Stop Telling Us Everything Happens for a Reason with Anti-Victim Tom Nash

We often comfort ourselves with the idea that things happen for a reason, or define our struggles as a test of strength. Tom Nash might ask you to reconsider. Tom is a speaker, former DJ, and globe-trotting advocate for agency, anti-fragility, and the radical idea that your worst moment might be your greatest asset — as he argued in his TED Talk, "The Perks of Being a Pirate.” He’s also the mind behind Last Meal with Tom Nash where he asks his guests what their last meal would be if the world ended tomorrow, and then actually cooks it for them. In our conversation, Tom shares how, at 19, a rare bacterial infection left him a quadruple amputee with a 2% chance of survival. And he'll tell you it's the best thing that ever happened to him. This isn’t just another conversation about resilience. It’s a deep dive into agency and the difference between a life that happens to you and one you actually choose. In this episode, we explore: ➡️ Why the story you tell yourself about your own life is the most powerful force in it ➡️ The difference between resilience and anti-fragility (and why it matters) ➡️ Tom’s framework for navigating adversity: The Artist, the Author, and the Alchemist ➡️ The counterintuitive reason why we actually need support networks ➡️ Why "everything happens for a reason" can be a trap (and the perspective that works better) ➡️ What your last meal choice reveals about what you're really searching for ➡️ Why the concept of being "self-made" is a dangerous illusion Tom joins me to ask a fundamental question: who is really holding the pen when it comes to your story? This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + Watch the new season of Tom’s show Last Meal with Tom Nash and head to: https://www.lastmealwithtomnash.com Want more Tom? Check out his website: https://www.tomnash.com + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 Adversity Can Be The Best Thing You Experience 00:03:45 Tom's Story: Contracting Meningococcal Disease 00:07:47 The Gift of Agency: Choosing to Amputate 00:16:18 The Artist, The Author, and The Alchemist: A Framework for Anti-Fragility 00:20:28 The Alchemist: Turning Adversity Into Advantage 00:23:52 Learning to Walk Again: The Momentum Metaphor 00:26:57 The True Purpose of Support Networks 00:34:33 Why 'Everything Happens for a Reason' Robs You of Agency 00:47:37 The Last Meal Question: What Your Choice Reveals About Freedom 00:42:23 Joel Robuchon: Leadership Through Teaching, Not Commanding 00:58:34 The Problem With Inspirational Affirmations 01:00:59 Stop Saying Everything Happens for a Reason + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek Simon’s books: The Infinite Game: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/ Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/ Find Your Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/find-your-why/ Leaders Eat Last: https://simonsinek.com/books/leaders-eat-last/ Together is Better: https://simonsinek.com/books/together-is-better/

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Are you going to treat adversity like the conversation stopper? Or is it a puzzle to be solved?

• 0:05Simon Sinek?

  Right. Your case is extreme and it's different than this adversity that most people will struggle in a day. But I like extreme cases because the lessons are easier to discern.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  For me, losing four limbs sounds like a bit of a shit sandwich to almost anyone who reads that story. But when I sit here and tell you it's the best thing that ever happened to me, and even you identify it as a gift, all of a sudden it becomes a really good story.

• 0:30Simon Sinek?

  Most of us have experienced some sort of adversity in our lives. And whether it's from well-intentioned friends or our own attempts to deal with our struggle, we often try to downplay how bad it is. Things could be worse, we tell ourselves. You still have your health. But what if there was another way? A better way to deal with stress? That's why I was excited to have Tom Nash on the show. At nineteen, he caught a bacterial infection which has a 2% chance of survival. But that's not the story. Because of the infection, he had to have both his legs and both his arms amputated. And how did he deal with it? He decided it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He went on to become one of Australia's most popular DJs and a highly acclaimed speaker.

• 1:15Simon Sinek?

  He's also the host of his own show, Last Meal with Tom Nash, where he serves his guests the meal they would want to have if the world was about to end. Tom is one of the best guests I have ever had on the show. He's smart. He's really funny, charming and insanely inspiring. And he will leave you with the greatest lesson you can ever learn. When we have agency, we can more than get through anything. We can come through anything even better. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:58Simon Sinek?

  Tom, thanks so much for, for coming in. I learned about you from a team member of ours who sent me your TED Talk.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 2:07Simon Sinek?

  You're a pirate.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  That's, that's getting a bit long in the tooth now. I can't believe.

• 2:12Simon Sinek?

  It's still out there.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  It's still out there.

• 2:13Simon Sinek?

  Just so people know what we're talking about, children stop you.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:19Simon Sinek?

  Children stare.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, children do a lot of things.

• 2:21Simon Sinek?

  Children do a lot of things. Well, let's, let's, let's go back. People stare.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure. People stare. Yeah.

• 2:26Simon Sinek?

  People stare.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I've lost both arms and both legs. They don't really notice the leg thing because usually I'm wearing long pants like I am now. And I'm pretty good at walking with prosthetic legs, so they don't really detect that. But the obvious thing is I have these two hooks.

• 2:39Simon Sinek?

  Oh, my God, you've got hooks. Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't believe how much that's a genuine response I get as well, like people pretending that they don't notice, which is even more awkward. But yeah, yeah, kids, kids are the ones that will sort of like, there's no fourth wall there. They'll just go straight for you and ask you whether you're a pirate or not, or a robot or something like that. And I just have to tell them that, yeah, of course I am.

• 3:01Simon Sinek?

  Of course.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Of course. I love being in America because I can, when people from America ask me what happened to me, I can tell them shark attack. And I totally get away with it because they think everything in Australia is trying to kill you.

• 3:16Simon Sinek?

  And you know, and that, and that's true. Most people die in Australia from shark attack.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 3:20Simon Sinek?

  That's a known fact.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. With kids, I mean, I was playing to the idea of it with them being a pirate or a, or a robot or whatever it is. And I think it just makes them feel a bit more comfortable. And I like it when kids are more comfortable asking questions to people with disabilities.

• 3:35Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Because, you know, I think it just de-stigmifies everything.

• 3:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  You know, if you will, so.

• 3:41Simon Sinek?

  So you, you lost your arms and legs when, uh, when you were 19?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:46Simon Sinek?

  Is that what it was?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:47Simon Sinek?

  So, I mean, you lived, I mean, into adulthood, able-bodied.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah. I was, I was an able-bodied person until the age of 19. I was studying at university. I was, used to be a guitarist actually as well. Uh, so music was a great passion of mine. And it was at one day at. College, I went in and I felt a general malaise come over me as I was sitting having coffee with a friend, waiting to go to a lecture. And I thought to myself, I might just go home because I was feeling like I was getting a flu. And so I took myself home and put myself to bed and I had probably what felt like the worst flu I'd ever had in my life. If you've, if you've had a really bad flu and you can imagine an order of magnitude more than that, that's kind of what I felt.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  So the night was really awful. And then the next morning, I woke up, texted my stepsister and I said, you have to take me to hospital. Actually, I think I said, you have to send me to a doctor, not hospital, because as a nineteen year old man, you always downplay the whole. She picked me up, took one look at me and said, I'm taking you straight to hospital. She took me to a local hospital. I, uh, I remember they, they had to transfer me because they, they looked at me immediately and they said, oh, you know, you've got purple rash all over your face and all over your body and everything's swollen up, something wrong with you. They knew what it was. I didn't at the time. So they transferred me from a local hospital to one of the major hospitals in Sydney. And I say this is because it was like one of my last memories. Hmm.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  I was in the back of a, an ambulance. I don't know if you've ever been in the back of an ambulance and they have the paramedic that's, that's with you just to make sure you don't die or whatever it is. And I remember this guy, like it was yesterday, he was very serious and he was very stern. And I made it my mission to make him laugh. Mm hmm. Because I knew that I just needed to break this guy. I don't know what was going on. Mm hmm. And so I was making a couple of jokes and there's nothing was happening. And then at one point, I remember saying to him, how long till we get to the hospital? And he said, uh, about ten minutes. And I said, ten minutes is what people say when they have no fucking idea how long it's going to take to get somewhere. Because nothing takes ten minutes, does it? It takes seven, it takes eight, takes nine, never takes ten, maybe takes fifteen or twenty. Mm hmm.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  And this made him laugh and had a bit of a chuckle and we laughed together. And then I thought, okay, I've won this guy over. Mm hmm. At that point, I completely lose my memory. Well, what happened was I I got admitted to the hospital and they put me into a coma for a couple of weeks. And then when I woke up, I realised that, well, I'd been told that I contracted meningococcal disease, which is kind of like a bacterial meningitis.

