You’ll Fail at Love…Until You Realize This | Simon Sinek

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I've gone on dates where literally the person I'm on a date with, they're like, have you ever been married? And they say to me, what's wrong with you? Why haven't you been married? And the stress that I've carried for decades for being a failure and I am bad at relationships.

What if our deepest human needs for connection and belonging hold the real answers for navigating a world that's racing ahead with technology?

I have a friend who was in a 16 year unhealthy relationship. She admits freely that she should have been in it for one year. Society looks at her and says, she did it right, I did it wrong.

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I AM your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high performance psychologist. Now, the idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries to learn to really learn about how they work from the inside out. Today's guest is the brilliant and engaging Simon Sinek. He's back for a second time on the podcast now. In this conversation, we discuss the deep value of friendship. Why it's not just a nice to have, but it's essential for survival and happiness.

None of us can achieve happiness, success, any kind of satisfaction with this very difficult thing called life alone. We're not great white sharks. We don't roam the seas by ourselves, but in groups. We're absolutely remarkable. And we take for granted that friends are more than a nice to have. They're essential for survival and the ability to thrive. But are we good at friending? Most people think they are good friends. And then you peel the onion, just one layer and you discover that most people are pretty bad friends.

Plus, we dig into AI not as a dystopian threat, but as a mirror, forcing us to re examine what's real.

The value of human is now going to go up because the value of machine is low. Your Pottery Barn mug, it is perfect in every way. But a Japanese ceramic mug made by hand with its imperfect sides and the wonky glaze, it is more beautiful because it is human, because it is imperfect.

With that, let's jump right into this week's conversation. Simon Simic. Simon, every time I get to sit with you, you keep me on pins and needles like I'm on my toes, where it's like there's something brilliant that you're about to reshape. The way I think, oh my goodness. Yeah, standards are high now.

Yeah.

So I one, this is me saying thank you for, well, I'm here to disappoint, so let's not do that. But I have such an appreciation for how you think, the discernment you go through to get to clarity of ideas, the way you tell stories, the way you understand the experience that people are going through right now. And so I'm stoked to sit with you again.

Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I always, I always like talking to you.

Yeah, it's fun. It's really fun. I feel like we have inhabited different worlds but have similar ideas. And so before we started, I was just generally asking, what are you most interested in right now? And you reminded me the importance of friendships, that that's where you're spending a lot of time, friendships, relationships. So in general, where does that come from for you?

None of us can achieve happiness, success. However you want to define success, it doesn't matter to me any kind of satisfaction, fulfillment, or ability to cope with this very difficult thing called life alone. Human beings are not supposed to. We're not great white sharks. We don't roam the seas by ourselves. We are social animals. We, we are pack animals. We are very weak as individuals. We're not very smart as individuals. But in groups we're absolutely remarkable. We can solve any problem we can overcome. We can fight animals much stronger than us. When we're in groups, we hunt together. We're kind of remarkable. We take for granted that friends are more than a nice to have. They're essential for survival and the ability to thrive. And there's a frustration with that, right, which is we actually have to work at being friends. The great frustration is it's actually not very natural. Like, yes, we could all make friends kind of sorta, you know, but are we good friends? Are we good at friending? And I'd say on that standard the answer's pretty, pretty abysmal. I talk to people and you say, are you a good friend? And most people think they are good friends. And then you peel the onion, just one layer and you discover that most people are pretty bad friends.

Open that up a bit.

I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. Let's talk about. I mean, I'll tell you. Me, my friends for years would accuse me of being a bad listener. And I would say, you know what I do for a living, right? Like I'm a really good listener.

Yeah, you are.

And then I took a listening class and that's when I discovered I am an exceptionally good listener with people who I will never see again for the rest of my life. But the people who I loved, terrible, absolutely terrible. The skills that I had, I never applied at home. And so I like literally called my friends one by one and said, oh my God, I'm a bad listener. And they're like, what took you so long? You know, we are not very good at asking for help. We are not very good at holding space when our friends need help. I called a friend, I was in a bad way and I called a friend and I said, I just need to talk. Do you have a few minutes? And they went, yeah, of course. And I started just letting it all out and I think I got interrupted a couple times. I think they interrupted me. I hadn't even got my thought out and they well intentioned trying to tell me what I should do and I would just, I just wanted to hang up the phone. That's not good friending. You know, I've been that person on the other end of the phone as well when somebody called me and all I did was go into fix mode. That's not good friending. The inability to read the room, the inability to understand what somebody needs. And when we are bad friends, what ends up happening is we leave people feeling unseen, unheard, misunderstood, alone. And that is bad for anyone's mental health. That's bad for anyone's ability to cope with stress, but that's also bad for anyone's ability to think through problems and seize opportunities. It's not just difficult things, it's. It's the positive things as well. And so when I look at my own life and my own career, I am so grateful that my friends have been patient with me through all of my stupidity and idiocy and selfishness and self involvement. I'm so grateful that they pushed me when I didn't want to push myself, that they held me when I wanted to be alone and I wouldn't be where I am and I wouldn't be able to call myself happy if it weren't for these remarkable human beings around me. And so to take what I've learned about friendship, some of them hard learned lessons, and share those lessons with as many people as I can, I think.

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I mean, I said it. I have immense gratitude.

You embodied it. You didn't just say it. You fully embodied it. I could hear it and I could feel it and I watched you change as you were saying it. I don't know if you were completely tuned or aware to it, but it's striking when you're on the other side of it, when you see somebody fully embody the words that they chose. And so can you just stay here for a minute? Like, what did you just do?

I honestly don't know.

Does it sound like what I'm saying is completely foreign to you or did you say or are you internally privately going, wait, what is he saying? Or yeah, I did feel it, but I didn't quite notice it at the time. But now that we're talking about it, yeah, I do feel what I say.

I think I always feel what I say. It's a little bit of a, I'm a little bit like, I don't know how to respond to be honest. I don't know what you saw.

I saw your. Something happened in your eyes. Your micro expression around your eyes changed and your voice inflection shifted. And when you're really into it, you look down, you are like in your own world feeling the gratitude for your other people. You weren't kind of musing up like this, you weren't making these kind of, kind of wild eye contact, like it's too much. You were just in your world experiencing gratitude. And it's worth pausing because all of your insights are always crisp. They're really good. Every insight that you share, I go, yeah, that's good. Oh, that's good too. Oh, that's, yeah, friendship. Okay, good. There's a difference between people who practice gratitude and people who check the box of what they're grateful for. You were just practicing gratitude. And if we're going to set somebody up to train themselves to be more tuned to their emotional state, especially the, I don't know, the more like aperture opening emotions like gratitude, you don't want them just to write it down and check the box. You want them to fully feel it, which is what you just naturally did. So that's why I just wanted to pause and ask, what was that like for you?

I'm relaxed.

Let's keep going.

Look, we have a problem. And again it goes back to good intentions misplaced or misused. And you and I are part of the problem, right? Which is we dispense perspective, points of view, advice, ideas again that we believe will help somebody live a better life, a higher performing life, whatever it is they're trying to achieve. And the problem is advice is followed very literally the number of times you and I have told you people things and they've done it and we're like, that's not what I meant. Gratitude being a good one, you know, checking the box of gratitude, doing your gratitude diary, you know, and those people who've made whole cottage industries out of selling us gratitude diaries and the like. I'll give you, I'll give you a really funny example of this, of the danger of these things that are not embodied but practiced. I Met this wonderful couple, madly in love with each other. And they were telling me how it's really important that they have oxytocin when they hug each other because they want that real connection. And they read an article that it takes about 16 seconds for oxytocin to start flowing when they hug. So they always make sure to hug for at least 16 seconds. Seconds. Of course, what I'm thinking is, you got to be kidding me. The woman later on that day or the next morning, I can't remember, and she said, you want to hug? I said, I'd love a hug. And we start hugging. Beautiful, beautiful, warm embrace. And I stop. I interrupt, I go, are you counting? She goes, yeah. I'm like, I can feel it. I. I said, stop, please stop. I'm like, the human body knows the.

