Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Conversation with Jean Moroney -- Setting and Achieving Goals in the Coming Year | Yaron Brook Show

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Conversation with Jean Moroney -- Setting and Achieving Goals in the Coming Year | Yaron Brook Show · Yaron Brook Show

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of them, photos of Widow Wattle and an
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: individual loss.
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  Speaker 2: This is the.
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  Speaker 1: Show, all right, everybody, welcome to your one book show
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  Speaker 1: on this Monday, December eighth. And I am really really
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  Speaker 1: pleased to have Jeane with me, Jeane Maroni, who's been
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  Speaker 1: a frequent guest in the past, So welcome, Jean.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you your own. I always always fun to talk
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  Speaker 2: with you.
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  Speaker 1: Good good, I'm looking forward to this one. And reminded everybody,
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  Speaker 1: UH feel free to ask questions. Super chat is open
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: uh and uh Gin will be taking questions on the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: topics we're going to cover today. But but just anything
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: you guys come up with, UH, generally in the realm
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of Gene's expertise, which I think most of you're familiar with.
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  Speaker 3: Just to give you a quick.
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  Speaker 1: Run down, Gene teachers ambitious people with challenging goals how
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  Speaker 1: to manage their minds so they make better decisions their
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  Speaker 1: goals and motivate and focus their thoughts for action. And
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  Speaker 1: she's the founder president of Thinking Directions. You can learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the work, access resources, or join her programs
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  Speaker 1: on her website think thinkingdirections dot com, thinkingdirections dot com. Great.
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  Speaker 1: All right, well, you know this is I love this
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  Speaker 1: season between kind of Thanksgiving and Christmas is a great time.
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  Speaker 1: I think things seem to slow down a little bit
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  Speaker 1: and a lot more time to plan and to think.
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  Speaker 1: It's and it's perfect for like getting you going for
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  Speaker 1: next year and thinking about next year, thinking about what
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  Speaker 1: worked and what didn't work during the previous year, kind
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  Speaker 1: of setting yourself up for for the next year. So
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  Speaker 1: what's the importance of if you were doing that, of
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  Speaker 1: kind of setting setting goals in advance of thinking through
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  Speaker 1: spending a lot of time on really thinking through where
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  Speaker 1: you are and in life generally or in your career
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  Speaker 1: or whatever it happens to be.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, well, I think long term goals are really essential
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  Speaker 2: to happiness. You know, this is not the most obvious
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  Speaker 2: case of this is a central purpose which integrates your life,
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  Speaker 2: but all long range goals are really the source of
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  Speaker 2: the deepest the deepest joy you get is from the
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  Speaker 2: things that you build and you see as a results
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  Speaker 2: of your life and of your choice and of your
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  Speaker 2: having in effect created something out of your own imagination
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  Speaker 2: as to how the world is going to be or
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  Speaker 2: how your life is going to be, the environment you're
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  Speaker 2: going to give your kids, or whatever it is. And
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  Speaker 2: there's really nothing more gratifying than being able to look
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  Speaker 2: back over the last ten years or twenty years and say, wow,
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  Speaker 2: that was an idea in my mind and look what
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  Speaker 2: I've done.
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  Speaker 1: Yep. So I mean, obviously achieving those goals is something essential,
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  Speaker 1: necessary for happiness. But there are lots of people out
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  Speaker 1: there that seem to achieve those goals, like you know,
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  Speaker 1: I know, I know people Silicon Valley. They take companies
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  Speaker 1: public and they make a lot of money and the
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  Speaker 1: companies do well. So it's not just about the money.
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  Speaker 1: And that might happen when they're very young even and
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  Speaker 1: they kind of lose it. They lose focus, they lose
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  Speaker 1: the sense of purpose. So kids, they've achieved amazing things,
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  Speaker 1: and yet they don't achieve the happiness that one assumes
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  Speaker 1: that they will. You know what's going.
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  Speaker 2: On, right, It's necessary for happiness, but not sufficient. Right,
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  Speaker 2: there's no substitute for a rational morality. If you think
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  Speaker 2: of like the Zappos founder, the story of his life
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  Speaker 2: where he died in a fire, you know, after his
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  Speaker 2: life went completely crazy after he sold out. He didn't
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  Speaker 2: have any compass. Now, sometimes I think entrepreneurs do have
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  Speaker 2: a compass while they're building the business, because they really
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  Speaker 2: do have a creative rational goal, of creative rational, real
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  Speaker 2: world goal and they take that as the whole thing
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  Speaker 2: and that you know, that that guides them and because
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  Speaker 2: it's rational, they do well. But in order to then
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  Speaker 2: set what the next goal is, you need something like
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  Speaker 2: you need a rational philosophy. You need to have rational goals.
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  Speaker 2: It's only rational goals that can really bring you joy.
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  Speaker 2: And to really get happiness you have you need to
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  Speaker 2: have integrated goals. And that's not possible if they're rational.
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  Speaker 2: That's not possible unless you understand the principles of rationality
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  Speaker 2: and you understand why they're needed for happiness.
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  Speaker 1: So does that mean I mean, it can mean that
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  Speaker 1: you have to be an objectivist to you know, to
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  Speaker 1: be successful in life. We know plenty of people successful
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  Speaker 1: who are not. So what is what is it that
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  Speaker 1: really is needed for them?
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  Speaker 2: Well that I mean, I actually think the people who
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  Speaker 2: are successful, and there are lots of people who are
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  Speaker 2: i would say successful and happy who are not objectivists.
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  Speaker 2: And if you talk with them, they do have an
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  Speaker 2: implicitly rational philosophy and they are probably you know, they
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  Speaker 2: may have some talk around the edges, like they may
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  Speaker 2: pay lip service to religion in some respects, and to
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  Speaker 2: the extent that they take any of that seriously, they
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  Speaker 2: will not be happy, right, They will be compartmentalized in
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  Speaker 2: any area where they accept subjectivism. I mean, Hank Reardon
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  Speaker 2: is the dramatic, you know, the fictional dramatization of this, right,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, he was essentially a happy guy as long
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  Speaker 2: as he didn't have to think about his family.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, a long home, he didn't go home, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, and it was dramatic.
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  Speaker 2: But but but this is real. And if if they've
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  Speaker 2: pushed that off to the edges sufficiently, they can it
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  Speaker 2: can be not an actual big part of their lives.
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  Speaker 2: I do think that that puts an upper limit on
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  Speaker 2: how much achievement you can have. I mean, I don't
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  Speaker 2: think that people with really huge achievements can be also
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  Speaker 2: hugely happy if they don't have a pretty logical, explicit
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  Speaker 2: philosophy and if they don't understand something about selfishness. Altruism
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  Speaker 2: is a killer if you are committed to altruism. And
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  Speaker 2: I've spent you know, I've spent thirty five years trying
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  Speaker 2: to get altruism out of myself. Even a small amount
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  Speaker 2: of altruism will make you miserable. And so the other
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  Speaker 2: thing I think you need to keep in mind is
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  Speaker 2: that the fact that people say they're happy and they
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  Speaker 2: put smiles on their faces doesn't mean you really need
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  Speaker 2: to look behind the scenes where you can't look because
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  Speaker 2: it's private.
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  Speaker 1: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So does that answer your question? Because oh, I
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  Speaker 2: got one other answer to your question.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the.
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  Speaker 2: Other answer your question I have is the common sense
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  Speaker 2: way that I think people stay rational is that they
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  Speaker 2: stay value oriented. And that's something that's the way I
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  Speaker 2: would put it, which is that you always think in
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  Speaker 2: terms of the value you want to create instead of
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  Speaker 2: the threat you want to avoid or the you know,
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  Speaker 2: you're always thinking in terms of the positive you want
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  Speaker 2: to create. And to the extent that you do that consistently, again,
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  Speaker 2: if you're always on a creation premise, those are going
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  Speaker 2: to be consistent and you will be essentially rational. And
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  Speaker 2: that is you know, in self help books and things,
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  Speaker 2: there is an implicit value orientation some of the self
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  Speaker 2: help books, but they also have a lot of garbage,
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  Speaker 2: which to the extent you let the garbage in, it's
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  Speaker 2: going to undercut.
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  Speaker 1: I mean this is why this seems to be a
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  Speaker 1: flavor of the weak self help book because people do them,
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  Speaker 1: they get some benefit from it, but it doesn't actually,
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't actually cure them. It doesn't really move them forward.
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  Speaker 1: So they're looking for the next gimmick.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's actually part of the problem. That's something
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  Speaker 2: I had to figure out for myself, is that they
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  Speaker 2: are looking for something that is going to cure them.
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  Speaker 2: And that is part of the problem. If you think
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  Speaker 2: that you're broken and you need to be fixed, this
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  Speaker 2: is a permanent problem with being happy. And you know,
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  Speaker 2: I haven't finished reading Teras Smith's book on Egoism without Permission,
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  Speaker 2: but she makes this incredibly important point in that book.
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  Speaker 2: She says that in effect, your commitment to your happiness
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  Speaker 2: is the authority for ethics, right, and that the reason
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  Speaker 2: that you need ethics is because you're committed to happiness,
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  Speaker 2: and therefore you need a moral code, which you know,
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  Speaker 2: I hadn't heard it explain that way before. It was
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  Speaker 2: really really, I mean, this is an original point that
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  Speaker 2: I really appreciate terror pointing out. And if you don't
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  Speaker 2: have that idea, you can have something that's telling you
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  Speaker 2: that you're not good enough. Like, if you have an
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  Speaker 2: idea of morality that's separate from happiness, you can still
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  Speaker 2: be saying, well, you know, I'm not happy because I'm
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  Speaker 2: not being moral enough, or it's all right that I'm
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  Speaker 2: not happy because this is the right thing to do.
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  Speaker 2: There there will be some kind of conflict between those
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  Speaker 2: two things. And if you think that you are like
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  Speaker 2: broken and need to be fixed, you're putting morality above happiness.
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  Speaker 2: The truth is that you can be rational at whatever
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  Speaker 2: whatever psychology you have. You can be rational now and
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  Speaker 2: you can improve. And so pride is moral ambitions is
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  Speaker 2: so you can improve. So you can be rational now
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  Speaker 2: and you can increase your skills and your abilities, and
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  Speaker 2: that's the source of happiness.
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  Speaker 1: So you say you don't have to solve all your
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  Speaker 1: psychological problems.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, before you can be happy, right right, it's actually
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  Speaker 2: the process of solving them is a happy process and
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  Speaker 2: should be a happy process. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting. So as we set goals for next year, as
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  Speaker 1: we set goals generally, what's the most you know, what
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  Speaker 1: can we expect to be successful? That is, what are
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  Speaker 1: the predictors of actually being successful or at attaining those goals?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the most important thing is your degree of
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  Speaker 2: desire for them. This is really true. The more passionate
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  Speaker 2: you are about the goal, the more likely it is
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  Speaker 2: you're going to keep going until you get it. And
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  Speaker 2: if you have a goal that's do it or die trying,
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  Speaker 2: you'll keep working on it, you know, over decades. Now,
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  Speaker 2: that's actually not such a satisfying answer. I mean, I
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  Speaker 2: think that's true, but it's not such a satisfying answer
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  Speaker 2: because that limits you a little bit by what your
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  Speaker 2: current values are and what your current motivation is. And
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  Speaker 2: so one of the things that I've worked on. So
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  Speaker 2: the second thing that is a predictor is do you
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  Speaker 2: have a process whereby you can pursue the goal with
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  Speaker 2: the motivation you have and build the strength of your
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  Speaker 2: passion for it as you go. I think that is
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  Speaker 2: really critical because if it's an all a long range goal,
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  Speaker 2: if it's a year or two years or three years,
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  Speaker 2: you're going to need to put in a lot of effort.
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  Speaker 2: And the way I look at it is you have
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  Speaker 2: to make sure that the process by which you're pursuing
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  Speaker 2: the goal is paying off as it goes, so you're
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  Speaker 2: getting some joy along the way, so you're reinforcing that
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  Speaker 2: value you're seeing the benefit, you're getting excited about it,
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  Speaker 2: you're building momentum, and that's what gets you to keep going.
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  Speaker 2: So like if we were talking about entrepreneurs, this is
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  Speaker 2: one of the reasons they need a minimum viable product.
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  Speaker 2: They need a proof that there's actually a market and
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  Speaker 2: that they can make this thing and you know, and
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  Speaker 2: at least provide some value and then they can iterate
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  Speaker 2: and make it bigger and bigger and bigger. And the
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  Speaker 2: same thing is true the way I teach it, I
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  Speaker 2: call it played evolution. You take the biggest goal, you
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  Speaker 2: take the absolute biggest goal. You can take a thirty
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  Speaker 2: year goal, and you need to be able to figure
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: out what you're going to do in this two week period. Yep,
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  Speaker 2: you can actually do in two weeks that you are
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  Speaker 2: morally certain you can do, want to do and will
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  Speaker 2: do in the next two weeks. And when you can
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  Speaker 2: bring it in that short and I think two weeks
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  Speaker 2: is actually a magic number. If you can bring it
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  Speaker 2: into that short then you can actually do it. Then
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  Speaker 2: it's just an issue of figuring out how do I
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  Speaker 2: put in the time. And if you have motivational problems,
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  Speaker 2: solving the motivational problems on something that you can do
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  Speaker 2: for something that has a really big payoff, So you're
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  Speaker 2: willing to put in the effort to solve any motivational
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  Speaker 2: problems you have so then you can grow your values.
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  Speaker 1: So make sure that it's you're really passionate about it,
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  Speaker 1: and then break it down into kind of bits that
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  Speaker 1: you can be equally passionate about each one of them.
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  Speaker 1: That a shorteduation that you can in actually achieve in
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  Speaker 1: the short run and get that satisfaction so that you
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  Speaker 1: can keep the motivation going.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and there's sometimes you can do that just because
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  Speaker 2: of your existing knowledge and values, and sometimes you need
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  Speaker 2: a process to help you figure that out. That's that's
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  Speaker 2: that's what I teach.
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  Speaker 1: That's like my the process.
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  Speaker 2: You know, that's the kind of thing that I teach.
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  Speaker 2: That's the kind of thing I coach people on because
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  Speaker 2: it's not I mean, it took me fifteen years to
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  Speaker 2: develop that process. It's you can figure it out yourself.
