AUBREY MARCUS | What Makes A Good Life? | Modern Wisdom Podcast 117

Aubrey Marcus is a podcaster, author and CEO. I wanted to find out how Aubrey defines living a good life, and how he structures his world to ensure that he's pointing in the right direction... As you might be able to guess, this episode is jam packed with amazing stuff. Aubrey is someone who contemplates the finer elements of exactly how to make his mind and body a little better every day. Enjoy this insight into the life of someone who is unashamedly working to uncover all his weaknesses and turn them into strengths. This episode is brought to you by The Protein Works. Head to https://bit.ly/TPWChrisWillx to check out their awesome range. Extra Stuff: Follow Aubrey on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aubreymarcus Buy Own The Day - https://amzn.to/326Ijmq Check out Onnit - https://www.onnit.com/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #aubreymarcus #onnit #mindfulness - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If like you think that some external achievement is going to make you happy, you're going to get it and you're going to realize that it's not going to make you happy. Until you actually start to get the things that you're striving for, you're not going to realize that they aren't going to make you happy. So I almost feel like everybody needs to learn the tactics and the techniques and get the tools to actually get what they're aiming for. So like if you want to get some level of financial wealth and you think that's going to make you happy and you just want that, well, the best way to transcend that is to actually get it. I don't know how you do it unless you actually get it. And then when you get it, then you're like, I've got to figure out some other things that'll work.

• 0:39Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by Aubrey Marcus, founder and CEO of On It, fellow podcaster and all round fascinating human. Aubrey, welcome to the show.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Thanks, brother. Happy to be here.

• 0:50Chris Williamson?

  Very, very happy to have you on. I'm sure there'll be a lot of people that are familiar with what it is that you do. But how do you describe what it is that you do on a daily basis and your life to someone who's never met you before?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean, obviously you can describe the, the things that I've done, you know, in my personal history that I've accomplished, you know, founded the company On It, you know, wrote the book Own the Day, done the Aubrey Marcus podcast. I mean, there's these things that I've done. But really, if you're talking about me as a person, I'm just someone who's trying to learn a little bit more today.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  That'll make me a little bit better tomorrow than I am today, you know? So just someone who's on the path of learning and the path of exploring and the path of asking questions and trying to figure out the small questions and the big questions.

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that interesting that when asked that, one of the first things that we default to is our achievements, our quantifiable metrics of status?

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's what that's what the typical response to that question is, you know, like, what is it, who, what's your job? Like, what have you done? Like, what are your, what are your validations? It's, it's reinforcing your somebody-ness, you know, as some of the spiritual teachers say, like, this is what makes you somebody. You founded a company, you wrote a book, you have a podcast, you have this, you know, wife, you have this thing, you have these kids, you have, this is your somebody-ness. And that's one level of expression, of course, and that's all fine, but the really interesting thing is like, who are you? And how close are you becoming to the truth of who and what you are and how you serve? You know, that's,

• 2:31Speaker 00

  that's a really much more interesting question, for me at least. But, you know, the other stuff's fine, too.

• 2:38Chris Williamson?

  I think it's interesting for me as well, but it's a little bit less sexy and easy to get out in a cocktail party, or like, when you sat around the dinner table, eh?

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, you have to suss out the audience, you know, you have to realize, like, yeah, you gotta figure out who's gonna, who's gonna care about those, those more interesting issues, and who's just gonna wanna talk about the same old stuff, you know, like, and that's, that's kind of the people I like to surround myself with, people that we can immediately bypass past the banal recounting of the, the personal history, you know, like, all right, that happened, I can tell you what happened, but, but that's not what's interesting. What's more interesting is what's happening, you know, like, how is, not who Aubrey was, but what is the Aubrey-ing that's going on right now?

• 3:31Chris Williamson?

  I understand, the verb to Aubrey.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it, it's, again, it's, it's so interesting, because it's easy for people to have a conversation, let's say someone maybe has quite subtle or contrary views, or they fall on the ends of the distribution for whatever normality is, that they have things in common in the way that they think, or the way that they speak about everything with other people, and they have to choose whether they want to be honest, or they want to be acceptable. And that that game of how much should I open up? And as you've alluded to, one of the key words is truth. Speaking your truth forward, being as virtuous as you can, living with integrity and acting the logos. If you're going Jordan Peterson with it.

• 4:18Chris Williamson?

  And it's easy to see why people start to take on these personas, right? They start to get addicted to the acceptability and they forget the honesty until they don't know what honesty looks like anymore.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  It's a bad trap because the persona is incapable of actually receiving love. It can receive praise, but you're not going to feel it because it's not you. You know what I mean? It's like when people, I think it's one of the reasons that like actors have a problem, right? Like people may love the character that they played and that may make them love that that person when they see them. But the actor is just playing a character. So, you know, you can be appreciated for your craft as an actor, but that person is not actually going to feel love. You know, because they know they're being loved for being Gladiator. You know, they're not being loved for being like, yeah, for, yeah, it's not, it's not that people are loving Russell Crowe. They're loving fucking Maximus.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And so we're all playing our own version of Maximus and then showing people this thing. And then people are loving that thing, but it's not actually landing. So we're actually denying ourselves the ability to have that genuine human connection that we really crave. And really being seen unless we lead with our vulnerability. You know, I mean, that's the, that's the key thing that's going to allow us to really feel all the good stuff.

