People of the UK and Ireland, if you are
coming to see me on tour, I want to hear
from you. I want to know what problems
you're dealing with, your worst first
date, and any questions that you've got
for me. And I will be bringing some of
you up on stage to talk about it. So, if
you're coming to see me on tour this
October, go to
chriswilliamson.live/stories,
submit them, and I might see you with a
mic in front of your face very soon.
Chris Williamson.tories.
What are the unifying features of How to
Have a Great Life? Let's just start with
how to have a great life. James Hollis
came on my podcast. He's 84 years old.
Surprised the [ __ ] out of me when he
said, "Here's how you have a great life.
It involves four things. The first three
are shut up." That's the first one. I
go, "Shut up." And he goes, "Yeah,
someone's always got it worse than you.
Nobody wants to hear you whine. Have
gratitude for what you do have. If
you're alive, you got something to be
grateful for."
>> Well, I didn't really expect that from
him. You know, he's like this
85-year-old Yungian analyst. He talks
about the unconscious mind. He goes,
"Shut up. Your day should start with
Huberman. Shut up. Whatever's got you
bothered, shut up. You got it better
than somebody.
>> It's interesting. I actually wish
someone had said that to you earlier,
but that's okay.
>> Thank you. Um, second,
>> you can keep this in.
>> Next. Next. He said, "Chris Williamson,
go [ __ ] yourself."
>> Yeah, that's true. Sorry.
>> First is shut up. Second is suit up.
What is suit up? Suitup is you have a
role to fulfill each day for other
people and for yourself and for the
world. Suitup is get prepared, shower,
organize your room. We've heard this
stuff from Jordan and from other people,
but get your act together so that you
can then do the third thing effectively,
which is show up. Go find a role in life
and fulfill it. It might not be the role
you fulfill your entire life. But if
it's a summer camp counselor, if it's a
babysitter, if it's a a nanny, if it's a
firefighter, if it's whatever you you
are doing at some point in your life,
you in order to have confidence and be a
healthy, happy person, you need to
fulfill roles for society, meaning for
people in your life, not just for you.
You have to be in service. Now, some
people might think I want to make as
much money in the world as possible.
That's not me, but a lot of people feel
that way. Great. To do what? Go fulfill
that role. So, get dressed properly. do
those things. It sounds so basic, right?
So, shut up is about gratitude. Suitup
is about prepare and practice. Don't
show up, you know, don't for me, I
delayed the publication of the book
three times. Why? Cuz I want the book to
be something I'm truly proud of and that
people will feel that they were honored
as smart people who deserve quality
information. Period. End of story. And I
was willing to tell the publisher and
everyone else, look, I'm so so sorry,
but I'm going back in again and again
and again. eat the shame because
ultimately I had a higher value which
was that the book be of good to extreme
value to anyone that that that read it
>> or you even just looked at a chapter for
instance and then that last one of show
up is actually go do the work like chop
wood carry water like no one gives a
[ __ ] that you don't want to do it today
just do it great confidence comes from
those but then he said the fourth thing
the pitfall is that when we get too much
into role playing these roles and doing
these things, we we don't often enough
or see, excuse me, many people end up
down a road that they don't really want
to be on and everyone fears that. So he
said the solution to this is very
simple. Once a day go into your mind and
get out of stimulus response. You either
meditate or just breathe. You draw, you
listen to music, you don't look at your
phone, you don't think about your role
in the world, and all you do is you try
and listen to, and it sounds real
squishy, but when it's next to shut up,
suit up, show up, I feel comfortable
saying it, which is you ask yourself
like, what is my deeper wish, my heart's
desire? What do I need to be focusing on
now? Maybe I have enough career, enough
money, enough enough uh whatever, you
know, colleague respect, etc. Maybe now
it's time to uh focus more on
relationships. Maybe it's time to focus
less on one's role as a mother, father,
not completely, but focus more on an
artistic creative side that if you don't
satisfy, you're not going to feel like
you had a good life. So personal
development, if you look at those bins,
it's not about shut up, suit up, show
up, and do this internal practice of
getting out of stimulus response. It's
that's just one example. You look out
across the landscape of personal
development and almost everything slots
into one or two, but usually just one of
those. Entire books are about the first
one or just the the last one or two of
the two of the four.
