Pain and Fulfillment

You're listening to Freedom Fast lane, presented by capitalism.com this is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran. Hey everybody. Ryan here. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. As I record this, I am reflecting on news from a few weeks ago of the death of the lead singer of Linkin park named Chester Bennington. And I was actually kind of. I was working on a podcast for you several months ago when Chris Cornell, the lead singer of Soundgarden, died. Both of them died from apparent suicides. Although some people have suggested that there may have been some substance abuse invol. It inspired me to talk about the topic of success and fulfillment because I always find it interesting what is going on behind the scenes of incredibly successful people. The reason for this is because we live in a success obsessed society in which we believe that achieving a certain level of success assumes that there will be a certain level of fulfillment. In other words, seeing that someone has accomplished something, we perceive that there is a different feeling on the other end of that accomplishment, whether that is making a lot of money, losing a lot of weight, getting a certain physique, entering a certain type of marriage. The perception is that when those things are achieved that we will feel differently. And most importantly, the perception that someone else feels a certain way once they have achieved that. So to make this less airy fairy, we often believe that people like Chris Cornell or Chester Bennington or anyone who is famous must wake up floating on air every day because they are that person. It's the same conversation as what happened with Robin Williams several years ago, where this man had made so many other people so happy and no one knew what was really going on inside of his brain and his body. And I think it is important, particularly for high achievers like yourself to regularly pause and to catch where this mental noise happens, where this mental noise can destroy us if we do not catch it. Because we often think that person has money or that person has abs. That would be me, meaning I have that perception of other people. Oh, they have abs. They must wake up every day and be incredibly successful. My lifelong struggle getting the abs, or that person has that relationship. So they must wake up every day and feel happy. In reality, when we get to a certain level or when we get the guy or the girl or the abs, our brains normalize that incredibly quickly. And as a result, the endorphins that kick in from getting that thing go away very quickly. So the reality is Those things don't change how we feel more than for a moment. And then our brains go back to comparing to something else. It goes immediately back to comparing to someone else who is ahead of us, comparing ourselves to some other form of measurement. For example, you could be incredibly financially successful and feel good about it and then turn around and compare your body to someone else's body or your amount of free time to someone else's free time. And we tend to notice the gaps in our lives and we overlook the progress in our lives because our brains are wired to be tribal. Our brains are made to be like everyone else, to fit in, to be safe with the crowd. So our brains go around looking for gaps. I don't have as much free time as that person. I don't have as much money as that person. Yeah, because they're inversely related. I don't have as much talent as that person. I don't have as much of a great physique as that person. And by doing that, we overlook our own progress and we see the gaps that we have among other people. I am going to give what I have found to be the, I guess the somewhat solution to this, although I'm not sure that a full solution really exists. But I'm going to give my prescription for what I. What I think actually solves that problem. I'm going to read the blog post that I wrote about the death of Chester Bennington, and I'm also going to tell you what I think is the meaning of life in this episode. But first, I wanted to give public credit to one of my mentors, Dan Sullivan, who I've talked about multiple times on the podcast. He's been on the show and he has two things that I think are useful tools that when I realize that I am in this spot where I'm comparing myself to someone else, kind of can snap me out of this. So two tools that Dan uses. One is simply the mantra that your future must be bigger than your past. If we look at successful people who have arrived at a certain point, if you look at the Chris Cornells and the Chester Benningtons, they have achieved as much success in a given area as most would deem to be possible. It's hard to get much bigger than Linkin Park. It's hard to be more successful than either of those two men were in the music industry. And one might argue that one of the reasons why they ended up unhappy was because their future was no longer bigger than their past. Chester was coming off an album that wasn't Very well received, and a single that wasn't doing so well. And as a result, he lost the fan base, he lost the critic acclamations, and he ended up ending his life. So our brains are made to project. They either are projecting the past into the future, or. Or they're projecting the present into the future, but they can also project the future into the present. If your future in your brain is seen as bigger than your past or your present, you will be compelled to move forward. Whereas if you think that the good days are over, you are likely to wither and die because you are pining for those and not working towards anything. We are momentum machines. So is your future bigger than your past? If not, it's time to create a more compelling future and find evidence to believe that it is going to be that way. The second tool that Dan Sullivan uses for this is called the gap. And he identifies how, especially with entrepreneurs, we tend to think of a future, and then we immediately see the space between ourselves, where we are right now, and that compelling future. And when we're comparing ourselves to an idea in our brain, we're set up to lose because we can't do anything right now about our future, meaning we can't close that gap immediately. So we walk around with this idea of, we're gonna get there, we're gonna get there, we're gonna get there, but the future keeps moving along with our present, or like a donkey following a carrot at the end of a stick, because we are chasing a future that is always moving, because we're also moving. And what he suggests as the solution, and I have found this to be true, is instead of comparing yourself to the future, maintaining a future that is bigger than your past, but taking the active practice of comparing yourself to where you came from, not to where you are going, where was I a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago? And the longer we can make that comparison, the more that we actually have the momentum and the fuel for attacking the things that will accomplish what's in our bigger, more compelling future. So when we look at where we've come from, there's a tremendous amount of momentum from people we have met, things that we have learned, things we have accomplished, and that becomes momentum for moving us into the bigger future.

