JAMES SMITH | How To Design A Life You Love | Modern Wisdom Podcast 205

James Smith is a PT and not a life coach. Following your default desires and social norms is a surefire route to misery, yet we're given very little guidance on how to design a life we love. Open wide for today's red pill . Expect to learn James' principles for avoiding a dreary existence, his best tips for a first date, how to overcome anxiety, why wealth can't just be quantified in a bank account, why dick pics aren't that bad and much more... Sponsor: Shop Eleiko’s full range at https://www.shop.eleiko.com (enter code MW15 for 15% off everything) Extra Stuff: Pre Order Not A Life Coach - https://amzn.to/30VkVdb Join James' Academy - https://www.jamessmithacademy.com/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #jamessmith #notalifecoach #notadietbook - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00James Smith?

  There's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it. A lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth are preventing people from doing that. If I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint because ultimately I think it's letting a lot of people down.

• 0:20Chris Williamson?

  James bloody Smith in the building. How are you doing, man?

• 0:25James Smith?

  I'm very well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. I think this has been quite a long overdue.

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  Very, very, very long time coming. Yes. So the internet, the internet is waiting on tenterhooks to hear what we've got to say today. So just to clarify, you're not a life coach and you also didn't write a diet book. So who, who are you then?

• 0:48James Smith?

  I'm still trying to figure that out myself, mate. I felt like I was someone that didn't belong to the fitness industry, but I was in it. And then I certainly don't want to belong to the life coach industry, but I still want to venture into it. I feel like I'm almost like a lost, a lost sheep amongst everyone else. Like getting into fitness, I had such passion for it, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this. I fucking hated most of the people that I was with. And what I didn't want to do was recreate any of their work in the slightest. And funnily enough, the name for that first book came, I was pissed with my publishers at Hawkesmore. And you go to Hawkesmore for like a nice lunch in London.

• 1:30James Smith?

  It's like 5:30 PM, we're doing shots at the table still with the last people in the restaurant. And someone's like, well, what are we going to call it? Because it's not a diet book. And I was like smashed. I was like, that's what we're going to call it.

• 1:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fucking, fucking great that, mate. Three more tequilas, please.

• 1:46James Smith?

  Yeah, that was pretty much it. And it was kind of like a nuanced title because everyone in the fitness industry brings out their own like fucking diet book or their system or whatever it was. And I wanted people straight from me off to think, oh, not another flipping personal trainer releasing another stupid book about broccoli and burpees. And what pained me was there are people in the fitness industry that I raised my eyebrows when I read their books. And I was like, their book's perfectly right. They did talk about the calorie deficit. They did talk about this. But then the book was fucking boring. And I was like, and I'm not going to name any names. And I was like, How can I do this? How can I kind of come in with enough anecdotes, information, and not try and talk about broccoli?

• 2:30Chris Williamson?

  The big thing that I've realised upon doing this podcast and speaking to people, like multiple, multiple New York Times bestsellers and the guys that are the top writers in the world, understand that context is important to deliver a key point. It's the same reason why when you're scrolling through Instagram, you see an inspirational quote, which might be the condensation of an entire life's work from one of the smartest people on the planet, just synthesised into a single sentence. But why doesn't it change your life? Because it's in the wrong context. It's like booty picture, booty picture, dog photo, funny cat video, inspirational quote, booty picture, booty picture. You're not in the right frame of mind, there's no context to it. So I think that you need to have that framing around

• 3:15Chris Williamson?

  the message that then actually delivers what people want. And that improves retention, which improves compliance, which actually means it becomes effective.

• 3:24James Smith?

  Yeah, 100%. I mean, even Tim Ferriss on 50/50 with some of his work and others, in the four hour work week, the way he butts up his points and uses stories, anecdotes, travel, you know, all of these things, and then brings you to a salient point. And you're like, wow, you've almost been warmed up like foreplay. And then that point when you read it is so much better because you're enthralled in it, rather than, you know, if he was just to open the first chapter and go, the opposite of happiness is boredom. You've got, oh, fuck off your American cliche, you know. So you're 100% correct. And it's almost probably having a physical book. At first, I didn't appreciate that you've got someone's full attention. Whereas social media is, it's like chatting up a bird while someone else started chatting

• 4:08James Smith?

  up five minutes before and they've not finished talking.

• 4:13Chris Williamson?

  That's a good, that is a good analogy. So talk us through this new book. What's going on?

• 4:18James Smith?

  So the interesting thing that I found from the first book was when I met people on the tour and I travelled, no one was, no one would sit with me and go, fucking hell, mate. The way you broke down, if it fits your macros changed my life. No one was really like, mate, the thermic effect of protein was fucking exciting. The, the things that like really made people excited, they were like, James, I've realised the sunk cost fallacy is affecting me. I realised after reading your book that I've only, I'm only with my boyfriend because of how long I've already been with him. Not because I want to be with him. And there was one girl in particular and she was like, I've just broken up my boyfriend. I was like, when? She was like, yesterday. I was like, how long have you been with him? She was like, eight years.

• 5:00James Smith?

  And I was like, holy shit. Like, I was like, at the time, I was like, I'm sorry. She was like, no, no, no, don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. And the feeling I got from that was it wasn't the first time this has happened because I actually did this when I was a PT. When I was on the gym floor and someone would come in, they'd vent about their boyfriend. I'm like, why didn't you just break up with him? Oh, we've been together four years, you know? And I was proactively doing it back then. That's how it found its way into the book. But to me, it was, it was those conversations I had with people that really resonated the most. And then when I stripped it back, I realised the, the things that people liked from the first book wasn't fitness stuff. So I was like, I might have to do this again without the fitness jargon.

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  Just as well, it's not a diet book, but it should have been even less of a diet book, would have, would have maybe hit even harder.

• 5:45James Smith?

  But then I still think it would have been a perfect companion for someone starting that journey because I'm sure you're well aware that when you're trying to get people to start a new chapter or begin a new identity, they do need to strip away often a lot of relationships. And, you know, I'm sure you probably run a lot of people the wrong way when becoming more successful. And you're like, oh, we were friends, but this person's going to slow me down. And Arming people kind of the knowledge to do that is is one thing. I suppose the second book, Not a Life Coach, gave me, I don't want to be this guru. I don't want to be there like, you know, hey, guys, you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to. But I want to step in and be like, right, there's a, there's an interesting part in the book where I talk about dating.

• 6:30James Smith?

  And I say to people, we live in a world where we don't chat each other up anymore because we're fucking petrified. We're petrified of engaging with people because of how social media has changed us. A DM is now the way you can be chivalrous. And, you know, instead of going, hey, I think you're beautiful, can I have your number? We're down like, what's your Insta, babe? And we've completely deconstructed this whole, you know, approach to dating. And I personally see around me a huge dropout rate with first dates. Based primarily around the fact there's a lot of anxiety from both parties. But the anxiety is shared. Catfishing is getting worse both sides through people not portraying a real identity of themselves on dating apps.

• 7:14James Smith?

  We've got face tuning, we've got angles, we've got Adobe Lightroom fucking pulling five years off of you, you know? And suddenly because of this, people are becoming more and more apprehensive to meet people. And they're worried about so many factors. So even in, even in one part of the book, I was like, here's a different approach. Don't go for drinks or dinner on a first date. Ask someone if you can walk them from their office to the tube. Why don't you take the dog out for a walk? Why don't you grab a coffee? Why don't we deconstruct this kind of notion in society that we need to go balls in on a first date? Because we've all been on a date with a person in front of us. We're wondering in and we go, fucking, I'm gonna have to get smashed. I'm gonna have to get smashed to endure this. And I was like, there's one part of the book where I was like, why don't we just do something shorter, sweeter?

• 7:59James Smith?

  You know, saying to someone, just get an ice cream. Oh, you train at the gym, just a quarter mile from me. Why don't we have a protein shake together or something? Because then you can deconstruct that anxiety for that first proper date, just in shortly meeting someone. And that's just a very small strategy to, to help someone with their life. And that's not Tony Robbins shit. That's just me going, hey, this is something that I've started doing. Why don't you try it too? And my friends around me are doing it. And I was like, this is so valuable. And. Just changing the way that we approach things to improve their success rate is supposedly what the book's all about. And that's, that's just one of the bits. Have you ever found yourself doing that?

• 8:35Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Yeah. I had a conversation with Amanda Cuda, who is a female coach in America, dating, big into sobriety, which I am dipping in and out of myself. And her number one idea for a date is a walking date. Like she has a, you know, you've, you've stumbled upon something that's like that. So I've got a question here that was, why should anyone listen to life advice from you? But you've already answered it. And it's the same reason as to why I think people resonate with my content and, and perhaps yours as well. Is that if you live enough life and reflect on it, and then iterate forward and allow an evolution of ideas to survive, the ones that you're left with inevitably end up being all right.

