? Like, uh, some people do it just for the, just for the effect, but I don't, I don't really mean it like that. I just mean it's overrated. It's not that it's a bad thing, but that it is overrated. Uh, because what I've found in my life is that what you do is far more important than how, how hard you work on that thing. So for example, you know, I thought about the hard work thing and I used to work in restaurants and nobody works harder than people in restaurants. Restaurants are open, you know, from breakfast till, till late night, every single day, seven days a week. It is, uh, you know, a thankless job. You are working in a hot kitchen. Um, and you are, you know, cooks work hard. Cooks in the back line of a kitchen work hard. Janitors work hard. You know, the cleaning lady works hard. Um, but you know, you sort of

• 2:40Shaan Puri?

  think about it, you're like, why isn't the janitor driving a Bentley? Right? Like if hard work was the key to success, then why aren't the people who I think works, work the hardest in, in most of these situations, doing better? Um, and it's because, you know, hard work will let you win the game that you're playing, but it doesn't help you if you chose the wrong game. And so the most critical decision is actually project selection. What you decide to work on, uh, what you decide to do with your talent and your time and your, your work ethic is far more important. And I don't really hear that. In fact, I actually, growing up, heard the opposite. Um, you know, you get to college and they're like, what's your major? Uh, I don't know. I'm 17, 18. Like, how am I supposed to, you know, I just came from high school, right? Like, I don't, I don't know

• 3:21Shaan Puri?

  what the thing is yet. Um, is there a list I can look at of like the jobs and what they're like? Can I, do, do I get to go see one? Um, you know, and instead it's just like, just pick. If you don't pick, if you don't declare, if you don't declare your major, this is in the US at least, I don't know how it's for you. If, if you don't declare your major, you're behind. Like already, it's like, you, if you've chosen to wait and see or think, or go test, you've fallen behind, right? So it, it just became this thing where picking what you do was like this quick one second thing you were supposed to just get right, right away with no preparation and then spend the rest of your life working hard. And I just found that the opposite actually turned out to be true for me, which was picking the right projects made the, made a huge difference.

• 4:06Shaan Puri?

  And working hard enough was good enough. I consider myself to be frankly, somewhat lazy, but very happy and successful. So, you know, I, you know, I don't know if I'm the outlier or what, but like, at least disproved, it is not, um, It is not the main thing in terms of success. I believe it's overrated.

• 4:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, to clarify here, I don't think that you're saying hard work doesn't matter. Hard work isn't a competitive advantage. You're saying that for the people who believe that hard work is absolutely everything. It is the end all be all, that there are other higher points of leverage that you can do that open up layers, uh, levels and, and layers to the hard work so that it can be maximized.

• 4:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Hard work is maybe the fourth or fifth most important factor or ingredient.

• 4:55Shaan Puri?

  So you might say, uh, what, what's more important? So number one to me is what you work on. Number two would be who you're around, who you, who you work with, because those people will influence you in a far greater direction and provide more opportunities in the future. So what you work on, who you work, uh, who you work with far more important than how hard you work. I sort of think it's something like fourth or fifth most important on the list. And that there really, there's just a threshold you need to reach. So, um, if you simply don't take action, you don't do the work. Doesn't matter how good of an idea you had or how good of a partner you had, obviously not going to work. But, um, it is a threshold and that going far beyond that threshold, going

• 5:38Shaan Puri?

  from 40 hours a week to 70 hours a week to 90 hours a week, like some people will, will popularize. Has much less of an effect than I think people think. It just sounds good, sounds cool, and it sounds like you earned it.

• 5:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Why, why is it if, if you're true, if what you're saying is correct and hard work is as overrated as you say it is, why is it such a pervasive myth?

• 5:59Shaan Puri?

  Because it's virtue signaling. Most people, um, you know, the reality is if you looked at, um, like a contribution, a, a chart that showed the contributions to success. Well, I was born with like kind of all my healthy functions, right? You know, 10 fingers, 10 toes, everything works great. I was born in the United States, so already that was like far more influential in my future success and endeavors than you know, somebody who had, you know, the genetic lottery played out differently for them. They're born in a different place with a different set of fiscal resources. And you just keep going down the list of like how, what you, what, what actually contributes to success. A lot of those things are out of your control. I can't take credit for where I was born.

• 6:42Shaan Puri?

  I can't take credit for the genetics that I was given or the gifts, the talents that I had as a baseline. So what people try to do is they try to shove those away, pretend those don't matter because you didn't earn them and people will say you're privileged if you, if you, if you bring them up. And so instead they go to the thing that sounds like they made a choice to do it and that is the sole reason why they had the success that they had. I chose to work hard, I put in the time, I earned it. And it's sort of like, you know, the same thing happens in, in any endeavor. When I win, it's because I'm great. When I lose, it was bad luck. So why is that? Why do we think that when we win, it's because of what we did? And when we lose, it's because of what everybody else did, right?

• 7:24Shaan Puri?

  What the, what the economy did, what the weather did, what the, you know, the government did, like, you know, people are very quick on the downside to offload accountability and on the upside to load in accountability. So just notice these things and notice human nature's tendencies and realize it does seem like that would be the convenient thing to do, to assign credit to your actions and to make it sound like you. If you, if you have a lot, if you earned a lot, if you got a lot of success, the reason why is because you put in a lot. And in reality, we know that sometimes it's asymmetric. Sometimes you just make a few critical decisions, simple decisions. I might've taken you. A very short amount of time to do, but totally differentiated between success and failure.

• 8:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think there's a few things going on. Um, one being if you achieve success and it wasn't painful, people who are working hard and suffering and haven't achieved success to you, uh, to them, you just look like a wanky sort of bourgeois aristocrat of some kind, like a, a randomness aristocrat that was blessed by this, this, this sort of chance. Um, Sam Harris has got this idea that I didn't get a chance to bring up with him on our episode, uh, the myth of the self-made man. Uh, and he takes this one step further because he folds in determinism and a lack of free will. So he's basically like, none of the things, none of the achievements that you have are yours to bear because you didn't choose the circumstances.

• 8:47Chris Williamson?

  He didn't choose the laws of thermodynamics. He didn't choose your genetics. He didn't choose the randomness. He didn't choose anything. And he, uh, sort of aims this at the right and says, this does an awful lot of heavy lifting for people right of center. And uses it to kind of lambaste this, this myth of the self-made man. The problem that I have with that is it's a very disempowering story to tell yourself. Uh, I, I don't see it as an adaptive or useful story. Like I want to feel pride in my successes. Because otherwise I know that I'm not going, I'm going to leave more on the table because what's the fucking point? Like I get satisfaction from doing things well. So it's almost like, uh, it might be a literal truth, but a figurative falsehood. In that it, it, it's not adaptive to believe, even if it's true.

• 9:30Chris Williamson?

  And I think that, I don't know, maybe there are times when self-deception can be justified and that might be one of them.

• 9:37Shaan Puri?

  A hundred percent agreed, um, on both of the points you made. So I think the first is that, uh, you know, if you were honest about what actually works and what doesn't, it might annoy people. Because if they have it hard, if, if things are going poorly or it's hard, uh, they wanna, uh, they, nobody likes to hear, uh, how easy it was for somebody else or how simple it could have been if they had made different decisions. Uh, so it's a sort of like keeps the barbarians at the gates type of thing to be like, no, no, no, the reason, the only difference was I put in more time in this direction and you put your time in this other direction, you know? And it's the most equitable way to describe this, uh, that pisses off the least number of people. However, for me, pissing off people is not really.

• 10:22Shaan Puri?

  A priority or a concern. I'm not trying to do it, nor am I trying to avoid it. Just simply trying to be and let the chips fall where they may. Some people will love it. Some people will hate it and that's okay. I don't really care too much either way. The second point you made, which is there is no, you know, the complete myth of the self-made man is it is disempowering. And so I have this whole category of things that I always say are maybe true, but not that useful. So for example, if it's true, but not useful, there's, there's plenty of things like we'll be in a meeting at work and somebody will say something. I say, that's, that's true. I don't argue with what you're saying, but it's simply unimportant. It's not useful to what we're trying to decide or what we're trying to do here. Similarly, if it is true that we sort of have no free will and that it's all determined anyways, and that doesn't really matter what would you do?

• 11:07Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's not that useful because it doesn't actually serve me. That's not a story that serves me. And once you realize that it's all just stories anyways, pick the ones that serve you. Pick the ones that make you feel the way you want to feel, that gets you to the outcomes you want to have. And, and not the ones that make you feel like crap.

• 11:24Chris Williamson?

  A related point, another opinion of yours. What are the most underrated skills in the world right now, in your opinion?

• 11:32Shaan Puri?

  So I have two, the first one, people don't even think is a skill, which is how underrated it actually is, is enthusiasm. Sort of a lame, probably maybe a little bit of a letdown from the way I framed that. But I don't think it should be a letdown. I think it should be exciting that enthusiasm is underrated. I'll give you a little story. So I had a realization one day. So I was 24 years old and I took a job. And so I moved to Silicon Valley to take this job. I joined the company and I think at the time I was probably the youngest employee in the company. About 20 people there. I was the youngest of 20. And, and I looked around and there was engineers and there was designers, people with all kinds of talents that I did not have. Couldn't code, couldn't design, you know, can't dance, can't do a lot of things, right?

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  So it's not like, don't feel like I have a bunch of hard skills.

• 12:20Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, what am I good at? You're right. You sort of have that, that sort of like imposter syndrome, self doubt moment where you're like, what, why do they have me here? Why do they put me in charge of this project? Is it because I literally am like, you know, and I, and I realized that like, one of the things that I had that turns out to be quite important for most people who go on to do interesting things is I had a lot of enthusiasm, meaning I was very excited about what we were doing. I would paint a picture that was compelling to me and then I would sprint at it. And the ability to paint a picture that excites you, the ability to bring excitement to a situation, sounds cheap, sounds fun, sounds totally frivolous, until you're around a group of people that don't have it. And then when the first person comes in that has a bunch of enthusiasm, that has hope

• 13:05Shaan Puri?

  about the future, that brings energy to the table, it's contagious, it changes the way everybody feels. And if you're ever going to do something that's important, generally, it's hard, right? I come from the world of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, people sort of realize like, yeah, it usually starts off like you're starting from scratch, you have nothing, trying to make it happen. There's a lot of force of will that goes into that. And discipline is one force of will. I'm gonna show up at the right time and do the right things. The other is enthusiasm, which is, I'm gonna believe before it's here, and I'm gonna believe that it's gonna happen. I'm gonna take the, I'm gonna borrow on that future excitement today. I'm gonna take out a loan against the future, and I'll borrow my happiness and excitement about the future, and I'm gonna deploy it today to invest that enthusiasm today. That's how I think about

• 13:49Shaan Puri?

  enthusiasm, is borrowing from the future. And I think it's a skill, I think it is massively underrated. I think having enthusiasm, when things are going good, is quite easy. Having enthusiasm, when things are neutral to bad, is where you get the value of it. And most things are hard, and most things have pretty deep dips. So having enthusiasm is, I think, completely underrated, because people don't even see it as a skill, they don't see it as something you could develop, and they see, and they don't place the importance on it, they don't realize how important that source of fuel is, how contagious that is, how it brings everybody's level up when you have it. So I think that's underrated altogether. The second one is storytelling.

• 14:30Chris Williamson?

  I want to go, I want to jump, I want to jump in on enthusiasm, two things.

• 14:34Shaan Puri?

  By the way, agree or disagree?

• 14:36Chris Williamson?