• 5:42Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Do you find yourself, obviously, as you've mentioned, there are quantifiable metrics of success that can be ascribed to you, to define you. As those begin to mount up and continue to mount up, does it feel sometimes like baggage that you then need to release? To not identify yourself with those things?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  You know, I think I um, I think I do a, I think I can get stuck in little sticky traps for sure. But I think my sticky traps are the, the traps of kind of

• 6:19Speaker 00

  binding myself to a certain expectation of progress and expectation of doing more. It's not that I'm like, it's not that I have to shed the, the baggage of the past because I almost do that automatically. Like, oh, I did that yesterday, whatever. That doesn't, that was, that was yesterday. Like, I don't really celebrate the things that have happened in the past. I'm always looking towards the new thing. And so that's actually where I have more of a challenge. You know, it's like I, they, and you know, I got the, I got the text and the call that um, Own the Day, Own Your Life was a New York Times bestseller, which is something that I really was

• 6:55Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  What happened. Yeah, thank you. So, so when that happened though, I took like one minute to be like,

• 7:03Speaker 00

  that's pretty cool. And then like immediately, like I didn't give a shit and I was on to the next thing. You know what I mean? So it wasn't like, so for me, it's about slowing down a little bit and not trying to think about what the next thing is. And just being able to like be at peace with where I'm at now. As well as have that ambition to continue to go and to continue to, to offer my, you know, what I have to give to the world. So yeah, for me, it's a little bit of a different challenge. It's not so much that I'm, um, I need to let go of the past because I feel like I don't, I don't even take that in anyways. It's like, oh, that happened, whatever. But it's like, what am I doing now?

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  And that's, and that's where I get stuck.

• 7:43Chris Williamson?

  Baggage from the future, bizarrely.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:46Chris Williamson?

  Not baggage from the past. That's interesting. So I wonder whether or not the writing process of when you were writing your book, of whether you were more consumed with the idea of writing a good book and of potentially becoming a New York Times bestseller. And then when it happened, it was like, okay, like that's, that's done. Isn't that bizarre that our conscientiousness and our industriousness, our desire to continue to feel like we're moving forward is almost that is what we're working toward rather than the achievement itself. The achievement comes and goes.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. You know, it's like, uh, and that's why if you get stuck and that's the only thing that you're, you think is gonna make you happy. If like you think that some external achievement is gonna make you happy, you're gonna get it and you're gonna realize that it's not gonna make you happy. And I think it's, it's a, it's one of those things that until you actually start to get the things that you're, that you're striving for, you're not gonna realize that they aren't gonna make you happy. So I almost feel like everybody needs to learn the tactics and the techniques and get the tools to actually get what they're aiming for. So like if you wanna get some, some level of financial wealth and you think that's gonna make you happy and you just want that, well, the best way to transcend

• 9:02Speaker 00

  that is to actually get it. You know, if you think that writing a, a bestselling book is gonna ma- make you happy, like the best way to realize that it's not gonna make you happy is to get it. You know, it's like, I don't know how you do it unless you actually get it. And then when you get it, then you're like, fuck, I gotta like, I gotta figure out some other things that'll work. Uh, and that's the process of kinda like retraining yourself. And I think that's the process that I'm in now is I still enjoy the things I do. And, and that's great because I'm very fortunate that I've chosen things that I love. I love podcasting. I love writing. I love running on it. But, um, nonetheless, I recognize that no external validation, no external thing is actually gonna make

• 9:45Speaker 00

  me happy. It's the internal work that's gonna actually level me up into a place where I have a deeper satisfaction and a deeper engagement with the world.

• 9:54Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it interesting that we kind of need to close that loop? And that's a suggestion from yourself because I think a lot of the time speaking to people who are quite spiritually minded, there is a, there can be quite a aloofness or, uh, people on a high horse about the fact that you should just be able to let go of your attachments or let go of your desires to achieve certain things. Whereas you're coming at it from an even more industrious perspective, which is, okay, bring the thing that you think is going to make you happy into as sharp a contrast as you can, i.e. make it happen.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 10:31Chris Williamson?

  And then go from there. I think that's a really interesting way. And it's a, a much more fine, uh, final way. It's a proper full stop.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  I agree, man. And I just, I wish, I wish that I could believe that somebody could actually let this shit go without, without doing it. I just, I don't think I've ever really seen it, you know, because like, I've seen people pretend. Like, I've seen a lot of spiritual people pretend like, I don't care about money, you know, like, money doesn't matter. And then the minute we engage in some kind of business deal, you know, they get all squarely and get all weird. And I'm like, whoa. Like, everything's cool. You're gonna get paid, like, relax, you know. So I've never actually seen. It's almost like they're spiritually bypassing is, you know, the word. They're spiritually bypassing their egoic desires for something and pretending

• 11:23Speaker 00

  that they don't want it, or changing the game to change the rules. But I've never actually seen it work. The only time I've really seen it work is when someone actually gets that thing that they're aiming for, trains themselves, has the skills, learns the practice, gives the two 10,000 hours to actually get that, and then gets it and then realizes like, okay, I got that. And it didn't quite work. So now what's the next thing? It can't be more of the same.

