The Real Reason You Feel Empty (Even When Life Looks Good) | Musician Mike Posner

Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that pain is a teacher.

I realized that I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I've got a few hits, got a few million dollars, and I'm just sort of looking around like, is this it? Because I got all the stuff I was supposed to. There was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given. To the world. And I said, if I keep following that script, I know I'm never gonna close the gap.

I have to admit something. I am not a millennial. I also don't listen to a lot of popular music. And so if I'm really honest, I didn't really know who Mike Posner was when we booked him on the podcast. Turns out he's a multi-platinum Grammy-nominated recording artist and producer. But my team knew exactly who he was because they're millennials. And for them, Mike's hits were more than just songs, they were anthems for their generation. Songs like "Cooler Than Me" and "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" became part of the zeitgeist. But I'm really glad that Mike came on the podcast. Whether you know his songs or not, whether his songs captured your feelings or not, his message actually matters to all of us. By every external metric, Mike was hugely successful. But no one prepared him for life once the party ended. Mike spent the past decade trying to find himself again. He walked across America, he almost died of a snakebite, he climbed Mount Everest, and here's the thing: it worked. He learned something beautiful about himself: self-acceptance. Mike will freely admit he is now a different person from the guy who needed to chase external validation. And his new song "I Went Back to Ibiza" tells his new story. It turns out whether you have a Grammy nomination or not, whether you're famous or not, the lessons Mike learned apply to all of us, because his journey is a very human journey. This is A Bit of Optimism. You know, it's funny, they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Yeah.

And your career, your story, your presence, it seems to have shown up at the right time for the times we live in. The challenges that people are dealing with, the journeys that people are on, your story, your message, your inspiration would not have worked in the you know, 20 years ago. So I don't know if you feel that.

I don't know. I haven't really contemplated it before. I've toyed with this idea that God gives teachers pain, and if you learn to overcome that pain, you can teach others to do the same. And the teaching then is imbued with, you know, sort of like a gravitas that it wouldn't otherwise have. You teaching from experience rather than a conceptual, like, reading of some book that you've never gone through. So I guess, thank you. I guess, thank you. But you're right. You go through certain, certain trials and tribulations and challenges, we could just call them that, that maybe the ones that I've overcome or, you know, figured out some kind of rhyme or reason to how to get through them, maybe they were like, yeah, 5, 10 years before a lot of other people are undergoing the same ones. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to share and help people where I can.

Did you want to be a musician or a teacher?

Depends what age, Mike, we're asking. I think at 16, I just wanted to be cool and have some girls pay attention to me, you know, was probably as far as I had planned out. Definitely, definitely not a teacher.

And I guess it also speaks to the role of art, right? Which I'm fascinated by as an art lover. I spend, you know—

Do you know how rich you sound when you say as an art lover?

Oh my, really?

Oh yeah.

Okay, okay, now you're gonna get me. Okay, now this beautiful invitation to have you on the podcast is now gonna change, and I'm gonna pull up my soapbox and I'm gonna do all the talking now. All right, because that is such a trigger.

I love art too, by the way, but when you say, as an art lover, if you start a sentence like that, come on. As your friend, I want you to know certain people are gonna Does it sound elitist to say as a music lover?

No, no, right? Does it sound elitist to say as a food lover? In the middle. In the middle. So I think, I think we're speaking to one of the problems with, with art, right? I understand why it doesn't sound elitist when you say it for music is because music for $14.95 a month, you have unlimited access to all the music in the world. You know, so it's accessible. But this is the mistake about art, which is art is accessible too. It's the institutions that house the art or sell the art that are the elitist assholes that I hate. I love art and I hate the art world.

Yeah.

And there are incredibly talented young artists whose work is accessible. You can visit a museum, you can visit a gallery, many of those are free. You can also scroll through the internet and scroll through Instagram and you can appreciate somebody's intensity and creativity all day. And so, or you could watch a train go by, or you can watch a train go by. And I think you're absolutely right. I have these moments, they're ultra, ultra present moments, and they catch me by surprise. I don't do it on purpose, where I'm fully consumed by the sights and sound of the thing I'm doing. So when I'm making coffee in the morning and it doesn't happen all the time, but I'll randomly— it's like a switch goes and I'm all of a sudden hyper-attuned to the clank of the coffee pot and the swish of the spoon in the coffee and the sprinkle of the coffee into the cup, you know. And all those sounds become my morning music, and everything else is completely tuned out. To your point, we are surrounded by beautiful, beautiful things.

