#43 Follow These 10 Steps to Completely Change Your Life in 2025 | BigDeal Wrapped

Hey, and welcome back to The Big Deal Podcast. I'm Codie Sanchez. Let's get into it. I wanted to do something different this episode, which is bring in my favorite podcast guests we've had and steal their truths, their secrets, and their lessons from 2024 so that we can make 2025 the best year ever. So let's get into it, shall we? The first one is from Ali Abdaal. If you don't know Ali, he is a former medical doctor turned huge YouTuber turned multi-time business owner. And he said this line that lives rent-free in my head. A great piece of advice I got from one of my medical school professors: an hour before 9 AM is worth 2 hours after 5 PM. And I thought about this a lot this year because I have this belief that most of your problems would be solved by getting up at 5:45 AM. And if you woke before the sun, went and started working before everybody else did, and did the uncomfortable thing that most of us won't do, that your life would probably be richer and more successful. And so, you know, he now has this New York Times bestselling book about procrastination with this other line I love, which is that procrastination is an emotional problem. You don't put things off because you're lazy, unmotivated, or lack discipline. You put it off for an emotional reason. And I think that is the same idea, that if we do what Mark Twain says, which is if you're going to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. If you're going to eat two, eat the big one first, or the hairy one first. I go back and forth between big or hairy. What would be the worst type of frog to eat? And so I think this the idea of, man, maybe we can't do all 452 things we need to do to make our life perfect next year, but what if we just got up a little bit earlier? Do we think that that time might actually be more valuable while we're fresh and the world hasn't yet awoken and we can't be interrupted? And do we also think that that would teach us that it's not up to our emotions as much? It's just something that we do. It's a habit that happens every single day, just like we wouldn't forget to breathe, like we wouldn't forget to brush our teeth, hopefully. I don't know about some of you guys out there. Maybe that is something that you do. But I took that away from Ali Abdaal when I sat with him this year. And I also loved this clip of his.

The goal is also not revenue or profit. The goal is maximizing profit within the constraints of the life that I want. And I was speaking to James Clear about this, you know, the famous author of Atomic Habits. And he is somewhat like, I love speaking to people who are very, very successful and also seem very happy and sort of balanced family life and everything. And, you know, he's got kids and he's not, he doesn't do that much stuff. He like, his book is selling stupidly large amounts of copies. And I asked him, you know, what has he seen, like who are the successful authors who are the happiest? And he said the secret is basically draw a box around the life, around the day-to-day life that you want. And within that box, sure, maximize profit. But if anything falls outside of that box, you have to say no to the thing. So he only does like one speaking gig a month, even though he could do loads and make loads of money. He doesn't make an online course, even though he probably could. He doesn't have an app, even though he could. Because for him, the box around his life is, I wanna be able to wake up when I want. I wanna be able to take my kids to school. I wanna have a few hours of writing. I wanna pick 'em up from school and hang out with the family in the evening. And I love that he's defined his constraints and he's maximizing profit within those constraints.

The next lesson is from Rich Roll. Rich Roll has an incredible story. If you've ever been in the deep, deep depths of depression, if you have also thought that alcoholism was something you struggled with, or an addictive personality, or an addiction of some type, he is an incredible person to turn to because he's turned from addiction to bestselling author to kind of elite athlete. He's also got incredible hair, if you guys haven't seen it, and he's become a friend of mine. And he said this line, "The prize never goes to the fastest guy. It goes to the guy who slows down the least." True in endurance sports and possibly even truer in life. Now I have the saying that, If you wanted to make more money and be richer, you should just move faster. But the truth is, it's not enough to move fast once. You gotta move fast continuously. So this idea of turtle versus hare, consistent forward progress that is slightly faster than kind of inconsistent start and goes, sort of releases us from a lot of the things that I think go bump in the night, which is, how can I keep running all the time? I'm tired. You know, I wish that I could do all these huge things, but I can't. I can't always move as fast as I want to. And I loved this quote from Rich because it's around reminder of just, can you slow down a little bit less than the other guy for this period of time in which you want to achieve your big things? And that is also the truth, the truth of marathon running. Who burns out the fastest in marathon running? Well, it's not the guy who has the set time for every single mile. It's the guy who burns through the first 5 or 10 miles and then eats up all their reserves and leaves nothing left in the tank for the back half. And so I think life might be just like that too. So how could we not just move faster but slow down the lease? The next lesson came from Scott Galloway. He's a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, also multi-time bestselling author, also kind of a crazy, crazy guy. We have totally different opinions on many things, but he said a line that I totally agree with, which is, people say to follow your passion. I think that's bullshit. Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich. I think that's true for the most part. In the beginning, you gotta follow the profits and you gotta skill stack your way to becoming somebody who can eventually turn their profits into something that they're passionate about. But how many times do we get told this lie that we should just follow what we are passionate about and the money will come? Where's the data on that? Do you really think that in the very beginning Elon was just obsessed with batteries for a car and that's where it came from? You know, do you think that all of these billionaires on the Forbes list, they were just obsessed with groceries? No, they got obsessed with the game and they got passionate about the game. And so I love that line. The flip side of that, though, that he said that it's kind of been something I've been pondering a lot too, is that he had this video segment. Elon Musk, do you not like the guy? You guys get at it at Twitter. Did he really call you insufferable? Did you just put that on a drift? What do we think about Elon?

