Can Ambitious People Ever Have Balance? - Russ - #1046

Russ is a rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer. Is obsession a gift or a choice? If you want to do something truly great, the idea of balance can start to feel like a comforting lie. So what does it actually cost to win? How did Russ go from an independent producer to a Billboard-winning artist by sacrificing almost everything else in his life, and was it worth it? Expect to learn why you have to stop blaming your parents for you life eventually, how to take your life seriously and why that is okay, why your fear of embarrassment is killing your dreams and how to get over it, the verse that Russ resonates most deeply with, what the darkest side of the music industry is right now, how legit the Spotify charts actually are, the moment Russ learned being an independent musician was a non-negotiable and much more… Timestamps: (0:00) Why It’s So Hard to Reach the Top (13:25) What Makes Appreciating Success So Hard? (22:18) Why Do We Blame Our Parents For Our Flaws? (30:50) Never Dismiss Your Internal Struggle (40:55) Who Really Controls Your Reputation? (50:49) Who Decides the Reputation You Deserve? (59:36) The Fear of Embarrassment (01:17:11) Is Male Worth Tied to Competence? (01:23:32) You Don’t Need to Fight Your Emotions (01:29:45) How to Balance Vulnerability and Strength (01:44:41) Will We Chase Success Forever? (02:01:43) Why Surrendering to Creativity Changes Everything (02:12:08) What’s Next for Russ? Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - 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.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  You were talking about work-life balance and your inability to.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, man, I mean, balance is just, it's a luxury now, it's a privilege. You can't have it on the way up. It just has to be full hundred percent commitment to the grind. So now I'm trying to have more balance, but the guilt is there, you know, still like. It's just that PTSD of like, I shouldn't be relaxing right now, you know?

• 0:32Chris Williamson?

  It's a difficult question to work out. You know, almost everybody's on the come up, but by design, very few people make it or have made it. Right. There's way more people that want to be there than are there. And that means first off, that it's a sort of an icky situation because the total addressable market for people who need to learn how to put their, take their foot off the gas is basically zero. And the total addressable market for people that could do with working harder to achieve their dreams is still pretty high. But a good question to ask yourself is, okay, let's say that you achieve the things that you want to achieve. You get to where you're supposed to get to.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07Chris Williamson?

  What then?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  That is.

• 1:08Chris Williamson?

  Then what do you do?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  That has been beating my ass for like two years, that question. Because here's kind of like how I thought about it. Is the thing I'm scared of now is not having a horizon. You know, because in the past, my present self was not my future self. There was a huge gap between who I was and who I wanted to become. And that gap, the distance is what birthed the hunger and the velocity, you know? And now

• 1:42Speaker 01

  my present self is my past's future self. Like the gap has collapsed, so the hunger has nowhere like obvious to point. And it's scary because, you know, it's not really a fear of complacency. It's a fear of like directional ambiguity. You know what I mean? And, you know, kind of to touch on what you said where. The market for people trying to get here versus people who are here, it's obviously huge, but a huge difference. But the engine that was driving me, and I think drives most people at the beginning, is here's this person that I want to become, that I can imagine. And that engine works until you arrive. And most people never arrive, so they never have

• 2:27Speaker 01

  to confront this. But like, high achievers have to confront it, and it's just honest, you know? And so now, it's trying to figure out, like, not necessarily the new dream, but sort of like relocating the hunger, trying to find a new domain for it. I think that's why, to be honest, therapy has been so activating for me and interesting, because the ambition like moved houses to this internal landscape, where I can like attack the internal world. Because at the beginning, the external stuff is such a motivator, career, status, metrics.

• 3:03Chris Williamson?

  Validation.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that. But then you get it, and you're like, well, I can't keep tricking my brain into thinking that I want another plaque, or another hundred grand, you know what I mean? Or whatever it is. It's, this internal world is so fascinating because it's untapped land, it's

• 3:19Chris Williamson?

  Noob games.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's new, it's, but the issue with this, there's no finish line.

• 3:25Chris Williamson?

  And there's no metrics of progress.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  There's no metric of progress. So it's real easy to just get lost in myself and end up just doing this endless self-monitoring rumination. It's like, all right, hold on.

• 3:36Chris Williamson?

  Well, you apply the same hypervigilance and obsession that you do to finding the perfect kick drum, to working out your relationship with your parents.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's like, maybe you need to relax today, not attack this relationship.

• 3:51Chris Williamson?

  Think about this. So many people, I believe, have an obsession with personal development. I certainly know that this is true for me, because it was an anesthetic against not liking who I was in the moment. I was able to Delay, I was able to put off, I put on hiatus, self-love. Because I knew that tomorrow me was going to be better than today me. So it didn't matter that I didn't love myself today, because tomorrow I'll be better. But tomorrow I might, well, you know, I'm moving in the right direction. I don't need to matter about where I am now. But, well, you know, I haven't reached this level of validation or this particular achievement that I've got. And then when you do arrive or get close to arriving, or you outstrip the non-goals that you didn't really have.

• 4:36Chris Williamson?

  And you just think like, what the fuck am I doing here? You're forced to confront a much more difficult question, which is, I can no longer artificially inflate my, the like, or artificially add buoyancy to my own lack of self-love with tomorrow's promises.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:55Chris Williamson?

  Because I'm already so like out past where I thought I was going to get to.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:01Chris Williamson?

  That I, tomorrow, all of this feels like a dream. So, um, yeah, you end up in a very odd situation where you're, this is gold medalist syndrome. It's the same, it's the, it's a classic, classic, classic situation that fame won't fix your self-worth. Money won't make you happy. You don't love that pretty girl. She's just hot and difficult to get. Like you should work less, you should see your parents more. These lessons that everybody who has just become famous or wealthy or got the girl that they thought that they wanted all along, or has just lost a parent, all of them proclaim these revelations with like the vigor of someone that's just gone through a religious awakening. Why? Well, either one of a couple of things.

• 5:44Chris Williamson?

  First off, they are satisfied by this, but are lying to everybody else to try and pull the ladder up after them so that they don't continue going after it. Secondly, they're ungrateful or they're unable to sort of accept the blessings that life and their hard work has given them. Or thirdly, what they're saying is fucking true and external accolades won't fill internal voids.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:04Chris Williamson?

  And the prevalence of it, the fact it's so ubiquitous and so many people.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:09Chris Williamson?

  Arrive at this and then go, oh, fuck, so many of my problems are still here.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  All have the same epiphany.

• 6:17Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  That's what I've been telling people. It's like, what if we're right?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  You considered that as an alternative.

• 6:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, the, the reason that this is so painful, I think. It's it's very painful for the people that have gotten there and it's very uncomfortable for the people that haven't. Because if the people at the end of the race tell people who are still running that the end of the race isn't actually worth it. That really fucking ruins the promise. At least they got it and are saying that it's not worth it. I haven't even got it yet and you're trying to convince me that it's not worth it. How fucking despondent is that?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it comes off very out of touch. And I wouldn't even say it's not worth it. It's just not going to be what you think. It's not going to fix the things that you think it's going to fix, you know? It's going to address material issues, which is huge.

• 7:02Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? That's a huge struggle for most people, but it does not address any internal struggle you have. And in fact, now that the material struggle is taken care of, now all you have time to do is focus on like the internal struggle, which fucks your head up because you're like, damn, you're telling me none of this success fixes it? Like, no money, no, like, none of it's going to do it.

• 7:23Chris Williamson?

  It's, do you know what? It would be a good analogy here. It would be like talking about food and water. There is no amount of food that you can eat unless it contains water that is going to keep you hydrated.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Great analogy.

• 7:33Chris Williamson?

  It's it's just, it's the wrong pathway.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Chris Williamson?

  You know, it's like trying to fuel your petrol car with electricity. Like powerful and there's bits of the car that need electricity to run.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Chris Williamson?

  But it's not the thing for that particular solution. It's not the right fuel.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  That's what's fucked my head up is having to reconcile with the fact that the old fuel doesn't work anymore. And trying to find new fuel, you know? And it's tough because I was relying on that old fuel for so long.

• 7:59Chris Williamson?

  What did that fuel look like for you?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Insecurity mixed with conviction, you know? It was like, it was, I don't feel like I'm enough, but I believe I can become enough. And it was a psychotic level of delusional confidence. And the byproduct of that was discipline and consistency, you know, it's like. I believed with every fiber of my being that I was gonna become this massive, successful artist. I had already, like, my success was decided by me in my head. The outcome was non-negotiable. It was inevitable. And when something's inevitable, the choices aren't choices, they're just, I was living in the process. It was identity alignment.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  It was, this is who I'm becoming and this is what that person does. Which is why my discipline and consistency and work ethic that a lot of people clap for, it never felt heroic or dramatic. It just felt obvious. This is just what I'm, this is what this person does.

• 9:01Chris Williamson?

  How long did you release a song a week for?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Two and a half years.

• 9:05Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so like hundred and twenty, hundred and

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, somewhere around there.

• 9:09Chris Williamson?

  Forty songs.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was after doing eleven albums, which was like a hundred ten songs. You know, but again, it just felt like it never felt like this huge undertaking. It was just

• 9:20Chris Williamson?

  What you did?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you tell somebody, hey, in six months, you guaranteed are gonna have the best physique of your life. You're just gonna do the things every day that are required to get to that point. I'd already decided I was successful.

• 9:33Chris Williamson?

  I've been thinking about consistency a lot. Not too dissimilar to you. I think the same work rate of a artist releasing a song a week would be podcast doing three episodes a week. And that place that we've been at for, coming up on six years now.

• 9:49Chris Williamson?

  I, I've always sort of bowed at the altar of consistency. I actually think that I'm stubborn. I'm not convinced that I'm, I, I think stubbornness and consistency net out to the same outcome. But they come from a little bit of a different place. And it's more

• 10:08Chris Williamson?

  stubbornness is kind of, you don't have any choice but to do it.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 10:13Chris Williamson?

  So think about this. You have obsession.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  Motivation and discipline.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:19Chris Williamson?

  So motivation is I want to do this thing. Discipline is I will make myself do this thing. And obsession is I can't not do this thing.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 10:30Chris Williamson?

  But all of them, kind of, the, the outcome is the same.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  The same.

• 10:34Chris Williamson?

  Yes. But where it's coming from, the fuel that you're using to push yourself forward is kind of different.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  So true, yeah. And at the beginning, like I said, I was running at this version of me that was so far away. But it was such a clear visual, it was as if I was looking at the finish line. And I could see myself waiting for me at the finish line. So I knew I was gonna get there. But now, the version of me that I'm chasing feels like he's like right around the corner.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  Or behind you.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Or behind.

• 11:02Chris Williamson?

  I've already outstripped him.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:04Chris Williamson?

  I've outstripped my own dreams.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I don't know where to run. I'll run inwards.

• 11:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And just attack all my, you know, issues internally and.

• 11:13Chris Williamson?

  I mean, how many times, how many times do you see someone do that, but in a more obvious pivot, which is they were a super gregarious potty guy, lethario in their twenties, and then they turn to endurance racing in their thirties or their forties, and now they do triathlons and Ironmans and stuff like that.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's having to relocalize all that energy and hunger.

• 11:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  It's tough though, because I mean, there's no way to slice it. Like, I don't want the same things I wanted when I was twenty-two. Those same things can't drive me. I can't be driven by the need to sell out a tour and go platinum or make my, buy my mom a house. It's like, I did all that. So I can't keep tricking myself into, and this is what I tried to do is like, yeah, but I gotta get another house. Like, I gotta get another pla- it's like, that doesn't work. It's not, it's not enough sustenance, you know?

• 12:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's an interesting one, because habituation happens to everybody, you know? No matter how successful or unsuccessful you are, even if you're working a job that you fucking hate and it doesn't pay that much, you got excited for the car that you were gonna lease. And then when you got the car, after a little while, you got bored of it, and you needed to get a slightly better one. If you got a slightly worse one, you felt bad about yourself. But if you got a slightly better one, then it was satisfying for a while. And then the same thing, and the same thing, and the same thing. And I think there is an assumption that at some point you arrive. And that that compulsion is relinquished from you. You've like exercised, you've like.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  The arrival is the facade.

• 12:44Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  This is what me and my best friend were just talking about. We realize like, it's cliche, but the race is the finish line. That's like, that getting there is the most fun, to me. That's been a blast. That was the, I wish I saw how fruitful that part truly was. Because like you said, there's no arrival, you know? There's no, okay, I'm, I'm done what? Putting in work? I'm done showing up? I'm done being motivated, being dis- no, it's. It's really like all of a sudden you did this journey and you became this version of yourself that you always wanted to become. And I suppose that that's the arrival. But arriving is so much more fun.

• 13:25Chris Williamson?

  It is so much more fun to be a little richer than you were yesterday than merely to be rich. Alice Wellington Rowland.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  That's so real.

• 13:32Chris Williamson?

  I mean, dude, Andrew Tate, fucking the philosopher A. Tate, said, said, uh,

• 13:40Chris Williamson?

  having things isn't fun, getting things is fun.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 13:44Chris Williamson?

  And unfortunately, what this means is, uh, it's that Luke Combs, uh, fucking Bellion song.

• 13:52Chris Williamson?

  If the higher I climb is the further I fall, then why love anything at all?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:58Chris Williamson?

  You know, last week I found out that this is the eighth biggest podcast in the world. I'm the eighth biggest podcaster in the world as of last week's Spotify charts. And it was fantastic. And one of my friends, who is like the new business development manager for me, rang and was like, dude, I'm so fucking happy for you, but you do know what this means next year. And I was like, yep, it means that we've got to be number eight or number seven or number six or

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Or I'm a loser.

• 14:21Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna fucking hate it. But if I'd been 12th this year and didn't know where I charted, it wouldn't have mattered.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:27Chris Williamson?

  So there is a particular type of mindset that you have and learning to relinquish that, learning to be like, oh, just fuck, it's just nice.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  It's just nice to have that.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Laugh for yourself.

