Hello everybody. Welcome back to the
show. It is episode 1,100
and that is a number that I did not
think that I would get to. I don't think
I've done 1,100 of anything apart from
these podcasts. As is tradition, I've
put together a list of lessons that I've
learned from the show and from writing
and reading and life over the last 6
months since the last one of these that
I did. I'm going to go through them
today. So, let's get into it. First up,
I started thinking about obsession and
why no one understands obsession. I
think literally no one understands why
obsession is the way it is. Discipline,
motivation, and obsession are three
words that get thrown around quite a
lot. And I think most people
misunderstand all three. And because of
that, they miss some very big lessons
about how life actually works. So here's
the simplest way to separate those three
out. Discipline is I will make myself do
the thing. Motivation is I want to do
the thing and obsession is I can't not
do the thing. So all three produce the
same outcome, right? The thing gets done
but the internal cost couldn't be more
different. And the difference is
primarily around friction. So discipline
is friction accepted. You don't want to
do the thing but you do it anyway. You
lean on effort and willpower and
routines and environment and design and
past patterns and habits and drag
yourself over the line. It's mostly
under your control, which is why it's so
reliable. If you're willing to pay the
price, discipline will always show up.
But the problem is that the price is
high. Discipline is really expensive. It
burns energy, creates resistance, feels
heavy. It works, but it's a grind. And
motivation is friction reduced. You want
to do the thing, so the resistance
drops. You still need effort, but you
need less of it. Motivation comes from
desire, circumstance, and novelty and
identity and community and emotion. And
you can try to kind of manufacture it
with goal setting or visualization,
community support, and celebrating micro
wins or me and Alex Hozi compilation
videos and heavy metal music. Sometimes
it works, but sometimes it doesn't,
right? Motivation is unreliable because
it's kind of downstream of how you feel.
When your mood dips, motivation just
[ __ ] evaporates. It's useful fuel,
but you can't build a life that depends
on it. And obsession is friction
inverted. So remember, we've got
discipline friction accepted,
motivation, friction reduced, and
obsession is friction inverted. You
don't need to make yourself do the
thing. You can't avoid doing it. You
don't push. Instead, the work sort of
pulls you toward it. It invades your
thoughts. It follows you into the
shower, into the car, into bed. And when
you're tired, it doesn't disappear.
Obsession is kind of like motivation's
poltergeist big brother who just never
stops haunting you. And because you
can't switch it off, that's why
obsessions with negative pursuits like
politics or porn or a toxic ex can be so
destructive. The reason that obsession
is so powerful is simple. It's basically
permanent free motivation and
discipline. You get output without
negotiation and you get action without
having to tap into any willpower. It's
the uh fuel source equivalent of hitting
a superstar in Super Mario. So this is
why obsession produces such
disproportionate results in a short
window of time. I mean, people look at
the output and assume superhuman
discipline when in reality, if you're
obsessed, the work felt almost
unavoidable. People admire discipline
and envy motivation, but very few
understand obsession. And because they
don't understand it, they waste it. So,
here I think is the part that people
miss. Obsession isn't a personality
trait. It's a state, which means that it
can't be summoned on command. You can't
decide to be obsessed. It appears when
curiosity, identity, reward, and meaning
sort of all accidentally align some
weird celestial bodies. And when it
appears, it doesn't last forever, which
is a tragedy, right? Obsession is a
nonrenewable fuel source. When it
leaves,
you don't get it back on demand. In
future, it will take you so much more
effort to get even partially close to
this obsessive level of output. So, use
your free fuel while it's available.
Which is why the correct response to a
positive obsession isn't to suppress it
or balance it or apologize for it. It's
to surrender to it. So, if you're
currently obsessed with something
positive, my advice is to kind of let it
crawl inside of you and wear your skin
and stare out through your eyes. Like,
if you can't stop watching lifting
videos and spend all of your time
thinking about diet and training, now
isn't the time to be balanced in the
gym. Or if your sleep is wrecked because
you're ruminating about a business idea
that you can't wait to launch and then
this isn't the time for you to seek
calm. You're allowed to go full-on demon
founder mode with it. Serial obsessives,
as far as I can see, move from intense
project to intense project, making huge
progress while the tide is with them, so
that when the obsession inevitably
fades, something important happened
already. The rails for their future
behavior get laid down. So by the time
that your obsession waines, you have
built the patterns and routines and
skills and habits that allow you to keep
going when the fuel is no longer free.
So I I started going to the gym when I
was 18 because I was obsessed with
gaining muscle and I researched protein
shake formulations and dreamt of going
to Gold's Gym in LA and skipped nights
out parching to stay in my bedroom and
read the MISK forums on
bodybuilding.com. like the most autistic
excuse for not going on a night out
ever. Nearly 20 years later, I'm still
training. And
not really even because I'm that
disciplined or motivated now, but just
because an old obsession of mine
fossilized into my identity. And being
honest, this is true for my meditation
habit and my research for podcast guests
and the productivity systems that I've
got and my desire to build businesses.
What once obsessed me has now just
simply become me. What often looks like
discipline today is just the echo of
someone's past obsessions. This is a
quiet reframe that people basically
never say out loud. Discipline sometimes
isn't the starting point. It's just the
residue.
So what it's what remains when obsession
cools down and settles into routine. So
if you're lucky enough to be obsessed
right now, I think you can stop trying
to moderate it into something
respectable. You can stop worrying about
whether it looks excessive and you can
stop pretending whether you're supposed
to feel balanced.
Balance is what you can enjoy later and
obsession is what you get to embrace
now. Basically, as far as I can see it,
most people never get an obsession worth
anything.
So, if you have one, don't waste it. And
the more that I think about this and I
look at a lot of the guys that I've met
who appear to be super disciplined and
they're absolutely crushing it in life
and they've got they've their systems
are so dialed and you look from the
outside and think, "Holy [ __ ] this
person is just a machine." And what you
don't realize is that in the past they
had no choice other than to do that
thing. They were completely obsessed
with it. It consumed their life. And now
the like the cooled heart of the dying
star that's left over, the brown dwarf
of their previous huge furnace
is the life that they still have. The
thing that obsessed them became their
identity. And um yeah, sure I said you
can't engineer obsession. I do think
that's true. You can certainly lay the
ground the foundations for it. But the
other thing is
some people are more obsessive than
others. I that's something that I've
been blessed or cursed with. I have a
slightly obsessive personality. Not wash
my hands all the time obsessive, but
struggle to switch off obsessive. And
I'm going to guess if you're watching
this show that you do, too. What that
means is you are going to probably like
a a serial monogamist. you're going to
bounce from obsession relationship to
obsession relationship. And if you
dampen it down too much, if you don't
fully allow it to kind of take over your
life, at least to whatever level is
healthy or even maybe a little bit
beyond the level that's healthy, you're
going to miss out on free motivation and
free discipline. And then at the end of
it, because this isn't going to last
forever, right? Obsession isn't going to
it's a non-renewable fuel source. You
can't bring it back when you want to.
Once that's cooled off, if you haven't
allowed it to kind of take over your
life fully, what you end up with is a
world where you fought against
the thing you wanted to do to stop it
from being so all-encompassing or like
unrespectable. And then once it's
finished and you don't have it anymore,
you didn't gain the momentum and the
identity that allowed you to kind of
flow through it afterward. So that it
then became the the way that you show
up. I'm just a guy that goes to the gym.
I'm just a guy that builds businesses.
I'm just a guy that meditates or
whatever. So, yeah, I think uh that's uh
I I just I I love this I love this idea.