• 9:19Chris Williamson?

  And by the time that you've hit 30, 35, 40, you've got a bit of an idea of what's going on. Like, under the age of 25, you, you are completely clueless. Like even the most actualized transcendent individual, under the age of 25 years old, is essentially just like a, a, a child stumbling through the world, desperately trying to work out what works. But after sufficient failures and successes, you start to see common themes, right? And I sort of like to try and get a bit of an insight as to what it is that you, or why it is that you think that you've been able to sort of get these insights. Are you particularly reflective? Do you tend to try and look for these common themes throughout stuff?

• 10:04Chris Williamson?

  Where's this come from?

• 10:07James Smith?

  I think that the part of your brain that really analyzes certain areas of your life, in my brain, is certainly very active. So it's very easy for people to go, why are you giving me relationship advice? You've not been in any meaningful relationship that I've seen. And I'm like, okay, but have you ever seen me stay in a relationship I didn't want to be in? You know, and my friends say to me, they go, fair play, Smiths. They're like, as soon as you realize a relationship's not right, you get out. And I think that that comes back to being very appreciative of time. And then when it comes to business over the last few years, I've learned a lot of business lessons. I've learned in essence, life is all about protecting like a little bubble that you have around you of energy.

• 10:49James Smith?

  And also I'm very big into how my soul feels about certain things. And it sounds quite of a hippie thing, but the dating thing, the business thing, everything revolves around to what's going to make my soul happy. And me meeting someone for a very formal date with drinks, I feel a bit suffocated. I'm like, what if I don't like this person? What if I don't like the energy they're giving off? So by improvising that tactic to meet that person for a swim in the zero and ice cream. It makes me feel better about having to go see someone. So it's like a tactic that that's kind of brought into play. And I have these tactics all around my life, you know, um, and you know, even, even like when you're fucking picking the time of day to have a wank. I mean, you've got to get that at the right time, go have that at the right time.

• 11:34James Smith?

  You've got to fit that in before now.

• 11:37James Smith?

  But then you just fucking, you ruin, you ruin your, you don't want to do it for a training session, right? Cause then you go into a training session, you're feeling lethargic, right? You do it just for a nap, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna go under pretty quick. You only need to set your podcast time, it's eight minutes after one of those. And I know it sounds crass or whatever it is, but like there is, I see so many people tripping themselves up. I suppose this is a good way to answer your question. It to me is obvious where people trip themselves up, but they don't see it. And people probably think both of us are very motivated, but we're probably not. We just probably don't trip ourselves up as much as the normal person.

• 12:13Chris Williamson?

  The key in life isn't being clever, it's avoiding stupidity. That's a Shane Parishism from Farnham Street and it's totally correct. When people hear you as someone who does multiple solo IG lives, sometimes in a day. And that takes to the normal person, a huge amount of confidence and overcoming of anxiety and all this sorts of stuff. But even that is just a craft that you've learned. And the fact that you're able to identify, well, actually in order for me to feel a little bit more comfortable on a first date. That I am unconstrained and can free flow and meet this person. I choose to do something which allows me to feel that way.

• 12:54Chris Williamson?

  Whereas someone might just say, ah, James has got bottomless pit of confidence and endless amounts of charisma and all this stuff. So if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for everybody else as well. So what are some of the most common mistakes that you think people make when designing their lives?

• 13:12James Smith?

  So there's, there's quite a few. First of all, I think that everyone's kind of following this blueprint to life, which someone else has designed. And from generation to generation, I think it's quite dangerous that we take the blueprint from our parents because they lived in a very different life to us. And when people start at school, they go to school. And then when they finish school, they think that their time of development is done. People think that school's done, education's done. That's a very big flaw because the best things I learned in life all came from after school. Getting my teachers to expect me to fucking enjoy reading of mice and men, for instance. That's the worst fucking book I've ever read, man. Why the, why the fuck is that in school curriculum? You can feel me getting annoyed about this.

• 13:54James Smith?

  There are so many excellent fiction books as well. Give me The Hunger Games. Give me something that is, I'm gonna actually, from a start, we cannot rely on the educative system. Anyway, that, that's, that's one thing. And then suddenly our, our parents can often lead us down the path of becoming the most fucking qualified. But really, who does that benefit? Fair enough, there are some people that need to have qualification and be a doctor and be a nurse. But for a lot of other people, they're doing it just to buy time. But then we hit the twenties and I feel that no one has ever really taught in life that if there's something they enjoy, they can do it. And one thing that Australia really helped me understand was people here are a lot happier doing their job.

• 14:37James Smith?

  And you go to a coffee shop here and you struggle to understand why someone who's 23 or 24 can enjoy making a coffee for someone so well. And the truth is that they love their life. Their job is just a part of it. When I'm in the UK, I see a lot of people doing jobs they don't enjoy. And in Australia, that person who's making that coffee probably clocks off at four P M, goes for a surf, takes their dog for a walk, meets up with their friends and does whatever. Whereas in the U K, the blueprint's a bit stronger to get into the nine to five to aim for that six-figure salary. And this is actually the path that I was put on and no one ever stopped me or questioned me. I put on a suit to go to work for like four years and I fucking hated every second of it. But in my head, I was like, how am I gonna buy a house?

• 15:21James Smith?

  How am I gonna support a family? How am I gonna, you know, earn enough money so I can then go to rugby training in the evening? And the biggest mistake I feel is that we're all put on this trajectory. Not once was anyone ever stopped me and said, you enjoy what you're doing. Because if you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need to be motivated. You don't need alarm to get out of bed. And I feel so many people just follow the fucking tracks of go to uni, do your best, get a two one, tell everyone you got a first, go find, you know, go to a fucking office job.

• 15:51Chris Williamson?

  Bouncing in and out of unfortunate, bad relationships with people that you don't actually like and you realise after six weeks but don't split up until after six months.

• 15:58James Smith?

  Exactly. And then, and then, you know, get on the bags after work because you just need an escape. Texting your dealer at four P M, for fuck's sake, you haven't even had a beer yet. Then people are so worried about their pay slip and then fiddling their fucking LinkedIn profile and changing the months from ten months to a year to the point that they don't even know how their fucking C V looks because they've lied to themselves so much. And for what? For more money? So that you need more extravagant holidays to escape your dreary existence in life? And again, this was one of the points I wanted to make in the book, that wealth is subjective. It can't be quantified just in a bank account. Objectively speaking, it can, but subjectively speaking, I believe that someone who's hustling

• 16:42James Smith?

  with their own business, making twenty five thousand pounds a year, is far more wealthy than the recruiter making a hundred grand. So stressed, his dick doesn't work when he comes home to fuck his missus and he does more bags a week than he does have wanks. You know what I mean? And no one blinks at that. And it's going on all around us. And Probably another fucking deep point is if you look at the biggest killer of people before retirement, it's suicide. Right. And people, no one's, no one's questioning people's professional lives.

• 17:15Chris Williamson?

  Biggest cause of death in men under the age of 40.

• 17:18James Smith?

  Yeah. And, you know, everyone's like, oh, it'd be so good to retire at 45 and live my days, go here, go there. And I'm like, yeah, sweet. But fundamentally, I think there's something wrong and no one's, no one's talking about it. Everyone's just like brushing it off. And I was like, people fundamentally aren't enjoying their professional life. And they're, they're all dreaming about these big salaries, six figures and retirement. And to me, it overlooks the fucking, the, the best part. And that fundamentally is what I think people are doing wrong. And saving it all for the end is something that I can't get on with. I can't. And there's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it.

• 17:59James Smith?

  But a lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth are preventing people from doing that. And if I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint. Cause ultimately, I think it's letting a lot of people down. But the thing is, it didn't let our parents down. It, you know, my dad worked in the same business for 50 years, started at the bottom, made it to the top. And he's a very happy guy and he's actually happily retired. But I don't think that generation is, is comparable to us.

• 18:31Chris Williamson?