Means to an end.

It knows. Some scientist plugged some fricking electrodes in somebody and said, can you hug, please? And counted. It's however many seconds for it to flow. Good for them. You don't need that number. Your body knows. Stop counting and feeling. You and I will both know when we've connected. So let's try again, okay? Just be with me. And we hug again. Sure enough, however, I don't know how many seconds, some short period of time later, we felt really good and it felt really warm and connected. And I held it a little longer than that and then I stopped and pulled away and said, do you feel that? That's oxytocin. Stop counting. Start feeling. And I think we've become so metrics obsessed. And again, you and I are partially to blame, right? We've become so metrics obsessed that we've actually missed the point of it, that some scientist was able to discern how many seconds you're supposed to do this or how many times you're supposed to express gratitude or people who become close friends, spend at least 50 hours a week, blah, blah, it doesn't matter. Their averages and their largely irrelevant. Like, you know, there's no metric for how in love you are. There's no metric for like, a parent's love. There's no metric for trust or belief. But we all know when it's there and we all know when it's not. And in our metrics obsessed world, I know people are going to mock me because I'm wearing an OURA ring, right? It hasn't been charged in over two years. I had fulfilled its utility. I thought it was hilarious. It told me I had a bad night's sleep, which I knew because I'VE been up since 3 o' clock in the morning and I'm incredibly grumpy today. But it was given to me as a gift and I got used to wearing it. I haven't charged it in two years. But it was fun. It was fun. And you know this better than I do that there's now data to show that being obsessed with the metrics is worse for you. Like there's data that shows the stress you experience from eating chocolate cake. The cortisol that's released from eating chocolate cake. Like, oh my God, I shouldn't eat it. Oh my God, I can't. Is worse for you than the chocolate cake.

Correct.

The obsession with the sleep metrics and the gratitude metrics is worse for you than just missing a couple of days or having a bad night's sleep or having an unhealthy meal.

Chronic stress versus acute stress.

So I become so interested in, dare I call it, feeling your, like, feeling. Being. Feeling in friendship. Feeling in friendship. I don't even have a word for it. So I went to this longevity summit recently. I was dragged to it. It wasn't by choice.

Longevity is not something you're interested in.

Not the way that it's practiced.

Okay.

Like, sure, I want to live a long and happy and healthy life. Absolutely. But obsessing about my longevity is not something I'm interested in. But I went to the conference, right.

To be a good friend.

To be a good friend. I'd like to say I went with open mind, but I'd be lying.

Yeah.

And you know, I took a test where they scanned me and they were doing it for everybody. And I had to hold some electrodes and it spun some cameras around me and who knows what it did. And it's a data point. I think these things are interesting. I don't think they're false, but I don't think that it's gospel either. But I like data, you know, as a, as a, as a marker. And I'm. I eat well, but not the best. I exercise, you know, you know, now and then. But I'm not obsessive. You know, the one thing I'm obsessive about is my friendships. You know, that's a pretty much it. And I got the fifth best score in the room. In a room filled with longevity Health.

Obsessed supplement taking your bio age versus your actual.

So that was, that was a different story. So that was a different one. I did.

Okay, that's not what this.

That wasn't. This was some.

It was the best score based on Quote, unquote, best score.

I don't know. All I know is I got the fifth best score. They're like, you got the fifth best score. That should be not right. I should have the worst score in the room.

Yeah, because you are not. Because I'm not that hyper focused.

Not hyper focused, not taking any supplements, you know, So I did the other thing. I did the blood test. Yeah, same thing. I did my, my glycan age, which actually, that's actually pretty good science. You know, they took my blood test and same thing. They asked me to fill out the survey so they can compare my results to my lifestyle. You know, they said anything better than eight years. If you're eight years lower than your actual age, you're doing really well. My glycan Age was 22 years younger than my chronological age, 22 years younger. And they told me that the people who are obsessed with the metrics and the longevities have the worst glycanages, the worst. And they all poo poo the science because they're not getting good numbers. Right. And what they were telling me is it's because of stress. That, because I do all of these things, but I'm not obsessed with all these things. My stress levels are lower because I care about my friendships and being around people and companionship. It helps me manage my stress. My stress is lower because if I work really hard for a week, I'll take a day off because I earned it, you know, which is stress. And the longevity obsessed people, it's okay to do some of it, but they're doing all of it. So when you do intermittent fasting, you're adding stress to your body. When you do a really hard workout, you're adding stress to your body. When you do cold plunge every morning, you're adding stress to your body. Any one of those things is good and healthy, that sort of artificial stress. But when you stack all of them every day, it's too much stress on the body and not spending time and focusing on friends. Because one thing that I've discovered when I started talking to a lot of these people who are health obsessed is a lot of them aren't that happy. They're not that happy. And so the question is, you're living a long time. Why? And when you ask me, am I not obsessed with my general longevity? I want to live a long happy life. Of course I want to live a long happy life. But the word happy is in there inextricably linked with long.

That's right, a long miserable life.

A long, miserable life. I don't want to live a long, miserable life. I want to live a long, happy life. My point is, I think we need to go back to human. And it's no one's fault. We live in a digital world. Digital has overwhelmed us. We know it. This is not news. There's already some rebellion against some social media and some rebellion against smartphones. Like, it's not news. We all know about dopamine now. You know, when you and I were talking about it, you know, 15 years ago, DOPA what? You know, like it's a thing now. Everybody knows that our devices addict us. We all know the science. It's all pretty basic now. And what we're asking is, we're asking the machine, we're asking the counter, we're asking the ticker to tell us how to be human again. And the body knows. And this goes back to trust and gut and all of this stuff. Entrepreneurs, we always say the most successful entrepreneur is, what's your secret? I trusted my gut. So if we allow an entrepreneur to trust their gut and kind of know what decision to make, and this is what we try and teach people, why do we not allow. Why do we not trust ourselves to know? Like, when we're doing well in friendship.

Or not, we're not properly calibrated. Yeah, I want to hit three things. I want to hit stress, I want to hit calibration, and then the gut bit. So on the calibration, let's go back 200,000 years ago. It's an easy story because we're outside a lot, that we were calibrated to the rhythms of the world. Sunup, sundown, you know, and you gotta kinda get it all done before sunup and sundown. Okay, so there's a calibration and not.

Get eaten in between, basically.

So there's an easy calibration story that we can grok to there. And then if you fast forward, we are looking at our devices more than we are looking at humans. So we're decalibrated from other humans. Okay, so now we got Mother Nature, now we've got decalibration from other humans. And then when we think about what makes us really pretty special is our ability to name our emotions, to feel them, and to be aware of those feelings and put words to them. What kind of grade do you give on interpersonal connection or intrapersonal connection, meaning your connection with yourself? I think it's pretty decalibrated as well. I don't think we're well calibrated. To what's happening inside of us. So much so that I think the number is like 36% of people can accurately name the emotion that they're experiencing. That's pretty bad. You know, like 3 out of 4 out of 10 are good at the thing that is really remarkable to be human. The upside is we got a lot of room to grow. And if you're checking in, if you're muting. Oh. Not even to mention alcohol, drugs, and other numbing devices from kind of the feeling experiences. So if you're all dopamine related, all dopamine, if you're dysregulated there, if you're more tuned to technology and you're disconnected from mother nature, it is reflexively easy when you have an oura ring, which I think it's a really good product up until you start to over calibrate to the technology.

Exactly.

So the thing.

Which is why I stopped charging.