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. But the difference between, uh, and this is one of the great advantages that nobody ever realizes as it's happening, when you're on the climb, it is easier at the beginning, in the middle of your journey, within whatever it is, even if it's just mastery, even if it's internal mastery. When you start your therapy journey, look at all of the low hanging fruit about, I never realized that my parents did that and that was strange. And I never realized I had that conversation with my sister that was formative and it made me think about the thing. At the beginning of your journey, the noob gains are real. And all of this stuff's just, you're accumulating it all the time. So progress comes relatively easily.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:16Chris Williamson?

  But as you get better at anything, and this is unfortunately both true for internal and external metrics.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:22Chris Williamson?

  You start going to the gym, you gain strength every session. After 10 years of training, you gain strength every like three months, every quarter.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's harder to show up when that's happening.

• 15:32Chris Williamson?

  There's less motivation.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:33Chris Williamson?

  And it means that pullbacks are more likely because you actually have something to lose.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  A hundred.

• 15:38Chris Williamson?

  You have nothing to lose in the beginning. Tell me about the therapy insights you didn't know that you forgot. Right? I didn't fucking know them. How could I forget about them? Whereas now.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:48Chris Williamson?

  If you encounter some conversation with your girlfriend and you go, fuck, there's that pattern again.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:53Chris Williamson?

  There's a, I know about that pattern. There's an obligation for me to act on it. That means that I have not got, you know.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  And if I don't act on it, then.

• 16:00Chris Williamson?

  Then I'm a piece of shit. I've taken a step backward. What was the point of all of the therapy? Why therapy's fucking pointless? I shouldn't have even gone in any. You know what I mean?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Chris Williamson?

  That, the higher I climb, the further I fall.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  It's so true. And I think, you know, I always like, the analogy I use is video games and like creating a player and, you know, starting as a 50 overall, right? And it's so fun and you gain attributes so quickly and get yourself up to a 75 and 85 and, but then you get to a 98 overall. It's like, it's just not that fun to play anymore. And you just want to start a new career. And so I think for me, that's kind of why I've been like wanting to get into acting. Because again, it's almost like I'm trying to trick my brain into go climb a new mountain. Even though I know what's at the top. You know what I mean?

• 16:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. But that's, that's a, that's a really, I've never heard anybody talk about that before. I think that's so interesting that you already know that this is just a race in a different territory.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  I know what it is.

• 16:59Chris Williamson?

  It's the same race in a different territory.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  It just gives me an opportunity to enjoy the climb again, though. Because I'm like, I wanna go climb a mountain because last time I wasn't there for the climb. I was mentally at the summit the whole time.

• 17:11Chris Williamson?

  I don't know if it's, I don't know how easy it is to be there, dude. Especially when, when, when you're thinking, um, the sort of stuff that you do, performing on stage to stadiums and arenas of people. And it's your music and they're your fans and they really resonate with you. And then you get off and you've got to work out, are we getting Chick-fil-A or Sweetgreen? Like, what, what time's the lobby call tomorrow? Have we got, because the bus, fuck dude, that bus, like, actually the bed is kind of a bit, you know, it's a little bit. I like the bus that we had last, like, you're, the norm, the normalcy.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:43Chris Williamson?

  Of the worries that you have are always there. And I think that that's why envy about anybody's life, especially what looks from the outside like a magnificent life. Life is not made of peak experiences like that. It's not made of days on stage and playing to arenas. Life is an average Tuesday afternoon.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the majority of it.

• 18:01Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Life is made up of average Tuesday.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  I've had to learn to look around as much as I can and tell myself this is enough. Like this moment is enough because to what you're saying, me sitting with my girl on the couch and our two dogs. That is the majority of the time. It's not selling out a show, you know? And I think part of me sometimes wants to curate a life that is full of as many peak moments as possible. But I just know that that's not real, you know? It's like, cause then I'll do that and I'm missing like the thing I can really sink my teeth into, which is balance and normalcy and just hanging out with my family.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, you know, you don't see your dad for a year and a half because you're like over here trying to chase this high of being on a stage or conquering something, you know? So it's tough though, man.

• 18:58Chris Williamson?

  Have you found, even when you've played your biggest shows, that watching the footage back or watching the vlogs and all the rest of it? Do you have more enjoyment watching it back than you did doing it at the time? Do you remember it now through the lens of the camera, not the lens of where you were?

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Cause it looks like it's someone else's shit. So I can appreciate someone else's success. Very hard for me to appreciate my own. And when it's happening in front of me, a lot of times it's tough. It's really hard to be present for me. It's very difficult. I spent a lot of my life living outside of my body and living inside my head, you know? And so what I used to do on stage was just, I'll just get drunk. You know, I'll turn my brain off. That's how I would turn my brain off. And it worked, you know what I mean? But it's not sustainable. And so now I do my shows sober. And it's harder to be present because I'll be up there and a lot of times I'm in my head.

• 19:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, me too.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  You know, like, when you're, when you're drinking on stage, you don't really notice nor care about anyone's facial expression, about what you just said, did, whatever. You're just having a blast. When you're sober on stage and I'm singing a song, I can see you just like, what was that? Did I fuck up? Was this not cool? You know, and it just boom. And now I'm like-

• 20:19Chris Williamson?

  In a room of fifteen thousand people, just one girl in the front row.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so true, bro.

• 20:26Chris Williamson?

  I did, um, I finished off my tour last week. So I did Salt Lake, Denver, Vancouver.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 20:33Chris Williamson?

  Um, which was lovely. It was a really cool way to finish it up. And we'd started in New York a couple of months ago, and then we rounded it out there. And the final show that I did, the, um, park hands on the curtain behind me were brighter than I was used to, which meant that the first four rows were illuminated.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  It's the worst.

• 20:52Chris Williamson?

  And they only had one stage light. Look at how fucking specifically like opulent and bourgeois this sounds. But it meant that the first four rows, uh, would just, I could see people's eyes. I could see the facial expressions. I could see if somebody needed to go to the bathroom. I could see everything. Like this fucking sucks. This blows so much. Put another stage, another stage light. Yeah, exactly. Put another stage light on me. I'll darken them down. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Look, 2026 is the year that you're finally going to launch that business you've been thinking about for ages because, as you've heard me harp on about, making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing. Telling people you're going to do the thing still isn't doing the thing. But here's the good news. Shopify makes it unbelievably easy to actually do the thing.

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• 22:18Chris Williamson?

  I saw you give a break in the middle of one of your performances and said, I just want to say every parent is going to fuck their kids up a little bit, man. You get to an age where you can't keep blaming them.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:30Chris Williamson?

  What's that mean to you?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think naturally when you start therapy, you start descending into the root of a lot of your patterns. And it obviously starts with childhood and the natural inclination is to like point the finger and be like, why would you, why, why? But the reality is they didn't have the tools, you know? Like, I look back and I'm like, my dad was probably my age when he had me, you know what I mean? I'm like, like I would be.

• 23:04Chris Williamson?

  This retard?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, what? There's no shot that I would do well. I would do well now compared to what I would do five years ago. But yeah, I just had to get to a place of understanding that I love my parents.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And there's also just things that they didn't mean to pass on to me and behaviors and, you know, um, yeah, just habits that they didn't mean to pass on, but they did. And I got to unlearn them and everyone's parents are gonna like, you know, unknowingly pass on unhealthy shit. But it's like at a certain age, you have to, I have to father myself, you know?

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  Can I read you an essay?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Please.

• 23:43Chris Williamson?

  So I wrote this a couple of weeks ago.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:46Chris Williamson?

  The parental attribution error. We love blaming our parents, practically a rite of passage in modern psychology. But there's a double standard buried in the trend. We attribute what's broken in us to our upbringing while claiming what's strong in us is ours alone. Call it the parental attribution error, like the fundamental attribution error, where we blame others' actions on their character, but excuse our own by pointing to circumstance. Like, I cut that guy off in traffic because I'm late, he cut me off because he's a dick. It's a skewed way of assigning credit and blame. We externalize the bad and internalize the good. We're quick to blame and slow to credit. You say you're anxiously attached because no one held you when you needed it, but isn't your ability to be alone in your emotions and to endure discomfort quietly also forged in the same crucible?

• 24:30Chris Williamson?

  You blame your parents for pushing you too hard in school, convinced it made you perfectionistic and neurotic. But when was the last time you acknowledged that same pressure gave you ambition, discipline and drive? You point to a childhood where mistakes weren't tolerated as the reason you fear failure. But what about your meticulousness, your standards, your refusal to phone it in? You complain that no one ever asked you what you wanted growing up. But could that also be why you're so tuned in to what everyone else needs? You say your low self-worth comes from your never being praised, but isn't that the same fuel that makes you outwork everyone around you? You trace your conflict avoidance back to all the shouting at home, but isn't that also where your talent for de-escalation and an emotional radar came from? You chalk up your hyper-independence to not being able to trust anyone, but isn't that also what made you capable, adaptable and calm under pressure?

• 25:14Chris Williamson?

  You say you're emotionally guarded because no one took your feelings seriously, but isn't that also why you're steady when the people around you fall apart? You've labeled yourself a people pleaser because you had to keep the peace at home. But maybe that's also why your social fluency and emotional intelligence were born. You blame your poor boundaries on parents who didn't respect yours. But isn't that also why you're so careful to not cross anyone else's? You say your fear of being a burden comes from being treated like one. But isn't that the same fear that now makes you reliable, disciplined and impossible to disappoint? You attribute your sensitivity to criticism, to all of the judgment you grew up with. But isn't that also what makes you thoughtful, receptive and serious about getting better? You say your nervous system never relaxes because your home was unpredictable. But isn't that also why you're perceptive, quick thinking and never caught off guard?

• 25:58Chris Williamson?

  The traits you're most ashamed of are often just the dark side of something light. Your sharp edges didn't appear out of nowhere. They're often the byproduct of something useful, a strength turned up too high or a gift handled without guidance. Think about a sword, powerful, precise, designed to cut through resistance. But if it's double edged, and most strengths are, then sometimes it nicks you on the backswing. That doesn't mean that you throw the sword away. It means that you learn how to hold it properly. Because most traits worth having come with risk. The truth is messier than a single cause. Every trait is entangled. Wounds and gifts often share a root. The self reliance you're proud of may come from the same childhood where you couldn't rely on anyone. The confidence you carry may have started as a defense over ever feeling small or dismissed again.

• 26:41Chris Williamson?

  Even your drive to succeed may be rooted in the fear of not being good enough. But this perspective requires maturity. It's simpler to cast yourself as the victim of bad parenting than to reckon with a complicated inheritance. It's easier to say, "They hurt me," than to admit, "They shaped me in ways I'm still figuring out." A cultural narrative rewards blaming your parents more than it does understanding them. Therapy turns them into victims and villains. Instagram makes them punchlines. But how often do you thank them in the same breath that you critique them? None of this excuses abuse, neglect or dysfunction, but it does ask for honesty. And you're going to draw a straight line from your childhood to your flaws? You should also draw that same lineage to your strengths. If you can't let your parents take credit for what's right with you,

• 27:25Chris Williamson?

  maybe you shouldn't be so quick to make them the villains for what's wrong.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 27:32Chris Williamson?

  Yes, yes.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  You know, it's because I've thought about that a lot. First of all, that was incredible.

• 27:38Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. If that doesn't go viral, I don't know what. But I've thought about that a lot. And the answer I've come to with talking to certain people is that.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Maybe there was another way to still give you those traits. You know what I mean?

• 28:00Chris Williamson?

  Without the shortcomings.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Without, exactly. And someone like myself, I was able to use all those negative things as fuel and still achieve in spite of, because of, whatever. But that's just because of how I'm wired. Somebody else who's wired differently would be just buried underneath some of that shit. You know what I mean? Under some of the heavy criticism or whatever the negative traits are. So it's also,

• 28:31Speaker 01

  it sounds good if you succeed. It doesn't sound good if you don't succeed, you know?

• 28:36Chris Williamson?

  Because you've alchemized it.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Right. Which takes a special person. So, yeah, for me, it's just, the main point, I think, again, is that maybe there was another way for me to develop those traits. Maybe it didn't have to come through this like

• 28:52Chris Williamson?

  Pain.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  pain and fuckery.

• 28:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  You know?

• 28:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  But I agree in, in, in essence that, you know, this is what my dad always tells me. He's like, yeah, but you turned out all right. I'm like, that's because I'm fucking awesome. But maybe it didn't need to go that way.

• 29:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  You know?

• 29:10Chris Williamson?

  I think we, asking the question, uh, interesting difference between, um,

• 29:19Chris Williamson?

  something being a fluke chance, uh, and something being sort of written in the stars. So if you were to run the universe back

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Chris Williamson?

  a thousand times, how many times does this happen to you?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:30Chris Williamson?

  And I think that's an interesting question to ask yourself. Like, um, you could think about convergence, right? This thing was kind of, it was always meant to be.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Chris Williamson?

  Or coincidence. This thing wasn't, so is it coincidence or is it convergence? And, uh, I think that's a, that's a cool question to ask because what you realize is that the, the inheritance you've got in terms of your traits might actually be pretty fucking rare for you. That you shouldn't be this person, really.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 30:00Chris Williamson?

  You know, not just that you're a rare person, but of the, all of the persons you could have been.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:05Chris Williamson?

  This is a rare version.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:07Chris Williamson?

  You know, there are way more versions of you, and maybe there's not. Maybe most of the versions of you result in you being a multi-platinum.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  That's what I have to.

• 30:14Chris Williamson?

  Fucking recording. Yeah, well, yeah, it's, it's very, um, the self-authoring nature of that, the fact, it makes you feel like you are the, um, rider on the top of the elephant that's actually controlled it. As opposed to this fucking elephant was going where it wanted and I was like.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 30:30Chris Williamson?

  Just thought I was guiding it along the way.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Isn't that interesting? That's a, uh, that concept is what I named my deluxe album after, The Elephant and the Rider.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Is it so interesting to me? You swear you're in control, but that elephant, once it decides where it wants to go, it's going.

• 30:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  Fuck. I've heard you talk about people dismissing internal struggle.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:53Chris Williamson?