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  Speaker 1: I did.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, like the lean process, like the Lean
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  Speaker 2: Startup by Eric Rice is a book of it for startups,
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  Speaker 2: and I would say that's a very similar process, but
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  Speaker 2: it's in entrepreneurial And then you know, experiments. It's a
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  Speaker 2: similar process or in writing, where you do drafts, you
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  Speaker 2: figure out, you figure it out, and you iterate. There
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  Speaker 2: is one process that's out there, but sometimes figuring it
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  Speaker 2: out for your particular goal takes a little bit of creativity.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and how ambitious do you think those goals should be?
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  Speaker 2: I think the sky's the limit.
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  Speaker 3: I think generally scary, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, that's super scary.
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  Speaker 2: It is scary because when you set a goal, it
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  Speaker 2: means that you could fail, and if you don't put
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  Speaker 2: in the work, you will fail and you will feel guilty.
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  Speaker 2: When you set a goal, it's very exciting and you
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  Speaker 2: get it's like you get some happiness on credit. You know,
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  Speaker 2: you get some of the pleasure of having achieved the
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: goal because you set it and you imagine what it
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  Speaker 2: will be like, and it's really I mean, it's really
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  Speaker 2: pleasurable to imagine, right. But then if you decide if
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  Speaker 2: you then drop that goal, then there's some real mourning
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  Speaker 2: associated with it because you know that you've blasted those
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: expectations and it's very painful. And I think that's why
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: people are afraid to set goals, because they've set them
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: without setting them realistically in some way, or they've set
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: them without being committed and so they've dropped them. And
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  Speaker 2: so the the problem is not how ambitious your goal is,
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  Speaker 2: it's I are you? Are? You? Do you have a
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  Speaker 2: process that you can be confident that you will stay
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  Speaker 2: at it? And if not, then you should set a
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  Speaker 2: less ambitious goal and learn a process where you can
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  Speaker 2: stay at it, and then the sky's the limit.
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  Speaker 1: So uh So, if you set a simple goal, is
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that like a step towards the bigger goal, like like
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  Speaker 1: you described earlier, that's what I That's what I still have.
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  Speaker 1: You still have that ambitious goal out there. You're just
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  Speaker 1: taking steps.
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  Speaker 2: And you're not as committed to it.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: The thing you really wind up committing to is the
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: shorter term thing that that you can commit to. I
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: think that's a big part of it is that. And
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: then the other thing is that when you said, like,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: let let me give an example here, I mean this
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  Speaker 2: personal example of I assume it's all right, you know
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  Speaker 2: I I basically went into psychopistemology. I was interested in understanding,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: in fact, how do you think what is the interaction
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of memory
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and affict right, and for cognition, and I was not
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: interested in emotional stuff. In fact, the first let's see,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: so the first wasn't until about eight or so years
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: into my business, I suddenly realized, you know, I'm talking
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: a lot about overload, but I should say something about
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: emotional overload. You know, that might make sense, right, And
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: then and then it like opened up, and I realized,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: you can't really understand a thinking process without understanding how
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: emotions work and how to manage them. That's actually a
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: really important part of the process. I had a total
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: blinder on. I had no idea this was part of it.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: And in a sense that my goal has widened as
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  Speaker 2: a result of that, and it's gone down channels that
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  Speaker 2: I didn't expect it to go because I was following
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  Speaker 2: my nose. And so one of the things you need
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: to be open to when you set a long range
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  Speaker 2: goal is that you need to be willing to have
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: it be somewhat flexible. You know, you set a long
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: range direction, but then you actually don't know what exactly
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: is possible, and and so you need to be able
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: to go a little more abstract, like I'm interested in
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  Speaker 2: how the mind works. Okay, managing emotions. That's part of
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: how the mind works. It's all right, you know, it's
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  Speaker 2: like the umbrella got a little bigger. That's okay, But
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: then the goal also got a little harder because I'm
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  Speaker 2: now working on thinking, feeling, and action. I'm interested in
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: all three of them. So okay, it changed the scope,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: but it didn't change the overall direction. And it didn't
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  Speaker 2: mean that I didn't see progress. It did change the
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes this changes the timeline. So that's the
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: other thing that you need is is you know, you
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  Speaker 2: never have to continue a long term goal. But a
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: coach who's been very helpful to me, a woman named
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: brook Steal. One of the things she says is she
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: says it in a subjectivist way. So she says, so,
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  Speaker 2: I right to give up on the goal, but you
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: need to like your reasons. And so for example, if
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: you if you've actually decided you were more interested in
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: this other area, well that's an excellent reason to change
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  Speaker 2: your goal.
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  Speaker 3: So it's not so much as giving up.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It's giving up in the particular goal, but it's not
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: giving up on ambitious.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Goals exactly right, right, And it's figuring out what you
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: care about the most or having your values changed, or
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: going to a new phase. I mean, I think every
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: ten years or so you do need to make a shift.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I bet you've seen. I mean you've I know you've
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: seen shifts in your career every ten or ten years
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: or fifteen years or so.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Right, No, absolutely, And once I went had a conversation
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: with actually the venture capitalists who gave the money to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: zepp Us to make up us.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, Okay, so.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Don Valentine who was like a legendary adventure capitalist for
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Sequoia Capital, and he basically said, he said, every ten years,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: you should change what you do. Every ten you know,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta refresh, you gotta do something different,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: because it it just you need. You need to stay ambitious,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: you need to stay curious and flexible. And once you
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: go over ten years and the same thing you kind
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of too much said in it set in a in
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: a given pattern.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah you're not growing anymore. Yeah, you're not growing anymore.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Too much of it is just same old, same old.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And that's I mean, I do think that that's you know,
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: it's interesting. Pride is one of the virtues, and it's
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: moral ambitiousness. But I actually think you need ambitiousness across
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the board. I think that, you know, continuous self improvement,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: not just that you're getting better morally, but that you're
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: you're actually developing skill and it it almost doesn't matter
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: where you're developing skill, but you need to continually be
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: doing that.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in every aspect of your life. I mean, why
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: would you want to be mediocre and anything? You know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: in a part of your life you want to keep
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: pushing yourself and being ambitious.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: You need to choose.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Because you know you can't do everything.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: You can't do everything all at once. You can do
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: you can do something in every area, but usually serially,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: not in parallel, and and you do need to keep
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's a classic thing, right, Older
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: people have trouble with technology. It's because they've automatized all
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the earlier technology and it actually gets harder. You have
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: to de automatize something and automatize something new, and it
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: is it's not a piece of cake to do that.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: I think us older people, I will put myself in
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: that category, got a little bit of a hard time
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: for this, but it is, you know, and then is
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: that your priority? Right? You know, Well, at a certain point.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: It does need to be your priority, because otherwise the
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: world just passes you by. Right.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's easier for us than previous generations because
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: we've lived through many, many to chnological changes. It's it's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: something we've had to do constantly as we grew up,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and so just a continuation. Whereas if you think about
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: people before computers and after computers, I mean, that's a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: big it's a big change.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: But I do. I mean, I see a huge gulf
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: between me and the digital natives because oh my god,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: I am a paper kind of girl, and I don't
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: function if you don't. If I don't have I don't
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: have paper and pencil, I am not. I am not functional,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: and that's becoming.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm done with paper for the most part.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I I congratulate. Yeah, no, but you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: there's no question young people can do stuff when their
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: computers can do stuff with technology that I can't and
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I don't, and I you know, the area is where
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I'm ambitious when it comes to technology and areas where
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not exactly there's only so much times you have.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you delegate the other stuff.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, But how he was telling us he's still programming.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, well he's doggedly determined in that regard.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. I haven't programmed in forty years, I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: think thirty years. It's been a long time.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: So setting ambitious goals really really important and you need
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: to keep at it, you know.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Do you see people who have kind of given up
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: on that?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And and and what happens you know when when people
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: do give up on setting ambitious goals.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean the people who were attracted to my
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: stuff are mostly not people who have given up.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Yep. And Howry says he doesn't admit it, though, I
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: guess the programming let it slip.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So the thing I would say is, so I think
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: you see this as a as a stereo type of
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: the person who you know, I mean, think of like
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the stereotype of like a pack rat. Right. This person is,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: you know, has given up on even just having a
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: house that's livable. Right. I'm thinking about the you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the crazy shows they have where the people have all
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: this stuff that digging out their houses. It's basically it's
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: a garbage dump in their house. You know, they've really
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: given up even just having a normal life, which is
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: just a tragedy. Now that's an extreme case of that, Yeah,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: but you I mean in these places. But I think
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: it's a dramatic example because if that happens, the person
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: has a smaller and smaller existence. Literally, I mean, like
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the space in their house gets filled up and there's
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: only this much room that they can even move in.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's a tragic situation, But I think
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: people do that in their lives too. I think about, like,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: for example, some people that I've actually been able to help,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: But I'm thinking of one person who was really feeling
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: locked in on his job because he wasn't getting interesting work,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: and eventually, by talking with him out and having to
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: figure out what he wanted, he actually talked to his
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: boss and they figured out something he could do where
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: he didn't have to go get a new job, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: that he was doing something he really wanted to do.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: But he had been locked in for years. I mean
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: it was something in like ten years that he'd been
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: locked in doing things that he didn't want to do.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: More and more unhappy with his job, you know, you
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: become miserable. Yeah, and you and part of the problem
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: with this kind of thing is it's totally threat oriented,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: you're only seeing what's wrong with your life. That means
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: that you keep avoiding threats. That's why it gets smaller
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: and smaller and smaller, and you start thinking that's the
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: way the world is. And this is how people develop
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: a MALEVL and universe premise is that they have some
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: bad situation that they don't know how to deal with.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: So they were French, and then some other bad things
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: come up, so they were trench from that, and before
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: you know it, they live such a small life that
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: they they don't even realize the world is open to them.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons why I think continual
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: growth is so important. It's part of what forces you.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Forces is not the right word, but it's one of
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: the ways you keep recommitting to values and recommitting to
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: finding the way forward as opposed to withdrawing.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: How do you get people to overcome the fear factor,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: because I mean that clearly is what drags people down.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: You know, they're faith to leave their job because maybe
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: they won't find an you on, or they're faie to
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: talk to their boss because maybe you'll take it the
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: wrong way. Fear seems to be a driving emotion that
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: holds people back and reduces their ambition.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Well, only if they're emotionalists. I mean, that's actually something
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: that I think people don't realize. Why what a subjectivist
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: age we're in. People do think fear is what's holding
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: them back. But fear is just an emotion. It's an
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: alert that there's something that is a threat to you,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: something that you don't want to have happen. And that
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: is just a value in disguise. It means there's something
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: you're longing for. And the solution to fear is to
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: actually face the fears. The worst thing you can do
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: is to just say, well, that's a fear and I
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: need to avoid it. That is the absolute worst thing
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: you do. You need to face it and figure out,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: first of all, is it actually true. Like in this
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: case I was telling you about, once this guy actually
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: talked to his boss. A lot of his fears were
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: not true, but it took courage to actually figure out
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: what he wanted and to start fighting for his values.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: But any fear, anything you're afraid of, the actual cause
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: of that fear is some value that is threatened, but
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: it takes extra steps to figure out what the value is.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: The fear just points you at the threat. It does
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: not point you at the value, whereas you know, love
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: points you at the value you're thinking about. You love
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: your wife, points you write at the value you think of.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Desire for something you want points you write at what
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: you want to desire. Pride, it's like you it points
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you directly to what you're proud about. But that's not
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: true of the threat oriented emotions. And so the critical
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: skill that you need to learn is first of all,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the fact that you feel this doesn't mean it's true.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: And the fact that you feel this doesn't mean that
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: this is the fundamental motivation. The fundamentalization is always a value,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: and that's what you need to go find out. And
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: you know a lot of times people talk about this.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Right when the worst happens, they suddenly stop feeling fear
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: and they start dealing with the problem. Oh no, what
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: if I have cancer? It's going to be the end
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: of the world. And you know, they don't get the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: destin and finally they find out they have cancer and
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: then it's like, Okay, what am I going to do? Yeah,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: it's like you don't feel once you the problem is
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: here if you if you look at it, you can
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: you know, some people are delusional and they pretend that
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: they don't have it. But if you say, yeah, oh
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: my god, I got to do it. Once you say
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: oh my god, yeah this is a threat, what are
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: you going to do about it? Right? This, this is
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: what propels you into action, But you need to actually
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: look at it and know. You know. The other problem
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: with a threat is it just tells you something you
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: want to avoid. There are three hundred and sixty degrees
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: away from a threat, which one of those is towards
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: something you actually want. You don't know until you figure
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: out what is the value that's threatened. And that's that's
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: the mistake people make. They just work to avoid the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: threat instead of figuring out, well, what do I really want?
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: And sometimes you need to deal with the fear. I mean,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: I think that's what I don't like the term self
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: discipline because it has the word discipline in it, which
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: basically means corporal punishment. Right, I mean, that's what discipline is,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: is it? I mean that's I mean at a logically, that's.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Where it comes That's where it comes from.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, But you do need to be able to do
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: things that are scary, unpleasant, uh, frustrating. You need to
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: be able to do things like that and and manage
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: all those emotions in order to get to the other
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: side to learn a skill sometimes. And so you can't
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: be afraid of fear and you can't be in love
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: with pleasure. Right, you need to actually be set on
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: rational goals and on achieving in the world. You need
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: to have a reality focus. There's no alternative, there's no
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: happy alternative.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: So I mean this makes you know, coverage, you're pretty
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: important virtue in this context.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, if you're if you're filled with fear,
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: courage is the courage is the too pursue. And of
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: course it's an aspect of integrity and what it's integrity,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: it's loyalty and action to your convictions and values. You've
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: got to figure out what your values are and what
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: do you what do you believe is true and then
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: start figuring out how to get those values based on
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: facts as you.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: You know, sits back to you got to you got
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to be rational.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, right, and that and that it's not so
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: much you have to be rationalist, is that the virtue
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of rationality is guidance through this very difficult what can
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: be a very difficult process. It's it's it's your it's
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: your life preserver, it's the thing to hold on to.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: When you don't know what to do, you say, well,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: this is an honest step, or well, this is my
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: value and I'm going to fight for it, or well
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: this is what I think is true even though no
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: one else does, or you know, I'm going through the virtues.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's painfully obvious or not, but yep,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: you grab onto a virtue and you say, well, I
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: can tell this seems to be an act of this virtue,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: so it must be. It must be all right, right,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: let me try that, right?