That's right.

Because I realized I was looking at it too much.

Yeah. So then what?

It was a me issue, not an oura ring issue.

It is you. It's an us issue. It's me too.

And I should stress that.

Yeah. So what I do with athletes. So if somebody's listening right now, you might find this to be a normal experience is you wake up in the morning and you flip over and open your phone or whatever device to see the number that you got.

Mm.

And there's something really satisfying about getting something back. Okay.

Everybody likes to be a winner.

You got a 91.

I won sleep.

I won sleep. The problem, though, is that you're relying on the second order data abstraction to tell you about yourself. So what I ask athletes to do is look at the numbers for a while. Couple weeks, you're looking at the numbers. Cool. And then play this other little game, which is when you wake up in the morning, where am I? Red, yellow, green. And then flip open the device and oh, I was right. Green for green. Cool. Then fast forward a couple more days. I think I'm green and I think I'm low. Green. Flip it over. Oh, look. Score is 92. Right on. So now you're actually calibrating to this other thing that's a proxy between self calibration and technology.

The one that I always struggled with was great sleep score and tired all day.

Yeah. Right.

Or terrible sleep score. Functioned just great all day. Totally fine.

Yeah.

So at some point. But at some point, I'm obviously recognizing that these are just data points. And I like data points.

Correct.

It's when I found myself to your point, which is waking up every single morning and not being able to start my day without looking at that score and even having a competition with my girlfriend. Like it's kind of lost its meaning. Which is why I stopped charging it, because it was. It was. It lost its utility.

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Yeah.

Based on the technology, we're not in the right. But if you, if you're using it to. To be the tuning fork, that's very good. You're the tuning fork first. And then you look over there and I, I do ask my wife, like, after I've tuned and she's done her job, hopefully to tune. How'd you do? And it's not like right away, but it's a way that I can go and say. She says, tough one. I got a 72. How do you feel like that'll be. She'll ask me or like, but how is it? Actually, I'm cool. She goes, yeah, I feel it. Then I know that, okay, I'm on dish duty. I'm on trash duty. I'm on doing the things that, you know, that I just want to carry extra water, if you will.

Yeah.

And that helps me in some respect. And I realize, as I'm saying, even, like, why am I not doing that all the time? You know, I think, yeah, there's a partnership in there where if she's like, oh, you're tired. I'm going to carry your bags for you. And if I look over her and she's tired and I'm like, let me carry the bags for you. There's something cool about that.

Yeah. So anyways, I think the thing that we forget, and we've definitely forgotten this in business, we've become obsessed with metrics and business and quarterly results. And again, we think of business in terms of winning and losing. We've talked about finite and infinite games.

Before.

That we forget that metrics, unless it's a finite game, unless there's a score and there's a beginning, a middle.

And end, which is the characteristics of.

A finite game, which is a finite game. A finite game is always a beginning, middle, and end, where the metrics absolutely are the score and the end of the game. The score actually matters. For an infinite game. Nobody's going to win sleep. Nobody wins business. But we have metrics in sleep and business. And the problem is that we have to remember that those are just markers. They're indicators of speed and distance. How fast am I going? How far have I gone? That's all they are. They're not absolutes. And there are no indic. And this is one of the problems with putting metrics on Feelings on sleep, on all of these infinite components, we treat them with a finite mindset, and that's where the problems are. That's why we're having stress, because we think we're losing or we're smug and we think we're winning when we're actually unhappy. Right. But they are simply indicators of speed and distance. How far have I gone? How fast am I going? And so going back to your sleep metrics, which is, I am doing better, I am moving faster. Like, I'm recalibrating to use your language, which I really like. And I think we just have to. We have to contextualize the value or what the metric means relative to. To what we're measuring. Is it a finite thing or an infinite?

Yeah, that's cool. The relative is like. That's what I'm using with my wife. Like, who cares what our actual scores are?

Who cares what the actual scores are?

But the point is, like, if. Let's say that I'm at 100 and she's at like a 92. Happy days.

Like, you both had a good night's sleep. There's no variation.

She's at 100. I'm at a 85. Happy days.

You both had a good night's sleep.

Yeah. But when one of us has a delta, then it's like, oh, let me. Let me. Okay, good. Let me use that. She likely. Or I would likely tell her throughout the day, whoa. Even if we didn't have this technology, man, last night was rough.

Right?

And then. Then I would go, oh, yeah, okay. So note to self, let me help out. And I think that this is just an excuse, you know, how, like, I don't know, some psychological assessments are kind of excuses to start a conversation, which is fine. Yeah. They're not actually going to diagnose with great clarity. Some are actually commercial grade and some are medical grade, but many of them are conversation starters to. To really understand what's happening. And in some respects, technology can do that for us as well. But again, what you.

What you're offering is context.

Context, context.

And that's what. That's what matters here.

Yeah.

Which is. Which is I'm fine with all these metrics. Right. I don't actually have a problem unless it's a bait and switch. I don't actually have a problem with any of them, but they are points.

So two other bits here. One is when it corrupts intuition. We're both going to have a problem with that. And I still feel it. I saw it early, and I still Feel it in elite sport when old school coaches that value the hardened, the tested, the tried, the true principles that have led to mental toughness and mental agility and like bonding between people and doing hard things. And there's a gut feel that these coaches have tuned over time. And then you've got folks that are in the science world that say, hey, but listen, there's a lot of data that you're missing out on. And the early tension, and still there's tension now is coaches don't want to have data corrupt their intuition and vice versa. You wouldn't want data, I'm sorry, you wouldn't want to lose the intuition to the data. So both points of view are right. Valuable. It's figuring out the intersection between the two that is pretty complex.

And both are right. And this is, I mean, we can't help but go into the AI conversation from this because the value of doing the work, you accumulate wisdom. The value of doing the work is what makes you smarter and hone the machine. If we just ask AI to do all this stuff for us, the results will be incredible. That article you wrote was amazing, by the way. Thanks. AI did it for me. But because you don't know how to write an article, you can read it and say, that was good. But because you don't know how to write it, you're actually not getting smarter, better, faster, any of those things. In other words, your intuition isn't honing. And so the obsession with metrics, the obsession with, I wouldn't even call it metrics, the obsession with the result means you're not doing the work, which means you're hurting yourself and you're not honing the intuition. And the example I'll give, I can't remember which book it was, there were these firemen who were. They were fighting a forest fire, fire in a field. And the wind kicked up and the fire started chasing them. And these guys are running for their lives. They're just running like crazy, right? And the fire is coming and they will be able to outrun it, except for the fact that there's a hill and the old timer screams, get down, get down, get down. And the young kids ignore him because the fire is coming. He jumps down, puts his hands over his head. And what his intuition knew from years of fighting fires, which was never taught, is he knew the fire was burning so fast and it was burning through the grass really quickly, that it would just fly over him. And so he hunkered down, the flames went right over him, caught up with the Kids who got caught up on the hill and they all died. Right. You got to fight a lot of fires to have that instinct to just know. And eventually that knowledge can then be passed down and be taught in a lesson. But the lessons have to come from somewhere. We can't teach something we don't know. And somebody has to either succeed or I'll give you a really, really, really funny one, which I just realized the other day. And I don't even know if this is biologically or anthropologically true. I just really like it. And again, this is because human beings are smart. Have you ever noticed that when somebody throws up the sound, the visual, the smell, the only thing you want to do is join in. You just want to throw up, too. There's no other bodily function that if somebody does it, you want to join in. Right?

Yeah. Good framing so far.

