E51: The Certainty Of Unexpected Chaos

This week's episode of The Diary of a CEO is all about the certainty of unexpected chaos. This is a different episode, for the very different times that we’re living in. But, I think you ALL need to hear this, because I did. I discuss why you should be responsible for your actions, how to be positive amongst all the chaos, stay psychologically effective and the importance of being compassionate with your thoughts. I also delve into what I call "happiness dividends" and discuss why it is vital not give up on your long term goals for short term pleasures, especially in this time of uncertainty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:08Steven Bartlett?

  I've spent a long time on this podcast, talking to all of you about the certainty of unexpected chaos. And that sounds like an oxymoron, certainty, unexpected, but life is full of it. And if you've lived, you'll know that. It's not the ebb and flow of life that risks displacing us, it's the certain but unexpected chaos that arrives suddenly, unwelcome, and without prior warning, the type of chaos so unimaginable that we didn't want to prepare for it, and we couldn't. And because of our lack of preparation, significant chaos relies solely on your reaction. And in the last couple of weeks, chaos showed up again, in the form of global pandemic, one like we've never seen before.

• 0:53Steven Bartlett?

  And that's meant for the last couple of weeks, as the CEO of a large multinational company, I've been having to make a lot of tough decisions. I've had to focus now more than any time before. And that's also meant that this podcast has taken a backseat in my list of priorities, if I'm honest. But I also realised that if there was ever a time for the world to see my diary, for you guys to tune in to me and my thinking, surely it's now. Surely now is the time for me to share with you what I'm thinking, how I'm coping, and how I think we can get through this together. And I believe there's really one thing, above all others, that can help us get through this period more than any other thing. And I think that'll become clear in today's podcast. You know, there's so much pain, uncertainty

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  and confusion out there right now. And I'm hoping today's episode might, in some way, help you to relieve a little bit of yours. This is a different episode, for the very different times that we're living in. But I think you need to hear this, because I did. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:11Steven Bartlett?

  Isolation is a very funny thing. And right now, the whole world is pretty much locked in relative isolation. We can't go to restaurants, we can't see our friends, we can't go outside and socialise. And when you're in isolation, your mind can go one way or the other. We're not used to it. But I know someone that is. A guy called Shaka Sangor. He was locked in isolation in prison for seven years in a small six by nine foot solitary confinement cell. And he wrote a letter, which I'm going to read to you, which speaks to the correct mindset and also the incorrect mindset when you're in a period of isolation. Here's the letter.

• 2:54Steven Bartlett?

  For seven years, I spent every waking moment inside a six by nine foot solitary confinement cell. For years, I witnessed the men around me suffer the mental anguish of being in an environment designed to crush souls. For the first two years, I suffered alongside them. I was anxious, I was stressed out, and I was deeply depressed until I discovered the root cause of my state of being: an indeterminate sentence in solitary confinement. I simply didn't know when or if I was ever going to be released. And not knowing when the torture would end nearly drove me to the brink of insanity. Every time an officer, councillor, or anybody approached my door, my body would tense up and my palms would start sweating profusely.

• 3:36Steven Bartlett?

  "Is this the day that my nightmare is going to be over?", I would tell myself silently. When they whisked past my cell, my heart would sink into my stomach and my mind would drift deeper and deeper into depression. What I learned in the two years to follow was that I was trying to control something that I had no control over, and I suffered as a result. In my third year, I began to journal. I discovered that my thoughts and my actions were the only two things I could control, and this was a pivotal moment in my life. I went from being the victim of my circumstances to being the master of my destiny. I had stopped worrying about when this prison administration would let me out, and I started focusing my energy on becoming the best version of myself. I realised that I could turn my prison cell into a space of enlightenment,

• 4:21Steven Bartlett?

  one of creativity and higher learning. And it wasn't easy, but with the hard work, dedication, and a commitment to come out on the other side of this pain and this hell as a whole, I was able to do it. And it really all starts with your thoughts. And that's the letter written by Shaka Senghor, who, as I said, spent seven years in solitary confinement in a small, small, dark cell. And for many people, adjusting to this new reality that we found ourselves in isn't going to be easy. We've had to make tremendous lifestyle adjustments and it's scary. It makes us feel uncertain. We know that businesses are being destroyed. We know the stock market has plummeted. Many of you are caring for family members and trying to protect them from contracting what is potentially a deadly virus.

• 5:04Steven Bartlett?

  And with all of this going on with government imposed quarantine and the stress that comes with that, it can feel incredibly scary. And even though people don't like to hear me say this because of the context we're in, there are upsides here. And I'm not saying to ignore the downsides, but there are upsides in every form of chaos that arrives in your life, whether it's a learning moment, whether it's an opportunity to pivot and change, whether rejection acts as redirection. In the middle of every crisis, there's opportunities. And as Shaka said then in his letter, there's an opportunity for us to grow spiritually, become more resilient mentally and to become healthier physically and to be able to help those in need. And I would really focus a lot of your like central energy on that.

