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The biggest thing is if you're trying to march down a path of self-improvement without clarity, without a terrifying level of clarity, you're never going to make it.
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And when people say that your network is your net worth, that's partly what they mean is like, oh, who you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
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That's part of it for sure and that's valuable.
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But the other part is like, well, if you have people in your network that know something you don't and can tell you and you can hear it, that will be life-changing. Timing is everything. Absolutely.
0:31
And literally we were at a conference what?
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Two weeks ago now, I think? Yes. Yeah, yeah.
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And Tom talks about hard work.
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And if you listen to Tom, he'll talk about how if you want to stand out in the noise, you have to put in the work.
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You have to be working harder than everyone else around you.
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Tom worked harder than every speaker there.
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I thought I was going to work hard that weekend. I think I can second.
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But but Tom literally worked harder than every single person there.
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He was in all the meet and greets.
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He spent time with everyone.
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He answered everyone's questions.
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Your work ethic, man, it's admirable, but but more importantly, it's real because you've got to love it to do that much. Yeah, that well said.
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You've got to love it to do it that much. Or here's the bad news.
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You actually don't have to love it to do that much, but you will burn out.
1:14
And so, one thing that I worry and actually worry about this in my message.
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So, I used to post a lot about what time I was waking up.
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I'd show myself in the gym sometimes at like 2:00 a. m.
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And so, people started setting an alarm.
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And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like that's not what this is.
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Like, I sleep as much as I need to. I prioritize sleep.
1:31
So, I stopped doing that um because I didn't want people to lose sight of what I'm really saying, which is that fulfillment is the punchline.
1:41
So, if we can just literally skip to the end of like the whole thing that we're going to talk about like all of life, the success that people are chasing, they think they want money and fame and all of that.
1:49
And those things can be very valuable in a way, but they they aren't the punchline of life.
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So, the punchline of life is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. That's it.
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Like that's all any of us have.
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And the only thing any of us are ever haunted by are when we feel like we've let ourselves down or not lived up to who we wanted to be.
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And so, I have chosen to value hard work and discipline.
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And so, because of that, it's like I've cultivated cultivated that around myself and you know, it's something that I really want to give.
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But, what I want people to hear in my message about like working hard and discipline and all of that is the only reason that I put as much time and energy into it is because I love it.
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So, me trying this method in something I don't love, I've lived that.
2:37
I know where that ends and it ends with me quitting.
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Um and you know, that's something that I'm sure we'll get into later, but it was like I did that the first six and a half years of my journey as an entrepreneur were about the typical grind it out stuff.
2:47
And look, man, it it was an important phase in my life, but it ended up really chipping away at my soul.
2:55
And I flirted with depression just enough in my life to know how dangerous it is.
3:02
And dangerous because it will literally lead to somebody killing themselves.
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Or just dangerous in that yeah, sure you live a normal lifespan, but you hate every minute of it.
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And so, just really understanding how you get out from under that and like lesson number one, love what you do. Absolutely, man.
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And you've said it before that when you started out, there was a time when it was just about money. 1,000% That's it.
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I used to repeat that over and over and over. What? I just want to get rich? Yeah. I just want to get rich. That's what this is.
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I kept saying to my wife, I'm going to make you rich.
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I'm going to make you rich.
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I'm going to make you rich.
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Like it was it was the core of my identity.
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From the time I was probably preteen cuz this was tied to my desire to be a filmmaker was film was I knew like inside I identify as an artist far more than I do as an entrepreneur.
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And I was looking at okay, I love poetry and I love filmmaking.
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Well, there's no money to be made in poetry, but I could become truly wealthy in filmmaking.
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So, that for me was a creative endeavor that I could also generate tremendous wealth.
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And so, that put me on a path, which of course was part of the reason that I went into being an entrepreneur in the first place was I needed to control the art, I needed to control the resources.
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So, I had to like learn business.
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And so, going down that path and really realizing what it took to build a business and all of that, which is a whole universe unto itself, to have the will to push through all of that difficulty, it was I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich.
4:31
And then just realized that maybe for Scrooge McDuck, who wants to swim in his money, that would be like a self-sustaining motivation.
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But, somebody even like a Warren Buffett, at the end of the day it money means something to him and it's the thing that it means that drives him.
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It isn't the money in and of itself.
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And the problem was I was literally chasing money in and of itself. Yeah.
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And it's fascinating to see someone and this I know about you, to be reflective enough and aware enough to be okay to switch.
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Because I think the sunk cost bias in us, the part of us that's just so invested and has built success with that mindset to some degree, but actually your success didn't come from that mindset.
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It came from switching away from it.
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It came from yeah, a a willingness always to switch.
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So, I heard a quote one time and it so terrifies me.
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This in fact, over a long enough time period people are going to hear this quote from me so many times because seriously, man, I'm not joking. This scares me.
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And it scares me enough that it it has a daily place in my life.
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And that is genius is a young man's game.
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And when I heard that quote, I thought, "Whoa."
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The one thing that all of us touch for the briefest of moments is youth.
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And if you're lucky, what you'll get is a whole lot of middle age and then some old age, but you don't get a lot of youth.
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And so I just thought, "Ooh, that's really scary."
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And they were basing it on the number of people that win Nobel prizes, it's almost always for work they did in their 20s and 30s, almost always. Wow.
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And I thought, "Uh, I don't like that."
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And so looking at why that And the reason, I guess this is important to say, the reason that I didn't like it was I felt that my youth was really whipping by and I hadn't accomplished the things that I wanted to accomplish.
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So, if I'm, you know, my youth is whooshing by me, how do I make sure that I can access genius at any time?
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That And I don't know, genius shorthand for like playing at the absolute best of your game and really changing things, like really having an impact.
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And this is one thing I think you and I share, like no [ __ ] I want to have impact in the world.
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So, um if I just wanted to be rich, Lisa and I would have bought an island and retired, you know, years ago.
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Um so, clearly there's something more that's motivating me and that thing is impact and and really touching lives.
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So, it's like wanting to be able to do that, I don't want to say, "Well, I had this brief window in my youth and I either did or didn't make use of it."
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But even if I did, I don't want the rest of my life to be looking back on that.
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So, another quote that drives me, "Your future should always be bigger than your past."
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So, all right, you've got genius is a young man's game and a and a personal belief of mine that you you should always be looking towards doing something more than you've ever done.
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And so, you put those two together and I just knew I had to solve for that problem.
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And the only solution that I have for it is switching things up, like you said, to live at the edges.
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And the same book was talking about the people that do end up getting either multiple Nobel prizes or prizes for work they did later, is it's people that would routinely change so that they would have these two overlapping areas.
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So, like chemistry and physics.
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And like where those two meet, like there's new discoveries and new ways to challenge your own thinking.
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And so, always staying fresh, always challenging my own thinking, always looking at how am I wrong?
7:43
Um, most people go into an endeavor with the confirmation bias.
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In fact, you just brought that up.
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So, it's like, I'm so aware that by nature, like everybody, I just want to be told how right I am, how amazing the way that I'm thinking is.
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And cuz it feels good, right? That feels awesome. Totally.
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But, that's how I'm going to calcify into dogma.
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That's how I'm going to be another statistic in the genius is a young man's game thing.
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So, I'm just always looking for disconfirming evidence.
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I'm always encouraging people.
8:14
In fact, there's a part of every Monday team meeting at Impact Theory where it's take a minute, and not just me, but take a minute and point out anything in the company that's going wrong so that we can address it.
8:25
We call it principles from Ray Dalio's book. Mhm.
8:27
And that is so instructive to get that like raw feedback, and quite frankly, sometimes just naked criticism about where you are so that you can get rid of a blind spot. Ooh, I like that.
8:38
I'm going to have to ask you to do that for me. Oh, man.
8:40
It's It's super important.
8:40
So, this is really interesting, and um, I don't know the structures of your interviews well enough to know if this tangent will pay off, but like just talking to you now as a friend, if we can get to that place where, um, because you and I share a very similar vision of who we want to be, and I don't know if you're talking publicly about what you told me before we started rolling, so I won't say it.
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But, your vision of where you want to go and the type of person you want to become is so extraordinary, and I promise nobody gets it. Mhm. Um, I have the chills.
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So, like, that's going to be really cool.
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And I have a similar sort of big vision of who I'm trying to become, and I don't think anybody really understands about me, either.
9:16
And so, if you can find somebody high-level who has that desire to push and progress themselves that you can get to really no [ __ ] give you that kind of feedback is so powerful.
9:25
And when people say that your network is your net worth, that's partly what they mean is like, oh, who you know, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
9:33
That's part of it, for sure, and that's valuable.
9:35
But, the other part is like well, if you have people in your network that know something you don't and can tell you and you can hear it, that will be life-changing.
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So man, I'll I'll take that like if if you're sincere, you can you can sign me up. I'm being serious, man.
9:51
I think I think we all need it and like you're saying it just gets harder and harder and harder as you go on.
9:55
I was just saying the other day to someone and and my structure with these podcast for me really is to have a conversation beyond an interview. Yeah.
10:05
Because I learn so much more when I'm just hanging and actually that's when I have the best conversations.
10:09
And I have a format, I have my questions, I know you well enough of research, but I'm like I want to go beyond structure. I love flow state.
10:17
My videos are created in flow state.
10:20
I'm fascinated by when I go beyond checking and filtering everything that I'm saying and hearing and trying to match everything you say with what I've read a million times because that again is giving me confirmation bias. Right.
10:33
How am I able to kind of take all that away and and hear from you differently? Yeah.
10:38
And and not judge or filter everything you say and box everything you say and and learn more from it.
10:42
So I mean that that leads me on to a quote.
10:44
When you've been sharing two quotes, the first quote that did come to my mind which I've never said to myself, so I'm going to share it is you know, youth is wasted on the young. Like we hear that too.
10:56
We hear that too at the same time which totally goes against the genius one you spoke about.
10:59
Yeah, well that one is coming from a very specific place of somebody who's older, right?
11:03
It is the the exact parallel to somebody um saying I've got all this wisdom now, but I've lost the benefits of youth.
11:12
You know, not exactly catchy quote, but like that's that's the sentiment that it's coming from. You know what I mean?
11:18
It's like and I do feel that way.
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Like, you know, I'm looking at Johnny here.
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Johnny's 20 years old and I think oh my god, if I had and and really what I mean there is there there are not only physical things you can get away with when you're younger.
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Look, I'm young enough and I've really focused on staying in shape so I don't have a lot of deleterious effects of getting older.
11:40
But if I had that period of my life where being poor doesn't matter and nobody is like holding it against you.
11:48
Like he can walk into a meeting and what people are going to be thinking about is oh, is this the next young Turk, right?
11:53
They forgive everything else.
11:55
But if I walk in you know, at 42 with like the same level of accomplishment or whatever they think okay, well, if he's not married now, there's something wrong with him, right? The old adage.
12:06
So it's like there's just the world perceives you very differently.
12:10
And so I think it's a it's a fair comment.
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Like he he honestly like he's in a better position cuz he's at Impact Theory. So I'm hoping it helps.
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But like he doesn't have the context, you know what I mean?
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To really know where he's at in his life what to do.
12:26
Like the fact that he and I both dyed our hair ridiculous colors at almost exactly the same age.
12:30
It's like there's just this predictable in that experimentation phase where he's trying to figure out who he is and make some noise and like establish that.
12:37
So now imagine you're already done with all that. Now you're deep wisdom.
12:40
Now you're like making impact.
12:42
How do I make this change?
12:44
I've spent decades of my life working on myself and I'm still 20.
12:49
Like that would just be an intense game. It would.
12:53
that I would love to play. It would.
12:53
But I feel like you're still playing it now.
12:57
I am in some in in some instances and this is interesting.
12:59
So here's anybody that knows me that's followed my content knows I plan to live forever. Mhm.
13:03
And so I emphasize the word plan because one I know that it's not going to happen by accident.
13:10
Um I'm not doing anything to make the medical breakthroughs that are going to be necessary.
13:13
So right now I am without question on a collision course with death.
13:17
And I know that I'm aware of that, but also at the same time I'm structuring my life so that I'm never thinking oh, I only have so many years left.