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: So is it is the is the risk that people
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: perceive for going out and getting achieving the goals? Is
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that related time ambitious the goals are? So I think
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: people afraid of ambitious goals because they think they're riskier.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: There's there's a lot more and risk here I assume,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: is you know, possibility of failure.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, And let's put it this way. Ambitious goals take
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: a lot more effort and you'll get a lot more
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: opportunities to just give up and throw up your hands.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: So there's a sense that they're riskier if you don't
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: trust yourself to see them through. And that's why I
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: think self esteem comes up in such a big issue,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: because there is an issue of trusting yourself, and that's
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: not something you don't do that by decree. That's not
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: something you say, well, I'm a worthy person, therefore I
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: should go set this big goal. I mean that actually
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: has to do with how do you feel about yourself
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: and do your trust yourself to take the actions? And
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: if you don't know, it's finding out how to trust
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: yourself is actually part of the process. I think this
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: is another reason to set goals per se. Not necessarily
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: the most ambitious goals, but something that's relatively ambitious. You know,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: an ambitious goal for you, for not you personally your own,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: but for a person is a goal that you don't
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: have the skills to achieve. So like for me, I'm
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: learning to play tennis, right, Okay, I've been learning to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: play tennis. We're getting close to ten years here, it's
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: definitely more than seven years. And I'm terrible. I mean
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I am terrible. I now have good form, and I'm terrible,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: But like I never was athletic as a kid. Yeah,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: and it turns out I don't have. Like I played
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: tennis with Peter Schwartz and I asked him what he
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: thought my problem was. He says, you don't have the
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: killer instinct. It's like, I'm totally non competitive. Turns out
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: you kind of need to be competitive if you're playing.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: A games competitive sports.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, if the other person hits involved, I think
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: as good as I stop and look at it, say wow,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: really good head like like I don't have. I'm really
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: working on that. Actually I really want that killer instinct.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: But this is you know, this is at the edge
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: of my skill level here, and it's actually part of
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: the reason it's fun. But I'm actively looking at like
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: like this is actually a real thing I'm thinking about.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Is how do you manage yourself? And I'm very interested
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: in it because you need to manage yourself in real time.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: You need to manage your emotions. There's like a mental
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: set you need. I play way better when I'm taking lessons.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: I've gotten actually pretty good at lessons. And you know
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I've I do I've I mean, I've had to learn
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: everything you own. I've had to learn everything, including how
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: to run like that. You're gonna laugh about this, but
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: at a certain point. After I've been injured several times,
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I got my my chiropractor recommend I get footwork drills.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: So I said to my tennis coach, I need footwork drills.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: So he gave me some footwork drills, including some running,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: and then after he watched me doing them one time,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: he said, Okay, you need to take bigger steps when
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: you're running. It turns out I ran like this. It
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: turns out you run much faster if you take bigger steps.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: You get faster immediately. It's amazing how much faster you
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: get if you take long steps. Like this is the
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: level of knowledge I had about athletics, right. But I'll
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: tell you it was a complete victory. And I love
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: running now. I mean I would never go on a run,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: but I love running around the tennis court and taking
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: these big steps and I'm like, wow, look at how
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: fast I am now I take these big steps. So
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: it is an ambitious goal for me. It wouldn't be
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: an ambitious goal for someone else. And yet I getting
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: tremendous pleasure as I learn each little piece of it.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And I do occasionally win games. Now. I don't win
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: sets particularly, but I do occasionally.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: You win a game once in all, that's good.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: That's good. I haven't played tennis in years and years
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and years decades.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Probably Okay, you could probably cream me, but anyway.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would swing once and hit the ball and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: my back would.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: So I would be out.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I was fairly good once a long, long
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: time ago.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: So I guess the reason I was saying that is
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: that you can set goals like at part of the
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: way that you kind of get into a virtuous cycle
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: is you set goals that are at the right level.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Now you know something that is ambitious and that you're
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: going to need to grow into it, but it has
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: some pleasure along the way. So like from the very
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: first lesson in tennis I had where I literally only
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: made contact with the ball about five percent of the time. Yea,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: that's our best guess. But when I did hit it,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: it read whack and I thought that was fun and
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I was completely solved.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: No, but it's so important that ambition doesn't mean that
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: you have to be the best tennis player in the world.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Ambition just means it's in your context.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, it's in your context because it's you who's growing,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: and it's you who's going to get the pleasure and
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: the pride and the confidence from that growth, and that's
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: what's going to set up a virtuous cycle. And it's
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: absolutely true that playing tennis has actually helped me in
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: other you know, you know, it has a bleeding out effect.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Any goal you set that you start getting this virtuous
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: cycle going, is going to bleed off into other things.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: There's a lot there are a lot more areas of
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: fitness that I'm stronger in now, of course because of tennis,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: and also mental things, you know. So I mean there
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: is a I mean that's partly because of my interest
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: in psychology, and it's a very mental game. But it's
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: not a coincidence. It all. It all feeds onto everything else.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: It sounds like though, when you talk about failing to
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: achieve a goal, it's almost it's always that you give up.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, there could be external factors that you know,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: make your goal. Businesses go under in spite of the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: best efforts of founders and people who look at them.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, So there is also a contextual element to it.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Let's see if I can, let me try to give
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: an example here, because because part of the thing is
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: how you frame the success and so for example, there's
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: sometimes when you can't you can't, like in the case
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: of tennis, unless say, suppose I got a back injury
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: so that I was like medically not able to play
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: tennis anymore. Obviously I wouldn't continue with my tennis goal
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: because it would not be in my rational self interest
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: injure myself, and just as it wouldn't be in your
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: rational self interest to play tennis right now. And but
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't call that a failure so much because I
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: had success all along the way. I mean, when I
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: look at all the things I've learned from trying to
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: learn tennis, It's true, you know, my goal is to
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: become a four point zero tennis player. It's not clear
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I'm actually even really a two point five tennis player.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: This is a very imbicious goal, right If I stay
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: healthy enough, I will probably eventually get there. I don't
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: see any obvious reason why I can't. But there could
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: be something that would make me decide that that, for example,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: that I should switch to a different sport, or that
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: I should you know, and then it would be a
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: different like say, a different fitness goal, let's say. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: so the point there is that you sometimes need to
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: go more abstract in order to course correct, but it's
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: still a course correction of some kind, and that's the
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: way I would look at it. I would look at
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: it as a course correction. So like a business that
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you know, this really happens in businesses that you you
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: need to do a lot of experiments every iteration, like
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: the minimum viable product as judgment. You know, it's an
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: experiment to try to see because you think that this
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: is going to work, and you think this is the
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: way to get to your goal, and you need the
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: real life feedback. You actually cannot predict the future. So
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: whenever you set a twenty year agal, it has to
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: be with a contextual proviso that you know, given what
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: I think is true, but bearing on new facts that
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: are going to come that they are going to come up,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: I'm going to need to adjust course based on new facts.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: And it's not a failure if you actually put out
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: a product, and or particularly one where you've made the
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: decision this is the minimum viable product. We're going to
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: try to get proof of concept here. If you don't
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: get proof of concept that is, that is not a failure.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: That is a very important data point which is very
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: good you did early so that you didn't throw a
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: whole lot of money away before you figured out that
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: this is not a viable concept.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Sure, but it might mean the end of your business.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: So in that sense, in that sense, it could be
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a failure. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure failure
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: should have that negative of a connotation in that context, right.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Right, I think that's right, And and so, and this
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: is true of all investments.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: You can put in the money because you think it's
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: going to pay off. You do not have omnissions. You
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: can't predict the future. But and so, I you know,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: it's interesting. I think I need to figure out how
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: to say this exactly because it's feeling like I'm doing
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: weasel words here to try to say it's not a failure,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: so it is a bad thing. Let's let's let's definitely
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: establish that if the business goes out of business is
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: a bad thing. If you lose your investment money, it's
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: a bad thing.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Well, investment's a little different. But if if if you know,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: if you're a founder and you start a business, hire people,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and you've you've got a great idea and for whatever reason,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: competitives you didn't see coming eyes the technology you just
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the business doesn't work. It fails, right, And
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I think, I think failure is not a bad would
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I think I think failures would if we understand it
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: within the context.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: So tell me what you're thinking, because I think this
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: is very interesting and I want to hear it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, uh, you can.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: You can fail it stuff all the time. And if
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: you learn from that failure, and if you use that
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: failure to grow in some ways, then you as a
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: person grow. Even if this particular venture, this particular goal
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: is not achieved, or this particular you know value is
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: not attained, the bigger value you you.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Can grow as a consequence of it.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: So you know, every time SpaceX sends up a rocket
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: and it blows up mid a, people are you know,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: it's a failure. It was supposed to go into a
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: oh bit. But it's a failure that allows them to grow.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: It's a failure that allows for bigger success.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: And the your context. And if the context ultimately is
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: your life, then you are growing by learning.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: From the failures you engage in.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: And almost every successful entrepreneur out there has failed.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yes right, yes, yes I could. I I agree with that.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Everything you said and listening to you also clarified what
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: I was trying to get at. So I agree with
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: you about failure and that the idea that you don't
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: fail unless you stop trying, I think you're right. I
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: think that's not a good way to put it. The
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: point is you need to make sure if you fail,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: it was totally worth it. And all of the cases
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: you are because you learn from them. Because you did
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: that what in your judgment was the best thing, because
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you gave it your all, you have no regrets about it.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: The failure is totally worth it, and it's not it
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: doesn't have the it doesn't have the pain associated with
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: it when it's just you didn't actually try. When you
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: don't try and it fails, it's like it's the guilt
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: and the shame and the and the grief are huge
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: and there's no nothing redeeming. Whereas when you gave it
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: your all and it's really you got you learn something
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: about reality as a result of it, it feels completely different.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: It's not it's still painful, let's let's let's be clear,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: but it's a clean pain and.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: You can grow out of it. You can you can.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Grow out of it, and it's part of the way
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: you figure out that this risk that it's worth taking.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: This risk is that you're it's worth it because you
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: you actually you know what you're going to get if
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: you fail in a certain way. That's actually part of
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: the calculus, as when you make a commitment and that
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: what what what gives you the certainty to be able
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: to take action and make that commitment. It has considered
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: the failure option.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that that coaches you know, that embrace that
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: embrace the idea of failure to grow. You know that
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: failures is kind of a is part of the process
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: and the cultures that reject that. So if you look
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: at the US is generally your Silicon valley is generally
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: a culture where if somebody has failed, okay, well what
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: what what are you going to do now? Is kind
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of the attitude, whereas in Europe, you fail, okay, well,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: obviously you're not meant to be an entrepreneur. You know,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: you better get an eight to five job. And that's
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: why it's a big part of why entrepreneur entrepreneurship in
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Europe is much much much smaller, much much less impactful
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: than it is in the US, because there you get
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: one failure and if you get one shot, and if
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: you fail at that one shot, you're out. You know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: nobody will give you money, your family will walk, you know.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: It's just it's you're label the failure, whereas in the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: US it's never been the case. It's it's always been Okay,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: what next, next?