  I have noticed since I've been in America, I've realised the value of people around me being excitable. British are genealogically, like we are genetically predisposed to be kind of dour, sort of personality is very similar to the weather, it's sort of grey and everything's a bit shit. We're very great with the satire and the sarcasm and the cutting, the cutting remarks and stuff, but my disposition doesn't need any more of that. And what I realised, one of the reasons that I've flourished since I've been in America is I've been around people who believe that things are going to be better than they are right now. They continually presume progress is baked in, it's factored in all the time, that things are going to get better. Of course, stuff's going to grow. Oh dude, it's going

• 15:21Chris Williamson?

  to be fine. There's catastrophe, you're going to get over it and everything, da, da, da, da. That may be America overall, I'm not sure. That may just be my particular cohort of particular people in this particular city that I'm living in. But what it's done is it's raised my ambient mood an awful lot. We do not know the things that are going to happen in the future, right? We are not clairvoyant. We don't even really truly know ourselves. We're self deceptive. Other people deceive us. We don't have a crystal ball that shows us what is going on either outside the world or inside of our own minds and our own bodies. Given the fact that we have to have some form of delusion, why not pick a delusion that's going to be beneficial to you? Right? Like you have the choice to

• 16:04Chris Williamson?

  do this. Why err on the side of, and the only real reason, I've been railing against cynicism for quite a while now, and it was Michael Malice's book, The White Pill, that really got me on to it. Cynicism is the opposite of enthusiasm in some regards. And what I realised is the people who were being cynical were doing it because it was like sour grapes at an existential level. I called it the cynicism safety blanket, that if you presume that things are going to be terrible, you can never be disappointed by the world.

• 16:34Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 16:35Chris Williamson?

  And it just seems like it's like a coward's way to live. And I understand, I understand people have had, bad things have happened to them, they've gone through traumas, they've had discrimination, they've had all of this stuff. Like, don't, I get it, right? I understand. And that would set you up to believe this may very well happen in the future. But like... What does it do for you? What corn does it grow? Show me the corn that you're growing from this. The corn you're growing is fucking shitty. So yeah, I think less cynicism, more enthusiasm. The skill, two questions, you can respond, but two questions as well. How do you develop it as a skill? And how do you fuel it effectively?

• 17:11Shaan Puri?

  Let me, um, let me give you a couple of different angles of this. Okay. So I come from Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley, the cynics get to be right and the optimist, optimists get to be rich. Um, so the cynics get to be right that, you know, eight out of the 10 things are going to fail. Of course. Yeah, you were right. You get to be right eight out of 10 times. And the two out of 10 that actually work, you sat on the sideline thinking it was just another thing that's not going to work. So Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley re-trains your brain. So one way to train your brain to default optimism rather than default pessimism is to play the game where optimism gets rewarded. And so come to Silicon Valley, you get to play a game, uh, optimism is rewarded. Here's another, here's another angle where it comes from. There's a great Conor McGregor quote.

• 17:53Shaan Puri?

  I love it. It used to be my desktop background. I told the story before I came to Silicon Valley and, uh, every engineer has like multiple monitors and it was like a status symbol, like they don't have Louis Vuitton or the status symbol is like how many monitors you have. How elaborate is your desk setup? So I'm sitting here with just my laptop and I'm like, shit, I got the, I'm like the, you know, I'm, I'm wearing the, the thrift store version of, of, of this luxury status.

• 18:17Chris Williamson?

  I'm the idiot kid at the party.

• 18:19Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. I didn't even know what I would do with another screen, but hey, I need another screen here. IT guy, come on, let's go. So I get another screen and I don't know what the hell to do with it. And so I just put up one quote because I was like, I don't have any functional, you like, there's no functional utility here aside from, again, honing this skill of enthusiasm. I'm controlling my mood. And the quote that I had on there was a Conor McGregor quote where he said, they were like, Connor, you always have this personality and even when you lose, you seem to be having this like, I feel like we never get to see you, you know, down in the dumps. And this is usually a sport of highs and lows. And he goes,

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  At the end of the day, the quote is this, "At the end of the day, you gotta feel some type of way. So why not feel unbeatable? Why not feel untouchable? Why not feel like the best to ever do it?" And I just love that quote, which is, "In any moment, I am going to feel something. I'm gonna be feeling a certain type of way." And I think what a lot of smart people do is they try to make that neutral. Because it's just like almost logically, mathematically, rationally makes sense. It's like, "Well, I'll make my default emotional home to be neutral, feeling nothing. And as good things happen, I'll feel better. And as bad things happen, I'll feel worse." And this is like a unspoken thing that I see a lot of smart people do. A lot of intellectuals do this.

• 19:37Shaan Puri?

  It is like a neatness and starting at zero, and then I'll go up if it goes up, and bad if it goes down. Whereas people with the self-delusion, and which are usually, if you get to sit down with like, kind of people, remarkable people every week, you'll notice that their emotional home is not zero. Their emotional home is closer to 10. They default feel untouchable, unstoppable, unshakable. They just enjoy that feeling and they just start there. And yes, sometimes the world will beat them down a little bit and they'll dip. But everybody always returns to your emotional home. And so you have to like, program it, set that like a temperature, like a thermostat in your room. What is my default temperature going to be? And I just took time to do that. So that's the first thing.

• 20:19Shaan Puri?

  The second thing is, here's enthusiasm in a non-business context.

• 20:25Shaan Puri?

  Anybody who's ever dated somebody knows that like, there is the quote-unquote honeymoon period. Like the start of every relationship that you get into is typically where it's like, you know, the highs. You know, both people, I always say a first date's like two people sitting down and deciding to lie to each other. It's like, you present your best self, you're going to, you're going to basically play everything up. You're gonna, you're gentleman, how gentlemanly are you? You're gonna play it up. Let me get that door for you. Let me, let me dress up. Let me do X, Y, Z. Nobody farts on a first date. And so... What happens is later in a relationship, people will retreat back to their emotional home, their, their personality home. And all of a sudden, they'll start to behave differently.

• 21:07Shaan Puri?

  Somebody, you know, at the beginning, let me take out that trash. At the, at the end, why I always have to take out the trash? Why don't you do it every, you know, for once, once in a while. So we, we kind of slip and we slip in these ways. And the worst way we slip is that the enthusiasm dips. We get comfortable and the enthusiasm dips. And the kind of the classic trope here is like, when, if you see somebody come home from work, you see like a dad come home from work. This person, you know, dad might've been left there at the house at six in the morning, seven in the morning, worked hard all day, drive back home, sit in traffic for 40 minutes, get back to the house, open up the door, they're hungry, they're thirsty, they're tired, they put down the, the briefcase, take off the suit jacket finally, and like, they

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  sort of slump through the door. And what, all they want to do is get to the couch, get the cold beer, turn on the TV and turn off their brain. And this is how like, I think a lot of the world operates. And I heard this once, and I never let it go, which was that if you, if you, if you do what you did at the beginning, there would never be an end. And, and this works in relationships. If you act the way you acted at the beginning, there would never be an end of the relationship because both people would be on their absolute best behavior, giving to each other all the time. And the version of this that I try to like make as a practice or a habit, is to have, honey, I'm home energy. So honey, I'm home energy is like, if you ever seen I Love Lucy back in the day, the guy opens the door, he's bursting with energy, like nobody comes home from work

• 22:37Shaan Puri?

  like that. But this guy did it in the show, because it was a show, he would come home, honey, I'm home. And you could just hear from the voice, if somebody's in the house, oh, get ready, it's on. Like, get ready for a great ball of energy coming your way that is going to be loving, that is going to be affectionate, it's going to be playful and flirtation is charming, all the things we kind of want to be. But we, we slip and we don't do it. And so one simple practice to develop the skill of enthusiasm, is to have this honey, I'm home energy, which is where before you walk through a door, whether it's to a meeting, whether it's to your house, your apartment, whatever it is. Just decide to walk in with that honey, I'm home energy and you only need to do it for like 45 seconds.

• 23:17Shaan Puri?

  But if you just do that for 45 seconds, you'll like the way it feels, they will respond to you differently and it'll just carry. Versus if you come in slumped over, you're going to have that type of energy and that type of interaction, those types of experiences, which nobody actually wants to have.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking to Sean in one minute, but first I need to tell you about HubSpot. Look, I spent a decade and a half networking with people and following up with them and ensuring that the messages that you send are well crafted is such a crucial part of that. And HubSpot's free follow-up email template guide is absolute gold for this. It's got over 30 email templates covering everything from a simple thank you to asking someone out for a coffee without seeming too weird. One of the best ones that's in there is their sharing resources template. If you ever come across a valuable nugget of information from say, listening to this podcast perhaps, or anywhere else on the internet, you now have a template to share it with other people, which in my opinion is a really underutilized networking skill because it gives them a gift for free and it keeps you in their mind.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  I highly recommend you download the 100% free follow-up email template guide by going to the link in the description below or click hubspot.com/lnx. That's click hubspot.com/lnx or the link in the description below. Yeah, the enthusiasm or excitability portion is it's almost kind of like a personality trait that I didn't know about. It's like finding out that there's a new type of weather. You just step out one day and you're like, what the fuck is this? Oh, I've never seen this before. It's like that, right? And um, yeah, I very, very much, I'm completely pro, I've been calling it toxic positivity.

• 24:56Chris Williamson?

  I'm very pro toxic positivity, like just seeing, seeing the good in situations, being around people that do the same. There's definitely an undercurrent in the UK of excitability almost being naive, it being kind of immature, it's being lame. And then, you know, even as you move up through the IQ distribution, smart people like the idea of being cynical because it seems heterodox. And it's, it seems like you've considered all of the options. Only somebody that's a, you know, a smooth brained idiot would believe that things are going to go well. Obviously, you know, that's what, that's what, that's what the normie midwits think. No, no, no, I've, I've considered the options. But it fails to recognize that ultimately.

• 25:39Chris Williamson?

  Your experience of your life is largely determined by the story that you tell yourself about it. In fact, you could maybe say that it almost, it's almost exclusively determined by that.

• 25:48Shaan Puri?

  There's a thing called, so people talk about vicious cycles and we've seen vicious cycles, how people slip into depression, how companies fail, how vicious cycle. A vicious cycle, for example, would be if you, if you break it down into its core elements, there's just three, it's a triangle, three dots. Triangle, dot one is belief. If I believe that something is not going to work, this relationship is not going to work, this company is not going to work, this meal is going to suck, whatever, whatever it is. If I believe that it's not going to work, the second dot is action. How much action am I going to take towards making it happen, right? Like, I'm going to take minimal action because I don't believe that it's going to work. If you don't believe it's going to work, you know, you sort of tiptoe in, you're not actually going to like go full, full, full force on it.

• 26:30Shaan Puri?

  So minimal belief leads to minimal action, which leads to a minimal result, which only reinforces your shitty original belief. And that's the vicious cycle. So then the next time you just reinforce that, oh, you know, um, I don't really believe I'm going to stick to this diet. So therefore I'm not actually going to like throw away the junk food. I'll just put it away in the closet a little bit. And therefore I'm going to actually end up snacking on the stuff because I know where it is. It's in the closet. It's just, I just have to open the door and then I get a shitty result and I say, ah, I knew it. I'd, I'd never follow through with these things, right? Like, these are the stories you tell yourself silently in your head, the voice in your head. And the opposite is true. There's also the winner cycle or the virtuous cycle. The virtual cycle is the exact opposite. Massive belief, oh my God, this is going to work.

• 27:15Shaan Puri?