  Well, people only validate struggles that they understand.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:57Chris Williamson?

  Uh, there's a line from Oliver Berkman that says, just because someone carries it well, doesn't mean the weight isn't heavy.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:04Chris Williamson?

  I think it's so great.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  God.

• 31:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think with, um,

• 31:11Speaker 01

  I think with men especially, you know, the whole cliche, like, we've been taught to hide it and to carry it alone, and that's what makes you be a man, is carrying all your shit and keeping it under wraps. You know, um, and I also like, there is truth and validity to the fact that material struggle is vital, you know? Having food, water and shelter is necessary, but there are so many internal struggles that are harder to see, and it doesn't mean that they're not real. You know, and I think,

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I think everyone is just so quick to get into this, uh.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Like struggle competition with people.

• 31:52Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, but I had to go through this. But there's always going to be someone who can say, that's cute. I had to go through this. It doesn't mean that your shit isn't real, didn't have it. It doesn't mean it didn't have an impact, didn't affect you. Yeah, I don't it's it's so divisive to me.

• 32:11Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's an interesting one because and this speaks to your age and stage of development. Two things can be true at once. Many people who don't deserve the term victim. Use it as a way to gain leverage and status and accolade. And also lots of people are denying just how fucking hard their life was.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  Um, so Rogan's got this idea where he says that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. So if if if the worst day of your life is somebody misgendering you in a Starbucks, then that's a pretty big deal. But if the worst day of your life is you running into battle at the fucking Battle of the Somme. That is also and everything then becomes kind of relative to that. And it's also there's a recency bias.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:57Chris Williamson?

  There's a well, life's been pretty good recently. And you begin to get a bit of sort of like, you know, velvet. Uh, nightgown syndrome where you think, well, stuff doesn't really need to be that. And then you get hit by something and you realize I me 10 years ago would have dealt with this more differently. And now me now feels like I'm more fragile.

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  We're not static and one person's ability or lack of to deal with discomfort needs to be sort of scrutinized carefully. You go. I I don't think that that's that big of a deal and there's a very easy way to call that out. But also going, dude, that you need to accept when you've been kicked in the dick and when it's really, really hurt.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think lately I've just been trying to expand my capacity to handle bullshit, you know?

• 33:44Chris Williamson?

  How do you do that?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Um, God, I wish I fucking like new, really actionable advice. Uh, for me, I think it's just interrupting patterns, catching them. When I start to spiral and start to catastrophize certain things, just at least step one, being aware that I do that. Step two is now interrupting it and being like. I'm okay. My world is okay. It's not a fucking tragedy. But it's tough, you know, and I think that was a lot of my resistance with wanting more success was well, more success means getting hit more. And I've been hit before by my last version of success. I don't want to be hit again, but then I don't want less success because then I'm stagnant.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  So the only answer is you need to increase your capacity to handle shit, you know, to juggle. Me and my therapist always talk about is grief and gratitude simultaneously, you know? And that's been um that's been challenging, man, because I could have swore once you get success, it's just all things that you're supposed to be grateful for. There is no more grief, just all gratitude. It's all fun shit. And I used to always like look around and be like, this is fucked up and they fucked that launch up and this just happened, whatever. And just feel like I had some broken version of success. Like surely there's something wrong with the version of success that I bought. I need to trade this back in.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Like this is malfunction. This is not right. But it's like, no, man, there is always going to be some bullshit and some good shit going on. And it's just the ability to hold both, you know, and not just ignore the bullshit. You know, acknowledge it, but not ignore the gratitude and not think that it's just supposed to only be that.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's a painful realization for everybody that there will be no point when you have no problems in life.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:45Chris Williamson?

  What did you think that one day you were going to have no more problems like?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:49Chris Williamson?

  Getting to a level in a video game and there being no enemies left. That's not the way that life works. There will never be a time when you have no problems.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:57Chris Williamson?

  And unfortunately.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  That's not what they sell you, though.

• 36:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Reach the escape velocity, dude. Out in space, they can't hear you scream and they definitely can't hear your fucking problems. You know, one of those balance boards, it's like a skateboard deck and it's got a cylinder underneath it and people use it for working on their balance. I think about life a lot of the time, kind of like that, even when you're it looks really flat and I'm looking at you and you're almost perfectly still.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:22Chris Williamson?

  You're making these little micro adjustments at all times and then sometimes you go, whoa, and you're really whoa on one side or the other. And I just, the more, the more that I experience life, the more that I think it works like that.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:38Chris Williamson?

  That there is no point where you reach stasis. There are times when you are more steady and more flat, and there are times where you're more extreme. And sometimes you meant to, because you're playing around, and sometimes you were forced to, because there was a big fucking gust of wind.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Chris Williamson?

  But there's no point where you're not fixing.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Making those micro adjustments.

• 36:56Chris Williamson?

  Fixing things and making my micro adjustments, yeah. You'll never be able to fully take your eyes off the ball.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And I think that was, it still is, a big hurdle of mine, is overreacting and catastrophizing the small little like, you know, adjustments that need to be made. And it's, because it feels, it feels like a, it used to feel like a threat against who I was and what I built and, did I build something unstable? Did I build something not that great?

• 37:27Chris Williamson?

  Wrong.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Did I build something wrong? Am I wrong? Am I fucked up?

• 37:31Chris Williamson?

  Well, what that reinforces, if you don't ever hear this, and it's why it's so wonderful to hear the inner workings of somebody's mind,

• 37:42Chris Williamson?

  it helps people to realize, oh, this isn't a personal curse.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  On me. This isn't because I did it wrong. This isn't because, this is just the way life always is for me. Everybody else has arrived. Everybody else is going to have it in such an easy, gentle way. They're whole, they don't have problems.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:00Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, this is endemic.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Chris Williamson?

  This is a feature, it's not a bug.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:06Chris Williamson?

  And everybody else feels this too, they just don't talk about it.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  This is why I envy bands. I envy bands because you guys all go through the same shit together. That's so incredible to me. Like, I think about the Beatles. I'm like, you all got famous at the exact same time. Like, so you always had each other to talk to, but when you're just an artist, everything you're experiencing feels like it's happening in a vacuum. And you're sure that nobody else is having this experience.

• 38:38Chris Williamson?

  Well, what they, even if they say they are having your experience, you can excuse it away. Because, well, the way that they play or the music there, the genre, the fan group that, well, you know, their Instagram game is like totally, they actually came up on the, there's a way to excuse it. But yeah, you're right. You have a, it's a wonderful, a wonderful split test when you're in a band.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:58Chris Williamson?

  If you're one of four or six or whatever members of a band, you go, well, everybody else is experiencing the exact same thing.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:06Chris Williamson?

  Maybe they play a different instrument, but we're all, and so the similarities we can assume are because of the situation and the differences we can assume are just mine.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  Right? Because I, my constitution is different to theirs and it helps you to run a pretty good experiment on why you feel the way you do.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that was comforting on the come up because me and my friends were all at the same place. You know what I mean? So there was a bit of synergy there psychologically and there was community inherently. And then when one of you kind of ascends to this crazy level, it's kind of like, well, now I know nobody who gets this. And you expect me to what? Go like make friends as an adult? That's impossible. You know what I mean? So it's just fucked.

• 39:54Chris Williamson?

  We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance. But most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just $499.

• 40:39Chris Williamson?

  And right now you can get a hundred dollars off, bringing it down to 399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that hundred dollars by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernd wisdom. That's functionhealth.com/.

• 40:54Chris Williamson?

  Modern wisdom. Talk to me about why it's okay to take your life seriously.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Um, because I think people

• 41:04Speaker 01

  downplay

• 41:07Speaker 01

  their own

• 41:10Speaker 01

  passion and zeal for wanting to make a dream come true out of fear of embarrassment, fear of coming off cringey because you really want that. It's that whole like, I'm gonna downplay what I want. So that if I don't get it, I can just say, I didn't even really want it anyway. You do want it, and that's okay. That's why I love like Timothy Chalamet coming out and saying, I wanna be great. I'm in pursuit of greatness. That's awesome. All this fake modesty, like too cool shit, I fucking hate. I think it's fake, and I think that that's just, it's posturing, it's image management. You're trying to be relatable. It's not real, though. Like, I love hearing people claim that, not, I'm trying to be

• 41:55Speaker 01

  the biggest artist in the world. I wanna be the best. I think I'm the best. I love that. Cause we all we all have something we desperately want, you know? And I think it's okay for you to be serious about getting that. I think that there's times where you shouldn't take yourself and certain things too serious. But it's okay to take your life serious. This is your life. You're not gonna take this serious?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  If not this, then what? You know? Strange to me. It's very strange.

• 42:25Chris Williamson?

  I think seriousness gets a bad rap.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:27Chris Williamson?

  Because it's seen as a stern, uh, not fun having, too rigid, too contrived. Uh, and yeah, totally effortless achievement uh, from the outside, doesn't trigger many of the defense mechanisms. Um, because, oh my god, he must just be so talented. You know, like how amazing. And he's not sort of shoving it in our face, and he didn't say what he was gonna do before, and so on and so forth after.

• 42:58Chris Williamson?

  But I think

• 43:00Chris Williamson?

  taking things seriously and the bravery to take something seriously is a like a wonderful skill to develop. Uh, earnestness as well.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:09Chris Williamson?

  Think about seriousness in your idea, I think, is to do with

• 43:16Chris Williamson?

  Saying what you want.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:18Chris Williamson?

  Frankly, and showing the level of effort and commitment that you're prepared to put in to go and get it. Might be a good way to look at it.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:25Chris Williamson?

  But earnestness would be the same, but directed inwardly toward emotions. So earnestness would be the bravery to take your emotions seriously. And I like earnest people, you know, I think your point is basically that detachment is self-protection.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 43:46Chris Williamson?

  By keeping things at a distance.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:48Chris Williamson?

  I don't, I don't really connect myself. It's the person who's never fully committed in a relationship.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:54Chris Williamson?

  Because, well, if they reject me, they're not rejecting me because I kept this little bit of me for me.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Chris Williamson?

  They didn't, you know, they didn't get to see all of me. Exactly, yeah, because if I'd really wanted them, if I'd really tried.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  I would have.

• 44:06Chris Williamson?

  Then I would have had them, but I didn't, I held this little bit back.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:09Chris Williamson?

  So you.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  You always come out on top.

• 44:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you avoid failure publicly by guaranteeing your failure privately.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah. It's a defense mechanism against embarrassment, you know, and um.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  It's just okay to want something in your life and want to take it serious, you know, it just is. And I think it's kind of interesting, I always like relate it back to watching certain anime and certain characters who didn't have the innate skill, they were fucking annoying, they had to like really bust their ass to like get good and get their powers and shit. And they were annoying to me, they were not as cool as the character who was just nonchalant and just like had the shit.

• 44:57Chris Williamson?

  Yep, yep.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And I think as dudes, we all look at that guy like he's fucking awesome, he's not even trying, he's badass. And we look at the main character who like doesn't have the skills yet has to work as like annoying. But to me, that's just because it's confronting a lot of times, you know? There's a lot of times when I see somebody busting their ass in.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Saying like, this is the journey I'm about to go on. This is what I want. This is what I'm willing to do. This is what I'm going after. I'm not there yet, but I believe I can get there. I see how people react to that. And I just think it's confronting because it's a mirror for most people. It's it's asking you, are you willing to do the work that this person's willing to do? What are you doing with your life?

• 45:38Chris Williamson?

  But also suggests that success is more in reach than you might think.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  That's the part that fucks people up.

• 45:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, because, well, actually, it's not because of blasé innate talent that this mystical ephemeral, difficult to replicate thing.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:52Chris Williamson?

  Oh, he, he just worked hard and fuck. That means all I needed to do was work hard and therefore the fact that I'm not where they are.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Might be my fault.

• 46:02Chris Williamson?

  Because I didn't try.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  You know what's easier to say? I think he just sold his soul. I think that's like, it's gotta be what it is. It's so much easier to just do that instead of the truth. The truth is far less sexy.

• 46:17Chris Williamson?

  Correct. That's, I mean, that, that is increasingly the direction of this podcast going in, very unsexy truths, fortunately, over and over. Um, and you know, some of the seductive mirages that I was facing when I was a, a younger man. And now that I'm a young, but slightly less younger man. A lot of, I've got to them and realized it wasn't some oasis. It was just like this sort of vision thing. And one of those is earnestness and seriousness and taking things seriously. And, um, I fucking hate, I hate ironic speech so much. I think it fucking blows.

• 46:56Chris Williamson?

  This sort of cynical side eye. I never plant my position in the ground. I never say like, hey, you went too far. Like, you're not supposed to say that. It's always lol, but actually you're the, it's like, no, don't say lol, say fuck you, because that's how you felt. But because you don't want to say to somebody that you actually hold a position that you can be hurt by something or that you care about something. As soon as you say that you care about something, that's a a flag that's planted in the ground and that gives a territory that other people can try to attack.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:24Chris Williamson?

  Whereas if you're I didn't really care about her all that much. It wasn't really that important to me. I didn't want the business to go that well. I like, I'm not that, you know, like I'm just doing comedy on the side. Like, it's just like, you know, whatever, whatever.

• 47:39Chris Williamson?

  I had another essay recently. Procrastination is often about fear. We like to pretend procrastination is a time management problem, but regularly it isn't. It's often a self-protection strategy wearing a Fitbit. When we delay doing the thing that we know we should do, we're sometimes not wrestling with our schedule. We're wrestling with our self-worth. The logic goes like this. If I try and fail, everyone will see. So if I never try at all, the failure is private, deniable and safe. This is the psychological sleight of hand at the heart of much procrastination. It feels like avoidance, but functions like armor. You convince yourself the task is scary, other conditions aren't perfect, or you need to feel ready first. But really, you're just terrified that doing your best might not be good enough. So you don't do anything.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that's everyone. I think you nailed it too with, you know, it's just, you get to fail privately. And that's so, and you can handle that, you know? But I just, I have a lot of respect for people who publicly go after shit. And I think, deep down, it's an attractive trait. That's why a lot of times those people attract a lot of fans and a lot, because we all know as society, ambition and earnestness is attractive. Because we know it's a really tough thing to have. And it's no surprise that it's also polarizing.