13:23
I always think about what's the like biggest impact that I could have on others and myself.
13:29
I want to for sure have impact positive impact on myself as well.
13:31
And so I'm looking at it through that lens and not through the lens of my age, which is very tempting.
13:36
And so I'm, you know, I constantly issue that, but the thing that's conflicting is everyone is delusional about death.
13:45
And we either obsess over it too much and it feels too imminent or you get people like me who deny it so completely that it doesn't at all influence their day-to-day.
13:55
And I do worry sometimes that I have so pushed death off as a reality that I may be blind in the moment to a truth that could be useful.
14:06
And so I'm constantly again looking for, you know, disconfirming evidence.
14:09
I'm constantly checking that to see like how much of this is fear of death and just pure delusion and how much of this is really useful.
14:16
And I try to stay deep into useful territory by reminding myself I could have an aneurysm before the end of this podcast and be dead That's real. Mhm.
14:27
with but don't think short-sided, you know, otherwise I would just go, you know, eat some ice cream and call it a day.
14:34
But, you know, to really invest. Yeah, absolutely.
14:36
And anyone who's listening to this podcast right now, I hope you're enjoying it because if you want to know about Tom being an entrepreneur, you can go and find that online.
14:44
If you want to hear about Tom learning about how he got funding and how he built a business and how he built a strategy, you can go find that online.
14:53
My role here is to be the monk that I am and speak to Tom beyond all of that.
14:59
Being a friend of Tom's, I hope I can say that.
15:01
Oh, aggressively, aggressively.
15:02
Being Being a friend of Tom's, I My time with Tom has shown me that he is an entrepreneur.
15:07
He's an extremely successful entrepreneur, more than millions of people will ever be, but beyond that he has so much more to offer. You're a real visionary.
15:13
You really push the boundaries.
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You Your self-study is on an insane level.
15:21
And and I want that to come out.
15:21
Like that's what I want people to hear about.
15:24
And I can hear it already.
15:24
And that's what I'm excited for people to know you as because to me that's that why, that's that pillar, that's what's built everything else that's coming from you.
15:33
Yeah, for So far it's so good.
15:33
And I really want to be the poster child for changeability.
15:38
And a large part of that is because I I really just the sort of like the raw materials.
15:48
Um I was not voted most likely to succeed.
15:52
My own mother quietly assumed I was going to fail when I went to college.
15:55
She later confessed that uh when I finally asked her, you know, you all but kicked me out of the nest when I was 18 and have spent every day since trying to claw me back.
16:01
Like why did you encourage me to leave?
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And she was like, oh, I just assumed you were going to fail.
16:07
And the way she said it was like totally devoid of malice.
16:09
It was literally just like, I didn't want you to wonder what if.
16:13
It was self-evident to me that you were going to fail.
16:16
And it was that like this notion that it was just self-evident.
16:20
And it was self-evident because I was so lazy.
16:22
And so everybody looks at me and I'm sort of the walking after picture from an entrepreneur standpoint.
16:26
And there's no way to show a compelling before picture.
16:30
And so everyone So I was on um on a podcast not too long ago, James Altucher.
16:37
And it who was really fun by the way.
16:40
I really enjoyed my time with him.
16:41
But his conclusion was, Tom, you're just smarter than you think you are or smarter than you're willing to admit or whatever.
16:47
And I had to laugh cuz I'm like, this is where everybody goes.
16:49
They try to make me special instead of going, oh, that's how much humans can change.
16:57
And when it when it comes to muscle, people get it, right?
16:59
When you can show somebody they have no muscle one year and then, you know, 10 years later, they don't look like the same species.
17:08
They've put on so much muscle.
17:08
And all I'm saying is the same thing is true of the brain.
17:11
And you can make the same kind of radical transformations and still be the same underlying person.
17:16
And this all comes back to epigenetic change.
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The reason that humans are the apex predator is because of our ability to adapt. That's it.
17:24
Like our DNA, when they first sequenced human the human genome, they thought they'd find some extraordinary amount of gene encoding or trait encoding genes.
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And what they found was there were only 20,000.
17:35
And so they're like, okay, we have onions that have 40,000.
17:39
So are we really supposed to believe that an onion is twice as biologically complicated as a human?
17:44
This just doesn't make sense.
17:44
They were like, well, there is all this junk DNA, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
17:47
And of course, whenever a scientist say that, flash forward 5 or 10 years and suddenly they figure out what it actually does.
17:54
And that's epigenetic signaling.
17:56
So we have all these genes.
17:58
All they do is tell our other genes how much to express based on what's happening in in our environment.
18:03
And so the brain is as prone to those radical changes as is the body.
18:08
And so to avoid falling into a depression after a failure, I'll just shorthand all of, you know, a very long story.
18:16
But in film school, my final senior thesis, which was like a miracle that I got chosen to do it, and it was like I beat all these odds, and I thought I was the [ __ ] and I just thought I was winning and better than everybody.
18:26
And then I failed and realized, oh, actually the reason I failed was because I don't have talent.
18:32
Now for most people, and myself included, at the moment that I had that realization, that was for me a permanent state.
18:37
I have no talent because I'm talentless, I will always be without talent.
18:41
And so I started sliding towards depression because I had no idea where my life was going to go.
18:45
I had this vision of me as a filmmaker, and now it was just dead.
18:48
And so I was like, whoa, what do I do with that?
18:51
And as a part of this, I don't even remember how I stumbled upon it, but I started reading about the brain.
18:55
And in reading about the brain, I realized, oh, there's this hotly debated, this is late '90s, there's this hotly debated notion of brain plasticity.
19:01
Can the brain change the way the body does?
19:05
And I was like, I choose to believe it can.
19:08
And I don't know that I'm right, but it just thinking that I could get better lifted that dark cloud that had settled over my life.
19:16
And at the time I was teaching.
19:18
And so as I'm teaching I realized well I can help the students make better films and if I can help them why can't I help myself?
19:25
And so that is the seed that gets planted that turns into me going into entrepreneurship and self-development and all of that stuff and really making just massive radical changes in my life. Absolutely.
19:37
Yeah, we stop making permanent decisions based on temporary feelings. Yeah.
19:40
And we we slot it in and we think it won't change.
19:42
And this is what I'm so glad you went there because I don't think people know this because you're always interviewing everyone.
19:50
The thing is that you have so much studied and read neuroscience and about the brain.
19:56
And you can talk about it from a really educated standpoint which wasn't always the case obviously as we've just found out.
20:02
What what's the latest thing that you've been reading or heard or something that's kind of stuck with you from that background where you've just been like this is what I'm testing right now.
20:11
This is what I'm experimenting with.
20:12
Yeah, so the the thing that I recently came across that is shocking is not going to be news to a lot of people but have you read Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life? Okay.
20:23
Absolutely extraordinary book.
20:25
His book Maps of Meaning is actually even more impactful but it's dense.
20:31
But when he talked about lobsters and how the serotonin system is present in lobsters it's like getting people to understand because here's the other thing that people will mistake in my belief system.
20:41
They think what I'm saying is humans are just blank slates. We're not. I wish we were.
20:45
That would be so much more interesting to me that we're literally blank and you can just paint anything you want on that canvas. It's not like that.
20:53
But it is like using the body as a metaphor it is like the person who weighs you know 135 lb soaking wet and then they you know become a 250 lb just muscled out strong as an ox beast.
21:07
Like that level of transformation is very real.
21:10
And so, getting into that and realizing how innate some of these things are.
21:17
And so, some things aren't about changing or overcoming, it's about leveraging.
21:22
And so, once you realize some things are a game of change, some things are a game of leverage.
21:27
And so, leveraging the serotonin system, for instance, or here's one of my favorite things about neuroscience.
21:34
This literally changed my life.
21:36
This affected my marriage.
21:36
And when I give people the answer, Jay, they're going to think this is so dumb.
21:42
But I'm talking to the six of you out there right now who are actually going to do this. They're all watching.
21:46
It It will change their life, dude. You ready? I'm ready.
21:52
When you take on a facial expression, you will feel the emotion. Mhm. No matter what.
21:58
Whether you want to or not, you will.
22:01
And when I realized that the brain and the body are in a feedback loop.
22:03
Meaning that the brain gets as much information through the vagus nerve, I think 82% of the signals running on the vagus nerve, which is the biggest nerve in your body, 82% is your body speaking to your brain.
22:15
Not your brain telling your body to do something, your body telling your brain what's up, how to feel, sending um signals that end up influencing massive amounts of both conscious and subconscious behavior. So, it is truly a loop.
22:28
So, I used to I don't get angry easily.
22:31
And this actually used to really wind my wife up.
22:35
And or I should say but, when I did get angry, I would stay angry.
22:39
So, it would be like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, boom, now I'm pissed, and now I'm going to be pissed for the next 8 hours, or a day, or 2 days, or God, there were times I'd be mad for like 3 days. Oh, wow.
22:51
And I thought, it's funny, I've never once come out of one of those periods and thought, you know what, I'm glad I was mad that long.
23:00
That That a great use of a Saturday with my This is really just a smart way of living.
23:04
Every time I came out and thought this was moronic, I don't know what you're doing, you're wasting your time.
23:08
So, I had read this study that said if you hold a pencil in your mouth and then have somebody which sort of forces you into almost a smile and then have people rate their levels of happiness, they'll rate it higher.
23:18
And I thought that can't be true.
23:19
And so the study goes on to talk about getting people to laugh out loud and all this stuff.
23:25
And I thought, okay, I'm going to try it.
23:26
So, I would force myself to laugh out loud and it would change my mood.
23:31
Now, I felt stupid doing it for sure.
23:33
And then but about like 6 seconds in, it's so dumb and so ridiculous and now you're getting that feedback loop that it actually becomes real and your mood lightens.
23:44
And so I wrote this letter to myself and I gave it to my wife to read to me if ever I was in a bad mood.
23:48
And she only had to read it to me once and it worked so profoundly that I realized I don't need somebody to read the letter because the notion of and the letter was basically cuz whenever you're in a fight with somebody and they try to soothe you, you reject that because you think, well, they're just doing that because they've done something to wrong me.
24:06
I'm legitimately I have a legitimate reason to be upset.
24:09
They have an incentive a perverse incentive to see me forgive it.
24:15
So, I'm not going to forgive it.
24:15
This is real and some deep recess of your brain you feel it needs to be punished.
24:21
And so in that mode, you won't believe what they say because they have motive.
24:25
So, I had to read this letter and it was like, hey me, it's me.
24:26
You know I have no motive in this.
24:28
I want nothing other than when you're looking back on this for you to feel like you made the right decision.
24:34
And so what I want you to do right now is laugh out loud. That's it. Just take 10 seconds. Laugh out loud.
24:41
And at the end of that, you know it's going to change your brain chemistry and I remember citing the study and I was like, you know it'll work. So, just do it.
24:46
And so she read it to me. I laughed out loud. It felt ridiculous.
24:49
I didn't want to do it by the way.
24:50
I did not want to laugh out loud.
24:52
But the code that I live by is, man, you always do that which moves you towards your goals.
24:55
I want to have an amazing marriage, so I did it.
24:59
I laughed out loud and it changed my mood on a dime.
25:00
And I was like, I can't believe this is real.
25:01
So, that like and it goes on and on. If you've read V. S. Ramachandran, Yeah. And also, yeah. Oh my god. Carry on. Carry on.
25:10
Just there's so many cool studies like that.
25:12
There was no punchline to that, just that if people haven't read him, he is extraordinary.
25:18
Yeah, and I think it was only last year that a couple of years ago now where Harvard did their study on power poses. Yeah.
25:24
And they talked about it if you stand like Superwoman or if you stand like Wonder Woman or if you stand like Superman, then all of those things are going to boost your mood before an interview or before speaking to a stage of a thousand people or whatever it is.
25:35
Do you want to get into the like the weeds of this? Let's do it. Purely experientially. Let's do it.
25:40
I find if I'm feeling anxious and I try to do power posing, it makes me feel exposed. Mhm.
25:43
There's a reason when you have deep levels of anxiety that you close in.
25:47
There's a protective mechanism, but the emotional rewards you get is that you are safer.
25:53
And I find in moments of like overwhelm or high stress, I want to be in small spaces.