That wasn't my point. I was just trying to tease you a little bit. I know.

Do you have to have courage to put so much of yourself and your vulnerability in your work for display? Like, why not just sing about love and happiness and joy? Why sing about loss and pain and hurt? Because most, most art or most music it's superficial. Let's be honest, the lyricists and the lyrics that are written, it's forced rhymes and silly stories and made-up ideas. What is it about your work? Is it courage? Is it naïveté that you are so raw?

Well, first of all, thank you for recognizing that as you asked the question, I had this riff that our friend Enki sometimes goes on. I know he's been a guest on your—

Yeah, I loved his episode.

He has this great riff that he'll sometimes do on stage and he says, "Art is alchemy." Yeah. Okay, so you're taking pain that you undergo in life and pain is a part of life. We all go through pain. Every single person at some point will undergo extreme stress. Not like, oh, I stubbed my toe. Like, man, this person died. Like, every single human being gets the privilege of experiencing extreme pain at some point. Artists have this gift. We get to make, if we do our job well, something beautiful out of that pain. So our friend Adam Enki, he calls that alchemy. He says you are alchemizing pain into beauty. Now, if someone else like you as an art lover can go either listen to the song or hear the poem or see the painting, and that imbues you with a sense of fellowship, okay, going, "Wow, I too have felt that sort of pain, but it was hard for me to describe. It was hard for me to put my finger on." Maybe because it's hard to even describe in words to begin with. But if you get to play with music or you get to play with color, then suddenly you can put your finger on this thing that was otherwise ineffable. And then you, Simon, as our placeholder, as an art lover, kids say, wow, I'm not the only one. So art is an artist with a capital A. And I agree with you, you know, a lot of the art— and it's not with judgment because I've done it too, right? Most of the art, or the music, most of the music rather, that we have, it is not art, it's a commodity.

Most of the artists become brand ambassadors for a picture of themselves that they used to be, or Or it's simply a commercial enterprise and it's a product and they choose the product that sells well.

Great, great. And nothing wrong with it.

Yep.

But art, as you asked, with a capital A, it often involves— I haven't thought about it enough to say it always involves, but it often involves this sort of alchemy. And it's somebody saying, the artist saying, hey, this is what it's like for me to be human. This is the stuff I don't tell other people, or I don't even know how to— I don't even know how to start telling. But when I sit down at this keyboard, I pick up this guitar, this is what it's like for me to be me. Anybody else? Does anyone else feel this way? And if we do a good job, someone hears it, looks, sees it, and and they might not even be born yet. That's the crazy thing. And they go, "Thank you, me too." Okay, I have so many thoughts bubbling.

I have talked about this publicly that we have misinterpreted vulnerability in broadcast, that going into a room by yourself with your phone, turning on the camera and crying and talking about how you're a loss is not really vulnerability, but it is broadcast. And it's actually more difficult to say those exact same words to a friend in person, in private, than it is by yourself in your room with your phone, right?

Right.

But this is where I need your help. What's the difference between the broadcast of my feelings by myself in my room with my camera, and you sitting by yourself writing down your lyrics, strumming your guitar, recording the album and putting it out there. Why is one art and designed to be a mirror to make others feel not alone in that pain, and the other seems to kind of like— I know it feels different, but it feels to miss the mark, like, because they're similar. What makes them different?

Well, It comes down to intention because you're right, you know, going alone in the guitar— look, I got my microphone right here, you know, I could be alone in this room. This is where I do my music, by the way. If I just sit here and I write a song from that exact viewpoint, which is not to create a human connection and fellowship but is actually to get attention and Enqueue Riffs on this. He said that's not alchemy, that's turning pain to pain.

The equation would be then, if you're broadcasting and the likes and the follows are the thing that alleviate the pain, you miss the point. Because the album sales, the downloads of your song are not the thing that relieve the pain, but the album sales and the downloads are a recognition that others may either appreciate the music superficially or feel not alone when they share your pain. Perhaps, perhaps, you know, they could be because you didn't write the song and say, this is going to be the hit.