• 6:17Simon Sinek?

  Just just a fluke, just a.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's it's contracted, kind of like people contract Covid or something like that through sharing drinks or someone coughing on you or something like that. But it's very rare. So I just got extremely unlucky or whatever. I was to be in hospital for another eighteen months. I came really close to death. I think I had like a two percent survival.

• 6:36Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Uh, opportunity. And I managed to get through that with the help of the doctors and nurses and and some trial drugs and things. But during that time, I I had amputations. So after I'd come out of the coma, I had both my legs amputated. Um, and a couple of weeks after that, a doctor came into my room. I remember this like it was yesterday as well. This is one of those other sort of poignant moments. This doctor, his name, his name was Peter Mates. He was one of several doctors that I had. And for some reason, this guy had a really acute understanding of my dark sense of humour, in in a way that few people have understood from since. And I remember he came into my room once.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And I'd had my legs amputated, arms, I had gangrene on them and stuff like that. And I was really wanting to keep the arms because, as I mentioned before, I was a guitarist and, you know, it wasn't just the lack of independence, but like the idea that I couldn't play music.

• 7:33Simon Sinek?

  Part of identity.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  So he came in and I I realised the situation was really different because he wasn't flanked by the usual registrars and lackeys that he normally was, being quite a high up doctor. And he sat down next to my hospital bed and he said, so we've got to talk about the arms. And I said, okay. And he said, uh, as I say, you have two options. And I said, okay, what are they? He said, we can amputate your arms. That's the first option. And uh, it's pretty rare for people to live with two prosthetic arms, but he said, it does happen, but you'll have to live with prosthetics. And I said, I don't really like the sound of that. What's the other option? And he said, uh, we can leave them. And I said, okay, what's the catch? And he said, uh, oh, you'll die.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  I see we share the same here. Um, so after I had a bit of a chuckle at that, I I realized that, um, apart from like tapping into the dark sense of humor.

• 8:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Uh, he was giving me a choice.

• 8:28Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  For the first time in this whole process.

• 8:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Because up until then, everything had been happening to me.

• 8:34Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  And I had no sense of agency.

• 8:37Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  In the whole process. And at that point, I mean, obviously, I was gonna say amputate the arms, right?

• 8:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  And that's the decision I made, obviously, if I'm sitting here in front of you, uh, having this conversation. What it did was it completely changed my mindset at that point, because now I've made the decision to lose my arms. And it imbued me with that sense of agency.

• 8:56Simon Sinek?

  So you're not a victim of the amputation?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  It's interesting you use that word. I I very much regard myself as an anti-victim.

• 9:03Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Uh, what I do in most of my life is is try to, I I think, rail against the concept of victimhood, generally speaking.

• 9:11Simon Sinek?

  There's a subtle but important detail here, which is the doctor gave you a choice.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah, that's right.

• 9:16Simon Sinek?

  That you had the agency, which makes you not the victim.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:20Simon Sinek?

  Because this is something I chose.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:22Simon Sinek?

  I wonder if you woke up one morning and then the arms were gone, if if that mentality would be the same? Or it would have taken more work to get there?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  That's a really interesting question that no one's asked me before, and I'm not surprised that you're someone that picked up on that. But yeah, absolutely. Like, the I the idea that you actually make the decision imbues you with a deeper sense of agency.

• 9:44Simon Sinek?

  Even if it's even if it's a fake decision.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:46Simon Sinek?

  You know, I mean, it's like, it's a choice-ish.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:49Simon Sinek?

  But you get to say, got it, let's do it.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  And I think what that points to mostly is that almost everything in our life is the story we tell ourselves. And everything is a reframe, or it can be. And so you can choose to look at things that have happened historically as something that you had input in and some or something that you didn't.

• 10:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  And I think people's ability to make that distinction is what decides whether they have the agency moving forward and what they can do with what.

• 10:16Simon Sinek?

  This is so interesting, because when I sat down with you, I thought, okay, this is gonna be a conversation about the importance of sense of humor. I thought this was gonna be a conversation about when life gives you lemons, you know, make a joke, right? Because I believe life is made of balance, right? And this is, this is everything. For everything we get, there's a cost.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 10:38Simon Sinek?

  And for everything we lose, there's a gain or a lesson. Everything, right? In other words, it's always balance. And I always, I always ask myself, okay, what's the balance? Right? So when times are hard, I'm like, all right, what am I getting out of this? And when something goes good, I'm like, careful, this is coming at a cost.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, what's, what am I planning to get this year?

• 10:55Simon Sinek?

  Always. And so, and again, every aspect of life. So for example, if you have a corporate job, you know, your lows are not that low, but your highs are not that high. You live an entrepreneurial life, your highs are insanely high, but your lows are insanely low. Like, it's always balanced.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:10Simon Sinek?

  And so what I thought we were gonna be talking about was that the sense of humor was tapping into the balance. Because otherwise, if you have imbalance, that's where you end up depressed, lost, victim. And so to find what the gain, what the balance is, is like, okay, something bad has happened. Your identity has changed, your life has changed, new struggles, all of that. Okay, my sense of humor got darker, you know? And, and it helps you just sort of live in balance.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:39Simon Sinek?

  Right? I thought that's what we were gonna be talking about.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  We can if you want.

• 11:43Simon Sinek?

  What is showing up here, I actually think is more interesting, which is agency. And how one reclaims agency. Now, this doctor gave you a gift, which is, he didn't save your life, he let you save your life. And I guess the question, I mean, we don't know if that didn't happen, if you just woke up with no arms, you know, what would have happened? But are there other circumstances as you've had to change, you had to relearn to walk, you had to relearn to function, you had to relearn to get dressed? I mean, everything was brand new for you. How did agency show up? When did you feel like a victim?

• 12:25Speaker 00

  I don't believe I ever felt like a victim. I, I, I think there was probably a time where.

• 12:29Simon Sinek?

  I mean, there was no depression that came at all.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, there was depression. I don't believe it came in the form of feeling like I was a victim. I think, I think you do some, get these glimmers of kind of, you know, why did this happen to me? It's not necessarily, I think, a victim mindset, but you, you're kind of trying to make sense of how you've been selected for this particular brand of misfortune. At the same time.

• 12:51Simon Sinek?

  It's like, it's the opposite of a lottery.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  It's, yeah, that's right.

• 12:54Simon Sinek?