No, he called me an insufferable numbskull.

On Twitter?

Yeah.

Did you talk back to him?

I don't even remember. I don't remember what I was saying. Yeah, it's not a big deal. And he's actually reached out to me through a friend saying we should get together.

I like that. I like a little bit of— I think you got to push back even on the biggest billionaires and they can handle it and they'll probably push back too.

Yeah.

Look, the problem is we're in a culture where we've decided if someone or a company is a net positive, if I had a button that Elon Musk would have to go back to South Africa, I wouldn't push that button. I think he's been a net good for the world, uh, inspired the EV race, the space— I mean, seeing that rocket, that booster rocket captured on it as it's falling, that shit's just inspiring. But at the same time, the word— the, the problem with the word a net good for society is the word net. I also think he should be held accountable for his coarseness and his cruelty. I don't think you attain that level of power such that you cannot pay people their legally obligated severance. I don't think you accuse an employee of being a sex criminal such that that employee has to move their house. I think he's not a very good role model for men. I don't think living alone with 9 or 12 children by 3 women with a loaded gun next to your bed is what men should aspire to. So, you know, I think it's just sort of a Greek tragedy. I think he's gonna move the world forward But I think quite frankly, being coarse and cruel and super into ketamine, I don't think that's something young men should aspire to. So should he be recognized for his achievements? Yes. Should he also be held accountable? And should we be critical of him on the things that where I don't think he's living up to his blessings? Yeah. And so, but look, I don't think he thinks a lot about me, nor should he, but I don't, More generally, the people who are most patriotic are the ones who've invested most in our nation, and that's veterans. They're the most patriotic. The thing I find so distressing about guys like Elon Musk and generally what I'll call this tech bro community is I think they're the most blessed Americans, or the most blessed people on the planet. Because if you look at a map, if you go up the western, coast, you start at San Diego, Qualcomm, and you go up to LA, you get SpaceX and Snap, and you keep going north, you get Salesforce and Meta and Alphabet, and you keep going north, you get Amazon and OpenAI and Microsoft, and then it stops when you hit the Canadian border. Lululemon maybe in Vancouver. And then you go down to San Diego and it stops and you gotta go another 5,000 kilometers until you get to Mercado Libre. Maybe there's something about being in America that has really helped you. And I find these are the first people to shitpost America. So it's like, boss, you don't realize a lot of your success is not your fault. It's the success of other Americans. Every one of these companies is built on a technology that was funded by American middle-class taxpayers, whether it was DARPA, whether Elon Musk got $350 million tax-free loan. He hates subsidies, but he was there for it when we gave him a low-interest $350 million. Their charging stations are being built out by taxpayers. DARPA, the internet, Netflix was built on net neutrality funded by California and the other 49 states taxpayers. And yet they seem to just dislike America once they have leveraged the shit out of it. And I just find it obnoxious.