• 5:49Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I'm doing. Before I get into the real granular details, there's five things that I'm incredibly focused on at the moment. The first is meditation. And once upon a time, like a lot of you listening to this now, I thought meditation was hocus pocus airy fairy bullshit, right? But the, the way that I meditate is simply by creating a moment of stillness in the day. And a great time to do that is at the start of the day when you wake up because the mind is awash with nightmares and you know, your subconscious worst thoughts in moments like this. So if you're having trouble sleeping or you're having nightmares or you're not sleeping through the night properly, I would certainly recommend that you meditate, just create a moment of stillness in the, in the morning where you focus on your breathing, whatever that might be for you. It could be with your music playing and you just focus on your breathing.

• 6:33Steven Bartlett?

  And I think that will have a tremendous knock on effect for the rest of your day. It helps to really clear out the mind. The second thing is you have to write journal and podcast, whatever your, you know, your medium is of expressing yourself, you have to be doing that. And I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. Also, and again, I'm saying have to because I really mean have to here, right? I don't see these things as voluntary. You have to be exercising and you're exercising not because you want to look great when we pop up back in summer and you've got the, you know, the late summer coronavirus body on lock, but because exercise is incredibly good for the mind. And at a time when there's very little that we can do because of government restrictions, exercise remains one and it's the only thing we can do and it's good for the mind. So I would, uh, want to say the only thing we can do, I mean, the only thing we can do outside.

• 7:18Steven Bartlett?

  I would be making the most of your, your, your opportunity to exercise right now and really trying if you can to do that in nature. The other thing that I'm intently focused on is enjoying a process where I get to unoptimize my life for once. And what I mean by un-optimizes, you know, we spend so much of our lives optimizing our time away so that we can fill it with more things to be busy with, right? So we don't walk to work because we can get new, but we don't cook foods because we can order online. We don't call our parents or spend time with our loved ones or have that conversation that we've been meaning to have with someone that means the world to us because we can send a WhatsApp. And for most of us, and I'm excluding, you know, the, the brilliant NHS staff and key workers

• 7:59Steven Bartlett?

  that are working on the front line, for most of us that have these long extended weekends where we can't really do much socially outside, getting back to basics and getting back to being human and un-optimizing our lives and cooking, in my case, every single day has been a real pleasure. It's almost like a lost pleasure and it's one that I've come to appreciate. And I think through this period, that is something that we can enjoy because it's an opportunity we don't get often. And you know what? For me, it's been a really good way for me to remember some of the things that I sacrificed that I wish I hadn't, some of the things I've optimized out of my life, like walking to work or spending time speaking in person to some of my loved ones that I wish I hadn't. Cooking, these are things that I gave up in the course of pursuing my ambition

• 8:44Steven Bartlett?

  and pursuing this vision of myself that I had that I now realize that I wish I hadn't. We'll see what happens. And lastly, before I get into more detail, I'd say that one of the most essential things you can do at a time where structure and routine has been torn out of our life is to start habit tracking. And for me, I use an app called Streak, and it's really, really simple. I write the five habits, or six habits, or 10 habits into this app that I want to do every single day. And every single day that I achieve those habits, I just click on them, it makes a nice little, you know, a nice little effect happens, and it gives me a bit of reinforcement. And what I'm doing is I'm building a streak of days that I've followed through with that particular habit. You know, we've all heard the saying, I think it's 21 days to form a habit. But this kind of gamifies the process. It's an

• 9:29Steven Bartlett?

  app, it's an orange app in the App Store called Streak, and I use it for pretty much everything, for making sure I exercise every day, for making sure I eat healthy every day. And every day that I do, it adds to my streak. And that mentally reinforces me to make sure I stick to those habits tomorrow. I would highly recommend it. The second point in my diary today is again about surviving chaos. I've just written how to survive the chaos of life. And I've gone into a number of real, practical ways that have taken me from being an 18 year old dropout with no money, from a bankrupt family shoplifting in Manchester, pizzas to feed myself, to where I am now as the head of this global company. And the first point I've written here is thinking about your thinking. You know, I spend so much time imploring people to keep a journal, or to start a podcast,

• 10:12Steven Bartlett?

  or to blog. And if you can't afford an on hand psychological therapist, like most people can't, it's the cheapest and most cost effective way to become your own therapist. And you have to develop the habit of thinking about your thinking, which is something I don't think people talk about enough. And I have to credit a clinical psychologist here called Nick Wagner for this, but psychologically, when someone is healthy, and when they are psychologically effective, they think about their thoughts, they break them down, they analyze them, and they draw useful conclusions from them that aim to make their future better than their past. And in technical terms, this is called metacognition. It means you're aware of the fact that you're thinking things, and able to assess the quality and

• 10:56Steven Bartlett?

  usefulness of your thinking. Continuing, for example. Psychologically unhealthy or ineffective people often say things like, I just, I just got so worried and I couldn't stop thinking all the bad things that might happen if, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a panic attack. In reality, worry is something that you do, not something that happens to you. It's a habitual pattern of thinking that leads to tremendous overwhelming anxiety and stress, but without the habit of thinking about your thinking, it feels like something that just happens to you. On the other hand, if you have a habit of thinking about your thinking, you'd notice that worry is actually an activity and something that we do,