• 48:56Chris Williamson?

  With, with that, people need, feel the need to like temper their ambition and their earnestness though. Cause if you're too much, then in the UK, you would be called a keno, as in keen, keen, like you're too keen. You're overly enthusiastic.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:13Chris Williamson?

  It would be cringe, right? Like this person who believes this thing and like, yeah, maybe he got there or whatever, but like he sort of loves it too much or whatever. And, and it's strange because some people seem to be able to play it off with.

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  Sort of an artistic, likeable quality. And then for some other people, I don't know what it is. They're just, the way that they deliver something similar, the obsession sort of leaks out of them in a less aesthetic shape.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I think, you know what, I've noticed, and I'm guilty of this for sure in the past. Sometimes it comes off like you're trying to prove it to yourself.

• 49:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 49:52Chris Williamson?

  It's the guy at the party who introduces himself as saying, just sold a business for one billion dollars.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:57Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to just it coming out naturally in the course of the conversation.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  And you, people can feel the intention, you know? It's like, this feels like you're trying to prove to yourself.

• 50:07Chris Williamson?

  Compensation.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I do think that there's just an issue with society wanting to control and own the key to other people's confidence.

• 50:17Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that's great.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Like, no, no, no. We will let you know when you're allowed to feel confident about yourself. Because again, kind of what you said earlier, they have to believe that because it reaffirms the hierarchy in their head, that we're in control, confidence is something given by us to you, as opposed to the truth, which is, no, no, no, no. I give myself confidence. I own my confidence.

• 50:48Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. This is a, this is a good one. So this woman went on a pod recently, I'm gonna play this clip for you. This woman went on a pod recently and gave a really wonderful insight about the relationship of how much reputation people think that you deserve.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:06Chris Williamson?

  Well, this was so cool.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  People have an assumption of the level of celebration you deserve.

• 51:14Chris Williamson?

  Interesting.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Right? Like how good you are and how much reputation you deserve.

• 51:18Chris Williamson?

  How do people decide that?

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Let's get to that, because you, you, you wanna try to engineer it.

• 51:22Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  If you're above that, people think you're overrated and they wanna bring you down and they don't like you. If they perceive that you're below that, then you're underrated. Like underrated is a compliment. Why is it, why is it a good thing to be poorly rated? In my mind, it's sort of like you fumbled. Like, what do you mean you're not well rated? Like, go fix it.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  It's an interesting point.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  But underrated is a compliment, overrated is an insult. You would think that being highly rated is good, but overrated is not. So people wanna fill that delta.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  If they think you're underrated, they'll try to bring you up. So this is like what people, we'll get to this too, but this is what people have been saying about Google Gemini. It's underrated. It's like, it's high status to say.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a compliment, but it's.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  It's a compliment, but it's also like seen as insightful and valuable and useful to point out that Google Gemini is good.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  That's true. Yes, people feel good when they make that point.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're like, I'm pointing this out. So I'm, I'm righting some kind of wrong in the universe. I'm filling that in balance.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  People also feel good about themselves when they call it something overrated. People just feel good about identifying the discrepancy.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  We're all kind of reputational Karens. We feel off when something isn't where it should be. And that's why all these phrases exist.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  So real, though.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  That's why I like, I'm of the opposite mind. I like seeing the Chiefs win the Super Bowl every, I want them to win the Super Bowl every year. Like, I want the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl every year. I like when Taylor Swift drops an album and it goes number one and people say, well, she couldn't just let that girl go. No, beat me. I love shit like that. I love shit like that. I don't even, I have no favorite NFL team. When my brother was like, who do you wanna win the Super Bowl this year? I'm like, the Chiefs. I just wanna see dominance. You know what I mean? Cause I hate all this like, oh, let someone else win. It's like, you're not even that great. Prove it.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  I love shit like that. But that, I mean, again, that's just like, society is just, in my opinion, bitch made. It's just a bunch of like, weak-minded.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  People who don't want to face the reality that they themselves lack the quality in the fuel that this person used to become great.

• 53:30Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's why the, I think it's called the bigotry of small differences or the narcissism of small differences, that the closer you are to somebody, the more rivalrous you feel your relationship to them. If it's someone who grew up in a different country, a very different sort of upbringing or from a different family, like, yeah, you might not rate their success, but it doesn't have the same sort of visceral status rivalry that you would expect. But if it's the person who grew up down the street from you and you basically had the same opportunities.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:04Chris Williamson?

  That really hurts. Yeah. It's another reason why I've chosen a profession, an industry that is very easy to criticize because everybody does this over the dinner table.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:18Chris Williamson?

  Right? I have not tried to put together a track. I have not tried to open up fucking Ableton or Pro Tools or whatever the fuck and make a song. Therefore, when I see what you do, I can say that I do or don't like it, but it's so removed from the skill set that I have. But the closer that you get, the fact that I haven't had to put in 10, 20, 30 years on logic or whatever to work out how to fucking make this thing, anybody can do a podcast. How many times have someone been over dinner and said, bro, we should have recorded that? That was such a good, that was better than like fucking Joe Rogan. Like, we should put that, we should have put that on the internet. Maybe we should start a podcast, like every white guy.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:59Chris Williamson?

  The fact that people feel close, it's the same reason that everybody has an insight about how Nike should be doing their social media. Oh, I didn't like, I didn't like that social media post. They shouldn't be using AI because everybody's got a social media profile.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:12Chris Williamson?

  So everybody has some.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Everybody's an expert.

• 55:14Chris Williamson?

  But not everybody files the fucking P and L tax return at the end of year for their company.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:22Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, I would have done it differently. You don't know how the spreadsheet works. You don't know how to do a V look up or any of this stuff.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:27Chris Williamson?

  So you have more of an opinion and you can be more triggered and push back more when something that somebody else does, it feels like, it feels like you're a part of the industry in a roundabout way. And the more. Walled off, the further away that particular industry is. Elon, Elon, you can laugh at the fact that a rocket bursts into flames if it doesn't work right. But you don't know how it happened. I would have done it differently. No, of course not. But if you listen to a podcast that goes bad, you have an opinion.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:01Chris Williamson?

  Well, you have an opinion about that. Why? Because you think that you, oh, if I'd been there. And then maybe some people could play football. So they'll think, well, I would have, you know, that play is just stupid. Why did they call that play? That play is fucking dumb.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Chris Williamson?

  And the further and further away that you get, if you're some, you know, microbiologist that's just come up with something new, go, I, it was good or bad. The resolution with which your criticism or compliments can be deployed.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Chris Williamson?

  Lowered, the more difficult the task is, basically, and the further your skill set is away from it.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  I think because brilliance is boring and it's subtle. I was watching this documentary on Pixar and the guy was saying, the trees in the background, the animation, it's so perfect that you don't notice it.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  But if that tree was drawn fucked up, you would notice it. Same thing with soccer players, basketball, like the music I make, whatever. There's certain decisions that are getting made that are the culmination of so many hours in a high level of taste or intelligence, whatever, not just in my field, in all these different fields, that the average person doesn't recognize them. They only recognize the fuck up. But it's like you don't recognize the brilliance when you don't recognize when it's going well, because you don't know what goes into this. And you think that your volume of commentary replaces your lack of credentials. You don't know what's going on.

• 57:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, one of the problems as well is that people bind together over criticism way more than over compliments.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Misery loves company.

• 57:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  You know?

• 57:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  And it's, to me.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  You give yourself an excuse if you reject the truth, which is there's a lot of people, kind of what you're saying, like similar opportunities, who just worked harder. They worked harder or they just were naturally better than you at this thing. And they developed their skills or whatever it is. And so the truth is that you didn't maximize your opportunities. And that sucks to hear. And what's easier to do is reject their journey, dismiss it with some rumor or some nonsense. Because the truth is that you could have been here too. But you fucked up.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Take it up with your mirror. This has got nothing to do with me.

• 58:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  You know?

• 58:22Chris Williamson?

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• 59:05Chris Williamson?

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• 59:37Chris Williamson?

  It's a, it's a strange challenge that people have when it comes to.

• 59:45Chris Williamson?

  Do I, do I want to criticize this thing because I genuinely have an issue with it? Do I want to criticize this thing because it's triggered in me something that I feel uncomfortable about?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:58Chris Williamson?

  And um, the idea that being a black sheep is still being a sheep. And just because you're against something doesn't mean that you're in the minority. It doesn't mean it's a more sophisticated position.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Chris Williamson?

  You know, you, you, you don't really like anything?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:00:13Chris Williamson?

  You, you regularly dislike most things.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:16Chris Williamson?

  What a sophisticated position to hold.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:18Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations, dude. You must have such refined taste.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I was just talking about this, man, like this whole community of people who hate anything that's popular because it's popular. Not because they actually don't like it, they just don't like it because it's popular. Whether it's an artist, whether it's shoes or whatever. It's like sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes things are popular because they're good. And sometimes things are not popular because they're not good. Not all the time, but sometimes.

• 1:00:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  And it just, it's people who, who feel like they, they get to have some sort of autonomy and some sort of like leverage over the rest of society, like you guys like that.

• 1:00:59Chris Williamson?

  That's the underrated, overrated thing again, right?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, uh, yeah, it is funny, there's sort of two camps of people. There's uh, one who are creators that are underground. And I would, dude, you know, it's just my, my work's so sophisticated.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  No one gets it.

• 1:01:15Chris Williamson?

  They're just, yeah, they just don't get it. It's like, oh, maybe it's just not that good.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 1:01:19Chris Williamson?

  Um, but just because something is big doesn't necessarily mean it's good. But on average, it, it typically is. Like people vote with their feet and there's a lot of competition out there.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Chris Williamson?

  A lot of competition. You think it's got to be that, you think Luke Combs has got to be that big if he can't do country well?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:35Chris Williamson?

  Like, no, obviously not.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  I have a good friend who said some, a long time ago at the beginning of like my journey. And I'm sure we were like hating on some artists or something. And he was like, you know what? Every artist that's like wildly successful or famous, I can always find something about them that I think is like really genius. Like every single one.

• 1:01:54Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  And I was like, wow. And I, ever since, and this is a conversation from 10 years ago. Ever since then, even artists where I don't like their music, I'm always able to find something about them, whether it's their branding or their visuals or something where I'm like, that's fucking genius.

• 1:02:09Chris Williamson?

  It's much more useful because what-

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  I can take it.

• 1:02:11Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Allow me to take the one thing. Oh my God, I think this person sucks.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Chris Williamson?

  And I've found something that I think is great. So if my opinion is right, how much of a compensatory mechanism is this one thing? They must have the best Instagram on the planet.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Right, right. As opposed to this just sucks. Everything about it sucks. It's like, you're just doing yourself a disservice. You could be stealing and learning and evolving.

• 1:02:37Chris Williamson?

  This is, I think, related to the fear of embarrassment that a lot of people have. You've got a line that's very similar to a friend's. You said, uh, people who are less talented than you simply care less about being criticized and made fun of will get so much further. Fear of embarrassment is friction. Another friend of mine said, uh, there's someone with half your talent and five times your self-belief making 10 times the money.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  That was like, I think, to be honest, that's me. That's why I've always talked the way-

• 1:03:03Chris Williamson?

  But how do you, so I'm trying to work out how lots of insecurity-

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Chris Williamson?

  Married with lots of self-belief, because those two things don't always comport.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  No, I think the insecurity was, I'm not good enough. You know, we'll just keep it simple. Early on, it was, I'm not good enough at making songs. My raps aren't good enough. My singing isn't good enough. The beats that I'm making aren't good enough. The mixing isn't good. None of this is good enough. I knew that deep down because I would make shit and I would love it, but then I would go listen to established artists at the time, Wiz Khalifa or Drake or Kendrick or J. Cole or whoever, and I'd be like, damn, their shit just sounds like way better than my stuff. Um, and so I knew that my shit wasn't there yet, but I really still genuinely liked what I was doing and I had this belief that I could become good enough.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  And so the reason, I always tell people, it's like, I loved everything I was doing, but if I loved it to the point that I'd never thought I could be better, I would have stopped going to the studio. I would have been like, no, I made my best song ever. It was last night. My best song ever is the one I'm making tonight, and it always is, you know? But yeah, it's that-

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  That marriage is the old fuel that I'm talking about, you know? It was.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Cause how long am I supposed to not feel good enough? You know what I mean? Cause now I don't feel like that anymore. I feel like my music, this is years now where I felt like it's good enough. Um, but yeah, it's. It was a, uh. It's a conundrum, man. Really was. Strange. What was the original question?

• 1:04:42Chris Williamson?

  Fear of embarrassment.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  How do we work that in?

• 1:04:46Chris Williamson?

  Cause I said, uh, there's someone with half your talent.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so.

• 1:04:50Chris Williamson?