I love the fact that obsession gets a
really bad rap and in many ways it can
be horrible, especially when it's
pointed toward politics or pornog. But
if it's pointed towards something that's
actually good, you should allow it to
kind of take over your life. And then
once it's finished, everyone will look
from the outside. Oh my god, dude. How
do you how do you train so much? you
know, you like really consistent with
your tra. You must be really
disciplined. You must be so motivated
and you're like, "Not really, man. Like,
I just used to be obsessed with this and
now it's kind of who I am." All right,
next one. The paradox of self-awareness.
So, everyone understands that actions
are more important than words, right?
You are what you do, not what you say
you'll do. And there's this line from
Hamlet, thus conscience does make
cowards of us all. And I never read any
Shakespeare. I can barely remember even
going through it in school, but I came
across this line again and did a deep
dive on what it means. Thus, conscience
does make cowards of us all. This line
comes from Hamlet, and it's usually
misheard as an insult. It's as if
Shakespeare is sort of sneering at
morality, saying that um ethics soften
us or thought drains courage from the
body. I don't think that's what's
happening. Shakespeare isn't attacking
goodness. He's pointing at
self-awareness and naming its cost. It's
in the to be or not to be saliloquy. And
Hamlet isn't really weighing life versus
death. He's circling a more practical
question. Why do humans hesitate to act
even when action would clearly relieve
their suffering? Like why do we endure
situations we don't want? Why do we
tolerate lives that we could in theory
change? Well, pain isn't the only
obstacle. Imagination is. And by
conscience, Shakespeare means something
closer to consciousness. It's the
ability to think ahead, to judge
ourselves, to simulate futures before
they arrive. It's to to see the
consequences coming and experience them
emotionally in advance. And
unfortunately that ability cuts both
ways because the very capacity that
makes you reflective and ethical and
intelligent also makes you hesitant. We
imagine worstc case scenarios so vividly
that we treat them as if they're already
real. So courage isn't defeated by fear.
It's defeated by simulation. We rehearse
embarrassment, loss, rejection, and
moral failure in advance. And then our
bodies respond as if those things have
already happened. Your heart rate rises,
your muscles tighten, avoidance feels
sensible, and inaction feels like
safety. Hamlet describes what follows.
Thought, he says, puzzles the will.
Thought puzzles the will. Reflection
drains us. Not because thinking is bad,
but because it multiplies potential
outcomes faster than our actions can
deal with them. Right? I think that's so
cool. Thinking isn't bad itself, but
it's able to generate more realities
than our actions can solve. Animals
don't suffer this, right? They just act
when a threshold is crossed. Humans
linger. And by the time that the moment
to move arrives, we feel as if we've
already lived through its inevitable
failure. So we wait.
This is the deepest psychological point
that I think Shakespeare is making. And
I'm aware that a guy that basically
didn't read Shakespeare is just reverse
engineering what I think he said. But I
do think that this is a cool
interpretation. Right? Our intelligence
doesn't just protect us, it also
inhibits us. We learn quickly from
mistakes that we make, but we almost
never feel the cost of mistakes that we
avoid. The humiliation of speaking and
failing leaves a scar, but the decadesl
long erosion of never speaking leaves
nothing that you can point to. Which
explains why people stay in the wrong
job, the wrong relationship, the wrong
version of themselves for years. Not
because they don't know better, but
because action demands stepping into an
unrehearsed future. Hamlet names the
real enemy, which is uncertainty. Right?
Not pain or effort, but just
the unknown. Our minds would rather
endure a familiar misery than gamble on
an unfamiliar freedom. Even suffering
becomes tolerable once it's predictable.
But people would rather spend years in
misery than risk a few days of pain. And
this is why modern life despite being
safer than any previous era often feels
more paralyzing. Right? Because our
nervous systems evolved to avoid death
and lions. And now we use it to avoid
embarrassment and misjudgment and
reputational damage and identity
fracture.
And here's the final uncomfortable
implication Shakespeare leaves hanging.
Self-awareness is not a pure good.
Right? Beyond a certain point,
self-awareness actually inhibits agency.
Less reflection can mean more peace.
Less certainty can mean more movement.
Less conscience can sometimes mean more
life. Courage isn't about thinking
clearly. It's about moving while things
are still unclear. You know, there's
that famous line, the unexamined life is
not worth living. But a life can be
deeply examined and still never lived.
This paradox of self-awareness, the fact
that the deeper you think, sometimes the
less you're able to act, if your mind is
able to generate realities more quickly
than you are able to come up with
solutions or move through them, you kind
of have this weird cost benefit
imbalance. or maybe like a cost profit.
You your your balance sheet is offset
where the overheads are higher than the
revenue and this sort of puts you in a a
negative equity in terms of your ability
to move forward and that can freeze you
in place. You don't want to do something
because you think
look at all the ways that could go wrong
and the more ways it could go wrong the
less ability I'm going to have to act.
and what if this thing occurs and that
thing occurs and over time conscience
makes cowards of us all. Uh
it's weird because most people probably
need to be more thoughtful. They need to
spend more time, be less rash, act less
impulsively. But there is a cohort of
people that are the opposite. And
they're people like me and maybe you
too.
And they're the people who think more
than they should, talk themselves out of
more things than into them, and actually
move more slowly. They get less done in
life due to their thought than more.
Now, they'll make way fewer mistakes,
and that's great, but again, the mistake
of omission is different to the mistake
of commission. So, people make
commission errors if they don't think
enough. People make omission errors if
they think too much. Like if you
overthink, decide not to go up and speak
to that girl that's been in the
cafeteria at work for six months, she
gets a boyfriend, would have been the
perfect partner for you, and you decide
to not make the move because you've
talked yourself into and out of it so
many times. Your mind's ability to show
you what could go wrong is greater than
your actions ability to fix it in
reality. That is an omission error, but
we don't see it in the same way cuz it's
not as obvious. For instance, I chose to
not bring a number of guests on this
podcast in 2024. And
maybe that's leaked out of me in a
couple of other vlogs or whatever, but I
didn't make a big song and dance about
it. I basically never spoke about it.
I'm never going to get credit for the
things that I didn't do. And in the same
way, you never pay a cost for the things
that you don't do. I mean, look, if you
leave a person to bleed out on the side
of the street without calling the
ambulance, that's a kind of omission
error, but it's it's pretty obvious. A
much more quiet omission error is I was
scared of building the business because
my mind taught me all of the different
ways that stuff could go wrong, so I
didn't do it. And I'll never know the
pain of not fulfilling my dreams,
but I avoided the pain of failure. And
the pains of failure are much more
prevalent in our mind than the pain of
[ __ ] what if this doesn't go well? So,
um, there's this great audio book from
Tony Robbins. It's 30 years old. George
Max sent it to me. I don't even know how
to find it. It's I'll try and find it
and put it in the links, but it's
basically an hour and a half worksheet,
awaken the giant within, but it's an
audio book and all he does it's
basically one long exercise to try and
frontload the pain as much as possible.
Look at what this situation you're in
now has cost you in the past. Look at
what it's costing you right now. And
look at what it will cost you in the
future. And he tries to get you to sit
in the discomfort as much as possible.
It's horrible. It's awful exercise. Uh
it's like the the mental equivalent of
an ice bath. And then he gets you to try
and do the opposite. Look at what would
have happened in the past if you'd made
the change that you want to that you
think is right. If you'd improved this
thing, look at what would be happening
now and what look at what would happen
in the future. And he tries to sort of
get you to use he calls it the pain
pleasure principle.
motivate your behavior through pain and
pleasure and uh the type of pain that
you can frontload with. Look at what not
starting this thing is has cost you in
the past and now in the future. You have
to be much more conscious like the um
commission errors come naturally to us
but the omission errors are much more
hidden. So you need to kind of you need
to do an exercise. You need to
consciously bring omission errors in
like [ __ ] like I've always wanted to be
a stand-up comedian. I've always just
wanted to do I I've always I want to do
an open mic. I just really want to do an
open mic. And you've put it off for
decades. You never did it. You never
closed that loop. And you might hate it.