So in it, Professor Galloway is talking about that he doesn't think that Elon is a great role model for young men, right? That he thinks that the things he does in a familiar way doesn't actually lead to a good role model. And so I think we have to be careful of this idea of, of moral absolutism. Does a human have to be perfect in every way in order for us to learn from them? No, they don't. Because guess what? You're not perfect and neither am I. And so when I listen to Prof. Galloway on this, I agree with him that maybe that is not how I want my son to be. I don't want my son to be married to 4 or 5 different women. I don't want my son to have all of these children by different women and not be happy. I mean, this clip from Elon right here where he talks about how living inside of his brain most people wouldn't want to do— I don't want that for my loved ones. And also, he is probably exactly the type of human humanity needs. And so do we have to have perfect humans? If you go back through history and time, I don't think you can find one. The Founding Fathers certainly were not. Hell, even Mother Teresa got shit. So I think at some point we have to say, how can I learn from the few things that I really admire about a human, and how can I serve it up kind of like a buffet? You take a few things you like, you leave a lot of the rest. And this releases for me a lot of maybe the same thing that you might feel, which is in order to have an incredible next year in 2025, we have to be perfect. And I think the answer is not so true. We have to pick a few things in which to focus on and know that at some point, even if we were— we are Elon Musk, other people will talk shit about us. The next one comes from a good friend of mine now, Bryan Johnson. So Bryan Johnson, he actually started a large tech company called Braintree, sold that for— I can't remember how many hundreds of millions of dollars— became very wealthy, then started on this mission to never die, or as he calls it, don't die. And he gets a lot of shit on YouTube if you guys have seen him for doing crazy things like measuring his erection every night, but all of it in this pursuit of trying to increase longevity. And I actually really think Brian's a brilliant guy, and when you get to know him and get past all of these kind of weird things that he does for his health, you can see that his mission is really noble, which is he wants humans to survive. And his, his, his ideas do also live rent-free in my head, and there's 3 of them. One is he says, imagine a world in the future in which people no longer die, in which AI exists, in which we're interplanetary, in which there's no scarcity, in which there's massive abundance. Wouldn't that be the ultimate travesty if we miss that? Because we were right on the cutting edge of the generation that did die. And, you know, while I'm a religious person and don't believe that death is the end, I think there's something really beautiful about this idea of what if we could just extend our life. I mean, back in the day we used to die when we were 30, right? And so maybe there is some like moral imperative to this idea of what if we could live with a wonderful lifespan and healthspan until 200. That's kind of cool. And in that vein, I get overwhelmed sometimes about all of the things we have to do in order to have good health. But if you were to talk to Brian, he'd say this one thing. He'd say, sleep is the highest yield activity within reach. Nothing has a higher payoff. Our culture makes this hard to see and tells us to resist it. I thought that was fascinating. Like, if you could do what he said on the podcast is, friends, I'm telling you, make sleep your number one priority and everything in your life will improve. So maybe we start with getting up a little bit earlier, but we also make sure we go to bed a little bit earlier too. And what happens with a well-rested mind is maybe the everything— maybe everything else shakes out. And one of the reasons I think this could be true is because Brian Johnson also talks about this quote that I think is really beautiful, which is, if you're struggling with depression, know that you are not your thoughts. Depression warps reality so thoroughly that you cannot see what is real as hard as you try. There is hope. Life is worth it. You will get through this. And Brian knows firsthand, you know, when in the, the podcast episode here he talks about his depression. But you have been public about being extremely depressed, suicidal, and at your lowest, and building a huge company despite all of that. What, what changed specifically that you think could be replicable for other people?

Yeah.

Besides the zeroth principle thinking.

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It was so easy in retrospect. 10 years, I tried everything to fix my depression. Like, you name it, I tried it for 10 years. For 10 years. And then I did two things that fixed it. I left my church and I got a divorce. And those two changes just made it evaporate. So it was environmental and it was contextual.

So if you were to give advice to, let's say, your kids or the next person before almost any of the blueprint, is it get your power of place and community right, and your person or partner right? Like, do you think those are even more fundamental than, than the health aspects?

Yeah.

Or I'd say if I could speak to myself, I would say— and I was trying to help myself problem solve— I would say, what do you feel paralyzed by? And once you identify that, then what is the strength you feel that this thing has upon you. Like, in that moment, leaving my church, my religion, like my existential existence, felt unimaginable. And leaving my marriage with my 3 kids— I was like an all-in dad, I worked really hard, and so my identity was so built up into that. So those things felt impossibly hard to break. And so how trapped do you feel, and how impossibly hard do they feel to break? And if you can identify those two things, you probably can put your finger on the thing that's, you know, potentially responsible. Not always. This is for my case, but that definitely was what kickstarted this next phase of my life. And so others are just generally in a really bad spot. And for them, I would say try your very best to get your basics right. Like go to sleep on time, like make sleep your number one life priority. Do well on your diet and exercise and just try to get the basics in place. As your number one life priority.