• 11:37Steven Bartlett?

  something that we engage in, and as a result, it's something we can with practice not do, or at least not do nearly as often, right? Because it's, it's somewhat impossible to never worry, but we can do it less often and that will have a tremendous impact on our life. When you're curious about your thoughts, it's a lot easier to work with them instead of fighting against them. And it's our thoughts that ultimately determine our actions and it's our actions that determine our outcomes. So really, it's just all about your thoughts, like Shaka said in his letter. If we're not analyzing our thoughts and intervening and correcting our cognitive processes on a regular basis, in a diary or in a podcast or in whatever medium that works for you, then it's incredibly easy for you to fall into a negative cycle of thinking.

• 12:19Steven Bartlett?

  And we see these negative cycles across our lives. We see negative confidence cycles everywhere. They're one of the main causes of things like imposter syndrome, when, you know, when someone tries something, they go for a job interview, the outcome is bad, they don't get the job, so they start telling themselves that they are not capable or they are not enough. And like the lobsters in Jordan Peterson's book, Twelve Rules for Life, this has a psychological effect and a physiological effect. And these negative thoughts turn into negative actions and people start doing things in more timid ways with less confidence. And they get more negative results. As a result of that, they lose more often, which further reinforces their belief that they are not enough. And the cycle continues and continues downwards.

• 12:59Steven Bartlett?

  If there is no analysis, no intervention, no correction of that initial negative thought after that failed job interview, if you're not questioning your own thoughts and the behaviors that they produce, then you are not in control of your life. And your life can easily descend into misery, depression and anxiety, all because of one small moment of chaos. You have to establish the habit of thinking about your thinking. The most successful people do. The truth is, you can read as many books as you like, but until you can read yourself, you'll never really learn a thing.

• 13:33Steven Bartlett?

  The next point here is about being more compassionate with yourself when you make mistakes. Listen, we all make huge mistakes, me as much as anybody else. That is an unavoidable part of being a human being and trying to live your fullest life. And psychologically healthy and effective people that are best equipped to survive chaos are able to be compassionate with themselves when they fail, or when they make a mistake, or when they're undergoing self-imposed stress. And if your best friend failed their exam or failed a job interview and was really disappointed, you probably wouldn't say something like, "God, what's wrong with you? I told you you should have prepared for longer, you're probably just not enough." If you're a good friend, you'd probably say something more like, "I can see you've tried really, really hard and I can see you're disappointed in yourself.

• 14:14Steven Bartlett?

  It must be hard and I understand that and that's fine, especially considering the fact that you put so much preparation and work into this, but I think you'll bounce back and I think you'll get it next time and there's plenty more opportunities out there." Obviously, this is just a healthier way to treat people. So why do we so rarely treat ourselves like this? When my business partner Dominic recovered from an alcohol dependency, which you can find on episode 10 of this podcast, which was primarily caused by the stress of building and running this business at a very young age, I remember him saying to me, "Steve, one of the reasons I became alcohol dependent is because I didn't have anybody to speak to." And I remember him asking me who I was speaking to about the stress of running the business that we were both going through.

• 14:56Steven Bartlett?

  And I remember saying, "The truth is, we were both speaking to someone this whole time. We're all speaking to someone at all times. Ourselves. That voice in your head." And it can either serve as your best friend, an inspirational therapist, or it can be your worst enemy, a pessimistic opponent. In the case of my business partner Dominic, we were both going through the same thing at the same time, but the voice in his head was terrorizing him with negatives, telling him to escape and to avoid these problems, while the voice in mine was telling me that I was capable of overcoming these challenges and that I was going to get there and that this was all just a game and that everything was fine.

• 15:40Steven Bartlett?

  The amount of compassion that that voice in your head gives you will determine so much. Self compassion is not just some new age fluffy positive self talk bullshit. You probably know I'm not really into that stuff. It's not fundamentally either about just being nice to yourself. For me, it's about being honest and about being realistic. If you made a mistake and you feel bad about it, there's a very good chance you'll improve the next time and you'll be fine in the long run. Ignoring that possibility by blasting yourself with judgmental negative self talk is just as destructive and dishonest as puffing yourself up with overly positive nonsense. When you make mistakes, be compassionate and treat yourself like you would treat a good friend with honesty and with support.

• 16:23Steven Bartlett?

  The next point in this section about chaos is about responsibility. Psychologically effective people in moments of crisis take responsibility for the things that are under their control and they seek to control their responsibilities and they take absolutely no responsibility for things that aren't in their control. They don't try and control things they're not responsible for, which simply means that they know they have to be responsible for their reaction to this pandemic, but they're not responsible for the pandemic. And they therefore don't fall into the poisonous trap of trying to control such a global crisis with excessive worry and excessive fear, just like Shaka said. They control that which they are in control of and they don't depress themselves by trying

• 17:08Steven Bartlett?

  to control that which they can't control. In times of crisis, the most psychologically effective people know that understanding you're responsible is necessary, but it's also not sufficient for genuine change. You have to actually take responsibility for your actions and you have to make practical plans and put in practical steps to facilitate change, right? And that means when shit hits the fan in your life because of choices that you've made or in this circumstance, because of circumstances that you find yourself in, psychologically effective people avoid blame, they grab hold of the situation and they plan how they're going to move forward with practical actionable steps.