• 11:48Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  It's almost like, it's almost like Buddha, right? Like, would Buddha have been able to be Buddha if he didn't grow up in the palace, Siddhartha? If he didn't grow up in the palace of luxury and feasts and sex and orgies? And if he was outside the palace walls, he might have been like, man, if I could just get in that palace and have a couple of feasts and a couple of threesomes, man, I'll be happy as shit. You know, and then Buddha never would have existed. But because he grew up with that and realized that that didn't make him happy, then he went outside the palace walls and was like, no, no, no, like, that didn't work. I did that thing. I was not happy. You know, now I'm doing this thing, sitting under the Bodhi tree, and I'm happy as shit. You know, like, so it's, it's interesting and it's a,

• 12:29Speaker 00

  I'm definitely open to other ways for people to, you know, engage in the path. But I think the most reliable thing is to just work to get those things that you want. And when you get those things that you want, you'll be ready to take the next step of the journey, which is to realize that there's more to life than getting these external, you know, achievements.

• 12:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a very, very interesting way to look at it. So one of the things that I wanted to discuss today was what you think a good life looks like. And we've already touched on that, not necessarily doing things for their sake, doing them because they feel like something that's valuable to you, not doing them for external validation. But how do you define a good life? What does a good life look like to you?

• 13:17Speaker 00

  I think a good life is a life that leaves, it's a life that the signature that life is something that you've experienced, you've really lived, you've really, first of all, you have to really live life. You know, I think the ascetics, the people who've like denied the pleasures of the body and been in a path of renunciation where they're just kind of isolating themselves or going to a monastery, I respect that path, but I don't think that to me is the path that most of us should take. I think we're here to live on the earth to really experience all the things, to eat the food, to try the drinks, to try the, you know, to try the drugs, not all the, not all the drugs, but some of them at least.

• 14:02Chris Williamson?

  Select drugs.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Select drugs. Yeah, like, like, do the things, don't abuse them, you know, like, don't go, you don't go wild, but like, experience all the things, like, go visit the beautiful places, like dip in a cold waterfall and feel rainfall on your face and, you know, go to a hot desert and climb a snowy mountain and do all of these things, surf and ski and play and dance and make love and do all the things that we're here to do. I think, I think that's a big part of it, is just to open yourself up to that. I think another part is to feel our connection, you know, spiritually to everything around us, to that source energy, the universe, God, if you, if your language permits it, whatever your

• 14:45Speaker 00

  language permits you to feel as far as a spiritual experience. I think that's a, a unique expression of what we're able to do here. So it's both the carnal and the spiritual, it's the physical and the astral kind of dancing together.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  And then the other thing is to just make sure that you've left the world and everybody you've touched a little better for you having been here. And I think that's the commitment to service, you know, so experience everything, but also leave everybody that you touch and everybody, every place that you go, a little more enriched and a little more colorful and vibrant than than when you found it. And if you do that, that's a good life to me.

• 15:29Chris Williamson?

  It's really nice guiding principles, I think.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 15:33Chris Williamson?

  An interesting thing there, again, one thing that appears to be a defining characteristic of what you're talking about here is agency and not inertia, not necessarily being an ascetic, as you suggested, not the relinquishing of things, but the the movement, the direction towards those things. A body at motion stays at motion and it continues to collect and move through these experiences and these adventures. I wonder how many people that lean toward a spiritual life and say that they are satisfied with simple things, that they only need, some people take pride in how little stimulus they need to be happy.

• 16:15Chris Williamson?

  And again, as you've suggested, there's some spiritual leaders and some master meditators for whom that's amazing. But I wonder how many other people are kidding themselves into believing that, because it is a very easy way to not have to push for many things in life and to allow yourself to settle at a much lower set point of experience and adventure.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  I'd say most of them. You know, I'd say, I mean, if you're asking me, like, what's the ratio? I'd say that's most people. You know, I think we, it's, we're afraid, we're afraid to acknowledge what we want. We're afraid to acknowledge what's possible, because then we're afraid we might fail. We're afraid we might not get it. So it's easier to just pretend like, oh, I don't care about any of that. You know, like, no, it doesn't matter to me, because that's just changing the value structure so that you're, the ego can win at a certain level that the ego doesn't feel like it can win at the other level. But it's really, it's ultimately the pursuit of the thing that's, that's always the most enjoyable anyways. And I think there's a great satisfaction in getting, getting yourself better at whatever it is that you can do, you know, and.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  So yeah, I mean, I think it's most people who are who are kidding themselves when they're saying that they don't want these things. They don't want. I think we do want these things. It's part of life and it doesn't have to be fancy. Like, I mean, you don't have to have a Ferrari. Like, that's like not necessary. But like a nice car, there's lots of nice cars. It might be nice to have a nice car, like a vehicle, a mechanical vehicle that like you're like, yeah, I fucking like this thing. You know, like you don't have to set your sights on some super fancy, you know, Bentley Ghost or whatever the fuck.

• 17:57Chris Williamson?