25:58
Um, nothing is more pleasant than sleep like I sleep under a blanket, fully under a blanket.
26:03
Blanket wrapped up over my head.
26:04
There is nothing more comforting than that.
26:07
So, now what you have to do is train people to do that not right at the height of their vulnerability.
26:13
This is me speculating, by the way.
26:15
Just like my gut instinct about having used some of this cuz I have suffered from massive anxiety for years and that one didn't serve me.
26:26
But, what did was to use that prior to remind myself to stand up straighter to remind myself to do those poses so that I don't feel exposed when I'm in that posture.
26:36
So, that when I'm anxious, that becomes something that soothes me rather than just makes me feel super vulnerable.
26:41
But, I find that that stuff and certainly end of one experimentation where you're just running this stuff on yourself to see, you know, where are you?
26:49
Um, is it working for you or not?
26:49
Like it may work for one person, but not for you.
26:52
But, yeah, there's really extraordinary stuff coming out on the brain. It's pretty gnarly. I love that.
26:59
And I love that you studied the hybrid one recently that that literally changed the way I work through everything.
27:02
And And luckily I read it I read it after I came on the show.
27:07
I probably read it in March or April of this year and then started really putting it into practice, especially seeing as my content this year became so much more of a commitment than it's ever been.
27:17
It was the first time in my life we started making three videos a week and 12 videos a month.
27:20
And I read a study that said your brain, you can't physically be creative and logical at the same time. That's interesting. Right.
27:29
You can't be creative and logical at the same time.
27:31
So, you can't really be authentically in flow state creative and at the same time have a business meeting and conversation and talk about your accounts or taxes or numbers or sales or whatever it is.
27:43
And I was like, that's really interesting because I felt that anytime I had done that in the same day.
27:46
So, sometimes I'd go and I'm sure people listening go from being in a business meeting to then try and write a script to then running back to another business meeting to then trying to have like a creative time with their wife or partner or whatever it is.
27:58
Or maybe play an instrument.
28:00
And I used to find that I could do it for some time, but then you start seeing burnout.
28:03
And what's basically happened is you're just stretching your ability and you're stressing yourself out and you're just getting tired.
28:09
If you are pulling it off right now and you're going, "Jay, you're talking nonsense."
28:12
Basically, you're just getting tired and eventually you'll run out.
28:15
So, what I started to do is I started to have creative weeks where I would be creative for a whole 7 days, and that would allow me to go so deep into my creativity.
28:24
I wrote some of my best video scripts at that time.
28:26
I got immersed in my creativity and how I could really deliver the message better.
28:33
And I was able to accelerate my creativity.
28:34
And then for the rest of the month, I'd just be in networking events.
28:38
I'd just be in business meetings.
28:38
I'd just be connecting with people. And it just lifted me.
28:42
It It just completely took off the the creativity ever feeling like a burden or a weight and let me just be creative.
28:51
And I was sharing that with a lot of creators recently who've been going through mental health or burdens or whatever it may be.
28:56
Anyone who's doing something creative on a regular basis, I highly recommend testing it.
29:01
That's really interesting.
29:01
So, right now, obviously, there are two sides to my life.
29:04
There's the public side that people see, me on camera, all that stuff.
29:08
And then there's the we're building a studio.
29:09
So, we're writing comic books, we're prepping screenplays and movie pitches, and um so, that is like there's those two you almost could group together.
29:20
But then there's the other side of I have whatever, 21 employees.
29:24
And so, it's like the day-to-day of dealing with HR and you know, what are we doing with um people's health insurance?
29:31
I mean, it's just like a thousand things like that, right?
29:32
So, and bouncing back and forth between the two is is very stressful.
29:38
And I'm not deeply efficient at switching gears. So, some people are.
29:43
I'm like whatever the spectrum is, I'm like way low on the spectrum.
29:46
So, going back and forth for me is a nightmare.
29:48
Um it's interesting though.
29:50
I've never thought to like really chunk it out like that in terms of weeks.
29:54
I've thought about this half day or something like that.
29:55
But and I always think of it as project specific versus being project type, which may be even better.
30:03
That's really, really interesting.
30:04
I will have to try that out. Yeah, try it out.
30:06
Let me know what you Let me know what you find from it.
30:06
It definitely's been working for me and I've been trying to hold true to it and trying to stop myself from I've been having two creative days a week for the last two months. Wow. do anything.
30:16
I just pick up random books, write notes, think, read, and it's just it allows me to really get into a zone. That's yeah. Yeah. That's sexy.
30:25
Like the thought like hearing you describe it like that like makes me want to do it immediately.
30:29
Cuz when you can get into the zone.
30:31
So, I think it was Einstein that said, um a lot of working hard looks like staring out the window.
30:37
And there is some truth to that.
30:37
It's like sometimes you you need to let go.
30:42
Like your mind has to relax.
30:42
It's part of the reason that I like meditating so much is you go into an alpha wave state, so you're calm and creative.
30:48
You're making these far-flung connections in the mind.
30:51
They seem to cough up into your consciousness.
30:52
Like you're not working for them. You're not chasing them.
30:55
And so like there was something that you really captured when you said, you know, I just I just walk over and pick up a book. It's like, yeah, man.
31:01
Like you chase that thread.
31:01
You pull at that and then some idea comes out of it.
31:05
Like I was talking with my writers the other day and we were talking about something else and they said something and I felt bad.
31:10
They said something but it clicked an idea so hard for me that I didn't hear them probably for 90 seconds where my mind was just like I was off like chasing that idea and like, you know, that story and what that story would look like and all that.
31:24
And then finally at at about 90 seconds of like being down that rabbit hole I was like, guys guys, I'm so sorry.
31:29
I'm going to stop you cuz I'm not hearing you at all.
31:32
Like you triggered this hard idea.
31:32
But when you're in that mode, you're in creativity.
31:37
You're sitting with writers.
31:38
You're all talking or you can just a book or you can watch a movie or something and just get inspired and you're drawing all these inspirations in.
31:44
It's crazy like where your mind will go.
31:48
Like one thing I like doing is going to like a Comic-Con.
31:51
Have you ever been to a Comic-Con? I've never been. I really want to.
31:54
I've been watching I've been following you.
31:55
I've been living through you. thing.
31:56
If if you're not into Comic-Cons, it'd be a total waste of your time. comics, so yeah. Yeah.
31:59
When I go, it's like it is the the thing that I like about the art form of comics, even though it had they have catastrophic drawbacks.
32:09
But the reason that it is an art form that has survived as long as it has is because there's no medium that can give you like big ideas really fast like comics.
32:19
Like they've just really figured it out.
32:21
An economy of language, um just everything is ultra high concept.
32:24
It's It's utterly fascinating.
32:27
So when I'm walking a con, it's like I get into a meditative state.
32:31
walk with my hands clasped behind my back.
32:34
There's and I don't know why.
32:36
Just intuitively I always do that where I'm like almost shutting my body down.
32:39
I walk really slowly and I just let the bombardment of ideas hit me and it puts me into like the super creative space where ideas start sparking for me, right?
32:49
You go look at a piece of art or you see a headline on a comic or something. It's crazy, man.
32:55
So, yeah, getting into that that realm where you're, you know, essentially staring out the window, but that's where the work gets done. The mental work anyway. Mhm.
33:04
Yeah, because otherwise we're so on autopilot.
33:06
We all we all have morning routines.
33:09
We know what we're doing.
33:11
Everyone's running on default and then everything kind of just adds up and stacks up and yes, we're effective and productive, but I find that in the focus of being effective and productive, I was losing that raw raw creativity which I crave and love and enjoy. So, yeah, no, good.
33:28
I'm glad I'm I'm interested to try try yours too and I I definitely have been doing that more so, the physical to the mental because I spent so much of my life mastering the mind that I often neglected the body.
33:40
And it's funny cuz I've kind of come back the other way and been like, "Okay, no, I want to I want to bring my body on the journey now."
33:47
Like I don't want to just let it kind of fade away and die, you know, just in the expense of the mind.
33:51
But okay, let's where one thing I wanted to go with you was around your self-awareness. You're so self-aware.
33:59
You're always trying to be more self-aware.
34:01
When I see relationship theory with you and Lisa, by the way, if you don't know Lisa Bilyeu, Tom's wife, incredible, absolutely amazing woman.
34:09
Love her Instagram stories. Go follow her. She's she's incredible.
34:13
The way she I told her she's one of my favorite Instagram storytellers, like hands down.
34:18
we for a second dive into that? So, yes, she's my wife.
34:20
What I'm about to say is not because she's my wife.
34:22
She's my wife because I think she's cool, not the other way around.
34:25
So, she is in our company, she is the best social content creator we have.
34:32
Like, oh, for sure I'm including myself in that. I don't know what it is.
34:35
She's just got a knack for like understanding how to be raw and vulnerable, but in a way that you can package, which is hard, man.
34:41
As soon as you start trying to package it, you you somehow lose something in it.
34:46
She knows how to keep it, dude.
34:48
So, literally, I was watching her IG feed, and I was like, "Damn, like it's so much better than mine. What the fuck?"
34:53
So, I pinned her down, and I was like, "You got to help me, man.
34:57
What you're doing over here is amazing."
34:58
And so, she was like, "All right, post this picture, and then just whatever comes to your mind, talk about it."
35:03
And so, she would like start feeding me all my throwbacks and my transformation Tuesdays and all that, and she was like, "You know, whatever comes to mind, just go on it." Yeah.
35:11
And so, doing that, picking like, you know, the the weird photos of me, the ugly office instead of like anything cool that I'm doing, like just all raw, vulnerable, like all of it, and then just riffing off of it, is amazing. That's all her, man. She's just crushed it. it.
35:27
I love that you guys have documented everything. It's insane.
35:30
Like, when I see your pictures, how but even the, you know, physical changes, job changes, home changes, everything.
35:35
It's unbelievable to see it all documented.
35:39
All of our lives are worse because you didn't take pictures of yourself when you were a minor.
35:43
I'm just going to I'm going to put that out there right now. I've got two pictures.
35:46
I mean, I to milk those forever. I I wish I could.
35:50
Cuz having that before to show people, even and and maybe you don't need this, but this has been very valuable for me, is one of uh one of the biggest benefits that I have is I don't live in the past.
36:00
So, my past sort of um fades, which is wonderful, and I read this book one time.
36:05
I can see by for people not watching this, just listening, Jay is agreeing vehemently.
36:08
And I used to be really bothered by this, and then I realized, "Oh my god, this is why I don't have hang-ups, because things just like drift away from me."
36:15
And there I read this book, and it was talking about this character who was immortal, but he only had a 10-year memory.
36:23
So, 10 years is enough to have formed really deep connections, so he wasn't lacking that in his life, but it also has these weird consequences of there's no sort of grounded you.
36:31
You are just this 10-year window.
36:35
And I thought that's actually really interesting.
36:37
And that feels very much like my life.
36:38
And if we hadn't been documenting this stuff, I've already been with Lisa for almost two of these 10-year cycles.
36:44
So, when I think back even now to just when we first got together, it's like it's fading.
36:49
And so, having the photos, having documented Having video where you can really see your attitude, right?
36:57
Where it's not like Like when I look back on that and I can see, yeah, all that mopey side that I worked to get rid of, like that was there.
37:06
And you see it in the videos, and it's embarrassing, and it reminds you, yeah, I don't want to be like that.
37:09
And so, having that, being able to see and be reminded or to recapture, like, whoa, we really did start with nothing. You know?
37:20
And to to just, yeah, see something that sparks it off that I wouldn't be holding on to anymore, but is very valuable for somebody to understand, like, no, no, no, this is where I started.
37:27
You're seeing me today 20 years into a journey.
37:33
But this this is what I looked like 20 years ago.
37:35
Yeah, the message is, even if you have nothing, take pictures. Yeah.
37:37
Use your way if you have nothing.
37:40
Especially if you have nothing.
37:41
Because then when you build something, you're going to be like, I wish we'd taken photos at the beginning. Totally. Totally.
37:45
I can I can so identify with that.
37:46
My life's not very well documented in pictures or video at all. I don't know why.
37:49
It just never was a conscious decision.