  Making 10 times the money.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  So I really was not the most talented person at all. There's artists who their fifth song they've ever made is a massive song. I'm like, I simply did not have the talent. That my fifth song could have even been that big. I was 110 songs deep before I think that. I think on my eighth album, so maybe like 85 songs released, but probably hundreds of songs made. Before I'd made something that was good enough to even be a big song. You know what I mean? That's a lot of work to even just get to the starting line. And, um. That's why I kinda preach what I preach to up and coming artists, which is. The majority of y'all are gonna be like me. You're not gonna be like the dude who.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Picked it up and on his fifth song, it's a billboard charting song, cause he's just a freak in nature talent. That, the majority of us are me. Where this shit sucks for mad long. Like these songs are not good enough for like 200 songs. You know what I mean? That is the majority of us. And I think the belief that I could end up making a great song. Is what kept me going. And still to this day, while I try to figure out the direction my hunger is supposed to be pointing in. That.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  You know, North Star has never changed, which is. I still think I can make the greatest song of my life. You know? And I still think I haven't made it. So. But again, it's like. I think I've beaten out so many people who were so much better than me. I had friends growing up that were way better than me. Way better, but they just.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  What I'll say is this, I think a lot of people cannot tolerate uncertainty the way I can.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  I think that's a very underrated skill. The ability to withstand uncertainty over an extended period of time is a pretty big indicator of if you're gonna be a successful artist or not. You know, I had a lot of friends who they put out one song, didn't blow up, huh, alright, I'm going to college. Or they put out one mixtape, it didn't blow up and they're like, this is bullshit, I'm out. Up and coming artists that I've talked to over the years who, they put out a couple of songs a year, they're mad their career's not moving fast. It's like, you're not moving fast. How fast can the career move if you're moving slow? You know, and you have to deal with that uncertainty of the external uncertainty and it's, for me, I was able to tolerate

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  external uncertainty, I was able to tolerate lack of external evidence because I gave myself to certainty. I knew I was gonna make it. So I didn't need, early on, I didn't need the external validation, my own internal certainty was enough to temper the fact that, when I put the song out, it gets two streams. You know, because I just knew that y'all were wrong. I believe that. I seriously thought the first mixtape I ever dropped, I thought it was gonna blow up. I remember like tweeting, tomorrow my life's gonna change, you know what I mean? It's like, it did it, at all. But, I believed it, you know?

• 1:08:00Chris Williamson?

  What about the fear of embarrassment thing, overcoming that?

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  I didn't have that. I was consequence blind, early on, which I think is just a trait of being young and ignorant. You know, I didn't, I didn't know there was pitfalls.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  I thought, you put out music and it blows up? And then you ride off into the sunset and everybody loves you. You know, which is why, this is probably not gonna be a popular opinion, but I encourage everyone to go after that crazy dream as young as possible. Because the older you get, the more aware you become, that all that glitters is not gold and you start becoming aware of the trade, of the cost of everything.

• 1:08:42Chris Williamson?

  You also have more to trade, right?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, and so for me, now even, it's like

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  The fear of embarrassment, all that stuff is amplified now. Because I know there's people watching. I know there's people looking at me.

• 1:08:54Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, someone asked me this, maybe at the Vancouver show this week. And they'd said, basically, I want to do my first podcast. But I'm really nervous. I'm nervous about what people will think. I'm nervous if people are gonna have judgment on it, all the rest of it. I was like, I'm just gonna, it's a wonderful question. It's one that I think a lot of people have. I'm gonna stop you right there. I can promise you that no one is gonna laugh at you for your first podcast. Do you know why?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Because no one's gonna see it.

• 1:09:17Chris Williamson?

  No one's fucking listening. That's why. Because no one knows who you are. No one cares. So you have this beautiful upside only. You already are not a podcaster.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Chris Williamson?

  You already are not a recording artist.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Chris Williamson?

  There is only upside. Imagine if you did a trade and you said you can bet the whole, obviously, you can fucking put money down, you can leave a job, rah rah rah. But assuming that you don't do something insane in order to get your first mixtape or podcast off the ground.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:45Chris Williamson?

  You can only get better. It's only upside.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  You can only get more views.

• 1:09:49Chris Williamson?

  There is no, you've already done no views. Congratulations.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Chris Williamson?

  You have an infinity more views that you can get.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  You're competing with zero.

• 1:09:58Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Now, you're competing, like you said at the beginning, you're competing now next year with number eight. But it's, it's, it's funny. I always tell up and coming artists, take advantage of the fact that nobody gives a fuck. Because they spend so much.

• 1:10:12Chris Williamson?

  No expectation.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  They spend so much time, like, do you think that I can drop a song like this right now? Or what do you think people will think? I'm like, you got 10 fans, bro. Nobody gives a flying fuck. Like, this is the time to do whatever. I envy the anonymity that up and coming artists have, to a degree. Obviously, me not being anonymous, me being successful, gives me all these great things. But the purity and clarity you get to operate from, when you don't have anyone listening, you don't have any feedback.

• 1:10:43Chris Williamson?

  That's why people use pseudonyms, right? They'd start Side Project.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Put on a mask.

• 1:10:48Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Alter your voice. I've thought about doing shit like that.

• 1:10:51Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Like, starting a whole other career. And just alter my voice, pitch it down or pitch it up, change the production.

• 1:10:58Chris Williamson?

  That'd be cool.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I've thought about it almost every day, like, five years.

• 1:11:03Chris Williamson?

  Do you know that Sick Kick guy?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Sick Kick? No.

• 1:11:06Chris Williamson?

  Sick Kick. So he's a, fuck, like, a lot of things. He does live sequencing is one of his big things. So big fuck off midi pad, and he always wears a mask. And I did a big. Doomscrewing, I wanted to call it a deep dive, but that makes it sound too sophisticated. I was doomscrewing. And I went through his Instagram and I was like, oh, nobody knows who this motherfucker is.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Chris Williamson?

  The guy can sing, he can rap, he can definitely fucking produce and mix. And he does some originals, he's got like original albums, all the rest of it. And he said, I'm never going to release my face until I get a Grammy. And the whole thing, if he sings, he lifts the mask up just so it covers the bottom of his nose. He'll sing through that and then he'll pull it back down. He plays DJ gigs and does all the rest of it. And I thought that was really cool.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  There's a big rapper right now, SD Kid from London, who everyone thinks is Timothy Chalamet. Isn't that awesome? And he's rapping with like a Scouse accent.

• 1:12:00Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay, I can promise you it's not Timothy Chalamet.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  It might be, wouldn't that be fuck? And Timothy Chalamet is like feeding into it. They're asking him in interviews, they're like, is this you? And he's like, oh, we'll be revealed it.

• 1:12:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, brilliant.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  What if it's him?

• 1:12:13Chris Williamson?

  Imagine if you're that artist, though, and you find out that Timothy Chalamet.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 1:12:16Chris Williamson?

  Through no like construction of your own, is somehow feeding into your own law.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:22Chris Williamson?

  Like, hey, Timothy, dude, fucking appreciate you, man.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Cause you know there's gonna be time in five years when everyone's like, you remember when people thought?

• 1:12:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  But it's, no, it is a, anonymity is freedom, you know? There's a liberty, creative liberty and freedom you have when nobody knows who you are.

• 1:12:40Chris Williamson?

  But again, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall. That there's a big difference between never made it and fell off. Holy fuck, dude. That fell off hurts so much harder than never made it.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Well, cause you had it.

• 1:12:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you were there.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  You were there.

• 1:12:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but by design, by design, unless you continue to be the best in the world. Like Mike Tyson, you're not going to continue to be the most dominant.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Athletes, I don't know how they do it, man.

• 1:13:04Chris Williamson?

  It's a lesson in humility.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Because the stuff that we do, we can do forever, you know? But athletes, it's like, you got, what, a 10 year window? Maybe, especially like if you're running back in the NFL, eight?

• 1:13:17Chris Williamson?

  Well, think about, even from your industry, musicians.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:20Chris Williamson?

  Female artists.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Chris Williamson?

  Female artists have an additional price that they need to pay.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:24Chris Williamson?

  Like, oh, you want a family? Guess what? That you want a couple of kids? That's like a four, five year hiatus.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  I think about that all the time, man, to be honest, cause I know in my industry, specifically rap.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Youth is equivalent to cool. Old is lame. And the currency in rap is being cool. And so, how do you be old and cool in a genre where those are antonyms? You know what I mean?

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  But that's why I love seeing older rappers have success.

• 1:14:00Chris Williamson?

  Who's a good example?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Clips. Pusha T and his brother Malice, who Grammy nominated, they're like forty-nine years old. The album's great. It's like, that's important for hip-hop as a whole. Whether or not you feel this way about them or whatever, it doesn't matter. It's what it's doing for the genre, which is telling people you can have maturity, wisdom, and still be cool in a genre that appears to only clap for youthful energy, I'll say. You know? It's like, oh, man, that is inspiring. So you're telling me it doesn't all end.

• 1:14:40Chris Williamson?

  Without being a legacy act, without you just having to run it back.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Right, just play your debut. You know what I mean? They're putting out a new album that people love, like it was their debut album. That, to me, is inspiring, or seeing an artist like Kehlani catch her biggest hit ever ten years into her career. Like, I just posted that today. I'm like, if this doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will. Like, this is, for me as an artist, the scariest thing is to consider the possibility that, well, at some point, your best years are gonna be behind you, right? Surely, like, your biggest song was the one you put out five years ago, and you'll just never do it again. And so I always get scared that, is that this year?

• 1:15:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's a good excuse to knock out your best song, right? That's why somebody would, I'll just hold a little bit back.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:29Chris Williamson?

  Hold a little bit back, yeah.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  And that's why people don't understand why, for me and other artists I know, the numbers...

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  It's not ego anymore. It's existential. You know, if I look at streams and I see they're lower than I think they should be. I don't have an ego situation happening. I have an existential crisis happening because I'm thinking, oh, my God, is this it? Is this the start of the decline? I'm no longer able to take care of myself, my family, the responsibility. Is this it? Is this it? So it's not ego. It's not. My songs are so much better than this. This is some bullshit. It's. It feels like it's feedback turns into a threat instead of just data. You know, and it's scary.

• 1:16:19Chris Williamson?

  Well, because your sense of self is wrapped up in this thing now.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, when the work becomes your worth, it's over with.

• 1:16:25Chris Williamson?

  Of course. Yeah. Do people love me for who I am or for what I do?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Chris Williamson?

  And if all I do is what I do, then.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Isn't that who I am?

• 1:16:32Chris Williamson?

  What happens? What happens when that gets taken away? Like, that means that the love's gonna go too. That people only want me because of what I can do.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Chris Williamson?

  And if I can do less, then I am less. And it's strange because people want to.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Especially as men, right? Not to do the woe is me men shit. But we do get taught that we're only as good as what we provide, as the value we provide. And so as an artist, as a man, it's like, well, I'm providing value now. But to your point, if the streams are going down, does that mean I'm providing less? And if I start to provide less value, does that mean the love is gonna decline as well?

• 1:17:09Chris Williamson?

  It's a great point. And the first, I've talked so much about sex differences.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Chris Williamson?

  And the first conversation I ever had this year where someone just called it out, direct, and it's the first time that anyone's ever done it. I thought it was so great. I was having a conversation with a guy who wrote a book about the female orgasm. And he was basically saying that as far as he could see, the female orgasm is a selection mechanism, that it is a physiological embodied way of the woman's desire responding to how she perceives her mate. And I basically mentioned that, well, this feels a little bit ruthless, that guys are sort of being judged in this manner that they don't really get to control. They just sort of are who they are and they've worked on themselves to the extent that they do and they turn up and,

• 1:17:57Chris Williamson?

  you know, this, this, whereas for women, they don't have the same type of judgment. Like, it's, men are more mechanical, let's say, in that regard. And instead of equivocating, instead of needing to say, well, you know, because men have got it. And you went, no, you're right. Yeah, yeah, that it's it's tough. And that's the way it is. Women, women have this particular type of blessing or curse or judgment or ability to scrutinize or bestow status or take it away from from a guy in the same way as is true here, which is, I think that you just need to accept as a man, yeah, your value to the world is going to be tightly

• 1:18:42Chris Williamson?

  tied to your competence. Yeah, 100%. If your competence seems to be dipping, the world is going to love you a little bit less. They're going to need you a little bit less. And that's why you can't rely on that. And it's also why you need a fucking partner who sees outside of that. Like, if you have, I've got a couple of friends who are in relationships with, I don't know what you would call it, like, high, highly status sensitive women. One of them. That is such a gentle. Gentle, but I'm really trying to use, because what, well, look, one of them, one of them's Diana Fleischman, who is an evolutionary psychologist, and she's married to Jeffrey Miller. And Jeffrey's told me this story before, but she's like got some dark triad tendencies. She's wonderful, warm lady. I think she's fantastic and I like her a lot.

• 1:19:27Chris Williamson?

  But she's definitely got some sort of psychopathic tendencies in her. Enough, enough, enough to make a fantastic mother and a great partner. But also that she has some sensitivities that I, I've heard, like, just great, sort of like, if, if, if they're driving and Jeffrey misses a turn because he's not watching or because he like gets bullied by somebody who's in the lane that he needs to get in, she's, has like a little bit of an ick response because her sensitivity to his competence level is quite tightly attuned. I was talking to a girl not long ago and she said that she saw her partner trip on the street and was like, I'm not really, I don't want to, I don't want to like, you know, for the next five

• 1:20:09Chris Williamson?

  minutes, you're not that attractive to me. And I think that in some ways, that kind of a relationship would compel men to keep doing more. Not only do you have to perform out there, but you've got to perform in here too. Awful. That's bad. But for, and for certain guy like Jeffrey, for some reason, this guy is just construct, these two are built to be together. Yeah. So constructed to be together. He's got no jealousy. He's got no insecurity. He's just like, it is what it is and he keeps on showing up.

• 1:20:35Chris Williamson?

  For me, with my construction, I need a safe harbor. I need to feel like.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Same, same.

• 1:20:40Chris Williamson?

  I'm done being Chris Williamson and I get to come home and be Christopher.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Chris Williamson?

  And that, like, there's a line, I wrote this a little while ago. Sturgill Simpson has a song that my friend played at his wedding. And I was the best man at his wedding. And I came up with what I think basically every man wants to hear, which is, I know you can be more, but you are enough already. And even if you just stay where you are, I'll be right here next to you. You're going to be great, but you don't need to be great. And I'm with you no matter what. Or, as said best by Sturgill Simpson's mom, boy, I don't care if you hit it big because you're already number one.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  I would say I do right now.

• 1:21:26Chris Williamson?

  But that, I think.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  That is so spot on, man.

• 1:21:29Chris Williamson?

  I agree.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  It's so spot on. Because we feel like we have to go out there and conquer and perform and excel and climb. And, and if you feel like you still have to be on your fucking A game.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  And be nail and be on.

• 1:21:46Chris Williamson?