>> And I go, that's very satisfying to me
because as my colleague said, putting a
structure on things is is very helpful
because it helps us navigate without
feeling like there's all this
information. Wait, I'm supposed to
journal and I'm supposed to do therapy
and maybe psychedelics, maybe not and
I'm supposed to have social connection
and and like pretty soon you're like
when am I supposed to do the morning
sunlight thing? So the idea is that you
you understand the framework and then
when it comes to the trauma piece for
unlearning, right? Like there's a
tremendous amount of information in the
book on how to focus and learn better.
But then also what about unlearning?
>> All of getting over bad stuff is four
steps. The process is four steps. The
first thing you need to acknowledge the
bad thing. You can't just deny it
anymore. You can't suppress it. What are
you suppressing? You need to acknowledge
this happened. This sucks.
Two, the second step is you need to feel
the feelings completely. There is no
working around this. their entire books
and workshops written around breathing
into, psychedelicing into, talking into,
hugging into, shaking into feeling the
full suck of the horrible thing that
happened or things.
But that's not where it stops. People
often just end there. The next piece is
feeling calmer even slightly and more
peaceful
around the accurate detailed memory of
the thing. You're now uncoupling the
emotion from the thing. You can't just
live in the feel your feelings. We have
an entire generation of people and
collection of people online who are only
there and they wonder why they're still
there
>> at the mercy of their feelings.
>> They're at the mercy of their feelings,
but also they're not effective in the
world. They're not affecting change.
They think they are, but they're not
affecting change. This is actually why I
think they hate one of the many reasons
why successful people are often hated
because they're moving along. They're
like I feel like sometimes online I look
and I'm like you remind me of those kids
when I would go home cuz I left I went
to college then came back and that
scared the [ __ ] out of me cuz I was like
oh my god you guys could write a
textbook on how to become like a world
class loser.
>> And some of them weren't like drugging
out or anything. I was just like, you
guys are still talking about stuff that
Well, today I talked about stuff that
happened in high school that was helpful
for me, but
you guys are like stuck. It's like these
people that hang out in the parking lot
of bars for years and years talking
about this thing. I mean, it's the
saddest thing in the world. And men do
it one way, women do it another way.
It's this fixation on the things that
happened that we feel wronged about. And
we all have them, right? And granted,
some people were genuinely wrong. That's
not the point here. It's not whether
they were wronged or is that they're
stuck there. And the third piece is
about the uncoupling. And then the
fourth piece is what we kind of think of
as the magic of life where people take
the hard thing and the experience and
their journey of moving through it and
they transmute it into something of
beauty and goodness for the world. Mhm.
>> These are the people that go and talk at
bereiement workshops, talk to people
who've lost a child, talk to people um
who have experienced horrible things,
talk to maybe they even just plant a
flower and put it in the window sill and
every morning they appreciate not the
pain they went through, but the pain
they went through that they no longer
experience and the beauty that's there
representing it. A small detail, right?
A small detail in their life. They've
transmuted the pain. But you can't just
go, "Oh, you know what? You had this
horrible thing happen." You know, plant
a flower,
>> put it in the window sill and think
about how beautiful it is. You can't
take somebody who's struggling in number
one or two.
>> Yep.
>> Or three and put them there. So for me,
>> go back through those four for me.
>> What's that?
>> Go back through those four.
>> Acknowledge the thing.
>> Yep.