  You've got a one in 10 million chance of being a millionaire or.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, look at me. I think it very quickly shifted from why me to, you know, what next effectively? But I think there was an intermediary step there of kind of why not? Right? And why not being really important when you think to yourself, statistically, it's going to happen to somebody. Why not me? Of course. Um, and that's an important realization because it's the first time that you realize that a lot of these things that happen are just completely random. And the universe doesn't give a shit about you. And you need to start developing a skin that can handle that effectively. I think what you said about balance made me think about something completely different, which was that even though you were kind of trying to diagnose this, maybe humor is this kind of

• 13:42Speaker 00

  antidote to the deficit in other areas. I think rather than humor being the antidote for me, I've found what I call anti-fragility. This is a topic that you would know well, was developed by Nassim Taleb. Usually with respects to complex systems. He's a, you know, market analyst or, you know, options trader, whatever it is. But I think it applies just as much in psychology than anything else because the human mind is a, is a complex system. And so what I've identified in my own life along the way is like, what advantages have come through having a disability for me? Uh. You mentioned my TED Talk actually before, which is the perks of being a pirate. We we we talked about the idea of being a pirate, but the the salience be underneath that is

• 14:26Speaker 00

  the perks of what are the advantages of having a disability? And when I look back on my life now and what I've become, I'm a better problem solver. I'm a more, people say resilient person, I'm I'm more anti fragile person. I believe that there are so many advantages that I've had having a disability. Just completely in my mindset and the way that I approach life, that that's the balance.

• 14:50Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Humor isn't the balance. The balance is how can I flip the script on this and make it something that's positive? And that's effectively the lens through which I I view life these days.

• 15:02Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Is you know, how can I develop habits that are anti fragile effectively?

• 15:08Simon Sinek?

  Emotionally as well?

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 15:10Simon Sinek?

  Because physically, clearly you have to solve problems. You have to figure out, you know, work in the world.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:14Simon Sinek?

  But are you more anti fragile and better at solving emotional problems, relationships, you know, conflict at work?

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:21Simon Sinek?

  You know.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  I think so. When I talk to a lot of people and particularly in business about anti fragility, it's important to know that like, I don't think it's a binary thing that you're you're either anti fragile or you're not.

• 15:31Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  And I think people get it uh very caught up being like, am I optimizing my response? You know, for positive upside optionality all the time.

• 15:40Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  I don't think you need to be all the time, but once you develop like the habit of doing it and you get better at it, even if two out of five situations you can flip into a positive, there will be a net benefit over time.

• 15:51Simon Sinek?

  When something happens to us.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:54Simon Sinek?

  And and we're all susceptible to it, like, oh, why me?

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:59Simon Sinek?

  Is there something you say, a mantra, that helps you change the mindset? I mean, you kind of alluded to it, which is not what did I lose, but what do I gain? It it mean, is that the, is that the thing? Like, is there a mechanism that helps you get the right mindset?

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, there is. I actually developed a system that I use day to day. Um, I have like three characters that I can play in various different situations. And I call them the artist, the author and the alchemist. And they're for very different applications. And if you think about these things as actual characters, I like to think of them as people.

• 16:38Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  So the artist is somebody who paints perspective, right? I mean, artists always work with perspective. If you think about it like a photographer who can zoom in or zoom out of a particular situation. So that kind of oscillates between like a narrow and a broad framing of something. I think that being able to change your perspective on any situation at any given time is a skill that you can develop. You know, an example of this would be if you're drowning in the minutia of your life and work or something like that. It's useful to zoom out and appreciate that you live in a really good country or you have a spouse that's supportive. Or you have a great family or friends network or your life is on the right track.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Maybe if those things are actually all catching fire, it's better off to oscillate that framing again and zoom in and appreciate a moment like spending time with your dog on the couch or having a cup of coffee with your spouse or something like that. Anyone has the choice to be able to make that decision at any point in their life. You can run through an exercise whereby, you know, today is another day you didn't get an email telling you you have bowel cancer. Right? It sounds fucking ridiculous on the offset, right? But but today is that day for you and I both.

• 17:51Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  And if you put yourself in the mental headspace where that is a possibility.

• 17:56Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  It does actually lighten the problems that you're going through now.

• 18:00Simon Sinek?

  You know what I like about it is it works because it's specific. Whereas, you know, usually when something bad happens in somebody's life, you usually get the pendulum of like, you have your health.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:09Simon Sinek?

  Which is this kind of generic, kind of like, it's the same kind of idea.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:14Simon Sinek?

  You know, but it's such a generic thought. It's too hard to say, yeah, sure.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:20Simon Sinek?

  It's it's too hard to appreciate something so broad in general, right?

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:23Simon Sinek?

  Whereas when you say, you know, you don't have bowel cancer today.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Bowel cancer today, yeah.

• 18:28Simon Sinek?

  You know, it's kind of like, yeah, it's a it's a good point, you know, it's like, it's the specificity.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:33Simon Sinek?

  Of the, this is why I like your concept of the photographer, it's the specificity of it.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:38Simon Sinek?

  Not like, hey, life is good. But rather, just take a step back, look what you've got.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  That's right. Are you zooming in or are you zooming out?

• 18:45Simon Sinek?

  And it's the specificity that I really appreciate.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  And then another one would be the author.

• 18:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  This was one that I do with myself for the last ten or fifteen years. And I never really had a name for it until I put a name on it. But I would imagine myself as my own eighty year old autobiographer of my own book. Right? And it would help me make decisions on what I was doing in life, right? So whenever I had a decision to make and it was really tough and I had to consider all a bunch of different variables, I would project myself into the future when I was eighty years old. And I would think, if this was a story that I was writing and I was the protagonist, what decision would I want the main character to make? Like, what kind of story would I be proud to write, to tell?

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Like, autobiographies are very much the stories of heroism and making right decisions.

• 19:38Simon Sinek?

  Especially when you write your own book.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  When you write your own book, right? Exactly. And so you don't want to make the wrong decision, but you're also giving yourself this benefit of objectivity, right? Of being outside of yourself.

• 19:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Of being the third person, in a sense. You know that axiom is kind of like, it's always easy to give advice to a friend, but never take your own advice? This is just you putting on that hat.

• 19:59Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  And giving yourself advice.

• 20:01Simon Sinek?

  Sitting on the outside.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:02Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  The artist is great for, you know, if you're sort of drowning in the minutia. The author is great if you have a decision to make, but you want to respond in the best way. And then I guess the last one would be the alchemist, which is what I live my life by. And the alchemist is somebody who turns horrible situations into gold. Right? So how do you find, what is the hidden benefit from some horrible challenge that's happened to you? Are you going to treat adversity like the conversation stopper? Or is it a puzzle to be solved?

• 20:33Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  What are the great things that you can get out of what's happened to you? So for me, losing four limbs sounds like a bit of a shit sandwich to almost anyone who reads that story. But when I sit here and tell you it's the best thing that ever happened to me, and even you identify it as a gift. All of a sudden, it becomes a really good story. And that's what the alchemist does.

• 20:53Simon Sinek?

  Here's where my head goes.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:56Simon Sinek?

  Your case is extreme, and it's different than this adversity that most people struggle in a day. But that's why I was excited to talk to you. I like extreme cases because the lessons are easier to discern.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:09Simon Sinek?

  Because it's extreme.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:11Simon Sinek?

  And then you take those lessons from the extreme and you apply them to less extreme circumstances.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:15Simon Sinek?

  Where the lessons are harder to find, right? And so when you talk about the alchemist, and when you say, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. When somebody gets dumped, fired, a small business is not, is barreling down.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:29Simon Sinek?

  It seems too simplistic to simply say, change your mindset. This is the best thing that ever happened to you, you know?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:39Simon Sinek?

  Like, when there's so much emotion, I mean, I have to believe this is something you developed, not something you had out of the gate, right? It wasn't the week after amputation. You're like, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. That that is not how it worked.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  No.

• 21:53Simon Sinek?