Right. There's none. Just that. But now go back. We're trying to figure out what we can eat to stay alive. And somebody in the group tries a berry, and we've all just been trying the berries, and they lose it instinctively. The rest of us are being like, if Kenny lost it, probably safer. We all lose it because I don't want to find out. And so we all just heave ho because Kenny got vomited from the berries. Why? To keep us alive. Accumulated. And then somebody goes, don't eat that berry now. Like, we learned the lesson, and thankfully nobody died because we all threw up. Don't eat that. The point is, now you can pass down that accumulated wisdom, and now it's a lesson. And that's the same for everything. But if we have the machine do all the work, what happens to accumulated intelligence? What happens to accumulated wisdom? What happens to discovery? Do we just rely on the machine for everything? And look, I think AI is an amazing tool. I am not an anti aist, but it's the difference between somebody who wants to have surgery to have big muscles, but they'll still be weak if they don't work out. Like, we can put all the implants in and your body will look amazing. But you're weak. Right? Which is. It will look amazing. The press release is amazing. That article is amazing. That drawing is amazing. But you're weak. And I choose to write my own books. I choose to write my own blogs. Not because I think they're better. I definitely know it's slower. I'll have the AI fix my grammar because that's annoying, you know, Because I want to be stronger, I want to be smarter, I want to solve logical intellectual problems by having to go through the difficult thought process of making it work on a page. That's my choice for my body and my mind. I think what's going to start to happen is it's probably already happening, which is the value of human is now going to go up because the value of machine is low. So things that come off an assembly line are perfect and not special. Your Pottery Barn mug, it is perfect in every way. But a Japanese ceramic mug made by hand with its imperfect sides and the wonky glaze is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it is human, because it is imperfect. And I think we're going to start to want imperfect, and we're going to want handmade and hand drawn and hand conceived and handwritten because we want effort. Effort has value.

Very cool. I know. We're going to want quickly to discern if it was real or not, and likely because we want to make sure that we're not being duped by something that's not real until AI becomes real. You know, like we have. I don't think we're at that chasm yet. This. This idea, though, about intuition.

Very philosophical conversation we're having.

It is. I enjoy it. I really did want to get to how you're thinking about AI but before we take this any further, I do want to understand how you do storytelling and insight. You are. The mechanics of storytelling are not complicated. You know, Joseph Campbell kind of laid the blueprint. You obviously understand the beats that you're walking through. I'm wondering if it's rehearsed or you are working the beats as you're going, or there's some other way. You're great at storytelling. You're really good at it. But then you have a clever. And I don't use that despairingly. You have a wonderful insight from the story to go take action on or to see something differently. So can you just help me understand how you ready yourself to tell the stories and how you draw the insight in your unique Mr. Cynic way?

You're going to hate my answer.

I'll be the judge of that.

I have insatiable curiosity. I don't like reading things in my own category. Don't read leadership books, because I'll either just nod and agree or be annoyed and disagree or I'm sure there's something I can learn always. But it's a lot of effort for very little gain. If there's a couple of insights in there or there's a turn of phrase that I'll really like. But Did I have to read the whole book for that turn of phrase? I'm an oral learner, so reading to learn doesn't help me. I have to talk and listen, and I love to learn things of which I know very little about. And some of my curiosities I don't understand. I don't want to learn something about everything. I want to learn things about things that I find interesting. And my interests, like everybody, go in and out of fashion. Sometimes I see a movie and there's a character or a time period that I like, and then I go down a rabbit hole, and then I discover something. I go deeper and deeper and deeper, and then I start connecting that stuff to everything else. And because I'm an oral learner, because I don't read textbooks like anybody, I remember things. I remember stories. That's how I learn. That's not unique to me. That's why we do mnemonic devices, because the stories, the rhymes, they help us remember things. My adhd, which makes it very difficult for me to read. And I've carried a lot of shame for that for many years, because as an author, people would say, what books are you reading? What's on your nightstand? I buy books like they're going out of fashion. I do not read them. It always sounds like a joke every time I say it. But it is the God's honest truth. I have written more books than I've read. And where I used to carry shame, I now realize it's an absolute superpower. The only way for me to remember something is if I remember the story. And so I pursue stories. So when somebody's explaining something to me, I genuinely don't understand it. Like, my brain just doesn't work that way. And so I'll always say, can you tell me a story to help me understand what you're trying to explain to me? Not unique to me. They tell me a story, now I remember, and now I kind of get the gist. And so it's very easy. You know, people think I have this amazing memory. Talk to my friends. How often I forget birthdays or plans or somebody asked me to do something, I say yes. And if I didn't write it down, it's not getting done. My brain will. It'll disappear. And to the point where people think I don't care. My brain just doesn't work that way. And I feel very guilty every time. Tell me a story, I'm golden.

That's okay. So you're.

So. It's easy for me to recall the Stories I can recall. People think, I have this amazing memory. I have amazing memory for one kind of thing.

Stories.

Stories.

And you have tuned your ability to retell a story with all the right suspense, with all the right. Oh, no. Oh, oh, I get it. You know, so you have the right kind of beats on a story that is.

Well, it's because I'm enjoying myself as.

You'Re telling the story.

I'm telling the story to myself.

And are you seeing it in color?

I see it visually. I don't see it in color.

I see it visually. Do you see it as pictures or do you see it as a movie?

Oh, that's a great question. So here's what popped in my mind as you. As you asked me that the way I would play as a kid, right? I had these little toy plastic soldiers. And where a lot of kids would be like, they'd hold the soldiers. I'd be like, that's not what I did. Right. I would have a scene, a vast scene in my head, a story. And I would come down to the basement and I would set up my soldiers to capture one photograph, one snapshot of the story that was going on in my mind. I'd spend hours setting it up, that one photograph. And then I'd go for another day or two upstairs and I'd play and be a kid. And then some time to go back to the basement. And the story had progressed in my imagination. And so I'd move all the soldiers just slightly because it was the next scene. And so whatever that is probably persists today, that it's always moving in my head. But then I'll capture a storyboard, it sounds like. And so that's why I think I can tell. I can stand up on a stage and tell all these disparate stories that all go together, because I'm telling you, I know the movie in my head, and I'm picking and choosing stories from all over the place to help me communicate the scene that I'm at in this moment. So you're moving along with me so I can tell a story of Martin Luther King or a story from the military, or a completely fictional account of something or some hypothetical done with beautiful local color. And I can. But what I'm doing is advancing my macro story with all these little micro scenes that seem to come out of nowhere.

It's very cool. Thank you for the way you said it.

I've never thought about it.

Yeah, that's awesome. And then, so you're scaffolding the stories around your core Ideas or the stories, disrupting the core ideas to make new ideas.

I treat everything like a jigsaw puzzle, which is. Think about a jigsaw puzzle. All jigsaw puzzles start the same way, right? You have all of the pieces scattered.

You flip them over.

You flip them over, right? And the first thing you do is you lean the box against the wall, right? So you know what you're building.

Look, you're doing it again. You know you're doing it again, though.

What?

You're telling a story.

I'm painting a picture.

So you're so good at this. I understand. Now. You're practiced. You're well practiced, and it's organic to you because of the way you learn. But just. You just invited me in in the clever way that you started the story, which is it all starts the same way, in other words, for you and me, for all of us. And then you had two commonalities, which is like all the jigsaw puzzles. And I go, yep, that's me. And then leaning it up, I added the stupid little flip them over, whatever, but. And then the thing, you lean it up. I can't wait to see where you take this next. You lean it up. I go, yeah, me too. So there's a thing that you're using stories to bind or bond me with you in that art.

What I'm doing is you don't know where I'm going, right? And that's the point of the story, which is I know where I'm going because I'm the one building the jigsaw puzzle.

That's right.