  What if you knew that like, if you knew that if you get to this, like you're, you're going to the corner store. And if you knew at that corner store, there is the winning lottery ticket. It is there. The next person who prints it wins. Would you, would you walk or would you run, right? Like you're going to run. So your belief, if you really believe that you would take massive action, you would sprint. And when you sprint, you would actually get there first, right? And like you would actually have a different result than, you know, lottery is not exactly right. Cause you're not going to, the belief is ill founded in that case, but you would take massive action and generally massive action over a consistent period of time leads to results, which reinforces your belief that I'm the type of person that whenever I set my mind to something, I do it. And when I do it, I get

• 27:59Shaan Puri?

  results, right? Like that, that just becomes how a winner thinks. And so enthusiasm is another word, this is sort of a, you know, roommates with belief. And if you say belief, beliefs are these kind of like heavy, long-term, you only have a few beliefs. Enthusiasm is a general state that you operate in such that it takes your default level of belief in something up, which takes your action up, which takes your results up over time. And that is sort of like the, to me, the strategy that under, that explains why this works. Not only does it feel good to have positive enthusiasm or positivity, but like, there's an actual advantage. I think there was a TED Talk back in the day called the happiness advantage. And this guy was talking, he's a Harvard professor and he explained that like happiness is not just, doesn't just feel

• 28:42Shaan Puri?

  good. It literally makes you perform better. They did many tests to see how you actually perform on the same, same test, if you came in in a certain state versus a different, a different state, the happy, the happy state versus not.

• 28:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. George Mack has this really great idea that I'm going to write an article, a co-written article with him about of, um, uh, public metrics and hidden metrics. And he talks about stuff like peace of mind being a hidden metric, but money being a public metric and time is very interesting times somewhere between the two. We kind of don't know time, but we kind of do as well. Uh, so for instance, people will happily sacrifice their peace of mind in order to achieve money, because there's no dashboard that tracks your peace of mind. Uh, and it's almost like enthusiasm, right? Enthusiasm is such a hidden metric, uh, as opposed to it being something that you fail to see the cost of, it's something that you fail to see the returns on, uh, because the, the, the inner texture of your mind is not something that you're open to. So that's-

• 29:37Shaan Puri?

  People will learn another language. They'll tick a box. They'll, oh, I'm going to learn Spanish, um, versus work. If you said, I'm going to work on upping my general level of enthusiasm, you'd be looked at like an insane person. What's going to actually serve you better in life?

• 29:50Chris Williamson?

  We need to Duolingo, Duolingo for enthusiasm.

• 29:55Shaan Puri?

  I actually, I prefer the opposite. I am happy to be the one who is- Massively exploiting this arbitrage.

• 30:01Chris Williamson?

  Capting or capturing all of the games.

• 30:03Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. It lets a talented, talentless guy like me thrive in a world like this, right?

• 30:08Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Second skill. What's the other one?

• 30:10Shaan Puri?

  Storytelling. So stories are the, storytelling is massively underrated because stories are the natural like transfer mechanism between individuals. So like, if you want something to stick in somebody else's head, you really have two choices. Music or story?

• 30:29Shaan Puri?

  And you know, you look at like through all of time, what are the things that have lasted thousands of years? Religions, how are religions coded? Do you remember all of the, all of the rules of religion? No, but people remember the stories. Same thing with, you know, anything that lasts a long time or sticks in people's heads. You know, I couldn't tell you what I learned in seventh grade, but I could tell you the plot of Lion King, you know, play by play plot of Lion King. Why? Because it's encoded as a story. So stories are like an encoding mechanism for, for information or for knowledge. Music is another one. People will naturally, you know, remember catchy music. Most people don't have the ability to make music, but almost everybody could tell a good story.

• 31:09Shaan Puri?

  So if I could do the music thing, I would, but instead I'll do the story thing. And I think this is underrated because, and I think, you know, Steve Jobs had some quote like this. He's like,

• 31:22Shaan Puri?

  it's something like the storyteller is the most powerful person on earth because they get everybody else to take action. So they're the ones who move one person to the next. And this is how politicians get people. This was how CEOs run companies as stories. And so, but you're very rarely taught how to tell a story. Like if I went and asked somebody, like, just explain to me, like how, if I wanted to get better at storytelling, what would I do? Like, what, what, what are the skills? Like, give me like the two or three big concepts. And so they're very, uh, nobody really knows how to articulate it. You're not taught this in school. And because of that, again, there's a massive arbitrage. You have a thing that is quite, is very valuable, that most people don't know how to do very well. So if you even try a little bit, you'll become the

• 32:03Shaan Puri?

  top 10%, 1% of storytellers very quickly. And from there, you know, you get the sort of results that a great communicator would get.

• 32:10Chris Williamson?

  What are the principles of storytelling as far as you're concerned?

• 32:14Shaan Puri?

  So if you listen to like Aaron Sorkin, so the guy, you know, the writer and movie guy who did, you know, I think he did like whatever West Wing and Newsroom and a bunch of other stuff like the the Social Network movie. He's like, if you ask him, like, I wanted to take his master class. I had set out a day. I was like, I'm gonna learn everything there is to know from this guy about storytelling, because this guy's a master storyteller. I cleared my calendar and like in the first 30 minutes, he just repeats the same one principle over and over again. I'm like, oh, that seems to be it, which is stories are about intention and obstacle. He says, I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. So basically, if you watch any movie, you watch any TV show, within the first second, you will, you should know, right? Like, at any given time, you should be able to pause, and you'll know this usually within the first five minutes of every story.

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  There's a hero and the hero wants something, they have an intention, and they have an obstacle. What's in the way of it? Last night, I was watching a show called Hijack. You seen this?

• 33:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I finished it. Did you finish it?

• 33:11Shaan Puri?

  I finished it last night.

• 33:12Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah. Everyone should go and watch it. Idris Elba.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  Right away, you see Idris Elba, well, I won't spoil it, but Idris Elba wants one thing, right? At the very beginning, is he wants to be with his family. And he's got some obstacles. Wife doesn't want to be with him. Alright, so like, you get that. If you go watch Die Hard, Die Hard, oh, it's this movie about defusing a bomb and doing all this, create this terrorist plot. What does he want? At very beginning, he gets a call, he wants to be home with his family. But then, there's this terrorist plot. And really, at the, at the end of Die Hard, all he's trying to do is just get to his family. Like, the whole movie is hero wants something, and there's something in it's in his way, right? In this case, a terrorist plot. And so, and then throughout any story, that escalates. So like, let's take this show Hijack, right? The name kind of gives it away, a plane gets hijacked. Okay, cool. So now, this person wants something different. He doesn't want

• 33:58Shaan Puri?

  to bring his family back together. He immediately just wants not die from this terrorist, right? Or not die from this hijacking, land safely. Now, that's the intention. What are the obstacles? Well, there might be people working against that plan. And so, every story must have at its underpinning, an intention and obstacle. Okay, that's the first key principle of storytelling. And it doesn't matter if it's a romantic comedy. Oh, what does she want? Well, she's a high-powered lawyer, but all her friends are getting married and she's not dating anybody. What is she? She has an intention. She wants to be married, wants to have a loving relationship. The obstacle, she's so successful and all the guys she meets are assholes. Okay, cool. She's busy and meets assholes. Okay, now what do you do to make a story more compelling?

• 34:41Shaan Puri?

  The next ingredient you need to add is stakes. So you sprinkle some stakes on there. What are stakes? Stakes are elevating the what's at stake if they don't get it. So intention obstacle, if the intention is I'm hungry and the obstacle is, you know, lunch is over there in the other room. It's not that exciting of a story. If the stakes are this person hasn't eaten in 30 days and they're, you know, if they don't eat, they're gonna die, right? Like now, all of a sudden, you have something more interesting. So stakes are how you elevate it. Now, stakes don't always have to be life or death. The best stories, some of the, some of the best things, like, I don't know if you've seen this show called The Bear that's out recently. It's on Hulu and it's cool. It's just kind of like critically acclaimed, like cool people think it's cool type of show. And in that, there's not life or death stakes. There is no terrorist plot.

• 35:26Shaan Puri?

  There is no like life on the line, but they know that for everybody in whatever your world is, there's something that's the highest stakes thing, the thing you want the most. And all you have to do is convince the audience that this character really cares about this, that the character really feels like it's a, like a life or death. It's a life changing swing if it happens or it doesn't happen. So all you have to do is make it believable that that's the case. So when I tell stories, I actually take most pride in a story where on the surface, the stakes are small. Like I told a story once at a corporate retreat. It was like an executive retreat and they went around the circle and everybody's supposed to say what's going on and everybody was trying to one up each other with a more, a bigger problem, a more urgent fire that they had to put out. And I went the other way.

• 36:09Shaan Puri?

  I said, so I just moved out of my house into my own apartment. This is back in the day. I've just moved out of my house, my own apartment, living on my own for the first time and my mom is coming over. Now my mom's coming over and I had told her that like I'm living on my own. I'm a man now. I'm a big boy now. I can do it. But the reality was I was still there, like clothes are all over the floor. House is a mess. I don't have groceries, nothing. But I had told her I'm cooking dinner for tonight and I'll be damned if I didn't look like an adult for at least two hours while my mom is there. And so I've established the intention. I've established the obstacle, right? I'm trying to look like an adult obstacle. I'm not actually an adult stakes. My mom's opinion of me matters to me. I can convince you that it matters. I convince you that like. Drop everything. I will not fail at this. I will, it will be so bad for me if this

• 36:54Shaan Puri?

  happens. And I talk about in the story, I'm like, you know, I, and this is true, really, I made Brussels sprouts because that was the most adult thing I could think of. I'm trying to figure out how to make Brussels sprouts taste good. I've never even eaten Brussels sprouts. And like, I tell the story, people loved it. They loved it because I took a low stakes thing and I told a story well.

• 37:11Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. I love that. That's really, really great. And yeah, I say this a lot, but aspiring fledgling podcasters that ask me about sort of what I wish I'd known when I started the show. And there's all the technical stuff and all of the strategic stuff that's good for growth hacking. But when it comes to the show, when I first started doing it, I thought that the job of a podcaster was to basically be blinkist for your guest, that you were supposed to ruthlessly index whatever's in their head, and that you, any moment that was meandering away from it, any sentence that wasn't directly driving some sort of return that people could action in their life. I basically wanted to be Andrew Huberman's

• 37:51Chris Williamson?

  website dictated, right, to people, but for everybody on the planet. And over time, increasingly, I've realized that the best podcasters are just vibe architects. They architect the vibe. And all that they're doing is they're just allowing you to marinate in that vibe. You know, today's vibe is here are some contrarian thoughts that you may take offense to, but you're probably going to find interesting. And we're going to whimsy our way through a bunch of side stories before I decide that it's time to move on to the next one. That's the story, right? That's the vibe for today. So people know what they're going to expect. And I love these listicle style articles in particular, because it keeps everything quite snappy, and it keeps it moving, and it stops everything getting too. But it's not about being like, right, Chan, I need to know the five step process on storytelling,

• 38:34Chris Williamson?

  and then I need to understand exactly how to do the whatever. It's good because it focuses you to make sure that you get something out of a conversation. But allowing someone to meander. And let's not forget, I've sat down opposite Rogan. And a lot of my friends have multiple, multiple times. That man is a like, he is like a cook for meandering. Like, he is in love with meandering and it works amazingly on his show. Because it's, it just feels so naturalistic because that's how you talk with your boys or that's how you talk with your girls. Right. When you're sat at the dinner table or out having a beer or you've just finished playing pickleball or whatever. Someone sees a particular type of bird. Guess what?

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  The next 15 minutes are about birds. Like, and then the next five minutes after that are about how birds are actually a psyop from the government. And I saw this conspiracy theory online. And oh, what about Australia? Remember you seen that thing that Australia doesn't exist and that's a psyop? Yeah, actually, my aunt went to Australia. I've got a friend who's doing rattlesnake conversion therapy because rattlesnakes are turning gay due to eustrophes in the water. How do you think that Alex Jones trial is going? And isn't he the most suit person? And you're like, it just fractures and branches off. It's like freestyle rapping, but really slowly. And I think that that protracted just allowance of I'm going to follow the curiosity. It, it keeps people who have got varied interests interested because it doesn't, it doesn't pigeonhole you too much. It's a natural representation of how people have normal conversations.