• 17:49Steven Bartlett?

  Instead of relying on willpower or luck or good intentions or faith, the most psychologically effective people take responsibility. They demonstrate that internal locus of control and not just for the outcome that they wish to receive, but to building the processes they need to get there. In moments of total chaos like the current pandemic we're living through, You have to take responsibility for your actions. You're not responsible for the virus, what it's caused, the fact that it might have cost you, but you are completely responsible for every second, every minute and every hour of your reaction to the situation. You have to be responsible for your actions, even when you're not responsible for the situation you find yourself in.

• 18:30Steven Bartlett?

  And there's one more point I've written in my diary about how to be psychologically effective in moments of chaos, and that's all about your desires and your values. At all times in our lives, our short-term desires are pulling us in one direction and our long-term values are pulling us in another. And more often than not, in times of chaos and stress, our short-term desires win because they can be satisfied today, now, just by opening the fridge or saying yes to something or adding an item to your cart. And giving into short-term desires gives us a fleeting short-term emotional boost, and that's why we do it when we're emotionally deficient. And you know, you see it after breakups. It feels good to eat a whole tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and binge Netflix and become a little bit toxic.

• 19:14Steven Bartlett?

  And that's fine, I guess, in moderation. It can be, it can be a form of therapy. It can be a somewhat unavoidable coping mechanism, but in times of chaos, the times we're living through now, completely abandoning your long-term values will have grave, long-term knock-on consequences. And it's typically not something that psychologically effective people do. Of course, it's possible to resist the pull of unhelpful short-term desires like craving unhealthy food or risky sexual impulses or gambling, but a basic principle is that you have to actively stay mindful of the cost of indulging in these desires. And that's something that psychologically effective people do.

• 19:54Steven Bartlett?

  You know, sure, more sugar tastes good, but type 2 diabetes will make your life a real struggle. Staying in bed, procrastinating every day during this isolation process and Netflix binging is more comfortable, but losing your job because of it and having to live hand to mouth for the next couple of months is not comfortable. Sex is fun, but losing your relationship or getting an STD or having an unwanted baby is not so fun. Gambling is exciting. Until you run out of money and can't pay your mortgage. The real problem is not that we have these short term desires. It's that we so easily forget our long term values when we face chaos while standing in

• 20:36Steven Bartlett?

  the presence of something that will allow us to meet our short term desires. The trick for me to navigating this chaos that has been sprung upon all of us has been to keep my values and my highest aspirations front and centre of my mind. And there's a number of practical ways that you can do that that I'll go into because we all know it's easier to resist that third bowl of ice cream when you imagine how important it is for you to feel healthier and to look how you want. And we all know it's easier to say no to that risky sexual encounter when you remind yourself of the type of love and connection you really crave in your life. And it's easier to save your money and to invest it wisely instead of blowing it on cheap thrills and unnecessary material things.

• 21:20Steven Bartlett?

  If you're able to remind yourself about that house you want to buy in 10 years and the love of your life that you want to live in it with. The reality is, no matter what you do, it's going to be hard to say no to short term temptations regardless. There's really no cheat code for this, but it certainly does help and it's proven to help me a huge amount in my life to keep my values, my long term values, front of mind. And during this period of chaos and uncertainty, it's especially easy to feel pessimistic about the future and it's especially easy to be stressed. And when you give up hope and when you feel stressed and when you don't feel that hopeful about your future, our long term values weaken. The power and the force that they can have as a motivating factor, they weaken and our short term desires can rule the roost.

• 22:05Steven Bartlett?

  Psychologically effective people are people that achieve success in the long term, however you characterize success. And they're able to hold their long term values in moments of chaos during uncertainty and they tend to win the war over short term desires more often than not. Ultimately, I think they understand that the cost of your short term desires comes out of the bank account of the things you value in the long term. So here's my advice. During this time when you think the world is melting down around you actively, don't think about. Actively get closer to understanding what your long term values are. Write them down, make a values board if you have to, just make sure those things are front of mind. I've done this in my life in many, many ways.

• 22:49Steven Bartlett?