As he talks about like where he was and sort of the depth of despair he was in, he didn't realize that it was really due to two things, right? It was due to he had a mission he didn't like. He didn't love what he did for a living, and he was super unhealthy at the time. And it turns out that when he got a little healthier and when he did something that he really liked, his life turned around and the depression was gone. You know, I have a friend, Marissa, who had the same thing. Used to be like anti-gym girl, you know what I mean? Like just never went to the gym, kind of was like sort of like just skinny naturally, ran a business. Cute, seemed happy, but was super depressed on the inside. Just like, what is the point of life? Existential crisis after existential crisis. And then one day, you know, she was talking to a couple of our friends and they basically were like, why don't you try getting some endorphins going, getting some adrenal response going? Like, let's go to the gym. And it was pretty funny because about 3 months later she's like, turns out going to the gym solved about 99% of things. And so I think often We go really huge with what we have to solve when maybe it's just in front of us. Maybe it's just a little bit more sleep, just a little bit more movement. What if that's all it takes for our 2025 to be a hell of a lot better? Now we got Joshua Weissman. Now Joshua's huge on YouTube, uh, chef, YouTuber, hysterical, always slapping things and talking dirty like this. I don't know what the deal is, Joshua. Um, they call him Big Papa and they've Kitchen, which is like ridiculous to say out loud because we're friends. And so seeing, uh, people on the internet call him Big Papa is just slightly weird for me. Um, but there were a lot of, uh, quotes that I loved from Joshua that surprised me. One of them was, there are a lot of things in life you can't control, but the food you cook is one of the few things you can, and this gives you a real sense of power over a huge aspect of your life. Think about that. So much is out of our control, but you know what's not? The things we put in our body, and the things we put in our body becomes the things that fuel us through life. And maybe there's nothing more important or sacred than that. He has some other thoughts that I thought were hysterical, like always keep crispy shallots on hand, you'll never be disappointed. I'm not sure that's going to help us in 2025, except those things are fucking delicious. And I will you in the comments if you disagree with me on shallots being delicious. Especially when crispy. But the other part that I thought was fascinating is this story. So I asked Josh about an emotional time in his life. Like, has there ever been a moment when somebody made you cry? And this is what he shared.

Most people would make fun of me, you know, which is fine. Like, that's part of what, like, we all razz each other. I wasn't like going home crying, you know, but they'd be like, Josh, you gonna go film a YouTube video when you go home? I'd be like, fuck yeah, I am, you little bitch, you know? And that was like kind of the vibe.

So did you just— have you always been the type of person who just kind of ignores when people make fun of you or think that something you're doing is goofy?

No, no. When I was a kid, I was super overweight, and so I got bullied pretty significantly. Um, but I think that kind of like gave me a pretty thick skin early on. Um, and I mean, I ended up losing all the weight, which was great. I lost like 140 pounds when I was like 16, so But, you know, in a weird way, they kind of pushed me to do that. So it's hard to— I regained this new perspective where I was like, I mean, you know, they were mean to me and they made fun of me. And I'm not saying it was right. And the way they went about it was way, way, way not okay. And I don't condone bullying, but it did push me in a direction that changed my life, which made me realize, oh, I can like literally just change something in my life and make good things happen for myself if I'm willing to put in the work.

Okay, cool.

And that attitude stuck with me from that moment forever. So, the whole, like, people saying negative things about me kind of was this wash after that.

Now, I think for most of us, when we're, you know, on the come up, it's hard to look at somebody like Josh Weissman and think about the time when he was starting in a kitchen, when he was working under somebody else, and he was insecure. And at the time, as he would say at first, not me, he would say he was overweight, he was insecure, He was working super hard. He didn't know if he was gonna make it, and he still remembers that moment to this day. He's been famous on the internet for years. He has one of the New York Times bestselling cookbooks of all time, and yet he still remembers the exact moment and how it felt that time when he felt so very small. And this is a great reminder for me that all of us have those moments that either we can choose to let them break us or fuel us. And I choose to let moments where emotion feels overwhelming and I feel very small and that little Codie inside of me doesn't feel so strong to fuel me instead of break me. And so it's not just you if you're feeling that right now. Maybe this moment, this moment of you feeling small and worthless is the exact moment that you need for your change in 2025. Like, let that settle in for a second. What, what, what might that feel like if that was true? For you. That was my takeaway from Big Papa. All right, uh, Mikayla Fuller, who is actually Jordan Peterson's daughter. This episode I really liked because— is it ever hard for you to like look yourself in the face and tell yourself the difficult truths? Well, this clip was pretty incredible for me. She said this quote: Working on yourself is the best thing you can do. Make yourself more knowledgeable, make more money, make yourself as attractive as you can. Work on yourself until you're someone you'd want to date. Listen to this clip as she talks about being a single mom with no prospects, with a terrible autoimmune disorder, and thinking she would never find her human. You were divorced previously, and I'm guessing looking around for a human, uh, was that hard? You were successful, you were doing well monetarily, and, um, then you had to find a human who could keep up with that.