  So, so, so, so I guess that's where I'm getting at. What is the process that we have to go through of mourning loss? You know, going through the fear, going through the anxiety? Because you gotta go through it. There's no avoiding that. Otherwise, it's just suppression and you're kidding yourself. Allowing you or yourself the grace to cry and be depressed and be like, this is normal. You know, I just lost something, I'm gonna be depressed.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 22:16Simon Sinek?

  Like, how long was the gap when you went through fuck my life to, you know what? No, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. And what was the process to get there?

• 22:27Speaker 00

  I'll tell you my gap, but I don't want that to sound prescriptive to people. Because I don't think it's gonna be the same for everyone in every situation.

• 22:35Simon Sinek?

  But I just want people to appreciate that it's not just some faux spiritual affirmation.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:41Simon Sinek?

  That you're going through some shit and you just turn your life around, change your mindset. You know, this is the best thing that ever happened to you.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:46Simon Sinek?

  And then all of a sudden, you're, you have this amazing outlook on life. That's, that's, that's not how this works.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  I went into hospital about middle of the year. I, I, I was terribly depressed in the beginning. And I noticed that that had a high correlation to physical pain.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  And I know that emotional pain can kind of induce physical pain and all that sort of stuff, but Pain. Pain. Pain. Sure, yeah. Um, but my emotional pain and therefore depression, I think, was very closely correlated Mm hmm. with physical pain because I noticed it getting better as I, the pain started to subside. Mm hmm. Notwithstanding, I experienced the kind of pain that I didn't know existed and for prolonged periods of time, things that you would think, oh, that's an eleven, might be a hundred and ten or something like that, crazy amounts of pain. And so that, that was largely unavoidable, but I think it sort of skews the results in my head. Mm hmm. There were these markers along the way. Having that agency, that sense of agency of losing my arms was one marker. Another marker was, you know, walking for myself unassisted, which would have been

• 23:51Speaker 00

  about eight or nine months after I first went into hospital. Actually, the story about the first time I walked like unassisted was a bit interesting because I had these two prosthetic legs put on me and in the beginning, I had a person holding me under one arm and a person holding me under another. And then there were a person on each leg, like moving my leg forward. So I started with like five people when, when I first started to learn to walk again with prosthetics. And as I would get better and better, I would lose people. So I lost the people on each leg because I could move the leg by myself. And then I just sort of needed balance, so I lost one person to my left and I just had this person to my right, holding me for balance. The longest period was when I just had him. It was just a wardsman.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  And he would hold me under my arm and every day we would go for little bits of walks around the grounds of the hospital. I remember I couldn't work out what it was that I couldn't walk on my own. And I thought to myself, I'm like, it's balance. I don't have the, the balance, right? And I had this fear of him letting me go because I didn't, he, he was giving me the balance. And it was just this one day that I'm wa- walking along with him. Hmm. And I remember we're walking and I'm starting to pick up a little bit of speed, more speed than, than I had previously. And I said to him, okay, let me go. I don't think he was supposed to let me go, like it was probably had, he might have got in trouble for that by the hospital administrators.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  If he'd done it, but he he could see in my eye that I was ready and he let me go. And as soon as he let me go, I just started picking up more and more speed. And what I got was momentum. And the momentum was actually what gave me the balance that I needed. So what was happening is he was holding.

• 25:32Simon Sinek?

  Kind of like a bicycle.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  It's like a bicycle, right? So he's holding my arm and I'm thinking he's giving me balance, but he was actually holding me back. And I I didn't realize that, right? And so I realized at that point that the momentum, which was, that was what was giving me balance and that's what propelling me for. And it was only fear that was stopping me from from having him let go. So that was another milestone along the way, right? And so when I say that, you know, it wasn't like waking up to the next day and being like, oh, I'm fine now and everything's positive. No, it's iterative and you have little moments like this over the course of like a year or so. And you know what? That that hasn't stopped happening. I still have moments like that that just make life better and better, just don't have the ones that make life worse.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  That's my only recommendation.

• 26:19Simon Sinek?

  This is such a good insight, which is we go to friends in times of struggle and hardship for help. Of course. And it is much easier for us to get through struggle and hardship when somebody is by our side, metaphorically, holding us up.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:38Simon Sinek?

  Giving us balance, making us feel like, you know what? I can walk. Thank you for being by my side. But there is a point where the friend's love and the friend's intention of holding us up is actually holding us back. And there's a point at which we have to say to ourselves, I love you, but I have to leave you now. This this support is holding me back.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a dependency. You know what I I learnt about support networks during my period in hospital is, and I had a great support network, like not just. People who are paid like doctors and nurses, but family and friends and things like that. And everybody kind of thinks that the support network is good because of what people do for you. I actually found out that for for me at least, and I think this is for everyone, support networks are useful. Because you feel like you owe these people something once they commit to you. Right? It creates a debt of honor. Effectively. So you want to get better yourself because they've invested in you and they believe in you. I think that's happening for everyone who has support, whether they see it or not.

• 27:39Simon Sinek?

  You don't wanna let them down.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:40Simon Sinek?

  They they sacrifice for you.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 27:42Simon Sinek?

  They gave you and you wanna make sure that their sacrifice was worth it.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  That's it. I think that's that's the best aspect of support networks.

• 27:48Simon Sinek?

  I mean, this is this is what it means to be human, right? Which is, and I and and this is when all these discussions about AI and all of these things. The problem with technologists is they always leave the people out. And they forget that people are still people and we're gonna be people all the time.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:03Simon Sinek?

  And their technology is great and it supports us. Like, they always forget the people part and so much of people and humanity and humanness. We don't fully understand or we only understand in in in sort of silos, you know, various social disciplines, psychology and sociology and, you know, psychiatry and all the rest. And but there's so much we don't understand and get. And it's this idea of pride and not wanting to let people down. And that the value of a friend is not just that they were there. You know, it's like when a when a kid graduates high school or or university and they're walking across the the stage to receive their diploma and there's this sense of pride. But the parents and the friends and the family sitting in the audience also have this incredible sense of pride. It's this shared feeling.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:48Simon Sinek?

  That we have with each other. It's called relationship. It's called love. It's called trust.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  It's reciprocity.

• 28:52Simon Sinek?

  It's reciprocity and like, we forget that emotions aren't aren't just in us. When we are close with someone, we share in those emotions. We share in their pain. We share in their pride. And in in this case, there's, I I don't know even what, I don't even know there's a word for it. You know, there isn't a word like not wanting to let them down, you know, it's some sort of version of gratitude.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I I I think of it the best I could come up with.

• 29:16Simon Sinek?

  But we don't have a word for it. Isn't that kind of amazing?

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Debt of honor, I guess.

• 29:19Simon Sinek?

  But even again, we have these phrases, but we don't have a word for that shared experience.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  I bet the Russians do.

• 29:25Simon Sinek?

  The Germans, the Germans have a word. The Germans have weird words for everything.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's good.

• 29:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Does it bother you when people stare at you?

• 29:33Speaker 00

  No.

• 29:34Simon Sinek?

  Because I I hear from other people who are disabled in some way that that causes great discomfort to be to feel like an object.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  It's funny, isn't it? So many people. Spend vast amount of energy and resources and money to be objectified on Instagram and

• 29:55Speaker 00

  and some of us just have it and then we don't want it.

• 29:57Simon Sinek?

  It's a gift.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  No, I don't give a shit. It's fun. Yeah. I think people are just generally curious. I mean, I I do my best to try and make people feel comfortable off the bat. And that could be just making a joke about my hooks or making them feel comfortable in another way. Uh, my aim is to, on- once I get to know somebody is to make them forget that I have hooks.

• 30:21Simon Sinek?

  I love this idea of how you, and I guess we have to thank that doctor. Cause I mean, we don't know what what the future would have been, but this idea of taking agency and making choices, like I'm going to choose this. That the mindset starts with choice. I really like that.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  It always is, yeah.