  I agree. I agree. I had, um, Andrew Scott, if I've got his name wrong, I'm going to feel embarrassed. Andrew Scott, uh, who recently, recently wrote A New Long Life. He has a book talking about the economics of the fact that everyone, each generation lives eight years longer than the generation before. So you versus your great grandparents, you're actually going to live for another generation on top of them. Which means even just from a temporal duration perspective, using the blueprint that came before isn't going to work. And then when you think particularly about the changes that people my age and your age have seen. You know, if you were born a millennial, if you were born early, late eighties, early nineties,

• 19:13Chris Williamson?

  you've seen such a huge paradigm shift from what your parents experienced to your, your life. And that means that all of the things, all the lessons that our parents taught us, like bless their hearts, like it was great and it was the best that they could give us. But really like fucking rules of the game have changed now, mate. Like it's gravity boots and upside down basketball and you know what I mean? Like it's everyone's flying around in space and there's, you know, there's dick pics and all this sort of stuff.

• 19:44James Smith?

  Mate, it's exactly that. And people are often comparative to being overweight in their jeans and whatever. And I say to people, fuck you. I was like, even as a child, we would have to walk to the fish and chip shop to get fish and chips. Now, when I order Uber Eats, I don't even want to go to the door to get it. I buy my housemates. I buy them something so I don't have to go to the door. When I'm hungover on a Sunday, I'm like, I'm like, boys, anyone want a McFlurry? Yeah, I'll get my McFlurry. So when that door knocks, I don't have to go get it. I'm like, come on, mate. I've got your McFlurry. Go get that. But it's funny you say that about dick pics. I had this conversation with someone the other day and I was like, fair enough. If you send a dick pic to someone without consent, that's a bad, that's a dickish thing, pardon the pun.

• 20:26James Smith?

  But in our lives, there are a lot of men probably listening to this, right? That have sent a consensual dick pic and they worry about it. And I often think that whenever we're wanking on our laptops, we always get scared for that second that the webcam's on. We all do. And anyone listening, you say it, you're a liar if not. And some people get really severe anxiety. And I got a bit of it. I was like, fucking hell. When I released this book, there are probably some

• 20:52Chris Williamson?

  Flurry, a flurry of dick pics that are just strewn around the internet, distributed across the seven continents that could come back up here. Yeah.

• 21:01James Smith?

  Deny till you die. But then I was like, do you know what? And this again is another tactic I use to deconstruct that. I'm like, is it really that bad? Is it really that bad? It's if I was the only person on the planet sent a dick pic as a teenager when I was drunk to a girlfriend, then yeah, but I wasn't. And people need to get over themselves. And again, when I talk about cocaine, everyone's like, you're talking about, I'm like, listen, it's a five billion pound industry in London. Who do you think, where do you think that's going? Your doctor, you know, you know, your fucking aunt and uncle, like everyone you know is doing this behind closed doors, but no one talks about it. And again, psychedelics and people are like, James, it's really irresponsible to talk about psychedelics. I was like, no, everyone, when you talk to

• 21:44James Smith?

  someone, even there was a program on Netflix about all the celebrities that came out and we're talking about it.

• 21:49Chris Williamson?

  I saw, I saw that.

• 21:52James Smith?

  And and and do you know what? That was liberating for me because it it I'm not saying that, you know, drugs, again, is such a broad spectrum of things. Some can make your life better, some make your life worse, some cure you from illness, some don't. And everyone's so quick to go, oh, no, dick pics are bad. Hold on, someone might have sent one, somebody wanted one. There was like webcam for porno. Everyone's watching porn. You know, these are big, big industries. And again, with like recreational drug use, it's going on. And Elon Musk did a tweet where he goes, wow, five years ago, marijuana, or maybe longer, was illegal in the States, but cannabis dispensaries remained open during COVID, which means they are now an essential in the American way of living, yet people

• 22:36James Smith?

  are still in jail, serving their sentences from dealing it.

• 22:40Chris Williamson?

  Paradigm shift, man. The world is moving significantly quicker than the policies that in closing it. And even further than that, it's moving so much quicker than than our evolution, which is a huge challenge, right? Because we are not evolutionarily fit for the environment that we're in. We're not built for hyper normal stimuli, bings and bongs and a million fucking messages, dopamine kicks from left, right and centre. We're not built for the amount of radiation we take. We're not built, we're not even built for fucking artificial light. Like, it's supposed to be dark when it gets dark and light when it gets light. And there's not supposed to be some fucking hat. I've got over there, I've got a brand new, very good sleep mask, like, so that I can get

• 23:23Chris Williamson?

  better sleep between the hours of like six and fucking seven on a morning when it's sunny in the UK. Like that, even that, I'm not evolutionarily fit for that. So people that presume and talk like with so much fucking vehement certainty about how how authentic we are or unauthentic stuff is, talking about how dirty it is to discuss drugs, or how inappropriate it is to discuss dick pics and stuff like that, like, it's fucking bollocks. Like, look at the way that life manifests itself now. And I think me and you share in the same stance on this, which is that if you lay out the way that the world is for people, they are free to interpret it however they want. We have to have faith

• 24:07Chris Williamson?

  that people are sovereign individuals who are able to make their own fucking decisions and their own. They have agency over their own lives, right? Like, what's the alternative? To pretend that dick pics don't exist? Like, to pretend that cocaine doesn't exist? To pretend that psychedelics aren't being used? Like, how does that help prepare anybody? And it's actually really insulting to the people that it's talking to. It's basically saying, you are so much of an infant who doesn't have any agency or control over what you think or believe, that I'm going to wrap you in cotton wool and put those little fucking foam cups that go on the edge of sharp stuff so that children don't run into it. I'm going to put all of them around and then don't worry, it will just shuffle you into the fucking grave.

• 24:53James Smith?

  If you see monkeys in the zoo, they're playing with their dicks in front of dozens of people, you get arrested for that these days. Yeah. And, and, and again, like you say, there's the one thing that I've probably struggled with from, from, the only thing I worry about from a mental health perspective is this, this growing worry of when your brand and your identity increases, your ratio for what you're allowed to get wrong diminishes. And if someone out there sends a racist tweet and there are nobody, no one, no one does anything about it and that doesn't make it fine. But even the fact that Ellen DeGeneres didn't quite get the hashtag right, people were demanding that she donated money to certain charities off the back of not getting the hashtag right.

• 25:36James Smith?

  And you, you kind of worry that, you know, a dick pic from a random guy on Chatroulette, that's fine. But if it's a major celebrity, you know, suddenly everyone's out to get them. Everyone, but hold on, that's, that's the same offence between the two. And suddenly people saying something wrong, there's this very, it's a very scary time at the moment in social media where I've noticed people's posting frequency since the black square diminishing massively. Because people are petrified of doing something wrong. Because the repercussions have never been worse. Have you felt, have you felt this kind of nervousness?

• 26:15Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 26:15James Smith?

  Amongst social media.

• 26:16Chris Williamson?

  Ambient anxiety.

• 26:18James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Chris Williamson?

  Ambient anxiety that we're all swimming through, man. Like.

• 26:24Chris Williamson?

  The Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan. Did you see the second one? Did you listen to that?

• 26:29James Smith?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And he uses this term and holy fucking shit if it's not correct. Joe asks him, why are you selling all of your possessions? Elon waits for 45 seconds in silence and then says, I see it as an attack vector. That's what it is. It's an attack vector. Your fame now is an attack vector. My platform. So I said this yesterday. I launched a Patreon yesterday. We've got an academy launching, which is like a different side of the Modern Wisdom Universe launching in a couple of months' time. And I'm like feeling more and more anxious now, just low key ambient anxiety.

• 27:11Chris Williamson?

  Because I'm like, before, when I was doing a thousand plays a month, it didn't matter. But when I'm doing half a million or a million plays a month now, everything has been ratcheted up. Everyone now, there's a reason for people to want to take you down because people resent success. There's more people to see what you're doing, which means there's more likelihood of someone that takes offence seeing the thing that is going to then erupt into all of that. And once you leverage all of that together, you're like, hang on, I actually care about this now. You care about your academy. You care about your clients. You care about the content that you put out. You care about the message and the books that you write and all of this sort of stuff. And it's your legacy, right? You don't want someone on this increasingly large audience

• 27:54Chris Williamson?

  with this increasing disposition and reason to attack you to then take down what is now an increasingly large operation. Like everything, all of the fucking stakes have been raised.

• 28:05James Smith?

  Mate, it's crazy. At the moment, there's a currently probably up in about four or five times. There is an organised group of people that jump on my Instagram lives to try and get me to say words that are racist by breaking them into names, two-part names. And then they come on and say they're trying to catch me out and they're obviously stream recording. So they're trying to get me and catch me out and go, you need to apologize to this person. And I've checked these accounts and they're real. So there's an organized group of people trying to trip me up.

• 28:33Chris Williamson?

  Fucking Christ.

• 28:35James Smith?