• 40:02Chris Williamson?

  And even if you sit down to try and have a normal conversation with someone and then you began to constrain it, everyone would feel the constraint. Like, I've got a friend, really famous comedian who sat down for dinner with Jordan Peterson. This is a long time ago now. It's the first time you met him and now he's become friends. The first time we met him, he had notes. He tried to have a conversation with Jordan and apparently halfway through. He was like, I need to like, stop fucking about with these notes. Like, I'm not, I'm not here to interview you. I'm not the New York Times, right? Or like the Washington Post. He'd just have a conversation with the guy. And guess what? Like, if he had a bad flight that morning, you're talking about flights for 20 minutes and that's fine. And yeah, I vibe architecting, storytelling, whimsy, really leaning into it, like, you know, unnecessary detail.

• 40:46Chris Williamson?

  Like cold, blustery November night, all this shit. Like, yeah, get in there. I love that. I love that.

• 40:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think it's a podcasting is a medium that allows for that. That's the beauty of it.

• 40:58Shaan Puri?

  Not other mediums. You can't do that. You can't meander in a Tik Tok in the same way. But you could do other things in a Tik Tok, which are very interesting. Like you can say nothing in a Tik Tok and it works as long as you had the vibe right there too. Have you seen this girl who did this?

• 41:14Shaan Puri?

  What the fuck do DJs actually do? Video that went viral? You haven't seen this?

• 41:18Chris Williamson?

  No, what is it?

• 41:19Shaan Puri?

  Oh my God, we need Jamie here to pull this up for you. Okay. So this is Tik Tok, this girl, I think she's a model. She's, she's just looking at her phone like she's like very close to her phone. It's not even like a staged, whatever. It's like, she's just looking at her phone. And she's, she's like crying. There's like a tear going down her cheek, which is inexplicable because all she's saying is she's like, almost like, uh, broken down. She's like, what the fuck do DJs actually do? Like, what are they, what, what buttons are they pushing? What did the buttons do? Is it even connected to anything? And she just, she did that and it was so funny. It was not trying to be funny, but it was so funny. She was saying nothing, which was, it was the whole vibe was there because immediately she was like, somebody who was so shook by this, like, this unknown and this like realization that I don't even, I don't even understand this thing.

• 42:03Shaan Puri?

  And I think it might even not even be real. Are we sure that this is real? And it went viral now. And then a bunch of DJs started duetting, turned her saying that into a sample and turned it into a song. They're turning it into a, a, a song and, um, and then she came, as she came back on also, like the very next post where she was like, so many DJs are answering me about what DJs actually do. Now it just got me thinking, what if, what does footballers actually do? I mean, like, are you guys just running around like she's like almost flirting like, maybe you guys should slide into my DMs now and tell me what you do. Cause that other one worked so well. But she gets Tik Tok in a way that nobody does. I think like she's going to be a superstar. I watched a bunch of her content and it's because she is a vibe architect there. She knows how to be at her house, doing nothing.

• 42:49Shaan Puri?

  While still entertaining you and making you feel like you know her, like she's done this like kind of like girl next door hot thing, right? She's hot enough that TikTok is interesting, but she's makes it feel like she's not trying.

• 43:03Chris Williamson?

  She's relatable enough.

• 43:04Shaan Puri?

  Kind of feel relatable.

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  Yep, yep.

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  And she's talking about nothing, but she's entertaining when she the way she says it. So it's this like amazing like mashup. Now Rogan does the equivalent of that for podcasting, where he's like, he gets a good guest, but not like celebrities, really like it worked when it was like his friends were good hangs. It's like, no, we're going to talk about stuff, but we'll kind of go wherever. And we could talk about nothing, but you still are entertained and you still kind of learn something because we talked about a nothing subject that you knew zero about. And so, you know, he gets you that way. So I find this stuff very, very entertaining or very interesting how it all plays out. It's not how you would have thought. And I'm sure many people told him like, dude, three hours way too long for a podcast.

• 43:46Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:47Shaan Puri?

  Cut it down, trim it out, edit it, make it 40 minutes. That's the length of a commute.

• 43:51Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:51Shaan Puri?

  And he was like, I'm just gonna do what I want. How about that?

• 43:54Chris Williamson?

  And I like it. I remember when I first started doing podcasting and I looked, you know, run everything by the data. Okay. So what is the optimal length for a podcast? Well, if you want to maximize completion and balance that with value, you're looking at it's between sort of 30 and 40 minutes, I think, because that's the length of a commute and you want people to be able to commit to it during a commute. It doesn't account for those psychopaths out there like me and probably you that listen to stuff at like 1.5 or two or 2.5 times speeds. It's like, that's like double commute or whatever. But, um, yeah, and ultimately it comes down to are you having fun? Because if enthusiasm with storytelling, enthusiasm plus storytelling or enthusiasm about your story is a vicious combo. Me and my housemate always talk about this. These rally, not rally

• 44:39Chris Williamson?

  cross. What's the, is it motocross or rally cross, rally driving, like off-road rally driving thing like Colin McCray, what he used to do. There are these guys that were anoraks and it's the Scottish Highlands and it is the middle of October and it's pitch black and freezing cold and they've been camping there and they stand there by the side of this dirt track to see 0.25 seconds of a car go past.

• 45:06Chris Williamson?

  That's it. And then they turn to all of their boys and they're like, ah, and they can't believe it. And watching anybody get fired up that much about anything fires you up as well. This is why enthusiasm is contagious. And this is why toxic positivity and going against cynicism is good, because it has a trickle down effect, right? Like a contamination zone from a nuclear spill. You've got this fallout that just continues to go. And it can happen on the internet. And it's this girl. This girl was genuinely so intrigued and found it so funny to to observe this thing like, what do DJs do? And I've employed them for 15 years. And it's still a question that I can't give her a definitive answer to.

• 45:51Shaan Puri?

  She's on to something.

• 45:52Chris Williamson?

  What the fuck do they do? And so, yeah, I think very, very good. Okay, next one. If you're in your head, you're dead. What's that mean?

• 45:59Shaan Puri?

  I guess there's kind of a theme with these, which is smart people do really dumb things. And I think an example of that is people who are in their head a lot. So if you're in your head, you're dead. I heard that once, and it just resonated with me, partly because it rhymes. I'm a simple ten. But also partly because there was something that was very true about it. And I didn't even fully understand it yet. But I was like, yes, what though? Yes. And what? That was my reaction to it, which is a very good like signal for something you want to know more about, which is an immediate visceral yes, without the intellectual understanding yet. And what I learned from this was a very simple thing. I want to be happy, like many people do. But I did something that most people

• 46:42Shaan Puri?

  don't do, which is try to figure out how the hell do you actually be happy? And one of the things about actually being happy is that you need to get out of your head. So, most people who are, again, the type of people who listen to podcasts, I'll call out a lot of people who listen to podcasts, they are in their head. They try to think their way through life. They think their way into, they think their way through problems, and that serves them. But then they think they can think their way through feeling, like, they want happiness. So they try to think their way there. Wait, whoa, no, no, hold on. You can't, you know, like, that's like saying, I'm gonna talk my way through cooking. No, no, there's two different things. Like, I can maybe think my way, like, in logic, my way through logical problems. But I can't think my way through emotion. That doesn't, that's not how emotion works.

• 47:26Chris Williamson?

  Trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction. George Mack.

• 47:34Shaan Puri?

  Dude, George, two bangers in this episode. I love it. He's great. I just added, by the way, I just added George to my work Slack, even though me and George don't work together because I was like, I just need more George in my life. So we just have a channel on Slack where like, I'll just dump random shit like this and he'll do, he'll do the same. It's amazing. Highly, highly recommend. Um, so the, the realization here was I always had a mindset. I thought the formula worked like this. I thought if you um, think a certain thing, you will feel a certain way, which will lead you to do a certain thing. And that is true. If I think that this person is, um, this person just cut me off while I was driving, I will feel pissed, I'll feel angry,

• 48:15Shaan Puri?

  and I will then do something in retaliation. I'll road rage, I'll drive, I'll cut them off, I'll flick them off, whatever it is, right? Think leads to feel leads to do. I thought it's a one-way street. And then I realized most like, like math equations, math equations are like reversible. Like if A plus B equals C, then C equals A plus B. So the other way also works, and it actually works better in this case. So if you do a thing, you will feel differently, which will cause you to think differently. And so anybody who exercises knows this intuitively, whether they've wrapped words around this or not, which is, uh, if you, if you focus on, if you think so, if you think you're feeling tired or shitty, and therefore you, um, you know, if you think I don't have enough time, or I'm feeling I didn't sleep enough last night,

• 48:59Shaan Puri?

  whatever, you'll feel tired and shitty, therefore you won't do exercise. But if you just happen to overcome that, if you, if you quickly just short circuit that and say, nope, not listening to that thought, and you instead just go do the thing, you go and you do 50 pushups right now on the ground, you go into a cold plunge, you do something physical, you will immediately feel different, which will lead you to have a different thought. And, um, and so once I realized the equation works better the other way, the street, the traffic is less crowded going, driving the other way on that road. I was like, this is the hack. And so now I realize that the thoughts are not the sort of master controller of the universe. They're just an equal party to this. They have one seat at the table, feelings have another and actions have another. And actually, they all influence

• 49:43Shaan Puri?

  each other. So if you want to feel differently, you can either think something different or do something different. And doing is just way easier. Because if you try to think yourself out of it, you just tie yourself up in knots usually. And so, once I realized this, I realized I had lived a lot of my life in my own head, trying to think my way through everything. And a much faster version of this was to just do something. This plays itself out in a bunch of different ways. So, one time I saw on Twitter, somebody say something like, I'm having panic attacks, or somebody found a way to, you know, get myself to not have these panic attacks. And they were like, therapy, or you could try, just, you know, really talking yourself through it, so you're not feeling that, you don't think that thought, therefore you don't have that

• 50:25Shaan Puri?

  feeling, therefore you don't have the panic attack. And then, Emmett Shear, who's the CEO of Twitch, the guy who had acquired my previous company, replied to it. And this was, I never really thought a CEO would chime in on like, hey, here's how I deal with panic attacks, but he did. And he goes, fastest hack for panic attacks, immediately dip your face, submerge your face into ice cold water. You will stop having the panic attack immediately, because it activates the mammalian dive reflex.

• 50:52Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 50:53Shaan Puri?

  And I had never heard this before, it was completely new to me, but it was exactly in the same line of thinking, which is, often, the fastest way to change how you feel is a rapid change in your physiology, which then will lead you to think a different thought, which then will lead you to feel a different way and have a different action. It's just a hack. It's just a complete life hack, that most smart people don't utilize. They're just brains, sitting in a dead vessel. And you see this, go, go watch how people operate. They just sit in their car, sit on their couch, and sit at their desk. Or like, you want to make, you want to have a meeting, where you're going to make a key decision that might change the trajectory of your entire company. And everybody sits there, hunched over, tired after a long day, eating shitty food.

• 51:34Chris Williamson?

  Full of muffins. Yeah.

• 51:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Trying to get a coffee just to stimulate themselves, just to kind of get through that thing.

• 51:39Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 51:40Shaan Puri?

  It's insane. We make decisions when we're in that physical state. It is, it is a, uh, an absolute leak or weakness in most people's game.

• 51:48Chris Williamson?

  One of the interesting things I learned from Kelly Starrett's supple leopard guy was if you've ever had to take a really mentally challenging phone call, what you will sometimes find yourself doing is like a puppeteer has got a hold of you. You'll stand up from your seat and you'll start locomoting around the room.

• 52:06Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 52:06Chris Williamson?