• 30:37Simon Sinek?

  You you're helping put a lot of things into place for me. Where there's certain things that what I now know is agency. Which I wouldn't have defined as that prior to this conversation. There's agency. I'm not left with this life. I chose this life.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:55Simon Sinek?

  This is not the metric I have to accept. This is the metric I chose. I really like this framing a lot. I think there's a lot to be, I think there's a lot there in your artist, author and alchemist. And then the alchemy is always just to your, I mean, literally in the definition, the magical part.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  I, well, actually, it's interesting you say that because, and I've been following your work for quite a while now.

• 31:21Simon Sinek?

  Thank you.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  You know, I remember when I first heard about, you know, what is your why or whatever? And I think I stumbled on mine by accident.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  I don't know when, a while ago, because you know, you think you have it and then you're kind of wrong or whatever. And uh, there was a, there was a guy who came, who approached me and said, um,

• 31:46Speaker 00

  He said, I was, you know, really great to meet you. We'd been chatting for a while. He said something along the lines of, uh, you know, I, I never would have been able to go through what you did and remain so positive on the other side of it.

• 31:58Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  And I remember feeling so deeply upset by that. Just, I never wanted that to be what people took away from me.

• 32:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  And so it wasn't as much that he revealed something. He revealed what I didn't want. What I wanted was for people to understand that they, they never really know what they're capable of until they're truly tested.

• 32:21Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Like, that's what I want to communicate. That's what I want people to get from me. And so at that point, that was when I realized, at least vocationally, that everything that I did, I wanted to, to make it so that people didn't look at me thinking, oh, I never could be that positive after having something like that. I want them to think the exact opposite, that like nestled deep inside me, there is the power to overcome crazy bad shit.

• 32:49Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  And it just hasn't been tested yet.

• 32:54Simon Sinek?

  I want to agree with you.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. I, I want you to not, because it would be way more interesting for the conversation.

• 33:00Simon Sinek?

  I want to. I want to.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:03Simon Sinek?

  But I don't think I do.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. Tell me why.

• 33:06Simon Sinek?

  My great aunt survived the Holocaust.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 33:09Simon Sinek?

  And, you know, this is Viktor Frankl stuff, you know, Viktor Frankl, who also went through Auschwitz.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:15Simon Sinek?

  And he came out of it and he couldn't understand why all these people who are suffering the same horrors, that some people had the will to live and some people didn't, right?

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:25Simon Sinek?

  And that was how he wrote Man's Search for Meaning at the end of it. And that it was, that there are certain people who can accept and recognize that we cannot change the circumstances around us, all that we have control over, agency, is our attitude, is our response.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:39Simon Sinek?

  And my great aunt, who came through it, I, I remember talking to her about it. And, you know, we, we talk about post-traumatic stress, but we rarely talk about post-traumatic growth. And I read this recently and I can't remember, I'm gonna muck it up, so people are gonna get angry at me. But that post-traumatic stress is only a recent thing that we started talking about. And it used to, we used to talk about post-traumatic growth more.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 34:03Simon Sinek?

  How you grow from trauma, not just, not just struggle from it. And both are true.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:09Simon Sinek?

  She went through the concentration camp with her husband and she said, Um. You came through it stronger or broken. I came out stronger, he came out broken.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:20Simon Sinek?

  This is why we made a great team. Cause we are there for each other.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:24Simon Sinek?

  You know, I need him and he needs me.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:26Simon Sinek?

  It's true. You don't know what you've got until you're tested. But I'm not sure everybody's got it.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Oh, that's what you disagree with.

• 34:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know whether everyone's got it.

• 34:38Simon Sinek?

  I don't think everybody has.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, I, well, there's no way for me to know that. It's not that I think everyone has, but I think everybody, I, I think everyone has the ability to surprise themselves. It doesn't necessarily mean that everyone could have gone through what I did.

• 34:51Simon Sinek?

  I, I don't think they could have.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Maybe not. Um, but I still think everybody underestimates what they're capable of, generally speaking.

• 35:01Simon Sinek?

  That I agree with, and we see that in national tragedy.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 35:03Simon Sinek?

  But I think our ability to, and, and this is the, the next line of question I have you, which is, I think our ability to withstand the extreme stresses of life go up when we have a support network.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 35:16Simon Sinek?

  You didn't do this alone.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Of course not.

• 35:18Simon Sinek?

  And that's really important here. It's not like, you know, Tom with this inner strength of a, of a, of a, of a, you know, an ancient Greek god.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 35:25Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 35:26Speaker 00

  No, I, I, I quite often talk about what, one of the things I detest the most is that the self-made myth.

• 35:32Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like the idea that you, you were the author and, and the contributor, every, the only contributor to your own success. I mean, like what you are talking with right now in conversation is a person that probably had 11% to do with who I am right now.

• 35:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I'm a product of doctors and nurses and families and friends and support networks and getting sick in a country that had medical support and they pay for my prosthetics and just, I'm literally a, a, a melange of all of these things. The only thing, reason I think that's important to identify is because if you want that to be replicable

• 36:08Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  in your own life, you need to have an honest conversation about how you're not the center of it effectively.

• 36:13Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Because some of the best people know how to rely on their support networks and use them as resources.

• 36:20Simon Sinek?

  And when we go through adversity together.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 36:23Simon Sinek?

  We're more like. Quickly to come through it healthily in as individuals.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:26Simon Sinek?

  And it's definitely in America, we've over indexed on rugged individualism, but you see it all over the internets as well, especially on social media. Where, you know, everybody has to be the hero of their own life. You know, even when they're expressing gratitude, it's always like them by themselves.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:41Simon Sinek?

  You know, welling up in a car.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:43Simon Sinek?

  You know.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  But look, that is fragile.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  That's not anti fragile. Think about it, right? If you are the self made person, if everything that you did relies only on you, that's one choke point.

• 36:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  You know?

• 36:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  That's not anti fragile. But if you're somebody who's resourceful, you mentioned before about somebody who loses their job or whatever it is, right? Um, this is a obviously huge challenge in someone's life, but I don't know. Let's say, for example, you worked, where are we? California. Let's say you work in tech.

• 37:14Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Right? You earn a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. You've been working for like four or five years or something like that. But, you know, you work for Nvidia, but you've got plenty of friends that, you know, work for Microsoft or Apple or, you know, all these things. You're going to all the conferences, you're building this support network, all this sort of stuff. And then one day you lose your job. Now imagine that person and then imagine like a recent Columbia grad or some whatever, right? That doesn't know anybody that's also going for the same jobs. Who's gonna get it?

• 37:43Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  The person who has the strong support network. And you know what? They're probably gonna get a better job than they had before. Because they hadn't even thought to reassess their career path. So number one, the network is anti fragile. Number two, getting fired might not be the worst thing that ever happened to you.

• 37:59Simon Sinek?

  This is also touching on, if you're at the top, just don't relieve your own hype. That's when you start believing people have to rely on you. That's when you start breaking the networks. Because you become an asshole.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:13Simon Sinek?

  You know? And and I think to have the humility that this could end at any time. It is amazing to me. How many people I bump into and opportunities that are showing up.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 38:22Simon Sinek?

  I'll give you a perfect example. I went to a conference, uh, just last weekend. And I bumped into a guy who, um, I last saw him sixteen years ago. Right now, we remembered who each other, you know, we remembered each other. We've had, I would say, exchanged maybe two texts over the course of sixteen years.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 38:43Simon Sinek?

  Right? Or maybe I don't even think texts, emails, I don't even think we had each other's phone numbers.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 38:47Simon Sinek?

  Right? I saw him sixteen years later, we were happy to see each other, and we decided we're gonna do something together.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Oh, great.