No, I'm always surprised by those. You know, I've had, I think it's 5 songs that you could air quote call hits in my career. 2 have been that I sing, and then the other 3 have been songs I've written for other artists, right? That I don't perform.

Right.

But people ask me this question sometimes. They'll be like, you know, because I've made albums my entire adult life. I think I have 12 now. So almost one a year for like the last 15 years.

I just thought you were a guy who wrote a song.

Right. So people ask me this question. They say, but listen, the context in which I live now is like, My last hit song was, I don't know, like 9 or 10 years ago, like really popular song. So people will say to me like, when are you gonna write another song? Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I've written hundreds of songs since then, all in the context of, for whatever reason, I'm always shocked by which of my songs have become popular. Yeah. I feel like I meet and work with and know other recording artists who can sort of like sit down and go, hey, we're going to make a big one. And then they do. And then they say, this is the big one. And then you promote it and then it's the big one. I always put these on like, man, surely this one's going to be— this one's going to be very popular. It never works out. And then I'll write something like my most popular song so far is called I Took a Pill in Ibiza. Right. And this song is like I finished it and I loved it. It felt true to me. It felt like territory I hadn't already trodden as a writer. But I also thought, surely this will never become popular because it's got a drug reference in the title. It's like, this will never be on the radio. And lo and behold, it became quite popular. So I never know.

I wanna go back to something that we said before. I said there were lots of thoughts, and there's another one that I had, which is you had the courage, and I call it courage, to put your feelings, your hardships in a song for all to hear. But do we live in a world right now where people, and I'll skew younger, you know, the younger people, well, maybe old people, not to be ageist, are afraid of discomfort. And the reason I see younger people is because I think, you know, they didn't live through the war, they didn't live through civil rights, you know. Arguably, there's a lot of discomfort these days. There seems to be a lot of upheaval and discomfort these days for all kinds of reasons. Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that, that pain is a teacher. But are we learning the lessons? Are we learning the lessons of pain now, or are we just avoidant? And putting up barriers and walls and, you know, creating boundaries— I put it in air quotes— because the pain is just too much. Scott Galloway talks about this, like, go screw something up, go fail, go humiliate yourself. It'll be more valuable to your life than none of those difficult, hard, and uncomfortable feelings.

Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't You know, I got a degree from Duke University in sociology, but I haven't really kept up with that in the last 20 years, Simon. I'm vaguely familiar with the archetypal stereotypes of Gen Z and millennials, all this stuff, but I wouldn't be so bold as to say whole generations this way or that way. I could say in my own life, many of the things that you just referenced are true. Yeah, that things went relatively well. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. There was no capital T trauma in my childhood. I got really good grades. I went to Duke University, all the while sort of developing this skill as a musician. Before I graduated from Duke University, I won myself a record deal. My career had started to take off. I was becoming famous. Flash cut forward, now I'm 30 years old and I've got a few hits, got a few million dollars in the bank account, and I'm just sort of looking around like, is this it? Because I got all the stuff I was supposed to. When it comes to like the American society, or like what's the pinnacle? It's like president, Rockstar, you know, it's like, which one would you rather be? At least for our gen— I think now it's like Instagram influencer is up there for kids, but for people my age, it's like, I was a pop star, man. You can't go that much higher than that. It's true.

I think pop star is even higher than movie star.