  You'll just do laps. You know, you've got a 30 square foot room that you're in and you're some, you've somehow managed to create some totally arbitrary route that you're walking in a figure of eight or an infinity symbol or whatever around this room. We're just built to move. Humans are built to move. We're built to be on the ground. We're built to be out in nature. We're built to be connected to the, the ground to see sun, et cetera, et cetera. This, you don't need to go full like Aubrey Marcus psychedelic woo, like biohack, Ben Greenfield biohack stuff here. Like it's just, it, it's notice within yourself what your physiology feels compelled to do when things happen to you. Like you do something, you reach for something because the cookies or the cinnamon rolls

• 52:50Chris Williamson?

  or the coffee or whatever is in front of you. And you've conditioned yourself to think that that's the thing what's that's going to change you. Huberman's got the best quote on this, which is you cannot change the mind with the mind. You have to change it with the body. I don't know if that's strict, as with most aphorisms, there's exceptions. Meditation is purposefully changing the mind with the mind, right? Like it's, it's actually isolating the mind to cycle on itself. But I think the, the broad rule is very true. And I've always said this, that if you gave me the choice between having a good night's sleep or going to the gym, I will go to the gym every time and my mood will be reset more from pre to post-training than from pre to post-bed.

• 53:30Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 53:30Chris Williamson?

  I can wake up and yesterday's bad mood or whatever can bleed through the night. I'll have a dream about being kidnapped by people from Liverpool and being forced to do their marketing. Oh, I had that literally happened a couple of weeks ago. I also had another one where I'd committed a war crime and my old cricket team from 20 years ago knew that I'd done it and they were mercenaries hunting me and Sam Harris was a newscaster trying to track me down. Speaking of Sam, the episode that I did with him, he had this really lovely bit where he's, he's talking about kind of this, um, like cerebral pornography that a lot of us have where we sort of pray at the altar of cognitive horsepower and, um, and presumed that because we've got such good concepts that we can just, you know, we can, we

• 54:13Chris Williamson?

  can sort all of this. And when you, when he tries to explain to his smart friends that meditation and maybe letting go of that and finding a little bit more ease, releasing the tiller a little bit more might be a good idea. They say, well, that sounds roughly equivalent to being hit over the head with a hammer. You know, I, I look at all of my great concepts. You would have a much better life if you had some, you should have more concepts like mine. Like imagine how great you'd be if you had my concept. Right. And it's, yeah, I, I, it's a permanent battle, I think. And you're right as well to point the finger into the ears of the people that are listening to podcasts like mine and yours.

• 54:48Shaan Puri?

  You're so good at this. Uh, you just told a funny, vulnerable, the story about being kidnapped and forced to do their marketing is so funny to me. By the way, that is fucking amazing. And, uh, and then you like connected the dots to some like Sam Harris, like you have this like bank of quotes and frameworks and nuggets from the smartest people on earth. That's so amazing that you have that. So first of all, you're good at what you do. I, I appreciate that.

• 55:14Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 55:14Shaan Puri?

  Uh, the second is I had a realization while you were talking that I think is a, a new philosophy that I, I just realized. Let me try to work this out live. Um, mental minimalism. So basically I think it's becoming vogue to have a sort of minimalist lifestyle, maybe fashion style, like minimalism is in in a bunch of different areas. One area where it's not in is mentally. So, um, the sort of knowledge porn, worshiping at the altar of the cognitive of cognition, um, collecting, you know, mental models and frameworks, like their stamps, like, you know, I, I think a lot of this is complete wasted energy and actually counterproductive. Um, you know, it's,

• 55:57Shaan Puri?

  what's that Bruce Lee thing? It's like, you know, I don't fear the man who has, knows a thousand kicks. I fear the man who's practiced one kick a thousand times. Same, same, samezies, you know, like, that's how I feel about like, I really just want to understand a few principles. And that's it.

• 56:14Chris Williamson?

  And call it a day. How do you know which are the right principles?

• 56:17Shaan Puri?

  Um, I think there's the, I think they're the ones that resonate and they'll still change over time. So like at any given season of your life, you need different, there's different principles that will speak to you. Um, almost in a like when the student is ready, the teacher appears type of thing. Um, right now in my life, I think that there are certain ones that are, that stand out more than others. But this mental minimalism thing I think works because it ties into my favorite meme, the, uh, the midwit meme, the

• 56:44Chris Williamson?

  Yours, mine and George Max. George is, ask him about if he's going to do it, uh, the midwits guide to life.

• 56:52Shaan Puri?

  So I haven't heard this.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  He's, he's thinking about doing a, a coffee table book, which is every page is a different midwit meme. And it's just the, just all of them.

• 57:04Shaan Puri?

  I'm in first customer, whatever.

• 57:07Chris Williamson?

  Kickstarter, I'll, I'll put, I'll put money into.

• 57:09Shaan Puri?

  Whatever it is.

• 57:09Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 57:10Shaan Puri?

  That meme, I, I, I told my business partner at the beginning of the year, I said, that's, this is the meme of the year. I said, this meme explains everything I've done wrong in life and everything I've done right in life. And when I did it right, I did it right according to this meme when I did it wrong. So if people don't know the meme, it's basically, I'll, actually, I think you might explain it better than I do. Can you articulate what is the midwit meme? And then let's, let's play with that a little bit.

• 57:30Chris Williamson?

  Of course. Yeah. So it's an IQ distribution, which is a bell curve, right? So you have a graph and from left to right, you have stupid on the left and you have super, super smart on the right. And you have this bell curve that runs showing that there's more people in the middle than there are on the edges. And on the left, you have this guy that kind of looks a little bit like a Neanderthal with this sort of furrowed brow and sort of these sort of recessed eyes. He looks kind of thick. And then in the middle, you sort of have this woke. Sort of SJW screaming, very tense, kind of like glasses stressed out guy. And then on the right, you have the sage who almost looks like a Jedi, Jedi master or whatever. And usually you have both people, the stupid and the smart person end up coming to the same realization.

• 58:14Chris Williamson?

  And the person in the middle has some over complicated idea. So one of the obvious examples would be lift weights, eat protein, stupid guy, guy in the middle. I must ensure that my predigested grass fed coffee butter is perfectly served 30 minutes before to ensure that my protein window. Lift weights, eat protein, right? George's, George's favorite one of these is the guy in the left says, I'm the guy in the left. The guy in the middle says, I'm the guy in the right. And the guy in the right says, I'm the guy in the left.

• 58:45Chris Williamson?

  Fucking.

• 58:45Shaan Puri?

  That is good. There's levels to the mid whip meme. I'm now learning.

• 58:49Chris Williamson?

  Matters.

• 58:50Shaan Puri?

  I think that meme explains so much of life. I think that most people should strive to be, you know, the funny thing you could strive to be either the Neanderthal, Neanderthal or the Jedi, doesn't matter. They come to the same conclusion. And this idea of mental minimalism, can you distill down why you're doing something to one reason? People love pros and cons lists and they tie themselves in knots trying to weigh this out the scale of one pro, one con, two pros, one and a half cons. And they, and they can't make any decisions or this happens to me a lot in the business world. I talked to a founder today, they're starting a new company. And I said, your last company was so interesting. You raised $20 million, you did all the stuff, you did some good things, but it obviously didn't work out. That's why we're here versus on your yacht.

• 59:34Shaan Puri?

  So, um, so what'd you get wrong? And he proceeded to talk for 20 minutes, telling me about everything he did right. And I was like, what happened? I asked you a question, I said, where did it go wrong? You gave me 20 minutes, which already is an incorrect answer because the answer should be simple. And then the 20 minutes were weaving through things you did right and things that other people did wrong and things that other companies tried. What are you talking about? People don't even learn the right lesson from what they did. And so like, you know, I would simplify a lot of the things in life, right? They like the diet part of my life. Eat real food, not too much exercise, right? Like, that's it, right?

• 1:00:16Shaan Puri?

  Eat real food, mostly veggies and exercise. This is, this is diet advice at the simplest level. All I need to do now is intensely do that thing, right? The difference between knowledge and wisdom, knowledge is knowing what you should do and wisdom is doing what you should do. Like, to me, that is my definition of wisdom. It's knowledge applied. It's doing what you should do. You do need enough knowledge to at least know roughly what you should do. But what most people do is they then over index on knowledge and go try to learn all the possible things that there are to know about the subject and under index on wisdom, which is actually doing and applying that the, the, the base knowledge that they have.

• 1:00:54Chris Williamson?

  Yes. So trying to take the mental minimalism thing, making it a little bit more applied. I think that it makes me think a little bit about the explore exploit framework, which is that you need to be able to expose yourself to enough ideas that you can work out which ones are good, which ones are bad. Tim Ferriss has a phenomenal idea, which is his system for memorization and it's called the good shit sticks. And what he suggests is, you know, if you're Tiago Forte and you're Ali Abdaal and you're built from like that cohort of people, you'll have a perfectly organized, ever known external brain that's got everything's root folded and decision tree back to whatever, whatever. If you listen

• 1:01:36Chris Williamson?

  to something and it stands out to you and you can't not send a screenshot of it to someone from a book or screen record it and send it to your friends or put it in a group chat or write it down in a note. Yeah, that's good. That's good. The good shit sticks. And that, that for me is the easiest way to remember stuff because you don't ever have to remember things that you're not excited about remembering. It's easy to remember stuff like the one that I've got from you earlier on today, that cynics get to be right and optimists get to be rich. Money, beyond money, right? I can't forget it. I can't forget, I'm going to remember that now for five years, right? I'm going to be caught in that in, in half a decade's time. Can't get rid of it. It doesn't matter if the if the story about storytelling, if you've switched off and you started thinking about like what you've got to do later on today or what you're going to make for lunch or whatever like

• 1:02:22Chris Williamson?

  sweet, then you don't need to go back and try and remember that because it wasn't for you. Right. And that's that, you know, you just enjoyed the lovely, warm tones of what we're going through. So explore exploit, good shit sticks, good, good. That's so we've got, um, how do I expose myself to it? How do I allow things to pop up? Like, what's my selection criteria from the things that I've been exposed to? So that's a nice little framework to to run ourselves through. And then I would maybe say,

• 1:02:48Chris Williamson?

  when it comes to like stopping yourself praying at the altar of cerebral horsepower quite so much.

• 1:02:55Chris Williamson?

  All of the people that I know that are the most effective in life have a very small number of operating principles and one orientation, usually. One single orientation. And this is a lesson.

• 1:03:09Shaan Puri?

  Orientation, what do you mean by that?

• 1:03:10Chris Williamson?

  They are moving toward a particular destination. I hesitate to say goal because I don't think it's quite the same as a goal. It's more an area that they're moving toward. Uh, so for instance, for George, um, his would be, he wants to be able to have fun and write. So his entire life is built around him being able to have fun and write. Wants to write for two hours every single morning. It doesn't matter where on the planet he is, and he wants to have fun. And fun for him can be from hanging with friends. It can be doing cold, cold tub. It can be learning to play pickleball. It can be traveling. It can be doing whatever, right?

• 1:03:45Chris Williamson?

  Two stories, one from Jeff Bezos, apparently while he was at Amazon, every single decision that was made was run through one single orienting principle. Now, orienting principle was, does this improve the customer experience? Does this improve the customer experience? Every single decision. Don't know if it's true. Symbolically, it's useful. Second one. Elon Musk, does this get us closer to Mars? Does this get us close to Mars? And if you have a single orienting principle, evidently, does me taking a poop now or taking a poop in 15 minutes' time, which one gets us closer to Mars? Like that's, you know, you're not going to ask yourself that question. But just having that orienting principle, and this is why Holmose, who has got an interesting approach to this.

• 1:04:28Chris Williamson?

  He talks about periods of life, phases, phases or periods of life. And he was talking about for this next phase or for this next period, and he breaks them up into seven year blocks. He was like, I know that I'm going to be in Vegas for the next seven, so I don't mind. Like I can just lock in, I'm in Vegas, this is, this is what we're going to do. We've got the apartment, I've got, I know where I'm going to buy an office and I'm going to do the whatever and I'm going to build a gym.