  Vigilant.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  You know, with your partner, oh, man, that would, that would just be a wreck. And to be honest, it's been a hurdle of mine because that's my default setting. Right? Is to perform, be on, be perfect. And, you know, that I think has caused vulnerability issues for me. Because if I'm vulnerable, then I'm.

• 1:22:07Chris Williamson?

  Chink in the armor.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Then I'm going to not be perfect. You're going to see me not be great. You're going to see me with training wheels on. I don't want you to see me in training.

• 1:22:16Chris Williamson?

  My love will be withdrawn.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Chris Williamson?

  You know, it's been.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Come back when I'm doing flips.

• 1:22:19Chris Williamson?

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• 1:23:02Chris Williamson?

  What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. First of all, Momentous offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. One of the wildest things is this year I've probably been more below the neck than I ever have. It's a journey that I kind of regret and regret. I hate previous me for embarking

• 1:23:45Chris Williamson?

  on it because it's really fucking hard, but I think future me will be proud. But at the moment, I'm in the valley of just eating shit with emotions. But one of the things I've noticed this year, more people have said that they love me than ever before. More friends have said, you know, just, guys, dudes, I like, I fucking love you, man. And then like, you know, just like, it comes out of you sometimes. Sometimes. Maybe it's because we're getting a bit older. Maybe it's because we're part of this movement. Maybe it's because I've released like 30 podcasts this year on fucking emotions and they've all been listening to them and it's, I've red-pilled them.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  You should cry for it.

• 1:24:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. I've red-pilled them with the same kryptonite that I red-pilled myself with and now we're all in the valley of despair together. I'm not too sure. But more, more of my friends have said that they love me this year than ever before. And I, I just have to fucking assume that that's because they actually got to see me a bit. They genuinely got to see me.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Gary though.

• 1:24:36Chris Williamson?

  You know, I'm backstage at some show and I'm just in the fucking trenches. Like, everything, everything, everything, everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. And one of the shows, two weeks ago, one of my boys like hugged me for two minutes, must have been two minutes, and the other one said a prayer while we were there. And then. I go out, did the show, show went good, came back and I was like, fuck, like I borrowed his nervous system.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:01Chris Williamson?

  Like I fucking, like mine was not, mine wasn't robust enough. So like, he fucking lent me some of his peace.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow.

• 1:25:09Chris Williamson?

  So great.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  What would you do in that moment if they're not there? What does that look like?

• 1:25:13Chris Williamson?

  The same thing I've done my entire life. I'm an only child, dude.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Chris Williamson?

  Like I can get through, I can get through anything, but I'm sick of fucking Lone Ranger-ing it. I'm sick of white knuckling my way through it.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:25:23Chris Williamson?

  Because now not only do I know that the show went great and everybody really loved it and the people from C A A were there and they've got all of these notes and, oh, we need to do the blah, blah, thing, all this stuff. But now I've got the memory of like me and the guys backstage and it's not a memory of us high fiving or drinking beers or celebrating. It's like this very small, like kind of mundane, very private, normal.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Chris Williamson?

  Like beautiful memory.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Chris Williamson?

  That I've got where I'm like, fuck, like I borrowed some of Max's nervous system and Bennett said a fucking prayer and like, and that's, you know, see it into my.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  It's like microdosing, going through a hard time together.

• 1:26:01Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  And finding like.

• 1:26:03Chris Williamson?

  And they're watching.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Community.

• 1:26:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, they're seeing it and they're like, fuck, like Chris is, Chris is really fucking suffering at the moment and that's what gets them. And I'm like, oh, if I'd kept that in.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:16Chris Williamson?

  I would have not got the support that I desperately needed.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  You didn't even give them the opportunity. Yeah.

• 1:26:22Chris Williamson?

  They would have not had the opportunity to give that to me. We would not have all gone through this shared experience of difficulty that we came out the other side of, which has now bonded us all together. You know, just an endless list of reasons to do it. And like the reason to not do it is that some people might laugh at you.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:41Chris Williamson?

  It's like, well, I don't know. If the people around you laugh at you when you show your emotions, if you're the sort of person who feels them, and I'm not, I'm not convinced that everybody feels them equally, sort of widely or deeply.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:51Chris Williamson?

  But if you're the sort of person that does, like you need to be around people that can hold that.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:55Chris Williamson?

  They need to be around, I think you, you know, Connor Beaton.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:58Chris Williamson?

  Good friend of mine.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Chris Williamson?

  And, uh. He's got this line where he talks about your friends need to be able to hold you in the complexity of your emotions.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Chris Williamson?

  And some people have got more complexity and some have less. And that's why I think so many friendships that don't work and relationships that don't work are just two people. It's incompatibility. It's not that they're bad. It's that you're fundamentally incompatible. And the.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  You think it's a capacity issue though, yeah?

• 1:27:27Chris Williamson?

  To, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that would be, that's an even better way to put it. Yes.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  But, and that's almost like a choice, though. I'm not sure. It's almost like, is it incompatible because of something innate? Or is it incompatible because you're choosing to not expand your capacity for my shit?

• 1:27:46Chris Williamson?

  I had a great conversation with Connor, like two weeks ago.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:50Chris Williamson?

  And coming out in between Christmas and New Year. And I basically asked this question. I was like, does everybody, because again, me putting on the diving mask and going, going fully down over the last 12 months has, it just keeps growing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the, the amount that my emotions can sort of permeate everything that I do and like my fucking daily experience is so great and so painful at the same time. Like, does everyone feel shit like this? And his position was genuinely, there are some people who just don't have that big of a breadth, or maybe their sort of net of positive and negative is skewed in different sorts of ways.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:34Chris Williamson?

  So, you know, if you're talking about excitement, they're happy to go there with you. But if you want to talk about wistfulness or rumination or vigilance or sadness or anxiety, they're not. And the same vice versa, too. Stan Hatkin has this idea of airplanes and submarines. That plane's nervous systems are able to move real fast and they're kind of up high. And submarines, they go slow and deep and then they take a little while to come back up and repressurize. But. Maybe it is far more people than know it are not feeling feelings because they choose not to than because they can't.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Chris Williamson?

  Like, there is a much bigger proportion of people who should be feeling them and aren't than like can't.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Right, I agree. Yeah. I think there's also, I've had to learn that not everyone is meant to know everything and you're not meant to share everything with everyone. Certain friends are.

• 1:29:27Chris Williamson?

  Selective.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, this is for them, this is, that used to fuck me up, though. It made me feel like I was being fake or something, you know? Like, nah, everyone in my life needs to get every part of me, otherwise I'm being inauthentic. It's like, no, this is, you know?

• 1:29:45Chris Williamson?

  How do you balance vulnerability and strength? You're in an industry which is

• 1:29:52Chris Williamson?

  not exactly renowned for its acceptance of male fragility.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:59Chris Williamson?

  And inner work.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Chris Williamson?

  How do you think about balancing those?

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Um, it's scary and it's getting less scary because I'm doing it. So naturally, I'm, you know, kind of disarming the fear by just facing it. It's scary because I know that not only is the genre that I'm in sort of resistant to vulnerability, but the audience of men are resistant to vulnerability. So, you know, I, I think my music and my career has gone through this transition where I would say before Santiago, this album that I put out 2023, everything before then was me about conquering the external terrain.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  And then Santiago marked the shift in this like line of demarcation where it was, well, now I'm going inward. You know, let me explore this. And now the most recent album is sort of the integration. That's what I'm working on now. Cause again, I said earlier, I don't want to just endlessly self-monitor and just stay in here.

• 1:31:07Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  You know, I do have to figure out what's the new dream now, you know?

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  But. I'm just a very big believer in being vulnerable and confronting the parts of you that are, you know, that you've been trying to act like don't exist. That's real strength. I don't think you're strong for being scared to face yourself. You know, and I think I haven't said it on this song clue that I just put out like a couple of weeks ago where I said the monsters, I'm making mess with monsters that you're scared to face, you know, and the demons you pretend to don't exist, I'm fighting publicly. It's like that to me, what I'm doing, you know, is courageous and I know it is because this is the kind of shit that I was scared to do in private. I was scared to sit with the parts of me that I didn't like in private.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  I'm telling you about him on a song, you know, I'm not rapping about someone else's life. This is my shit. You know what I mean? This is my life. These are songs that are sparking conversations with my parents and family members and like, yo, you know, like this is real life. I'm fighting this shit publicly in hopes that one, it's because it's cathartic for me and I need to, and it's exciting for me to just talk about. It's what I'm passionate about, but two, it's the hopes that a couple more years of doing this, the men in my fan base be like, okay, I can do it now, you know?

• 1:32:35Chris Williamson?

  You've given them permission.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:32:37Chris Williamson?

  You've given them permission and the scariest thing is someone who does that permissionlessly.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Chris Williamson?

  Right. There was no permission to do that.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Chris Williamson?

  Uh, or fewer role models, fewer archetypes.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Chris Williamson?

  Uh, is the reverse of yours that still resonates with you sort of the most deeply, this huge massive back catalog of yours? Is there something that you, you come back to as a philosophy lots?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Wow, I've never been asked that. Shit.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  I have recency bias though. It's just whatever the most recent song is.

• 1:33:11Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Probably Clue. Because Clue is the first song where I have said what I've been trying to say for years, which is you just don't have a clue about what it's like to be me. And I didn't know how to articulate it without sounding like whining about success, you know? And so I was very intentional about not, not making it sound like that, not talking about anything material, really.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  But you know, the second verse is, "I resent your audacity. You can't last as me, you spineless fucker. You can't hold your life together, let alone the lives of others." So you talk it to like, and it goes into this whole thing about just like, "I don't resent you, I resent your audacity, that you think you know what this is. You don't, and that's okay." And what I tell people is, sometimes your level of understanding should just be that you don't understand. And that's gotta be enough.

• 1:34:14Chris Williamson?

  You're claiming that you do.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  And you haven't done the life experience to understand, and you're commenting. So you just haven't earned the experience to comment on this. And that goes for so many people. That's what spawned my post about people comparing struggles. It's like, I would never critique or comment somebody's struggle that I just don't know about. I don't have the resume, I don't have the credentials to comment on what it's like to be, you know, you were a single mom and this happened, you lost your job.

• 1:34:50Chris Williamson?

  A med student.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I don't fucking know. Like, I kinda get imposter syndrome when fans hit me up with like, certain stories of theirs where they're like, "I'm going through this, what do you think I should do?" I'm like, "I have no fucking idea."

• 1:35:02Chris Williamson?

  Sounds fucking hard, dude.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, that's something I've had to learn too, is within my own family is,

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  that fine line between empathy and jumping into the hole with y'all. You know? You're going through a hard time, well fuck it, me too now. Because that to me is what love is and and caring is, but that does us no good.

• 1:35:31Chris Williamson?

  Have you gotten to Joe Hudson? Are you familiar with Joe?

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:35:33Chris Williamson?

  I'll send you some of his stuff. So he's um good, really, really great coach, eastern, western stuff. And he's got a framework for conversations, view, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder. So vulnerability is speaking your truth, especially when it's scary. Impartiality is not trying to change your experience. Empathy is uh sitting in the emotion without becoming the emotion. And wonder is curiosity without an outcome.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:36:02Chris Williamson?

  Um. So view, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Really? That's just emotional sovereignty is what like

• 1:36:09Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Wrapped up is that. That's been the toughest thing for me. How do I hear about a hard time my mom's going through without wanting to make her emotions my emotions?

• 1:36:18Chris Williamson?

  Well, the the problem, there's there's two reasons there, the two two multiple fucking horrible things. First one, uh if you absorb somebody else's emotions as yours, you're now in a much more uh

• 1:36:35Chris Williamson?

  unfunctional position to be able to help them.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. You don't have bandwidth.

• 1:36:39Chris Williamson?

  Secondly, if someone is upset and they see that they're upset is causing you to be upset. That means that they feel like their pain is hurting you and they'll clamp it down.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:36:54Chris Williamson?

  So there isn't room for it.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:36:56Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:36:58Chris Williamson?

  And I mean, one of the things that one of the things that Connor says that I've never heard anybody say before, which I think is such a fucking wonderful, like reassuring uh third place. So Joe talks about speaking from the third place. So first place is judgment, second place is savior, third place is just impartiality. So you can even feel it when you sort of sit in it. So the next time that someone's trying to have a difficult conversation with you, just sat across. If you've got like an open posture, so your feet are on the ground and your hands are just sort of on your thighs. And you're not sort of forward and you're not sort of back and doing the judgment thing. You just sat in a third place and you're balanced between that judgment and that savior position.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:37:39Chris Williamson?

  And uh Connor had this line where he said, uh, your emotions aren't too big for me.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:37:45Chris Williamson?

  Oh dude, your emotions aren't too big for me.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Chris Williamson?

  I can hold you in this. That's fine. I'm safe. I'm okay.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to worry about you. You worry about you. You don't need to worry about me.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:57Chris Williamson?

  Right? And I just thought, I thought he was so wonderful.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  It is, man. God, that has been a challenge of my thirties. I've gotten better at it now, but it used to be, I couldn't understand why me swooping in to fix things and and being so affected by your emotions to the point where they feel like they're mine. What I was doing wrong. I could have swore like, no, you're the one that's fucked up for catastrophizing small shit and freaking out to the point where I gotta feel like I gotta swoop in. But I had to learn that, well, wait a second. I'm not doing anyone a service by jumping into this fucking lake with you while you're drowning, but you're not really drowning. Your feet are on the floor. You're just flapping your arms.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  And I'm starting to flap my arms too. Like, yeah, what is going, you know what I mean? That's not doing anything. So I had to learn.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  My emotions end here and yours start there. And there's space. And now I can still be here for you.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  And I can help. And if you don't want a solution, that's fine. I can just be here.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  And I, and I have so much more bandwidth now. I had no bandwidth my whole life. Because I wasn't just dealing with my emotions. I had hers, I had his. I had, it was all part of my shit. You know, and I'm, it's not like perfect now, but just understanding that concept of emotional sovereignty has been life changing.

• 1:39:30Chris Williamson?

  When you start off as permeable, as absorbent as you were.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Chris Williamson?