Maybe, perhaps. I think then there's levels to each. You know, I realized that I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I was living in West Hollywood, and I, I just thought, you know, this can't be it. This can't be it. And there was this feeling, Simon, that maybe you'll resonate with, and I'm willing to bet more than one person resonate with listening. There was this feeling like there was more inside me than I was expressing. Like, I, I had more to give inside my soul than my actual life reflected. There was this asymmetry between, like, what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world, and I couldn't figure out how to close that gap. And people would say to me at the time, but you've done so much. You're the guy that sang Cooler Than Me. You did I Took a Pill in Ibiza. Like, you got nominated for a Grammy. What, like, what do you mean you've given so much to the world? But it wasn't about the external. It was this just internal knowing, like, something is off. And I remember, like, for years I felt like, man, I was just like one supplement away, or like one new biohacking trick away, or one change in my diet away from feeling peace from feeling like my life was the way it was supposed to be. And at age 30, I said, I don't know how I'm going to close this peace gap, but I know if I just keep doing what I'm doing— like, because I was on a trajectory, I was supposed to make albums, then go on tour, then make another album, then go on tour, man, make another album, then go on tour. I was supposed to basically do that until I died. Or became so irrelevant that it was no longer a business that, that, that a multinational corporation could count on, right? So I, I said, if I keep following that script, I know I'm never going to close the gap. That's a recipe to not close the gap. So to Scott Galloway's point, like, I have to try something else. So that's when I chose to do this crazy idea, which was to walk across the, the United States. I wanted to start walking on the East Coast, the Atlantic Ocean, New Jersey, and walk all the way to the West Coast. It is some strange effort. I was trying to lose myself and find myself at the same time. And I only tell this whole wild story because at age 30. I made the decision to go, and then I actually started when I was 31. It's a funny change of numbers because I grew up Jewish, and Judaism, you're supposed to have a bar mitzvah when you're 13, and that's when you're supposed to become a man. But now I wasn't 13, I was 31, and I realized, hey, you know, I'm not a man. Why am I not a man? Because I haven't gone through hard stuff. Life just kind of worked. And there's been hardship internally. But you know what? Instead of trying to make myself more famous, more money so I can get more stuff, make my little box inside LA more comfortable, I'm gonna make it as uncomfortable as possible. I'm gonna do something I don't know if I can do. It's gonna be physically hard. It's actually going to be dangerous. And it's going to be so divorced from what I'm supposed to do that it might actually risk the work that I put in the last 10 years of my life to become a pop star. And that's what my agents and managers told me. They said, you're going to ruin your whole career by doing this. Okay, let's go. And for me, that was my real bar mitzvah. That was my real starting to become an adult. I think there's a lot more to that. So I agree with you, you know, a lot of what mental health is supposed to be is actually mental weakness. And it's like, I'm gonna take time off, I'm gonna make boundaries, I'm gonna shield myself from stuff that's challenging or difficult. That's not mental health, that's weakness. That's you can't deal with things that are challenging. No, you actually want to become inoculated. Choose hardship. And I realize like maybe some people listening to this are thinking, oh, this is absurd, you know, Mike Posner, you're like a healthy young white guy who has a lot of money saying choose hardship. And I'm saying yes, you're right, I had a life that didn't have so much hardship. In fact, it was so devoid of hardship that it was empty. We need hardship. We pretend that we don't want any challenges in our life. In actuality, We crave them. We crave challenges because even though our intellectual minds tell us, hey, let's make life as comfortable as possible, the only way to grow, the real way to grow, is through challenges. Challenges come and we ask, what are we supposed to learn from this?

Who were you when you set off in New Jersey and who were you when you arrived in California?

Well, I can remember when I arrived in California, I looked at my friend and I said, man, before I started this, I was such a bitch. I just, you know, you learn. There's a through line of me and all of us I think never changes, but there's a lot that we can change, more than we give ourselves credit for. We got to be real careful when we start saying, I'm this kind of person. I'm an introvert. I'm an avoidant type of person. I'm an anxious type of per— no, you're not. You have avoidant tendency. You have avoidant habits, patterns. You have anxious habits, patterns. A lot of stuff we can change we don't give ourselves credit for. So to your question, what changed? A lot of things didn't change, you know. A lot of things didn't change. I didn't learn to become a better person in relationships. I didn't become somebody that somebody else would want to marry. I didn't find joy and fulfillment. But what did change, I found a freaking tougher part of myself, man, that was never going to come out in West Hollywood. Because I almost died on the journey. I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake and spent, I think it was 3 nights in the ICU. And my leg swelled to the size of an elephant trunk. And, and when that happened, I got really famous. I got a lot of attention. You got picked up by mainstream media and TMZ, and my Instagram followers went up. So I was getting all this attention after I got hurt, and it was a crossroads moment because I was either going to go back to living my life based on how much attention I could get from other people. This goes back to the beginning of our conversation, or I was gonna finish this thing. Because the more I, more I was hurt, that's more attention I got. And when I was walking, I didn't get that much attention.

So there's an irony in it, isn't there?

It's ridiculous.

There's an irony which is if you just walked across the country and not get bitten by a snake You would have learned your lessons, you would have had your hardship, you would have come out and said, I was this, I'm now this. And, you know, different because you got bitten by a snake, but, you know, you would have had your lessons of humility and all of the rest of it, right? But walking across the country for the rest of us is boring, you know what I mean? Like, hearing about a guy walking is boring, not for the person doing it.