• 1:04:53Chris Williamson?

  By having phases or periods of your life, it allows you to be more ruthless with your orientation principle. Because you don't, it doesn't need to scale for quite as long. If you accept that you're time bound on what you're doing at the moment, I actually think seven years is fucking insane. Like, and obviously he's probably got it broken into 90 day sprints and one year blocks or whatever, whatever. But by having it at least time bound, what it permits you to do is be like, right, okay. All that I need to do within the next 90 days is build up a healthy eating habit. And my social life can go out of the window and my business might take a little bit of a hit. But I've decided in advance that this is the thing that I'm going to do. And I like the orienting principle as like a way to simplify down.

• 1:05:38Chris Williamson?

  I've been exposed to all these ideas, some good ones have stuck about, the ones that I enjoyed are the ones that I've, I've kept. Now, what, what am I really, really aiming towards? Okay, which one spoke to me the most? How does it fit with my lifestyle? And how can I time bind, time bound that for the next however long?

• 1:05:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the time thing is interesting because.

• 1:05:58Shaan Puri?

  You can use it in a bunch of different ways. You can play with time in a bunch of ways. So when you think that something's going to be really hard, you shrink the time to time box to be like, cool, what's the best I can do in the next 45 minutes? And all of a sudden, the brain becomes a, I call the brain an answering machine. You just have to figure out what the right questions, right prompts, like AI, what are the right prompts I need to give it? In order for it to give me a different answer, ask a better question, get a better answer. And so you could time box on the short scale to be more productive, to be more creative. You can time box, like you said, to depressurize a decision. So you can think in both directions.

• 1:06:38Shaan Puri?

  What I'll do sometimes is say, what if I was long, like, how do I take a longer term orientation towards this? So for example, I might say, um, there's a meeting on the calendar. I don't really see the agenda. It doesn't tie into this thing I'm doing right now, but like, over a long time horizon, I think Chris is awesome and I want to do awesome things with awesome people in the long run. Great. It's worth doing. Or, you know, this person, I could kind of win more in this deal now. But maybe if I give a little, it actually builds some goodwill with us and it lubricates the next 10 deals we do together. I met a friend once, um, I really wanted to be an investor and I had no money. And he was like, um, so first I just didn't do any deals because I didn't have the money.

• 1:07:22Shaan Puri?

  I just was limited by my imagination. Don't have money, don't do deals. And I missed three deals. I became billion dollar company. And at that point I was like, okay, well, I don't want to really see number four, so I'm going to find a way. I still have no money, but I'm going to find a way. So I asked a different question to my brain. How can I invest even though I don't have money? Brain says, well, you got friends who have money. Why don't you ask them? Why don't you, why don't you do a deal with them? Take a little less economics, but at least you do the deal. And immediately go to a friend who's maybe 10 years older than me or so, seven, seven to 10 years older. And, um, he's got money and I said, want to do this deal? He said, yeah. I said, okay. Well, I don't really know. What's the fair split here? Like, is there a standard? I'm Googling. I can't find it. I don't want to be a sucker, but I also don't want to be greedy. I don't know the answer.

• 1:08:05Shaan Puri?

  And he, I thought, well, this, and this guy's a business shark. So I'm like, certainly he's going to shark me with this offer. I got to prepare myself for this shark attack. This guy's been so successful, made hundreds of millions of dollars. He is, I'm, I'm playing chess against Magnus Carlsen here, trying to negotiate this deal with this guy. And instead he texts me and just says, um, uh, whatever you think is fair is fine with me in this deal. I actually don't care about this deal. What I care about is doing deals with you for the next 20 years. And I was like, huh, never had a text message like that. Never even had an experience like that. Never met somebody who takes that long-term orientation. Bezos and others have, I think Bezos donates a lot to the Long Now Foundation, which is like this in San Francisco, there's a clock that's like 10,000 year clock or some shit like that. It's like this

• 1:08:48Shaan Puri?

  this tells you like, think longer, think bigger. Um, you will operate differently than somebody who's always short-term minded. So you could go in that direction, or you could shrink the time horizon and say, you know what? I don't know the forever answer of my purpose in life and what I want to do with my career and all this stuff. But what I do know is like, this is fun right now. I think it'll be fun. And why don't I just set two years? What's a, what are great decisions I can make though? I'm happy to commit to for a two-year period, but not necessarily a 20-year period. So you could depressurize the situation and allow yourself to think more clearly. My buddy Sam has a version of this called worry time. And he's kind of like, I'm a pretty laid back guy. He's a lot more like high strung in general. And I'm like, how do you live like that? And he's like, oh, I've found my mechanisms. He goes, I have

• 1:09:31Shaan Puri?

  something called worry time. He's like, I used to worry all the time about whatever it is, money, uh, my car repair, whatever, whatever's going on. He's like, and I realized like, that really doesn't get me anywhere. Um, to have this like low ambient worry at all times, this low level, nonspecific stress at all times. He's like, so I just started setting out time. I said, okay, I don't think about, I don't worry about money, except for Sundays from 11 a.m. to noon. And that's my time. I know it's there and I'll think about money during that time. And I'll say, do I have enough? And am I spending too much? And whatever? And I'll make some adjustments. I say, I'm good till the next Sunday. And he's like, that's what I do. I literally just schedule it in. And just the fact that I scheduled it of like, now is the time I'm going to work, work on this or worry about this. Um, totally changes my like, allows me to then function freely and

• 1:10:15Shaan Puri?

  think clearly, uh, other than that. I love that hack. Justin Maris has a similar one about choosing what to work on. He's like, A common thing you see is people get to a certain point, like middle of their career, and then they get paralyzed. They can't decide what to do. They're looking for the perfect project as the perfect conditions. That's just gonna be like sufficiently ambitious and prestigious and noble and lucrative and all these things. And they just don't know what to do. They could feel totally lost. And he goes, uh, one of the big things that works is basically committing to something and being like, I'm gonna not question this decision every day. Um, my trainer says this thing. He goes, you don't plant the seed and then dig it up the next day and say, are you growing? Like, no, you plant the seed and you just water it.

• 1:10:57Shaan Puri?

  You just water it. You just, you, you know that that plant is gonna take a little time to sprout. You, that's okay. You don't dig it up every single time and question it. And so, um, get this sort of scheduled worry time or scheduled commitment times. I think, I think people are mostly victims to time. And then you meet some people that are sort of masters of time. They manipulate time in a different way. And I didn't even have language around this until I met them and I started to realize, oh, there's some games you can play with time that actually make it work for you versus just this thing you're running out of and don't have enough of.

• 1:11:27Chris Williamson?

  Next one. People think they learn from failure, but I don't find that to be true. Why?

• 1:11:34Shaan Puri?

  Uh, it's another one of those things that everybody says, and you sound crazy to disagree with it. Um, everybody says, oh, I failed, but I learned so much, right? Uh, I didn't lose, I learned, right? And these are, it's a great mindset to have. If it were true, is simply not true in most situations. Because you, if you press on that, you ask about it. So what, what did you learn? Answer's not at the tip of the tongue. Okay, let me give you some time. Let's think about it. Okay, so what did you learn? Right? I, I gave the example of the, the founder who I said, well, it failed, why did it fail? And they had a different story. Some people in success learn the wrong lesson. Uh, I had a guy work for me, 18 years old.

• 1:12:15Shaan Puri?

  And he, he was talented at what he was doing, but he had like, you know, like many people do, I did at 18 too. I had a bit of a degenerate streak, like to gamble. And, uh, you know, when I gamble, I played online poker. Kids nowadays, they play Robin Hood. And they play crypto and they play other things, right? So he was like, you know, I'm talking to him on a call and he goes quiet for a second. I'm like, hey, did you, are you, do you hear me? Like I said, let's do this. You're writing the notes. You stopped writing. What happened? He goes, oh, sorry. I saw that Bitcoin crashed to $4,000 and I wanted to buy. And I go, and I'm like, two things. A, we're in a meeting. Why are you looking at the Bitcoin price? B, why is Bitcoin at 4,000? I want to buy too. And so I went.

• 1:12:57Shaan Puri?

  He bought on like some crazy leverage. So he's buying like 25X or something like that. So he puts in like five grand, but buys 25X worth, but like he's going to get liquidated if the price drops anymore, but he played that, right? Makes money. And so he's 18 or 19 years old. I think he's got a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank from like combination of like taking all the money I paid him for work and then gambling and trying to run it up.

• 1:13:20Shaan Puri?

  And I'm like, okay, that's good. Um, and I'd always talked to him about this one company. So there's this company that he, uh, he was really interested in that was like, whatever, some gaming company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. He kept talking to me about this. I'm like, dude, do you think I care about some company in Australia? Like, why do you tell me about this? He's like, I think it's going to be big. So I'm like, if you think it's going to be big, you should invest in it. But I forgot that he's not a normal person and he's going to invest everything in it. So he does. He invests all of his money into this one stock. Of course, things don't go right. This, that company wasn't doing so well. They say, they decide, you know what? Shit's not going well for us. We're going to do what was in vogue at the time.

• 1:14:01Shaan Puri?

  We're going to pivot to crypto. So they go and they say, we are now a blockchain gaming company. Australian Stock Exchange doesn't like that. They boot them off the exchange. They say, we don't support crypto publicly traded companies. So they delist them. So now my friend is 20 years old. He's holding $200,000 of a stock that is no longer listed on the market and basically has no pathway to get back on there and just seems like a dead end. So he joins this Facebook group of people who also were like stockholders, like a, you know, like a victims of, a victims group. And people in that group are just like, what do we do? Like, I own the stock. I can't even sell it anymore. And so it's not publicly traded anymore. So what do I do?

• 1:14:44Shaan Puri?

  And so some people are offering like, look, I'll buy it off you for like, you know, 10 cents of the dollar. Like, I'll just, I'll give you 10 cents for every dollar you have of this. And people are happy to move on from their position. So my friend decides, you know what? The thing I'm gonna do, or the lesson I've learned so far in this like extreme risk-taking thing is that I didn't take enough risk. He immediately goes and doubles down on it and um, he, he buys, he goes and borrows more money and starts buying up more stock from all these people that are selling for pennies on the dollar. He becomes like one of the largest shareholders of this company. Somehow through like dumb luck, um, this company starts to uh like crypto, crypto hits a bull run.

• 1:15:27Shaan Puri?

  Crypto starts going up. Now any crypto company is looking good. NFTs become a thing. This company's perfectly positioned to do something NFTs. Share price goes way up, but it's still delisted, but it's now worth a lot. So a guy um approaches him and says, I'll give you $2 million for it. Hold on, I gotta take my daughter to go pee. One second.

• 1:15:44Chris Williamson?

  That's okay. All right.

• 1:15:46Shaan Puri?

  Potty training.

• 1:15:50Shaan Puri?

  Here I am, dropping knowledge bombs and then I have to go wipe a butt.

• 1:15:54Chris Williamson?

  And potty training. That's the duality of man. Get you a man that can do both.

• 1:15:59Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. That was the commercial right there. Um, where was it? Okay, guy comes up, offers him $2 million for his stock. I'm like, how the hell did this work out for him? Of course, he says no. He says this is gonna go bigger and he goes forward. And I'm telling the story and at the time I told the story, I was telling it because I was like, this guy who was my intern had this crazy story. Like, isn't that amazing? And one gentleman at the table goes, Huh. He goes, so do you think he learned the right lesson out of that? I had never even heard somebody say this question, which is, did you, you learned, yes, but did you learn the right thing from this experience? And I don't think I had even learned the right lesson. And definitely my friend, who was the kid who was doing this, had not learned the right lesson,

• 1:16:44Shaan Puri?

  which was his, he was taking away this lesson of like, I'm a genius and I'm right. Um, as his like takeaway, when he actually probably should have been taking away, you know, a slightly different lesson. And I just see this over and over again. Um, and I think there's a practical part of this too. People don't write down what they were thinking at the time or later. Like they don't really have a system in place that will let them assess what they're doing. So that you can kind of like, our memories are generally quite bad. Our memories of our own thoughts are worse. Our memories of our thoughts when we were wrong, you're kidding me? Like, there's no chance we have an accurate view of that. And so because you don't actually have this like accurate, like, I'm doing this for this reason. I think this is how it's going to play out.