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, right? Learning, go on, tie on and go on.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's interesting how this gets inculcated into cultures
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: kind of the different attitudes.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, huh, I didn't know that, but that makes a
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: lot of sense.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And the and the and what next doesn't have to
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: be the same pursuing exactly the same goal, you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: so it's not like you're you're you're trying to do
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the same thing. You might be trying to do something different,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: but you've learned from the experience and you're building on it.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: And these things shape you, right, I mean success shapes you,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Failure shapes you.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: My favorite story is built is Steve Jobs, Who's my hero.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Who's my hero generally?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Right? But but fire from Apple, you know, starts a
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: computer company called Next doesn't go anywhere, but in the meantime, starts,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: you know, buyas this company called Pixar that happens to
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: change movies in a big way and then returns to
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Apple and makes it the most successful company in history.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: And you know, so that Awk is just to Me
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: is a great example of that and how he goes
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: and he talks about how he grew through the process.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure you've read Becoming Steve Jobs.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: No, oh god.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: It's a biography by someone who loved him, unlike the
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: authorized biography, and it specifically talks about the metamorphosis he
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: went through during the years at Next where he went
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: from being not a good CEO to being what he
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: was at Apple when he returned, and the things he learned.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: And it's a really interesting book. It's totally worth reading.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Becoming Steve Jobs.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Good, I'll definitely get it. Yeah, yeah, So, you know,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: some people feel like I feel like I think it's
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the right thing. They can't achieve the goals, or they
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: can't achieve certain goals, or they they set themselves up
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: with very limited possibilities right in advance, even young people,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: which is tragic, you know, And and so they're very
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you know, very narrow. How do you how do you
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: get how do you get out of that.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Well, Uh, I think it's important to realize you can't
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: get somebody else out of that. But if they come
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: to you for help, the place to look is something
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: that they already want. Right. The way that you build
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: stronger values is by starting with whatever values you have now.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: And that is not always obvious, right, But as I said,
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: any fear you have is a value in disguise, and
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: so the first way you can help someone like that
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: is help them figure out what it is they actually like,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: you know. So the practice I learned, well, I've kind
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: of turned it into a tactic, but celebration in mourning.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: There are tactics out there. I learned this from Martin Seligman.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: He called it a gratitude process, but I call it.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: I just call it three good things because it's three
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: good things that happened yesterday. It's basically a celebration process,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: is what I would say. It's actually even better. Lindzenzer, who's,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: you know, the head coach for my thinking Lab, she
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: does three good things that I did yesterday. So there's
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: a really selfish it's got pride in there. And one
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: thing if you do this every day. What Seligman said
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: is that this is one of the he's kind of
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: leading the positive psychology movement, and this is one of
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the things that they did with undergraduates and experiments that
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: actually had an impact on their happiness. And the reason
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: it had an impact is because they liked it so
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: much they kept doing it after the experiment is over.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: So six months later they were happier because they've been
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: doing this every day for six months. And I think
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: that that's you know that that is part of what
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: you need to do. You need to actually start celebrating.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: And actually they can be as small as you want. That.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: That's part of the rule of the three good things
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: is find three good things from yesterday, and it doesn't
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: matter how small they were. You know, I didn't break
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: any glasses, you know, yay, you know, I'm just making
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: something up now. I should actually break something yesterday, something
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: that's not one of my three good things from yesterday.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: But I have other good things from yesterday. But it
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: gets you in the habit of actually seen what you
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: did that you think is good, or what happened that
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: you think is good, because it really is. You know,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: they you know, they are all kinds of trite things
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: about well, you can look at the glasses half full
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: or half empty. But there is an issue of what
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: are you looking for? There is an issue of what
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: is your mental set. Are you looking for values or
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: are you focused just on threats? And the emotions you
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: have when you focus on values are love, desire, joy, pride, gratitude.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Let's see, there's some others that I'm just going out
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: of my mind. There's also grief, right, Grief is actually
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: a value oriented emotion. So the flip side of celebration
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: is morning. And I think the other thing that you
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: need to do to try to get out of this
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: really narrow thing is if there is something you've lost,
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: so an opportunity that you really you didn't take or
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: that you screwed up or whatever, it is actually really
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: looking at that and seeing why you care that you
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: lost that and understanding what are the values you lost.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: This is another way of honoring your values and of
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: getting clear on your values. Both celebration and mourning are
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: values clarification exercises, and it's one of the things you do,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: you know, when you lose a family member. I mean,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: I've lost both my parents now, and the process of
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: mourning is you actually get clearer on they why they
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: were such an important part of your life. I love
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: both my parents. I'm very fortunate, and I learned things
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: about them, and I learned things about what was wonderful
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: about them that I literally was not aware of when
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: they were alive. And it took that contrast of losing
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: them and being sad and actually looking at what is
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: it I'm missing and realizing, wow, you know mom always
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: did that or Dad always did that, and I didn't
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: even know how much I appreciated that at the time,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: and get you actually understand these things, and then once
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: you understand the things you care about, you can then
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: fight for them in the present. And that's what awareness
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: is the first step, and it's a general process. If
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: you really, if you're closed in, you need to be
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: general with yourself and just open up and start actually
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: understanding your values. And once you start paying attention to
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: your values, you'll also start wanting to act to gain
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: and keep them, and then you can start setting a
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: little bit bigger goal and a little bigger goal.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: So what would make a goal an irrational goal as
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: compared to irrational one.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean there're the easy cases where the justification
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: for it is something completely irrational. So there are all
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: kinds of secondhanded goals. Like some people want money because
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: as a social comparison thing, Right, I want to have
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: more money than those other people, because I want to
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: be a big shot or whatever it is. Right, that's
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: a terrible reason for wanting money. And so any anything,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: anything that involves secondhandedness, if the goal is set for
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: a secondhanded reason, it is an interrational goal and it
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: is going to bite you in the butt if you
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: go after it. Now, the thing that's confusing about that
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: is that you can have a goal that has part
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: In fact, any goal that you can achieve, it has
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: got to have some rational element. So like take making
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: a really big business, making a business really succeed. No
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: one can actually make a business succeed without being somewhat
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: focused on reality. You need to actually produce things on
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: a schedule for an amount that people will pay, right,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are a lot of facts there that
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and values involved that have to be addressed or else
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: you will not make money. But you could have a
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: really wrong reason for doing that. And if if that's
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: the case, you won't get the pleasure out of it.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: And if that's the case, one of the things that
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: you need to do is you need to untangle the
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: rational part of the goal, which is usually a creation goal,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: from the irrational part, which is like to impress people,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: or or maybe it's something like so because I never
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: want to feel unsafe again, which is not possible. That's
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: like impossible. Right, life is risky, I mean where life
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: is a process of continuous action because if you stop
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: the action, you die, You literally die, right, So there
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: is no such thing as safety. And so if that's which,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: if you've built in something that's impossible into the goal,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: even if it seems like the concrete that you're trying
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: to get is possible, if you've loaded it with a
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: reason that's impossible, or a payoff that you're expecting that
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: it's impossible, or in irrational justification, that would make it
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: an irrational goal. And there's you can't necessarily tell that
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: from the outside. That's something that you have to figure
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: out from the inside. And the way you figure it
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: out is you wint it having ambivalence about your goal,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: because if you have any if you have any irrational
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: motivation built into it, you will be pulled in a
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: couple of different directions. It won't be all aligned around
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: one thing.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: How do you know if you've set a goal that's
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: really impossible. Well, like, if you set a goal in
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: tennis to be I don't know how the eating system goes.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: But yeah, well let's be to be world champion.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: That would be ridiculous, but you know, to be much
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: better than you can be.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, let's say professional level. Right, for me to
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: be professional level at you know, sixty two? Right, Okay,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is not going to happen. So the
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: person you have to convince that it is logically possible
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: is yourself, right, I do not think I could convince
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: myself that's logically possible just from what I know about
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: anatomy and and things like that. Right, it might have
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: been potentially possible if I'd set that goal when I
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: was fourteen. I really don't know. I really don't know.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Maybe it would have needed to have been eight, you know.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: I mean it's not clear to me how early you
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: need to start developing some of these skills before you
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: know that, I'll never have the kind of coordination that
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I would have if I had been sports oriented at
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: a younger age. I really don't know. But like, but
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: let's take something like I have a goal which I
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: think probably a lot of people think is totally impossible,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: which is to have a ten million dollar business, meaning
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: ten million dollar revenue a year. And now that is
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: a very long range goal your own. I am.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: This is that's a lot of money.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of money. And to say that I'm
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: nowhere close there is such an understatement. I mean, it's
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: it is. It is a little bit ridiculous to even
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: say it out loud. But the reason that I actually
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: have that, and I have it, and it's I don't
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: have it as like a committed thing where I have
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: a plan to get to it, but I have a
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: commitment to figure out how to really make money and
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: build a scalable business. I really do have that commitment
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: and I am actively working on that. And the reason
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's crazy is because of this coach
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: that I mentioned, Brookes Deal. She has a business that's
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: made fifty million dollars a year. Well, and so there's
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: it's a life coach business, and and she talks about
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: how she set this goal. She's actually made one hundred
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: million dollars actually, and she's made enough money at this
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: point she said, what would she set next a billion dollars.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: That was ridiculous. She wasn't interested in a billion dollars.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: So she says she isn't setting a billion dollar goals.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: She's moving on to other goals. But I mean, that's
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: wildly exciting and that would have, you know, tremendous impact.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: It's like that's it's like really opened up my horizons
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: to think, Wow, that might be possible. Now I have
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: a ton of things I need to work on to
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: be able to do that. Like my attitude toward money
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: isn't good, you know, in the same way I don't
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: have the killer instinct in tennis, I don't have the
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: competitive instinct in business, and I need that in order
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: to make some money. And so I'm literally working on
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: some of these values and I may never get there,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: And it might be that it is in fact, maybe
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: i'll it, maybe that I'll die trying, or it may
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: be that in ten years, when I have solved a
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: lot of business problem, I also decide that I'm not
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: actually that interested in business, and so I don't want
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: to learn the additional business skills to do that. But
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I don't see any reason in principle that I couldn't
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: do that, and you know, assuming that I live long enough,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: and assuming that I live, assuming that I live for
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: at least twenty or thirty years or something like that.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: So I don't think that's an impossible goal. But you see,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: I have some basis. It is not an arbitrary goal.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: I have some basis for believing it's positive possible. It's
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: so it's exactly the possible probable issue that there needs
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: to be some evidence that this could be done, and
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: there can't be any evidence that it's impossible. And so
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: let's let's get another example of something that might be impossible,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: or can we or does this answer the question?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Or am I I think so? No? I think that's good.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: This is why you can't do any How does anyone
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: survive with the objectivist ethics and epistemology? I don't know
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: how they serve five your own without it?
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, without it.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to say.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: One hundred thousand years without it.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: I know those poor people.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: You must have. That's some of it implicit in some ways.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is it?
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, okay, so we've got a bunch of questions.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe we should shift to questions just to make sure
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: you don't let's see you did want to, we want to?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: You want to say something about your website, Phoebe January one,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: anything like that. You want to, you want to, you
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: want to pitch.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: So this if you're if you if you have goals
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: and you want to get some help actually working on
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: them and getting them achieved in twenty twenty six, I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: have coaching programs for that. So I have a coaching
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: program called Launch that's actually going to start January tenth.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: It runs for eight weeks and it's a group coaching program,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: and I coach people to set the goals so they
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: can actually get it. Could be a ten year goal,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: but you want to achieve something major within that eight weeks,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: and we will. I will coach you till you figure
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: out something that will move objectively, move you toward your
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: long term goal and get you some momentum. And if
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you're curious about this, I have a freebie. I'm running
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: a freebee on January first. It's called motivating steady work
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: on a major goal. And that's part of what you need.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: If you've got a long range goal, you've got to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: be able to work on it consistently, even when you
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: don't feel like it, and that's what I'm going to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: be talking about on January first. So if you go
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: to my website, thinkingdirections dot com, so that's thinking, like
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: using your brain directions like north, south, east and east
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: and west, and there's more than one of them. So
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: thinkingdirections dot Com. There's a sign up for the freebie
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: and you know, lots of other stuff.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: And assume that's all virtue. That's all over all.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Zoom over zoom okay, all zoom yep excellent. And then
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: we should also mentioned that we are going to be
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: at Rand's Day weekend Objective's confidence.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, and what are you going to be talking about?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be talking on self esteem, reliance on
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: the power to think. It's going to be really interesting.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: It's a I've been thinking a lot about that topic
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: and thinking about ein RAN's line that self esteem is
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: reliance on the power to your power to think is
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: so exactly true. It's it's such an important idea. Nobody
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: else has that idea. Nobody else has that idea. That's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: what I'm going to be talking about. What about you?
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about your own.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about you know, trade.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: It sounds so much more boring than your topic, the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: history of free trade and tariffs and all that fun stuff.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: So a little bit of economics and history. There's some
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: really interesting American history there.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, it will be fascinating.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: The one you gave last year was absolutely fascinating. It
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: was great. I mean, I thought it was a really
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: fun conference.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: It's you.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: It's a little smaller conference.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it's a lot of fun.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: It's in Florida.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: It's in February, in late January, early February, so you
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: don't want to be anywhere else in the world in
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: late January early February, Floid is the place to be
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: because the weather's perfect, the sunshines. And yeah, so if
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: you guys still want to if you guys want to
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: sign up, and you should, and you should come. And
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: again it's small, so it's intimate, so you get more
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: time to talk to one another and to the speakers,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: all hanging out and we're gonna have Don and Peter
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: Schwartz and Shoshana Milgrim and Ellen Canna and of course
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Harry Bence Warner will be there. Go to RAN's Day
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Con so RMS Day Con Dot THEBVH dot com. Now
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: that is a terrible U r L. Whoever does the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: marketing for this, they need a better, like something short
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and simple, right ranscon dot com, you know that would
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: be good.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, I can give you an easy thing for people
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: who want Yeah. Uh, we own Harry and I own
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: TF publication zones ransday dot com. If you go to
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: rans day dot com, it tells what ramsay is and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: at the bottom is a link to the rams day.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Dot com. Because then the bottom of the page, because
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: the BVH is like it blows the crow and everything
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: else out of the water. So it's impossible. Uh, Toby
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: says he's in the UK. I mean nobody wants to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: be in the UK in late January. Get on a
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: plane the cheap flights to Florida and come on over.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be streamed.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: No, it's not going to be streamed. We had someone
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: come from the Canary Islands last year. You got no
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: excuse ex.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: And the Canary Island the weather is good in late January.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: So but the UK, I know what the weather's like
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: in the UK in late January, right, not good? All right?
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: So we have questions you can still ask questions, so
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: feel free to ask questions and jump in. And if
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: you want to just support the show, you can use
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the sticker feature.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: But questions are good because that way we get content.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: This is good, yes, all right, So this is fifty
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: dollars molten Splendor. I love his handle, molten Splendor. That's great.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: So here's his question. He says, I had a great
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: career for forty five years.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: I'm now tired.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I'm passionately engaged in collecting and researching a specific genre
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: of hot glass. I'm a terrible read of nonfiction. My
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: mind wanders. Any tips on how to become a better
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: reader of nonfiction, Well.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: I would suggest you get some nonfiction on this genre
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: of art glass that you're interested in. So the way
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: to develop any skill is to have a selfish value
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: for developing it. So that's the first thing. Probably it's
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: this stuff that you're reading about. So here's the second thing.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: This is something I actually just learned from a book
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: called The Practicing Mind, which I just recommended on my
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: website yesterday. If you're trying to develop a new skill,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: you need a practice that you can do that is easy,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: and the four key words are simple, short, small, and slow.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: So keep it simple, short, small, and slow. I got
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: this from the practicing mind. I knew about keep it simple, sweetie,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: but I didn't know about keep it simple, short, small,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: and slow. So let's explain what that might be for
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: reading nonfiction. So the whole issue is you need retention, right.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: Retention is the key thing you're going for. So a
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: simple way to improve your retention might be to read
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: a page and write one sentence of something you learned.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: And that might be also. And if that's too much,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: then well let's stipulate. If that's not too much, that's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: small enough. Right. It has to be small enough that
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: you could say, read that page and then set back
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: and say what did I get from that page? And
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: if that's not tall enough, if you can't do that,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: then make it smaller. Take a paragraph and say what
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: did I get from that? And it's okay to say
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't get anything from that that was boring. So
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: this is very important. I'm just gonna this is people
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: think that they should have to read every paragraph of
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: a book because someone said it was on a topic
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: that they should read. Books have to be interesting. If
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: the book is not interesting, you don't have to read it.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: So this is a So here's a short test for
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: whether I'm trying to come up with something that's simple, small, short,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: and slow. Here's a short test. Is this interesting or not?