What was that like? That was— it was really hard. So a couple of things made it complicated. Uh, one, yeah, I work all the time and I'm swamped. And the friend group that I had in Toronto was kind of an older friend group, so there wasn't anybody in there that was interested in what I was doing. Not that I needed somebody particularly interested in what I was doing, but there were certain things I was looking for. So I was like, they need to be smart. Well, let me start from the beginning. I'd gotten to the point after the divorce with a kid that I was like, being in a bad relationship is really bad. Being alone is way better than that. So I was like, I'm okay, I'm actually gonna be fine if I'm by myself, I'm fine. Now, I was lonely for sure, like very lonely, but I was like, this is fine, I can do this. So I was at that point And then I tried to think about what I wanted, which I wasn't just going to get into a bad relationship. I was like, okay, this needs to hit on a lot of levels. Uh, they need to be okay that I wanna work all the time. They need to be okay that I'm not gonna be a stay-at-home mom. Uh, what else was it? They need to have a sense of humor. They need to be emotionally stable because there's so many like crazy ups and downs. In my life, and I have so much baggage, and I had more baggage 2 years ago, but like so much baggage. So I was like, you need to be emotionally stable when things go badly. You have to like be able to laugh it off. And then my ideal partner for me was somebody I could work with because I work all the time. So I was like, if I'm gonna be working all the time, and that's all the time as in like the morning around 8 until like 11, like all the time. Uh, if I'm working with other people, then I'm just not around. So ideally I can work with somebody and they can help me grow the things that I wanna grow or that we wanna grow together. That was like my, what I was looking for. And then they also had to be okay with the fact that I have a kid. So I was like, I'm screwed and I'm fine with being alone. Like that's what I decided. And I think I also got that from growing up in a, now I know, a fairly conservative family. I don't think we were that conservative, We weren't really conservative, but there are some areas where my dad's very conservative. So I had this view that if you had a kid and you were divorced, you were screwed. And that's really common in the more like redfield areas or conservative areas. It's just like, that's it for you. And so I had that view and it was surprising to me that I actually found somebody that was amazing.

Most of us, we make excuses, right? And so when we're in the dating pool, what did I say when I was in the dating pool? It was like, 'No, there's no good men anywhere. There's nobody around. God, it's awful dating today. The guys are terrible.' What did she say instead, which is so weird to me? She was like, 'Actually, I'm really difficult to date.' I mean, which is fascinating because she's like a beautiful woman, super famous father, she's now famous on the internet, she has a couple businesses, they make a lot of money. Most of us, myself included, would probably go, 'Actually, uh, I'm a catch, like, this is great.' And instead she said, 'It's super difficult. I didn't think I was ever going to get married again because who would want to marry a single mom who was sick constantly and, you know, struggled with some depressive thoughts and could only literally eat steak. Like, that's all she eats is red meat. And she's like, you know, think about like dating me, going out to dinner, and the only thing I'll ever eat is red meat. And I'll ask every time what it's cooked in, and I'll kind of make a big, big proclamation every time. The lesson there for me was, if she can still feel self-confident about herself while also looking the hard truth in the eye, which is that she comes with some baggage, where are are we not being honest with ourselves? Because it's like David Beckham said to Victoria, when we are being honest with ourselves, it turns out that the world appreciates that a little bit more and I think might just give it back to us. I also loved this line, which is she said Dad, meaning Jordan Peterson, said to her in second grade, don't listen to stupid rules. I think that's one of the best things I've ever heard, and it's true. Where in your life right now do you have a stupid fucking rule you're listening to for who knows why? And how can you let that go? Is that really a rule, or is that a should, a preference, a somebody would like you to? If it's stupid, let's not listen to it. The next one is Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa is one of the biggest YouTubers on the planet when it comes to behavioral science, like what does it mean for humans to interact One to Another. And this podcast was like one of our biggest podcasts of the year and was all about how do you make a good impression on other people and how do you get people to like you. Vanessa talks about the fact that she is a recovering awkward person and doesn't really love social interactions. And you wouldn't know that if you've met her actually, because she's kind of gregarious and extroverted, but that really depletes her. She cannot hang afterwards. And so if you are also a closeted introvert or an actual introvert, I think what's interesting is this video from her right now on how do we judge if somebody is somebody we like or don't. If you want to be treated with more respect, what do you do from a body language perspective?