So the analogy is, first you lean the box against the wall, and now you know the picture that you're about to build. And then you sort of create a little system. I'm going to do the blue pieces over here. I'm going to put the red pieces over here, and you start building the puzzle, right? And it doesn't really matter the order. And you can do the same puzzle five different times, and you'll do it differently every single time. But there's a system. And here's the best part, which is you don't have to finish the puzzle for somebody else to come. Let's say you move the box away. You don't have to finish the puzzle. That somebody come over and be like kittens, right? So I'm fully aware that I don't even have to be complete in my explanations for you to understand what I'm trying to say. I can be completely incomplete. That's how I treat all of what I'm doing, which is I know the thing I want to get to. I know the picture on the box. And then I call upon all of these little thoughts and stories that I have. I've got some blue ones that I know this story is good for this, this, and this. The story that's good for this, this. And it's not that prescriptive. It's organic. And I'm filling in the pieces and eventually you'll see what I'm trying to tell you. Even if I don't get it all out and it's incomplete, it's always a jigsaw puzzle.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Skims. We just finished the NBA Finals, and if you were following along, you've likely seen some Skims signage on court. When I heard Skims was launching a line for men, I was really curious. My wife loves their products and quote unquote from her they've done a really good job. They kind of nailed it. So I tried the boxer briefs and then right away I could feel the difference. It fits how it's supposed to fit. I mean, I don't know what to tell you, but they did. They nailed it. And it's really rare to find gear that just kind of disappears into the background because of how well it does its job, but that's exactly what Skims has done. I think they're great. Shop skims mens@skims.com Finding mastery and then after the checkout, select podcast in the survey and then choose Finding Mastery from the dropdown menu. Again that skims.com finding mastery and select podcast and Finding Mastery so that they know that we sent you. Today's episode is brought to you by Finding youg Best. It's our signature mindset course Here at Finding Mastery, there's only three things that we can train. We can train our craft, our bodies and our minds. And the best in the world. They don't leave any of those up to chance. So let's talk about training your mind. We built an online mindset course called Finding your Best. These are the same skills that we use to train top athletes, top artists, and Fortune 100 executives around the world. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce. They trust this training to unlock the potential of their people. Finding your Best is a science based framework for building psychological skills. The same ones I've taught in boardrooms, Olympic training centers, locker rooms. They're all designed to help you build clarity on your values, your goals, to hold yourself accountable, to be your very best self and consistently make progress to what matters most in your life. This isn't about hacks. This is about training. It's about developing a system that you can return to when life gets loud and complex and uncertain. If you're ready to unlock what you're really capable of, head to findingmastery.com course and use the code summer75 to get $75 off. That's summer. And the number 75, summer75@findingmastery.com course for $75 off. Because it's not what you know that changes your life. It's what you train. Some people see the art of life like a jigsaw. Others see it as a tapestry.

Well, this is the explanation you're asking me how I. How I communicate. The way I communicate is jigsaw puzzle.

Jigsaw puzzle. So tapestry. So it's. Yeah. So this is a communication story process that we're. You're pointing to right now.

It's how my brain works.

It's very.

And so the stories that accumulate are the pieces. And sometimes my puzzles can get more expansive. Sometimes I'll swap stories out. Sometimes I have my favorites.

Okay, back to AI Because I can tell stories too. Okay, how are you readying yourself for the next wave that's taking place both in the readying yourself, but then I'm also as equally as interested how you're helping ready other people for what's coming.

This is the magical period. Magical in quotes, of the introduction of new technology. And we don't know what to do yet. And when Edison introduced the electric light bulb, people were afraid to use them because they thought it would make you sick or disturb the sadness of sleep. Serious. And they would put signs over electric light switches that says, this is an Edison electric light bulb. It is totally safe. Don't worry, you can use it. But there was a learning curve took a lot of years before everybody was like, I love this electricity thing. There's always fear and uncertainty of new stuff, and we don't quite know how much to use it or how little to use it. And you look at all the inflection points, whether it's the printing press or the telephone and the telegraph and the Internet, all of these things that there's always a period of complete madness where you have zealots on one side. I remember the early days of Internet shopping. And the zealots would be like, it's the death of bricks and mortar. Didn't happen. But sure, we'll go with that. And then there's the other side, which are the protectionists and the fearists, like oh my God, this is the worst thing in the world. The sky is falling. Are you hitting. We're all going to die. Let's be Luddites and dig into the old is what we know. And the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that's the period we're in now. We're in the period of complete madness, complete uncertainty. The zealots, the detractors. And I think for any kind of new technology like this one to reject it is stupid. Don't need to be overly zealous because you're probably over guessing its utility and you're also forgetting that human beings are on the using side of it and you won't know how we choose to use it. Like the crowd will source that one. You know, we'll figure out all the new ways to use things that, that you Buffins haven't figured out yet. And so I embrace it. I find it fascinating. I don't think it's going to be all consuming of our lives. Things will show up because we demand it. We will reject certain things because we demand it. And I don't think anybody who's making any predictions really knows. And so it's. We'll wait and see and we'll find out. And anybody who lived through the Internet, we saw it happen, we did it, we went through it and it's only. And like now it's kind of like settled and we all kind of get it. But I remember the insanity when the Internet showed up.

So you're not, you're not pointing to friendship and relationships as a counter rotation to digital, not, not toxicity.

It's not a, it's not a, it's not a pendulum, it's not a reaction to. Yeah, I recognize that me sort of going deep and talking about relationships and friendships now. Absolutely addresses a lot of the ills that have been caused by excessive digital. An excessive digital life. I'm fully aware of that. But it's not like I woke up one morning be like we've gone too digital. I need to go friendship. It wasn't a reaction. Yeah, it was more organic than that. But I'm fully aware that it, that it, that it. I get a twofer.

And that yeah, you definitely. And that came from usually, I don't know, life shifting insights or set of practices or ways of living come from some sort of suffering or pain. And I know it sounds a bit brutalist and harsh, but that's been my experience and I think research holds it up. Like why do people change because of pain? I'm wondering, like, are you clear or able to share what happened that led you to wanting to over index in your life or reinvest in your life? On relationship.

So my work is all semi autobiographical. It's my journey. So that's when you ask me, you know, is it a reaction to digital world? I'm like, no, it's a reaction to my world.

That's right.

And it just so happens that it's an antidote to the digital world. Like I said, twofer. Right? So yeah, I can tell you where it comes from for sure. My social life, my, my romantic life. I, I've never been married. I've had a couple of long term relationships, but not many. And I've gone on dates where literally the person I'm on a date with, like, have you ever been married? I'm like, no. They're like, well, what's your longest relationship? I'm like, about three years. And they said to me, what's wrong with you? Like why, why, why haven't you been married? And the stress that I've carried for decades for being, and I believed my own narrative that I am a failure and I am bad at relationships and people like you have commitment issues. Like they all diagnosed me, you know, and it didn't sound right because I don't think I do. Maybe I do. It's stressful and you can't you carry that weight that I'm bad at relationships and I don't know how to make people happy and I don't.

And it's a light word, you know, it's a little heavier than stressful.

And just over the past few years I've had some experiences and insights that have challenged my own narrative about myself. So I have a friend who was in a 16 year unhealthy relationship. She admits freely that she should have been in it for one year. Society looks at her and says, she did it right, I did it wrong. That's what society would say, that's right. She got it right and I got it wrong. There's something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with her.

Because there's something flawed in you if you can't figure out how to do it.

If I can't figure out how to do it. But staying in a 16 year relationship that you should have only been in for one, that was unhealthy and unhappy and just not a good thing.

From the surface.

From the surface, that's right. But that's the point. And I realize I'm a very happy person despite my lack of relationships because I have great friends. And why is the society overvalues the romantic relationship and undervalues the friendship?

Why do you think that is?