Here's the other thing. The thing that
you're putting off from doing, you might
absolutely hate, but at least once you
realize whether you like it or you
don't. You go up and speak to the girl
in the the the cafeteria and find out
she's got horrible breath and she's an
[ __ ] There you go. Loop closed. You
don't need to think about it. But the
what if after the fact will kill you.
But the what if before the fact is
really hard to to determine. So yeah, uh
I think thus conscience does make
cowards of us all. That is my uh year
seven uh fourth grade assessment of
Shakespeare. Thank you for coming to my
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wisdom. All right, next one. The dark
knight of the soul has a positive side.
So, there's a quote from Rogan. The
worst thing that's ever happened to you
is the worst thing that's ever happened
to you. The saddest that you've ever
been is the saddest you've ever been.
The hardest you've ever worked is the
hardest that you've ever worked. Shock,
horror. Tough times aren't fun in the
moment for the same reason that no one
ever believes that they're living
through a golden era. Right? The golden
years, interestingly, only ever seem to
exist in the past because it's only with
the benefit of hindsight that we know
all of our worries were a waste of time.
But when you're going through it, all of
your concerns are still open loops.
They're all things to fear. In
retrospect, you see that you had the
ability to handle whatever your problems
were and that there was nothing to be
bothered about, which suggests that if
you've just come out of the hardest
period of your life, this seems like a
cause for celebration, right? because
you now have a new workload level that's
being unlocked. Every new challenge that
you go through shows you a new territory
that you were scared of but survived.
Each time that you break a new limit,
you now know that you have the capacity
to handle more than you ever did before.
It's kind of like inverse PTSD or
workload exposure therapy. And it
teaches you, "Oh, I've been here before.
and I didn't die.
This is okay.
Joe was making some pathy comment about
like misgendering a blue-haired barista
and said, "If that's the worst thing
that's ever happened to someone, the
worst thing that's ever happened to you
is the worst thing that's ever happened
to you, that is a big deal." And it kind
of is a big deal. You could imagine some
person had been created in a lab and
raised by robots and they'd never
endured any discomfort and they go
outside and they feel the wind on their
skin. I mean, maybe it would be nice,
but let's say it was a strong wind or
maybe it was a strong wind with some
leaves in it and sand or whatever. That
to them might be absolute agony because
their level of sensitivity has been
tuned down an awful lot. And I think the
same thing can happen psychologically
too to people that wow, I've not really
ever been through much difficulty that
all of this stuff has been snowplowed
out of my way and then I've arrived in
the world and [ __ ]
it's harder than I thought it would be.
But the opposite is also true. Which
means if you are the sort of person who
regularly seeks out discomfort or
discomfort seeks you seeks you out and
you have to push back against it
each time that you do something that you
couldn't previously believe that you had
in the locker.
This is a new level that you have just
got to that teaches your body I've been
here before and I didn't die. This is
okay. For instance, I just came back
from this tour in Australia. And the
opening night was two and a half
thousand people in Sydney, which is the
second biggest audience I've ever been
in front of. And the theater is so
[ __ ] huge. It is so scary. This big
spraw, it's like IMAX. Imagine looking
out at an audience of people and they're
wrapped around you. It's basically
There's no part of my vision that
doesn't have people in it. And it's even
angled like a [ __ ] IMAX screen. And
uh I'd run the show a bunch of times in
Austin, Texas first, but I hadn't done
it in front of a big audience. There's a
difference between doing it in an
intimate 50 person comedy club in
Austin, Texas, and in front of two and a
half thousand people, you know, maybe
onethird of which have been brought
along as friends are partners of people
who love the show. So, it's a way colder
audience with huge 100 foot high
ceiling. It's totally different
environment. and uh I'd never run this
show instead apart from in this small
comedy club in Austin. James goes out
before me and does an entire 3inut
segment which is just calling different
things gay and I had to
as opposed to me going out with warm
audience he had really sort of put me on
the back foot. all of this stuff was
like [ __ ] like this is so hard that just
felt really really difficult
and that is now the new I thought this
thing was going to destroy me and I got
through it. Wow. Well, the next time
that I do it, maybe the sound cuts out
halfway through. At that same show, the
sound guy decided to trigger the end of
show sequence halfway through. It's the
first time that's ever happened to me in
New York. the people who came to the New
York show. I um the entire venue sound
cut out apart from the onstage monitors
for like three minutes. That's the first
time that that's ever happened to me.
And it doesn't matter whether you're on
stage or not, but you know, the heaviest
weight that you've ever lifted is the
heaviest weight you've ever lifted. Each
time that you break a new PR, each time
that you do something that's difficult,
each time that you go through a
situation which is tough, yes, it sucks
and obviously you don't want to lean
into accumulating more of those than is
necessary, but especially if it's
something around your chosen pursuit, if
it's around work, if it's around
difficulty, skill acquisition, stuff
like that, like you know that you have
that in the locker, you know that you
can survive that. And it's cool. And I
basically think inverse PTSD, workload
exposure therapy is a good way to
alchemize something that you could see
as really toxic and bad and difficult
and actually realize, wow, this is kind
of a gift to my future self. Look at how
hard you can work. Look at how much you
can endure. Look at how skillfully you
were able to get through this thing. And
on the other side of it, that's that's
your new level. You know that you can do
that, too. All right. Six lessons about
choosing your life direction. First one,
James Clear. It doesn't make sense to
continue wanting something if you're not
willing to do what it takes to get it.
If you don't want to live the lifestyle,
then release yourself from the desire.
To crave the result, but not the process
is to guarantee disappointment. I think
that is so [ __ ] good. It doesn't make
sense to continue wanting something if
you're not willing to do what it takes
to get it. If you don't want to live the
lifestyle, then release yourself from
the desire. So a lot of the time people
might think, I want to become a touring
rockstar. Go, okay, you crave the
result. Touring rockstar. Do you want
the process? Do you want the lifestyle
to get there? And then the lifestyle of
being there, too. To become a touring
rockstar, you're going to have to play
guitar in your bedroom on your own with
no one listening and no promise of
whether or not it's going to work for
like a decade, right? that you're going
to have to learn all of the scales.
You're going to have to learn to write
music. You're going to have to find a
bandmates and learn mastering and
recording and bouncing tracks and
[ __ ] you know, all of this stuff. Do
you want that? Do you want to have
calluses on your fingers? And then the
lifestyle of actually even being there.
You're going to be on the road away from
your friends and your family for 6
months of the year, every single year.
You're going to be in a smelly tour bus
for the first half of your career
because you're not going to have made it
unless you break through with like
Gangdom Style or some [ __ ] And then,
okay.
Is that what you want? Is that really
what you want? Do you want something or
and are you willing to do what it takes
to get it? Cuz if it's not both, it
doesn't matter. Next one. Outward
complaints aren't a good gauge of
internal suffering. Just because someone
carries it well doesn't mean it isn't
heavy. Just because someone carries it
well doesn't mean it isn't heavy. This
is an Oliver Burkeman line. And I often
think about this, you know, the the
challenge of somebody that looks
competent or if you're the responsible
one in your friend group, you're the one
that is listening to human podcasts and
trying to optimize your sleep and maybe
you've gone to therapy and you're doing
meditation, you're trying to be balanced
and regulated and all of these things.