  And you know, I have family values, I have health values, I have love values, I have career values and financial values. And one of the ways I've done this in my life as it relates to my financial values is I created a document many years ago on Excel called my net worth document, right? It's really simple. It calculates my net worth. It adds up all of the money I have saved, all of the shares I own in various companies, property investments, startup investments, and it spits out a number which is my current net worth. And before I made this document, I was very much short term with my spending. If I wanted a Louis Vuitton bag, there was no force interrupting the short term desire to get it, right? There was no intervention. After I made this document, because I update this document so, so often, literally every day,

• 23:34Steven Bartlett?

  and I can literally see how allocating even one pound to my savings or to investments impacts my overall net worth, which for me is basically my long term future. My spending habits have completely and utterly changed forever, right? And I, I couldn't emphasize this more. You know, now when I see that Louis Vuitton bag, the voice of my net worth document screams in my head, Steve, if you do this, it will compromise your long term financial values. And now my long term values are beating my short term desires, just because I've built a system in my life to keep my values at the front of my mind at all times. So I would really encourage you to actively do something in your life to put your values, your long term values

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  front and center, especially in these times of chaos, uncertainty and stress. And that really concludes what I wanted to say today about chaos. And I guess my. Conclusion to all of this is pretty simple. The enemy in your life is not coronavirus. It's largely your own thoughts. That's really what we're fighting against at all times. And when external chaos arrives in its unpredictable but certain way, it's so easy to believe that the war we're trying to win is against the external chaos. But we can't win that war. We don't have control over it and it's not the war we're fighting. And efforts to do so so often lead to anxiety and depression and fear and worry. The external enemy is uncontrollable.

• 25:02Steven Bartlett?

  The only thing we're at war with is our own thoughts. Chaotic situations like the one we're living through, they direct your attention to them. This could be a breakup, it could be a bereavement, whatever it is. Chaos demands attention, which leads to us thinking negatively about the situation. And finally, that leads us to feeling negative things. So really, you have two opportunities before you feel an emotion to do something about it. You can make an effort to avoid the situation, i.e. if you know you're going to feel like shit if you're in a certain situation, you can avoid the situation. If you know you're going to feel bad if you're around a certain person, you can avoid the person. But in the current coronavirus crisis, we can't just avoid the situation. Of course, we can tune out of the news and we can watch it a little bit less, but we can't block it out completely.

• 25:46Steven Bartlett?

  It is a global crisis and we will have to be aware of it. So the second opportunity we have is to work on reframing our thinking. That's the second step before it becomes an emotion. Understanding this sequence of a situation resulting in your thoughts, which results in your emotions, is helpful because it allows you to take steps to either avoid the situation that give rise to your unhelpful emotions or to adjust these emotions with healthier thinking. One of the most effective and evidence-backed ways for people to adjust their emotions is a technique that psychologists call cognitive reframing, which is like the central component of what they call CBT therapy. And the premise behind cognitive reframing is that it's not really the things that happen in life that drive our emotions and our behaviour.

• 26:30Steven Bartlett?

  It's what we think about those things. And this loops back around to my first point, which is if you want to survive the crisis, you have to think about your thinking. It loops back around. What Shaka said when he was trapped in isolation for seven years. You need to take responsibility for your thinking and you need to form active processes and establish healthy principles to improve your thinking. And for me, those things are the things I've said. It's being more value orientated. It's having this podcast, it's writing a journal. And listen, in a world where the internet is capable of convincing millions of people that 5G internet has caused a global viral pandemic. We all need a set of clear, inflexible principles that determine what we believe when we log onto the internet, right?

• 27:12Steven Bartlett?

  What we think when we consume information and also what we think when we're talking to ourselves. And ultimately, therefore, how our emotions will be impacted. And I believe if you can get a little bit better at this, then this chaos and this pandemic will be a little bit easier to endure emotionally. But also from a business perspective, from a productivity perspective, from a work perspective, you'll be so much more innovative, effective, proactive, and you'll really attack the situation. And as they say, offence is the best form of defence. Attacking is the best way to defend. And that couldn't be true right now.

• 27:49Steven Bartlett?

  But listen, changing subject, the podcast sponsor, which is Boost by Facebook. They are a dedicated one stop shop for entrepreneurs, for CEOs, for small businesses, job seekers, and anybody with ambition that's looking to thrive in this digital economy. They launched with the aim of creating a place where all of us can understand this new world of digital and social. It can be incredibly intimidating. My mum, I was talking to her about Boost with Facebook the other day. She doesn't know how to use a phone. She doesn't know how to type and she's trying to run a business in 2020 and compete against people that do. Boost is a place for people like her, where she can learn more about the digital economy, about features and skills and training and all of the things that matter, the things

• 28:31Steven Bartlett?

  that might level the playing field for her as someone that doesn't know about this new world that we live in. You can learn more about this at facebook.com/boostwithfacebookUK. And if you do check it out, drop me a message and let me know how you find it. I always pop on there every now and then to try and make sure I'm staying ahead of the curve. But yeah, do let me know how you find it.

• 28:52Steven Bartlett?