• 38:53Simon Sinek?

  Now, you know, if you don't treat somebody nicely sixteen years ago.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:59Simon Sinek?

  That has repercussions.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 39:01Simon Sinek?

  And it is amazing to me, and I would never have imagined this as I was coming up through my career. It goes back to your photographer, everything seems so myopic and everything seems so close. And the number of relationships that show up again. And by the way, the other way around, which is people come to me, he's like, have you ever worked with X? I'm like, actually, I have worked with them.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:19Simon Sinek?

  You know, he treated me like a complete chump when I was starting out my career. I'm thinking of somebody very specifically.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  It sounds like it.

• 39:26Simon Sinek?

  Who, as I was, as my career was just getting going.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:29Simon Sinek?

  Um, this guy treated me like an asshole for no reason. I don't mind if people don't wanna work with me, I don't mind if people don't like me. But you don't have to go out of your way to demean me, just say no.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:42Simon Sinek?

  Right? And he went out of his way to insult me. And he was a very successful, powerful guy in his industry, right? And I was just getting started, and he was an asshole. Flash forward, my career's going pretty good.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:55Simon Sinek?

  And all of a sudden, his office calls, not him, cuz they wanna work with me. And I said, not only is the answer no, never call me again.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:06Simon Sinek?

  Right? I don't care what the money is.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:08Simon Sinek?

  Don't ever call me again, right? Flash forward, I found out that his company worked with me through an agent. So I didn't, in other words, it was hidden.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Really?

• 40:17Simon Sinek?

  So I didn't know.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 40:19Simon Sinek?

  And so I called.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  That's a non-consensual business arrangement.

• 40:21Simon Sinek?

  So I called the agency and said, whenever you get a request from that company.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:25Simon Sinek?

  I don't care how much money.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:27Simon Sinek?

  The answer will always be no. There's no word for it, but whatever the opposite of loyalty is.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  There's a lot of situations we're finding that there are no words for.

• 40:38Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Is it just we have limited vocabularies?

• 40:40Simon Sinek?

  Well, I mean, the Germans probably have.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Get this podcast translated into German, please. Thank you.

• 40:47Simon Sinek?

  Because all of, well, it'll be much shorter. We'll have all the words for the things that we have to have a whole podcast about. Oh, yeah, they're just talking about X.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there should be an inverse to loyalty, shouldn't there?

• 40:57Simon Sinek?

  And again, I have no problem with people telling me no. I hold no grudges. I'm not even a grudge holder as a person. Like, when I have fights with people, like, I can let things go pretty quickly. I'm not a grudge holder. It was just, I was astonished how somebody starting out, that somebody would go out of their way to push down and suppress.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:15Simon Sinek?

  For no reason, right? To insult. And now expect that just because money's on the table, that I'm gonna like, be like, woo-hoo, can't work to work, you know?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:24Simon Sinek?

  I think that this is the reason you treat people nicely all the time. Now, that doesn't mean we, I'm an asshole sometimes. I'm angry, I'm tired, I'm short-tempered. Like, we're all imperfect, but to really make the effort to be nice to people.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:38Simon Sinek?

  Because you just don't know. How did we get on this topic?

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't remember. But there was one thing that I wanted to bring up with you, which is kind of like, not entirely parenthetical, but kind of adjacent. You have this quote that I really love, and now I can't really work out how it said, but I'm sure you'll be able to correct me. It's something like, it's about leadership. It's not about being in charge of people, but taking care of the people.

• 42:04Simon Sinek?

  Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  That's it, right? I always loved that. And it made me think of this story that I wanted to tell you about a chef called, we're talking about food before we started rolling and in particular in Paris. Do you know a guy called Gerard Robuchon?

• 42:25Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So. The first time I ever went to his restaurant, this would have been like twenty years ago. I met him because he was sort of walking around the restaurant. He was a really sweet old guy. He came around and he just talked to all of the customers and everything. I remember saying to him, he was like, oh, well. You know, how's your night going? And I said, oh, can you give me a recommendation on what to eat? And he said, what do you like? And I said, I like to be surprised. And he said steak and mashed potato. And I was like, okay, that's not very surprising. But it was a very surprising steak and mashed potato. I've never had anything like it in my life. So he was right. But what I noticed is that he was pottering around the kitchen while the, you know, they've got twenty chefs or whatever doing. I never ate there, but sure. Right, yeah. And he's sort of pottering around and like looking, you know.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  And the next time I went back there, I sat up at the bar because that's kind of the experience and I had one of the chefs in front of me and I was talking to him. And I said, I was rubbish on in tonight. And he's like, no, no. And he's, he got really excited. He's like, but he was in a week ago. And he's like, you know, we really love him here. He's like a grandfather to us. And I was like, that's a weird thing for a sous chef to say, or whatever it is. But I was. And I was chatting to him a little bit about it. And I was like, you know, what is it you love about rubbish on? And he said, oh, you know, he's just, he's just like having a grandfather around it. He doesn't get in your way or anything, but he'll come up and. You know, if you're doing something wrong, like he doesn't yell at you. He, he'll take the knife off you and he'll like teach you a bit of a technique. He'll show you how he does it and then he'll hand the knife back to you.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  I remember thinking, that's a very unique style of leadership, right? And it was kind of like leading from the side sidelines, but not getting angry about people. Anyway, the third time I was meant to go there, I'd made a reservation. It was like a Monday night. This is many years later now. It's two thousand eighteen, I think it was. And I remember getting a text from a friend. He said, what are you doing tonight? I said, I'm actually going down to La Tellia. And he said, oh, didn't you hear rubbish on died today? And I was just like, oh, my, my stomach dropped and I was just like, fuck, like, should I cancel my reservation? I'm like, no, no, that's ridiculous. Like, go down there or whatever. So I went down there that night and all of the staff were wearing black armbands.

• 44:37Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Like, they loved this guy so much.

• 44:40Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  And I, I remember sitting at the bar again and I was talking to them. And one of them said to me, um, he's taught me everything that I know. And all I want to do now is become the best version of myself that I could ever be.

• 44:54Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Robichon is, I mean, for anyone listening to this who doesn't know who he is, arguably the best chef of all time. I think he's got like over thirty Michelin stars. And he's widely regarded as like a kingmaker in the culinary industry, you know, he, Gordon Ramsay and many, many others who have come up or were influenced by him, Eric Repair, stuff like that. That was his thing. He would harbor people and, and teach them to be

• 45:16Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  um, the best that they could be. And, you know, at the ripe age that he was, I forget, he was in his eighties or nineties or something like that. He didn't become this like culinary despot at any point.

• 45:26Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Like, he was just loved by literally everybody who came

• 45:29Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  close to him. And it was this leading from the sidelines where he would show someone how to do something and then hand the knife back.

• 45:35Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  And when I was thinking about it, it just reminded me so much about some of the leadership stuff that you talk about and taking care of people. And at the end of the day, they end up loving you

• 45:45Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  and wanting to give you their best.

• 45:47Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm. And it goes right back to everything you said, which is you want to make them proud.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Hmm. That's right. Yeah.

• 45:54Simon Sinek?

  They saw something in me.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  There's a debt of honor.

• 45:55Simon Sinek?

  There's a

• 45:55Speaker 00

  And also agency as well, I guess.

• 45:57Simon Sinek?

  And agency and patience and all of these things. It's really a beautiful thing. It's such a, again, the

• 46:05Simon Sinek?

  You're rubbing off on me with your dark sense of humor. Um, I was gonna say, you know, the extremity of your experience. Um, yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Oh, gotta hand it to you.

• 46:15Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, thanks.