  Rocket to Mars, yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Just like, just like, but but no, that like, no, I want a nice car and I want like a comfortable house that has like, I want to own my own place and I want to like, you know, one day I want to have a threesome, you know, and like whatever the whatever your thing is.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  And you know what it is? You've just taken the words out of my mouth, not threesome, but one of the fans of the show, Jordan, I know he's also a fan of yours. He once told me the story about why he, I don't know whether he's got a written list, but I know that he has a bunch of desires that he wants to fulfill sexually, like to have sex with a Brazilian girl and to have sex with a this girl and to have sex with a that girl. And it comes back to the open loops we were talking about earlier on. And he said that he wants, once he's settled down with his wife to be and he's starting to build a family, he wants to be able to walk past a Brazilian girl in the street and not think, I wonder what it's like to fuck a Brazilian girl.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like, if you don't, if you don't do that, I mean, it would be like imagining, imagining like, a certain type of fruit is forbidden, like watermelon is forbidden, right? And then you could, because you've made an agreement with somebody that you can no longer ever have watermelon. Well, that might be fine if you've had a lot of watermelon in your life. You're like, I know watermelon. It's pretty good. But like, I'm good. Like, I can remember what that's like. But can you imagine? Can you imagine walking by a watermelon, everybody's on a hot summer day, just pouring salt on it and like, oh, just juice dripping down their mouth. And you're like, God, I can't even fucking try that thing? That really is bugging me. You know what I mean? Like, and that's, I think, I think the, that's the thing, like, get out there and live,

• 19:31Speaker 00

  like, really live, especially. Before you get in a situation that's going to restrict your ability to do that. And and I think there's lots of benefits. People think I'm like this open relationship champion. I'm not. It has tons of perils and tons of challenges and it's a very hard path. But I think it is important to like have a lot of experiences like your friend says. So that if you do get in a situation where you are restricting some of the options that you might have, that you understand like that you've gone out there and you've lived. And that you know, you know largely what the landscape of everything looks like.

• 20:08Chris Williamson?

  Do you think you'll be non-monogamous for the rest of your life or have you not got an agenda at the moment?

• 20:14Speaker 00

  You know, it's a really interesting question. I mean, right now, I'm sorry about that. That's a the dog gets really excited when somebody comes to the door.

• 20:22Chris Williamson?

  Is it not when someone talks about non-monogamy? Is that what it is? Someone mentions the word non-monogamy and the dog goes crazy.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, you know, it's a really interesting question. I mean, right now I'm not in any any like labeled relationship. But um, and so we're exploring like what this framework of not having any particular relationship structure looks like. And even with even with Whitney, who I've gone from monogamous to open to then we separated to now we're in this kind of unlabeled experience where we're enjoying each other and just experiencing what it's like to have a relationship beyond expectation and beyond labels. And it's really interesting, but the experiment is just continuing. And and there's opportunities to explore and learn and

• 21:15Speaker 00

  expectations do creep up and challenges still do creep up. But it seems like we're able to move through them faster now than we were when we had a structure. And it was like. The structure was almost like a Velcro wall and all of our insecurities were like tennis balls. And every time we'd lob something up, it'd get stuck. You know, but now we're still lobbing our own insecurities and our own stuff up and our own aversions and our own stuff. But it's not really sticking to anything. So we're able to kind of move through things a little bit faster. But I don't know what the, I don't know what the next phase is beyond this because I'm still just right in this one right now. Where this is a, another interesting structure. So, so from, from single, there's single, there's monogamy.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  There's open relationship, then there's no relationship. And then perhaps there's even celibacy. That's something that I'm contemplating as well, like a, a elongated period of celibacy. To see what that's like. What is it like when you remove that, you know, sexual expression from your life? And explore that. And then I don't know what the next phase beyond that would be, but I'm definitely open.

• 22:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm really, I'm really open. And that's, I think, that's, I think, the thing that's, the only message that I would give is to just not feel like there's only one way. Just be curious, be open to explore, always be looking and asking the questions like, is this serving me in the best way possible? And what am I learning from this? And that's what I'm going to continue to do. And where that takes me, you know, who knows?

• 22:50Chris Williamson?

  I, I have to say, I did a conversation on non-monogamy not long ago. And as a part of that, I couldn't, I couldn't help but be viscerally, have visceral reactions. As someone explained to me the, the real finer workings of how different types of non-monogamous relationships occur. And I could feel my, I don't know whether you want to call it programming. There's a debate here about whether it's programming or whether it's inbuilt, right? But whatever that is, that response to thinking about what would happen if you allowed someone that you cared for to, at your own, not request, but at your own allowance to be physical with somebody else or to have feelings for some, et cetera, et cetera.

• 23:35Chris Williamson?

  All of these different ways that it pieces together. And I honestly think that that sounds more difficult than celibacy, but I haven't tried either. So I can't, I can't speak just yet.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there is, there's nothing. I mean, and I've done every different psychedelic, every different sweat lodge and, you know, a lot of different initiation rituals and different grueling workouts and different types of things, founded company, all the different things. There's nothing that's come even close to an approximation of the challenge of being in an open relationship. I mean, if you're saying you had a visceral reaction to the description of the types of things.

• 24:13Chris Williamson?

  Of someone else doing it.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Of someone else doing it. Like, if I really, if I really decided to like, break the, break open the, the walls of privacy and share the details, I mean, the people, people get viscerally affected, like, really viscerally affected. Because I was, I mean, I've been in places where I've been crawling around on the ground, not knowing if I should vomit or cry or, or like, run or like, punch a wall or like, there's so much feeling. And, yeah, like you said, some of it, I think, is conditioning and some of it is perhaps innate programming. I think largely, if I had to put the scale, I'd say it's largely conditioning, just based upon some of the ancestral and tribal kind of arrangements

• 24:59Speaker 00

  that we can find in, in, you know, different groups around the world. But regardless, like, it's a brutal, brutal path. And, uh, and it's, it's way, way, way harder than you might think, you know, because I, I-

• 25:16Chris Williamson?