  The next point in my diary is completely different. It's just something that I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple of weeks, but really developing the concept for in my notes. And I've written in my diary, what things pay the best happiness dividend? You know, most things we strive for don't pay great happiness dividends. And if you don't know what a dividend is, it's a business term for an amount of money paid regularly, usually annually, to a shareholder for owning a company. So basically, it's something that pays you because you own it. And I've made up the term happiness dividend, but it follows the same basic premise. A happiness dividend is something that continues to pay out happiness because you own it. For example, perishable things pay bad happiness dividends. A loaf

• 29:36Steven Bartlett?

  of bread, you know, it lasts a few days, doesn't make you happy. It nourishes you, of course, but but then it gets moldy and then it vanishes into the bin. And material possessions, if you believe the science and the Stoic philosophy about hedonistic adaptation, which says that things tend to give you short term pleasure before they get boring, right? Are also things that pay pretty short term poor dividends. However, children, a dog, a cat, good friends, parents, you know, they pay great happiness dividends for decades because they are intrinsically rewarding for a long time. And outside of the tangible things, there are other things in life that continually pay great happiness dividends. The process of striving for something is a process that pays a great happiness dividend. Being involved in helping others

• 30:18Steven Bartlett?

  pays a great happiness dividend. The state of gratitude while you're in it pays a wonderful happiness dividend. But there are also things that seem to pay zero or a negative happiness dividend, you know, an unhappiness dividend, i.e. having these things in your life means that you're continually paid a small amount of unhappiness. One of those things might be grudges, fame, having lots of money sat in the bank and having lots of followers on Instagram are all things that often pay negative happiness dividends. And I'm not referring to how you might leverage your fame, how you might spend your money, or how you might use your audience. I'm talking about those things in and of themselves. They are empty things unless they're put to work. And often they are empty things that cost you in terms of mental health and

• 31:01Steven Bartlett?

  Stress and insecurities and other things. But you know, if you use your fame or money or audience for things that are intrinsically satisfying you, then maybe. But in in and of themselves, the cost of those things typically nets out as a negative. As Naval points out, one of the surprising things that actually nets out as a negative happiness dividend is being in the state of desiring something. And desire is is too often a contract you make with yourself to be unsatisfied and unhappy until you get what you want. It's the decision that happiness exists in the future or within a goal in the future, but not completely in your present. And it exists in parallel with the innate human delusion that there's something out there that will make you happy, fulfilled and satisfied forever.

• 31:47Steven Bartlett?

  But if you've ever achieved any level of career success in your life, sold a big company for millions, taken a company public, you know, attained something you've strived for for a long time, for a decade. If you've ever spoken to a billionaire at length or an Olympic gold medalist, you'll know that the minute you get the thing you've strived for and longed for all your life, you don't become happy necessarily. You tend to revert back to the state of desire, especially when you were striving for that thing for external reasons, for social validation, to make other people think better of you or to become famous. And as Naval says, if obtaining things made us permanently happy, then cavemen would be incredibly miserable and westerners would be wildly happy.

• 32:29Steven Bartlett?

  You have to be very careful with your desires and the ones that you pick to pursue in your life. You have to be clear to yourself why those desires intrinsically internally matter to you. And you have to aim for desires that will pay the best happiness dividend in the process of you attaining them. You really don't want to suffer to attain something that immediately reverts you back to desire the minute it's yours. You know, the universe is rigged in such a way that. If you just want one thing and you focus on that one thing, the world will somehow move out of your way, you'll probably get it, but you'll have to give up the chance of possessing many other things as a sacrifice for that one thing.

• 33:12Steven Bartlett?

  So you have to be crystal clear with yourself about what you desire. And here's my overall conclusion. Just as investors seek out companies that pay the best cash dividends, if you want to be happy, you have to seek out things that pay the best happiness dividends. Unhappy people, unhappy people, unknowingly fill their lives with things that pay negative happiness dividends. If you want to optimize your happiness, strive for desires that pay the best happiness dividends, both during the process of attaining them, but also when you attain them. The things that will pay the best long-term happiness dividends once you attain them are the things that you wanted, not things that you wanted to post on Instagram or brag about or needed to fit in or, you know, to meet society's bullshit fairy tale of how

• 33:57Steven Bartlett?

  your life is meant to be going or to please your mum. The things that you deeply wanted to satisfy your soul and your truest, truest self. And in a world built on consumerism that is programmed to convince you that there's something you don't have but need, so that you buy something you didn't really want, it's hard to sometimes know what you actually want. What does your truest self actually want versus what society has told you you should want in order to improve your social ranking, in order to be happy, in order to satisfy other people's opinions of you? And I guess this is the challenge, this is the crossroads that we find ourselves at most key moments in our life. And most people don't have a fucking clue what they want. And they pull up at 37 years old after making the wrong decision about what they want because

• 34:40Steven Bartlett?

  of social pressure, and they find themselves having a midlife crisis because they're surrounded by a bunch of things that society told them would make them satisfied. You know, that corporate career in finance, you're a doctor and your mum told you you should be one, that spouse that makes you miserable but your mother told you you should marry, that shoebox apartment you were told you should be grateful for in the middle of that concrete jungle city which is draining your mental health. As well as obsessing over filling our lives with things that pay great happiness dividends, we have to be intentional with our desires or else the world gets to pick them for you. And you have to be intrinsic with your desires, which means that they can't come from Instagram or peer pressure or from society, they have to come from inside you.

• 35:23Steven Bartlett?