Typically to your friends around you,
that means well, you know, like Leanne,
she's always got it together. Like
Leanne doesn't she doesn't need help.
like she's she's always good. But you
don't understand if this person is
bearing even more weight than everybody
else around them,
but just carrying it well,
holding on to it, not breaking down. And
again, it goes back to the Rogan thing
of the worst thing that's ever happened
to you is the worst thing that's ever
happened to you. If you are carrying a
heavier weight than someone else, but
you just know that your capacity to lift
it is greater, that doesn't mean it
isn't heavy. It just means that you're
doing a really good job at keeping it
quiet.
Your life does not need to be easier. It
needs to be simpler. I think this is
such a true rule. Your system is
designed to handle stress and challenge,
but not complication. So, think about
it. You probably handle hard things
pretty well, but you feel overwhelmed
when they become messy.
So don't attribute to difficulty
something that can be explained by
complexity. Your system is designed to
handle stress and challenge but not
complication.
If you think about the times when you
felt very overwhelmed, I'm going to
guess that it's rarely because of one
pathway of thing being too intense. It's
typically because you have one thing
that's pretty intense and then your mom
gets ill or your partner has an argument
with you or there's an issue with your
house or the power goes out or you lose
your job or whatever. It's the
complexity that really wrecks us. you
are able to handle stress and challenge
but the the complexity the complication
is when stuff gets really difficult and
uh yeah don't attribute to difficulty
something that can get explained by
complexity and obviously the solution
here the implied solution is if you're
feeling overwhelmed
look at how you can reduce down
complexity
as opposed to intensity or if you've got
lots of things and it feels really
complicated and complex. Just attack one
at a time. You're not going to be able
to fix your relationship and get the
power back on in your house and complete
that presentation for what it's like,
okay, I just need to triage this. What
is the number one problem? And I'm just
going to go through them sequentially as
opposed to in parallel. I I the more
that I think about that rule that your
systems designed to handle stress but
not complication is the more true it is.
So try and simplify stuff wherever
possible. Uh, another one. You need
fewer inputs, not more. The answers you
seek are in the silence you're avoiding.
The answers you seek are in the silence
you're avoiding. Shameless rework of the
magic you're looking for is in the work
you're avoiding. But this is a different
pathway. And I don't think that I don't
think that it's the same solution. A lot
of the time you do need to work harder
and you're trying to dress it in
whatever outfit you can so that you
don't need to lean in and do the work.
And that's great and and
important and maybe for most people is
true. But after a while, once you've got
the I work hard muscle embedded, you
then realize that because you're working
so hard, you're not listening to
fleeting thoughts. you've maybe pushed
your intuition to one side. You're not
able to tap into your gut as well. You
don't actually know what you like
because you're in so much chaos and
busyiness and complication.
It's a little bit hard for you to tap
into that inner sense. And that's when
you need to use a different fuel source.
The answers you seek are in the silence
you're avoiding. You'd also say the
answers you seek are in the showers
you're avoiding. I think shower thoughts
underrated, toilet thoughts overrated.
Saw a tweet the other day. Some guy said
that if you sit on the toilet for too
long with your ass hanging out that you
get hemorrhoids. Don't know if that's
true, but
shower. No one's ever had a problem with
too long of a shower. So longer showers,
the answers you seek are in the silence
you're avoiding. Another one, don't fall
into the trap of mourning a life that
you can still live. Don't fall into the
trap of mourning a life that you can
still live. Basically, if you are the
sort of person that's regularly
surprised at how well things go,
maybe that's a good indication that
you're allowed to believe in yourself
more. So many people, as far as I can
see, have this
premeditated
resentment for the life that they don't
think they're going to be able to exist
in. They don't think that they're going
to be able to live this life, but they
still have the opportunity to. And a lot
of these people, the overthinkers, the
ones who conscience makes a coward of,
they have all of the skills to be able
to fix this thing. They can go and get
this thing done, but they're
overthinking. Their fear is getting in
the way of them believing it. And it's
almost like they're trapped inside of a
prison. They're the prisoner and the
prison guard and they've got the keys on
them at the same time. Like if things go
well, you can probably believe in
yourself more. And if you still have the
opportunity to live a life, I think it's
a really bad idea to get resentful and
sad about the fact that you're not
living it. It's like it's right in front
of you. Just go and do it. And then the
final one, simple steps to a better life
to improve your life. Focus on what you
like instead of what you dislike. and
focus on people who focus on what they
like instead of what they dislike. And
this just becomes more and more true,
especially as I get older, which it
might be me trying to offset the sort of
natural entropy toward grumpiness, but I
just like being around people that are
enthusiastic
about stuff. There there are two
categories of friends typically that you
spend time with. One are people who want
to talk about [ __ ] that they're fired up
about, really excited. This is something
that's so cool. I've got to show you
this thing. And then did you see what
dot dot dot did today? Did you see that
thing?
I don't know, man. I just I really like
being around people that are positive.
And again, the one tattoo that I have on
my body is on the inside of my wrist and
it says smile because I was trying to
remind myself at 23 to stop being such a
miserable bastard, which might just be
being British. I don't know. However,
I like offsetting that. I like being
around people that make me more fired
up. Maybe there is someone out there who
is too enthusiastic and needs to be
around a bunch of British people to, you
know, bring that down. Come and be my
friend. I'll [ __ ] bring you back down
to earth. But yeah, I think uh be around
people who talk about what they like,
not what they dislike. And to make your
life better, also focus on what you like
instead of what you dislike. So yeah,
there's some lessons about choosing your
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All right, next one. The [ __ ] are you
family? So, I started thinking a lot
about why the fathers that I know seem
to have a different kind of confidence
about themselves. And I think it's
because of this concept that I can't
unsee anymore. So [ __ ] you money is a
meme, but it's also a truth, right? [ __ ]
you money. There's an amount of wealth
that you can achieve when the typical
restrictions and conventions no longer
apply to you. You don't have to suck up
to gatekeepers. You don't need to do
things that you don't want to do. And in
extreme situations, you basically don't
even need to follow the law cuz you can
just pay people off. Similarly, [ __ ]
freedom is kind of downstream from [ __ ]
money, but can also be achieved through
cultivating a lack of resilience and
reliance on other groups. There's no
restrictions on where you can travel to
and when and for how long. You don't
need to show up to work on time or work
at all. And if if you're sufficiently
well structured, you don't even need to
care about the state of the economy or
the power grid or the wider world. This
is the I live in dripping springs on a
ranch that's got completely independent
power with solar solar panels and a ton
of guns and it's it's Tucker Max. This
is Tucker Max. I'm talking about Tucker
Max there. But I then started thinking
about a different type of [ __ ] you
liberation which is significantly
cheaper and more accessible and more
common and maybe even more powerful. And
this is the [ __ ] you family.
So, a lot of the fathers that I've
spoken to have told me about how their
priorities were completely changed when
they started a family. All of the
previous status games that they played
seemed petty. The games that they used
to go through in an attempt to impress
people in power or those with status
seemed juvenile and shallow. much of
their anxiety around whether different
people and groups like them or thought
that they were cool just sort of
evaporated because the only people they
needed to care about impressing were
asleep under their roof or in the bed
next to them. Because to their kids,
these dads were the coolest, richest,
strongest, most heroic person on the
planet. And that gave them a very
powerful type of liberation.