  They're then saying to me, oh, we've seen that we've seen the tweet. We've seen it. It's come up. We found the old tweet. And they were saying they're making these accusations. And on the live, I was like, nah, I deleted all my Twitter accounts. Don't you worry about that. I've got nothing. I buried those. And yeah, like, and I was like, fucking, I was like, this is pathetic. And this is the world we live in at the moment, where where people would actually try and out you on something like that. And then the other day, my issue was not rising to something. And I had a picture up from our IFS events in Barcelona. And someone went to the trouble of counting how many people in the picture were black. And sad face, sad face. Oh, I can't believe there's only three black people in this photo.

• 29:17James Smith?

  And at first, I was like, okay. And then I went and I did a looked at statistics of skin colors of non UK citizens that reside in the UK. And from a statistical standpoint, it was actually spot on the amount. So if you say that that was just broadly UK following that attending a seminar in Spain for the amount of people in the crowd, for the amount of black people, that was actually perfectly acceptable. Yet someone had proactively gone and tried, this is maybe four weeks after I posted the picture, someone's gone back. They must have scrolled. What can I be offended about? What can I be offended about? Here we go. There's only but three black people in this photo. I'm really upset that there's not more, not more black people in this photo. I was like, what's going on? What world do we live in?

• 30:03Chris Williamson?

  I don't know, man. Like, to me, I don't, I, I don't think like that. So when I see people acting like that, like this whole, the, the, the real kind of malicious online atmosphere that's been occurring recently, I

• 30:24Chris Williamson?

  I like, I, I understand the principles behind it, but the people that are taking these sorts of things that are just virtue signaling and trying to find a problem with anything. I'm like, I, I, I don't even, I can't map their mode of thinking into my existence. It almost feels like I'm watching, like that person, it almost feels like I'm watching a different species or a different universe or something like what?

• 30:46James Smith?

  It's like a black mirror.

• 30:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's so strange. So let's, let's get back to the, the, the, the life thing. So you talked about the, the sort of blueprint, this classic upbringing. What are some of the other mistakes that you think people make when it comes to life design?

• 31:02James Smith?

  So, um, I would say relationships is a big one, which I touched on there before. A lot of people are in almost like relationships that they're more platonic. They almost go away from sexual and then after a while they share a mortgage together and there's so much on the line, they've been together for so long, they struggle to walk away. Now, this is another thing that conflicts with kind of the other blueprint in which we have of having a family life, but I sometimes think to myself, people are staying together in a miserable existence to bring up a family. And it's a tough one because it's, it's like a double edged sword when, when kids are involved, but you have to question whether or not two happy entities bringing up one or two children or whatever would be better

• 31:46James Smith?

  than staying together for the wrong reason. I see that happening a lot as well. As far as professional life, uh, one of my favorite areas would actually be sport. I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I think that if you're in any form of martial art, there is this sense of humility, no matter what you do, you turn up to training, black belts, brown belts, purple belts, blue belts, white belts. No matter what your income, what your ethnicity, your religion, whatever it is, you line up in order for how good a student you are. Not on athletic ability either, because someone could be 30 kilograms lighter than you, squat half of what you do, but if they're two belts above you, you're gonna, you know, you're not gonna call them out for a role. And I feel that a lot of people become lost

• 32:30James Smith?

  on this path of being a student. And when you, even playing rugby, I never really got better playing game on game. You're just out there with the boys, you know, getting on the piss on the Saturday night, you go train and you learn your line outs. And I feel that what's amazing about jiu jitsu is you can set your own rules for success. So I suppose values, I don't want to be the best jiu jitsu athlete in the world and I know I'm not going to be there. But just the process of improving where I'm at is what I love. And, you know, the same with your podcast, the one we're speaking on right now. Although you know Joe Rogan's there, you're not there like, oh, how long till I can pick him off the top spot? You appreciate it's there, but you're just working on you. You're like, who can I get my next guest? What kind of engaging conversation can we have? And your podcast won't exist more than one conversation at a time.

• 33:15James Smith?

  Like in jiu jitsu, nothing exists more than one session at a time. One transition, oh, that's interesting. One new way to take the back. Oh, that's interesting. And being a student and only transitioning in this blinkers down mentality is one of the most satisfying things. I've ever experienced in my life and I feel like a lot of people don't have that. And when training for physique or going to the gym to be in shape. Fundamentally, I see this big flaw that people don't really enjoy the training because they don't really enjoy the process. They're stale mating a bit and they're in this constant state of battling off. Do I want to enjoy the quality of my life and drink wine and eat crisps? Or do I want to be lean and hungry and, you know, not feel fucking energized the whole time?

• 34:00James Smith?

  And if people could just find something, whatever it is, taekwondo, kickboxing, boxing, jiu jitsu. Something where they can become a student. It can distract you from all areas of life. And again, a big part of the book is to get people into just trying jiu jitsu, just trying it out.

• 34:18Chris Williamson?

  Are you the front end of the funnel for every jiu jitsu gym that's across the world?

• 34:24James Smith?

  Do you know, do you know what? It's honestly been such a great place for my mind to wander. And for me, I don't take my phone near the mats often. I go out there, nothing else exists apart from the training and there's a lot of being humble. Keep your shoes away from the mat, keep your hygiene high, shake hands with everyone and. You know, we were saying before about a monkey wanking in a zoo. And we're in this world where everyone seems to think we're perfect. No matter what human you find, we're all kind of apes at heart. And there's a certain amount of times you can flick someone on the forehead before they slap you in the face. All right, you could be the fucking nicest person in the world. Mother Teresa, you piss her off, you could piss her off enough, she'd fucking slap you in the nose.

• 35:05James Smith?

  And I think from a primitive standpoint, humans have always been combative. They've always wanted to go toe to toe. But we live in this society where you're not allowed to express your emotions anymore. You're not even allowed to be angry. Being angry is a very normal fucking human emotion. And we have these social and professional hierarchies that suppress a lot of people's emotions. If your boss is a cunt to you, you can't call him a cunt. And people sit on these emotions all the time and they suppress them, which I believe amplifies them. But when you go into like a combat sport or jiu jitsu gym, you have somewhere you can channel that and you can vent it. And I think that's very healthy.

• 35:44James Smith?

  And a lot of people can't understand why the nice girl from the office loves boxing or why, you know, this dude loves jiu jitsu or whatever.

• 35:51Chris Williamson?

  But she seems, she seems so sweet.

• 35:54James Smith?

  Wait, did you grow up with any brothers?

• 35:55Chris Williamson?

  No, only child.

• 35:57James Smith?

  Okay, so you, when you were a kid, did you ever have any like play fights?

• 36:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 36:00James Smith?

  Like, and, and play fights were fun. The mum and dad's in the house, it was yours or someone else's, and stick their head round and be like, all right, there's no punching. But, you know, just, just don't break anything, right? And we have all these things taken away from us in these social constructs. But having a play fight with your mate, he puts the cricket on, you wanna watch the football, you're there, you're like, let's go, let's do this, let's settle this. And looking back, they're some of my favorite pastimes. Now I get to experience that as an adult. And I think there's something hugely healthy from a mental health perspective of engaging in combat with other humans. And you never wanted to hurt your friend, but you wanted to make him suffer. And that's almost the whole sport of jiu jitsu.

• 36:35Chris Williamson?

  That is the sport of jiu jitsu, precisely, yeah.

• 36:38James Smith?

  And I, I wish that more people would do that because it's, it's been when work's tough, when I'm stressed, when I've got that. And Darren and I are the same grade. We can go out on the mats and there's no egos, there's, there's nothing apart from this game of human chess. And when I'm working in the mornings, I do a lot of work. When my food comes, I shut off my phone, I get rid of WhatsApp and I get a YouTube video up. And I'll study like a 10 minute YouTube video of jiu jitsu while I eat my food. And for me, it's just nice to dream off into another state and learn something. And I think that I couldn't imagine a life without it.

• 37:12Chris Williamson?