37:52
I I never thought I'd be anywhere.
37:54
So, I was kind of like, what am I going to take pictures for?
37:57
But it's But But now I value it.
37:57
And when I see your both your feeds, I really value it.
38:01
I learn so much by reading about both of your throwbacks, the work, the energy, the effort, and you both live it beautifully.
38:07
But the reason why I was bringing up Lisa, apart from that, was I also feel that you are constantly working on yourself, whether it's health, relationships, impact, you're constantly working at yourself.
38:20
What I want to know is, how did not did how did you build that mindset but what what is that mindset of constantly working on yourself without judging yourself to a deeper level without doing it in a way that always pulling you down but always pushing you up.
38:34
And you're doing that in your relationship.
38:35
Whenever I watch Relationship Theory, I think the conversations you and Lisa have incredible.
38:39
So it seems like you're doing it all areas of your life.
38:41
Which area did it start in which areas did it evolve to?
38:45
Let's just break that whole Yeah, so let's answer that question.
38:47
So where did it start and where did it go?
38:50
So the honest answer is that like many of the most amazing things in my life, they were born of misery.
38:57
And I was deeply and profoundly unhappy, dissatisfied with who I was, what I was capable of, where I was in life, all of it.
39:04
I was just really unhappy about it.
39:06
Now the one good thing is I've always met things like that with and what can I do?
39:13
And I have a a bias towards action.
39:16
And then I've cultivated that bias towards action which is how it's gotten extreme and has permeated into every area of my life.
39:21
Okay, so it starts with it's this dark place, this like I said, I failed in film school.
39:25
I didn't fail in film school.
39:26
I graduated second in my class but there was a failure that was so emotionally catastrophic that everybody else would have been like, oh you got a B, like what's the problem?
39:35
Sure I got a B in the class but I didn't walk away with a thesis film that I could use to get a job as a filmmaker.
39:41
So for me it was like, whoa, I just lost massively.
39:44
So I'm, you know, in this very dark place.
39:46
I'm broke as the day is long, I can't afford furniture.
39:49
I literally sit on the floor in my unfurnished apartment like that, you know, just it's a normal phase that people go through but then put on top of that that I'm feeling down and stuck like I don't know where I'm going to go.
40:03
Propensity towards action kicks in, I start reading, I'm learning about the brain, figuring out how much of this can I change.
40:07
I realize I can change it.
40:07
And then that change felt so good.
40:10
And even let's do a thought exercise.
40:14
This is for people listening cuz you're already there.
40:17
But for anybody listening and you're listening to Jay because you want to get there.
40:20
You see something, which by the way you feel when you're with him, it is real and I love that about you.
40:26
But like this sense of peace, like um the normal slings and arrows of life, he's found a way to deal with.
40:31
I won't say that he doesn't have them, but he's found a way to deal with it and that's what you're looking for.
40:34
So, going into that, it's like if you are in a dark place and you hear change is real, change is possible.
40:47
Doesn't that lift your mood?
40:47
Don't you want that to be true?
40:49
And once you allow it, because you have to allow it.
40:52
Once you allow that to lift your mood, you're like, I feel better just by thinking I can change. That was huge for me.
40:59
That was like moment one was when I realized I actually can change.
41:03
So, this thing that feels like a death threat, this like smothering cloud of just like despair, it can clear away.
41:10
And it immediately, and it's not like, oh, it went from gray skies to blue skies.
41:14
It wasn't that immediate, but it was it literally immediately a lighter load just because I realized I can change.
41:21
So, I was like, whoa, I can change.
41:23
None of this is a death sentence.
41:25
That's so like just amazing.
41:28
That was enough to get me going.
41:30
And people are always looking for, how do I have the energy? I'm depressed. I'm down on myself.
41:33
How do I get the energy to push through?
41:35
Man, you've got to find a way to find energy in that. You can change.
41:39
So, whatever position you're in right now, you can change.
41:42
No matter what it is, no matter how horrific, no matter what you've been through, no matter what you've done.
41:46
Like there is a way out from under it.
41:49
But part of it is allowing that sense of lightness to be there. So, I allowed it.
41:53
And so, it began to lift off my shoulders, which then encouraged me to take more action, to read more, to get better.
41:58
I started my obsession with gaining skills, that reading isn't about checking a box, it's about actually getting better at something that at least you do something.
42:05
And I need a better way to explain this.
42:06
This is one of those things, like if people really understood what I'm talking about right now, this one fact would change their life forever.
42:12
You don't get skills because it looks good on the resume.
42:17
You get skills because it lets you do the thing you want to do.
42:20
So, let's let's use sports as an example.
42:23
It's just all too easy not to use it.
42:25
So, if you want you're in poverty and you're Lionel Messi and you realize actually I think who's the other one? Cristiano Ronaldo.
42:35
Cristiano Ronaldo, thank you.
42:35
He was in the grips of poverty.
42:37
And nice, that's perfect.
42:39
So, Cristiano Ronaldo in the grips of poverty realizes that playing soccer is a way out for him.
42:44
And so, he goes and gets the skills. Why?
42:46
Because if he can win on the soccer field, then he can actually elevate his family out of poverty.
42:51
Like when you see that trail, it goes back to the Nietzsche quote.
42:55
If you have a why, you can survive almost anyhow.
42:57
So, how am I going to get there?
43:00
The The amount of work that Cristiano Ronaldo has put in to become one of the greatest if not the greatest The greatest.
43:07
football player of all time is it's inhuman.
43:09
Anybody else would look at it and say, nope, not willing to do that.
43:12
And fair enough, but it was somebody who said, if I gain these skills, it will let me dribble around people, score when other people can't score, galvanize a team around me, leverage it to be wanted by teams, to turn into financial resources, to make me famous so that I can get brand deals and things like that.
43:30
All the things that he would need to do to pull himself out of poverty.
43:33
Like this stuff isn't an accident.
43:34
It's about skill acquisition.
43:36
So, there's another kid that had the same dream, I'm going to use soccer to get me out of poverty and did nothing about it, therefore did not have the skills, therefore could not elevate their family out of poverty, and looks at it like, well, this is all circumstance. It's not circumstance. It's cause and effect.
43:49
It's how much energy do you put in to actually gaining the skills and did you gain them?
43:53
Or did you just put in the energy and the effort thinking that should be enough to gain it, but you didn't actually gain them?
44:00
So, this is what it's it's like the gift I want everybody to receive is you can get good at anything you set your mind to. Mhm.
44:08
But do you actually set your mind to it?
44:10
Do you have that inhuman level of follow-through?
44:11
Do you keep pushing and fighting long after it stopped being fun, deep into boredom, because you have a why?
44:17
You know why you're doing what you're doing, and you're just driving towards that.
44:20
And when you have that, you're going to accomplish this extraordinary stuff.
44:23
But I really think people now are doing it for the gram. Mhm.
44:27
You're doing it for the gram.
44:27
You want to go to that thing and do it because it's like, "Oh, this is going to look good on my gram."
44:32
And look, I've done that a hundred times. I get it.
44:33
But at the core of my existence is not that.
44:38
At the core of my existence is, I'm going to, in the amount of time that I have, I'm going to be acquiring skills.
44:43
Now, to acquire those skills, going back to what you were asking me, it's like you have to be self-aware.
44:47
So, as a part of the formula of knowing that skills have utility, that I can put that utility to the test in service of something bigger than myself, that helps other people, makes me have meaning and purpose, also helps me generate finances, do the things that I want in my life, all of that.
45:02
But it comes down to that acquiring those skills.
45:03
So, going into something, knowing that like, "Oh my god."
45:09
Okay, first it lightens my load a little bit, because I realize I can change.
45:14
Then I realize these skills actually have utility, they're going to let me do stuff.
45:17
So, now I really want to go hardcore into that.
45:19
And so, I poured my attention and energy into making that emotionally rewarding.
45:24
We all get to decide, in fact, I will be writing a book about this.
45:29
We all get to decide what our values are, what our belief system is, what our rules in life are, the code of ethics that we live by.
45:35
Those are all decisions that people mistake for empirical truth.
45:37
But if you want to know how just unempirically true it is, look across all societies, they don't share it.
45:43
So, we just decide that stuff.
45:45
It's usually handed to us by our parents, which is what makes us confuse it with just being true.
45:50
But the reality is that we're all constructing this belief system, value system, honor code, all of it, and it's going to determine what we do and how we do it.
45:58
Now, if you choose to breathe a life into from a value and belief standpoint, putting in that work to get those skills, then suddenly that energy of like, "Whoa, this is going to let me do something that lets me serve."
46:08
All of the sudden, like, "Wow, that's uplifting in and of itself."
46:13
So, you feel good as you're doing it.
46:15
Now, as you're feeling better about it, you're going to want to do it more.
46:18
And so, that became that self-reinforcing loop of I want to do this more, but to do it more, I have to become aware of my blind spots.
46:27
And that's where self-awareness comes in.
46:29
But, just like any other skill, like you have to cultivate it, you have to get better at it, you have to seek disconfirming evidence, you have to come to realize where you have been blind.
46:37
Now, often those moments where we realize we've been blind, they're emotionally devastating.
46:40
So, the one going back to film school, in creating that final thesis film, the realization, the removal of the scales from my eyes was to realize I did not yet have talent as a filmmaker.
46:53
Now, I didn't know the word yet at the time, so I just, you know, felt like a forever.
46:56
But, it was like, "That's the truth.
46:58
I did not yet have talent."
46:59
Okay, well, at least now I know. Now I can address it.
47:01
Had I known that on an earlier film, I wouldn't have made the mistakes in my thesis film, cuz I would have known I'm not John Woo, I'm Alfred Hitchcock.
47:10
And the night and day difference with which they approached films.
47:14
And so, what I had to learn as a creator was, "Oh, I'm Alfred Hitchcock.
47:17
I have to plan everything to the nth detail because I can't think fast enough to do it on the fly.
47:20
I have horrible spatial relations.
47:22
Film, oddly enough, is massively about spatial relations."
47:27
So, like being able to hold that in my head, I can't.
47:28
So, I have to get a computer program.
47:30
I have to literally do what are called animatics if I want to shoot a film.
47:33
So, the next film that I directed, I animatic the whole thing out, literally.
47:36
Every shot, camera angle, lens choice, everything was made in like 2 months leading up to the shoot.
47:44
And then, on the shoot, it was just like, "What does my animatic say?"
47:47
Oh, it says the camera's going to move from here to here.
47:48
We're going to be on a 35-mm lens.
47:50
It's going to be at 4 ft 7 in. It was all mapped out.
47:54
So, I could watch it and say, "Is it working or not?"
47:57
Because I can't hold that in my head.
47:58
That's a limitation of me. Okay, fair enough.
48:00
But, like that self-awareness allowed me to address it with a set of skills, which was animatics.
48:04
So, that's my like whole obsession.
48:07
I don't know if I got every nuance of what you were asking in in self-awareness, but it's like you can train even self-awareness. Yeah.
48:14
It's often going to come from pain, but you can and we can get into it.
48:17
I don't know if it's of interest, but there there are ways to train yourself to be more self-aware. Yeah, let's do it.
48:22
I love The reason why I love this one is because I believe that this is the root of everyone's biggest challenge. then let's get into it.
48:28
So, the the biggest thing is if you're trying to march down a path of self-improvement without clarity, without a terrifying level of clarity, you're never going to make it. Mhm. So, start there.
48:40
What do you want exactly?
48:42
What skill, what trait, what ability, what belief, what what are you trying to make yours?
48:45
So, once you identify that Notice he did not say a thing there. Like you said, right?
48:51
Like you said, what what ability, what trait, what quality.
48:56
You didn't you didn't ever say what house, what car. Yeah, right. It's important.
48:59
Yeah, Because it because I think that's too much I mean, when I remember first getting into self-improvement Sorry to cut you off.
49:06
I'm I'm saying this because I I think it's such an important point that you made that you did not let that word even come into a list and you named like seven things and it didn't come in.
49:14
Because when I started self-improvement, so much of what I heard in the West was always about a vision board of having stuff. Mhm.
49:20
And it was like put a picture of that ideal house, put a picture of that car.