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: And if it's not interesting, you don't have to read it.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: If it's mildly interesting or you think it should be interesting,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: name why it's interesting. Now that will slow you down.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: But if you can name why this is interesting, why
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: you care, that will make you more curious about the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: next paragraph. Now you might not need to do this
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: on every paragraph. You may need to once a page
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: say what did I learn? Was it interesting? Or what
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: would make it interesting? And answer those questions for yourself.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: And that will help you figure out if you should
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: even be reading this book. And if you are reading
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: this book, it should help you retain it. So I
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: just made that up as a process. The point is
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: you need something something like that where you're going to
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: actually practice and have that be your test of success.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: Your test of success is not what you got out
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: of the whole book. Your test is did you do
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: that three times while you were reading today or something
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: like that. I did this actually with tennis. I was
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: this is the example that's in the article that I
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: wrote yesterday. You know, terrible, Like I'm playing a game
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: with Harry and I'm terrible. I'm just terrible, And I'm like,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: why can't I do what I do in my coaching session,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: And I said, I need something simple, short, small and slow,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: and so I said, okay, I'm just going to try
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: to do a split step whenever he hits the ball.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: This is a particular thing you do in tennis. I
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: can try to demonstrate it, but you basically you jump
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: up and with your feet apart, and this puts you
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: in a position so that you can then move in
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: the direction of where the ball goes. And you do
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: it when the other person hits the ball, which is
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: just before you're going to find out is it going
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: to your left or your right? And so it gets
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: you ready. And it turns out it's quite hard for
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: me to actually do that, to actually like, stop whatever
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: I'm doing, pay enough attention so I can see that
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: he's about to hit the ball, get in position so
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I can do a split step when he hits the ball.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: My game got much better immediately when I did that.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: But I tested my success not on whether I hit
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: the ball or whether I got the point, but whether
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: I did the split step, and I focused on and
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: this is the other thing from that book, I do
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: observe correct, So I just focused on did I do
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: the split step? And if I did, yay? And if
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't, why not? Oh I need to look a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: little earlier, and I got better at it. So that's
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: what That's the kind of thing you need to be
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: more specific, I need to actually talk to you about
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: why it's hard to read the nonfiction.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Great, thanks Moulton. Harry has a comment. Please repeat the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: idea of finding the value behind the fear based emotion.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: I find it so powerful.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, hey, you should find the fear behind the fear
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: based emotion. I guess he wants maybe we could give
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: an example. What's something someone might be afraid of.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: Well, they're failing, yeah, but we.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: Need an actual goal that they would be, that they
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: would be that they would have a concrete fear about. Well,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: so let's take Moulton. Let's take Moulton's example. Suppause he's
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: afraid he's going to spend all this time reading this
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: book and he's not going to get anything out of it.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: He's not going to have learned anything. It's going to
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: be a total waste of time. He's going to be
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: bored out of his mind. It's like, I don't want
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: to read this book. It's going to be terrible. Right,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: He's all kinds of thread oriented emotions about it. So
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: just so, one of the things you can do to
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: turn around a thread or ated emotion is you can
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: just ineffect rant about it, like I just did. I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: just made up a rant for our friend. Right, But
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: the rant has in it the seeds of the value,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: so like it's going to be boring. Okay, so you
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: really want to be intellectually stimulated. That gives you. Intellectual
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: stimulation is a deep rational value. So that actually gives
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: you a way to say, well, what is that. That's
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: actually one of the reasons I suggested Milton, ask was
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: it interesting? Or how could it be interesting? You can
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: figure out why it might be interesting to you. That
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: will make a big differen and you're being able to
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: take in information and you can find out that that's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: what you care about. Because when you rant about the problem,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: you're worried about being bored or I'm going to waste
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: all this time. Well, okay, so the thing you want
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: is you want to get banged for your buck, right,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: you want to actually get a payoff. Well so, and
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: the payoff is in some kind of understanding. Well, that's
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: also the thing that I had just suggested is also
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: related to that, because I put in the question do
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: you know what did I take from this? This is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: a known thing. The tactic that I've taught, actually the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: first tactic that I ever taught something called condensation where
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: you I learned it from Peter Schwartz at the Objective's
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: Graduate Center. And it's you extract the main points and
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: theme from a piece of writing. And this is an
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: incredible study technique. If you to write, you read a
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: paragraph or you read a section and you try to
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: name in one sentence what the point of that is.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: It's incredible study technique. It absolutely I mean I have
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: done this for all of OPAR and I know o
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: PAR very well. As a result, it's an incredibly helpful tactic.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: It really helps with understanding. Now you might not know
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: that offhand, but if you know that what you want
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: is something that helps you retain material, you can then
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: go look on the internet for strategies. You know, at
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: Locke has a book how to study, and it has
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: this kind of thing in it too. I mean, this
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: is not a completely alien strategy that you're getting from me,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: and it's not the only strategy. So the first step
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: in turning the threat oriented the fear or the fear
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: based emotion is putting into words what are you afraid of?
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Explain what you're afraid of, and then look at what
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: exactly you're afraid of and see if you can name, Well,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: what does that mean? I want? You usually want the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: opposite of it, but it's something concrete. It's more concrete
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: than just the emotion tends to be a little bit
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: vague and abstract.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: How you suggest public with the fear of public speaking?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, people are afraid of public speaking for different reasons.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Some people are afraid that they're going to be They're
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: going to look stupid. Some people are afraid that they're
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: going to be they're not going to have anything to say.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: So you in order to solve the fear of public speaking,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: you need to actually name what are you afraid of?
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: And some of them turn out to be cameras. Right,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: I'm afraid that I won't get my point across. Well,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: you definitely won't get your point across if you don't
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: do the public speaking for sure, right you have zero
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: chance of getting your point across if you don't try.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: And it's very helpful to put that into perspective because it,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes you've got kind of a false contrast
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: in the back your mind, and making it explicit makes
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: you see what your actual choices are.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: I thank you, Harry. Let's see Andrew rand wrote a
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: letter that she did wrote in a letter that she
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: did love herself, albeit it is a different feeling than
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: love she had for others. What's gene view on the
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: nature of self love? Is it synonymous with self esteem?
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: I haven't thought about that. I don't think it's synonymous
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: with self esteem because I think self esteem has a
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: lot to do with your capacity to act in the world,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: and self love is about you being a good person,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: which is you know, related to self esteem. But when
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: I think self love, I think taking delight in myself,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: and it's a lot more like romance in the sense
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: of I'm really glad I exist, and I look, I've
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: done this, and I've done this, and yay me, And
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: there's there's a kind of celebration involved in self love.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: Whereas self esteem is a little bit more solid and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: forward looking and feed on the ground. How's that for
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: an answer?
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think they're right. I think I think
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: that's basically right. I mean, we can probably if you
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: think about it more, I think you'll probably find the answer. Sure,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Andrew though a scoundrel, Brandon's essay on Pleasure and Pain
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: in Virtue of Selfishness is critical for former religionists or
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: to integrate objectivism. How does one convert from negative emotional
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: purposes sadness and guilt to positive joy?
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to take I'm going to take the question.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure how it relates to the art Menia,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: but you know, I mean, I'm rand I've ran edit
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: of the publication that that came in. I'm not surprised
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: you've got some value from it. There. So the first
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: thing with any emotion, so there's you don't change. Your
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: goal should not be to change your emotions. Right, If
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: your focus is on I want to feel a certain way,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: that is an emotionalist goal. And I don't mean that
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: to give you like to make you feel bad. I'm
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: giving that to you because you're interested in objectivism and
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: you recognize that emotionalism is self destructive. Part of the
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: problem you can get into when it's our confusion and
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: that people have about setting happiness as the purpose of
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: life is that they then set emotions as goals, positive
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: emotions as goals, And that does not follow if happiness
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: is your purpose, your goals need to be rational. They
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: need to be objective things that you can achieve in reality,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: and emotions are not objective. They are transient experiences that
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: you have. What they are, and the way to think
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: about them, which is very important, is that they are alerts.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: You think of them as alerts. You do not have
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: an emotion unless some value, some value of yours, something
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: that you care about deeply. And I mean here when
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: I use the word value, I mean in the philosophical sense,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: something rational, something is in fact good for human life.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: When you have an emotion, there is some value of
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: yours that is at stake, meaning your action right now
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: is going to determine whether you gain or keep that
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: or lose it or harm it. And the reason that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: it's so important to introspect emotions is that the emotion
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: won't necessarily tell you what that value is. You need
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: to introspect the emotion to figure out what is the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: value at stake right now. And that is very very
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: situational specific. And you know your emotions change really quickly.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, what's its stake changes as things unfold. So
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: so each of the emotions. The way I teach this
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: I a I have classes on this too one and
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: I have a tactic I call introspection one oh one.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: The way I teach it is you need to well, okay,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: I teach it several ways. Let me just say what
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: it is. You need to figure out which basic family
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: of emotion it is. The ones you mentioned, the ones
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: that were mentioned the question were basic families. Each basic family,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: like anger or anger and gratitude is a family, or
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: joy and grief are a family. Or desire and aversion
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: or a family. Each basic family has a signature evaluation
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: associated with it. So anger and gratitude are about other people.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: Anger is the other person did something that was bad.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: Gratitude is they did something was good for me, bad
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: bad for me, or good for me. That's what anger
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: and gratitude are, whereas joy and grief are I gained
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: a value or I lost a value. Desire and aversion
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: is I mean they're in a certain sense that the
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: most big desire is something this is if I acted
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: to get this, it would be good. And aversion is
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: if I acted to get this, it would be bad.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: So don't do that.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: So you need to figure out what you do is
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: you take the emotion, you know what the generalized evaluation is,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: and then you figure out concretely in this situation, what
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: are the pieces like who's if you're angry, who's the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: person and what do they didn't do that was bad?
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: Or if you're feeling grief, what is the thing you lost?
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: And you need to go Sometimes you need to go
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: one level deeper. You get to the value and then
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: say why is that important to me? Why is that
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: important to me? You need to go more abstract because,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: for example, if you lost something like I did something
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: the other day that I really wish I hadn't done,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: and when I introspected it because I really felt guilty
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: about it, it was professionalism. You know, I really wanted professionalism,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: and so you can't get back what happened last week
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: where you acted unprofessionally. But if you sit there and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: you say, gee, professionalism really matters to me. What can
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: I do to become more professional? Now? How can I
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: act now to be more professional? What that does is
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: that shifts things, that makes professionalism a higher value to you.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: You take an action now, Like you know, I sent
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: an apology, I actually took some steps to learn from it.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: I actually put some things in place so that I
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: wouldn't do that again. And this was for me, right,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: This is to develop my value of professionalism. This is
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: not because I owe other people in apology. This is
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: part of my pursuing my values, and that's what heals
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: all wounds. It's the identifying the value that is in
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: fact underlying that emotion and then pursuing that value that
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: shifts everything. As soon as you start pursuing the value.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: As soon as you put yourself in that mindset, you
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: start feeling desire and confidence. As soon as you start
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: getting it, you start feeling pride, and that's what shifts
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: the emotions. But that is a byproduct of your acting
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: to gain and keep values. So whatever emotion you have,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: it's an alert to some value at stake, and the
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: important the rational responsibility there is to figure out what
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: is the value, and how do I act to gain
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: and keep it now and sometimes you have to go
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: more abstract. Sometimes you have to go more abstract to
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: be able to do that.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: Good Richard, it just says you mentioned the issue of
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: putting morality above happiness. Would you elaborate on that.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I just got this from Tara's book, but I
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: think the way she put it and which really resonated
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: for me, is, you know, one of the things that
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: brought me to objectivism was I had a strong sense
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: of morality of good and bad. I really believed in
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: right and wrong and good and bad, and I was
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: going to be good and right, and so I RAN's
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: moral confidence was one of her big attractions to me,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: and the moral confidence of the characters, and at the
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: Shrug that was, you know, one of the big things
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: that I resonated with, the moral certainty, and so that
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: came first for me, and I had a whole lot
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: of altruism baked in. I mean, that's why. I mean
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: I've told this story. But you know, unlike the vast
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: majority of hardcore objectivists, it took seven years between the
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: time I read out the Shrug at the time I
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: decided she was right, I mean really right, yes, and
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: that's that's not a typical that's not a typical case.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: And I the thing that I had to be convinced
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: on is that altruism is wrong in principle, and that's
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: what I figured out seven years later. But the part
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: of I need to do what's right was stronger, and
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: uh a lot of the things that I figured out
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: over time. I was very focused on doing what was right,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: and I saw then when I wasn't happy, so like
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: I had a big problem with a duty premise. And
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: when I started my business, I you know, I actually
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: really got myself sick by working too hard because I
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: thought that was the right thing to do. And I
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: just made myself work and it didn't matter how I felt.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: This was before I started, before I started talking about
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: emotional overload, and I really I had to learn this
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: stuff the hard way. This is one of the reasons
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: I know so much. If you want to find someone
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: who is a good teacher, find someone who really had
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: lived its Yeah, I mean, it's really it's ridiculous anyway.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: And not only did I do it the hard way,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: but I liked that I was doing hard stuff that
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: actually turns out to be also slightly a misconception if
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: you pick a goal because it's hard, I mean, don't
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: rule out the goal because it's hard, but don't pick
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: it because it's hard. That's you know, pick it because
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: you're interested in it. It's not a feature that it's
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: hard anyway, that's an aside. So the thing is that
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I would then say, oh, I'm not happy, so I
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: must be doing something wrong. What am I doing wrong?
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: And I would analyze it that way, and then I'd
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: figure out what the right thing to do was, and
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: then I'd find out that I wasn't happy again, and
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: in effect, happiness didn't have a high enough a standing
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: in my psychology. I mean, I was pro happiness. I
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: definitely was on board that happiness was, you know, the
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: purpose of life and that I should be happy and
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: all this stuff, but it wasn't an operation and factor
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: in my deciding what was the right thing to do.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: The right thing to do is what I saw, it
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: was the right thing to do, and to hell with
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: how I feel. That was basically I mean, this was
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: this was now a long time ago. That was basically
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: what my attitude was. And to completely get that out
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: of my psychology has you know, I figured out it
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: was wrong and then I but then to get it
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: out of your psychology is not the easiest thing in
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: the world. So what this line of Tara's did for
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: me was, well, it tied in with the article that
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: ein Ran wrote who was the final authority in ethics?
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: Which is, you know, Q and A from one of
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: the old back issues. I think it's probably in the
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: virtue of selfishness too, uh, where she she says that
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: question is mistaken because there's there is no who, there
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: is no God, there is no authority in ethics. And
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: so you know, Tara's line is a little twist on
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: that that it's your commitment to happiness which gives ethics
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: its authority. I mean that just completely makes it be
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: about you and your life, and it sets the hierarchy
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: right right that you do need to So this is
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: something that again I've learned the hard way, that you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: need to set goals and pursue them in a way
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: so that there's pleasure as you go, there's payoffs so
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: along the way. I mean I've known that for years,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: I've coached people on that, and yet I saw that
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: as a practical issue, and I think Tara turned it
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: into a moral issue. The pleasure along the way has
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: got to be a given that's got to be factored
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: into your plans, because happiness is the purpose of your life.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: And it's not good if you aren't seeing the connection
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: to your happiness. And that's not happiness. It's sometime twenty
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: years in the future happiness. I mean, I guess I
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: give two talks onhappiness, but I really you know, happiness
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: is an ongoing state where, in effect, you are achieving
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: your values values plural, meaning that your values are consistent
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: and you can kind of achieve them all at once.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: That's so that's the kind of switch through that I
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: got from Terra's uh introduction to her.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: Book Good Let's see Fendhoppas says, if annoyed is an emotion,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: what is a psychopistemological response to it? I see it
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: as I had an expectation and it's being ignored the disrespected.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: Also as an on a meeting you at okon twenty five.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: Likewise, so annoyed is in the anger family. So this
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: is the way I would analyze it. So it's a
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: mild form of anger. Somebody done you wrong. It was
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: a small wrong, but some he done you wrong? Okay,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: So one of the things, can you repeat what he said?