• 1:17:28Shaan Puri?

  Fast forward, here's how it actually played out. You don't have this before and after to learn from. So I think generally people aren't very good at learning from this. And I think it's also, um, interesting that they don't have a system to do it. And I think people should have a system to assess the decisions you make, because judgment and decision making is probably the most important skill you can hone over time. But we just kind of leave it up to like, I hope it just comes with age, when actually you can probably increase the rate of learning on your decision making. If you like, establish a little system for yourself of being, just writing things down, writing down why you're doing what you're doing and why. And then assessing it later, regularly, regularly assessing it.

• 1:18:07Chris Williamson?

  I always thought it would be really cool if there was such a machine as being able to take a photo of the texture of your mind and being able to revisit it. You know, for the people that are trying to become more positive or more enthusiastic or more balanced or equanimous or mindful or peaceful or aggressive or overcome their shyness, whatever. Go back to you five years ago, you 10 years ago, and get a sense for what sorts of things captured your attention on a daily basis. What were the sorts of things that you were caught up ruminating about and worrying about whether they were going to happen or how they could have happened? Or if what you would have done had you not wanted them to happen?

• 1:18:50Chris Williamson?

  If you were able to go back and experience that, literally feel it again, the texture of your mind, the contrast would be so unbelievable, but it's the drip, drip, drip, Japanese water torture of erosion that's so slow, like a tectonic plate moves over time that it nudges what we expect from our daily existence to the point where you can't notice it. When did you become confident? When did you overcome your shyness? When did you whatever? Like it's, there's no point at which it happened. It's just, it's like asking someone when they became old, right? They just, it's just a gradation that you went through. When did you become peaceful? When did you become angry? When did you become resentful? Like

• 1:19:31Chris Williamson?

  all of these things, they just occur. And I think that self deception around things that we got wrong, as you said, is just, it's, it's fucking unbeatable.

• 1:19:43Shaan Puri?

  I went to the doctor the other day and I'm sitting there and I'm like, yeah, I think I might have sleep apnea. I don't really know. I did a test back in the day. They said, you know, very mild, but I feel like it's gotten worse. I don't really know. And he goes, um, he's like, have you gained any weight? And I was like, um, yeah, maybe a little. I don't know. Hard. Yeah, I think so. But like, I not like something drastic. And he pulls up my chart and the, the doctor's office I go to, it's like the charts like in between you two. So it's not like, back in the day, the doctor used to have it and they used to look at it, then talk to you. Here we could both see the screen. And so I'm looking at the chart and literally he's like, so 2017, you were 40 pounds lighter than you are now. I was like, 40 pounds? That sounds like a lot of weight to gain.

• 1:20:27Shaan Puri?

  I guess it has been. I basically gained 10 pounds a year for eight pounds a year for five years. And it was like, um, yeah, I knew I'd been getting kind of out of shape, dad bod status, but like, uh, when you hear it that way, or you see it on a chart, you're just like, what? Like, it was eye opening. And that's me. And I can see my body. Imagine my brain and my level of wisdom and the things I focus on and my, my intellect and my decision making. Like I have no chance of noticing. Either the degradation or improvements, to be honest, of those over time. I do wish such a machine would exist.

• 1:21:06Chris Williamson?

  George, again, this is like, George is the third guest here. He's just, it doesn't happen to be contributing. He's been very quiet today. He's got this thing that he's doing, which is pretty diddick-pilled as it goes, where at the end of each day, he's trying to capture some key lessons about the day so that he can make the hidden observable in terms of how he feels. And, you know, journaling is kind of a more qualitative solution, I suppose, for this. But, you know, a dashboard like what Rob is trying to design, or George has managed to cobble together on a free type form website, or whatever it is that he's using, I do think is a good way to start visualizing the things that you care about. All right, next one. I love this one. Being a billionaire is a stupid goal.

• 1:21:49Chris Williamson?

  Why? You're around billionaires. You're a man of many means, and you have friends with as many means and even more means. Why?

• 1:21:57Shaan Puri?

  Well, first of all, they just give the money away anyways. So clearly, it couldn't be that valuable. Like, they worked their whole life to get it, and then they give it all away. So already, that tells you that, like, massive accumulation and abundance of money beyond a certain point certainly doesn't matter, otherwise they would not give it away. Like, let's say I gave them extra health. I don't think they're donating that. Let's say I gave them extra time, 100 extra years of life. I don't think they're donating that. But you can give them a billion dollars, and they'll give away 99% of it. So that's the first thing. Just the first signal that maybe this is overrated. The second is, I'm not against abundance. So most people who hate billionaires just hate abundance. They hate when anybody wins at a large scale. I'm not that guy. I like people

• 1:22:40Shaan Puri?

  who win. I admire and respect and strive to be one of those people. But what I admire and appreciate the most is somebody who picks the right game to play, somebody who chooses a game or designs a game of their own liking. So the question then becomes, what are the other things that could become massively abundant and a massive winner of? Okay, the money game is one.

• 1:23:05Shaan Puri?

  And there are certainly checkpoints along the way of money that matter. When you don't have to have any more money, like you don't have to have a job because you have it. Your investments make you enough money, right? That's financial freedom. That was like the key checkpoint of life or it's not being in debt. Getting back to zero for somebody who's in debt is a big checkpoint. But beyond that, you know, the checkpoints run out or they spread out in a big way. And the prizes shrink. It's like, what's the difference between somebody who's got $50 million and $500 million? Like one rents the jet, the other owns the jet. There's not that much of a difference, right? One has a library in their house, the other guy pays for the library at the school. It's like, who cares? Do I really care about that anyways? Not worth dedicating my life to. So the question is, what things, what things of abundance are worth dedicating your life to? And how do you think about those?

• 1:23:48Shaan Puri?

  So I think it's great to have an abundance of time, free time, but also youth. That's youthfulness. And also, if you're just a young person, like when I was 21, I just wanted everything that the 40 year olds around me had. They seem to have the money, they seem to have the relationship, they seem to have the, the cars and the, the status and the, the cool job and everything else. And now that I'm, you know, I'm 35, I'm going to be 40 soon. All I want is what the 21 year olds have, time and youth, energy, abundance, like freedom. Like, you know, and so, you know, youth is wasted on the young in that way. So I think having an abundance of time is amazing. Having an abundance of generosity would be amazing. Having an abundance of fun is amazing. I got, I've figured out what to do with my life just by simply asking the question. Who is having the most fun in their career?

• 1:24:33Shaan Puri?

  And that was a much better guiding principle for me to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Was look around and figure out who's having the most fun. I knew a lot of successful people. Those people were not having a lot of fun. And the, the scary part, the most dangerous part of it all was if you asked them, are you having fun? They say, yeah. But if you observe them, it's like somebody whose volume knob is stuck on seven. They don't even know that there's eight, nine and 10. They can only go to seven. They think seven is sufficient and maximally fun.

• 1:25:04Shaan Puri?

  Once you see somebody on 10, you look at the seven, you're like, ah, there's a clear difference. Who were the people that were at 10? Um, so there's some people that are like of, I would say first, it was sad how hard it was to think of this because I was like, I know a bunch of people who by traditional measures are successful. And it wasn't like I just could rattle off 20 names of people who are winning. Like if you said, who's winning the money game, I could name you 20 people. If you said, who's winning the audience game, I could name you 20 people. But if you said, who's having the most fun, who's, who are the people that are dominating that have fun in life game? It was a lot harder for me to think of those names, which means I kind of surrounded myself with the wrong people, the wrong inspiration.

• 1:25:42Shaan Puri?

  I think that Joe Rogan has a ton of fun and he's kind of like a popular person. So it's not that cool of an answer, but what I think he's done amazingly well is he has managed to make his life about his hobbies without turning his hobbies into jobs. Um, so his hobbies loves, you know, martial arts, fighting UFC, becomes the commentator for the UFC, gets to call all the biggest fights, sit ringside, gets to know the fighters, follow the sport, study it for, get paid to study this thing, get paid to watch this thing he would otherwise be paying to watch. Hmm. That's great. But he also avoided all the trappings of that job.

• 1:26:21Shaan Puri?

  He's not on the road 200 days a year like Dana White is. He doesn't have to, he literally just said, I'm only going to do the Vegas shows, which happened to be the best shows, which happened to be one hour from where he live, you know, was living in, he was in LA. Um, and he's like, I'm not going to travel to Abu Dhabi for this one fight. It's just not worth it. Right? He loved comedy. He finds it creatively challenging to do that and finds it amazing to like make people laugh for a living. He does that and he has, he has won in that game as well. Um, but he again, doesn't have to tour 250 days a year like most comedians. But doesn't have to censor himself like many comedians. Podcasting. He's like, oh, I'm just curious guy. I'd love to have these conversations. Became the number one podcaster, right? Um, didn't have to, but what you don't see him do is what a lot of content creators do. They get on a content treadmill that they don't enjoy.

• 1:27:04Shaan Puri?

  And they're constantly begging the, begging for audience, trying to figure out what do I need to do to get more clicks, more likes, more whatever. And they almost ruin what's otherwise the best job in the world. He's managed to become the podcast without doing that. And so he kind of hits the goals, but also what you call the anti-goals, which are basically the traps you could fall into while achieving your goal. I'll never forget, like a friend in college, her dad was a partner at a big consulting firm and he was making literally $1 million a year. And I thought that was mind blowing that somebody could make $1 million in a year, let alone like, I thought having a million dollars was like what you accumulate over time. That was the end point of money. And he was making a million dollars a year, but he also traveled Monday through Thursday night and he would get

• 1:27:46Shaan Puri?

  back Thursday night and then be there Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday he would leave again, basically travel for his job. And he did that her whole life. And now she's in college and he missed like basically her whole, her whole life. And she resented him for it. And I was like, wow. You know, can you, you know, you want success, but you want your kids to like you. You want success, but your kids to know you. You want success, but you want your wife to still like you and be faithful in that relationship. So like, you know, define the game a little differently. So I think bigger billionaire is a stupid goal because it defines the game on terms that for an abundance that doesn't actually matter.

• 1:28:17Chris Williamson?

  I love that. Are you familiar with Die With Zero, Bill Perkins stuff?

• 1:28:22Shaan Puri?

  Good book. Yeah, I like that book.

• 1:28:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I became really tight with him after I brought him on the show. He, I mean, you know, for anybody that doesn't like that book, and I can understand why it rubbed certain people up the wrong way because it's a book that's written for people who have surplus income and not everybody does, which means that the people who don't have it get upset about it. He is a man that lives that philosophy.

• 1:28:40Shaan Puri?

  Which is a classic case, by the way, of pointing the blame the wrong way. You're mad at this guy who wrote this book for some people because you're, you know, you don't have what those people have. You know, that's misguided anger.

• 1:28:54Chris Williamson?

  I would, I would agree. Yeah, we finished that podcast within 30 minutes. We are on his boat, being driven by the captain of his boat, wake surfing for the next three and a half hours with Phil the Unabomber, somebody, somebody, the poker player. And I'm like, this is brilliant. And then, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then over the next like three or four weeks, I spent a ton of time at his house and he just, he does the things. This is related tangentially to something that I think you've done recently, or at least I've seen someone write about you, or maybe you write about yourself, which is the life-changing nature of having an assistant and integrating them correctly into your life. What does that look like?