I don't know. Judeo Christian values? I couldn't tell you. I don't know. Probably, you know, but this is the world we live in where there's an excessive amount of pressure to get married. White picket fence, 1.3 children or whatever the statistic is 2.1. I don't know. Right. And in entire economies, entire economies on how to find it, nurse it, get it, make it right. And yet there's so little on friendship. And if you're not in a relationship, you still have friends. And when you are in a relationship, you still have friends. And in fact, if you are in a relationship and you abandon your friends, you're a bad friend.

I would say you've got some.

And I'd say you've got some issues.

Yeah, that's right.

In fact, if you want to have successful relationships, you better have friends to hold space for you when you're struggling in your relationship. And last I checked, every single successful, happy relationship, when you talk to the people in that relationship and you say, what's your secret? They all say the same thing, it's hard work. And we do the work. Well, if it's such hard work, who's supporting you in that hard work? I bet it's your friends. So basically what you're telling me is the secret to successful relationships is in part friends. And so I just came to the realization and the conclusion that I have great friends and I have a very happy life. And it turns out you can make out with some of your friends now and then, by the way. So it's like I'm missing out on nothing. I'm a happy person because of my friends. And so I.

Do you. Do you have friends with benefits, as it's called?

I have had friends with benefits.

Does it work?

Sure.

After the sex, what happens?

You have breakfast. I mean, does it work? Sure. I mean, sometimes it lasts, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the friendship can sustain it and sometimes it can't. Like it's a stupid question because it doesn't matter. Right. As long as it's two consenting adults who are kind of like, you, single, I'm single. You want to do this? Sure. And sometimes it's mundane, sometimes it's companionship. It's just sleepovers. Without it, it's just nice to have a warm body to wake up Next to it doesn't matter. As long as it's two people who want the same thing and the friendship allows for that to happen, then those are the parameters of the friendship. My point is I made myself unhappy because I thought I was missing something. And all the time I was neglecting that I had more than everybody else. I had amazing people in my life, amazing friends who offered me the love, the comfort, the companionship that I could get from a relationship, but I just wasn't getting from a relationship. And what has happened in my dating life, which is now when I date, I used to date, I'd be like, I hope this works. I hope this works. The pressure I'm putting myself, the pressure I'm putting them, it's unfair in everybody. It's destined for failure just because of the pressure. Whereas now I meet somebody and I tell them out of the gate, I'm like, listen, I don't know if I'm gonna date you or not. What I can tell you is I would like to become your friend because I like you. And maybe there's a friendship here. And if the friendship, if there's enough here that we can become friends, we've already won. And if we discover from that friendship that there's more, then I'm open to it.

Sounds like the aperture's wide open. You're really free with this. I'm most interested.

And if I don't have another long.

Term relationship, I'm cool because you've got.

Because I've got my friends and I'm happy.

What was the departure from the narrative that you swallowed and embedded, which is I'm a failure in the eyes of society on how I do my love life, my friendships, my relationships to what cracked that open?

I saw it in a friend, a different friend of mine who's divorced, hasn't really dated since her marriage ended 10 years ago. And her friends give her a hard time and she gives herself a hard time and she goes on a date here and there and she's like, what the hell am I doing? You know? And she would complain to me and I had the benefit of objectivity by being the outsider, looking at a person who's got an amazing family, who's got amazing friends, of which I count myself amongst them, who, if she just lets go of this relationship thing, she's got no complaints. And I would be like, just look at your life. Who cares? You get everything you want. You have everything you want. And I was giving her the advice I needed to hear.

Yeah, so you, you Learn from others as much as you learn from your own introspection.

Yeah, right. It's all part of the puzzle.

Yeah.

I got some blue pieces and I got some red pieces.

It's a cat. Is that what you said before, kitten? All right, look. So I think you're pointing to one we know from research, the Harvard study and lots of other studies on, well, being that connections and relationships are foundational.

It's embarrassing. We have to talk about it.

Yeah, like, we.

Everybody knows this. Like the fact that Harvard has a 75 year study to say that friends matter. Like, yeah.

So what do you think goes wrong?

Do we don't do the work? Yeah, like, we know we have to do the work in our romantic relationships. We just said it. That's the secret. We know that if you're a leader in an office, in a company, you got to do the work. Like in every kind of relationship dynamic, we know you got to do the work. Yet for some reason, we allow friendships to be organic and underinvested.

So how do you do the work?

I learn how to hold space. When a friend calls to vent to me, I learn to suppress my desire to fix. If I don't know what to do, I learn to ask. Do you need me to offer some advice or do you want me to just hold space for you?

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Mack Weldon. If you've been a community member here at Finding Mastery for a while now, you know our position on confidence. It's built from the inside out. It's not about flash. It's about really knowing who you are and showing up with clarity and conviction and purpose and substance. And that's why I'm so bought in with what Mack Weldon is doing. They make clothes for men who live that same philosophy. Understated, sharp, grounded in quality. Pieces that don't scream for attention, but quietly say, I've got this. Like their Latitude Bomber, it's clean, it's simple, it travels well. Whether I'm heading to work with an organization or just grabbing dinner, they're great. And they're silver denim jeans. It's this elevated fit, this great fabric, and somehow they feel broken in from day one. They did a nice job there. And what stands out most to me is their mindset. Mack Weldon believes, quote, knowing is more important than showing. That resonates deeply with what we're trying to do here at Finding Mastery, working from the inside out. And if that aligns with how you want to move through the world, I'd encourage you to go check them out, head to mackweldon.com and use the code Finding Mastery for 20% off your first order of $100 or more. Again, use the code Finding Mastery at mackwelden.com for 20% off your first order Of $100 or more. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Leesa. Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of high performance. There's no arguing that. And when we have great sleep, consistently and deeply, we give ourselves the best chance to operate at our best. Physically, cognitively, emotionally. Sleep affects it all. That's why I care about the environment that I sleep in so much. And, of course, a great mattress. It matters. One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been sleeping on a Leesa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference. They specifically chose one from their chill collection because they sleep hot. Something I know many of us can relate to, myself included. What are they reporting back? Fewer wake ups, deeper rest, and feeling more recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery, Lisa has several models to choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most is their purpose. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now, you can get 25% off all mattresses@leesa.com plus an extra 50 off when you use the code findingmastery at checkout. That's Lisa L E-E-S A dot com. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off. And then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. That hinge that my wife and I use on a regular basis, like, something comes up, and let's say she calls me and I know, like, I need direction sometimes I miss, hey, how do you want me to show up for you on this one? And she's like, look, I just need you to listen. I'm like, great.

People. People know.

Yeah. 100% of the time, I actually, I'm jammed. I need to hear your thoughts on this.

Yeah.

Like, I'm looking for a way through this. Great. Got it.

And when. And when somebody gets it wrong, just interrupt them. Be like, I don't need you to fix it right now. Here's what I need right now.

Yeah.

Like, either ask or interrupt.

Like, right.

Just give somebody guidance.

Street there. Yeah.

I read this thing that I thought was one of the most brilliant insights for marriages. Work, relationships, friendships, which is. We all live with the fantasy that our partner can read our mind and.

We'Re bad at it.

We all live with the fantasy that our friends can read our mind. We all live at the fantasy that our employees or our bosses can read our minds or we can ask or tell. So I've learned to ask and tell. I have learned how to listen actively. Really hard to do. If you do it well, you'll be exhausted at the end of it. It takes like. It takes effort.

What is listening hard require of you?

Here's the analogy. I went to this meeting. It's funny because now I'm hyper aware since the conversation. I'm playing the story in my head.

You are playing it.

I'm playing the story in my head. I can see it happening. And so the reason I'm a good storyteller is because I'm telling you what I'm looking at. It's as if I'm. It's as if I'm describing a movie to somebody who's blind sitting next to me or somebody who's not in the room.

Brilliant. Is it faster? Did you see the whole thing or are you doing it scene by scene with me?

I know the whole thing.