I get a lot of questions about what I think of some of Tony Robbins investment strategies, especially the ones where he talks about assets that can go up in value over time, but don't participate in any downside. I don't agree with all of Tony's investment recommendations. But I do participate in investing in insurance, which is one of the things that he's describing in that strategy. Now I want to give you a warning. When I went into that investment strategy, I got schmoozed over by a slick salesman and I wish that I had used a sophisticated firm that was actually dedicated to that. That's why I had wealthpoint on the podcast recently, and I'd encourage you to go listen to that episode about Infinite Banking. Now, infinite banking isn't the proper term to describe what they do. They actually use a modified version which is called capital warehousing. But what it basically allows you to do is park cash like you would put it into a bank, participate in the growth of the market without participating in any downside, and you still get access to that capital so that you can put it into other investments. So if you've got money sitting on the sidelines, you might want to use capital warehousing as part of your strategy. So you can go over to gowealthpoint.com freedom to learn how the strategy works, or you can just listen to the episode that we had with Sam Prentice from wealthpoint here on the podcast. It's called how the Rich Use Infinite Banking for Tax Free Wealth.

With that, I want to pivot into reading you the blog post that I wrote at the time of Chester Bennington's death. If you want to read the text transcript, you can see this@freedomfastlane.com the title was Chester Bennington and Success Without Fulfillment. Chester Bennington was the most talented male vocalist of his era. And yes, that was true even before the tragic news of his death. He and the guy from Breaking Benjamin have always been, in my opinion, in a league of Their Own. Chester was freakishly talented, but as we learned on July 20, that was not enough. Chester was accomplished, but he was not fulfilled. It would be wise for us to take notice because success without fulfillment can happen to any of us and it already affects us more than we care to admit. Success is the accomplishment of goals. Chester accomplished more goals by age 40 than most people do in a lifetime. He was beloved around the world. He had six kids. He had plenty of money. Chester was incredibly successful, but he still felt a deep pain that was evident in the lyrics that he sang. Pain drives us to do something different, but the something different does not usually solve our underlying pain. For example, most stand up comics have dark demons that drive them to use comedy as an escape, but even Robin Williams was not able to escape his demons. Most entrepreneurs, including myself and Elon Musk often feel a deep sense of loneliness that drives them to seek achievement as a way to connect with others. But as they get more successful, they often feel more lonely than ever. Many bodybuilders or athletes feel insecure because they were picked on, and it drives them to cover it up with physical ability that's healthy until it drives them to use copious amounts of steroids or to destroy their bodies in the process. We believe that if certain conditions are met, our pain will go away. If I am rich, then I will stop feeling a lack of purpose. If I have muscles, people will respect me. But the conditions don't usually change how we feel. When the way that we feel is dependent upon an outside condition, then we are a slave to it. We often become addicted to the results of our actions rather than the actions themselves. For example, Chester's pain drove him to create, which is healthy. However, his last album was poorly received and his critics let him know his source of anesthesia. Love or respect for his art was taken away shortly after he took his own life. As a result, people can be successful without experiencing any fulfillment. Tony Robbins says that fulfillment is an art. I think it's a science. More on that later. No one likes to experience pain, and that is why pain drives us. Pain is the most motivating driver ever created. It is more powerful than money, sex or drugs. In fact, all of those things are only addictive because they are viewed as possible solutions to pain. Pain moves us to create, to innovate, to invent and to write. To numb the pain would be to numb our greatest motivator and our greatest source of creativity. We want the creativity without the pain, but we do not get one without the other. I would go as far as to say that Chester would never have been a success if he did not experience pain as a young man. Your greatest accomplishments often came back because of pain. To try to escape your pain is to escape your greatest gift. Your proudest moments often came in the response to pain. Among your darkest moments come your greatest opportunities. Pain tells us that something is wrong and it is the agent for change. That is, by the way, why it is a terrible idea to attempt to use government to relieve pain or for doctors to prescribe something to cover it up. Looking at you, Mark Zuckerberg, please go back to coding and out of the universal basic income argument. It is pain that drives us to do something different or to create new solutions. But doesn't pain also drive us to overeat, to cut, or to take our own lives? Yes, which is why we need not to eliminate pain, but to develop a better way of dealing with it and responding to it. The Science of Fulfillment Pain drives us to find solutions. It becomes dangerous when those solutions become addictions rather than an outlet for the energy. Pain can drive us to create a new business. But when we seek money to cover up our insecurity, no amount of money will be enough. Loneliness can drive us to connect with other people. But when