  That's beautiful, man. That really, really is. I think you having found something which is a common architecture outside of the thing which most people would presume is your calling in life, being what has now become James Smith. Having that is what allows you to do everything else, right? Like, it's the foundation that allows you to pull yourself out of that. For me, it's podcasting and learning about myself and the world around me. When you rang on Skype earlier on, before I was ready, and all hell broke loose. Everyone that's been FaceTimed knows this, like, your two phones go off, and your iPad, and your laptop, and it's all coming from everyone. I was like, what the fuck's going on? And I was listening

• 37:57Chris Williamson?

  to Ben Shapiro, and I'm in full fucking flow, listening to him talking about Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore over the weekend. I don't really care, but at some point on a podcast over the next two months, I'm gonna get to drop some stat from that, and I'm gonna go, yes, fucking nailed it. You didn't know that, did you, you cunt? Like, that's what I want to do. I've got this one here about the hustle memory. So you were talking earlier on about how you don't want to necessarily even go to the door. The level of convenience has been hyper-normalized in modern society to the point where we don't want to even fucking Netflix the best films on the planet to our iPad, so we don't need to leave bed, and then we Uber our way to the date so that we can go home to Deliveroo our food and all the rest of the stuff. But everyone that's listening, think about some of your favorite

• 38:41Chris Williamson?

  memories to do with any project that you've been involved with. It was never when the project was going super, super well and super, super easy. The best memories you have from anything that you do, and this will include you, will be the night before you launched jamessmithacademy.com, and you rushed until 5:00 in the morning, and we nearly didn't make it, and the code all broke down, and we got the Domino's in, and oh, fuck, we did it, we did it, look, and we made it, and it went really, really well. That is the meaning. That struggle is the meaning. The obstacle is the way. You know, like, that's how it works. And finding something which is both challenging and worthwhile, Michael, Chikseg Michael's flow state, right? Like, that is, we are chasing that. We are chasing

• 39:24Chris Williamson?

  something that's just at the right, the right distance of our domain of competence. Just hard enough for us to believe that we can continue to do it, but just like, so much hard that we want to do more.

• 39:37James Smith?

  There's, um, uh, yeah, and it, there's, I can't remember who said it, where they said, we need to spend thirty percent of our time with people at the same level as us. Thirty percent of our time with people above us and thirty percent of our time with people below us. And for me, that's thirty percent rolling with white belts where I can fuck them up and try new stuff. Thirty percent of my time with blue belts of equal ability where I've really got to bring my A game. But then thirty percent of the time with purple belts where I'm humbled by them. But, and, and to me, that's the perfect balance. And that's like the hierarchy to life where black belts, where I'm with higher black belts. But you've, just a second ago, your excitement of listening to that podcast reminded me of another part in the book, which I call the invisible game. I play lots of games every day that no one else knows about.

• 40:20James Smith?

  Other people are involved in them, but the people involved in them don't even know that I'm playing it. And I did this throughout my whole career very early on, where you listen to that podcast, you, you probably without knowing it gamified your life a bit. And I used to love gaming when I was younger. I still play Call of Duty now. And it's all about waiting for that right time for those points to be played. And I found myself, I even made a list of all my competitors when I first started out as a PT. And everything that I did became a process to beat them. But it wasn't about an ego or a cock off because they never knew that I was doing it. And I really like gamifying certain parts of my life so that I can remove myself from them in the daily actions of it.

• 41:04James Smith?

  Getting out of bed on time, that's ten points, you know, like, or, you know, when you start studying something, I bet sometimes you're there listening to a podcast. And you're like, fuck, this is dull. I remember listening to a fifty seven minute podcast on caffeine. And it was dull as fuck. The guy was the most boring fuck in the world, but I was like, no one else is listening to this. And when someone asks me on a fucking live and I can recite this thing about caffeine, holy fuck, that's when I'll, I'll pull the.

• 41:29Chris Williamson?

  When I drop the adenosine pathway bomb on everyone, they're gonna go.

• 41:35James Smith?

  Yeah, that's it. And I I saw a bit of myself then when you were doing that because to me, they're they're quite dull and dreary processes in life, probably like Trump's fucking speech. But if you remove yourself from it and think someone else could be playing this game, and I got to make sure that I get the high score, it really helps me, you know, stay on top of things. And that's, that's, it's not an ego thing. It's just my way of how I approach things. And, you know, that, there's no top score, really, like, like in Call of Duty, you just keep prestige, just keep prestige. There's never, you're never going to be the best, but you might as well keep going.

• 42:13Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that creating those structures is such an important way to externalize motivation. I think that's what helps me. Like, I have, man, those invisible games are everywhere, from how long I'm prepared to count down in a cold shower from. And like, if I, if I start to bitch out, then I'll add 10 on. Like, if I think, if I think, I should leave, I should just leave early, then I add 10 seconds on. And I'm like, oh, for fuck's sake, you did it again. You stood there and you're like, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. Like, wrote a bunch of, I've got this academy thing launching in a few weeks' time. So yesterday, I wrote a bunch of agreements to myself. I wrote promises to myself about what I would and wouldn't accept. Like, I'm going to get up

• 42:57Chris Williamson?

  at this time. I'm going to make sure I go for a morning and an evening walk. I'm going to, just like the little basic structures. So one of the things I wanted to try and get from you are, what are the principles or the daily structures that you try not to compromise on ever? What do you need to do in your day to day life to ensure that everything else goes well?

• 43:18James Smith?

  So from a business perspective, in business, it sounds really basic, but my inbox, and my inbox is actually a lot more open to people than they think. And because it's so open, I think it helps me, where if any of my members need my help, they can always come to me direct. And I've always said that. So I love to clear that, that my email marketing campaign, email marketing is one of the biggest overlooked areas of business that everyone overlooks. And if I don't write an email, I almost feel dirty. I feel like I haven't accomplished anything. If I'm too hungover and I don't get that done.

• 43:49Chris Williamson?

  That's the Paul Maud effect, that.

• 43:51James Smith?

  Yeah, it is, mate, big time.

• 43:54Chris Williamson?

  James, have you sent that fucking email today?

• 44:00James Smith?

  Send email to get peered.

• 44:05James Smith?

  That's one of my non-negotiables, but during the last year or two, quite a lot of my daily things don't revolve around work. It's about having time to myself, training, learning something, having a bit of downtime. But yeah, as far as like the business part of things, I suppose in my mind, clearing inboxes, I probably spend about an hour a day in my social media inboxes, which is tough because I can't read them all, but I like spending time there and just having conversations with the right people. I'm very fortunate now that I've got my business partner, I've got my events manager, I've got all these people. And if I talk to them and just have conversations with them every day, everything looks after itself. I'm not actually that organised. I've been very fortunate over Covid

• 44:47James Smith?

  where I haven't set an alarm to wake up in about three months. And it's funny, I still wake up about six, six thirty, but not having an alarm gives me peace when I go to sleep.

• 45:00Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting, man. That's how everyone that I've spoken to that knows what they're talking about to do with sleep, that's their suggestion.

• 45:07James Smith?

  Just wake up.

• 45:08Chris Williamson?

  Wake up without an alarm. That's what it, that's how it should be. The alarm is cutting into your sleep. Presumably you want to sleep as much as you need, not as much as you want, like your alarm should tell you.

• 45:19James Smith?

  Yeah, I got, I got on it a bit at the weekend and I woke up like really late on Monday. Yeah, what is it, yesterday? I woke up at seven forty five and I was like, James, you dirty bastard. And I got to the cafe, right? I got to the cafe and they were like, the girls at the cafe were like, have you gone for coffee somewhere before this? And I was like, no, no, no. I was like, I've just woken up. And there were no seats because it got too busy. And I was like, you fucking deserve this, James. You wait outside like the dirty fucking stop out that you are, wait outside for a table. But yeah, I really like that. And again, the people around me, they don't know how to talk to me in the mornings too much. Sleep is actually probably my biggest non-negotiable where, first of all, I'm really

• 46:02James Smith?

  weird about sharing a bed with, with people. I'm not sure if this is a lie that I told women so they'd leave and that I've actually started to believe myself. But sleep's like a big one that. Even if I'm on a date, I'm like, come on, let's meet a bit earlier so I can, you know, get back to bed. And they're like, you fucking kidding me? Like, I like every lights out 10pm every night if I can. And prioritizing my sleep has improved my quality of life massively.

• 46:31Chris Williamson?

  I think very few people realize what life could be like if they got eight hours of sleep every night.

• 46:37James Smith?

  And this pregnancy pillow that the viewers will be able to see, I first of all just had like a tubular long pregnancy pillow. I think I could have been one of the first people ever to fly business class with a full size pregnancy pillow. And the air stewardess said to me, she goes, is that a pregnancy pillow? I said, yeah. She goes, where'd you keep it? I was like, my backpack. And she was like, is there anything else in it? I was like, no, my whole backpack was for my passport, my headphones, my pregnancy pillow. Slept for about 13 or 14 hours from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. And she was, at the end, she was like, fair play. But now I've got one of the C shaped pregnancy pillows, which is better. But this is going to be another kettle of fish to get on a flight. But

• 47:16Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna have to go in wearing it like a mid 90s rapper would wear, you know, like one of the old like mink coat things. You can just wear it as what? What do you mean? What do you mean? This is just, this is just part of my outfit?

• 47:30James Smith?