  Even the smallest movement in the right direction feels like a massive gain.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I mean, if, if it's such a normal response.

• 1:39:44Chris Williamson?

  It's such a normal response. Somebody's going through something and you want to say it's gonna be okay. You want to make them be okay. Cause they're in pain and you don't want them to be in pain.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Chris Williamson?

  But you saying to somebody who's in pain, it's gonna be okay, is the same as you saying, your not okay-ness is making me not okay and I need you to be okay so that I can be okay.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:06Chris Williamson?

  There is, there is no room for your emotions. They're too big. They're too big and they're making me uncomfortable or I don't think that you can handle them or something. So I'm gonna step in and I'm gonna like pervert this direction that you're on. As opposed to just going, fuck man, I'm really sorry that you're feeling that.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Chris Williamson?

  Really sorry that you're feeling that.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  You know what Connor told me one time is getting to the place where your partner or someone that you love has a bad day, you're allowed to have a good day though. Them having a bad day.

• 1:40:41Chris Williamson?

  Oh wow, yeah. Like. And it's not threatening to them and it's not guilt ridden to you.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Your wife, your mom, whoever, they can be having a bad day and you're still allowed to have a good day.

• 1:40:52Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  And that was a huge shift for me because I was like nah, if my girl's having a bad, I'm like, I'm upset. But then that creates that whole, oh, so me being upset is now making you upset?

• 1:41:03Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  And it's just a mess.

• 1:41:04Chris Williamson?

  Obligation.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  There's no space. Yeah.

• 1:41:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, obligation's a weird one. Yeah, man, that um, in order for you to not be okay, i- i- yeah, i- i- in order for, for me to be okay, I mean, I need you to not be okay. Um, like, that's the inverse, which is people who take a, a degree of like cathartic, resentful pleasure in their part, just somebody in their life falling behind. That's the rivalrous sort of nature thing. So it, it occurs on both, both sides. Like the people that you're coming up with, you're brushing shoulders and a couple of sharp elbows with and you see somebody fall behind and then, so if you reflect on that enough and you're an empathetic human, you realize that that's kind of a toxic fuel and you don't really want to be using that.

• 1:41:49Chris Williamson?

  You, you don't want your success to stand on the other shoulder, the shoulders of other people's downfalls.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:53Chris Williamson?

  And then the people in your life, if they feel bad, now you feel bad. Like you felt guilty for that one and yeah, so you, that emotional sovereignty, I think is a lovely way to think about. Joe, uh, an equivalent of that is vagal authority. Uh, where he says in a room, if somebody is losing their shit, do you? Maintain your vagal independence.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:15Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, yeah, I think that's a, it's cool that you've arrived at the same realization.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, my default setting was to be intertwined. You know? So even with, um,

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  even with my career, you know what I mean? Projected onto my fans, like the emotional enmeshment I'm in with my fans and career is damaging sometimes. You know, because sometimes I'll feel, again, I'll catastrophize what's happening in my life because the streams being low this time feels existential. And then I'll show up

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  with that energy to the world and to my fans and it, it's.

• 1:42:53Chris Williamson?

  What does that energy look like?

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  I don't know if it is, I think it's covert. I hope it's covert.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  It's like, no, we can tell.

• 1:43:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a mess.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're a mess and we know.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  I, I honestly, I don't know what it looks like for them. I think for me, it's more visceral, it's frantic, it's panicky, it's, um, bouncing off the walls, it's, I gotta make something happen right now, I gotta make something shake, you know? And, uh,

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  yeah, it's like, sometimes I, I don't know if this, I feel like this is related because I'm feeling compelled to say it. Sometimes I wish I was

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  the kind of artist who could drop one album every two years and it's huge and massive. You do the tour and I'll see you all in two years. You know? It's

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  50% of the reason why I drop so much music is because I love making songs and sharing them genuinely. The other 50% is because none of these have gone huge yet, to the point where I can take time off. You know what I mean? And.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  It's some of that franticness, some of that existential, oh my god, the ship is sinking, is what fuels the output still to this day.

• 1:44:14Chris Williamson?

  Same for me, dude. Same for me. Six years in, a three a week, you'll be episode one thousand one hundred and fifty, one thousand one hundred, something like that.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  I don't want to give the universe a chance.

• 1:44:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, just crushing.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  A chance to move on.

• 1:44:27Chris Williamson?

  Crushing volumes of evidence. Like, there is no way that with this much output that that.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Something's gotta happen.

• 1:44:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. But it is, uh, you make yourself a victim of your own work rate.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Chris Williamson?

  Um, and there's an idea called the Red Queen effect. I think anyone's ever talked about this, at least not in music, which is crazy because it's a fucking sick idea. So in Alice in Wonderland, um, Alice is running around a tree and she runs faster and faster and faster around the tree, but she starts moving more slowly. There's a line from the Red Queen where she says, "You see, my dear, you now have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place."

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 1:45:06Chris Williamson?

  I think that's really cool. Yeah. It's the, the classic, full calendar day, and now you need to become more efficient and you need an assistant to take on the extra calls and you've got to do the, and before you know it, in order to just stay in the same place, you have to work as hard as you ever have. Fuck.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  That's why the idea of climbing another mountain is fun. Because it, I, I kinda alluded to, uh, when you're cutting weight versus bulking versus maintenance. Maintenance sucks for me because there's no big change happening. Cutting, you see weight flying off, or bulking, you see weight flying on. And to your point, it's just, it, it gets exhausting, having to exert so much energy just to maintain.

• 1:46:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah, because you set yourself a, a pace.

• 1:46:06Chris Williamson?

  When the fuel was different.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:46:09Chris Williamson?

  And you know, this is another Joe Hudson thing where he says, when you become successful, your job is not to work hard, your job is to have great ideas. And if, if your goal is to make it, and then you do make it, and you're still punishing yourself just as much as you were in the beginning, you've still got that sort of come up energy in many ways. That's compelling. It, it's inspiring to people.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Chris Williamson?

  It feels grassroots and sort of upward aiming and noble. But so much of that is you being terrified that if, a few things, if people see you take your foot off the gas, maybe you'll become irrelevant. Or if people see you take your foot off the gas, they'll think that you've become a bourgeois, luxuriating, like incumbent, right? You're like, you're a nepo baby, but you're the father and the child.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. That's the, the real fear is that it's, I'm gonna lose relevance. And the only way to find out if I can be one of those artists who can go away and come back and not, is by doing it, but then you might find out too late.

• 1:47:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, not everyone's John Bellion.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've seen that happen to artists, you know? Or yeah, the, oh, who do you think you are? You think you're just this.

• 1:47:26Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to work so hard.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  It goes back to the overrated underrated thing. There's a real sick part of my fucking mind that is terrified of more success. Because right now, to my fans, I'm still very much slept on and underrated.

• 1:47:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Right? What happens if and when I catch the Billboard top 10 song and it's massive? Well, now, are you gonna root for me now? Cause now I'm Tom Brady. You know what I mean? Now it's like, are you gonna root for the person who's winning? Even though I'm winning, but to the like,

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  from an optics viewpoint, it's like, well, he's not this super mainstream guy. He's still so slept on, he's not in the conversations. And part of me is like, let me just stay right here.

• 1:48:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  It's like, I'm an underdog forever.

• 1:48:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:48:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, again, so much of that is a very accurate representation of the way that human psychology works, unfortunately. And it is that underdog overrated thing that.

• 1:48:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, when you're on your way up, people support you because you remind them of their dreams. And when you're at the top, people try to tear you down because you remind them of what they gave up on. And um, God, yes. It's a, Alex, one of my friends, has this story about where he started off his gym business, sleeping on the gym floor. And it was underneath a, like a car park that had these metal rivets in. So every time a car drove over at night, we'd go

• 1:49:01Chris Williamson?

  and he was sleeping on the gym floor. And he was the underdog. People loved him when he was the underdog. All they wanted to do was see him succeed. And now he know that he's slept, he's moved his bedding over to the far side of the gym. And then he'd take the classes and then he'd move it back at night. And then 18 months later, I think he'd maybe expanded to a couple of locations. And when people came in, they'd be like, boss man, how's everything going? And he's like, well, I did what you, I did what you said you wanted me to do. I did it.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Chris Williamson?

  And now that I've done it, you, the dynamics changed.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:35Chris Williamson?

  And you're no longer in my corner.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  People want you to be in pursuit forever. Cause that's relatable.

• 1:49:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that's great. That's so true.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  They just want you to be in pursuit. They never want you to get there. If you get there and I'm not there, what's that say about me? Oh, you think you're better than me because you got there.

• 1:49:51Chris Williamson?

  Well, also, you're no longer relatable. Because if you're, if you've made it, then you're not, and maybe that's part of the reason that

• 1:50:04Chris Williamson?

  if you appear to take your foot off the gas a little bit, that it doesn't seem like you're still on the climb.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:50:11Chris Williamson?

  It feels like you're just sort of floating with momentum.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Well, in a fucked way, I'm scared that if more people like me, more people will not like me.

• 1:50:20Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's true.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:50:21Chris Williamson?

  Any, any increase in love often feels like an increase in hate because we forget the compliments and we remember the criticism. So if any time that your platform grows and you get, you know, the proportion of love stays the same, which is what you're trying to do and you should do on average, right? It's like, you know, 99 to one, love to hate.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Chris Williamson?

  But because you forget the love, any increase just feels like an increase in hate. Because your brain is like Teflon for good thoughts and Velcro for bad thoughts.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a radar for negativity, it's just on the hunt.

• 1:50:56Chris Williamson?

  Always, always looking for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an interesting difference between the UK and the US. And I wonder whether this, this will happen within sort of small communities too. But um, in America, I think on average, more people want to see you win in case you take them with you. And in the UK, people want to see you stay where you are in case you leave them behind.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:51:17Chris Williamson?

  And this disparity between the two. So there was a, an article that came out in um, The Times, uh, and the lady who wrote this article was basically saying, we've got three podcasters from the UK in the top 10 this year, uh, and it's really cringe and embarrassing because they're all doing personal development. And British people should be, they should satisfyingly wallow in their own misery. And they're sort, they should be stiff upper lipped in their own loneliness and discomfort. And trying to sort of improve yourself is, is sort of like lame and cringe and very Americanized and, and, and not cool. And um, I just thought, what a, what a shame. I mean, our country is not exactly showering itself in glory at the moment.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:02Chris Williamson?

  And uh, if there was any better representation of how much the UK culture is one of tall poppy syndrome, that even in the opportunity to celebrate the fact that we're punching above our weight on the world stage, when the country's kind of eating shit at the moment.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:20Chris Williamson?

  No, it's cra, we shouldn't have done it. We should have done it. We should have.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  You should have succeeded this way.

• 1:52:26Chris Williamson?

  Ironic speech. It was too honest. It was too serious. You were trying to make, you, you remember your place. Remember where you are. Remember where you're from.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:52:33Chris Williamson?

  And uh, I thought, what a, what a wonderful example of, of, of our culture. Like, that's our cultural export at the moment. Not this. Not, not a conversation about earnestness and bravery with emotions and trying to improve yourself. Not a uh, ungainly, unwieldy, uh, delicate conversation about how to balance lots of conflicting and intention desires in life, but like a piss-taking comment going lol, this is fucking gay.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  Dare I say on brand because it's a bit snobby.

• 1:53:05Chris Williamson?

  Dude, it fucking worked. It worked. But it works, it works for a very specific cohort. And this is why unfortunately the UK, for, for a wild variety of reasons, but the culture is not insignificant. We have um, we have the same number of universities in the top 10. Globally as America does.

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:53:22Chris Williamson?

  But we produce eighty percent fewer entrepreneurs. And you go King's College, London, Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Durham's in there, I'm not sure. It's at least three. And you think, so our candidate, remembering that we'll have Americans.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Chris Williamson?

  Right? So like, we'll imbibe people from other countries.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:42Chris Williamson?

  Fucking Stockholm syndrome into our culture of like,

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  Don't get too big for your boots. Yeah.

• 1:53:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, dude, this is so hilarious. I just thought it was so interesting.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  I think society wants to keep people at arm's length when it comes to relatability. It's too scary when you're so far away from where I'm at, you know? Especially when I knew you when you were right there. It's just confronting for people. And I just think people want you to be successful, just not more than them. I mean, like, climb up the ladder. Just don't pass me, though. I want you to climb as high as you can, as long as it's not higher than me.

• 1:54:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, as high, but just a tiny little bit.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  And then stay here forever and let's grind it out.

• 1:54:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Forever. Let's be in a perpetual grind.

• 1:54:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I love that idea about people want to always see you in pursuit.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's something romantic about it. There's something relatable about it.

• 1:54:43Chris Williamson?

  But that that keeps people sort of with their with their foot on the gas. Again, like, if the things that you want to have happen, happen. If you build the business, the body, the whatever, what happens when you get there? What is your plan when you finally get there? Because you kind of need to have one. And what you'll find is, if you think about, you're doing this big fucking journey, this massive, massive journey. And you've got to get to this place that's really, really, really far away. And the start of the journey is you going across a river. So you're in a boat. And then you realize five hundred miles later.

• 1:55:18Chris Williamson?

  That you're out of the river, but you're still carrying the fucking boat on your head. You're like, this tool, this fuel was meant for then, but it's not meant for now. And I think we have a very poor judgment of when we're supposed to let go of those tools of need for validation, insufficiency, desperate desire to be liked by that girl.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:36Chris Williamson?

  The kids that didn't believe in me in school, like finally make mom and dad love me, whatever. Like, you're very bad at switching fuels.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, but again, it's because most people live in this suspended chase forever. Most people are chasing the thing forever. And so they're not trying to hear any sort of pitfalls of the thing. I'm chasing that. Do you mind? You know what I mean? Like, that's the mentality. And what can you tell them? It's kind of like, you know, think about the Alchemist book and Santiago just getting to the oasis and.

• 1:56:16Chris Williamson?

  Is that where the name for the Albin came from?

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Chris Williamson?

  Have you walked it, the Camino?

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:56:21Chris Williamson?