I understand.

And so there's an irony that the very thing you're trying to escape is the thing that doubled because of the event, of the drama, the near-death, because it's newsworthy, right? And this is where I find this whole conversation, quite frankly, difficult, because it's all true. Hardship builds character. Hardship teaches you things about yourself you would never learn. We don't learn anything when things go well. We learn things when things go badly. All the lessons are in the difficult. Everything you're saying is true. Challenging ourselves, getting out of our comfort zones, all of this is good advice and makes great posters with, you know, dangling kittens. All easier said than done in practice. You know, somebody who says, "I'm gonna walk across the country," and then you hear about you getting bitten by a snake, you're like, "Eh," you know? It sort of only adds the risk. The reason I struggle with the conversation, I'm even struggling being articulate about why I'm struggling with the conversation, Yes, because it's because like there's two kinds of hardship, right? There's an event— I got bitten by a snake— that's an event, that's a one kind of hardship. You know, I lost somebody I love, that's a hardship. My relationship collapsed, that's a hardship, right? And there's a different kind of hardship which is sort of like I'm trying to change my lot in life. I started my own business. I've decided I'm gonna live a life without a corporate job, and that hardship is more ongoing and more extended. Where I'm trying to get to is like, are we talking about either one? Are we talking about both? Because some hardship we can create for ourselves, you know, it's called risk, and other hardship just happens to us whether we like it or not.

Yes, yes.

Take a breakup, for example, right? Someone's not in a relationship and they're so afraid of being hurt that they keep their walls up so high and are so incapable of vulnerability that they'll never actually get the relationship. And they spend their life angry that they can't be in a relationship, not recognizing that they're the ones that have built this wall around them out of fear of losing. Or you can actually be in the relationship.

Wait, wait, wait, have you read my journals from ages, uh, 20 to 34? What's What's going on?

Or you can be in the relationship and so afraid of losing it that you become a pleaser to the other person, manipulating your own self into points of quite extreme discomfort just to ensure the other person's happy for fear of losing the relationship, which by the way will probably shorten the life of the relationship because you're not being yourself. Yeah, and this is what vulnerability is, right? Vulnerability is the risk to lose the thing you hope you don't lose. Vulnerability is stepping into the thing that absolutely could fail. And we're not talking about being blind. There's a difference between jumping out of a plane and jumping out of a plane with a parachute. You know, they both have the same thrill, but one has certainty and one does not, of failure. And when I make the blanket broad comment about, you know, afraid of being uncomfortable, we see it exhibited, which is, I'm so afraid of breaking up with you, even though we've dated for 6 months. You know what I'll do? I'll just ghost you. It's easier for me. Nothing personal. I know it's traumatic for you, but it's just easier for me because I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation, break up with you. Or I'm just going to quit my job. You know, it's not going great, but instead of talking to my boss, I think I'll just quit because it's easier for me, you know? And that's what I'm talking about, which is it is the discomfort, even when it blows up in our face, that the lessons will happen. Because you and I have both walked into things sometimes blindly and sometimes consciously, that did not go well. I would argue went extremely badly. And I can be blaming, be like, they did this, they did that. And some of that might be true, but it also gives me the opportunity to be like, how did I show up? What did I do to pour gas on that fire? Whether I started or not is irrelevant. And I can't learn that without screwing it up. And so if we avoid making mistakes, if we avoid feeling humiliated, if we avoid discomfort, pain, just because it's easier for me right now, you know, then to your point, that hollowness perpetuates. And now we're living lives of running away, avoidance, and fear. It's getting very philosophical, Mike. And so I think the problem I have with these kinds of conversations is the discussion is so academic, and the discussion usually happens with people who did it and are now going around everybody else, you really got to do it.

Mm-hmm.

And you have the credibility because you did it, and people found inspiration in your story and continue to find inspiration in your story. I guess, tell me a story not about you. Tell me a story about somebody who did something because of your art. Or because of your walk across the country?

That's a good question. I'll preface it by saying one other thing about me, or the old me, which is all the stuff that you're describing of avoiding, ghosting, making decisions based on what's psychologically most comfortable for oneself.

Yeah.

I've done all those things.

We all have. We all have.

No, no, I'm saying every single— worse, worse than that. I mean, who I used to be was not a good guy.