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: I had an expectation and it's being ignored or disrespected.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, Right, So the concrete expectation you had is the
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: critical thing. What were you expecting that was the value
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: that was ignored or disrespect That's what you need to identify.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: Like so for example, just just a little example, you're
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: going out of an old fashioned store that does not
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: have electric doors, and the person in front of you
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: lets the door fall so that it kind of, you know,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: instead of just holding it for two seconds so that
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: you can get your hand on it, so that it's
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: a little easier to go out the door. Now, that
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: would be a small enough item to feel annoyed, and
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: there is an expectation there. There's an expectation of, you know,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: just a little bit of support, a little bit of goodwill,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: a little bit of situational awareness that there's someone right
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: behind them, and benevolence, right, and so naming that this
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: is you know, I just named four things that I
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: would be wishing for and would feel annoyed that I
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: hadn't gotten if that happened. So then the question is
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: what can I do so I'm feeling a lack right,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: I'm actually there's a little grief in there that I
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: didn't get. Benevolence, support, situational awareness. Okay, we'll just use
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: those three. Those are values of mine which have like
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: they feel like I'm not getting these values. So what
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: do you do? Increase your situational awareness? Make sure you
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: hold the door for the next person. Pause and pause,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: and tell yourself that it doesn't matter they don't support you,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: because you've got your back. I mean, there are little
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: things you can do in that moment which will in
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: effect completely change your mood. And I mean it seems
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: a little over the top for just being annoyed because
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: a person didn't hold the door, but I needed an example.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: But the point is that you can do that, and
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: that's what you do. You know, the fact that another
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: person misbehaved doesn't when you process that emotion. First of all,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: in some cases you may conclude that they didn't misbehave,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: But assuming they did misbehave, that doesn't mean that they're
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: then going to apologize or make resptitution. That's not what
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: it's about. It's about you understanding your values and understanding
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: that you can get your values no matter what other
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: people do and like for example, I mean this happens
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: like with businesses, which we've been talking about. Businesses, you
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: try to try to sell your product to someone and
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: they don't buy it. Well, it doesn't you know, that's
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: not the end of the world. As long as you
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: have a product that some people want, you can sell
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: it to other people. You need some but any customers.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: You don't have to have this particular customer. You don't
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: have to have this particular person giving you support. You
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: don't have to have this particular person be someone with
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: situational awareness. But it does mean you now know that,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: like if you're trying to figure out who you're going
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: to date, you like someone who is generous, benevolent, and
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: has situational awareness. I'm just making this up. You understand
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: your values a little bit more. I think I've really
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: beat that example as far as it can be done.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's dead. I think it's good. I think
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: it's good. Piegupta says would love to hear Gene's thoughts
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: on tips for the crisis of meaning.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: I don't don't exactly know what he means by that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: the crisis of meaning.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: So this is the idea that you that you know
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: with the death of religion, if you will, people don't
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: know what the meaning of life is, the purpose of
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: life is, and young people today all twining to nihilism
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: because they don't see meaning in life. It's it's yeah.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, then I do understand that I didn't
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: recognize it. Under that I don't. So the first thing
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: is what gives meaning to life? Your central purpose is
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: what is the fundamental thing that gives meaning to your life?
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: Is your central purpose. That's the thing that's directly under control,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: under your control. Now, I do think important relationships give
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: meaning to life too. You know, there's a Victor Frankel's book,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: man Search for Meaning, which if you haven't read, everyone
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: should read this book. He's a concentration camp survivor and
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: he writes about his experience in the concentration camp. He's
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: a psychologist, and what he observed is that the people
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: who survived were the people who found meaning. And there
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: were three things that there were three kinds. There were
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: people like him. He was trying to reproduce a book
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: manuscript that he had just finished before he was captured,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: and he didn't want to lose his book, so he
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: was like getting a little pieces of paper and writing
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: on it. So he had a career purpose. He saw
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: people who made their whole purpose keeping a loved one alive,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: and then when that loved person one died, they died
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: like the next day. They'd been strong and then they.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: Just lost it.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: And then he saw people who used religion. They would
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: meet and have I don't I'm sorry, I don't know
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: the Jewish ceremony, but where there are various Jewish ceremonies
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: that they would do daily, where they would meet and
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: they would do them, and that was how they kept
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: their meaning alive. And I think this is exactly like
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: self esteem and pseudo self esteem. I think religion is
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: a source of pseudo meaning, and that the real rational
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: source of meaning, that the one that is entirely independent
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: and under your control, is central purpose. And so that's
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons why as central purpose is indispensable
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: in life. And I'll get to what do we do
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: for these poor kids, because I do think there's a
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: big issue with the young generation. And then I think
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: that relationships are kind of an intermediate case because you
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: can have completely independent relation, independent meaning morally independent, first
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: handed relationships and they do give meaning to your life.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: And when the person dies, it's devastating. And I mean,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: you know, it's one thing for your parents, but when
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: you lose a love one. I think of people I
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: know who have lost a loved one and it's devastating.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: And you know, it takes this huge source of meaning
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: o their lives. And that is understandable that person was
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: an irreplaceable value. I mean, I'm randon Frank O'Connor is
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: you know, of course an example of that. So, so
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: the first thing you need to understand is what puts
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: meaning into a life. The main thing that is under
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: your volitional control is central purpose. So then what about
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: these poor kids? Is I actually think you know, we
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: you know, Adam Reed likes to call it the disminding
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: of progressive education, but I think the worst effect of
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: progressive education is the destruction of valuing. That was the
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: lasting impact of progressive education on me was the value
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: the muddling up and the confusion over values and not
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: having clear values. And and I do think that that
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: is a problem. To the little extent that I know,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: I think that that's what the cause of this problem is.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: It's so it's partly literal of conceptual skills because of
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: the education, but it's also values that they have, you know,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: even things like this, you know, participation awards and all
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: these other things. There's because there is no developing of
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: individual valuing and you're caring about it's just things that
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: you do and everybody is equal. The the the leveling
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: that they go after, it really does confuse people's valuing system.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: And so how do we recover on that? I mean,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: I think it gets back to the question you asked earlier.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: You've got to find something that the kid or if
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: the kid wants help. The place to start is something
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: that they actually want, anything that they want that is,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: you know, got any kind of objectivity to it is
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: the place to start and start building that. And I
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: do think people are very resilient. I totally think that
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: this is a solvet that this that these individuals, if
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: they're reached, can be inspired and pulled out of that.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: But it is a big problem. It is a big problem.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not minimizing it.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: At all, Richard. Richard says, I told him, I told
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: a psychiatrist that psychology needs a philosophy. He applied that
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: every philosopher has a psychology that influences the philosophy any thoughts.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: The causal Read the last chapter of Opark ideas, philosophy
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: is the driver of history and philosophy is the driver
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: of psychology. For sure. That was This is one of
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: the reasons I left psychology graduate school with the masters
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: is that it was totally clear to me that the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: way that people were even thinking about how to study
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: psychology was entirely driven by their philosophical views, and they
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: didn't know that that was a total blinder. And I
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: do think Einran's philosophy is in the process of revolutionizing psychology.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's there's several of us working on that problem,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: and I think it radically simplifies the whole science of psychology.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: I think that. So I don't know what else to
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: say to that.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Usbud asks, could Edmund Dante from the Count of
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Monte Cristo have chosen to live a happy life by
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: leaving everything behind after escaping or was revenge necessary?
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: Well, revenge I don't think is a rational goal. I mean,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: do you think it's a rational goal you're own? I'm
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: really curious, But I don't think super satisfying. No, it's
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: not actually, I mean it is in fiction, but in
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: real life it's not.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Right, well, only in the sense of justice, right, So
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: revenge is a form of justice, and seeing bad people
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: get away with bad.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: Stuff is demoralizing.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: And seeing that bad people, you know, get what they
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: deserve is life affirming. It's it's there is justice in it.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: So it's why we respond positively to revenge fiction because
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: we're seeing that in action. Now, to make that your
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: central purpose in life, which is what in a sense
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: the key figure countermartest crystal, that is problematic, particularly if
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: it takes a long time and it's divoting from everything
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: any other value, because then it becomes But that's it's
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: essentially justice, and justice is important. So I do think
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: I do think it's positive.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: That's very interesting because that really clarifies my point of view,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: which I don't think is the same as your point
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: of view.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not Harry says Era that Iran lowed
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: the idea that he went after revenge and you could
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: see that because it's in the context of his life.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: It's a negative.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: Well not only that, but it's so you know, the
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: other thing that I ran said is it's more important
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: reward the good than it is to punish the bad.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Sure, but that doesn't mean it's not important to punish
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: the bad.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean it's not important to punish the bad.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: But he did it at the expense of his life, right,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: He did it at the expense of having a life
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: that created something. So I don't think punishment could be
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: a central purpose in the sense that I think a
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: central purpose does need to be a create something you
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: create in the world. The the other thing, I mean,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: there's also the other thing about revenge per se. I'm
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: going to think about this because I haven't thought about revenge.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: Has to live. He has to live a lie. He
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: has to put it on all our pretense, right, which is.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: A dead giveaway that this couldn't be the right thing
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: But well, so does a spy, right, so can you?
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: He is a spy and immoral, you know.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, I do think that it may be
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: that in order to be a spy you can't be
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: a completely integrated characters. So let's put it this way.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: If you were in like suppose a civil war started
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: in this country and you decided that you one of
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: us decided that what we needed to do was to
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: be a spy in order to you know, save Western civilization. Right.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: You might in an emergency decide to do that, but
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: it would destroy part of your soul. It would destroy
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: part of your soul. You you know, the double entry
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: bookkeeping will is it is a problem, and you have
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: to do it knowing you may never be First off,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: you'll be killed if you're discovered, but also you may
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: not be able to recover psychologically from them. Now you could,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: I think it would have to be an emergency situation.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: I think in a war situation you might decide this
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: is what I'm going to do, and the same thing
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: with you know, some other really destructive purpose. In a
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: war situation, you might actually really decide going after destruction
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: is the right thing to do, because it's it is,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: it is really not a normal situation. But I I
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: don't think that you could be psychologically whole and therefore
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: happy with that profession.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: And it might be a good fit for someone who
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: you know, it might be a good fit at a
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: certain time for someone that I mean, I don't know.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: It's it's a little outside of my range of expertise.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: That's interesting to think about it.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Could you be a CIA agent, Could you be almost
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: SUD agent and still be have a healthy psychology, have
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: a healthy life, be happy?
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a compartments compartmentalization does not work, is so yes,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: it would absolutely be required because I mean so I
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: actually have a little bit of experience with this in
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: the sense that I worked on classified work sure that
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: I still cannot tell anyone about. And we actually had
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: some conversations about this with some of us who were
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: in this program because it actually was an issued like
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: you having a conversation with your mother or your father
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: or something, and the wall would come up. I can't
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: talk about that, and it was not fun. It was
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: not fun. And this is you know, this is a
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: moral project for you know that for the USA government
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: doing rational work, and yet it had to be compartmentalized
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: because I couldn't talk about it with certain people. So
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: I do think there's psychological harm, but you know, I
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: don't know selative. There's a little speculative.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: But I want to say that there's a lot of
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: things that you don't talk to other people about for
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: who I do reasons.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: The the but usually you do it because you don't
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: want to.
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: But but why do you want to talk about something
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: classified with somebody. If it's classified, if you fully integrate it,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: if you fully understand the the the importance of keeping
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: it classified, then you don't want to talk about it.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: Oh. I think that's a little idealistic, because you know, here,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: this is I'm working forty hours a week on this program,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: and you know, and it's it's interesting work and I'm
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: learning things and I'm having successes and I can't share
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: it with the people I love. Yeah, it's it's you know,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: it's it actually does affect the relationships a little bit
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: because you have to put in a distance. So so,
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: but this is not an important This is not like
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: a center of the page issue that I want to argue.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: So it's okay with me. So absolutely, but it's fun
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: to talk about.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Right. Oh, here's a big one. What is your
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: assessment of Seguine Freud and called jung.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: Uh? So, I'm essentially ignorant. Okay, So I didn't study
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: clinical psychology. I was in experimental psychology. And what I
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: know about Freud I know from reading objectivism and sounds
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: pretty irrational.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: The thing that some people want to make sure he
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: gets credit for is that he got the idea that
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: you could talk to people and help them with their
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: psychological problems, although I wonder if he actually did help
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: people with their psychological problems. I think the big problem
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: from what I can tell with Freud is that he,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: you know, he made up this crazy theory about what
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: was going on outside of outside of to explain experiences
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: and that and and everybody has followed that up. They've
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: all got their crazy theory about that that they're all
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: very over complicated in my and and just totally arbitrary.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: And Jung, you know, was basically a Freudian who came
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: up with his own somewhat crazy theory. Now, Jung, I know,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: has at least one observation that I think is true,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: which is the thing that drives you crazy the most
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: in like people you love, is something you don't like
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: about yourself. He calls it like the shadows self stuff.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: But you know, he's got this crazy theory about it.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: So the general thing, I would say this is true
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: for almost every psychologist. You need to look and see
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: what the observations are and see if you think the
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: observations are true. But throw and in some cases there
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: will be practical insights related to the observations, but the
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: theory is essentially garbage. The theory is and it's very
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: important not to let the theory into your head because
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: it's it's destructive, it's all deterministic and uh ah will
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: actually create more problems than it solves.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: Have you seen the movie Aliens?