• 1:29:39Shaan Puri?

  Um, let me say two things. One, there's only one thing I remember from the die with zero book. I read it. I liked it, but I only remember one thing and it's a story he tells about. I want to tell it again because it was so impactful to me and I feel like everybody needs to hear this. So I'm like, oh, let me just say his, his bit here. He talks about like, he was, he had some job at a bank or investment firm or something like that. Like, you know, the job you want. And um, his friend was like, I want to go on a trip to Europe for like five or six weeks. Like, let's go backpacking through Europe. Uh, they were like just out of school, 22, 22, 23 to 25 years old, something like that. And he's like, let's go backpack through Europe. And the guy's like, oh, you know, that sounds, sounds great, but like, how are we going to get six weeks off? He's like, we're not probably like, we'll ask, but they probably won't say yes.

• 1:30:23Shaan Puri?

  And then we'll quit and we'll hope that there's a job for us when we come back. He's like, ah, man, like, that's irresponsible. Like, I don't want to do that. So his friend goes and he's, at the time, he's laughing at him like, stupid guy made stupid decision to quit his job and go backpacking, frolicking through Europe like, and uh, he's like, you know, I'm here making wise decisions. That guy's making unwise decisions. Friend comes back, friend is like, dude, he's like, how was he? He's like, I mean, I can't even put it into words. Like, anybody who's done study abroad comes back with the same thing where they're like, ah, it's hard to even explain. It was so amazing. I stayed at these hostels and I was, um, I, we met this band and we just jumped on their van and we toured with them for two nights. And then I met this girl. She was amazing. Uh, we're still dating and I tried this food and whatever.

• 1:31:06Shaan Puri?

  Slept on the beach three, three of the nights. It was amazing. He's like, wow, damn. He's like, I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. Should have had those experiences. And the second thing he says, finally, he, he's like 32, 33 years old. He's like, has accumulated enough social capital at this company to be able to take time off and go do this. So he goes on the backpacking trip at like 33 or 32 and he's like, you know, it's not that fun staying in a hostel when you're 33 and like, you know, it's, it's different. There's actually, it's not just that it would have been better to do it then. He's like, there's a time, a season of life where you should do certain things. And they're really, those things have maximal impact during those seasons. And what I thought he was doing was unwise and actually he was doing the life wise thing to do,

• 1:31:50Shaan Puri?

  which was to take advantage of our, our youth and um, Go have this experience at the time where that experience is amazing. And I just, that stuck out with me. I just, I feel like that is such a, such a important lesson, right?

• 1:32:04Chris Williamson?

  To add, to add an additional one in that he hasn't released yet. He has, this shows the levels of wealth. We're about to talk about your assistant. This guy's got an experienced architect who their only job is to find different things that they think he might want to do and then put them to him. And then even if he says that he doesn't want to do them, convince them that he's going to go and do them. And one of them was training, which is like interrailing in Japan. And there are these five star, very expensive trains that go the full length of Japan. And it's like being on a cruise, but being on a, like a really, really expensive train.

• 1:32:45Chris Williamson?

  And they sent it across to him and he said, eat shit. That sounds fucking lame. I don't want to do that. Why am I going on a train? I've got a hot wife. Like what am I, I'm going to go on this train on my own. It's going to be full of old people. I'm going to hate it. It's going to be moving around and blah, blah. They convinced him to go, he gets on, falls in love with it. He's like, I want to do this. I want to do this every month for the rest of my life. What he realizes is that he can do that when he's 70. He can't keep wakeboarding when he's 70. So he is banking this anticipation for when he's going to get back onto interrailing or training or whatever across Japan. And God knows where else he's going to go, but that's for the future. So he, there are, there are certain experiences that you can only do at particular periods of your life.

• 1:33:28Chris Williamson?

  They're better maximized during that time. It's kind of less lame to do them during that time. And it allows you to match the, it's, a lot of it is to do with health, like health, wealth and time are the three factors that you play within his book.

• 1:33:41Chris Williamson?

  Your health is largely a determinant of what it is that you're able to do because you like, your hips aren't going to take it skiing when you're 80, right?

• 1:33:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:33:49Chris Williamson?

  But you probably find to do training, like to sit on a train and be served like cake by, by, by a nice Japanese person, right? Like that's, that's, that's going to be fine.

• 1:33:58Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:33:59Chris Williamson?

  Um, so yeah, uh, periods, yes. You, assistant, what have you done? How's it worked?

• 1:34:05Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I don't even think it's that crazy, but I think that most people, I, I, I sort of rail on these like controversial things, which is like, the common theme of all of my, all of my beliefs comes down to the following, which is, don't follow what most people do, because most people don't have a result that you would want. So like, in America, most, the average person is obese. Literally, clinic, like, by the definition, I think the average person is obese. What, fifty something percent of marriages end in divorce? So that's kind of like, that's the average expected outcome there. And most people don't have, you know, more than a thousand dollars in the bank, or ten thousand dollars for, you know, like, an emergency, whatever the numbers are. The specifics don't really matter. Directionally, they're all correct, which is that

• 1:34:51Shaan Puri?

  it is easy to feel safe doing what most people do, until you realize that most people are going to a destination you don't want to be at. Then it becomes very risky to do what most people do. So,

• 1:35:04Shaan Puri?

  most people, when they get money, buy luxurious, luxurious things, like fancy cars, clothes, watches, maybe vacations, things like that. And I have this, you know, and, and so there's this, I would say, one of the general wisdoms is, experiences are greater than things. And I always say, services are even better than experiences. Like, I was able to hire, you know, an assistant, works full time for me, for like, the cost of a couple of purses. And an assistant improves the quality of your life far more than a purse that sits in your closet, because you're afraid to take it out and get a scratcher. Same thing with a car. I hired a private chef for our family for less than what most people pay for a luxury car.

• 1:35:50Shaan Puri?

  Because I didn't care what it looked like, like when I drove around, or, you know, like, I like a quality car, a safe car, but like, I didn't care if it was an Instagram car. But I did care that somebody would go get fresh ingredients, make healthy food for me and my family that tastes great and better than I can, and I don't have to worry about going, getting groceries, cooking, or cleaning, or cleaning up afterwards. So I got my time, I got my health, and I got my taste. Like, I can't believe everybody doesn't do this. Who can? Right? So, so that's the first thing. Assistant, same thing. Hired assistant through Shepherd. She's in the Philippines. So I didn't even go with a full on personal assistant here. I said, let me try first. Let me dabble with it this way. And it's great. She, she's the first line of defense on your email inbox and your time.

• 1:36:35Shaan Puri?

  And she makes me, she helps me be a better friend. I'm like, hey, my friend had this thing. I think I want to get him this gift. Can you go find a, you know, I want to buy him a candle that has this funny thing about this inside joke on the front and just send it to him in a month. And also wins their birthday. Let's make sure we remember that this year because I'm kind of a shitty friend otherwise. And they just help you be a better person. They help you be whatever the person you want to be, they can help you be. And I created a system to like, to do that. So I had to learn how do you even operate, you know, with this, with this new functionality to have, to have somebody who can do this with you. Once I learned it, it's a pretty big unlock. But I would say just in general, finding a way to buy luxuries that you actually want is great. I will also say, I think for people who are sitting there listening, they're like, oh, great.

• 1:37:19Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow. It was great to have a private chef and assistant. Yeah. Good for you douchebag, right? Like, that's fair. Take that on the chin. But I will say, I used to have a big reaction whenever I would experience, whenever I encounter people who had this type of stuff. It was basically bitterness and then, but it would be disguised as, oh, that's stupid. I wouldn't want that. That's stuck up. I would tell myself some story that would make myself feel better. And the story was either that having that thing would make me a bad person. Or that I don't want that anyways, for whatever reasons, reasons.

• 1:37:55Shaan Puri?

  And I had this visceral experience. I went to somebody's house in Las Vegas and they had, live in like a, basically a palace. And then they drive the fanciest cars and they have, there literally is a pool that goes around their house like a circle, like a moat. But it's just, that's their swimming pool.

• 1:38:08Chris Williamson?

  It would be cool if it was a moat.

• 1:38:10Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. It's like a swimmable boat. It's a boat you just want to stay in instead of cross. And, and I was talking to my buddy and I was like, yeah, they have all this stuff, but I wouldn't want that anyway. I was being defensive about it. I didn't even realize it. And he goes, he goes, you know, just going to let you know, one friend to another. Like one black belt to another, trying to master, we're both trying to master our minds. You're, you're, you're talking very differently than you usually do. And it kind of makes me feel like, maybe.

• 1:38:37Shaan Puri?

  You know, it's kind of bothering you that you don't have these things and you're telling yourself all these things about why you don't want them anyways, or why it's bad to have them, or how this person's a douchebag for having them. Instead, what if you switched it? What if this was Costco and you got to walk around and you're sampling a bunch of things of a lifestyle to figure out which ones you want and which ones you don't. And so instead of the reaction being, I don't have this, therefore I feel bad, be like, oh, I'm so lucky. I get to try this to figure out if I like this, how I like this, or if I don't care for this at all. Fantastic. What a cheap way to learn that. And I just flipped my mindset to like, oh, I actually seek being exposed to other ways of thinking or living in order to get a sample, a little taste,

• 1:39:20Shaan Puri?

  a little test to find out, oh, that's awesome. Or hmm, they do it this way, but I would want it this remixed way, or just, oh, I don't want that at all. Think I don't have to desire that because this is not something that appeals to me. And that really changed the way I interacted with people who I felt like, because I felt embarrassed at the way I was reacting before.

• 1:39:40Chris Williamson?

  Having a friend who calls you out in a what sounds like reassuring but firm way like that about your bullshit is you need to keep those sorts of people close to you.

• 1:39:52Shaan Puri?

  Well, we made an agreement. It was like, hey, look, I want to be this way. You want to be this way. We're both nerds about this stuff. So let's make an agreement that in our quest to master this, to become a black belt, there are going to be times where you're going to have to point out techniques I'm doing wrong, things I'm doing. And I so I want you to just say them to me when you see them. And I promise you that I will receive it as a gift. The feedback is a gift and I will receive it that way. So that's, that's the agreement. We're both going to do that for each other. That's part of who we're both like-minded in this way. So we know we can talk to each other about that. Whereas if we talk to the wrong person who's not seeking

• 1:40:32Shaan Puri?

  that type of input or, or opinion, they might take that the wrong way. But let's set an agreement and a foundation right now. We are men who want to live by a certain code. That's our code and we both are down with this.

• 1:40:45Chris Williamson?

  Crowdsourcing your personal growth. I like it very much. Sean Puri, ladies and gentlemen, dude, I'm so glad that we got to run this back. The first one was phenomenal and I want to do this again. So please keep on coming up with controversial tactics for people to have a better life. Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the different things that you do?

• 1:41:03Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, you can go to just my, my email list is where I put, I think the best content. So just go to seanpurie.com, S H A N P U R I E dot com. You can put the link in there, whatever, and just put your email in there. I send out stuff that I think is the most thoughtful stuff that's hopefully going to make you, uh, make you think is really all my, my only promise. I think I can spark thoughts in your head. And then the second thing is the podcast. So we have a podcast called my first million. Uh, you know, if people listen to this podcast, probably to become more wise. Most people listen to this podcast or our podcast to become wealthy. And so, um, yeah, it's me and my buddy, Sam. It's a good time. It's very entertaining and it's kind of about business and opportunities that we see, uh, or stories that we hear that, you know, we get to share, uh, on the pod.

• 1:41:48Shaan Puri?

  So my first million, go subscribe to that.

• 1:41:50Chris Williamson?

  Oh yeah, Sean, I appreciate you. Thank you, man.

• 1:41:52Shaan Puri?

  Thank you.