Yeah.

And I'm now going back and replaying it.

Brilliant.

In slow mo. And pulling out the bits that I need for you to. So I'm in this meeting and there's a woman sitting next to me who apparently is a famous yoga instructor. And the whole meeting, she's on her phone underneath the table. I can see I'm sitting next to her.

Her.

And it's not like she's got a family member in the hospital and she's getting updates. I can see she's on the social media. I'm looking. And at some point, she's looking down. At some point, the conversation at the table turns to being present and her head pops up and she says, that's why I love yoga, because it helps me be present. And I'm thinking, I think you're an idiot. But that's when I realized that we in the west have missed. We've lost the plot of what all of these practices, these Eastern practices are supposed to be and what they're meant for all of them. So let's take meditation, right? We know meditation has all these benefits to ourselves. We know that. We've done the science, we've put the brain scans. We tell everybody, you got to meditate because it's good for you. Right? And anybody who practices meditation, they will Know that what you do is you're supposed to sit still. You can't clear your mind. It doesn't exist. But you can focus on one thing. Your mantra, your breath, a dot on the wall, a sound. It doesn't matter. The point is, you learn to focus on one thing. And if you're distracted, if you have a thought that pops in your head, you learn to say, that's a thought. You label it a thought, put it out of my mind and I will deal with it later. I'm going back to focusing on one thing. And you learn this practice, and you're bad at it. At the beginning, you can do it for 2 minutes if you're lucky, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then an hour, focused on one thing, fully present. And at the end, you are, ah, nirvana. You feel amazing. You have a great day. All the brain waves, the science, all the electrodes tell you you're great. Here's the thing we've missed. We are social animals, and we live in paradox. Every day of our lives, every day of our lives, we are both individuals and a member of a group. And every single day, we have to deal with both of those things. Do I put myself first at the expense of the group, or do I put the group first at the expense of myself? The answer is yes. It's a paradox, right? And so, yes, meditation has benefits for you, but you're missing the pro social component. You are not present until someone else says you are. So when you're sitting with a friend and they're telling you about their amazing day or their terrible day, you are not waiting for your turn to speak. You have learned to focus on one thing and one thing only, what your friend is telling you. And when there's a bang over there or a conversation in the other direction, you ignore them. You are not interested. And when you have your own thoughts, you label it a thought and you put it out of your mind. You say, I'll deal with that later. Right now, I'm focusing on what my friend is telling me. And at the end of the conversation, you know that all of that meditation that you've been doing has now successfully been applied for your friend. You will know that you are present because your friend will say to you at the end, thank you for listening. I feel heard. My goodness, I feel whole. Thank you for being present for me. Congratulations. All the meditation was worth it. That's active listening. It's hard work to put aside the thing you want to say when you really want to say. It. It's hard work. I've had to learn this. So, like somebody who's telling me a story, I'm getting to know somebody and they tell me a story of how they went to Hong Kong. And the first thing I say is, I went to Hong Kong too, because I want them to know I can share and understand their experience. Wrong.

Wrong. Somebody tells you they got in a car crash, don't tell them you got traumatized by it. You go, oh, yeah, when I was 12, I hit a bumper. And, yeah, it's scary. Sounds totally missing the point.

Missing the point. And what I've had to learn to do is, though my desire is to match their experience to show that I can relate. That's my intention. What I end up doing is interrupting them, not making them feel heard, downplaying their experience simply because I'm talking about me. And so I've learned to put all of that away and say, oh, my God, that sounds awful. Tell me more about it. How was your vacation? How was Hong Kong? What was your favorite thing about it? And I've learned to be curious and make them feel seen and heard and understood. I will have my turn later. Now, I'm not perfect. I still screw it up all the time, but I am way better than I used to be.

That's actually the space of. It is great that you provide yourself. Are you more curious about their thoughts, their feelings, their behaviors, or tripwires? All of the above is a good stack. But where do you naturally fall to?

Depends on the person.

Yeah. So if you think they need a little bit or would benefit from a little bit of the feeling side, you'll ask more about that or is it more?

I don't know if it's that. I don't know if I think about it that much, to be honest. I think if I like somebody and I want to know more about their experience, if I had a good night's sleep, I'm full of questions.

Do you sleep well?

Yeah, I do.

You do sleep well?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How do you like the ADHD helps.

Meaning that you're just like a lot of deep sleep. Yeah. And you're buzzing throughout the day, so by the time you get to pillow time.

But I think. I think. I think it's a known thing that people with ADHD sleep hard, sleep deep. I sleep deep. Like, once I'm. It takes me a while to fall asleep, but once I'm out, a sayonara.

What are some of the best practices you have? Because you live a pretty vibrant life I could drop the word pretty. You live a vibrant life. What are your practices? Relational. We got it. Value sleep. It sounds like you got it. What else are you doing? Moderate exercise, I think you would say.

I think the thing that I've learned over time is grace. So give myself grace and recognize that what works for one person doesn't work for everybody. And my goal isn't to learn what works for somebody else. My goal is to learn what works for me. So I'm chronically disorganized, right? So I've tried a system to keep me organized or downloaded some app and it was great for a week or two and then I abandoned it. And then I'd feel guilty that I couldn't stick with it or I'm messy. So I get to the point where I'm like, I'm so annoyed and I like organize. I rip out everything out of the shelves and put it all back and I'm like, I'm going to keep it this way because it's so good it never ever happens. And I used to beat myself like why can't I stay organized? Or why won't this system work for me? I'm going to find a system that works for me. And then I just allowed myself grace, which is the system worked great for two weeks and then I'll find another system. And it's just made me less stressed about. I have periods of disorganization and periods of hyper organization. I have periods of stress and periods of total disconnect. I have periods of productivity and periods of complete no productivity. And it's all fine. I'm always trying to get better, but it's all fine.

Grace is the anecdote to self criticalness. Sounds like you were.

And it doesn't mean resignation, it doesn't mean whatever. Just this is how it's going to be. I'm always trying to be better. I'm always tweaking the system. But if it doesn't work for me, then it doesn't work for me. And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the system because if it works for somebody else, then that's great, but it doesn't work for me or it only worked for me for a short period of time. And so when you talk about the vibrancy of life, I would even say that that comes in fits and starts. I think my life is moments of unbelievable vibrancy and unbelievable whatever the verb, the noun is from mundane mundanity.

Do you slip into melancholy depression or are you more on the anxious side.

I think I used to get lonelier than I do now. I used to feel like I needed somebody around me all the time. And even that, I've given myself grace. My friend Rick, who's like a monk, he's not. Is a monk. He's like a monk. I asked him, I'm like, do you ever get lonely? He said, no, I'm always with myself. And I fell in love with that.

I like the company I keep.

I like the company I keep. And I sort of.

Do you like yourself?

I do.

It's important. Sounds cheeky.

I don't like aspects of myself.

It's an important question to wrestle with.

But I think that's the. I think we have to give ourselves the same grace that we're supposed to give other people. Right. Which is you never label the person, you label the behavior. Right. You don't label the character, you label the behavior. So you wouldn't say to somebody, you're a liar. You say you told a lie. You don't attack someone's character. You attack someone's behavior or you criticize the behavior. We're supposed to learn that. That's correct. Well, we should apply that logic to ourselves. There are behaviors I don't like that I've done or that I do. There are things that I don't like about me, but as a character, as a thing, yeah, it's good.

There's a Woody Hoberg. Dr. Hoberg is. I think he's like the best of us. He's a friend. He was on the podcast. He MIT PhD, NASA astronaut, got up to the ISS International Space Station and then was nominated for the spacewalk. And he is phenomenal.

Bet he's a nice guy, too. His character, so annoying.