Okay, so respect is a good one. So research has shown that 82% of our impressions of people are based on two traits: warmth and competence. It's not how attractive you are, it's not how tall you are, it's not how rich you are, it's not how successful you are. It's literally how fast can you signal, "I'm a friend, trust, and you can rely on me, competence." And so from a body language perspective, the faster you can signal those two things the moment you hop on screen, the moment you get on a video, the moment you enter a room, the more people like you and respect you.

Interesting.

So it is a balance. So what I like to think about is like a recipe. Is there are warmth nonverbal cues and there are competent nonverbal cues. So warm cues, these make sense, right? Smiling, authentic smiling, a warm cue. You're nodding. Nodding is a warmth cue, right? When you do a triple nod, research shows that I will speak 67% longer.

Wow.

So when you're just going, "Mm-hmm." Oh, I gotta start adding on. But not bobbleheading.

Which is this?

No.

Oh, right.

Right.

Too much.

Well, so that, that's also not good.

Right.

Well, it's your interview. It's too much.

If you do a slow triple nod, here I'll demo it for you, the other person speaks 67% longer. So this is a, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm." Stop.

Okay.

Right? That is a nonverbal dot, dot, dot. You're telling the other person, "I hear you, I see you, tell me more." Now, the pace of this is also important. So you only want to do 3 and pause, and you want to do them slowly. So slow is engaged and curious. "Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more." Fast is impatience. Mm-hmm.

Ooh, yeah.

So a little secret here is if you want someone to like wrap it up or speed it up, not that you ever would, you can go, "Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm." It's literally a signal for them to stop talking. So warmth cues, smiling, nodding, a head tilt. So watch the difference between a still face and a head tilt. So if I were to say, "I have some news. I have some news," a head tilt immediately softens you. It immediately adds more warmth. That's a small warmth cue. Competence cues, there's like 15 of them, but those are the easy ones. The competence cues, some of my favorites are like a steeple, right? So even this is just more wise and competent if it feels natural to you. Like some people look like, like, don't be Mr. Burns. Yeah, like, right. So you gotta be careful.

Another thing that I learned from Vanessa that's a lesson I want to take for the year is that I, for instance, am way more competence-focused than warmth-focused. Focused. So I am always like, data, data, data, study, study, study, intense, intense, intense. Well, guess what? That's not always great, because if you have a super high competence factor but I don't seem very warm or caring, that doesn't come off as something somebody wants to befriend, do business with, partner with, maybe, you know, date. And so as I watched her video, I started to realize there's this balance that we need to have between can we be really competent and kind, are we Are we being too kind and not competent enough? And maybe there is a balance between the two. The next one's Danica Patrick. Danica is actually one of the highest paid female athletes of all time, which is wild. If you guys don't remember her from back in the day, she was a NASCAR race car driver, has now gotten to pop culture in the public sphere and has a big podcast, but has taken huge hard stances over her career. And it's this lesson that I take away, which is that you would be more successful if you followed more people who you don't agree with. You would be richer if you talked to more people that you don't agree with. That in fact, probably the key to success is making sure that you're not surrounded by sycophants and yes-men. And, you know, she says this: having a hard time listening to someone who doesn't have the same opinion, that's where you grow. Instead of just trying to prove you're right, try and figure out what is right. And this is hard because this also happened to her. And this is where somebody yells at her publicly. We have a clip of it. Boo!

No, I get it.

That was annoying. It was.

Sweetheart. Instead of taking the booing, what I want to tell you is like, I do the very best I can. Yes, you do. I mean, if you're a real fan, you know that I'm not just like— my job is not to only sign autographs, right? My job is to drive the car, to tell the crew chief what's going on. I don't appreciate the booing. It hurts my feelings. I'm a fucking person.