It seems to me that much of what young
men get up to are surrogate activities
until they finally get a family. This
isn't to say that all fathers become
placid soy boy hippies or that having
kids neuters your ambition,
but it definitely seems to open up a new
level where they care far less about the
opinions of others. And ultimately,
what's the point in having [ __ ] you
freedom if you never say [ __ ] you?
I really think that
the aggressive businesschasing
capitalist meritocratic society thing,
which I'm all in favor of and have
benefited from obviously and love,
is playing off the fact that the longer
people put off having a family, the more
they find activities that replace that
same dynamic inside of them. It's the
obsession with body or aesthetics or
sport or business or wealth creation or
status or travel or whatever. That's not
to say that any of these things can't be
good, obviously. But if you were to have
the family, I think that you would find
a lot of those. It would be like going
around trying to eat a [ __ ] ton of
different foods that were all nutrient
sparse when there was a nutrient-dense
food that you could go to that would
satisfy a lot of those ambitions more
quickly. Does that make sense? It's
basically
the the source that you could go to,
like the most pure version of this, the
condensed like concentrated weaponsgrade
version of a lot of what you're looking
for to me seems to be on the other side
of a family. I mean, look, the is this
hypocrisy? I don't think it's hypocrisy.
It's much it's closer to dreaming,
right?
I am totally open to the fact that I
might be completely wrong and I'm going
to have a family and
my drive is going to go up through the
roof and maybe I'm going to be more
miserable and maybe I'm going to care
more about the opinions of others and
what a [ __ ] amount of humble pie I'm
going to have to eat if that's the case.
I'm just going off what I've seen with
other people. I'm going off what I've
seen with the fathers around me and
stuff. Maybe I've done a postmortem
incorrectly. Maybe I will live to eat my
words. But I don't know. Uh maybe this
is just a [ __ ] pipe dream. Maybe it's
a pipe dream for me that there's some
level of personal development available
on the other side of kids. Also not
saying that you should only have kids as
a selfish way to bypass the work that
you need to do to care about the
opinions of others. Uh just intriguing
thoughts. I'm just I just I'm like a I'm
a sier. I'm just offering you some oo
just some intriguing thoughts for you
there. Uh or maybe just totally wrong
ones. I don't know.
All right, next one.
I [ __ ] love this idea. I absolutely
love this idea. The curse of
psychological strength.
Everyone has a limit, right? And an end
to the amount of discomfort that they
can cope with. And this is obvious
physically. Some people can lift more
and run further than others. But how
much emotional pain or upset or
disappointment that a person can endure
is subtler, harder to detect. It's not
apparent in the size of someone's arms,
but in the capacity of their nervous
system. It's not a weight that you can
see on a squat rack. It's their ability
to carry a heavy emotional load. And
this psychological strength can be a
good thing because you're able to handle
more than most. You don't bulk at pain.
You keep pushing through regardless of
how you feel.
But too much strength can be a weakness.
And high performers are particularly
vulnerable to this trap. Psychological
strength is rewarded almost everywhere.
In the gym, it's discipline. In
business, it's grit. In public, it's
composure. You become the person who can
handle it, who doesn't complain, who
pushes through when others would quit.
Basically, your ability to ignore how
you feel and keep moving forward earns
admiration, builds your career, and
creates momentum. But what you are
praised for in public, you often pay for
in private. Relationships don't reward
endurance.
They require attunement. And if your
default strategy in life is to absorb
discomfort and override warning signs,
you will do exactly that when someone
repeatedly hurts you. You'll rationalize
it, reframe it, decide that it's your
job to make it work. And the stronger
you are, the longer you can stay.
What looks like strength from the
outside becomes self-abandonment on the
inside.
You've trained yourself to believe that
struggle is noble and difficulty is
meaningful. So when love feels
destabilizing, it doesn't register as a
warning. It feels like a challenge.
And challenges are your thing.
But a relationship isn't a marathon to
be endured. It's a place to feel safe.
And the qualities that make you
formidable in the arena can quietly make
you miserable in your own living room.
Let's say that you're dating and you
feel like a side character in your own
relationship. You put them first, they
put you sixth, the rupture is regular,
the repair is absent. Lower resilience,
less stubborn people would have broken
long ago and said, "I'm out. But not
you. You're the David Gogggins of
psychological suffering. Forget carrying
the boats. You'll carry the whole fleet
forever. In these situations, you're
faced with a much tougher problem. Not
how much can you tolerate,
but how much do you want to tolerate?
Perhaps this is what you had to do as a
child. If your needs weren't noticed,
your sadness gets ignored, or your
feelings didn't matter, then you became
accustomed to pushing through
disconnection
in order to make those relationships
function. If child you learns, I need to
work hard to be loved, then adult you
believes
if I'm not loved,
I just need to work harder.
You achieve 10,000 hours of ignoring
your own needs. You can't tell people
how you feel without first worrying
about how it will make them feel. You
unconsciously believe that suffering is
the price of connection and that silent
subjugation is noble. You basically
think I should be able to tolerate the
intolerable
in order to make this work. And when you
try to connect with someone who doesn't
see your needs, you don't notice this
person isn't attuned to me. Instead, you
sense, hm, this relationship pattern
feels familiar.
This must be what love is. You have been
trained at your core that your needs
don't matter. So, you always must work
to prove your worth. And importantly, if
you don't have to work for it, you think
that you can't trust it. So, you push
away people who are easy, ready, and
open. And instead, you pursue those who
are distant, difficult, and
disconnected.
I have to prove that I'm worthy of
loving
is a theory that becomes addictive and
completely disorienting.
The psychological strength that once
enabled you has now entrapped you. The
capacity to endure emotional pain
without protest is what happens when
your nervous system learns that
discomfort is safer than confrontation.
And in totality, this obscures your
ability to understand what you do and
don't want to tolerate. Perhaps your ego
doesn't want to admit defeat. And shame
spirals in this way. If you believe you
are the problem,
you also have to be the solution. So you
stay, you tolerate, you try harder. But
just because you're suffering doesn't
mean that you're noble.
It just means that you're suffering.
No one is going to congratulate you on
your deathbed with a medal for never
making a fuss.
No one is going to thank you for quietly
lifting weights that should have never
been yours to carry.
The answer isn't less resilience,
but less denial. Because a boundary
isn't an intellectual decision, it's an
emotional limit. And if you can't feel
it, you can't enforce it. Psychological
strength doesn't always make you strong.
Often it just makes you stay too long.
And you risk one day waking up in a life
that you built entirely around what you
were willing to tolerate
and then you finally break.
I think this is so important especially
for hard charging type A insecure
overachiever
thoughtful reflective empathetic people.
The assumption that if this isn't
working it's my job to fix it is noble.
It's a good thing. You should take
responsibility. You should try to help
other people. You should try to work
through things as opposed to just
quitting. But there is a limit.
and what you're praised for in public,
you pay for in private. This kind of
psychological strength, you know, I had
I had had Andy Stump on the show and he
told me this story about how as a Navy
Seal, he had basically built his entire
identity around being someone who never
quits
and that caused him to stay in a
marriage that sounded really destructive
for a decade longer than he should have
done.
At the same time that our slash
relationship advice subreddit just leave
them went from I think 10% or 15% to
50%. It doubled or tripled in the space
of a decade and a half. Uh go to
therapy. We ticked up a little bit but
like try to work through it. Explain
your emotions. All of these things
trended down. So two things are true at
once that some people are pulling the
rip cord and unable to go through
discomfort.