  In your book, you say about it, right? Dry retching on the floor for however many, like, half an hour or a longer or however long it was. Like, and the, the maddest thing was, uh, it doesn't surprise me at all. Incredibly challenging, incredibly challenging.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's to say the least, but incredibly beautiful, too. You know, and that's the, that's the thing, because through all those challenges, that's parts of yourself that you're breaking open so that you can re-heal. You know, it's like, if a bone, if a bone forms wrong, you know, you have to actually re-break it for it to form- To like correctly so that you're anatomically correct, like some parts of our ego have been formed wrong. And so you almost have to like re-break the bone of the ego to then allow it to heal in its proper way. But the re-breaking of the ego over and over and over again, and the smashing of all of that, it's a, it's a hell of a process, man. But you start to get the hang of it. You

• 26:17Speaker 00

  know, you start to get the hang of it. You start to realize like, okay, here it comes. Here comes the fucking gigantic nut kick from the universe. Like, let me just fucking, let me hold my breath. You know, here's my testicles are gonna be about throat high here in a few minutes. And, and then just, this is, uh, this is the way it's gonna go. And you start to, you know, you start to just be ready to learn the lessons and know that the growth is gonna come on the other side of that. Um, but I, I mean, it's, it's been probably my greatest teacher of all the things. You know, it's what's allowed me to, to learn the most about myself and heal the most of my own needs for validation and my own insecurities. And, um, I'm not like, hallelujah, I'm healed,

• 27:00Speaker 00

  you know, but I'm a hell of a lot closer than when I started.

• 27:03Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that interesting that one of the greatest teachers of all of the different things that you've done, all of the different, uh, experiences that you've had, hasn't been something that you've done in solitude?

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, it's been done in conjunction with, you know, with a partner, with Whitney in particular. And, you know, the other relationships have taught me different things, and some of those things have been valuable. But it's the deep emotional investment that I've had in Whitney, and the challenges that have come from that deep emotional investment, um, that have really brought the greatest level of growth. I mean, stress, any type of stress creates adaptation. And too much stress can create trauma that you don't adapt from. So like, if you over-train in the gym, you'll actually get hurt and not get stronger. And I think we've definitely put ourselves in positions where we, we fucked it up and like...

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Overstressed ourselves and like created traumatic patterns, but nonetheless, you can learn to unwind those and learn to take the space and time to heal those. But I think a well-executed open relationship would have the pacing and calibration, or two of the words that they use a lot, the pacing and calibration to know that you're opening up to challenge at a rate that, you know, is actually just going to allow you to move through pretty consistently without having to go backtrack and then unpack a lot of trauma. But we were doing this kind of blind, you know, we were just kind of figuring that out as we go and, and doing our very best. So, you know, no fault, no fault on either side. It's just, that's the way it, uh, that's the way it unfolded.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  But if we were going to do it again, we'd do it a hell of a lot better than the first time.

• 28:42Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever thought about doing a, a, a course or, or contributing to a body of knowledge somehow?

• 28:49Speaker 00

  There's gonna be, that's gonna be my third book, for sure. And, uh, it's gonna be about, you know, what love, you know, in, in relationship can look like and like how to reimagine, uh, love and relationship. And so, you know, I'm kind of holding off on that right now. Whitney is completely holding that down. She's offering coaching. She's got a great platform right now, so anybody interested, you can follow her at at wit and love, W H I T N L O V E. And she's sharing all the wisdom from our relationship and offering coaching and she has a podcast called True Sex and Wild Love with Wednesday Martin. Um, so she's really kind of diving into that right now and I'm focused more on mindset

• 29:33Speaker 00

  and the hero's journey for now because, quite frankly, you know, my, my own journey in learning about love is still, I'm still writing. I'm still writing my understanding. I'm still understanding what it looks like to be in this no-relationship relationship. And then ultimately, like I said, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be engaging in a, in a period of celibacy and learning like, okay, what's that, what's that path look like? And like then ultimately trying to put it all together, but I'm not at any position right now to say anything with any kind of definitive, definitive wisdom.

• 30:08Chris Williamson?

  Authorism.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Our authority on that because I haven't really allowed all of this to set in and explore it. I can certainly offer a lot of advice from where I've been so far. So people who are interested in opening their relationship, but you know, Whitney's been there right along with me for this whole journey and she's got a great perspective. So kind of allowing her to take that thrust of information as it is now and as mine continues to mature, that'll be a big focus for me in the next five years or so.

• 30:36Chris Williamson?

  That's cool. So getting back to our discussion on the good life, we've talked about some guiding principles and some things that people can cerebrally keep to give them a north star they're aiming toward. But anyone who's read James Clear's book this year, anyone who hasn't, please go and read Atomic Habits because it's fantastic. But he has this wonderful quote in there which says, "We do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems." And I think that we need structures and habits and routines to instantiate the things that we want to do. So how do you instantiate the things that make a life

• 31:19Chris Williamson?