  I've been thinking about this already because at some point I'm gonna have to come back to the UK. And I was like, maybe I can go to the lounge and say, excuse me, can I keep this here? But no one at an airport is gonna let me leave a fucking bag in a lounge, are they? I'd be like, it's, it's a pillow, relax. And then I was like, maybe I could check it in and ask them to take it to my seat or whatever. But now that I've done it, I cannot fathom the idea of flying without my own pillow. Because what, what strikes me as crazy is, let's say you fly, return to Sydney is about 4,000 pounds, which is extortionate amount of money, but I value my sleep that much. I'm not even being a diva. The idea of not sleeping on top of jet lag now, now kills me. I would rather, I'd rather have one less holiday to Ibiza and fly laying down than I would any other way.

• 48:13Chris Williamson?

  That's the price to pay. That's how, that's the equivalency there. Ibiza, how many Ibiza trips is it? I don't want to know how much it costs you. I want to know how many Ibiza trips it is.

• 48:22James Smith?

  The funny thing in Sydney is $300 for a bag. It's about £150 if you want a bag coat. So a friend told me, wink. And like, we had to get the washing machine fixed once. And I was like, how much is it? Two bags? And you're like, two, no, two bags are $600.

• 48:40Chris Williamson?

  Everything gets equivalents, yeah.

• 48:42James Smith?

  Yeah, I bought, I bought nine square meters of jiu jitsu mats in Covid. And I was like, $600. And someone would be like, oh, it's only two bags. And like, it's quite a funny way of doing it. But what was crazy is that people, I, I once said to myself, I was like, right, I'm gonna take this pregnancy pillow on a plane. And I think the most expensive one cost £40. So if you weigh it up against the cost of the flight, even if you left it on the plane and had it as like a disposable pillow, it's like fucking.

• 49:09James Smith?

  Yeah. And, and obviously I took it home and I've used it. And now my mum's like, James, you've got pregnancy pillows all around the world. I've got them in Sydney. I've got them in London. But like, you know, four grand on a flight, fine. But you get a pillow that's fucking half the size of a travel pillow. You're supposed to sleep on that for 12 hours. No chance. So for anyone out there, if you, if you're gonna stretch your legs on the plane, take your own pillow game.

• 49:29Chris Williamson?

  Pregnancy pillow.

• 49:32James Smith?

  We need to change the name of it. So it's not just for pregnant people.

• 49:35Chris Williamson?

  I know. It's just big lads. It's big lad pillow, isn't it? It's achy shoulders pillow. That's what it is. Anyone who, so I played the pregnancy pillow game for a long time. The challenge I had was, and you'll be familiar with this, if you want to change from side to side, often you wake up because of the complexity of having to pull your arm out from underneath to then turn to then slide the other arm in and under. Like, it's, it's moderately complex. I mean, it's complex to do when you're awake, let alone like when you're asleep. So.

• 50:07James Smith?

  It's a jiu jitsu move. It's called a hip escape. So you've.

• 50:11Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So you're drilling the hip escape in the middle of your sleep. Right. Fine. Well, I mean, that's one way, that's one way to maximize your gains. So what I've actually upgraded to now is a hourglass shaped memory foam pillow that slots between your legs, right up against the, the gooch, like right, right up against the gooch. And that still does. The same as your memory, your pregnancy pillow will do for your legs and it separates your thighs, which especially for guys, like until you've slept with something between your legs, like something big, bigger than it is now, like something really big that separates your thighs, you do not know what true comfort is when you go to bed. It is just, it's wonderful.

• 50:52James Smith?

  It's not a day that goes by where I think from an evolutionary perspective, what the fuck were we sleeping on for so many thousand years? Like, what were we, like, what we, before cotton, before wool, before springs? And you think from like a biomechanics standpoint, my back hurts laying on the beach. How did, how, how have we gone that wrong? Like my hip flexors, I'm so fucking lordotic that like I get a sore lower back laying on the beach and they were, they were human. 25,000 years ago, first oven was being made. What were they sleeping on?

• 51:22Chris Williamson?

  We need to find out, man. One of the regular guests on the show, Yusuf, slept on the floor for three months. Nearly, nearly broke his relationship apart because he wouldn't end an experiment of him sleeping on the floor and his girlfriend refused to sleep on the floor, quite rightly. Like she, she doesn't have to be a part of this bizarre experiment.

• 51:43James Smith?

  He had a pillow?

• 51:44Chris Williamson?

  So he put a mattress topper on the floor. So like this, this much. And the reason for the mattress top was simply so that when he went into his bedroom, people didn't think it was weird. And he slept on the floor for three months and did. But there's, there's some fairly good arguments for it, like firmer beds, better posture and all the rest of it. But yeah, man, I don't know. As well, there's an interesting, you'll have seen these advertised online, anxiety blankets, weighted, weighted anxiety blankets. You've seen these, like hyper heavy blankets and they've been advertised everywhere and it's supposed to afford some sort of calming effect. But what's a pathway that that's operating on? Because that's not someone thinking, I really want someone heavy to lie on me.

• 52:29Chris Williamson?

  So it has to be instantiated from our evolutionary heritage.

• 52:34James Smith?

  That, that reminded me of something like sleep paralysis where if some people take too much MDMA, they feel like someone's sat on their chest, don't they?

• 52:42James Smith?

  But I don't know, I don't know where that would stem from. That's quite an interesting one. I, funnily enough, I think it was Brett Contreras that goes, you sleep in the same position for eight hours, you don't wake up stuck in it. So shut the fuck up about your like posture and, you know, like people are like, oh, don't sit like that because you're gonna get, you're gonna get froze, them hamstrings are gonna shorten. He was like, fuck off. He was like, you lot are weak. He was like, you lot are weak. That's why you stood like that. Which I don't, I haven't read in the studies behind it, but it's not like we get out of bed in the morning like, I'm fucking stuck.

• 53:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can't move. What life lessons do you wish that James from 10 years ago knew? Any big ones?

• 53:22James Smith?

  It sounds really reductive, but not to worry about stuff. You know, and this is something, this is a bit morbid. It's another topic in the book. Like, me and my mate, we, we had this, we had few too many beers one night and we came to this agreement where we said if we ever found out that we're gonna die, we had to look at each other. We had to get a room, say you're there with your family, friends, your loved ones, and the doctor goes, you're gonna die in a week. We had to say as loud as we could, fair play. That was it. To everyone's shock, fair fucking play. And he said to me, if we don't live our life that way, that we can happily say that when we find out we're gonna die, then we've really got to change the way we're living. And I don't think there are many people out there that can say fair play if they were gonna find out they're gonna die next

• 54:05James Smith?

  week. So I've been making sure the last 10 years I've been living that way, where I've not been giving a fuck about mortgages, I've been giving a fuck about savings, I don't care about the stock market. I would rather spend my money on a pretentious dinner with my friends than I would investing in stocks because, you know, this whole saving it for later mentality that so many people are caught up about, I don't see the point of worrying about it. You know, that's, why bring tomorrow's problems to today? And yeah, I'm, I'm literally just going through life, just taking it as it comes, doing what I want. I don't know what I fucking want for dinner tonight, let alone what I want to do tomorrow. And everyone's so caught up in the future. And to be quite honest, we don't know where it's gonna hold. And the last 10 years have become a lot more.

• 54:51James Smith?

  More focused on the present. And whenever I take psychedelics, that's the only thing I think about. And I wish so many people could let go of the past because it's happened.

• 55:03James Smith?

  From, and I use space facts quite a bit in the second book. When we think of our planet going around the solar system, it sounds kind of weird. This is going to be psychedelics talk. We think of all the planets going around the sun, but we fail to neglect the fact that the sun is also moving around the Milky Way. Takes about 800,000 years for it to do a full circle. And I was like, when something happened in the past, it physically existed on a spinning ball going around a spinning ball of fire that went around a spinning fucking black hole. That point in time in spacetime, we're not going to revisit that as a planet ever again. So why are you revisiting it every day with your thoughts? I may have come across that in a DMT trip, but anyway. And people, then we get caught up about the future and we have no idea what's coming.

• 55:46James Smith?

  So why worry about it? And, you know, we have today's problems still without, we have today's obligations, we have today's, you know, state of mind to look after. Just look after that. And even tomorrow is another day's today. So for people that are worrying about stuff, just, just don't.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the ways that people can try and instantiate that? Or what are some of the tactics that you used? That helped you to actually make that happen? Cause it's all well and good. Someone listening and going, ah, it sounds fucking great that mate. Like, but I am worried about my mortgage. I am worried about my job. I am worried about whether or not I've got enough money or whether I'm. Going to be some of that stuff like that.