I just don't think that that's you. If
you're listening to this show, if you're
into the wisdom verse, modern wisdomy
stuff, I don't think that's you. I get
the sense that you're the sort of person
who
holds themselves in emotional situations
far longer than they should do, that
always has this sense that someone's mad
at them, that they've maybe they could
be doing more, they should be doing
more. They take responsibility and carry
weights that aren't theirs to bear.
like
walking around with everybody else's
luggage and then wondering why your
shoulders hurt all the time. Yeah, I I I
just I [ __ ] love this idea. It's one
of the It's one of the best things that
I've seen and I'm particularly
interested in things that are advantages
that we pay a price for. Psychological
strength is something almost always
almost almost everybody wants more of.
But look at how it can be damaging and
destabilizing
because you can't turn it off.
[ __ ] your feelings, just work harder is
a great philosophy if you want to do it
in the office or in the gym. It doesn't
matter if I'm tired. It doesn't matter
if I'm sick. It doesn't matter if I I I
don't feel up to it. I'm just going to
get through it. Right? Unless you're
obsessed, obviously.
The same thing isn't true around your
kitchen table. Like your capacity to
withstand emotional discomfort and just
keep moving
should be domain specific at different
levels. In the gym should be very very
high. Uh in the office should be very
very high.
In your relationships and your
friendships should be lower. maybe with
your family should be a little I you
know
I think it's a consideration that a lot
of people need to need to think about
because we praise this is such a
universal good which it almost certainly
is.
I'm trying to find the situations
where it shouldn't be used or it gets
used too much. So I think that's one of
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wisdom. All right, next one. I've been
thinking about the dark side of monk
mode. So, monk mode has grown to huge
popularity over the last few years as a
self-improvement strategy, especially
for men. Maybe on the internet, you have
seen these videos about monk mode
retreating from the world to focus on
the three eyes of introspection and
isolation and improvement. And it's been
talked about since 2014 was the first
time I read of it on the Illimitable Man
blog. He says, "Munk mode is a temporary
form of men going their own way by
cutting yourself off from the rest of
the world for a while so that you can
fine-tune your focus and calibrate your
direction and confront yourself. You
acknowledge your weaknesses and then you
formulate a plan of action to deal with
them. So the focus is on minimizing your
time contribution to social obligations
and junk activities because these
consume so much of your time while
yielding little to negligible increases
toward your social market value." Right?
Monk mode is a serious commitment that
shouldn't be halfassed. You're either
doing it or not. And it'll be a struggle
in the beginning, but once you've fully
engaged it, it becomes a beneficial,
productive, and dare I say even
addictive lifestyle. So that's from the
original blog post in 2014. And look,
for all that I can criticize it, I've
gone full monk mode tons of times
throughout my life with really great
success. all of 2017, all of 2018,
mid209,
basically straight through COVID until
2021 when I moved out to America. I've
cut out alcohol for 2,000 days. In the
last 8 years, I've done 500 days without
caffeine, over 2,000 sessions of
meditation, 5 years of daily gratitude
journals, over 300 sessions of yin yoga,
500 hours of Stew McIll's Big Three to
try and rehab my back. This just sounds
like the recipe for a very autistic
breakfast, I'm aware. But this is all
done as well in a bedroom in Newcastle
upon time in the UK sat on my own
usually first thing in the morning.
Okay,
I've done the monk mode thing, right?
There's my those are my credentials and
almost all of the most important
progress that I ever made was
facilitated by a concentrated period
like this.
However, monk mode's reliable
effectiveness, especially for men,
especially for men that are prone to a
bit of introspection and isolation,
creates a huge problem. And the dark
side is the final two words from that
blog post that I read, addictive
lifestyle.
The problem is monk mode justifies a
retreat from your life, a retreat from
risk-taking and adventure and repackages
it as self-development.
It makes you feel noble in isolation.
But it does that so effectively that it
can become hard to bring yourself back
out. And that means if you already have
a tendency to live a sheltered,
routinized, unsocial life, you are
encouraging yourself to sort of abscond
further away from ever building a real
life support network, which is actually
the thing that you need most in the long
run. Right? The reason that you're doing
all of this work, the isolation, the
introspection, the improvement is to
reintegrate to society and be effective.
But it's so addicting that a lot of the
time people who do monk mode just never
reintegrate. And I saw this with a
friend like 15 years ago who was
competing to go into a bodybuilding
competition. He already was introverted
and socially shy and then his upcoming
fitness competition justified 8:00 p.m.
bedtimes and militant routines and
rejecting all social invites. And the
competition came and went, but the
routine didn't change. And it took years
for him to revent venture out into some
sense of normality. This is largely a
personal reflection too, right? The
allure of perpetually working on
yourself is very high and improvement is
rewarding. But if you're not careful,
you can spend the rest of your life
focused on isolation, introspection, and
improvement at the expense of the actual
reason that you did monk mode in the
first place,
which is to be able to show up in the
world in a better way.
Bill Perkins says, "Delayed
gratification in the extreme results in
no gratification."
With monk mode, you practice in private
so that you can perform in public. But
private practice in the extreme results
in no public performance. So basically,
don't obsess for too long in solitude
for personal growth or you'll struggle
to reintegrate. And the solution is, I
think, periodize. Set a deadline for
your monk mode to end. Three to six
months is a really good sweet spot in my
experience. You can do longer if you've
never done it before. You can do shorter
if you're sort of more developed on your
journey. But yeah, man. I I really
[ __ ] earned my stripes, right? Doing
the isolation, the introspection, and
the improvement.
I the more that I did it, the harder it
was to integrate,
which I guess is the fourth eye,
isolation, improvement, uh, uh,
introspection. But then the fourth one,
which is the one that you're actually
hear, is integration. Like, how do I
bring what I've learned in private back
across into the public? I am trying to
make myself a better person so that I
can
function more effectively in the world,
be more successful in my business, move
along in my career, make better friends,
find a partner that I love, you know, ju
just function in the world in a better
way. But it does repackage
isolation as nobility. And again, if
you've got that predisposition, if
you're the sort of person who tends to
spend time on their own already,
this is going to push you in a direction
you're already moving in. It's going to
exaggerate your predispositions as
opposed to correcting the imbalances.
And uh yeah, look, I love monk mode. I
think it's great. Just no one that's
either done a video on it or tried to
create a [ __ ] course on it has talked
about the challenge of reintegration
publicly because it's way less sexy. And
this is the [ __ ] problem with almost
everything. All of the different things
that I've talked about today,
psychological strength, uh, uh, uh, the
self-awareness.
Everybody will want to extol the virtues
of why it's great. And it is, given that
I'm basically trying to
uh, dispel comforting myths about
commonly held personal development
strategies. That's basically what this
this like lessons episode is. I'm sorry
if I've [ __ ] ripped the rug out from
underneath you. This is also why when I
talk about this stuff, especially on the
internet, it doesn't ever happen at the
live shows, I think, because people,
they're able to see it in totality
whilst they're focused and not at four
times speed. Or maybe they're just too
scared to [ __ ] criticize me. I don't
know. On the internet, people hate
having their comforting illusions pulled
out from underneath them. So, there will
be a ton of criticisms about my
criticisms. Easy for you to say. you've
already da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d I'm like hey d d d d d d d
d d d d d d d d d d d d d I'm not saying
that these things psychological strength
being self-aware the opportunity to like
isolate yourself and work on I'm not
saying that these things aren't good
I'm warning you of some of the side
effects that come along for the ride
that no one wants to talk about the
reason no one wants to talk about it is
it's anti-imetic it's it's inherently
unmotivating right to talk about the
fragility of obsession
is an anti-mimetic idea because people
want to believe that their obsession
will carry them through or that
discipline and motivation will be all
that they need because they can't
engineer their obsession. I'm I'm just
here to tell you in my experience
that's not the way it is at all and I'm
sorry and if I could change it I would.