49:23
And I have always struggled with that.
49:26
Always struggled with that being the object of obsession.
49:28
So, I'm glad you didn't bring it up and you can carry on or go on that or whatever.
49:34
Yeah, so well, part of it is cuz I certainly don't want to be disingenuous.
49:37
Like there are also material things that I chase and am inspired by and all that, for sure.
49:42
I just come at it from a like, "What's the skill that I'm going to need?"
49:46
Even if that ultimately is where I want to get.
49:47
It's like all of that stuff people will find and God, I hope people have heard this a thousand times. It's so transient.
49:53
It is never going to fulfill you, right? But it's still fun.
49:57
Go ahead, chase it, have fun. Like I get it.
50:00
Um, but you will ultimately come back to something more meaningful, for sure.
50:02
So, the once you know what you want, you have that level of clarity, now it's about, okay, where am I in that?
50:08
And that's where it requires you have self-awareness to know where you are in developing that skill.
50:14
So, if you, one, are willing to be honest with yourself, you you've already won.
50:19
The single most important part in learning to be honest with yourself is to accept that you must have self-esteem.
50:27
And the problem is most people build their self-esteem around something stupid.
50:31
So, most people build their self-esteem around being right, being good, being smart, being worthy, and they see all of those as permanent traits.
50:39
And so, anything that challenges them being smart, which is my big one.
50:43
Oh God, even to this day, if I really want to get into a bad place, I'll just go hang around people that are just legitimately smarter than me.
50:49
And then focus on how cool being smart is.
50:51
Now, I can be around them when I value myself for being the learner.
50:55
But the second I let myself slip into just wanting to be cool for being smart, then being around those people is like getting kicked in the face. It sucks, man.
51:03
And so, I had this I went through this phase in my life that I call the king of remedial jobs phase.
51:09
And I wanted so this is post film school, post like realizing that I don't have talent.
51:17
I just need to be smart, man.
51:17
I just need to build myself back up by being smart.
51:20
And so, I would apply for jobs.
51:23
Like I worked I sold video games retail.
51:25
Um, and I sold insurance door-to-door.
51:25
I did anything that I could where I knew that the person interviewing me at some point during the interview was going to say, "Why you applying for this job?
51:35
Like you're too smart for this."
51:35
And be like, "I'm right where I need to be."
51:39
Which is crazy and sad, but absolutely true.
51:41
And so, I did that for a couple years.
51:43
And in that phase, it was I just didn't want my intelligence to be challenged.
51:48
So, flash forward now, I'm working with these two entrepreneurs.
51:51
They hire me as a copywriter.
51:51
I'm in an entrepreneurial environment for the first time and they're clearly smarter than me.
51:58
That that isn't even up for debate.
52:00
And I'm arguing with them for this idea because I needed to win.
52:05
I just I couldn't take another time where it's like they're smarter than me, they're smarter than me.
52:09
So, I was like, all right, I'm going to win on this idea.
52:12
And somewhere in the argument I realized I was wrong.
52:13
And there was a voice in my head screaming, "You're wrong, dude. You are wrong. You know you're wrong. Shut up.
52:18
Like stop pushing for this. What are you doing?"
52:21
And I kept going and I finally like whittled them down and they finally just gave up.
52:25
And so they said, "Yep, we'll do it your way. Fine. Whatever."
52:26
And right then and there is the one time in my life that was truly a lightning rod moment where my life can be divided before and after.
52:36
And that moment was realizing that I was telling everybody that I wanted to get rich, but the way I was acting was like I just wanted to feel smart.
52:44
And I thought, "Hey, no judgment. I'm totally cool.
52:49
Whichever it is, like we can craft a life where that will be wonderful.
52:52
So, if what you really want is to just be smart and to feel smart all the time, you have to quit.
53:00
You've got to get out of this environment because they make you feel stupid all the time.
53:03
And that's not a great place to be.
53:05
Feeling badly about yourself all the time for any reason, even if it's self-inflicted, it's not a bad scenario or it's not a good scenario.
53:15
You've got to get out of it.
53:16
So, I was like, "Okay, so that's option one.
53:18
Get out of this scenario.
53:18
Go back to being the king of remedial jobs.
53:22
Or if you actually want to get rich, start acting in accordance with it.
53:26
Start making decisions based on that."
53:27
And so I was like, "Okay, well, I'm going to have to give up my self-esteem.
53:30
I'm going to have to like stop worrying about feeling good about myself." And I was like, "Oof.
53:36
That is clearly a losing proposition.
53:38
There's no way to come in and feel horrible every day and think that I will have the energy to see this through.
53:41
So, I was like, "God, what else could I do?"
53:44
And I was like, "Well, I guess I could build my self-esteem around something that is sort of impervious to being around people that are smarter than me." And what would that be? Being the learner.
53:53
And I thought, "Okay, well, I could choose to do that.
53:56
I could choose to build my self-esteem around being not right, but finding the right answer.
54:04
Not being smart, but working hard to learn."
54:06
And so, that became just like the core of my existence.
54:08
I decided in that moment, "I'm going to start valuing myself for how rapidly I can admit when I'm wrong.
54:15
How much I learn, how much time and energy I put into learning."
54:17
And once I switched that and I switched my identity and my behaviors around to being the learner, then all of the sudden everything changed.
54:25
And that's when I went on hockey stick growth, because all of the sudden, if we were arguing and I realized you were right, I'd be like, "Dude, he's right. You're totally right. I see it.
54:33
Oh my god, thank you so much."
54:35
And so, I started earning a reputation of I never just backed into a corner, I never argued for something just because it was my idea.
54:40
I was legitimately on the hunt to find the right answer.
54:42
And so, now I'm getting the internal feedback of, "Hey, you said that you were going to always focus on being the learner, you're doing it.
54:49
You said you'd always admit when you're wrong."
54:51
And I would try to shorten that timeline down, so I wasn't like taking an hour to finally admit it, or even 3 minutes.
54:58
That I was trying to get to it like, "Dude, if I realized I was wrong 3 seconds, 30 seconds max."
55:01
Like, I'm, you know, just finally saying it, "Look, you're totally right. I'm with you. Yep, I see it."
55:06
And then the world was like, "Whoa, working with this guy is awesome.
55:11
He's not trying to take credit for other people's ideas.
55:12
He will change on what he was saying in a heartbeat when he, you know, he fights for what he believes in, but the second you can convince him, he's convinced and then he moves on."
55:21
And it just became a really awesome environment. Wow.
55:23
So, that was hugely transformative, but it forces you to constantly be on the lookout for where am I wrong. Right.
55:33
Anyone who's listening, I'm taking wait to take it all in.
55:37
Because that's The reason why I find that fascinating is because most of the time we always hear just like you know, self-awareness starts to just just observe yourself, do what you're good at, you know, that kind of stuff, which which I think is not bad advice. I think it's on there.
55:52
But you're actually flipping it totally.
55:54
When I'm listening to you, what I'm hearing is that you literally had to shift the way you saw yourself and what you felt was make you feel significant.
56:07
Because you were getting so much significance from being the smartest and you had to take that away and find a new significance.
56:13
It was still significance.
56:15
It wasn't like being a learner was insignificant or subordinate or inadequate.
56:18
You saw it with the same level of significance.
56:20
I I had to and that's the thing, you can decide what to value. Mhm.
56:24
And so this is another part of it's not really self-awareness, but this is another part of the the rebuilding process of somebody that wants to completely transform who they are.
56:32
Um you have to change your identity. So, who am I?
56:35
I'm I'm the smart guy and that's how I thought of myself.
56:38
Like I thought of myself as being smart and then the life slapped me around and I realized, oh wow, I'm really actually not that smart.
56:44
I just grew up in a small town.
56:46
And so in my small town, I was smart enough.
56:48
I was still never the smartest, but then I moved to LA and all of a sudden [ __ ] people smarter than me were just like growing on trees. Mhm.
56:55
So I was like, wow, I really don't feel smart anymore.
56:57
So that was like a a hard adjustment and so then putting myself into these smaller and smaller rooms was the solution, but I realized that I had been sort of taken as a default value intelligence.
57:07
Maybe it was the family I grew up in or the movies I watched, I don't know, but I just had this default that being smart was the thing everyone should chase. Mhm.
57:16
And then I realized oh, I can actually change that.
57:19
Not everybody values themselves for that and so I could swap that out with something else.
57:24
And I want people to understand that those things that are just deeply within you that seem as if they are innate human qualities, challenge them all.
57:32
Some things you won't be able to change, but some things are far more malleable than you thought.
57:38
And a lot of what you value comes down to what you repeat.
57:41
And so, just repeating myself, I'm the learner. I'm the learner. I'm the learner.
57:45
It began to be my identity, and then rewarding myself emotionally when I did that, repeating it, rewarding, repeating, rewarding, then it's like through that repetition cycle, it actually starts to be meaningful that you're the learner.
57:57
And by the way, I was telling everybody, I'm the learner.
58:00
I see myself as a learner. I'm the learner. I'm the learner.
58:01
And because I was telling people, then I really felt the sense of congruence with wanting to act like the learner.
58:06
And so, when you say you're going to do something and you do it, you earn self-credibility.
58:10
So, now I've got this loop going.
58:11
I said I was the learner.
58:13
Here I am reading this book.
58:14
Here I am being willing to admit when I'm wrong, seeking out knowledge, looking for disconfirming evidence.
58:20
Like, I get to feel good about myself for that.
58:21
And that cycle of getting good at emotionally rewarding, and if your audience is ready for this, emotionally punishing yourself.
58:27
And knowing that it's got to be never more than an 80/20 split.
58:31
You can never be like a 70/30 and spending 30% of your time in the negative. You just can't.
58:35
It's just something about the human being. And is it actually 20?
58:38
It's It feels ballpark there, but like if you think about you should be spending at least four more times thinking about all the things you're doing well, all the good things you're bringing into this world, the things you're grateful for, spending at least four more times amount of your time there than you do the negative stuff, the things you're doing wrong, the things that you can improve.
58:59
And just the easy barometer is, even if you have to take it down to a point of, you know, 0.
59:06
1% of um time in the negative, it's the the way to know if you're spending too much or too little is the second something begins to chip away at who you are and what you think about yourself, stop.
59:18
Because all of this should be building you up.
59:20
Even the things that I'm saying to myself, I'm not doing well at that, I'm I have like protection from, and that's okay because you're the learner.
59:28
I'm not good at that yet.
59:28
Like I'm so hardcore about things like that that I make sure that I'm I always remind myself that just because I'm not good at it yet doesn't mean that I'm not going to get good at it.
59:38
So, you start reinforcing that and you really can begin to build yourself up these beliefs and habits and routines and core values, identity, it's all malleable.
59:49
And if it's all malleable, that's that's where I'm going back to that question that I'd asked initially and you were like, "Did you answer all of them?"
59:53
And I And you were literally answered 99.
59:54
9% of it apart from this one.
59:56
It was when you're building that how do you build it without letting that then become negative judgment on yourself?
1:00:04
Or every time you're questioning yourself or you're okay with being in wrong, how are you stopping that from being so heavy?
1:00:09
Yeah, that This is where rules come in. Right. Yeah.
1:00:11
You talked about this at the event.
1:00:13
I loved that point you made at the event.
1:00:15
Yeah, and so about rules and barriers and boundaries.
1:00:18
I think I answered a question and you you were like, "Cuz you're a monk, you're allowed to say that."
1:00:22
And then you went and gave the practical answer.
1:00:24
I was like, "That was a great answer." So, yeah, please.
1:00:26
So, the way that I view myself as like Voltron, I'm all these like random bits and pieces that come together to make a whole, but the the reality when people look at me or they look at my success, what you're seeing is my identity, my values, my beliefs, my rules, my habits, and my routines.
1:00:43
They've all come together and they form a set of behavior, a set of seeking skills, and working hard, and wanting to impact and touch lives, and to be a good partner to my wife, and all of that.
1:00:55
That That's what you see, but it's all things that I've very consciously and very routinely comb over, prune what's not working, add something new as I learn it.
1:01:02
Um and that is at the end of the day, you have to have a rule that you don't do anything that diminishes yourself.