• 56:26James Smith?

  The worst case scenario for a lot of what we think is the worst case scenario, it isn't. And an elephant in the room that I found is when people face adversity, which is what they're worried about, they often do their best. And we're worried about this point in time where we can't afford to do things. We worry about this time where our business does go tits up. I worry about the time and I'm sure you do, that everything's going to fucking internally combust. But I tell you what, should it do that? I'll probably get out of bed that bit earlier. I'll probably hustle that bit harder and I'll probably try harder. And everyone can sit back and oh, it's all right for you, but everyone's capable of it. No one, I've not come across anyone that's, you know, I don't even think we have stupid people on the planet. We don't. I don't think we come in different engine sizes.

• 57:11James Smith?

  You know, people seem to think, oh, they're a 1.2 printer and someone else is a V8 supercharged. We're not. We've all got the same fucking brains and the same fucking heads. And people need to understand that. And you know what? If the worst case scenario comes, I'm sure you'll buck your fucking ideas up and have a new set of, and have a better attitude on you. And yeah, there's no point fearing that. And you said again, obstacles the way. If things go good, great. If they go shit, I'm sure you'll sort it out.

• 57:39Chris Williamson?

  There's a, an interesting concept. Everyone that listened to the episode I did with Ollie March on will know this example. There's a guy called Andrew Tate. Do you know who he is?

• 57:48James Smith?

  Heard the name.

• 57:49Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So he's kind of like, um, if James Bond was an evil supervillain, um, son of a chess grandmaster, world kickbox champion, multimillionaire, who lives in a fortress, a bat fortress in Romania, driving fast cars, uh, and like fucking porn stars, like that's, that's his life. Uh, and he's got this concept where he, um, he talks about having faith that future Andrew will sort it. So he spends money very freely, buy a new car, do a this. And he doesn't worry about that. He says the reason is because he's like, look, I, I have faith in my future self. I have faith that the future version of me will make the money back. If everything went to shit, I have faith that the future version of me will make the money back. And I think it comes, it kind of loops around to

• 58:34Chris Williamson?

  what you're talking about there. It's trusting your future self to sort whatever challenges arise. But for a lot of people, if you haven't built that trust up in yourself, why would you trust your own word? If you keep making promises to yourselves about, I'm going to start a diet, I'm going to stop cheating on my boyfriend, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And you don't do it. Inevitably, you're not going to have faith in your word, the same as a friend. If a friend kept breaking promises to you, you wouldn't have faith in them either.

• 59:05James Smith?

  Yeah, that's, that's exactly what it is. Yeah, I couldn't put it out better into words. And Andrew Tate sounds like a fucking legend. And I had this discussion with Darren where

• 59:15James Smith?

  two years ago, three years ago, I would have told you that flying business class was a fucking waste of money. Like, what the fuck? I said, give me that money. When I land, I'll go out and spend it. But first time I flew, actually, first time I flew anything apart from economy, I flew first. And I, and it was fucking crazy. I was like, when do we eat? And she was like, excuse me? And when I sat there, I couldn't afford it. I made, I did a, I did two seminars back to back. And I thought, oh, with the money I've earned from that, I'll just buy this ticket. But I hadn't taken into account tax, costs, the fact that I couldn't expense things I could. My accounts were all fucked. So pretty much I spent five grand on a flight that I couldn't afford. And from the outside, pragmatically looking at that, that was fucking stupid.

• 1:00:00James Smith?

  But I can never explain to someone the emotions I felt sat in that seat. First of all, I felt like I'd won the seat, even though I spent £5,000 on a one-way ticket. I felt like I'd won it and I couldn't get rid of this. I couldn't shake this feeling that I didn't belong in that seat. But then after a while, because it's a long fucking flight to Sydney, I was like, I best start fucking enjoying this. So I had some champagne, I had some wine, I'm sat there on my own, I'm watching a film. I've only ever flown economy before and I, not even that I got a taste for it. I made a promise to myself that from this day on, I'm going to do whatever it takes on a daily basis to ensure that this isn't the last time I do it. And I got, I actually got really emotional on my first ever first class flight. I sat there and I literally felt like well enough. I was like, this is fucking crazy. This is mad. I've got a shower on a plane.

• 1:00:45James Smith?

  And everyone's probably thinking, oh, it's worth it for you, you could fucking afford. I couldn't afford it. And looking back now, I think that making that leap and doing that fucking stupid thing. And I actually got a blessing from my dad when I did it. And I went into the kitchen. I was like, I was hoping he'd push back. I was like, dad, I'm thinking of spending a fucking stupid amount of money on a flight. And he was like, you're a long time dead son, you might as well fucking enjoy it. And he didn't say he doesn't swear, but I, I went on it and sitting there was such a wonderful thing. And I said this to Darren, I said, Darren, buy that fucking flight. Even if you can't afford it, because once you sit in that part of the plane, you will find a way to afford it and you will hustle harder and improve yourself worth it. It will enable you to do so much. And I wish more people did that because even those people

• 1:01:28James Smith?

  that are worried saving for a house, saving for a mortgage, hey, guess what? If you rent till you're 40, if you rent till you're 50, if you rent every single day you're on the planet, not only do you not have to worry if the boiler breaks, it's not your problem, you know? No one can take that away from you, that you have the freedom to rent. That doesn't make you a failure. If you rent a house with a smile on your face, then fucking hats off to you because

• 1:01:53James Smith?

  it's, it's not something that we need to get caught up about. And I feel that so many people are wasting their positive energy on their living situation or on something trivial or on money they were supposed to save. But like you say, the future version of yourself is, is going to have your fucking back. And if they don't, move in with your parents.

• 1:02:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fuck it. There's always, there's always a spare room, isn't there?

• 1:02:17Chris Williamson?

  Everyone that's listening has been fine so far. By virtue of the fact they've made it here to this very point with me and James Smith coming in your ears. You have made it. You have been fine. Like, that is reality reflecting to you that you are a capable, competent human being. Yes, maybe you fucked up tons. Yes, maybe you aren't everything that you could be. Yes, maybe your potential is unfulfilled, but you're actually fine, aren't you? You're here with a set of headphones in or in the car driving or whatever it might be. You are okay. Why would you not presume that that is going to be the way that everything continues to scale moving forward?

• 1:02:59Chris Williamson?

  Like, you will be fine. A situation will occur, a challenge will happen, a tragedy will strike. And you'll be fine. You'll deal with it when it happens.

• 1:03:09Chris Williamson?

  Cool quotes relating to what you were talking about there for materialism. It is easier to fulfill your material desires than to renounce them. It's Naval Ravikant. And what he means by that is that it's significantly easier for you to say, I don't need the Ferrari when you just sold a Ferrari. Or I don't need to live in Australia when you've just left Australia. You want to complete these things. A lot of people moving through an ascetic life where they have renounced all of their worldly possessions and say, I don't, I don't really care about this. Or I don't really care about that. That is a very easy excuse for you to just not play the game. It's a very easy excuse for you to just decide, I don't want to compete on a material level.

• 1:03:49James Smith?

  Yeah, I agree completely with that. And again, what you're saying there about people that might have these worries in life, like if people aren't happy in life, I always like to challenge them on whether it's because they're trying so hard to do things that they don't actually need to do. And people need to be very conscious of what makes them happy. And I don't think people often ask themselves that question. And funnily enough, I was in Norway about eight years ago, I was seeing a Norwegian girl and there was a guy on a checkout and he was a good looking lad. I'm a checkout in a superstore, it's probably like 23, 24. And when I left, I said, I was like, it's mad. Like, he seemed really happy doing what I thought was quite an average job. That's a lot more naive at this point.

• 1:04:34James Smith?

  And the girl's dad said to me, some people have a very complex life where they just need a simple job. And I never thought of it like that. And I was like, fuck, do you know what? If he was caught up about what everyone else was thinking about what he should be doing, he probably wouldn't be enjoying his day half as much as he was. But he was just enjoying it. And I never remember like getting schooled by, by a Norwegian girl's dad. And I was like, fuck, I was like, so many people out there, if they've got complexities, troubles, things going on with their life, you know, they might want to have a simple job. They might want to do simple things. Who's to say that you walking your neighbor's dog can't be the thing that makes you happy in life? And people really need to try and connect with that because it's almost like people are looking to other people saying, oh, my friend bought a Rolex. I need a Rolex to be happy.

• 1:05:16James Smith?

  My friend just did two weeks in Ibiza, I need to go to Ibiza to be happy. When really all these values are selected by ourselves.

• 1:05:23Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, man. What question do you wish people would stop asking you?