But I think that this is a much more
important conversation to talk about.
All right, that was a bit dark. Let's do
some interesting differences between the
sexes. So, I've been researching sex
differences.
I found some spicy ones. Your guy friend
is attracted to you and he thinks that
you're attracted to him, too. So, a
study of Americans finds that in
platonic couples, the men are far more
likely than the women to find their
friends sexy and far more likely to
think that she finds them attractive,
too. Indeed, a man's assessment of how
much his female friend fancies him
matches how much he fancies her and it
is unrelated to how she really feels. So
shock, horror, men are prone to wishful
thinking. Also, there is a uh
well understood failure of cross- sex
mind readading. the uh male
overestimation and female
underestimation of attraction. But
your guy friend is attracted to you
ladies and
he thinks that you're attracted to him,
too.
Nearly half of your guy friendss are
trying to sleep with you as a woman. So,
William Costello pled 527 heterosexual
and bisexual people and asked the
question, "Are opposite sex friendships
ever truly platonic?"
81% of women said yes.
Only 58% of men said yes. So, women were
three times more likely than men to say
that their friendship was purely
platonic.
Half of guy friends in the platonic
friendship
are trying to sleep with you. And this
is why dudes when their girl friend
says, "You know, he's no, he's just
nice. He's just
I'm sorry, ladies. We We understand how
that works. We understand how men's
minds work and you understand how
women's w minds work, right? But not
only are guys more attracted to you than
you are to them, they think that you are
as attracted to them as they are to you.
And you don't know either of these
things. So I uh
that's an uncomfortable one. There's
double standards over infidelity. So
according to recent polling, both sexes
think it's worse for a husband than a
wife to have an affair, which is sort of
the opposite of the traditional double
standard. So 53% of men say it's always
morally wrong for a married woman to
have an affair, but 61% of men say it's
always morally wrong for a married man
to have an affair. So 53% of men say
it's wrong for a woman. 61% of men say
it's wrong for a man. 56% of women say
it's always morally wrong for a married
woman to have an affair. And 70% of
women say it's always morally wrong for
a married man to have an affair. That
what's interesting here is both men and
women judge men more harshly for
infidelity
and women judge both men and women more
harshly. Like what's that? 9% more. So
61% of men say it's wrong for a man. 70%
of women say it's wrong for a man. 53%
of men say it's wrong for a woman. 56%
of women say it's wrong for a woman. So,
I mean, women are more sort of enforcing
and judgmental on this generally.
Might not be that surprising, but uh I
don't know what that says. Spicy.
Romantic relationships matter more to
men than to women. So, this is from
Steve Stewart Williams. He's got a new
book out. He's coming on the show very
soon. Romantic relationships matter more
to men than to women. Stereotypes say
it's women who care more. But this time
the stereotypes are wrong. A new paper
in behavioral and brain sciences
assessed that very question and
researchers found that among other
things, men strive harder to establish
romantic relationships. They fall in
love faster. They benefit more from
relationships, depend more on their
relationships for social support, are
less likely to initiate breakups, suffer
more in the wake of a breakup, and take
longer to get over their exes. So,
I wonder how much of this is wrapped up
in the fact that men don't have social
support structures outside of their
relationship in the same way that women
do. Typically, women have a broader uh
and tighter support structure of
friends. And a lot of the time when men
get married, they get rid of their
social support system and just sort of
adopt the wife's support system. Her
friends and the husbands of her friends
become his friends. And then if they get
divorced, those friends go with her, not
with him. So not only does he lose a
wife, he also loses his social support
network because he let his atrophy. This
is kind of typical. But they fall in
love faster, uh, strive harder to
establish romantic relationships,
benefit more from relationship. I think
all of this is like pretty normal if you
were to look ancestally. Why not? Like
women have got more choices, so men need
to work harder to do it. Women are
always going to be able to get a
replacement and men are going to
struggle more so. So, they're going to
take longer to get over. They're going
to be more worried. They suffer more in
the wake of breakups. They're less
likely to initiate breakups because the
chance of them finding somebody else.
They depend more on the relationship for
social support. All of these things make
complete sense, especially when you look
at it ancestrally, but anything that
denies male privilege is usually treated
as kind of abhorrent or or blasphemous.
And I just think it's it's cool to
highlight some of the ways that maybe
things aren't super rosy for guys or
maybe maybe some stereotypes are turned
sort of back to front. Just not calling
women bad or men weak or men more moral
or anything like that. It's [ __ ]
interesting. All right. Married men and
women disagree on how much sex to have.
Women typically believe their marriages
have about the right frequency of sex,
whereas men wished for twice as much sex
as they were having. This suggests many
couples adjust their sexual frequency
to the lower rate that the wife desires.
Right? Women typically believe their
marriages have about the right frequency
of sex. Men wished for twice as much
more. That means that there is a
disparity in what people want versus
what they're getting for each partner.
But look at which partner it defaulted
to. It defaulted to the woman, not to
the man. Now, that's not a bad thing,
right? You might say it's much better to
have to to like run the speed of the
race at that of the slowest person as
opposed to like dragging them along.
Like there's definitely a difference
between someone who doesn't get to have
sex that they want and someone that has
to have sex that they don't want,
obviously. But it is interesting that
there has to be a negotiation that goes
on here and men are sacrificing on
average 50% of the amount of sex that
they want.
And it's sitting at around about the
right amount that women do want. It
would be interesting to see how many of
these women would want even less sex
but aren't prepared to say it because
they know that their partner wants more.
That would be really interesting to work
out. also would be interesting to work
out if women want more sex, but they're
just scared of telling researchers what
they truly believe. Maybe because they
think that there's more judgment around
women being sexually open or something
like that. But
more spice before we continue, most
people in their 30s are still training
hard. Their protein is dialed in. They
sleep better than they did in their 20s.
Discipline is not the issue, but
recovery feels somewhat different.
Strength gains take a little longer. the
margin for error starts to shrink. And
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and modernwisdom at checkout. And a
final one here, which is actually
nothing to do with sex differences, but
far fewer people are made for polyamory
than think that they are. Polyory is
hilarious because the community is
basically 5% genuinely ascended,
emotionally hyper intelligent
communication masters who've got nervous
systems like a [ __ ] glass lake. a 95%
insatiable hungry ghosts who have
convinced themselves that they're the
former. This is from Cook Fuchious that
me and George [ __ ] love on Substack.