  And if they do, and if you're surrounded by things that are paying you a healthy happiness dividend, then you'll feel like the richest person on earth. The next point in my diary is just about gratitude. You know, we've had so much snatched away from us and, and it goes to show, or at least it should go to show, how many things that you took for granted. And there's these two kind of base fundamentals that we all take for granted that have currently been taken away from us, and that is a functional society. We, we have the privilege in the Western world of living in a functional society. And the second thing is the security of our health. And right now, both of those things hang in somewhat relative uncertainty.

• 36:07Steven Bartlett?

  And because of that, we can't really do much. We can't strive, we can't travel, we can't see our loved ones, we can't. And this for me has shown me how grateful I should have been for those privileges when I had them. And when you look at the people who are most vulnerable to this virus, it should say to you that your health and your youth is a privilege, right? And a privilege that I think we often disregard. Your, your younger years and your health are massive, massive privileges that you won't realize are privileges until they're snatched away from you as your social freedoms have been. And this is something that I've really thought about. It's like, you know, there's going to become a point, even though I sometimes, you know,

• 36:51Steven Bartlett?

  struggle to believe it as we all do, where I am elderly and I am vulnerable. And at that time, the things I'm capable of doing with my life will be significantly reduced. And it just goes, you know, if I could just say something to people that are listening that are currently healthy and that are currently relatively young, it's, this is your life. This is the chance you have. And coupled with that is you're going to die someday. So when you, when you really embrace those two ideas, the risk aversion, the playing it safe, the caring about people's opinion, all of that pales into insignificance. And you, you know, hopefully, I'm hoping that once the, the lockdown lifts and we

• 37:32Steven Bartlett?

  get a chance to really, you know, live our lives, the gratitude of having emerged from that situation and once having our freedoms returned to us, I hope will cause a change in people. And I really think it will, because I really believe it's going to cause a change in me. And the next point in my diary is about the Diary of a CEO Live, which is the live event I was putting on in Manchester on April 15th, which unfortunately has had to be cancelled because of the lockdown and the virus. And it's being postponed to the end of this year, but I just wanted to say something. I just wanted to say that first and foremost, thank you to everybody that bought a ticket. And because we've postponed it and moved the date back, I've said that I'll buy every single person that comes to the event, and there's about 900 people coming a drink upon

• 38:17Steven Bartlett?

  arrival. But also, I just wanted to say a few words about this particular event. The significance of this event in my life is it's the first time that I've really tried to express myself in a much deeper, more creative way. And I'm not going to give the game away too much, but this is much more than just a live podcast. That's what I'm going to tell you. It's much deeper than that. And I cannot wait. I really, really cannot wait. And in fact, this delay has only led to the event becoming better. I've expanded everything. I've invested more in the event and I've had more time to really think about making it a special event. If you're not currently coming to the event, if you didn't manage to get a ticket, the ticket sold out in about two minutes. So that wouldn't be too surprising.

• 38:58Steven Bartlett?

  But go to thediaryofaceolive.com and just put your name and email address in because nearer the event, there may be another batch of tickets released, depending on some conversations we're having with the venue. But put your email address in. If you do want to come and you're able to get to Manchester sometime in September, then I really highly recommend that you do come. And I wouldn't say that lightly, but I think this is really going to be a special evening. I really, really believe that. And I can't wait to meet all of you. I know there's some people that listen to this podcast that I've never got to meet before. And if you know me, if you've ever heard me speak before anywhere in the world, you'll know that I never, ever leave until I've met everybody that wants to meet me. And this evening will be no different.

• 39:41Steven Bartlett?

  And we can have a couple of drinks, whatever those drinks might be, and we can have a chat as well. So I really hope that a lot of you are coming because you know, you guys that listen to this podcast are the ones that know me best and that have followed my journey the most. So yeah, I can't wait to see you there.

• 39:58Steven Bartlett?

  This podcast always tends to end on my romantic relationships, which is kind of a look behind the, you know, a look behind the cover at what's going on in my personal life. And yeah, I'm super happy. I'm super happy. I'm in a relationship with a wonderful person and they live in a different country. So I've not been able to see them in two months because of this lockdown. Their country got locked down before mine, which is a bit of a fucking kick in the balls, but it's fine. We're communicating well. Yeah, all is well in my relationship life, which is quite a, quite a significant change. If you listen to this podcast for some time, because over the years I've gone through so many battles with like love and relationships and the competition with my business and,

• 40:41Steven Bartlett?

  you know, can I have a romantic partner and be successful? I've played with all of these ideas. And for me, the current situation I'm in where the, my romantic partner lives overseas and I see them infrequently, but you know, like one week a month, probably just works really well for me. It gives me, it gives me the space that I need and the space that she needs. And it also means that when we see each other, it's amazing. Right? It's really, really good. And it means that I get to miss them a lot. And, you know, I've thought a lot about this. I thought a lot about this idea of living together and how proximity can sometimes put such a big stress on relationships. And I've

• 41:23Steven Bartlett?

  always, I've always wondered, I'm sure my girlfriend's going to be listening to this and she's going to be like, what the fuck? Well, this might be a surprise or maybe she's down. But I've always wondered about the idea of like, could you raise a family with someone that you don't live with? It's not to say that I don't want to live with someone one day. Of course I do. I see myself living in a big house with a big garden and a picket fence with loads of kids and a wife.