• 1:05:29James Smith?

  Hmm. Probably about whether or not I'm going bald, because I'm not sure myself.

• 1:05:34Chris Williamson?

  You're just in this, this hair purgatory where it could go either way for the rest of your life.

• 1:05:39James Smith?

  The thing is, my mate's been giving me banter about going bald for about 10 years. I've just got very fine hair. Um, but you know, I'm, I'm not even sure. They go, you can have a hair transplant. I go, do you know what? I probably won't. I'll probably just shave my head if I'm honest, like, and, and even then, you know, this is, this is another thing that people ask me questions about. We could get a fucking another hour of this. Going bald is, is normal for a lot of blokes. Yeah. It's become the norm to go, I get a hair transplant. No, no, this is pretty fucking normal. Same with women and cellulite and, and again with wrinkles. I've never had a problem with wrinkles. I'll throw Sonny Webster under the bus. He had fucking Botox this week.

• 1:06:16Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 1:06:18James Smith?

  He's like 25.

• 1:06:19Chris Williamson?

  Shit, the bad.

• 1:06:21James Smith?

  I was like, mate, mate, it's fucking normal wrinkles. You go a bit bald, whatever it is, it's fucking normal. Just leave it. But yeah, there are people who are going to have a hair transplant. I was like, I don't fucking know. Like you had the opportunity to ask me any point you wanted about life, happiness, psychedelics, and you asked about my fucking hair follicles.

• 1:06:41Chris Williamson?

  Do you remember when Alan Shearer hadn't committed to the fact that he was going bald and he was still doing, I think it was Match of the Day? And he had, he had like, uh, different districts of hair that were still existing around his head. Uh, but he hadn't, he just hadn't embraced it. And everyone, everyone was screaming at the TV, didn't care about the football anymore, just screaming at the TV. Pleading Alan Shearer to accept the fact that he was going bald and shave his head. You don't want to be that guy. Like, don't cling on to, the comb over is fucking 60 years too late now.

• 1:07:14James Smith?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and do you know what? I think my mom will probably give me the nod. If my mom goes, James, it's time for you to let go, then I'll probably let go.

• 1:07:21Chris Williamson?

  Is your mother a canary in the coal mine for this?

• 1:07:25James Smith?

  Nah, she just, she's straight talking. Whenever I bring a girl home, my mom usually stands there and she's like, nah, she's not the one.

• 1:07:34James Smith?

  Wise beyond our years.

• 1:07:35Chris Williamson?

  Honestly, man, mothers have just got this. They've got the third sight, haven't they?

• 1:07:40James Smith?

  The intuition, a hundred percent, yeah. But the reason I'm saying that, this is quite funny, actually. This is completely off topic. The reason I'm saying that is so that women around the world are like, I'll prove to his mum. A friend of mine said to me this week, he goes, for some reason I tell girls I can't come when I'm getting head. And I was like, what? I was like, where's this fucking come from? And then we thought about the genius of it, right? He's been telling girls that he can't come from head, so they want to prove him wrong. They want to be the first person to do it. And he's getting all the blowjobs in the world because of it. He can. And then he pretends every time that she's done some like miracle thing.

• 1:08:16Chris Williamson?

  Ah, fanfare. Yes, the fireworks come off. That is, that is beyond. That's beyond clever man. There is wisdom hiding in places that you would never think it.

• 1:08:29James Smith?

  Which I just thought that was funny. So when I'm like, yeah, you're never getting past my mum. Hopefully there's a few female listeners going, Mrs. Smith, watch yourself.

• 1:08:37Chris Williamson?

  Show you how fucking virtuous and good of a wife I'm gonna be. Uh, final question. I'll see Darren in Ibiza later this week. What drink or drinks should I buy him to end his world?

• 1:08:48James Smith?

  Uh, he'll have a gin and tonic, although he's, he's getting a bit funny that he thinks, uh, the gin is the, like, the most depressing, not as in depressing, it's the one that slows you down the most, isn't it? Gin makes you tired, I believe.

• 1:09:01Chris Williamson?

  I'm not sure. It's, there's that like wives tale thing about it's supposed to be for, um, recent spinster divorcee women that are like crying on a set of steps, holding a bottle of gin. I think that's like the, the stereotype.

• 1:09:14James Smith?

  I think it might be bollocks, a bit like how people say tequila is an uppy drink, which it isn't. It's, it's fucking alcohol today. He'll have, um, he'll have a gin and tonic, probably something a bit classier like Hendrix, but if you really wanna, you really wanna get him, get him a pink gin. He, uh, he loves his pink gin.

• 1:09:29Chris Williamson?

  Now, one thing that's gonna hurt him. What doesn't he agree with?

• 1:09:35James Smith?

  Shots of any kind. Like you'd never see the life escape someone when you put a shot in front of him. Like, and he can't even put a facade on that. He's like, oh, thanks. He's just like, no, I'm not doing this. Or he's just like, bruv. But yeah, and you have to get Sven Govincen there as well to twist his arm over it.

• 1:09:53Chris Williamson?

  So I outsource the social pressure to Sven.

• 1:09:57James Smith?

  Good.

• 1:09:58Chris Williamson?

  Put the drink there. Make sure that maybe get a crowd, small crowd. Probably put it on Instagram. Oh, Darren, I got you a shot. And then zoom right in on his facial expression.

• 1:10:08James Smith?

  Yeah, that'll be it. Yeah, he'll enjoy that. He's definitely found his skin or his environment over there. He's so much happier. So you'd be getting him on a very good day.

• 1:10:18Chris Williamson?

  He seems in a good fettle, man. I think, having kept abreast as much as I can of stuff, you know, like whilst still leading a life, keeping up to date with sort of the way that Darren's been, I think his mindset and mine has probably been a little bit similar during lockdown, that we are used to travelling, moving, seeing different things. And there's an upper bound to the amount of satisfaction that you can take from hustling and just using lockdown well. I keep getting tons of messages, which is very complimentary from people saying it's really good to see that you've capped it. Like, we're doing three episodes of a week of this podcast, like every week since lockdown started, like, great, but there's a level that you get to where you're like, fuck, I just need some variety.

• 1:11:02Chris Williamson?

  Like, I need to see a diff- like smell a different thing, you know, like hear the sound of the ocean, do anything. And I think for someone like Darren and myself and you and Sonny as well, obviously, like used to moving around, when you get that taken away from you, you really do suffer in a bizarre way.

• 1:11:21James Smith?

  We were fortunate enough because living in Bondi, it's like I've been on holiday the whole time. And once we're allowed outside, that was great. But I said to him, I've talked to Darren most days and he was in a bit of a funk. He won't mind me saying this. I said, Darren, you love London because London is the most sociable city in the world. But without, with Covid, remove that social aspect, you're just in a concrete jungle with extortionate rent. And you can't even go pre and sit down. I was like, I would be fucking in a lot of trouble if I was over there. But yeah, I said to him, you just need to change your environment. And he said to me a few times, it was like, mate, you and Ibiza. You're in space, sun, sea, you'll be fucking on to it. And again, leaving, even being erratic

• 1:12:05James Smith?

  and spending a lot of money on somewhere to live there, he will see that money back through being a better marketer and a better human and being a happier person. And people often need to invest in their present like he is now. And the future, as we said, will look after itself.

• 1:12:19Chris Williamson?

  I love it, man. I love it. Look, James, it's been a very, very long time coming. You are a little bit like a, like a bird who is really game, like really, really DTF, but constantly in and out of relationships. So I just need to keep timing it right. Wait for the next lap. Oh, he's single again. Right. Get him. Like, and then you can just, you know what I mean?

• 1:12:40James Smith?

  Yeah, we'll shoot the shit again.

• 1:12:41Chris Williamson?

  It's the availability bias. The book, what is it? When is it? How is it?

• 1:12:46James Smith?

  Uh, Not a Life Coach is out later on this year, but you can preorder it now. There is links in my bios on Insta and on Facebook.

• 1:12:55Chris Williamson?

  Link will be in the show notes below, of course, to James's socials and all the rest of the stuff. JamesSmithAcademy.com?

• 1:13:03James Smith?

  Yes, please.

• 1:13:04Chris Williamson?

  JamesSmithAcademy.com. Go and check that out. Go and check out Not a Life Coach. I'm excited, man. I'm gonna have to get you to Newcastle for the book tour as well.

• 1:13:13James Smith?

  We're gonna be stopping through. I'm sure of it.

• 1:13:16Chris Williamson?

  Peace. Lovely. Thank you so much for your time, dude.

• 1:13:19James Smith?

  Cheers, mate.