Yeah.

So I don't think anyone should listen to me because I'm so wise, or I'm— I've done these cool things, or, you know, I think they're cool, you know, walking across the US. A lot of people think they're very stupid. I don't think anyone should, should take any credence to, to my messages or, you know, my messages. I was like, I'm not here to proselytize or preach to anyone. I'm just here to share human to human. But I don't think anyone should listen to me because of those things or where I'm at now. I think they should listen because of where I was, how miserable I was, how many times I thought about killing myself. Not because I hadn't achieved something externally— I, I had achieved a lot externally— but because I was doing the exact things you're talking about. That I realized somewhere deep down I was not happy. And the point of my whole life until I got into my early 30s was convincing the world I was. My life was a fraud, and my reason for existence was convincing people that I was not a fraud. And I was good at it. People even found me inspiring back then, and on some level I was But I didn't have what I have now. I didn't have just a peace in, in being. I didn't have the ability to hold a vision of the future that I'm excited about, but also being content with, hey man, if this all ends right now, I'm grateful I got to even have a go-around. So I'm not avoiding your question. The first guy that, that pops into my head, there was a guy named Adam When I was walking across Kansas, this— I'll call him a kid. He wasn't a kid, but he was younger than me. I was 31 and he was maybe 25 or something. He just kept showing up. And at that point, I walked 24 miles a day and he would walk with me 24 miles a day. And I think he walked like a couple hundred miles with me in Kansas. He was a really quiet guy. And I got a message a few years later, and it was from him, and he said, I decided I was going to walk across America also, and I would like you to walk the last day with me. So I went to Santa Monica and I met up with this guy. And I walked with him and he had this big backpack on and he was like real thin and like you could tell he'd been through, been through some life. And I watched him dive in the Pacific Ocean and I wouldn't be so egotistical to say it's because I did it. You know, I think probably had some, some non-trivial part in like seeding the idea in his head, but ultimately it was his decision to go do that. And I'm proud of them. You know, the other day I was walking on stage, and I used to run these community calls every week last year. I don't do it anymore. And I was walking on stage in this nightclub in Austin, and someone held up a phone because it's so loud in there, and they had written on the phone, and it just said, "Your calls helped me get clean from drugs and alcohol. Thank you." I get a lot of stuff like that, but it's not me, it's them. You know, he, he got himself clean of drugs now. It wasn't my call or my song or some magic word I said on a Zoom call, right? Like, one of my favorite teachers, Ram Dass, he say we're all just walking each other home. And I can't tell you how many times Simon, like, a piece of art— like, to go back to our, the beginning of our conversation or another human being live, or never on Instagram, but sometimes even a YouTube video has helped me so much, man. Helped me through like real periods of darkness. And if one of my songs or something I, I say, or some distinction that I picked up from some other teacher or some book I read, and I share it, regurgitate it back, and probably you know, mess it up a little bit, but hopefully don't ruin all the truth of it, can help someone on their journey towards what? Towards themselves, towards— I believe in God— with a connection to something bigger than them, towards the life that I think we all deserve, which is a life imbued with meaning, some fun, some joy, some enthusiasm. Maybe some laughter and definitely some love mixed in. If anything, I do bring people closer to that. Like, that's awesome. It comes from telling the truth first. And then sometimes, sometimes these are beautiful byproducts can happen. They're moments of grace.

I love the way you speak about peace and grace and moments. You know, and I think you're right. I think if, if you're living a life well lived, if you're leaning into the discomfort in the way that you're describing it, the result is calm, right? Because the opposite of calm is the anxiety of how many followers, how much money, how much fame, right? That is not calm. That's anxious. Me proving myself to myself, trying to convince myself that I have value relative to someone else. And I think this to me is the ultimate message that I find in your work, which is it's not about the pursuit of discomfort, it's not about the pursuit of difficult, it's not about the pursuit of any of those things. It's the pursuit of calm. Peace, a restful mind. And you have learned that these challenges that you put for yourself and these acceptances and the difficulties, what you have found is that has been the best route to find that peace, which is counterintuitive, that peace came from stress. Not from pretending you're a baller. And it is a deeply personal journey because only we know the stress and the discomfort and the unease that we feel, because we can project anything we want. And there's a deep, deep honesty that has to go with, am I calm? Am I at peace? And I think that's perhaps one of the reasons that You know, as I get older, I'm becoming that person that drove me nuts when I was younger. Me too. It's really annoying, you know, where when I was younger I thought I knew everything, and now I realize how little I know. And I actually find it more comforting knowing that I know less, where I thought I had to have comfort by knowing more and proving I could do more. And now just, I'm total, a total peace going, I know so little and I'm cool with that. If life goes normally, stuff goes bad. And so, you know, the benefit of age is not, is not that you get wisdom just because you're older. It's just that the likelihood that you've had to struggle a little bit is higher. Some people find those lessons at a very young age, you know, an 18-year-old who's had a bad run can have the same wisdom as a 70-year-old, you know. But the point is they lived a little. And what you're talking about is injecting life experience into the system, injecting the hardship, injecting it. And you can sit around and wait for it, it'll happen at some point.