• 41:48Steven Bartlett?

  But I've always wondered if that would be a more healthy dynamic for a modern relationship where you have space from the other person.

• 41:57Steven Bartlett?

  And I spoke to a friend of mine, you know, the founder of Huell, a guy called Julian, Huell, the drinks, that company, and he told me about his first marriage and how for a second one, he's adopted a different approach to that relationship where they don't live together. I think I'm correct there. If I'm wrong, Julian, forgive me. But that's what I believe he told me and how that's working out better. And I remember him making the analogy of trying to keep your romantic relationship like your non-romantic relationships, like your relationships with your friends. It's funny that those relationships so rarely break down. You know, you see your friends twice a week down the pub and you know, you're close and whatever. But for some reason, I think that maybe the answer is creating bespoke

• 42:41Steven Bartlett?

  models for relationships, which means that there's not one right way to have a relationship, that some people shouldn't maybe live together, some people shouldn't have kids together. And that really your objective when you get into a romantic relationship is finding the dynamic that works for you and for them, based on who you are and who they are, and also based on your career and your goals and your ambitions. And there's no book, there's no Instagram quote that encourages people to create like new dynamic bespoke tailored models for their life. Our lives are just this fairy tale of you go to school, then university, you get a job, you buy a house, you find someone to love, you settle

• 43:20Steven Bartlett?

  down, you have two girls, two boys, you retire, you have grandkids. And I often think when we're so different inherently, all of us, and we all have such different goals and aspirations and motivations and desires, how could it be the case that there's one model for all of our lives? And in fact, it's the the social pressure to fit into that box, to fit into that storyline or fairy tale that's causing so much danger, like so much anxiety and depression and unhappiness and midlife crises that like the ones I've talked about today. And I think the same with my romantic relationships. I think at any point when I start to believe that my romantic relationship should be going a certain way, according to the fairy tales

• 44:04Steven Bartlett?

  of Instagram and society, then it will probably fuck up. And I've seen so many good relationships. And I'm sure you've had one that are fucked up because deep down you wanted it to look perfect online or to your friends or to the Joneses or whoever it might be. And again, that's relating back to one of the early points I made in this podcast. That's another form of living extrinsically and it never fucking works. And I'm going to say something and then I'm going to wrap this podcast because this is kind of controversial. But here's what I think. When I see young couples repeatedly posting about their relationship, especially when it's a new relationship, so a relationship that's under a year. When I see them posting about their relationships online, on YouTube, on Instagram stories, wherever it might be, I always tend to believe that those relationships won't last.

• 44:49Steven Bartlett?

  And I'd love to get the data on this. Maybe there's a study I could do about this. But the reason for that is because they're making their private intrinsic relationship, something that should be intrinsic and rewarding for your own reasons, an external extrinsic issue. They're making it the business of hundreds of thousands of other people. And that it's almost like they're misunderstanding the purpose of a relationship. The purpose of a relationship isn't to get likes on Instagram. It isn't to get feedback from the public. It's for intrinsic benefit. It's for that internal feeling of belonging and love, which comes from, you know, being a human in love in a relationship. And whenever I see someone, especially when they've only been in a relationship for a couple of months, be so public about the state of their relationship or, you know,

• 45:33Steven Bartlett?

  showing their girlfriend off or their boyfriend off. It makes me think that their relationship is built on the wrong things and that external factors are a big part of something that should be an internal, internally motivated thing. And I tend to be right about that. I tend to be right. My, my, my general stance is that my personal relationship is the, the business of my friends and my family and me. And that's why I always try and keep my relationships confidential. And I'll talk about things I've learned from relationships on my podcast, but that's it. I don't post my relationships online. I don't share photos of them on my Instagram. That's something that's intrinsic and I want to keep it that way.

• 46:17Steven Bartlett?

  And I think if I keep it intrinsic, I'll keep it special and I'll keep it meaningful. And it will stay serving me for the right reasons. Thank you. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for hanging with me. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy these podcasts. Your feedback, as I've always said in these podcasts, this isn't some bullshit I say to promote it. Your feedback is genuinely the reason why I make these podcasts. And it's literally often just one tweet or one Instagram or something that I see that makes me think, fuck Steve, you need to go and pull out that microphone in a time which is, you know, clearly a very unique one. We're in, we're living through a moment of chaos. And you need to do this because it matters to people. And every single time I do it, it serves me in such a great way that I'm thankful for the fact

• 47:00Steven Bartlett?

  that you guys push me and that you give me that feedback. So if you're listening, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button on whatever platform you're listening on, leave a review and let me know that you've subscribed. And when you leave a review, please just put your Instagram or your Facebook or whatever way that I can reach you on there, share it on your stories, give me your feedback, message me in DMs, whatever you want to do, but I love to hear it. And I'm going to see you all next week for another chapter of the Diary of a CEO.