• 46:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, but the experience is so extreme that the lessons are just so enjoyable to highlight. You know, I love your framework. I love this idea of agency. I love this idea of debts of honor, you know, which is just another way of saying, I'm just so grateful. I don't want to let you down. I want to prove to you that that believing in me was the right choice.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:38Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:39Simon Sinek?

  And all of these things, I think, when you do them, you recognize that we can't do any of these things alone. All of these things are interpersonal, all of them. Right? Even even with your lens, it's like your lens goes in and your lens goes out. What you end up seeing is more people.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 46:52Simon Sinek?

  You know? And to recognize that in every adversity, there is something wonderful to be gained from it. And if you can't prove it, fuck, man, nobody can.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  There's a lot of responsibility now that you've said that.

• 47:07Simon Sinek?

  I threw a fuck in there.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  This is the debt of honor.

• 47:08Simon Sinek?

  I threw a fuck in there because I know as an Australian, you wouldn't have understood me without it.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that I could accuse you of cultural appropriation.

• 47:14Simon Sinek?

  Fair point. You're magic. I have a couple of questions to ask you. You host The Last Meal with Tom Nash.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:25Simon Sinek?

  Where you ask your guests, if you if the world ended tomorrow and you could have one last meal, what would it be? And then you cook it for them. What have you found a person's last meal choice reveals about them?

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Hmm. Obviously, it's different for everybody, but when I ask a person to choose a meal, their last meal, I'm usually trying to get them to trigger something about themselves. It could be like a moment in time that they remember fondly, or it could be something about, you know, it could be their childhood or something that their mother made them or something like that. And a lot of people in the beginning will just the knee jerk reaction is that something that they really like eating.

• 48:06Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  And I usually push back on that. And I'm like, just stop thinking in that way. Like, let's pick something that means something to you. And this is where it gets interesting because what they'll choose is usually correlated with a time in their life where they felt they had more freedom.

• 48:23Simon Sinek?

  Oh, interesting. Say more.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Well.

• 48:26Simon Sinek?

  Or give an example.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Tim Urban.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Um. He picked pad thai and it was because it it reminded him of a time that he was travelling a lot. It's not that he doesn't travel now, but he would like to travel more than he did. But when he was travelling, when he was nineteen years old, you know, he was travelling around Asia for the first time. And the pad thai just reminded him of that of that period. Um. Masih Alinajad, the Iranian journalist.

• 48:52Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Chose kormasabsi, which is a um Persian dish, beef stew, that she hadn't had since when she was back in Iran. Now, it would be foolish to think that she was free when she was there, but she was certainly connected to her family when she was. And I think that's something that she longs for. And so, uh, and another question that I ask people actually in some of these interviews is, if you could repeat a year of your life, you don't get to change anything, but you just go back and press play on it again. What would that be? And invariably, people choose a time of their life where they felt they were the most free. Now, that changes for some people.

• 49:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  For some people, it's like, well, last year. I find that people with a high sense of agency pick more recent times. And then some people, uh, they remember their college years or something like that as feeling more liberated and

• 49:43Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  and tend to anchor towards that.

• 49:46Simon Sinek?

  I'm so interested how they chose a meal when they to reclaim something.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 49:51Simon Sinek?

  You know, that the meal reminded them of something that they either lost or a part of their personality that they're that they like. You know, to to highlight. Um, what what would, did you, I mean, obviously you've thought about this, what would yours be?

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Ah, it changes all the time. My current choice of last meal is uh an English roast.

• 50:15Simon Sinek?

  Oh.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Cooked by specifically by my aunt, who is British, lives in England, and it has to be in winter.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:25Simon Sinek?

  Very specific.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, my, my, my aunt lives in, in England and my, my dad's British, although they, they both sort of were born and raised in Bahrain, but she, she lives there now and I used to go over my, my grandparents when they were alive. I used to visit them when I was young and obviously I would go in when it was Australian holidays and Australian holidays. For summer, it's hot over there, but then it's freezing in England. So I'd go over quite often when it was really cold.

• 50:48Simon Sinek?

  Uh huh.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  And I would have this really warm English roast dinner with the turkey and the roast vegetables. And it's freezing outside, but it's warm inside and the fireplace is on.

• 50:58Simon Sinek?

  So it's a nostalgia thing.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  It's a nostalgia thing, but I would always, I would have my grandparents there.

• 51:03Simon Sinek?

  My, my, it's so funny because immediately when I asked the question, of course, I've, you know, I thought about my own meal.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 51:08Simon Sinek?

  And mine was immediately nostalgia as well. My paternal grandmother was an amazing cook. And came from Czechoslovakia and a lot of Eastern European food and sort of grew up on that. And grandparents, because we traveled so much as kids, grandparents were people we saw, you know, once or twice a year.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:26Simon Sinek?

  And my, my maternal grandmother, there's a few things that she made, that she made for me as a kid that I loved. And so I would put all of those that I would get, like these meals when with one set of grandparents.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:38Simon Sinek?

  You know, this meal and I would put it all in one dish. I can tell you exactly what it is, which is I'd have schnitzel.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:45Simon Sinek?

  Vienna schnitzel, but the way my grandmother made it was, once the schnitzel was cooked, she put a layer of ketchup and a layer of cheese and put it in the grill and it all sort of like.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  So it's kind of like a Parmesan.

• 51:55Simon Sinek?

  Uh, yeah, but with, with ketchup. With ketchup and cheese on top of the schnitzel, but I just love schnitzel in general.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  What kind of cheese was it? Just a cheddar or something like that?

• 52:02Simon Sinek?

  Don't remember, don't remember, but, but just plain schnitzel I love, then spätzle.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a dumpling.

• 52:09Simon Sinek?

  That's a dumpling, a little dumpling thing, which is great. Uh, cream spinach, very Eastern European meal. Right? So that would be from one. And then from the other side, the, the thing that just, I, I love. Love Yorkshire pudding.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:23Simon Sinek?

  I've tried making it. I've tried Jamie Oliver's trick with the oil. I can't get my Yorkshire puddings to pop and be fluffy. Mine are not. And, and, and my grandmother would serve them any which way. So you would have them savory with, you know, with a roast or whatever, with gravy, but she would also put like yogurt and berries on top and a base of dessert. So like Yorkshire pudding was very much in there.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  I made them once for a dinner party. We did a degustation thing at my house called A Great Taste of Britain, which was supposed to be all British dishes. And so we did Yorkshire pudding, but I.

• 53:00Simon Sinek?

  And you weren't being ironic.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  No, I was. Of course I was. But I paired it with chicken tikka masala, which is a British.

• 53:09Simon Sinek?

  Which is a British.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Invention, right? But curry.

• 53:12Simon Sinek?

  So is butter chicken.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Curry with Yorkshire pudding is works perfectly as well.

• 53:17Simon Sinek?

  Got to remember that one.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I met this, this guy a couple, a couple of months ago. We were in Austin, Texas. Okay, so we went to have lunch with these two ladies that we became friends with from last year. And I think they're in their sixties or something. And we went to have lunch with them and one of them texts me and she said, do you mind if I bring my dad? He's ninety three years old. I said, yeah, I love old people. They've always got the best stories and like, let's sit down and.

• 53:43Simon Sinek?