Yes, it will.

But you have agency. We can inject it. And nobody's saying walk across the country, you know, But there are little things that we can do, little risks that we can take in our careers, in our relationships. Somebody recently said to me, I don't tell you enough how much I love you.

Hmm.

And I, I took that exactly how it was intended, and I felt more loved in that moment from the risk of telling me that I don't tell you enough, not because I don't feel it, It's just, I don't know how you're going to receive it, and I don't know if you feel the same way, but I realize I don't tell you how much I love you. And it was better. That one sentence made me feel more loved than the daily acts of kindness. My point is, that was an injection. That was a conscious decision to inject stress and fear into the system. It happened to have gone well. It doesn't always. And that's part of it, which is sometimes we don't get the response we're hoping for, and that's why we avoid doing it again. And that's where I'm struck by your message. I think it's about peace and calm, not about stress or discomfort.

I agree. I I'm glad that person told you how much they, they love you, Simon. A lot of people love you a lot, and I think you're quite lovable, man. I do.

Thanks, Mike.

I do.

And too bad we're doing this virtually. We could hug now.

A big hug, man. I'll give you a big bear hug. You're right, and thank you for distilling, you know, our conversation further. It's not about doing some crazy thing. In fact, some of the crazy things I've done, I feel like I had to do just to realize I didn't have to do them. There you go.

And that's the problem. That's the problem, because we see somebody on Instagram who does this, and now we think it's a cycle. We think that, that if we do this every day and we overstress the body and overstress the mind constantly, that's what's making us stronger. But it's only adding more stress. And the pursuit isn't strength. The pursuit isn't grit. The pursuit is peace, a calm mind. You embody everything you talk about, and you and I both know that that is rare.

Thank you.

And it's a joy to, to be in it with you, you know.

I appreciate that. You know, I'm very much still building the ship as I sail. I sometimes leave the toilet seat up, and I'm known for getting my wallet in airports 3 to 4 times per year. But all that being said, it's not to promote an album.

Hey, you can find my wallet at LAX.

Use my credit card for whatever you want.

That's right.

You can even—

you can buy me— buy my album with my credit card. Buy one for your friends. That would be a very clever promotion. To find your credit card.

Listen, you're right. Thank you for distilling it down, because on some level I thought, you know, it isn't my message to tell people, oh, you got to go do crazy stuff. This is all nuanced, you know.

But we live in a world of sound bites where there's plenty of people online telling us to go do the crazy things.

I once watched a podcast with two guys who you would know. I'm not going to say them because I'm going to say something mean afterwards, but two brilliant men, influencers, and they sat across a table from one another with their big brains and they like sparred with these witty aphorisms that they had like loaded up like machine gun bullets. What was the example of one? Like, I have my own of them. Like, I was going to say one earlier, like, you know, we train for the pain that we don't choose by the pain that we do choose, right?

Right.

And they, they just had like scores of them and they're like, wham! And the other guy's like, he— that's all that— the only way they could even speak. Like, there was no— he's like, well, I think this—

bam!

Another guy's like, that's interesting— bam! And it's like, it was like a conversation of just like—

it's like, it's like ChatGPT talking to Claude.