He's so funny. Even just the name is
brilliant. uh polyamory, 5% like guys on
the right with the the Jedi master hood
up and 95%
spiritually bypassed beadwearing fedora
hat shawl
burning man like hungry ghosts and I
think in my experience this is really
true and the problem is that the people
who are in the 95% who can't get it
right and aren't built for it and just
keep on trying more and more and more
until in the hopes that that's going to
fix the problem have
mistaken themselves for the former and
use the success of the people who've got
the amazing nervous systems and can
handle it as the justification for why
they keep going. Uh but they are not the
same shock horror. All right, the
internet is a wash with videos about how
to find your true self. But what do we
mean when we talk about our true self? I
think we live with a a quiet
superstition that beneath the noise of
our habits and our mistakes and
contradictions lies a a truer version of
ourselves to self that's fundamentally
good. An alcoholic who gets sober is
becoming who he really is. But a sober
man who starts drinking again has lost
his way. Uh in Scrooge, Dickens didn't
just write about a man who swapped
stinginess for generosity. He wrote
about a man who discovered his real
nature. Uh, when Richard Nixon fell in
disgrace, people said that power had
corrupted his real self. But when Nelson
Mandela forgave his captives, the world
said his true self had been revealed. Or
in real life, patients that have got
dementia or lose their memory, but
retain their kindness are often seen by
loved ones as still the same person,
while those same people who grow cruel
are perceived as having lost their
essence. Like even even when fiction
tries to make villains irredeemable,
audiences resist. Darth Vader is
terrifying until he saves his son and
proves that there was goodness there
deep down. We are reluctant to accept
that anyone, even [ __ ] Satan in
Paradise Lost is rotten all the way
through. And our language betrays the
bias. Goodness is authenticity while
badness is a mask. And psychologists
have tested this belief and the results
are so consistent. People overwhelmingly
identify morally positive changes as
revealing someone's true self but
dismiss negative changes as surface
corruption. I started thinking about
this when I saw this unreal study about
a man called Mark. So a study about a
man called Mark. Mark's life was
presented in two versions, right? In
one, he was a devout Christian who
believed homosexuality was wrong, but
admitted he was attracted to men. In the
other, he was a liberal who believed
homosexuality was perfectly acceptable,
but confessed to secretly feeling
repulsed by same-sex couples. In both
cases, Mark was split. Right? Belief
pulled him one way while a feeling
pulled him the other. The question to
participants was simple. Which side
represented his true self? Liberals
almost always said the attraction to men
revealed who Mark really was. While his
disgust at homosexuality was right-wing
programming, conservatives almost always
said that his conviction against
homosexuality revealed who he really was
and his public support was woke peer
pressure.
Basically, each group looked at the same
man and saw their own values reflected
back at them. It wasn't that people
consistently treated beliefs as more
authentic or feelings as less genuine.
Instead, they treated whichever side
lined up with their own moral compass as
the real side. And this has some
fascinating implications because it
suggests that authenticity isn't
something we find inside others.
Instead, it's something that we project
onto them. What counted as Mark's
essence wasn't hiding in him at all. It
existed in the values of the people that
were judging him. And these fights are
never just about evidence. They're about
who gets to define authenticity.
Interestingly, the whole exercise only
works when someone is conflicted. If
Mark only had one belief or one feeling,
no one would have hesitated to declare,
"Oh, that's who he is."
Conflict is the playground where we get
to impose our judgments about which side
counts as the real self. There are
consequences to always seeing ourselves
and the others that we favor as moral
too, right? It cautions us from despair
because failures can be brushed aside as
not really me, which makes bouncing back
after mistakes easier. But it also
blinds us to our own cruelty because
harmful actions get rationalized as
accidents or errors or aberrations.
It creates an asymmetry where we forgive
ourselves quickly while judging others
more harshly. It it skews our sense of
authenticity because we treat virtuous
impulses as real and darker ones as
intrusions, which can make us
dangerously naive about people who are
not conflicted at all, but those for
whom malice isn't a mask, but it's a
pattern. And it fuels this sort of
lifelong quest to uncover the good self
as though the work of living is not
making choices but
excavating our own purity. And to add
even more complexity to it, notice how
unevenly this belief gets applied. If
goodness is the truth and badness is a
mask, then in theory, we should treat
all people's goodness as authentic and
all people's badness as superficial.
But that isn't what we do. With our
allies, we assume their virtues show who
they really are, while their failures
are only slips or distortions or masks.
But with our opponents, we reverse it.
Their good deeds are dismissed as fake
or manipulative, while their mistakes
and vices are taken as proof of their
true character. This double standard
shows that the rule isn't actually
goodness is authenticity.
The rule is the kind of goodness I value
is authenticity.
Our side's goodness is treated as
essence while the other side's goodness
is treated as performance. And our
side's failings are masks, but the other
side's failings are revelations.
Psychologically,
this makes sense. In small groups,
assuming hidden goodness on insiders
helped to maintain our trust and our
cohesion, and it assumed hidden badness
in outsiders helped us define the
boundary between us and them. But the
cost is distortion. We give our friends
a free pass while demonizing our rivals,
blinded to their real virtues and our
own sides flaws. What looks like a rule
about human nature. Goodness is truth
and badness is a mask
actually turns out to be a rule about
group loyalty. So
here's a disconcerting idea. What if our
true self doesn't exist at all? What if
we are nothing but the bundle of drives
and beliefs and feelings that show up in
the moment? The addict is just as much
himself when he drinks as when he
doesn't. Scrooge was authentically
Scrooge as a miser and as a benefactor.
And we only anoint the generous version
as authentic because it flatters our
sense of what humans ought to be. And in
this light, the true self isn't
discovered.
It's basically invented.
The fiction makes forgiveness possible,
but it also blinds us to cruelty and
shortcomings. It allows us to keep
loving people even at their worst. But
it also tricks us into underestimating
their malice. We say every tyrant or
abuser has a hidden spark of goodness,
even when sometimes there isn't one. You
can see this bias everywhere. Addicts in
recovery routinely say that wasn't the
real me about their lowest points. But
no one ever says that sobriety is fake.
Childhood stories teach us the frog is
really a prince. The beast is really
gentle. The happy ending is always
framed as the revelation of what was
hidden all along. Therapists describe
patients getting back to themselves
after depression. But it's almost
unthinkable to frame it the other way,
right? that the depressed version is the
truest one. Even in daily life, when a
friend lashes out in anger, we soo
ourselves by saying that's not who she
is. But when they show generosity, we
never say that's not them. I I I hope
that that's not the truth, right? That
there is no authentic real self. But my
fear, my philosophical hypothesis that I
want to be disproven is that there may
be no real you at all. The true self
isn't something to be discovered.
Instead, it's something that we invent.
It's a a superstition that we cling on
to because it makes forgiveness easier
and love sustainable and cruelty
bearable.
And I started thinking about this when
uh I went through some spicy stuff at
the start of the year. And what I
realized was when you're getting
criticism, you're being criticized from
almost always one side for saying one
thing that they don't agree with. And if
they say, "Who are you to talk about
this topic?" The exact opposite opinion
would occur if you were saying something
different. So if someone says, "Who are
you to comment about the environment?"
if they're an environmentalist and you
are saying something which seems
environmentally critical.
But if you were saying something that
was environmentally supportive in their
direction, they would want you to say
more. So it's not really you're not
allowed to speak about this. It's I have
a problem with the direction in which
you're speaking. And because of that, I
found the next closest association. Like
who are you American person to talk
about the way that Britain is uh dealing
with its immigration problem because
you're saying something that disagrees
with whatever that person's point of
view is. But if you were saying
something that agreed with them, they
would want you to say it more. No one is
saying your support is too much. Please
stop doing it because you're not
supposed to be talking here. They will
say your criticism is too much. You
shouldn't be talking. You're not
supposed to be here.
It seems like an asymmetry, you know,
uh, men shouldn't be talking about
women's bodies. Well, if the men were in
support of access to birth control when
Row versus Wade got repealed, I would
imagine that lots of women who don't
want men talking about women's bodies
would have liked men to be talking about
women's bodies. In fact, that's the only
thing that you can get support with if
you want to get 50% of the population to
get on board with this thing that you
think is really important.
But if you only want to accept voices
from the other side when they're in
support of you, you can't expect them to
show up if you criticize them when they
don't agree. All right, that's it. 1100
episodes. Holy [ __ ] Uh, thank you all.
I love you to bits. Thank you for
supporting me. Thank you for supporting
the show. I'm here in the new studio.
This place rules. I got so many big
episodes coming up. Uh, like, subscribe.
It really does make a difference. Still
now 4.2 million subscribers later, it
does make a difference. So, wherever you
are listening or watching, I appreciate
you. I hope you have a wonderful day and
I'll see you next time.