  And they don't care what you think about them.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true. Going to meet them at this steakhouse in Austin. And I remember as I'm walking in, there's like the handicap spot and I noticed there's a car in the handicap spot and it says, the license plate has like the injured in battle. I didn't know they, they did that. And the front license plate said Korean War. And I was like, wow. For starters, like that was nineteen fifty three from memory, right? So you'd have to be pretty old to, you know, be in the Korean War. So we walk in there and we sit down with him and I meet Bob. Bob's the ninety three year old and he's got a walking stick. And I'm just like, okay, I I sit right down with Bob. I'm like locked in with Bob. I'm like, Bob, tell me everything. You look like the most interesting guy.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Uh, I've ever met in my life and I had a great time with them. And Bob's telling me about how um he was in the Korean War and he got injured in the Korean War. You know, his plane got shot from underneath and he hurt his leg. And then there was a convoy that took him down. And he was in like a MASH style uh army tent hospital for like three weeks. And then they sent him back up. Because they didn't have that many pilots, you know what I mean? And I was, I'm thinking about the maths as well. And I'm like, hang on a second. You would have been the right age for Vietnam as well, right? And he's like, yeah, I did three tours Vietnam over two years. I'm like, I am sitting with this decorated warrior. Incredible stories, right? So we're chatting and he's talking about how he was even a pilot at home and he had a Cessna three, whatever it was.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  And he and his wife used to fly around the world and just fascinating guy, great stories. And we're leaving the restaurant and he was saying goodbye and he's like, I wish I still had my plane and take you guys up. And I was like, I don't know if I'd be getting into.

• 55:24Simon Sinek?

  No offence, I don't want to.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  I appreciate the sentiment, yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  We're getting back in the car and I noticed that Bob doesn't get into the the car that I noticed in the handicap spot. And I was like, wait, what are the odds that there are two Vietnam War vets?

• 55:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  In this, because there were like fifteen people in this restaurant. This is not like a highly populated thing, right?

• 55:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  But I'm like, okay, we're leaving. It doesn't matter what he gets in the car. He goes, we get in the car. And I turned to Lauren and and she's like, did you have a great lunch? I was like, that was amazing. Yeah, I really loved like talking to Bob. And she said, do you want to hear something really funny? And I said, yeah. She goes, he was never in the Korean War. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, he is getting on a bit and he believes.

• 56:08Simon Sinek?

  Oh, no.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  That he was in the Korean and the Vietnam War and he has all these stories.

• 56:13Simon Sinek?

  Oh, no.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  He's my new favorite person. I didn't give a shit that he's not, that he hasn't. I, I wanna be his best friend.

• 56:21Simon Sinek?

  Alright.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Like, because it didn't really bother me. Like, she found out halfway through the lunch, your daughter said, oh, should we save Tom? Because, you know, he's talking to dad about the Korean War that didn't happen.

• 56:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  And she's like, no, just let him. He's having fun, you know? And, uh, and I was, that was the thing. Like, I was having fun talking to this guy. It made me realize how overrated reality was. I'm like, I just had a great time chatting to, it doesn't matter that.

• 56:47Simon Sinek?

  It doesn't ruin it at all for you?

• 56:48Speaker 00

  No, it didn't at all. There was no malice in it, right?

• 56:51Simon Sinek?

  No, no, no. I'm not angry at him.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:53Simon Sinek?

  But it does raise the question, like, what is the difference between an inspiring fiction story and an inspiring non-fiction story?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Yes, it does.

• 56:59Simon Sinek?

  Cause there is a difference.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  There is, but what is it?

• 57:02Simon Sinek?

  What is like, wow, great film.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 57:04Simon Sinek?

  And the other was like, holy cow.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:07Simon Sinek?

  Holy, and that makes you sort of go through the like, could I have done that? Like, I have a friend whose dad was in, he was in Chosin in the Korean War, which was not, did not go well.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:19Simon Sinek?

  And, uh, and he was also at Iwo Jima in the Second World War.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 57:24Simon Sinek?

  So he did, he did the Second World War first, obviously.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:26Simon Sinek?

  And then he did Korea. That's the chronology. He was in Iwo Jima and he was in Chosin. Like, he shouldn't have survived either of those. Like, the death rates at both of those battles was astronomical. And.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  He wouldn't still be alive now, though.

• 57:38Simon Sinek?

  I can't remember. If he is, he's in his nineties. And he was a marine, or he is a marine, and like celebrates the Marine Corps birthday every year and he cuts the cake with his sword, like, you know, and.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Seriously?

• 57:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 57:49Simon Sinek?

  He's an amazing guy, Eugene. He shouldn't have survived one, and then he shouldn't have survived the other.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:54Simon Sinek?

  And to have survived both is, he's like a miracle human, you know?

• 57:57Speaker 00

  I wonder whether people like that think they're, or see that, because, because I even sometimes think I'm living on borrowed time.

• 58:05Simon Sinek?

  I think it's healthy to think that.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:07Simon Sinek?

  You know, I mean, this is, this, look, how many fridge magnets do we have as like, live la, every day like it's your last?

• 58:12Speaker 00

  None in my house.

• 58:13Simon Sinek?

  Dance like no one's.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  I get rid of that shit.

• 58:18Simon Sinek?

  No, you don't have any posters of little kittens hanging there?

• 58:21Speaker 00

  No, I'm allergic to shit like that.

• 58:24Simon Sinek?

  It's either for people, and now I'm gonna offend, you know, an entire population here.

• 58:31Simon Sinek?

  Here goes. It's those posters, those magnets, those affirmations are either, they were either given to you as a gift.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Of course. Yeah, that's right.

• 58:43Simon Sinek?

  Or, or, or, well, well intended, or, or a lot of people must be nice about that one. Or, or they're for people who, I think, you talk about anti-fragile where there's, they need the constant reminder. Hang in there. Life's okay. Live, live every day like it's your last. And they're all good sentiments. Don't get me wrong. I don't reject the sentiments. And I don't mind one or two of those things around you, but to have an excess of them around you speaks to, I think, a refusal to take life on. I'm thinking of a real story. So, a person I know calls me up.

• 59:21Simon Sinek?

  How are you? She goes, "It's been a very difficult week, but the universe is trying to teach me a lesson." And I went, "How are you feeling?" She goes, "I'm, I'm having a hard time, but I know this is what the universe wants for me." And I'm, I'm starting to get impatient, you know? And I was like, "No, no, I'm asking you, how are you feeling?" She goes, "You know, I'm hanging in there, but you know, I know this is meant for some higher purpose." And I, I'm, I'm, I'm getting angry now, right? I'm like, "Stop with all the faux spiritual nonsense." "How are you? Tell me how you're feeling." And she goes, "I'm not good." And she started to cry.

• 1:00:03Simon Sinek?

  And that is what I mean, which is sometimes those affirmations are a way for us to avoid feeling the feelings we're supposed to feel. Those affirmations are a way for us to push away the people who want to pull us close to say, "Cry and I will cry with you." But none of this false It's meant for some higher purpose. Yes, that'll come. That'll come. I mean, your story proves it. That will come. But right now, be in pain, be angry, be sad, be frustrated, be those things. Give yourself some grace and feel the feels. Because if you never feel the feels, they will show up at a time not of your choosing.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  That's right. And I mean, I think the thing that always annoys me about people saying that things happen for a reason is that that robs you of any ability to imbue meaning on things yourself.

• 1:00:59Simon Sinek?

  And what a perfect way to summarize what you and I have just talked about, which is just as sometimes we can't make sense of why things happen to us. Not everything is for some predestined reason why they happen to us. Because then it robs us of the agency that we get to choose why things are happening to us. We get to choose what we get to do with those things, and we get to choose the lessons that are meant to be learned.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Perfect. I mean, exactly as I expected. You said what I thought, but way better. I'm like, can you be a bit more Simon Sinek about that? You're like, yeah, watch this.

• 1:01:33Simon Sinek?

  Well, thanks for the setup.

• 1:01:36Simon Sinek?

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Tom, what a joy. What an absolute joy.

• 1:01:39Simon Sinek?

  As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to Bit of Optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. But if you'd like more optimism right now, click here to watch another episode. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.