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: I have not seen the movie Aliens.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, because this is a question about the hero and
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Aliens chaws what we're gonna have to skip it this time.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: Let's see Lincoln asks, how does one stay motivated on
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: your professional goals when faced with personal challenges? Should they
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: be addressed first before focusing on work.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: I don't think that this is the kind of thing
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: that has a you know, a cookbook solution, right, generally speaking,
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: when you're in some kind of you know, conflict where
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: you think you should be doing work, but you're just
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: completely distracted, Like, let's just make up something. You're having
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: trouble in your marriage and you're worried about you know,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: maybe you're going to get divorced or whatever. Right, yep,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: you know, some real big issue that's on your mind, right,
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: or someone in your family is sick. Right. If you're
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: in that kind of emotional You're feeling multiple emotions. They're
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: pulling you in multiple directions for action. The most important
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: thing for you to do is to pause and figure
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: out all the values at stake. You need to introspect
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: those emotions and remember the emotions. The emotions feel like
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: they tell you what you should do. Emotions can't tell
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: you what to do. They are alerts to some value
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: at stake, and you need your rational mind, your logical
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: reasoning mind to figure out what those values are and
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: what the situation is. You need, in effect, like situational
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: awareness in this moment, and you can't get that in
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: that emotional state. You need to take, in effect a
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: time out to do some introspective work to get a
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: little bit of distance and figure out what the values are.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: And it can go both ways, like you can decide, look,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: I need to take a couple of days off to
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: take care of my personal stuff. Or like suppose suppose
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: you're you have a very important role at work and
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: there's a huge deadline coming up, and you could decide, no,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: I really need to keep work here. I'm going to
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: need to concentrate on work during work. I'm going to
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: need to do this after hours and it is possible
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: to do that. You're not going to be as efficient
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: as as efficient as normally and it does. There is
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: a certain skill involved. It's I call it a sprint.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: It's when you do work knowing that you're going to
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: be experiencing a kind of a low level of frustration
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: and discomfort in doing it, but you kind of say, yes,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: I accept that, I'm not going to suppress that, and
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: this is very important. You kind of get your head
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: around the fact that doing this work is actually what
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: you rationally think is more important, and you do that
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: without suppressing the other stuff, and you can actually do
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: work under really quite stressful situations. But it's a skill,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: it's a learnable skill. But the big point is what
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: you do in that moment depends on your values, your skills.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: That's why you need to stop and actually do the
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: introspection and assess the situation and then make a decision
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: about what you're going to do now and the take
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: what you want to pay for it is very relevant here. Right,
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: you might decide to do the work and it might
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: have a bad effect on the relationship. You might decide
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: to take time off from work to work on the relationship.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: It might have a bad effect on work when you're
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: in a bad situation. Part of what you need to
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: do is you need to face the reality that these
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: two things are in conflict, and you're going to choose
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: the one that you think is in your rational self
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: interest and you recognize the other one is less important
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: and could be harmed. And that is the decision that
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: you're making. And doing that with your eyes open is
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: not fun. It's not pleasant, but it is an act
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: of integrity, and it also insulates you, or inoculates you,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: as a better word, so that if something bad does happen,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: you have, you know, kind of the moral certainty that
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: you did what you thought was right and that you
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: had accepted that this consequence might happen. It still is painful,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: but it going in with your eyes open is the
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: critical thing. Eyes open to the values, all right.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: Lincoln also asks, let's see, this is a long question.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: What are the best strategies for balancing career ambitions and
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: family personal goals? For context, I'm a college student studying
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: finance wants to work in the tech VC factor as
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: my career, but I'm worried that will conflict with my
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: goals having a family, which I find just as important
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: to me. I don't want to sacrifice the opportunity to
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: work on and invest in disruptive technologies for a nine
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: to five job. But the tech hustle culture feels hostile
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: to the lifestyle that involves having a family and being
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: involved with your kids lives. Most of the kids of
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: tech employees were more raised by nannies instead of their
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: own parents because they were so focused on work they
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: would rather hear another pitch deck than see their kids
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: baseball game.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: So, you know, it's good to know that you care
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: about both of these things, and this means you're going
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: to need to develop some skills, right, You're going to
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: need to develop incredible skills so that you can work
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: very productively during your productive hours and that you can
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: put in place things that you can carve out time
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: for your kids. You know this is there are entrepreneurs
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: who completely successfully do this, and it takes it takes skills,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: and so if you want both, this is an example
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: of another example of take what you want and pay
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: for it. You need to recognize that you're going to
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: go in there and you're going to need to work
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: out the third way and you're going to need to
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: find some role models. You've got some anti role models. Sure,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: of course, there are people who have totally screwed this up.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: That's that's not hard to find. But there are positive
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: role models, you know. I think of one of my
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: good friends from MIT. His father was in the music business,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: and you know, there were a lot of screwed up
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: people in the music business. But his family, my friend's family,
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: you know, husband, wife, two kids, absolute loving, happy family,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 2: totally stable. I mean, he was a role model for
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: all kinds of people. He was unusual, but he was
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: a role model. And I'm sure you can find if
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: you this is worth actually researching research uh uh, you
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: know tech people or you know, entrepreneurs who really figured
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: out how to how to prioritize a family and have
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: a great family. You know, it's a solvable you know,
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: if something matters to you, the assumption needs to be
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: that it's a solvable problem. Now, if you know this,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: this is a very specific thing. That which because this
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: fellow is still a college student, right, he's not actually
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: in the situation, and I assume he doesn't actually have
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: a family yet.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: If he's you know, now would I think he's I
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: think he's he's got I mean, I think he's got
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: to gofriend that they're planning to get married.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: Great, that's wonderful. Right. So I have more of a
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: pep talk than I have an answer, because I think
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: the answer is going to be very specific. And of
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: course the other thing too is that as he gets involved.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: Right when they talk about the hustle culture, some people
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: treat it as you just have to work like I did, right,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: like the way I worked when I first worked, I
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: just worked. You know, you have to do this and
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how you feel. Well, you actually get
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: a hell of a lot more done if you take
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: the whole context of that the work has to pay
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: off as you go that you need to figure out
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: how to work efficiently during this time because you're not
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: going to spend twelve hours to do something that if
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: you really work efficiently, you can do in six hours.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: And that you put boundary, and then you need to
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: figure out how to put on social boundaries. So there
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: are a lot of skills involved, yep. And the way
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: that you develop the skills is by first knowing that
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: this is what you want and then second putting your
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: brain on that. I realized it's a generic answer.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: But oh it's good.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: The devil is in the details on these things, and
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: it is I totally believe that that's possible.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, string A Bell asks elo Jean, how does one
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: stay committed to a goal? I find an individual can
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: start out strong, but eventually something knocks them off track.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: So I think the most common reason people get knocked
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: off track is because they haven't figured out how to
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: make sure that they're building in results as they go,
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: and they're not actually seeing progress. Because if you see progress,
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: you get more excited and you get more motivation. And
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: so I think that this is the people envision the
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 2: goal and say, well, it's ten thousand steps, let's get going,
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: and they do the first one hundred and ninety seven
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: steps and then they say, damn it, one hundred and
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: ninety seven steps. This is you know, this is like
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: what is this? Two percent of the way? There is
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: my math? Correct? Damn it? You know I have I'm
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: waiting all this effort. I Oh my god, what am
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: I gonna get there? Ari, Well, I've got to keep
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 2: going And they do another one hundred and twenty steps
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: and it's like, oh my god, can I keep going?
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: You can't have a goal that's a ten thousand steps
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: until you get a payoff and I actually think that,
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: I mean I actually have I use the term step
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: for something that you can do in less than two hours,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: and I use the term a key results for something
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: you can do in less than two weeks, and the
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: term objective for something that takes like one to three
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: months something like that. And you need a different kind
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: of payoff in each of those. Like a task, you
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: don't actually need to see progress toward the goal, but
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: there needs to be some pleasure in it, like you've
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: got to finish something, or you got to enjoy it,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: or something like if you have to play music to
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: enjoy it. Okay, that's what you do for the task.
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: For the two week key result, you got to see
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: this is moving me toward my goal. I'm getting some
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: of the value out of the goal. And if you
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: do that to see if you can make it so
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: that you keep pulling this back, so it's a two
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: week key result that you're actually like, wow, hey, I'm
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: making progress, and then a two month objective where hey,
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: I've got a real result I can show people, and
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: you keep iterating to do that. The momentum builds, and
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: you get more and more passionate about the goal as
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: you go. The thing that kills passion is that you
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: don't you don't actually uh, you don't actually see results,
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: and you don't the goal is just something that is
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 2: only in your imagination, and the only way you feed
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: the value of the goal is in imagination. You've got
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: to feed it with actual real world results, because that
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: is how you program values. It's action, action that achieves
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: the achieves a value, what strengthens the.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: Value, thanks Stringa Bell, Jacob. Can there be a misalignment
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: between you rational goals and your personality that is insurmountable?
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: For example, a goal requiring extreme extraversion and you aren't.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: So I think personality you should think of personalities just
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: the things that you have skills at that you're comfortable with,
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: and like extraversion, you know, chatting up people and having
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: public speaking for example, these are learnable skills. These are
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 2: absolutely learnable skills. Now it may be the case that
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, like you know, there's there may be temperament
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 2: issues here like that people there some people test out
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: as introverts and is a fairly stable characteristic versus a
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: introverts the thing that introverts find when they do social
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: tasks is they get tired faster. Well, the reason they
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: get tired faster is because it requires more active monitoring
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: and more you know, it's not a totally automatized, familiar
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: skill that has values. But if it's important enough, you
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: can make it be a bigger skill. And if it's
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: not pleasurable, if you can't make the extroverted work pleasurable,
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: then you'll find some way to adjust that goal a
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: little bit so that it has less of that and
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: it has more of whatever it is that you do
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: find pleasurable. So, for example, I don't think introverts have
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: trouble doing zoom calls, whereas public speaking, where they actually
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: have people that they need to talk to in person,
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: that's more tiring. You may be able to achieve the
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: same thing that allegedly takes an extroverted skill, but you
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: may be able to find a way that is more
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: adapted to your introverted capabilities. But you don't have to.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: You can You can develop any skill you want. I
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: think that that is the important attitude to have. If
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 2: some people can do it, they actually have a lot
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: of people can do it. It's a learnable skill. It's not deterministic, okay.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: Hugh McKenzie asks any thoughts on token economies. This is
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: are the effective that is rewarding desired behavior with tokens
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 1: which can be exchanged for other reinforces.
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: So this is a new one on me. But generally speaking,
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: if this would be a secondhanded economy, meaning that someone
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: decides what behavior should be reinforced, and they try to
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: teach treat the people like animals by giving them rewards
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: for things that they want them to do. So I
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: am not in favor of such a thing, and I
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: think it is true that x eternal rewards. Is it
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: if you are passive and you choose what you do
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: based on what other people want you to do, and
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: you get your pleasure from rewards that other people give you,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: that is that is a secondhanded life. It puts you
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: completely at the mercy of other people. It makes you
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: a victim or a you know, wanting to have power
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: over the people. It's for the birds if you choose
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: to pursue values because they are important to you. This
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: stuff is all real irrelevant, So rests the question here is.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 3: I think you did, but then how would you treat.
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know, different bonus schemes at work which are
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: very similar or like stock options. You know, you you
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: make a lot of money if if if this is successful.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 3: I mean those do have a motivating factor for people.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: It's they're not neutral, right.
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: Well, part of what you're trying to do here is
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: you're trying to align the person's self interest with the
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: businesses self interest.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: The but how do I say this? So so one
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: thing I didn't say, So I will make clear that
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: I did not say that external rewards don't work in
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of cases. They do work in a lot
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 2: of cases. And something like that where you align the
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: like you the bonuses are aligned with the company's goals.
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: A person could be doing that for secondhand reason, for
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: first of.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: All, but there is an option of fust standard reason.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: There is an option of firsthand reason. Because part of
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 2: what this does is this like grabs your attention, says, hey,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: this is what the company goal is, and this is
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: how we're trying to get the company goal. And this
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: is your part in trying to get the company goal.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: And this is you know, you actually really see and
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: if you are smart and you want to get that
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: money you really figure out how to get the company
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: to be successful. Now that assumes that the company is
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: managed rationally, and that this bonus system is rational, and
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: they have a clear idea, that they have a rational goal,
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: and they have a clear idea of how you're actually
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: contributing to it. Now, I think that is actually I
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: think there's some very clever people at some companies that
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: really do figure that out. And I think it's some companies.
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: It's it becomes a game and people game the system
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: and it totally backfires because they do the thing to
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: get at the bonus, not to make the company successful.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so it could be rational.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: But so this is Adam says. As Ignman wrote, valued
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: deprivation is general to the whole of our culture. This
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: minding is specific to the progressive anti philosophy of education.
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: Of course, the whole of the culture is reflected in education.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: Please comment, how true? What?
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: What can I say?
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: She agrees with you? Adam?
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: Was that Adam reide? Okay?
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: All right? All right? Uh P Grouptor asks unambition. Is
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: it a trait one embodies or a trait of one's goals?
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: Is it a virtue? How does it relate to Russian
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: of productiveness.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's not a trait if you trait normally is
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: used to mean something that's like a part of you.
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: I think it's a characteristic of a goal, and so
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 2: it's it's a goal is ambitious if it is something
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: that is a little beyond your skill level, that would
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 2: be that would be what that would make a goal
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 2: an ambitious goal. As far as whether it's a virtue
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: or not, this is what we were talking about. I
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 2: think pride is a virtue, right. Moral ambitiousness is a virtue,
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: and I think because growth is rational and so important
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 2: to life, I think ambitiousness is also, I think, and
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 2: I think it would be generally under the heading of pride.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: But it's a little broader than moral ambitiousness. It's it's
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 2: self improvement in any area. Is it's going to help
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: grow your skills, give you more capabilities, make you more
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: able to succeed in the world.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 3: And she has how does it relate to rationality or productiveness?
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: Oh? So, so it relates to productiveness because it definitely
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: relates to goals. I'd say ambitiousness is an issue of
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 2: your goals, right, What is it that you're trying to
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 2: do goals are you set the goal of what you
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: want to achieve in the future, and then you act
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 2: to gain to create that out in the world. And
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: so it's built into productiveness. I mean, you can be
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 2: productive without being ambitious in the sense that you can
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: you know, like a janitor. Right that ein Ran uses
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 2: the example of a janitor as being kind of at
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the pyramid of ability. Right, But if
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 2: you sweep the floor every day, that is a productive undertaking,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: that is actually something that needs to be done that
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: does contribute you know, you get paid for that, right,
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 2: But there's no growth involved in that, and there's no
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 2: learning involved in that. Although there could be an ambitious
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: janitor who's always figuring out the better way to clean
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: things and what's the better products. So you could imagine
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: an ambitious genitor. I don't want to knock janitors. So
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: it's not inherent in productiveness, but it is inherent in
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: you know, any kind of large scale productive achievement, let's
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: put it that way. And it's inherent in a central purpose,
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: right if you have so in that sense, it is
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 2: inherent in the virtue of productiveness. If you have a
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 2: central purpose this is a long range goal. By definition,
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 2: you can't achieve it right now. It's going to require
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 2: a sustained effort over a long time. So it is
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: an ambitious goal just by its very nature. Now, how
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 2: does it relate to rationality? Well, in the same way
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 2: goals relate to rationality. They need to be based on reality.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: They need to be based on standards of what is
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 2: good for human life. So it's the standard by which
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 2: you or the means by which you vet everything that
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 2: you do, and you make sure that that the goal
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 2: is set in some kind of a reasonable way.