  good to you? What are the structures that you lay your life upon or some habits and some routines that assist you to ensure you're doing that?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Well, I think you gotta take care of the body. You know, that's what Own the Day, Own Your Life, my first book was about. Like, you gotta take care of the body. Like, it's the low hanging fruit. You know, like, if the body's out of alignment, the whole, your whole mindset's gonna be out of alignment, your, everything's gonna be out of alignment, you're gonna be fighting an uphill battle. So handle that shit. You know, it's, it's, there's a lot of intricacies, but it's largely, it's largely a solved problem. You know, like, stop fucking eating sugar, like, get some sleep, move, you know, move throughout the day, you know, get some sunlight, like, drink some salt water, yeah, hydrate, there you go. You know, like, you're doing it, like, take care of your shit, you know, and like, get the basics, get the basics down. And it doesn't mean you don't need fancy supplements

• 32:13Speaker 00

  and things like that. You can add those if you want to improve performance and all that, but it's just about like handling the basics. And then from there, I think it's about a personal ethos, and that ethos is if I see something that I'm afraid of, That or that something that I know that there's work that I could do, I head towards it, not away from it. And that's just a personal ethos. So that doesn't mean like actual danger. It doesn't mean if there's like a black widow spider in my shed, I'm gonna go try and touch it. You know, that's actual danger. That could hurt me. You know, like I'm talking about emotional fears or these things that are that I'm afraid of exposing some insecurities that I have. The ethos that I have, my own warrior ethos is

• 32:55Speaker 00

  like, oh, I'm scared of that. That'll be hard. Okay, I gotta go do it. And that's again, why I'm doing, why I'm doing this. I'm probably gonna do this. I'm not one, I don't want to commit a hundred percent, but I'm likely going to do this celibacy thing is just because I know it's gonna be fucking hard for me.

• 33:10Chris Williamson?

  The people on the internet, the people on the internet now will have thought there'll be something clipped out of this. That's just you saying the word celibacy five times.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  The people will believe that it's that. To interject there, there's this quote that I really love, and you might have heard it on might not before. And it's from Catherine Davidstow, who's a CrossFit Games athlete. And the way that she talks about discomfort is similar to yourself. And she refers to it as she says, lean into discomfort, as if you'd invited it through the door. And I really like that analogy, the fact that as discomfort comes towards you, you lean into it. You don't shy away. You don't stand your ground. You lean into it. I really love that visual.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  It's the only way, you know, it's like if you run away from your discomfort and you it's that that thing is gonna chase you down like a grizzly bear. And you know what a grizzly bear does when it catches you, it starts to eat you while you're alive, asshole first. That's what a grizzly bear does. So go ahead, run away from your fears and run away from those things you're scared of. But that grizzly bear's coming. And when it gets you, it's gonna eat you asshole first. Like, so like, figure it out, what your choice, whatever you want to do.

• 34:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  You know, keep running, keep running, keep running, or stand your ground and face it.

• 34:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  You know?

• 34:30Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so we've got look after the body. We've got this ethos of facing up to things that you're scared of. What else?

• 34:41Speaker 00

  I would say, community is another huge, huge piece. You know, like cultivating, cultivating and maintaining a healthy community. And that's people that you're comfortable being really vulnerable around. And people who you can share everything and people who see you. Like, I don't think we're able or capable of doing this thing alone. It's too hard. Life is just too hard to do it all by yourself. And I think people put so much emphasis on your partner or like your lover or this one person. But really, I think that emphasis needs to be spread much, much wider out to your entire community. It's your community that supports you because relationships come and go. And that's why I think people are so devastated.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  It's like, she was my everything. Well, you fucked up. If she was your everything, you fucked up. Cause that's like, not a good strategy.

• 35:33Chris Williamson?

  It's your trading portfolio entirely a hundred percent in one stock or like ninety percent in one stock.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Right. But that's the fantasy in the fairy tale that we're taught. You're my everything. You complete me. Okay, good luck. Good luck with that. You know, hope it goes perfect for you. Don't look at the statistics because it's a really risky bet you're making. You know what I'm saying? But if you have it diversified to a wide group of people that, that all share in love and vulnerability and, and things will get fucked up with them too. You know, like, stuff will happen with your friends. You know, like, it's not like they're infallible. Like even friendships sometimes go through periods of fluctuation. Less commonly so, but it happens. So, but like, if you have, if you have a genuine community in many points of, of people

• 36:20Speaker 00

  who you can talk to about anything, um, it's going to help so, so much. And I think so, that to me is actually, you know, if we're talking, it's kind of interesting because. You know, book one is about the body, book two is about the mind and the journey of awakening your consciousness and mapping that to the hero's journey. Book three is gonna be about love and relationship, and book four is gonna be about community. Cause I think those are the four, those are like the four pillars of, of a good life. Take care of the body, you know, understand the mind and how to open it up and look into your shadow, you know, find the way that you can align yourself to love and relationship that's in best accord

• 37:03Speaker 00

  with yourself, and then cultivate and build the community. And I think those are the really the, those are really the principles. And then, you know, book five is actually gonna be about, alright, now how do we apply this, everything that we've just talked about so far, how do we apply this globally to the whole world? You know, like how, what would a world look like if we embraced all of these principles? And that's kind of, I imagine that being more of a utopian fiction. I'm gonna have to really sharpen my pencil to get my fiction game right.

• 37:33Chris Williamson?

  I think you're going to, yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's, but that's really a really clear plan for me, and it really exemplifies those things that are the most important to me in my life.

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  It is, when you break life down into its component parts like that, it can seem so simple.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  It typically is. That's the thing. It's just simple, but it's simple but hard. You know, that's like, that's the truth. Like even the, even like the deepest spirituality is so simple, but so hard. Like, you listen to Ram Dass's, Ram Dass's teacher, he had his, you know, Maharajin. He said one thing, he said, "Love everyone, tell the truth."