  So I don't know whether I'm going to, but I, uh, I might do the epilogue to the Santiago over New Year.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:56:29Chris Williamson?

  So you do the big Camino to Santiago, you finish in Santiago Square.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Is that the, I think, I'm talking about Paulo Coelho though.

• 1:56:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  That's it?

• 1:56:37Chris Williamson?

  So Santiago's, um, it's a different Camino, but I think Paulo Coelho walked it and.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:44Chris Williamson?

  It's got to be related to his name. The journey that he takes, takes him through fucking Egypt and the rest of the stuff. Um, but anyway, you walk from east to west and Santiago's kind of northwest of Spain, kind of above, above Portugal, but there's an epilogue to the walk. And it goes from Santiago to Finisterre. And they thought it's the most westerly point of Spain, and they thought it was the edge of the world.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 1:57:10Chris Williamson?

  Because out in front of you is just the Atlantic.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:57:12Chris Williamson?

  So, uh, it's about.

• 1:57:15Chris Williamson?

  A ninety K, something like that, and you can do it in five days-ish. So I'm thinking, I'm gonna go to my mom and dad's for Christmas and then I'm gonna fly there on my own. And I'm thinking about doing that over New Year's.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:26Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, walk to the, the edge of the world from

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:57:29Chris Williamson?

  The Middle Ages.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Perception.

• 1:57:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were saying Santiago album.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think that, you know, it's kind of like Santiago goes on this whole journey. He falls in love with the girl in the desert, the oasis. He wants to stay at the oasis, but he's like, that's not even what the fuck I was supposed to be doing. And she's like, you're a man of the desert, you're supposed to keep going. And he goes to the pyramid, he gets to the pyramid and he swears that there's gold there. And he, you know, that's why he was going. And he's digging the shit up and there's no gold. And then he just like hits his ass beat. And they joke with him like, oh, he's probably thinking about the gold that's buried under that tree in Andalusia, which is where the story starts, is Santiago waking up under this tree where the gold was at the whole time. So I don't, I still kind of oscillate on what to make of it, but I just think it's kind of,

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  how I interpreted it was, it was you all along. That was the last kind of song on my album was, you were looking for you, but you needed to go on this journey to end up kind of right back where you were, which is with yourself and understanding that the journey was beautiful. You met this girl, you met Fatima, you know, you met all these people, you learned what you're capable of, which I think is kind of why men have this fascination with self sabotaging, you know, is because we all want to see what we're capable of, you know? And it's kind of fucked, it's a very toxic attraction to bottoming out, you know?

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  What are we capable of? But that goes back to

• 1:59:06Chris Williamson?

  When the chips are down?

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that goes back to not having enough initiatory experiences.

• 1:59:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I think it's certainly the thing, and this wasn't my insight, I'm stealing it, but

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  That wasn't mine either.

• 1:59:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I think that it's, um, the best reading of that story, in my opinion, is

• 1:59:30Chris Williamson?

  Ending up at the place that you started is not the same as having never left.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's beautiful.

• 1:59:36Chris Williamson?

  In order to go on this journey. So there's this example, I think it's

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  That's so beautiful.

• 1:59:39Chris Williamson?

  Some ancient Greek philosopher like Aristotle or something. And he said, imagine that you have a cork bobbing in the ocean and you have a ship that goes out and they're friends. And the ship goes out, sails around, goes and visits places and people get on and people get off. And there's a cork that's bobbing in the harbor. And then the ship eventually, after this long, long, long journey, it comes back and the cork in the ship, they talk to each other and the ship says to the cork, well, sort of what did you do? Did you go on a journey? It said, well, you know, I was, I was here. I was out in the ocean. I've been to the ocean the same time as you.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:11Chris Williamson?

  It's the difference between going on a journey and staying in the harbor and bobbing up and down. The time's going to pass anyway. You're still in the water.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:20Chris Williamson?

  But what have you done? What did that adventure?

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  About fulfillment, right? Yeah. It's funny too, you know, I always think about that old like fisherman proverb. When you talk about what do you do when you arrive? You know, the whole like the guys out on the boat fishing, the businessman comes. This is what I'm doing right now, you know, it's, but it's so, it's just so strange. I can't, I can't get a grasp on where my hunger is supposed to be.

• 2:00:46Chris Williamson?

  Well, humans aren't designed to arrive. We've never been designed to arrive.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:51Chris Williamson?

  You know, even ancestrally, when agricultural revolution, like 13,000 years ago, something like that. Before that, the amount of food that you could store was as much as you could collect that day plus a bit.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:06Chris Williamson?

  There is no arriving. There is just constant pursuit. There is just strive.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Chris Williamson?

  So we are really maladapted to an environment in which you can actually take your foot off the gas. And then if you've been given a lot of reward by the world and you've habituated it, you've built all of these patterns and these sources of validation and just your daily behavioral routines. I need to let go of all of this, plus a few million years of programming. In a desperate attempt to just be, be able to go.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  To just be.

• 2:01:37Chris Williamson?

  I've arrived. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Good luck.

• 2:01:40Chris Williamson?

  And then.

• 2:01:43Chris Williamson?

  Where does your sense of self-worth come from then? And I think that that's the big question that people, you know, lots of people that listen to your music and listen to my show will become successful and they will face a question that's not too dissimilar to this, which is, fuck, I thought that this thing was the answer to my problems. It's not. Am I going to keep eating more of the food that I know doesn't hydrate me? In a desperate attempt to think that it will, or am I going to turn around and try and find where this sort of problem comes from? And that's the therapy thing.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  I think in the meantime, I just keep doing the work. I keep making the

• 2:02:16Chris Williamson?

  What does that look like to you?

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  Well, for me, just

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  learning that

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  the fruits of my labor, that whole saying, the labor's the fruit. You know, and so while I try to figure out what the fuck to do and where to go and where to point my ambition and hunger and where where to get a charge from in the new dream.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  I'm gonna at least keep my feet moving and keep doing the work of my artistry. Because that is still a huge sense of fulfillment for me. To still make a song, to have an idea, turn nothing into something, to execute an idea. For it to sound like this in my head and then it comes out sounding like that. It's still extremely rewarding. It's visceral when it happens. And so it's been a huge support system for me, my, my creative side, because while I try to figure everything else out. At least I have sustenance from this thing still, you know, without any metrics. I always tell people, if I make what I want to make, the song is a success. It has to be.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  I can't keep living and dying by the industry's metrics. As existential as it feels to look at those numbers, I can't play that game. I have to change the metrics of success to, did I make what I want? Did I put out and share what I want? And did I share it in the way I wanted to share it? And when I wanted to and all that.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  That creative freedom and creative execution has to be my metric.

• 2:03:55Chris Williamson?

  It feels like authenticity.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:58Chris Williamson?

  Well, the problem there is.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  Like alignment is the new reward, you know?

• 2:04:01Chris Williamson?

  Congruence.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's a massive problem with audience capture that people don't realize. Throwing red meat to your audience, making what you think that they want to hear, et cetera, et cetera. You know, it's the YouTuber or podcaster that just starts beef with anybody they can because.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  I love how you just said that. Throwing red meat to your audience is so, I love that. It's so true.

• 2:04:24Chris Williamson?

  It's the musician that just has reverse engineered the exact type of beat or sound that's popular at the moment. And I'm going to do it and then it'll work or whatever. But the problem is, there's many millions, gazillions of problems. One of the really existential ones, if you do try and go down that route, is if the audience doesn't like what you did, you have no route out because you don't know what you were trying to achieve because it didn't come from you internally. And you will fucking hate your audience because you said, I did this for you. It's like.

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  I resent them.

• 2:04:56Chris Williamson?

  It's like being the child of a tough parent, not wanting to go and play violin, playing violin, making chair. And then your parent not being impressed and you're going, but I did it all for you. I did it for your adoration. I didn't do it because I wanted to. And you will hate your audience.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:12Chris Williamson?

  You will hate your audience if you make something for them. You will hate your audience if you just make stuff for them, no matter how successful it is or not. But if you make something for them and then they don't love it, you're going to feel, yeah, it's going to shoot you through the hogs. You go, I didn't even do it. I didn't even do me. I did this for you and you rejected me.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's a, Rick Rubin always talks about the audience has to come last, which I think is just so true. And it's harder when there is an audience, kind of what we were saying earlier. It's real easy to put the audience last when there isn't an audience.

• 2:05:41Chris Williamson?

  Of course, I don't care. It's like, no one cares.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  You're not.

• 2:05:45Chris Williamson?

  You mean you don't care?

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Nobody cares. That's, it's, man, that creative freedom, that is. Maybe the biggest thing I miss about um the come up and being like an up and coming artist. Is the innate freedom that just comes with it. You know, I know nobody's watching, so I I don't have a doubt in my mind that I'm making what I actually want to make back then. But now I think I'm making what I want to make. But there's no way I can say that with full confidence because even if it's subconscious, there is something that's saying, you know, you know, people are gonna hear this, right?

• 2:06:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the the one advantage, I think, I have many disadvantages over the world of live music and and recorded music. One of the advantages is that during a conversation, your ability to

• 2:06:38Chris Williamson?

  restrict what it is that you mean and what you say, your your ability to perform um does get eroded a little bit. You know, if you're two hours into a conversation, you're usually sort of bits of you start to leak out. Like authenticity begins to bleed through. Yeah, very difficult to keep the endurance race going. Um, and if that's the case, it means well.

• 2:07:02Chris Williamson?

  I can probably be pretty reliably assured that what I'm saying is actually like pretty aligned with what I'm mean to say and what I feel.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Chris Williamson?

  And um, yeah, when you spend so long refining, two in the morning, you're looking at this fucking kick drum for the thousandth time. Like going like, fuck, should I put more cutoff on it? I don't know if I don't know if I do. I don't know if I like the sound of it. Maybe I should just sack this entire thing off. But the the opportunity for you to obsess, I that I've never even realized that before, but that's a real blessing, I think of this. There really is one and done, and we don't edit anything. We never cut anything.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 2:07:40Chris Williamson?

  Um, which means that the tightrope walk of if you fucked it, or if there was a long pause, or if you forget a thing, like that's in because it was part of the vibe.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:50Chris Williamson?

  You're not supposed to, it's a difference between a track which is supposed to be as perfect as possible. Right? You can have just played like one note like bing, okay, we'll add that in and then bing, and then we'll add that in and that over time will construct a fucking riff. The opposite would be one take, all instruments, single mic.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  A lot of my best shit is accidents.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  Because I don't believe in accidents in the studio. A lot of times are accidentally.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  Fill in this pattern of a hi-hat or accidentally like I meant to click on that piano sound, but I clicked on this plucked fucking sound from

• 2:08:29Chris Williamson?

  Mandolin.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I went to do the melody and I was like, oh shit, that's crazy. You know, so it's so many times, that's where you kind of have to um, start exercising your ability to surrender, you know, surrender to the moment, surrender to the idea that surrender to faith, really, that's been a big challenge of mine, faith in general. I've had to do that at my shows, you know, because doing the show sober, right before I go on stage, the last thing I have to do, the obligation that I have, is to commit to surrendering. It's gonna be out of my control once I'm up there, you know? I don't know if this is a good crowd, bad crowd, they're gonna, if the mic's gonna fucking go out,

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  my ears are gonna go out, but I gotta surrender because when I start feeling like what's about to be out there, like da-da-da, now I'm in my head, I gotta get in my body, but to get in my body, my thoughts and my brain has to surrender to the concept of faith. But faith is difficult for me because I don't trust anyone more than I trust myself, you know? And that's real tough because I micromanage fucking everything. Because I would rather be the reason why something fucks up than you. Because at least, you know what, I took the last shot.

• 2:09:44Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  You know, but that's, it's not collaborative, you know? It doesn't curate or foster any trust with coworkers, you know? Because it just makes them feel incompetent. So you don't trust that I can do my job. No, I do, I think I just do it better, you know, but like that used to be the mentality.

• 2:10:06Chris Williamson?

  That's the, any solopreneur that's ripped a project off the launchpad themselves.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:13Chris Williamson?

  You did do everything.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  And it's still that delusional self-belief that I can do that.

• 2:10:21Speaker 01

  Because again, it also comes from knowing I was not the most talented out the gate. That I had to work and bust my ass and spend so much time in the studio. To just even get my shit to a level where it could be enjoyed by a shit ton of people. So I look at any other endeavor the same. I'm like, if I spend enough time, I do think I could get good at that.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  I just do because I, this didn't come easy. Now, if this came easy to me, I think I would.

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  Not, I would just not understand the grind of getting good at something, of developing the skill. I know that I have what it takes to commit to something and build a skill, but sometimes, again, it's like you're. And my friends have told me this, like you're downplaying how talented you were, though. You did have talent.

• 2:11:13Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:11:15Chris Williamson?

  It sounds more romantic to say that you had nothing.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  But then when I look at it from a logical POV, I'm like, if you go play.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  If fifteen year old me played his beats for thirty-three year old me now, I would genuinely think he's not gonna make it. That's why when people play me their music, I'm like, what do you want me to say? Because I should have no authority or control or influence on.

• 2:11:45Speaker 01

  Your decision to keep going or not going, because I would tell myself his shit sucked. I would have told me to stop, you know?

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  So I don't know, I just, I think that's what's kind of given me the audacity to think I could write a book. Or I could act, or I could go play basketball in Vietnam. Because why not? I fucking became an artist and I was trash. You know?

• 2:12:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Russ, ladies and gentlemen, dude, you're awesome.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 2:12:11Chris Williamson?

  Where should people go? What can they expect next?

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  Um, what do I have next? More music to combat the anxiety I have of being forgotten?

• 2:12:18Chris Williamson?

  Yep, yep.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, music, uh, I got a movie coming out in, um, hopefully like. In the spring of next year, which is exciting.

• 2:12:27Chris Williamson?

  Congratulations.

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, yeah, just catch me spiraling on social media.

• 2:12:33Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, yeah.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. This was incredible. I appreciate you having me. Seriously.

• 2:12:39Speaker 04

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