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: So Noack says A big fan of Gene, I really
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: recommend people check out her services. Thank you, Mary Ellen,
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: says Gene. Thanks so much for the recommendation of the
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: book The Practicing Mind I've vetted about.
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 3: I've had about half of it and I love it.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's a short read, and it really was a
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 2: delight when I discovered this couple of weeks ago.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: All Right, his Bozz's multi prong question. You can choose
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: what you want to answer this because there's a lot here.
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: How can parents of toddler's meet ex seed career goals?
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: What roles will humans have if AI, robotics take most jobs,
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: you'll take on New York City, Bitcoin, Trump, and musk.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 2: All right, let's take the first. Let's just kind of
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 2: do them in order. I'll just tell you what I
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 2: can about them. Okay, toddler's and a career.
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: Is that a career goal?
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 3: Meet to exceed career goals? I mean that's the question
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 3: you did before. I think yeah, I.
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 2: Mean I think so. I mean presumably if you have
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: a toddler and you have a career goal, you have
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 2: figured out you know who, you figured out who is
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: taking care of the toddler when you're working, right, So
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 2: part of it is being incredibly efficient at work. I mean,
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 2: this is something I've coached people on, is how do
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 2: you make sure that you get out of work at
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 2: six o'clock or whatever it is, whatever is the reasonable
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 2: time since you actually get home for dinner and you know,
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 2: to spend the time with the kid before or the
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: kid needs to go to sleep. That takes that's a skill.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: That's setting a boundary. You need to be able to
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 2: say no to people because people will come into your
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: office ten minutes before you plan to leave, and you
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: need to be able to You need social skills to
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 2: be able to do that. You also need productivity skills
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 2: because you need to be able to finish things up
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day and not see an
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 2: email and then say, oh, why don't I just quickly
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 2: answer that and have you know, forty five minutes go
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: by that you know, there's there's there's real self awareness
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 2: and real very conscious decision making and prioritization required to
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 2: be able to put those boundaries on work at home
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 2: and to make sure that you are ultra productive during work.
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: But this is so I'm going to sing the same song.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: It's learnable skills. And then I also think that celebration, right,
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: is because if you're working hard and you got a
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 2: two year old. Now I did not have We did
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: not have children, so I don't have first experience of this,
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 2: but I've had some experience with two year olds and
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 2: they are a lot of fun, right, And so make
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 2: sure that you actually really enjoy that experience with the kid.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: And that also is going to take discipline, because you're
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: going to be tired and you're going to need to
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: actually learn how to you know, get in the zone
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 2: and have a good report and also still have boundaries
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 2: with the kid because you don't want to spoil the
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 2: kid because you don't spend time with it. You know,
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 2: you're going to need to learn a lot of skills
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: and it is going to be worth it. Every skill
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 2: you learn is going to improve your relationship with your children,
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 2: relationship with your spouse, and your productivity at work.
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: Right Andrew asks, aside from the obvious, why can losing
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: a parent be so grief inducing? What are some keys
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: to recovering from that grief?
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know why we need to go aside from
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 2: the obvious. I think the obvious is obvious and is real.
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: So and I just want to say, I don't mind
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 2: talking about some of Boaz his other things, but but
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 2: let me stay on this one on the grip, say on, yeah,
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 2: so so, so here is the one thing that is
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 2: aside from the obvious. I really experienced this when I
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 2: lost my father. He had been watching out for me
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 2: my whole life, my whole life, and then he wasn't there.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: And you cannot be aware of that. You cannot make
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: the differentiation, you know, I mean maybe if someone had
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 2: maybe my telling you this. You know, some young people
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: who still have their father can say, oh, that's true.
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: My father is doing that for me, and that's right.
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 2: If he's gone, he won't be and you may be
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: able to visualize it. I don't know, but a lot
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: of times the things that you know about the value
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 2: of your parents is because of the differentiations that you
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 2: saw and so you were able to conceptualize them. So
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 2: like when I went to camp for I went to
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 2: overnight camp, and I never felt homesick except the one
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 2: year that my mother was in the hospital. My mother
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 2: almost died that summer, actually, and thank goodness she didn't,
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 2: because I would have been in camp, you know, in Maine,
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: you know, so and you know, my world was out
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 2: of whack because I literally this is what I was.
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 2: This is like, this is like my seventh year of camp.
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 2: Prior to that, my mother or my father had written
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 2: me a letter every day that I was at camp.
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 2: But because my mother was sick, I didn't do that,
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: and I it was missing and it was really a
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 2: big It really shook me up. But I had that.
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes you're able to conceptualize things because the
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: world gave you the differentiation. There is no differentiation of
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 2: Dad not looking out for me until he dies, and
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 2: then get that differentiation and you can see it, and
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: they are going to be things like that that you
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 2: took them for granted. There's a sense in which your
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: parents create the universe that you live in. They literally
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 2: created the house, they set up the house, they set
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 2: the ground rules, and you know this is something as
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 2: as you age you discover there are things that you
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: take for granted that other people don't. I mean, like,
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 2: to take an example, in my household, it was pretty
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: normal to yell at each other. That doesn't bother me.
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 2: But it turns out that in a lot of households,
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 2: this is like not done. This is not done, and
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 2: it's like a really big deal. If you raise your
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 2: white and I'm like, what, what's your problem? And you
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: know this is and this is the kind of thing
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 2: that you kind of have to get out of it
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 2: to be able to see. And that's one of the
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: things that is the not obvious part of why losing
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 2: your parents' heart is that there are a whole bunch
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 2: of things like this that you discover and it takes
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 2: work to actually name them, which gets to what can
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: you do about it? Put the time into conscious mourning
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 2: m o U r ni ng. This means that you
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 2: literally spend say a half hour a day. I would
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 2: do it in journaling, in you know, writing in a journal.
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 2: I mean the process that I recommend is something I
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 2: call an empathy bath. It's in my Thinker's Toolkit, which
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: is a little you know, the twenty dollars pdf you
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 2: can get from me. And you go through your emotions
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 2: and why do I feel this about the parent that
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 2: you lost? Right, And you do that each day or
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 2: then one day you maybe reminisce about them, and then
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 2: you go through, you introspect your emotions and what do
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 2: they mean? And if you do this proactively, if you
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 2: spend some time every day doing this, you will work
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 2: through all the issues gradually and you'll get some very deep,
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 2: very deep insights. You will feel closer. I mean, there
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 2: are certain ways in which I feel closer to my
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 2: mother now than I did before she died. I mean
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 2: I actually after she died, I got an appreciation for
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 2: her independence and her judgment that I just didn't have
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: when she was alive. And I got an appreciation for
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 2: something that I was totally oblivious to, is how she
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 2: actually care communities where she went, which I still am
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 2: benefiting from. Actually, and It's a long story, but and
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 2: part of how you deal with the mourning is by
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 2: loving the parent and learning the ways in which you
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 2: love the parent very explicitly, so that when that parent
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: crosses your mind, what you feel is love for them,
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 2: and love for what you learn from them, and love
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: for what you got for them, and love for how
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 2: you've taken that and put it into your life now.
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 2: And that is part of what heals the loss.
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: Neil. I've struggled in school and haven't been able to
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: advance my job. I'm in my early thirties and not
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: having felt success, my mind has a hard time trying
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 1: new things. I avoid many opportunities due to the fear
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: of failing.
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 2: Advice, well, uh, I heard all the things that are bad,
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 2: but I didn't hear something that you actually want to do.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 2: And that is the critical thing. What do you what
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 2: do you kind of wish you could do, and why
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 2: do you wish it right? And part of you know
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: you don't wish for something unless you've got some capabilities
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 2: in that area. They may be very meager, but you
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 2: can't even envision doing something without some awareness of the
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: means whereby it can be achieved. And so you've got
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 2: to start with what you want. The more you focus
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: on the problems, the difficulties, the past difficulties that that
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, that will suck you in into a vicious
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: cycle of despair. It will absolutely stop you even from
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 2: naming what it is that you'd like to do. So
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 2: if so, it's a little hard. I mean, obviously you've
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 2: got three sentences in this question, and I'm I hate
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 2: people who psychologize, right, so this is I'm not going
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 2: to make a statement about what's going on with you.
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: And if you're really feeling down, I would start with
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 2: the three good things that I mentioned earlier in the call.
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 2: Start writing three good things and make it be three
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 2: things I achieved yesterday, and start actually noticing what you
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 2: are doing right and what you like about what you're
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: doing right, and use that to help you start seeing
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 2: what it is that you want to do more of,
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 2: because it's that's where it's going to start. It's going
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 2: to start with something that you want and then the
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: you know, probably one of the basic skills is the
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 2: value orientation. This is something that I teach, right, I mean,
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: I'm not the only person who tea but this is
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 2: the this is the kind of thing I teach, maintaining
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 2: that value orientation, maintaining a focus on this is what
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 2: I'm going for. Yes, this is an obstacle. What am
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 2: I going to do about this obstacle? Because I want
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: that maintaining that, how do I get that? Okay, so
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: there's an issue here. Let's figure out a way around
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 2: that to get what I want to maintain that positive
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: for looking attitude. That is a skill. But the but
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 2: the short version of it is, every time you have
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 2: a threat oriented emotion fear, anger, guilt, despair, frustration, introspect it,
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 2: identify the values at stake. Try to go after those values.
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks Neil, friend, Harper says, great episode. You are my
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: favorite guest.
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 2: Oh that's sweet, thank you.
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: Andrews says, my reference to Brandon's essay on pleasure was
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: in contrast to the arbitrary value of pain from religion.
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: I know a few serious Jews who want to feel
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: guilty and sadness is proof of virtue, and they do.
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 2: That's so sad. Yeah, that's so sad.
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: So prevalent though. All right, Lincoln, any tips on developing
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: intrinsic motivations when working a lot of my motivations to
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: work to work hard are external for example, good class grades,
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: money for my job.
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 3: This won't be effective in.
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: The workplace, especially at a startup where there are no
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: a's and the monetary payoff is delayed. Great interview, by
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: the way.
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you, So throw out the term intrinsic motivation. What
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 2: you want is you want passion for the work you're doing.
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 2: So the word you want is passion. So like, suppose
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 2: you're taking a class and you're taking it because it's
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 2: a required course and you want to get an A
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 2: because you want to get into whatever pro you want
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 2: to get into. You got to find something interesting about
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 2: this class and or about this topic, and suppose you
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 2: have to write a paper for it. You need to,
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 2: you know, actually start looking for what interests you and
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 2: building up that interest. And that would be if it's
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 2: a subject, right, Like the way you get passionate about
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 2: a subject is you learn more about it and you
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 2: do your own firsthand integration of it and you say, well,
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 2: how will this help me? Like you have real goals, right,
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 2: so how is this going to help me with a goal?
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 2: Sometimes that takes creative thinking, but you know, if you ask,
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 2: like if you ask Lisa van dam She can tell
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: you how any piece of literature can help you with
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 2: your goals. So if you have to read literature, you
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 2: can figure that out. You can figure out a connection.
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 2: Or if you're studying history, you can figure out a
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 2: connection that's and that work that you do to connect
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 2: it to your actual goals that will make it more interesting.
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 2: So that's how you can do with a top topic. Now,
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 2: suppose you have to learn, like you have to take
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 2: a math class. There it's a skill and they're what
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 2: you want to do is you want to try to
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 2: figure out what is the basic thing you're learning and
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 2: get good at it, because when you get good at
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: a skill, you like it more because you know it's
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 2: like it's there's an efficacy involved there and so there
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 2: it's probably the kisss where you need to find out.
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 2: Like with calculus, I'm just making up something I haven't
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: thought about calculus in a long time, so I'm not
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: sure this is going to work. But something I never
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 2: did so is do as I say, not as I do.
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 2: But you know, there are a lot of things I
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 2: would do differently if I knew then what I know now.
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 2: Just as an example, when I was in college, they
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 2: would let us have a cheat sheet so we could
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 2: bring in, you know, what all the integrals were or whatever,
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 2: so that you didn't have to memorize them. I'll tell
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 2: you you'll be way better at calculus if you memorize
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 2: all the basic ones. Memorize and gets that you can
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 2: use them without having to look them up. That'll make
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 2: everything easier. And so choosing something that you can learn
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 2: that's a building block that's going to make it be
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 2: easier and make it easier to add on and easier
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 2: to remember other things makes a big difference. I was
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 2: a tutor to make some money when I first started
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 2: my business. I actually tutored a couple of kids in
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 2: my building who were in like first grade, second grade,
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 2: and the older boys having such trouble in math, and
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 2: I was helping him this homework, and I realized he
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 2: didn't understand. He didn't have memorized the single digit edition
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: facts or the single digit multiplication facts. So his mother
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 2: and I decided over the summer, she gave him a
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 2: page of edition facts, single digit single digit addition facts,
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 2: subtraction facts, multiplication and division, and he drilled that over
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 2: the summer. He did a page of each of those
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 2: every day for the whole summer. He went to the
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 2: top of his class in math the next year. So
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 2: there's always something. So if you really want to have
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 2: passion for the subject, it's going to be knowledge and values.
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 2: Deepen your knowledge connected to your values. Deepen your skill
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 2: and connect it to your values. That's what I would say.
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: All right, this is the last question, also from Lincoln.
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent agree on making sure can handle young
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: kids before having them. My parents have friends with a
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: couple of twenty years the junior. We have two who
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: have a little two year old toddler who I have
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: had the chance to spend time with and babysit with.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: My girlfriend and the adults out of town. Super informative
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: to us ahead of time before marriage and children. No
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: question there, Thanks Lincoln, great well, Thanks Geen. Almost three
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: hours that was that was fun. Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks you guys, Thanks all the super chatters. That was great.
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks you a.
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 2: Question interesting questions. Yeah, absolutely put me on my toes.
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 2: And thanks for the discussion your own. You know, when
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 2: I got a little stopped, I threw it back at
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 2: you and we had a good discussion.
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: What I'm here for. Uh, It was good. Well, we'll
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: talk about revenge another time.
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about revenge. Maybe maybe at Rams Day we'll
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 2: talk about revenge. I'll think about it between now and then.
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: Good. All right, everybody have a I'll be I'll see
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: all you guys tomorrow for a new show and i'll
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: see you Gene Advanceday. Great, bye, everybody have a good night. Bye.