You know what I mean?

I'm a person too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings. Okay? Please just be supportive fans. I'll do everything I can. When I came from over here, my car is over there. I only do so much. I have to get in the car. So, just please understand that. I have feelings too.

Danica, thank you for your hard work. Keep your chin up.

Chin up, bitch up!

You didn't sign on the way out either.

You can tell that she's actually not unwilling to go up to a random stranger who heckles her and say the weirdest of things, which I would never have the balls to say, which is, "You saying that hurts my feelings. Why would you yell that at me? I wouldn't yell that at you." She talks to a troll like a human. And because she does that, she gets less trolls. And where in our life are we not having the difficult conversation? With the person that we need to, because we don't want to talk to somebody we disagree with because it might be uncomfortable, because we don't think that they will come over to our side. They don't have to come to our side. We just have to show them that we're human. I think a lot of times what I've realized in business and life is most conflict stems from both parties not being honest about their feelings. Instead of us talking about what happened, talk about why we feel some way. And this is not that normal, but think about it in a fight. You're like, "You said you would be home at 5." "Well, you said, you know, that we would go out to dinner at this time." "Well, you said this." You're arguing realities constantly. It's what most fights are. But if instead we could get deeper, like, "You said you were going to be home at 5, and I was sad about that because I've been really excited to hang out with you. And when you're an hour or two late, I feel like you don't care about me. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but that's how I feel." That is much harder to argue with. Because you're not saying, "You're bad, you're wrong, this didn't happen." You're saying, "I feel this way when you do this thing. Is that what you meant to do to me?" It's so much more open in a world in which all we do is yell at each other. The next one is Chris Voss. I've done 2 episodes with Chris Voss now. He's incredible. Every time I listen to them, I learn something hugely. Actually, I think his episodes are probably 2 of my favorite that I've ever done. There's a line that he says that I'm obsessed with, which is, Remember that people are not against you, they are for themselves, which is why curiosity, empathy, mirroring, and labeling work like magic. It's not about you, it never was. I think that's pretty freeing. So the next time you have a fight, where can you realize this isn't actually about you at all? This is about something inside of them. If I want something from them and they're not wanting to give it to me, that's about something inside of them. How can we use that truth to our advantage? He also says He who asks a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. It's a Chinese proverb, but about this idea of asking more. He says one of the most powerful things we can do is be curious. And I think that's true, except I didn't realize all the data behind it. I'm a journalist turned investor turned podcaster turned YouTuber. And what is the one trait that is true through all of that? It's curiosity. Curiosity about why one investment would work versus another. Same in podcasting. I'd be a pretty shitty podcaster if I hated asking questions and didn't want to know anything about anybody. And I would be pretty bad at being an influencer or writing things online if I wasn't curious about what people wanted to know from us. It's like this conversation and feedback loop you and I are having. So are you being curious enough? Are you asking and using the 2-to-1 ratio, your 2 ears to your 1 mouth, continuously? He has this other line, which I think is tough to hear. When you start your sentence with, "If I were you," that's not empathy. You're not them. You're making it about you. Get out of your world and into theirs. We're not put on this earth to be narcissistic. We're here to help each other. Make curiosity and empathy your weapons. How bizarre to hear that from a former FBI negotiator, and yet it is super true. And so My lesson from him is ask more questions and actually want to know the answers. Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks ran the American Enterprise Think Tank, one of the biggest think tanks in the world, for a decade plus. He's best buds with the Dalai Lama. He also knows all the former presidents. He also works at Harvard at the Happiness Institute. He has been a multi-time bestselling author and he's also best buds with Oprah and wrote a book with her. So he's kind of an underachiever. But every time I talk to Arthur, I am shocked at how much I learn about the human condition and why we do the things we do. I want to talk first about women versus men, and I want to play this clip from Arthur about the difference between the two and who is happier today. What's going on with women these days? We used to be a lot happier than men.

It's a broad question.

You're like, where do we start?

Yeah, I know.

Bring out the list. But I was looking at some of your research and it seems like Women, you know, across multiple different categories used to be happier than men.

Right.

Now we're not.

Right.