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Alright, that's simple. "Love everyone, tell the truth." Well, that's fucking hard. "Love everyone, tell for real?" Like, if you're gonna do that, that's hard, you know? And then like Ram Dass says, "Love everything, not every being, but everything." I love my pain, I love my wheelchair, I love, like, it's the eradication of preference even, because you're loving everything. Well, that's simple, but fucking good luck. Good luck, pack a lunch, because that shit's not gonna be easy to get to, you know what I mean? So, I think, I think a lot of the deep wisdom is, is very simple, but doesn't mean that it's easy to execute.

• 38:59Chris Williamson?

  Something that people probably get quite confused by the fact that a lot of simple things are seen as easy, day to day life. Doing something simple should be easy. But as you've said there, because simplicity has no room for or limited room for nuance. There's limited room for you to allow that ego to come in and for it to change the rules. If you had love everything, but it was written out and every individual thing you had to love was stated and the document was like the size of a law book, there would be, there'd be slippage in between each of those things.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:37Chris Williamson?

  The simplicity is where the difficulty is derived from.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Hmm. You said that beautifully, man. That was very, very well articulated and I think that's absolutely right. Like there's no, it doesn't leave you any, any room. Tell the truth. Love everyone. Fuck. Well, what does tell the truth even mean? That I'm like, what, how truthful is the truth? Well, it's the truth is the truth. I mean, we're talking capital T here, right? Like, we're not, we're not making like exceptions with lowercase t, which is tell like the convenient, you know, version of it. It's like, no, tell the truth. Love everyone, you know, love everything. Like these are, there's not a lot of room. There's not a lot of room to wiggle around. And, um, and that's why they're so powerful.

• 40:23Chris Williamson?

  Talking about the truth, it's something which comes up all the time. I was doing a political podcast. I was in London on a political podcast and ended up talking about the truth and why it's so important for us. People layer a lot of, um, they layer a lot of personas and they're able to hide their truth very successfully. I know I've done it incredibly well, very skillfully, uh, at some points in my life. And it's taken a lot of work to unpack what that truth is. I wondered whether you had any advice for someone who was potentially layered on top of their truth, so many personas that they're struggling to find anymore?

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Well, you gotta, you gotta catch on to yourself. And like, I'm not, I'm not much different than you. I recognize how fucking slippery I am. Because like, the ability to like justify and rationalize and like create a story to make this true, this truth quotation mark, truth.

• 41:29Chris Williamson?

  Lower, lowercase.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, lowercase t quotation mark asterisk italic.

• 41:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  That you're expressing. Like, my ability to do that is really, is really quite remarkable. Like, I can be really like, really slippery with how I can massage things and how I can project things and, and you know, there's some studies done that show that like 55% of what you're communicating is received by body language, 35% is received by tonality, and like, less than 10% is received by the actual words that you say. So you could even be saying the words, but expressing them in an untrue way, you know, that's being manipulative. And so it's like, you have to catch on to yourself. You have to like be on your, like, like realize like, okay, I see, I see you there Aubrey

• 42:19Speaker 00

  being slippery and fucking doing that thing. You know, I see you projecting this air of confidence even though your words are, you know, quite vulnerable or vice versa. You know, like, it, it's, you just have to kind of catch on to yourself and realize what you're doing and, um, that takes the eradication, first of all, of shame. Like, I think, I think that's the big thing that limits us from seeing our truth and being on to ourselves is being ashamed of the truth. And then also, we have to let go of our desire to manipulate, selfishly manipulate reality for our own interest. You know, like, truth, truth is love. Tell the truth and love everyone is actually the same thing.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  You know, because you can't love someone without telling them the truth. It's not, it's, it's a temporary, it's a temporary ameliorant. It's like giving them, it's like the loving thing to do is not to give somebody, you know, a candy bar, it's to give somebody like a healthy meal.

• 43:22Chris Williamson?

  Do you know how many times I use that exact analogy when I'm talking to people? And I relate it back to Jordan Peterson's be friends with people who want the best for you. Be friends with people that want the best for you is not tell people what they want to hear. It's very often tell people what they don't want to hear. And some of my best friends, I can identify the people who have my best interests at heart because they don't swallow my bullshit wholesale or partsale or fucking like micron scale. They do not, they don't, they don't let me get away with it. Um, and yeah, the, it, the analogy is like a child wants a ice cream, tea, ice cream every night. Like, that's not what's good for it, but that is what it wants, but it doesn't mean that's what it should get.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Right, exactly, exactly. And it's just having the, having the patience, even if there's a little tantrum. You know, it's like, I want ice cream for dinner, you know, and you're like, I'm sorry, sweetie. Like, we're gonna have fucking chicken for dinner, you know? And it's like, no, like you have to just hold, hold that space and say, chicken is best.

• 44:29Chris Williamson?

  Tonight.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Tonight. And maybe someday it'll be ice cream, you know, for sure. But like, it is, it is having that, the ability to, to share that with somebody and have them receive it. And to be able to withstand those temporary reactions that people might have because you know that it's the most loving thing that you can do because it's not enabling them to continue on their own path of delusion. We have to understand that the, our purpose here is to wake up to the truth of who we are and the, the, all of the truth that's all around us because that's all the love that's all around us too. And so if we're all here to wake up to that truth and we're shielding that truth from somebody, we're doing them a great disservice.