1:01:10
So, for instance, if I'm in a dark place, I'm going to spend zero zero percent of my time punishing myself, right?
1:01:19
Because it doesn't make sense.
1:01:21
So, one of my like guiding principles is never do anything that diminishes you and then never do anything that moves you away from your goal.
1:01:28
So, again, goal, you have to have that clarity.
1:01:30
So, I know what I'm trying to do. Okay.
1:01:33
Well, if I know what I'm trying to do, does beating me beating myself up over this is that going to help me or hurt me?
1:01:38
Oh, it's going to hurt me because I'm going to be more likely to slide toward depression, to think less of myself, to be less bold, to take less action.
1:01:44
Okay, well then we're not going to do that.
1:01:45
And I don't think people have researched cognitive behavioral therapy nearly enough.
1:01:51
Pattern interrupting is like everything.
1:01:52
Get better at pattern interrupting than LeBron is at shooting.
1:01:56
Like you just have to be a ninja.
1:01:59
Like you've got to be so hardcore.
1:02:00
You've got to know about how to do that with yourself.
1:02:03
So, if I have a negative thought that's recurring, I just tell myself, "Nope, you can't think this anymore."
1:02:07
So, and every time it will come up because I can't stop myself from it popping up into my conscious mind, but you absolutely can control how the next thought goes.
1:02:17
The next thought can be, "Oh, I'm Here's what I'll do with a negative thought. That's so rad.
1:02:20
I'm so glad this negative thought appeared in my mind because that reminds me to be grateful for the fact that I'm friends with Jay Shetty or that reminds me to be grateful the fact I have a marriage that is so insanely cool that like I legitimately some days have to stop myself from just curling up in a ball with her and just chilling all [ __ ] day.
1:02:38
Like that is I'm super stoked.
1:02:38
Even now Jay, it's so funny.
1:02:41
I had to stop and think, "Wait, I'm going through this list of things that I'm grateful for. What started this?"
1:02:45
And I'm like, "Oh yeah, the negative thought."
1:02:47
Like that actually just happened to me right now.
1:02:50
So, you can imagine in real life when like you train yourself, "Every time the negative thought kicks up, don't don't sit in the emotion of the negativity that it will bring.
1:02:58
Instead, use it as a habit loop trigger to think about something you're grateful for."
1:03:03
And at first, it feels so awkward and it's like the negative thought just keeps coming back.
1:03:08
But if you're diligent and suddenly negative thoughts become a habit loop trigger to gratitude, to positivity, to repeating your rules about I don't allow myself to think things that tear me down, so I'm not going to think about that.
1:03:19
Even just saying that crowds out that thought and telling other people that, "Hey, this is what you're doing." It is unbelievable.
1:03:25
But, this is where I'm saying I'm literally just a patchwork of all these like tools and techniques that allow me to protect myself from negative self-talk, from anxiety, from depression.
1:03:35
I don't think I've ever officially been in depression, uh but I've been super [ __ ] close enough to know the feeling of staring into the void, which I don't think is accurate.
1:03:45
It feels like the void is collapsing in around you and just everything is meaningless and it is all utterly hopeless.
1:03:50
And I've had just enough of a glimpse of how hopeless that is to to get where people are in those moments, but anxiety, that I've been in the thick of.
1:04:01
So, that one I know and I've used CBT, uh cognitive behavioral therapy, to do interrupts on that.
1:04:06
Um I've a very well-developed negative voice, so I have had to um use tools and techniques to stop that.
1:04:14
I never would have become a successful entrepreneur if I couldn't um learn to self-soothe.
1:04:18
And at one point, that was what I would have said was my secret power.
1:04:22
That my secret power in business was I can self-soothe faster than anybody else. Mhm.
1:04:26
You're like you can self-heal. Yeah. Like Wolverine. Yes. Yeah. Well said. Yeah.
1:04:31
I have to start bringing out the comic book references. I loved it. It's good. No, it's true.
1:04:36
Yeah, and and that is such a beautiful quality because it's so funny you said that because we used to do exactly the same thing with sex as monks. That's interesting.
1:04:44
Because every time you have the thought of sex, which was opposing to the celibate lifestyle that we chosen to think of, the natural thing would be obviously to entertain it.
1:04:52
Like that's a very natural thought to go down because everyone's had experiences before.
1:04:55
The other thought that you can go down is, "No, that's bad. Don't think about that. Oh my god."
1:05:00
And you start criticizing yourself, start beating yourself up, you start feeling guilty because you're surrounded by monks and like, "Oh my god, everyone's so pure and I'm so impure."
1:05:07
And then that's another rabbit hole that you can go down, which I've done, too.
1:05:12
And and then and then third one you go down is just just the feeling of oh no, actually let me use this as a springboard as a launchpad to find the next thing I need to find or to switch that door into something positive or to switch that door and we were always taught about how sexual energy could be used as enthusiasm for service.
1:05:29
And the more that it was transferred and transformed, the more it could be used for the like because I mean that energy is what creates like creates the planet. Right.
1:05:39
So it's like the amount of creativity that sits in that energy is so high that you can kind of inject that into a a baby, a project.
1:05:45
You can do so many things with it. Yeah, I love that.
1:05:48
Yeah, so no it's it's fascinating that you said that and I I I think everyone who's listening Tom's just shared some like super practical advice.
1:05:57
Like that is so where I actually hearing that, I so believe that's where everyone should start because that is a skill even though it's not your superpower right now, that is a skill that's going to last you forever. For sure.
1:06:09
And it will apply to everything whether you do business or relationships or whatever you're going to end up doing, that's like the one skill that's just self-healing, self-soothing. For sure. that.
1:06:18
Thank you man, that was amazing. Absolutely. That was brilliant.
1:06:20
That's the best I've ever heard it explained.
1:06:21
Genuinely, it's just it was so clear and I really feel I really hope that everyone's going to go and do a bit of CBT, take a break.
1:06:27
Like go and learn the skill and we take it for granted and it's like yeah, I meditate for 10 minutes a day now and it's cool.
1:06:34
I'm I'm I'm I'm not I'm not criticizing anyone who does 10 minutes a day, but I'm like if you really want that benefit that Tom's talking about, it's going to take a bit more effort. Oh yes.
1:06:43
And take a bit more work.
1:06:43
And constantly and it never goes away.
1:06:44
It does get easier for sure. Yeah, yeah.
1:06:46
But um because it becomes your default reaction.
1:06:48
But it's never going to go away.
1:06:51
And I people I used to ask me like, oh how do you get rid of the negative voice?
1:06:54
I'm like, I don't know that you want to.
1:06:55
Like the negative voice is a powerful reminder to practice gratitude.
1:07:00
It's it's also a good reminder that maybe something is wrong.
1:07:04
Maybe you are doing something wrong and you should adjust and you should rethink.
1:07:07
I was just about to say that.
1:07:08
Sometimes your negative voice is what protects you. Sometimes.
1:07:11
Very Not all the time, but there can be times when it's protecting In fact, I'll say it like this.
1:07:14
It It probably does protect you all of the time, but it's so repetitive that you touch this issue and now we're into the 9,000th replay of this, that's where it becomes stupid.
1:07:27
And so the one thing, yep, cool, got it.
1:07:29
I do need to work on that. You're absolutely right.
1:07:31
Um and then just letting it go, right?
1:07:34
And not clinging onto it, not beating yourself up over it and all that stuff.
1:07:37
But it it has a use, which is why it's so powerfully with us.
1:07:41
I always get more fascinated by how much we are aligned on so many things.
1:07:46
Because when we first met, I remember it it could have been opposite because same with that with the thought.
1:07:51
I was talking about like you never get rid of the negative thought.
1:07:53
You don't only think about it for less time. Right.
1:07:55
And it's like the Roger Bannister 4-minute mile.
1:07:59
I always use that analogy because it's Everyone always believed that it took over 4 minutes to run a mile. Right.
1:08:06
And then one person breaks it and then from then everyone breaks it. So crazy.
1:08:10
And so all that changed was when you run a mile, maybe someone's going to do it in a second one day. Maybe. I don't know. It could be possible.
1:08:16
But the point is that there will always be for some time.
1:08:19
You can just make it less time. Right. Right? You can't get rid of it.
1:08:22
And I think that's the problem.
1:08:23
We're all trying to get rid of stuff.
1:08:23
So don't be worried if you have negative thoughts.
1:08:26
With these tools that Tom's been sharing, just find a way to let it sit in your brain for less time. Awesome. I love that.
1:08:32
And you brought up this and I'm glad you did about you being insanely grateful for your relationship.
1:08:37
I want to dive into relationship because I don't think you get to talk much about on interviews about relationships.
1:08:43
And my audience loves relationship advice and content.
1:08:47
So I I really want to get into it for the last kind of the last mile of our our interview is really going to your advice on relationships.
1:08:52
I've seen you and Lisa together.
1:08:54
I I love the relationship that you have.
1:08:57
Whenever I watch you both on Relationship Theory, I learn a lot from it, personally, which I find fascinating.
1:09:03
Like, I really love hearing you guys talk about relationships because you've been together for so long. How long's it been now? 18 years. 18 years. Congratulations, man. It's incredible.
1:09:10
You both look so young, so it's it's kind of hard for me to be like together early. I know, yeah. Yeah.
1:09:16
It's a thing, but 18 years, it's incredible, it's beautiful, and it's real.
1:09:19
I can I can say that because I've seen you guys together.
1:09:21
Let's start with people who are in relationships struggling with Well, actually, let's start there.
1:09:30
What do you think are the top three things that people in relationships struggle with? Communication. Yes. Communication.
1:09:39
Communicate I mean, that's that it that really is what it comes down to.
1:09:40
And it's it's things though that um to to not cheat you out of some more answers, it's communication in ways that they're not really thinking about. So, one, defining terms.
1:09:50
So, we all come to a relationship with like expectations about how we think people should act.
1:09:57
And unfortunately, we don't recognize our expectations as expectations, we recognize them as truth.
1:10:01
This is how the world is, it is how the world should be, and when somebody we think that they have those same beliefs and values and rules and all that.
1:10:09
And so, given this scenario, there's only one way to act, that is certainly obvious.
1:10:13
And so, when the person doesn't act like that, we take it personally.
1:10:16
Like, "Whoa, do you not respect me? Do you not love me?
1:10:18
Do you not care about me?" And it just isn't that.
1:10:22
They have a different set of beliefs and rules.
1:10:23
There's enough nuance difference that they're not If they're intending to hurt you, you have a whole different set of problems.
1:10:28
But assuming that they're not intending to hurt you, then you have a communication problem.
1:10:34
So, Lisa and I actually define our terms. Mhm.
1:10:35
So, we have a few words in our um marriage that they mean something.
1:10:41
So, if I say, "Hey, baby, it's important to me that you leave that, you know, glass of water on the table."
1:10:48
then there she just wouldn't move it, period. Simple as.
1:10:50
Like, the the word important like comes in all caps with exclamation points glowing red.
1:10:56
Like that's like when we say it like it's a drop whatever you're doing like it's important that you do X Y or Z.
1:11:01
Now the big thing is when you define a word like that you can't ever abuse it.
1:11:05
So like I would never say it's important to me that you leave the you know it's got to be it's just extraordinary.
1:11:10
Like how many times do I tell her something's important in a year?
1:11:16
I don't know, six, seven times in a year?
1:11:17
So it's like it's really got to be limited.
1:11:20
And then another one is promise.
1:11:22
If I say I promise I'm going to do that, dude, I'm going to do that.
1:11:29
Like there's no two ways about it.
1:11:29
So you never throw around promise ever under any circumstance.
1:11:34
And so dude, it's like you really really have to be hardcore.
1:11:38
And so and the other way that we use promises um if if uh she says, you know, how does this dress look on me?
1:11:46
I'm like, yeah, it looks great.
1:11:48
And she's like, you promise?
1:11:51
Then it's like, all right, all right, it makes you look fat. What can I say? You know what I mean?
1:11:53
It's like but then you you cut to like the chase on something.
1:11:58
Now the thing is you can't say that all the time.
1:11:59
You can't be like, how's this dress make me look? Fine. Promise.
1:12:04
Uh what do you think of this dinner? You like it? Yeah, I love it. Promise.