How bad are we? What's the difference and what happened? Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe, or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

So that's a good question. What happened? So the, to a little bit of background on that, for the longest time, you always found that women were happier than men and in a lot of ways to look at that, you know, women at different ages were were happier than men. Women of different, all different marital status were. Single women were happier than single men. Married women, widow women, way happier than widowed men.

I told my husband that one.

Yeah, I told my wife that. She's like, "Huh." The only group of women that were unhappy were divorced women. And typically it's because they had custody of the kids, and that's incredibly stressful to be a single parent, 'cause working and kids, et cetera. That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of meaning. It just means that day-to-day enjoyment can be attenuated. But what you found is that over the past 20 years or so, women have converged downward to the unhappiness levels of men. So they've converged, and at first I thought, great, men are getting happier. Huh-uh, women are getting unhappier is what we find, and they're getting unhappier very quickly. And so there's a lot of different theories of it. You find that there's a lot less family formation going on. There's a lot less marriage that's actually happening. You find that men and women are diverging politically really, really quickly. You find that women are getting much more politically progressive and men are getting more conservative. And so the result of it is that, especially in a culture where people think that the most important thing for making a romantic match is, you know, voting for the same party idiotically, as if, you know, that, so you'll find that they're less and less and less likely to find somebody that can actually love them as a person because of these differences in ideology. And they're just diverging in these particular ways. I think that a lot of the activism culture is particularly targeted at women. Social media is especially targeted at young women. It's creating a whole lot of misery with, with social comparison, with political hatred, with a sense of loneliness that's crawling out of people's smartphones. And all these things together are creating an epidemic of unhappiness among women, especially young women in our society today.

Arthur Brooks also has a line that's living rent-free in my head and I'm bringing into next year, which is that the greatest power you can use is love. Which is a little weird for a social scientist and conservative thinker to say. I don't typically think of those two things from a human like that. But in his most recent book with Oprah, he talks about the idea that we chase money, but what we actually want is love. That if we wanted to increase our happiness by 15 percentage points, the best thing we could actually do is live closer to the people we love in a 1-mile radius. Us, in fact. The closer that we live to those we love, the more we engage with those that we love, the happier we are. We actually want to get richer because we want to be happier, and yet we don't chase the thing that actually leads to more happiness, which is human connection. And that human connection at the end of the day is actually really all that matters. And so if we're happier and we have more love in our life, I think we also have other things that attract to us. He talks about the fact that, you know, it sounds a little touchy-feely, but that you are the things that you project out into the world. He would say this more from a religious perspective, but I think When it comes to us, where are we actually chasing after a thing we don't want? To do the old Fight Club adage, which is, you know, you're chasing after things you don't want to impress people that you don't like, and you're doing it continuously. He would say that life is a lot easier than that, actually. I want to end with Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire, a controversial figure. Joe is maybe one of the smartest people I've spoken to on building. Pure building of companies. But I loved this quote from him, which is, "Great men are called upon by history when they see dangerous times ahead. This is one of those times. And despite our immense challenges, I'm feeling optimistic as I see friends heed the call. We have nowhere to run. The United States of America is where we make our stand." And so I suppose I want to end this episode by saying to you guys, as he so eloquently says, that 2025 being your best year ever is actually really important for all of us. That I hope you take these lessons like I did and you apply them to your life, because if you become the human that is the best version of you you can be, how do you think you ripple out into the world? What does it look like if you're on fire? It's probably a lot easier to catch the rest of us on fire too. And so I hope these short lessons tell you that maybe your goals are a little bit closer than you might even think, that your to-do list doesn't have to be so fucking long, and that in fact, if you make a few decisions compounded consistently over time, moving towards something that is for the higher purpose, your life might be better and so might everybody else's around you. That's at least what I took away from the lessons from billionaires, from best buds with Oprah and the Dalai Lama, from addicts turned marathon runners towards— turned for— turned cover of GQ, and from some of the baddest-ass humans that I know. Thank you guys for listening to the Big Deal Podcast this year. I can promise you one thing: Next year is going to be wild. It is going to be even more fun than this year, and it is for all of you that we do this. So thanks for being part of the big deal. We love each and every single one of you. Well, we love most of you. I like a lot of you is actually what I'm trying to say. Happy 2024, motherfuckers! Here we go, 2025. I think it's just getting started. And do me a favor, tell me in the comments which one of the episodes was your favorite. Did you have a quote you loved? What did I miss? Maybe you can make me a little bit better, and me a little bit more on fire for 2025.