• 45:13Chris Williamson?

  It's a lot easier to be a good friend to someone else than it is to yourself, though. Like the perspective, the perspective that we have when talking to someone else. I recently wrote a, an Instagram post about this, about the fact that the likelihood of you ensuring that your dog completes its course of antibiotics is over 90%. The likelihood of you ensuring that you complete your course of antibiotics is under 50%. And it tells us something very interesting about how easy it is to care for others and how difficult it is to care for ourselves. But this analogy that a, a friend told me that stuck with me is when you're in an airplane, why are you told to put your oxygen mask on first?

• 45:57Chris Williamson?

  Because if you're suffocating, you're of very little use to everybody else around you.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  That's true. Yeah, to be of service, you have to be fit for service. That's what my late spiritual teacher, Don Howard, used to always say. And that's the, that's the mastermind group that I formed too, the Fit for Service Mastermind, based along that principle. Like, you have to take care of yourself and you have to be overflowing with your own abundance of energy, love, time, resources, everything, in order to actually be of true, real service to anybody or the world. And it begins with yourself. I once had a, someone said, I forget where it came from, but someone says that in a, in a healthy relationship, instead of serving someone from your cup, you actually serve them from the overflow that fills the

• 46:49Speaker 00

  saucer around the cup. So that no one's actually ever drinking from your own cup of your own love and your own resource and energy, but you have so much that it's always overflowing like a fountain and filling the saucer. And there's plenty to drink from the saucer. You know, and then that's like a really good metaphor, I think, for how we have to take care of ourselves. Because the moment our cup's empty, well, we're not going to be of any use to anybody. You know, we're first of all, going to be miserable. But second of all, we're not going to be helpful to anybody else either.

• 47:19Chris Williamson?

  It's a Jordan Petersonism as well, isn't it, to pick up the heaviest weight that you can and bear it and then continue to do that. And you may be able to, first off, carry your own weight and then carry the weight of the people around you and then carry the weight of your community. And it's this hilarious idea that I think progressive overload is king in every domain, from strength training to mind training.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, man. Yeah, another great way to put it.

• 47:50Chris Williamson?

  Um, so before we go, Aubrey, obviously, we've got your books out at the moment. I want to know, and I'm sure a lot of people that are listening will want to know, what, what are you working on right now? Like, what's a day in terms of projects look like for you?

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the podcast is something that I really love. So that's the Aubrey Marcus podcast. And then the Fit for Service Mastermind I just recently mentioned, that's been just blown away all the expectations of like forming a real community around the ideas. You know, On Ed, of course, continues to continues to grow and beat its drum and its message about, you know, being a little bit better tomorrow than you are today and helping the body. And then, you know, I'm gonna start writing my book, my next book coming up, you know, pretty soon here as well. And so that'll start to take up a lot of time. So there's always a lot of, a lot of things in the works, but you know, nothing, nothing too wild. And then there's the daily

• 48:47Speaker 00

  Instagram posts and everything that I put out on that, on that channel as well. So just, uh, just kind of doing all the things, man. Just doing all the things and just trying to learn, learn and grow.

• 48:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Back to what I said at the start.

• 49:01Chris Williamson?

  Very interestingly, we actually, I think, have been linked in. The reason that we've got this podcast happening is because of Ross, one of the guys who's in your group.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Oh, beautiful.

• 49:12Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, episode 12 on this podcast was with mutual friend and beautiful voice, Mr. Corey Allen.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Oh, nice.

• 49:21Chris Williamson?

  Corey's been on. Um, and yeah, I, I, I think one of the things that does strike me is very interesting is when someone is working incredibly hard and incredibly ruthlessly to try and sort out their own shit. And you have a very single sort of linear focus in terms of how all of these products align. You know, you see some entrepreneurs or professionals or personalities, however you want to, to name it, and you look at the portfolio of things that contribute to make up their life in terms of where they invest their time. And you think these are quite piecemeal Yeah, something from over there, something from over there. And I don't really see how

• 50:05Chris Williamson?

  this is one cohesive unit, but I can't, I can't really say that for yourself. And as well, you know, this episode is not brought to you by Onnit. However, the only nootropic that I've ever used, which I back is AlphaBrain. And that's

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Thanks, brother. Appreciate that.

• 50:21Chris Williamson?

  Honestly, man, it is when I need, I haven't used it tonight because when my housemate, I was a bit tired upstairs. My housemate was like, John, why do you have a coffee in AlphaBrain? I was like, it's 8pm. I'm not a psychopath. Like, I'm, you're not gonna have a coffee at 8pm. But yeah, when I need, when I need that extra, that extra little kick, it really does help. And, you know, I think that having someone who is in your position, who is pushing a more holistic view of the mind, a more complete view of how we should progress as ourselves. I think it's, I think it's something that's very worthwhile. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you achieve over the coming years.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  Thank you, brother. I appreciate that, man. And I always appreciate someone who has a introspection and insight and surprises me with their own, you know, mental machinations. So keep doing what you're doing, man.

• 51:09Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, man.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Doing, doing good work.

• 51:10Chris Williamson?

  Everything that we've spoken about today, from Aubrey's book to his Instagram and his fantastic podcast, will be linked in the show notes below. Of course, Aubrey, it's been awesome, man.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, likewise, brother.