1:12:05
Like if you're doing that it loses everything.
1:12:08
But if you're saving it for like in fact, God, I almost don't remember the last time I asked Lisa to promise something like that.
1:12:14
Um but you know that you have it.
1:12:17
We certainly use it more in the early days of our marriage.
1:12:20
But even then like how many times a year? Three or four?
1:12:22
I mean it's like but it it really forces you to respect these things that you make sacred in your relationship.
1:12:28
And then just being honest even when it sucks.
1:12:33
Because let me tell you how many times it's going to be where if you just lied oh God, it would be so much easier and you would probably get away with it and but it the way that I explain lying to people is you get away with it 50% of the time.
1:12:50
And so it tempts you to think it's a good strategy. Hmm.
1:12:52
But the other 50% of the time it is cratering trust.
1:12:57
And once you can't trust the person, all hope is lost.
1:13:01
And there's nothing more beautiful than being in a relationship with somebody who makes you feel like they're your number their number one and that you totally trust them.
1:13:09
And Lisa wrote this Instagram post about how she could see a photo of me with my arm around a woman or resting my head on a woman or hugging her, whatever, and she it wouldn't even make her radar to question it.
1:13:24
So that's the fun for us is having that level of trust.
1:13:29
Now it's like I think it's Buffett that said you spend your entire life building your reputation only takes 5 seconds to lose it.
1:13:33
So it's like we're so careful.
1:13:35
We for 18 years we've been earning trust with each other.
1:13:41
So like dude, so especially when I was back at Quest and it was women would come and flirt and hit on me because they wanted something wanted to be sponsored by the company or whatever.
1:13:52
And I was around bikini literal bikini models like all the time.
1:13:56
And so if ever there was going to be a moment of insecurity for my wife, it would have been that period.
1:14:02
A, she wasn't insecure and B, I the thought of throwing away 18 years of shared experience of all that trust everything.
1:14:09
It's sex is like rad and super exciting and I love it the most, but like compared to what I would have to give up for something like that, it just doesn't rate on the radar.
1:14:17
So and by the way, think something like I'm saying now which most people would hide from their spouse, oh that yeah, of course I find other people attractive.
1:14:26
What are you talking about?
1:14:26
Like we just openly talk about that.
1:14:28
Like she'll nudge me and be like, oh my god, don't you think she's hot?
1:14:32
It's like that's just we set up early on in the relationship to be aggressively ourselves and one thing that we both were really honest about was I was like, look, it is human nature.
1:14:42
You are going to find other guys attractive and I will actually trust you more if you admit when you find somebody attractive than if you say something stupid like I only have eyes for you. Oh, really?
1:14:53
You're the only human in all of history to like uh you know, transcend their human nature?
1:14:56
Like it doesn't make sense. Yeah.
1:14:58
And then that's a super fragile place to be because what happens if I get older?
1:15:02
What happens if I get injured or scarred?
1:15:03
Like then I'm really supposed to believe that suddenly you're more attracted to somebody with a scar than somebody without?
1:15:08
Like it doesn't make sense.
1:15:10
So, we all live in this fragile bubble of well, as long as they lie to me, it's okay and as long as I'm willing to believe and even though I secretly I know it's a lie and then it's the more pious than thou like, oh my god, she's thinking all these nice things about me, but I'm actually finding other people attractive and I'm just lying about it.
1:15:23
And so, then you're like, wait, if I'm lying about it, is she lying about it?
1:15:26
And so, it just it erodes all that trust.
1:15:28
So, from the jump we were like, look, you're going to find other people attractive, I'm going to find other people attractive.
1:15:32
But let me introduce you to this magical word called commitment.
1:15:36
Now, I'm with you because I love you, because I respect you, but I'm also with you because I'm committed to you.
1:15:42
And so, you don't have to worry that I'm going to be looking over my shoulder for a more attractive woman.
1:15:47
There are going to be more attractive women than you, for sure, especially as you age. Who the [ __ ] cares? You're my wife.
1:15:52
We have shared an experience. We've shared a life.
1:15:56
We've built this around each other.
1:15:57
And commitment means something to me, going back to having that code that you live by.
1:16:02
And the rules and the code that I live by, I'm never going to betray that. Yeah.
1:16:06
So, it's like we've always said, I may break up with you one day because I'm not saying that like, oh, there's nothing you could do that would make me break up with you, for sure there is.
1:16:17
But I'm never going to cheat on you.
1:16:19
I may come and say I'm breaking up with you because I'm going to go have sex with somebody else, but I'm absolutely not going to go have sex with somebody behind your back. Never going to happen.
1:16:27
So, like having that trust and knowing who the other person is, like all that stuff is is super meaningful.
1:16:30
And look, there's just more and more and more stuff, but those are some big ones. Yeah, I love those.
1:16:36
And and and it's nice to see that it's true.
1:16:38
I think when I hear you say it and I'm hoping that everyone who's listening when they hear you say it, they're just like, "Yeah, I want that."
1:16:45
And I get why it works as opposed to the hiding, lies, you know, white lies, whatever it is that we cover everything up with.
1:16:53
I'm hoping everyone's like, "Yeah, that's what I want."
1:16:55
And I think one of the reasons where I think people fumble, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is compatibility and what that means.
1:17:04
Like, there's so many studies about liking the same stuff, not liking the same stuff, having the same goals, not having the same goals.
1:17:10
Is it even about compatibility, or is it something completely different?
1:17:14
It is very much about compatibility, but I think people fundamentally misunderstand compatibility.
1:17:17
So, you're never going to get one simple thing that says, "Oh, either opposites attract, or they don't."
1:17:22
The reason that this stuff is continuously debated is because there's some truth to both sides.
1:17:25
On certain metrics, opposites do attract.
1:17:30
Like, my wife and I in conscientiousness.
1:17:31
I have I'm like, I think literally a 2% on the big five for conscientiousness.
1:17:35
I do not think through things. So, I am very open. I'm high on openness.
1:17:41
I'm high on aggressiveness.
1:17:42
So, I'm always just out there trying, trying, trying.
1:17:43
And if things fail, and I leave chaos in my wake, so be it.
1:17:46
My wife, on the other hand, really thinks through things. So, we work perfectly.
1:17:51
When it's something that needs to be fresh, spontaneous, like a business where you have to have somebody thinking of new stuff and pushing boundaries, then we need to lean on me.
1:18:00
But when it's the finance side, or it's planning a trip, we need somebody who's thinking through everything and can see the consequences.
1:18:08
Now, here's where people get in trouble.
1:18:10
One person who, let's say, like me, not being conscientious, they don't value the conscientious person. That's the problem.
1:18:17
It's not compatibility, it's valuing it.
1:18:18
So, she and I are not compatible on it at all, which is a good thing in this particular instance, but I value her, she values me, and we talk openly about it.
1:18:29
And we'll say, "This is where you shine. I don't shine here."
1:18:32
And that, by the way, took me a long time.
1:18:33
So, for any guys out there who want to be better than their wife at everything cuz you think that's the only way she's going to find you attractive.
1:18:39
Um I can help you with that one. It's just not true.
1:18:41
And think about anybody that one, there's two things that all of us humans like.
1:18:44
We like to be better than the people closest to us at things. It's fun to win.
1:18:48
And then two, we really truly want to have our areas of just like shining that we know in this relationship that you're going to want me to do and that's amazing.
1:19:02
And in that moment where you reveal vulnerability in yourself, I find you more attractive.
1:19:06
So you've got we want to win and we also love when people are vulnerable.
1:19:10
So you put those two together and as long as both people have both, the person who wants to win then can also be vulnerable at times, then you can have a really powerful marriage.
1:19:19
In the beginning, I would really frustrate her and it really made me feel insecure because my wife is better at traditionally male things than I am.
1:19:27
So she's better at spatial relationships.
1:19:28
She's better at organization. She's better at systems.
1:19:32
And finally, I was just like Did you ever see the movie Daryl? No. Oh my god, it's so good.
1:19:36
It's about this kid, he's an Android and his mom is heartbroken because he's perfect, because he's programmed to be perfect.
1:19:44
And the father pulls him aside and is like, "Sometimes people just need to be needed."
1:19:48
And I thought, I saw that probably when I was eight and I was like, "That's so powerful."
1:19:52
And so with my wife, I had my Daryl moment where I realized, "Oh my god, what am I thinking? She needs to be needed."
1:19:59
Like which means I can't try to be better than her at everything. Like let her shine, man.
1:20:03
Who doesn't want to shine?
1:20:04
So finding that was real.
1:20:04
But then there are things that I think from a deep value system, if you have a true collision of values, you're going to fight over it every time until you figure out how to deal with it.
1:20:14
So like take and this goes back to conscientiousness, um I don't value cleanliness and my wife does tremendously. Oh, me too.
1:20:23
And so it's like I see it as this just catastrophic waste of time and I'm like, "Oh my god, when I think about what we're trying to build, like this is crazy.
1:20:29
You're really going to make me like go pick up a dish? This is madness. Yeah.
1:20:33
And so, we collide over that over and over and over because no matter how much I look at her point of view from a knowing that I'm all about do what moves you towards your goals, it it doesn't make sense.
1:20:44
And so, because we collide over that, we've just had to find a way to say, "How do we deal with this?"
1:20:50
Cuz this is I'm not going to convince her, she's not going to convince me.
1:20:53
So, knowing if you have a true collision of values that you're going to have to address it in behavior, and then if you have a true collision of values at something deep and fundamental, that's where relationships fall apart.
1:21:04
Um and then there's a whole lot of other things, and this is one thing for great relationships, have sex. Have sex.
1:21:09
And I like The weird thing is in my personal life, I am not bashful about talking about sex in the slightest.
1:21:16
I will make your eyelashes curl back.
1:21:18
But for some reason in my public persona, I'm really like um like a bit stand-offish.
1:21:23
It started because I was at Quest and I represented a brand and I really felt like I had to to be super professional and respectful, and it's continued to carry on.
1:21:30
Um but having a hot sex life is so important.
1:21:35
Like people do not let yourself become your partner's roommate.
1:21:38
Like you have to spice it up.
1:21:39
Yeah, you you That one is super important.
1:21:42
And because especially males crave novelty, like you have to find a way to keep the relationship novel and exciting.
1:21:47
And then you have to know how to keep a fire burning.
1:21:51
It's funny, we actually used to teach people how to keep literal fires burning, where it's like, "Okay, you stack the wood in such a way that oxygen can get in and you put the easier-to-burn stuff in the middle. It's called kindling.
1:22:00
And then you use something really flammable to light it."
1:22:03
And like we knew how to do it.
1:22:03
And then you feed the fire, and this is how you keep the oxygen going.
1:22:08
But we don't think of relationships the same way, but they take the same amount of constant care and attention.
1:22:11
But if you give them the same constant care and attention, it will stay that same raging inferno. Mhm.
1:22:17
But you have to to do it.
1:22:20
You have to put the energy in. I love it, man.
1:22:21
If anyone wants more advice from Tom on relationships, hack on in relationship theory, check it out.
1:22:25
It's definitely It's great to see you guys talk about it together.
1:22:29
I think it's really powerful.
1:22:30
And I think especially with the busy lives we lead, the amount you travel, the amount your wife travels, the amount me and my wife travel, it's so important to talk about these things because in this entrepreneur hustle grind culture, being married men, and for them being, you know, married women, it's so often just like kind of just shoved to the side.
1:22:50
And and we find that so often that so many successful entrepreneurs end up having really broken marriages at home or broken lives and hence broken children and then just perpetuating the cycle all over again. So, thank you, man.
1:23:03
Thank you for being a great example and thanks for sharing it. All right, final five.
1:23:06
I always have final five questions for you. kind of things.
1:23:09
These uh yeah, I love them, too.
1:23:11
I You can try to be quick, but I The ones I've chosen for you are they're deep, too.
1:23:15
So, I You can try and be quick.
1:23:17
So, I'll give you quick and deep. This is amazing. Yeah, quick and deep.
1:23:20
If you can be quick and deep Okay, so the first one is you say you want to break people out of the matrix.
1:23:25
What is the matrix and how do you do it?