we use sex as a way to cover up loneliness, no amount of sex can be enough. I believe that fulfillment is achieved through a two part strategy. Practicing active appreciation and through enjoying intimate relationships. I am yet to find any substitutes for genuine appreciation, which is a muscle that must be developed via practice, and genuine relationships, which is a fundamental genetic input. Our relationships affect our hormones, our thoughts, even the food we crave. And yet to meet someone who was focused on appreciating what they have, felt close to the people around them and was unfulfilled. Our brains are incredibly smart. They always find a way to get our needs met, either positively or destructively. When we experience pain, we can put that energy into creation or through destruction, and it can find a way to get its needs met either way. Pain, therefore, is not something to fear or to run away from, but to embrace and to use as a source of fuel. Pain is a cycle and it never will be fully eliminated. Instead, it is the fuel for us to grow continually, which is our ultimate purpose as human beings. But enjoyment and fulfillment comes from appreciation and connection. And there are no substitutes. That's the end of that blog post. And what I hope people took away from that is a the fact that you can be incredibly successful and not enjoy any of it. Because fulfillment does not come from success. It comes from practicing appreciation. And I believe that it comes from relationships as well. I think it's probably our most primary and primal genetic input is the connection that we have with other people, other things, whether it's God or the universe or other people or whatever it is. I actually think that's why religion exists. Because it gives us the ability to connect with something. It gives us something compelling, beyond ourselves. And the second point that I hope people took away from this is the fact that pain itself is a change agent. It's fuel for change. That's what it's there for. That's what it is there to do. It tells us that something is wrong and it gives us the energy to do something about it. And in the case of a lack of fulfillment, oftentimes we think that the gift Is the acclamation or the admiration from other people. But really the gift is our own ability to enjoy something. And when we can only enjoy something because of the acclimates, because of what other people put on us, We're a slave to it Rather than free to create our own lives. I got into a conversation with a buddy of mine who also works with us@freedom fastlaneandcapitalism.com about the meaning of life and how complicated we make it. Our brains are meaning making machines. Our brains are made to figure things out, to find the meaning in everything. The reality is, life means nothing. There is no meaning to life. There is nothing you have to figure out. There is nothing that you have to find. There is no meaning except the meaning that you create. Now, some people resist this idea and they say, well, that's pretty depressing. If life has no meaning and they just put meaning to it, not only does life not have meaning, but the fact that it has no meaning has no meaning. But we are meaning making machines. We always want to find a meaning, we always want to figure it out. But there is nothing to get, there's nothing to figure out, there's nothing to find. There's no ultimate purpose for us to discover except that which we choose and that which we create. And if we are not actively involved in the creation process, then we lose.

It is both freeing to discover that there is nothing to discover in the first place. And it also puts more responsibility on us to create something, to create a future that is bigger than our past. To create something that motivates us to enjoy the things around us and to cultivate the relationships around us that that will ultimately give us a feeling of fulfillment, give us a feeling of enjoyment, give us a feeling of satisfaction. Without that responsibility, without us actually actively practicing that and developing that, then we become slaves to the admiration, the comparison, the success, the things that we think will be substitutes for appreciating what we already have and enjoying genuine connections with other human beings, with our source, with whatever it is that we connect to. That is what I believe is the source of happiness and what I believe to be true about our lives and our role in the world. There is no inherent meaning. There is nothing to find. You are literally free to create whatever you want. And anything that you've decided upon being the meaning, Whether that is your religion, or your goals, or your purpose, you have already made up. And already making them up actually makes us happier than finding nothing at all. So you might as well just create one that motivates you that excites you and creates a future that is bigger than your past. Would love to hear your thoughts. Let me know at Facebook. Head over to facebook.com ryandanielmoran leave me a comment on this post. Let me know what you think of it. If you hate me, love it. Disagree or agree? Would love to hear your feedback and I want you to remember Freedom is like an empty room. Freedom is an open space. We have to clear the old junk out in order to create something new. But it's a pretty boring place to be if we don't decide what we want in the room in the first place. And you can always fill it up with new stuff. But just clearing out the old and having an empty room and hoping somebody else fills it doesn't ultimately make us happy. Deciding what we want our lives to look like, what we want our purpose to be, what we want our lives to be about. That is ultimately what we are free to do and what we are required to do if we are going to enjoy it at all. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and and I'll see you on the next one.