>> Straight on exactly what happened or how
many you know what is the thing that
sucks that hurts so much. Two, you have
to in a safe environment. This is why
there's an interest in clinical trials
on MDMA because it's this empathogen
makes people feel you know love and safe
but you need that's not the only way I
mean there's therapy there's journaling
I talk about this in talk about all the
different approaches to each of these
steps that's the second step you have to
feel the feelings completely of the
horrible thing that happened the third
thing is once you've done that enough
and we talk about what enough is you
need to be able to recall the details
and specifics of the horrible thing that
happened with less emotional load. The
emotional load starts to peel back. And
it's a hard step to get to, but once you
get there, it's a process. It's not like
you go in and you go, "Okay, today I'm
going to remember everything, but it's
not going to bother me at all." Little
by little, you start to uncouple the
>> like memory exposure therapy.
>> Some people do EMDR. That's one way.
Some people do hypnosis. Some people do
talk therapy. Pennaker has people
journal four times for 15 minutes each
about the horrible thing that happened.
This takes them through steps two and
three.
15 minutes one day, 15 minutes the next
day, 15 minutes the next day, 15 minutes
the next day. No more, no less. And by
the fourth day, tens of thousands of
data points now, not just individuals,
but many, many papers. Even if uh you
know, manuscripts, scientific
manuscripts, but even if you tear up the
writing afterward, even if you delete
the file, you find that people move
through steps two and three to a
significant degree. And then the fourth
step is not just letting it hover there
as this thing that you got through but
finding some way or ways it can be many
of transmuting that entire experience
the thing that happened and the way you
moved through it into some point of
beauty or contribution to your own
well-being and to others well-being.
could be yeah a dog and the dog
represents every bit of your ability to
love unconditionally and their ability
to love unconditionally that represents
the unconditional love you didn't get.
Maybe it's a someone who has suffered a
horrible trauma is helping people who
suffered similar traumas. Or maybe it's
some just symbol, right? I mean, you
know, in a very Yungian way, it can just
be a symbol of like maybe you have this
paper weight and that symbol is the the
weight of your your certainty that you
made it through and you just, you know,
that the human mind can assign symbols
to to experiences very easily, good or
bad. So those are the four steps and for
me in thinking about personal
development it was like how do I look
out on the entire landscape of all these
books and all these podcasts and think
and and science and think what's the
best way to move through you acknowledge
that process. Neuroplasticity is alert
focus agitation through genuine errors
to get things right. Reinforce through
sleep and self- testing. Those are the
steps. There's not a fifth step or a
sixth step. There's not jump to step
three and avoid steps one and two. So
these days a lot of my role in in my
public life is to educate about
processes. And when and this all comes
from my training in neuroscience. You
don't teach people neurons fire action
potentials. That's the first thing you
teach them. Then you tell them how that
happens. And once they understand how
that happens and you get the action
potential, they have embedded in their
mind an understanding of when a neuron
fires, a neuron fires, they're not
thinking about all the steps, but it's
all there. That's what we call true
understanding. You have a nuanced um
multi-level
understanding of something. And I think
that all too often in the optimization
space, we say, "Hey, this red light's
going to give you better skin. It's
going to improve your mitochondria." And
people of course just want those
effects. But if people are feeling
overwhelmed, they should think, well,
what's better, red light or GHK copper?
I would say, well, what's the best
source of of red light? It's the sun
minus UV. When does that happen? When
the sun is low in the sky, boom, you got
the best red light therapy that you
could ever get, minus UV for zero cost.
Congratulations. You want a red light,
too? Cool. Be my guest. I own one. You
might want one, too. But just we're
talking about longwavelength light minus
UV. End of story. So, it's not
complicated. And I think the same is
true in resistance training. Andy Galpin
talks about this or exercise. They're
only like five or six different
adaptations. Better speed, better power,
better, you know, I mean, you've added a
seventh of like like, you know,
forearms, but for the rest of us, there
only six. And you can get that through
CrossFit, you can get that through sets
to failure. You can get more volume with
near failure. Like once you understand
something, you're in a position to make
much better choices around it. And so my
I'm actually wondering when to retire
right now. I'm kind of thinking what's
next and I have some ideas about where
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right heading into 2027, I think we
pretty well understand the principles of
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