1:23:27
The matrix is the limiting beliefs that everybody has that they mistake for the real world, not realizing that they're assumptions and beliefs and rules and everything passed on mostly by your parents, but also by the society around you.
1:23:38
So, I want to pull people out by giving them an empowering mindset that lets them realize they can do anything they set their mind to. And you're doing it.
1:23:46
Human potential, you say, is nearly limitless.
1:23:48
Every time you say that on one of your videos or the introductions, and when I see that, I'm just like, "What does he mean like nearly limitless? And why nearly?" Here's the thing.
1:23:57
I I've ac- actually moved more towards just saying it's limitless.
1:24:00
The reason I said nearly, which is more true, by the way, we actually are limited, um it doesn't do good to focus on our limitations.
1:24:08
Most people gravitate towards their limitations.
1:24:09
And I say nearly just cuz I don't want to get into stupid internet debates about, you know, what Yeah, walk off your roof and see if you can fly, Mr. Limitless, right?
1:24:19
So, you'll get dumb stuff like that, and I just don't want to deal with that.
1:24:22
So, my thing is you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation.
1:24:25
That's a lie, but we do it anyway, right?
1:24:27
So, like my belief system, literally I wrote it out, it's called the Impact Theory belief system, you can download it impacttheory.
1:24:33
com, and it actually has a call and answer.
1:24:36
So, it's like you can do anything you set your mind to. Number four. Number five.
1:24:39
Number four is a lie, but we do and believe that which moves us towards our goals.
1:24:42
So, it's like you're you're going to make more of the right decisions if you believe that you're limitless than you will if you're just a glass is half empty, always seeing the way things can't be done. Nice.
1:24:54
What's the best advice you've ever given? That I've ever given?
1:24:58
To read the book Mindset. Ooh, nice.
1:25:01
That will change your life.
1:25:01
If you read it and do it and live accordingly, truly, it's the most important book in the English language. Nice. Beautiful.
1:25:09
What's the worst advice you've ever given? I've ever given? Yeah. Um Wow. I've given my share. What is bad advice?
1:25:21
Um I said something recently, it probably isn't the worst, but just thinking of it fast.
1:25:24
Um it was an Instagram post that said something like um don't point out a flaw unless you have the answer.
1:25:30
That's pretty bad advice. Mm. You should speak up.
1:25:32
I just what I meant was don't just [ __ ] which is what most people do.
1:25:38
Be solution-oriented, but the way I said it would lead to bad behavior. Mm.
1:25:42
And one superpower you're trying to get right now?
1:25:46
Oh, that I'm trying to get? Yeah. Ooh, yeah. you want that.
1:25:49
What superpower am I trying to develop right now?
1:25:51
I am so focused on leadership, but that's like the when I say terrifying clarity, when people say, "Oh, leadership." It's like which aspect?
1:25:58
Um so, I will say that I'm trying to understand people's fundamental personality in real time and let that actually influence the way that I communicate with them instead of just communicating at a high level um using my normal um what would work on me.
1:26:12
And oddly enough, I think I'm actually pretty bad at that.
1:26:16
So, this is something that I'm really trying to get great at. Nice. That was the final five. You were quick, Andy.
1:26:22
That was impressive, man. That was impressive.
1:26:25
Let's Let's talk just before we finish up.
1:26:27
I just want to talk about Neon Future, everything else that you've got coming up just because I think just the fact that you're You inspire me because you literally lead every life you want. Wow, thank you.
1:26:40
And And I think that's a beautiful thing. That inspires me, too.
1:26:41
Like when people are like, "Well, where do you want to go now?"
1:26:44
I'm kind of like, "Kind of want to do this and that and this."
1:26:47
And not that I'm I'm going to do all at the same time, but there I I do believe that we live in this beautiful world where you don't have to choose your title anymore.
1:26:53
Like you don't have to if you don't want to, right? Yeah. It's beautiful.
1:27:00
This world is changing so fast. It is bananas.
1:27:03
Yeah, people are like, "What do you do?"
1:27:04
to me, and I'm like, "I don't know what to say."
1:27:04
Like I don't even know how to describe it. In a good way. Yeah.
1:27:06
As in I I'm I'm glad that I can't put a title on it.
1:27:09
So, let's talk about a bit about Neon Future because I'm excited by it. It looks so awesome.
1:27:14
You've been talking about it lots.
1:27:16
You've been showing it everywhere, sharing it everywhere.
1:27:18
Let's Let's talk about it.
1:27:19
So, Neon Future is a comic book that we plan to turn into film or TV, and this started with me asking the no [ __ ] question, "What would it take to give somebody an empowering mindset that is actively antagonistic to it?"
1:27:33
I thought, "God, how would you do that?"
1:27:35
And the reality is that the way that humans formulate their beliefs that lead them to act in a certain way is always through narrative.
1:27:42
The story they tell themselves, the stories that they incorporate from where they grow up.
1:27:45
And again, this is one of those things we mistake it for truth.
1:27:49
We just think, "I'm I'm not telling myself a story. Money is money."
1:27:53
No, money's a story, and the second we all stop believing in that story, it will fall apart and be totally meaningless.
1:27:58
And once you understand that you're telling yourself stories on that same kind of like it seems self-evidently true level, but it's really a made-up story that you could shift and change at any time.
1:28:06
So, I thought, "Okay, well, if the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative, then I'm going to be playing the game of narrative and getting in and looking at mythology, which is why earlier I said Jordan Peterson's book The Maps of Meaning is just extraordinary.
1:28:22
He talks about he's basically picking up where Joseph Campbell left off who wrote The Power of Myth, which is what Star Wars was wasn't based on, but it was like the George Lucas went to Yeah, exactly.
1:28:35
Went to Joseph Campbell and said, "Help me tell the ultimate hero's journey."
1:28:39
Now, the hero's journey is the story that across cultures, even before they met, they were all telling the same story in different guises. Why?
1:28:44
How is that possible for every culture to tell the same mythology? It's just bizarre.
1:28:51
But it's because it's a fundamental thing in the human condition.
1:28:53
It It is the life that we were meant to live, right?
1:28:56
The resistance of the call, finally hearing the call and going out and being in way over your head, having to go through some sort of pain and suffering to learn a lesson.
1:29:02
You finally learn the lesson that lets you defeat the great enemy.
1:29:06
You come back with the spoils of that and you teach to the rest of your tribe.
1:29:09
That is life, my friends.
1:29:11
That whole cycle of first you have to learn, go on a journey of self-discovery, do something hard, go through pain and suffering, come out the other side with some knowledge that's allowed you to like change your life.
1:29:23
And now, as the true act of the hero's journey, you teach.
1:29:28
And so, I want to tell stories that do that.
1:29:30
That is very much Neon Future is our first thing. Now, why Neon Future?
1:29:33
It's based on a Steve Aoki, the the DJ, um based on an album series that he did and I just knew that comic books come out like one every 30 seconds or something.
1:29:45
I mean, it's just bananas, insane how many comics come out.
1:29:47
So, I thought, "All right, to break through the noise, I need a partner on this that has celebrity."
1:29:53
And he is just an amazing collaborator and love his ideas about the future.
1:29:57
And so, um that's why that particular project, um which is set 30 years in the future in a world where advanced technology has has made illegal, and our hero goes on the the classic hero's journey, so. I love you, man.
1:30:10
What else can you talk about? What else is coming out?
1:30:11
Um, that you want to talk about.
1:30:14
On that side, we have other projects in development.
1:30:16
This one your audience may really like.
1:30:17
I'm just beyond obsessed with this idea.
1:30:19
Um, and it's about these two identical twins, and one of the identical twins, they're 12 years old, one of the identical twins is visited by an alien who gives him superpowers.
1:30:28
And instantly, overnight, he becomes one of the most famous people on the planet, and he's incredible, and he's able to do all this amazing stuff.
1:30:35
But our story centers around the brother who didn't get the superpowers, who is genetically identical to this now super brother, and he feels worthless, and he feels Is this a comic? completely depressed.
1:30:46
Yeah, it'll start as a comic.
1:30:47
And what he has to realize is that he can develop what will seem like superpowers to other people, but he's just going to have to do it through hard ass work.
1:30:56
So it becomes a sort of Superman Batman parable of one guy's given everything, and how does that affect his life?
1:31:02
And the other guy has to work for everything, and how does that impact his life?
1:31:04
And also, I think it's really important right now, given where we are, to show somebody walk out of depression, and what that looks like. Mhm.
1:31:12
I love how you're using entertainment, man. Thank you, man. It's so awesome.
1:31:15
I love the I love the creativity.
1:31:17
Where are these ideas coming from?
1:31:18
From sitting together, and Well, those two in particular, um, the first one came from, uh, an idea I had off of Steve Aoki saying that he wants to be cryogenically frozen when he dies. Right.
1:31:29
And I thought, all right, what if Steve Aoki actually had the power to, um, use technology to save lives. Yeah.
1:31:37
And so, that was the beginning of it. Ends up not being him.
1:31:38
He's not actually a character in the book, although one of our characters looks exactly like him. Yeah.
1:31:43
Uh, but that's a whole long story.
1:31:45
And then the codename powerless, uh, cuz his name is Lester. Get what I did there?
1:31:51
Um, so that one was literally just me obsessing over this idea of, you know, Batman and Superman, and what they represent, and how could we tackle that in a modern context?
1:31:59
Because the problem is people always think, oh, somebody's better than me."
1:32:03
And I thought, "Well, what if they were identical twins? Yeah. And one of them that.
1:32:07
somehow just became convinced that he wasn't as good as his brother.
1:32:09
And I thought, "How interesting it would be if like, let's say they were either of equal self-confidence when this happens, or maybe even the brother who falls into worthlessness is is more confident than his brother for whatever reason.
1:32:22
And then the brother, you know, rockets by him, and we see just because he compares himself to one person in the world, his self-esteem falls to nothing."
1:32:31
And I see this all the time with people. Yeah.
1:32:34
I love the way you're tackling comparison, mental health. It's genius, man. Thank you, man. That concept is awesome. I absolutely love that.
1:32:40
Yeah, I'm excited about that.
1:32:43
I'm so excited for you, man.
1:32:43
I'm so so excited for you. It's amazing.
1:32:45
I'm so excited for the world.
1:32:46
I'm excited for everyone listening and watching right now because I just feel like we're in this time where, and the fact that we're all friends, which is beautiful, but everyone's committed to trying to change the stories the world's telling themselves.
1:32:58
And that is exciting because this is media, it's mainstream, it's scale.
1:33:03
So, it's going to affect a lot of people. Yeah.
1:33:06
It's It we are living through a crazy time. Yeah. Super fun. We keep hearing that.
1:33:10
And I want people to just I've heard that so many times.
1:33:15
Every time I go to a conference or anything, everyone's like, "We're living in a really impactful time right now.
1:33:19
Like, we're really in amazing."
1:33:19
But I'm like, literally take a moment to recognize that. Like, we really are. Yep. It's It's Yeah.
1:33:24
It It's It's perfect for whatever you want to do. But thank you.
1:33:29
Tom, thank you so much, man.
1:33:31
You're absolutely incredible. I learned so much today. Thank you.
1:33:35
I'm excited for everyone to test it.
1:33:35
I highly recommend that you listen back to the parts where Tom was decoding things.
1:33:42
And take notes, test, experiment, try again.
1:33:44
Don't just listen and be like, "Oh, that was really impressive. And oh, that's so cool.
1:33:48
And Tom was on fire then." Like, that's all good. Like, that's cool.
1:33:51
And if you come and tell me or you post on Instagram saying, "Oh, this episode was epic." That's cool for me, too.
1:33:56
But I'll be more impressed if you actually go and try and test and then come back to me and Tom on Instagram and tell us what you tested and what worked and what didn't work because we both want to hear that, too. For sure. So, go do that.
1:34:09
You can find Tom on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, anywhere else that you are that I don't know. those are the good ones. Yeah.
1:34:18
You can find him absolutely anywhere.
1:34:19
Tom Bilyeu, thank you so much, man.
1:34:21
Thank you for being my friend and thank you for being an amazing amazing human. Dude, thank you. Thank you, man.
1:34:25
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1:34:30
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