Yeah, but they were clever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But like they weren't actually relating to each other, just kind of like slapping their intellectual balls on the table. And I was like, this is unlistenable, you know? Like, I can't wait, my brain's gonna explode. The point is that, you know, as, as, as clever as any of those aphorisms or quips are, and as, as far as like they can get any sort of like guys like us on the internet, there's always nuance. Yeah, like hardship does create challenge, which is like the thing that you were struggling with earlier. But like, you push it too far and it becomes totally selfish and this like rabbit hole that leads to nowhere. And I lived that because after I walked across America, I climbed Everest. And when I was on Everest, I was like, this is a really dumb way to die if I die here. And Thankfully, praise God, I didn't die there.

Because people forget that getting to the top is only halfway.

Exactly. Well played. So, and so the point is that I risked my life for self-improvement. Literally, I almost died twice exploring myself, which is selfish. Okay, there's a lot of worthy reasons to die. All of them involve other human beings.

Yeah.

None of them involve exploring yourself. Yeah. So any of these things, like, when pushed to the extreme, they kind of fall apart. And, and what's left is like this moment in our lives contributing to others, a feeling of love or transcendence if we can transmit that to another person. Like your friend did to you in that moment. Yeah, like, what's left after all this intellectual snobbery and like personal growth of, you know, it's like we're here walking each other home. We're all gonna die.

Yeah.

And, and can we make each other's walk a little more calm? Can we hold someone else's hand?

I'm realizing we just came up with an accidental aphorism. Which, you know, yeah, I know.

Uh, sound the alarms. By the way, before, because I get the feeling maybe we're wrapping up, I want you to know that I wore my grown-up shirt today.

Why?

Because I just felt like this is a serious podcast, man.

Oh my God, if you think this is a serious podcast, I have failed. Seriously, I have failed.

Serious business.

I get told this a lot. People, like, they're afraid to come on because I'm serious. I mean, that really upsets me.

No, I didn't say you were serious. I said this is a serious podcast.

Well, it's called A Bit of Optimism, which is not the most serious subject in the world. Here's the accidental aphorism that I've now decided I really like as a metaphor, and I'm not going to try and unwrap it, but I will lay it out, and then we'll leave it for you and for everybody else to just go ruminate. When I said when you get to the top of Everest, you're only halfway, I think that's good life advice. That when you get to the top of whatever mountain you're climbing— career, whatever, relationship, lock that marriage down, you know, whatever the goal is— when you get to the top, you're only halfway. And the only place to go once you're at the top is down. And if you thought the goal was to get to the top you've missed the point. The goal is to have peace on the journey up and to have peace on the journey down, that the joy of coming down is as exciting and the views are as beautiful as going up. And all the aphorisms are all about the journey up, and they never tell us that when you get there, you're only halfway. And no one gives us any advice on the journey down the other side of the mountain. Like, all right, I got the relationship, now what? Oh, now the hard work. Now the hard work. Mm-hmm. And I just think there's, there's more to unwrap there, that the joy of life is the whole journey. The joy of climbing Everest is not the peak, it's the whole journey. It's the ability to come down the mountain and say, I went up and I came down. Because you can as easily die on the way down as you can on the way up. In fact, you're more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted.

Way more likely.

You're way more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted and you don't think clearly and you make mistakes. And if you spend too much time on the top— you know all this— you run out of time, you run out of oxygen, run out of all kinds of things. And I like that too. I like that metaphor. That on Everest you can spend too much time there. The longer you spend up in that air, you will increase the likelihood of death because you spent too long at the top, which is another perfect metaphor, which is if you're climbing up, make sure to keep the humility that maybe you don't need to stay there your whole life.

Yes. Yes, I love that.

What a joy.

Well, I'm not gonna say any more words. That big brain of yours just came out with that great multi-tiered metaphor. Come on, let's end.

No, okay, we'll end right there. Mike Posner, thank you for climbing Everest. Thank you for walking across America. Thank you for being bit by a snake. Thank you for taking pills in Ibiza. What a joy. And thank you for writing hundreds of songs, for the joy of writing the songs, even though they're not necessarily as famous. I just love the fact you've written 12 albums.

A lot of them, man.

I know, it's the work, but it's the work. This is the work of the artist. You do it not for others, you do it for yourself. And if, if they're hits, great. And if they're not hits, you're still making music because you love making music.

Oh, it's the best.

As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to A Bit of Optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. You can also watch A Bit of Optimism on Spotify. And remember, Spotify Premium users can enjoy the show ad-free. But if you'd like more optimism right now, click here to watch another episode. Until next time, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.