Yeah. I mean, he is the literally the best of us. I think the thing that I asked him this question. When you think of living your best life, how do you think about going about that? He paused. He says, yeah, I think it's like just making. If I have a thousand choices throughout the day, I'm just trying to at each one make the right choice for me at that time. And it's backed up against the value proposition, and it's backed up against or in its counterbalance to the vision he holds of what could be. And I don't think it's that more complicated. It's a really simple thing. Now, where it gets tricky is when you make. When you zig, when you know that zagging was the right choice and you zig and you know that you made the easy, sloppy, wrong, expedient, whatever decision. Right. How do you work with yourself when that takes place?

Can I just take a quick sidebar there? So I, I got to meet the. The head of the human space program, the person in charge of the astronauts at NASA. And the question I asked was, what's the single most important characteristic in a human being you look for when you decide someone should be in the astronaut core? And the answer I got was they have to be nice.

Yeah, I think somewhere in the DNA of their job is to be ambassadors for human potential.

I don't think that's it. No, I think it's simpler than that, which is we're going to put you on a space station for six months with other astronauts, and there's going to be six of you living in close quarters.

You better get along.

You better get along. And what they know is, is that if you're nice and you get along, it also means you're better at asking for help. You're better at problem solving, you're better at teamwork. And so they don't care how smart you are and how good an engineer you are and how good a pilot you are. Yeah, sure, that stuff's important. Second, but if you're a good person, you make a good astronaut because fundamentally, it's a very, very dangerous job with an incredible amount of stress and very, very dangerous conditions. And you can only solve problems as a team. And so you better get along with other people, otherwise it's not going to work.

Yeah, I mean, but the point is.

It'S pro social that we're taking the most austere, the most dangerous, the most difficult conditions of which the whole outside world is trying to kill you at every moment. And you better get along. And by the way, there's a whole book about this that I didn't read called Survival of the Friendliest, which makes the case that for human beings we've misunderstood Darwin, that when we talk about survival of the fittest, it's actually not strength and brawn. We got it wrong. It's how pro social you are. It's how friendly you are. Because it doesn't matter how strong you are, if you don't get along, it's not going to work out. And I saw this happen at the Marine Corps when I visited boot camp. 13 weeks at Parris Island. The adrenaline instructors were telling me that for the first two weeks, everybody's trying to prove that they're good enough to be Marines. They're all trying to show off how Strong and how great they are. But the Marines, what they start to do after a couple of weeks is they put them in situations where they cannot succeed in the task by themselves. They're going to have to rely on each other. And they say something remarkable happens. And they're just observing. They're not paying attention to the anthropology. Right? Something remarkable happens. The group will organically eject the weak ones who refuse to ask for help or refuse to try, and the group will organically reject the very strong ones who think they don't need the group, and the group organically rejects them until they both learn to ask and accept help. And you better help the group, because it's not just about you, big guy. And they have to learn to ingratiate themselves back into the group. And this is proof that survival of the fittest is the ability to put yourself second and put your strength and your brawn and how smart you are and how you want to show off and show how great you are and say, no, no, no, I'm going to be a valuable member of the team. And then it works.

We are much more like a coral reef than just about any other analogy I can think about. We need each other to survive well. And there are sharks that swim amongst the coral reef that are dangerous, and they're predatorial, and there are all the different fittings, but we need each other in this ecosystem. So if. If an alien were to drop down and say, they just got to observe you and you're the n of one to recognize who humans are. Okay, so you're going to say, he's smart. They're going to say, oh, he's great at storytelling. Oh, yeah, he really values relationships. He's a little disorganized. He knows it, though. So humans are disorganized. They're good friends. Fill in the blank. Fill in the blank. What do you want them to see or to know about you? That you're not there yet? It's not totally apparent to the alien that drops into space or from space.

I think it's a flawed question because I'm not there for everything yet. Everything is a pursuit.

Okay, but that's the answer. That would be your answer. The question still is. I'll spar with you on this. The question is to invite, where is the unfinished business for you? And your response is, I mean, I'm.

Like, it depends on the week. You know, sometimes I'm focused on work, and so I'm trying to be a better leader. And then some weeks, everything's running Automatic, and I'm good and, like, the team's fine. They don't need me, and I focus on somewhere else. So, I mean, like, it's all.

Let me double click one more time, which is.

I don't mean to be evasive, but.

It'S like, no, I don't think evasive. I think. Let me see if I can drill it down one more niche, though, which is, what is the part of you that you're yearning to have more evident?

The part of me I'm yearning to have more evident.

Closer to the surface, I think my.

Grapple is the same as everybody else's grapple. I think it's a journey that some of us are further ahead and some of us are further behind, which is to be fully myself all the time, everywhere. You know, like, when do I edit myself, when do I hold back? And when do I allow reckless abandon to just, you know. So I don't think that's unique to me. And I think that's everybody's struggle, which is to be full of yourself all the time and have it not be performative either. Like, people who, like, they're sort of annoying and sort of in your face about things, and you're like, you want to settle down a little bit. Like, just being myself. I'm like, really? Is that the self you want to be? Yeah, I think that's. I think we're in this. I think people forget that being yourself includes I interact with other people. And that's part of the. That's the struggle, which is you don't want to be so much yourself that you just end up offending and pissing everybody off, even though you're just being authentic, quote unquote. But at the same time, you want to be so restrained and such a pleaser that you've hidden who you are as well. And so it's a very difficult question. It goes back to what I was saying before, which is being human is to live in paradox, which is, I am me, but I'm also a member of a team, a member of a family, a member of a church, a member of a community, a member of whatever. We're members of groups every single day. At the same time, I am me and I am an individual. And every single day I'm trying to be me, but every single day, I'm also trying to be a good member of the group. And it doesn't always line up well. And sometimes we're confronted with big or small decisions, which one of those things has to be sacrificed or Subordinate to the other if not sacrificed, and it's unresolvable.

I really appreciate the nuance that you and the tribe, we are trying our very best to be. Our very best to be ourselves. And there's a paradox embedded in that. And there's the likability piece and the authenticity piece. That is interplay. That's really complicated. So is it fair to say, like, if the alien was to watch, they'd say, oh, humans are really. I'm watching Simon, and he's trying his best to be himself. And I think that humans are really trying to get free to be themselves.

I'll tell you a story that I think captures what I hope the aliens think about us. My girlfriend and I were having a fight. It went something like this. Here's what I did right, here's what you did wrong. The response was, well, here's what I did right, and here's what you did wrong.

I don't understand what you're saying. I've never had this argument and you.

Can see how this goes. Well, here's two things I did right and four things you did wrong. Right?

How can you say that?

And it's getting more and more heated, and I had enough wherewithal to recognize this was going nowhere fast. And so I literally interrupted. I literally interrupted the fight and said, this isn't working. I'm changing the rules for this fight here. There's the new rules for the fight. I literally said this. These are the new rules for our fight. I'm going to tell you what I did wrong, and I'm going to tell you what you did right, and then you're going to take a turn. Okay, I'll go first. Here's what I got wrong, and here's what you got right. And she goes, yeah, well, here's what I got wrong and here's what you got right. And I went, yeah, well, here's something I got wrong that you frickin nailed. And within 20 seconds, we both realized we were trying. And even though we were idiots and making a mess of it, we were trying to. And I think that if you pull back at a macro level, whether you want to look at politics or the world order, everybody's doing their best. They're trying to provide for their families, they're trying to provide for themselves. They're trying to solve all their own problems, deal with their ambitions and their insecurities. We just want our kids to grow up kind of happy, kind of healthy. We all want to be safe going to work and going to school and then coming back at the end of the day and not have to worry about our safety. And we want to be able to make a living and feel proud for the work that we do and feel like our work matters and that we matter. It's pretty much it for the whole entire planet. Now we debate the right way to do that or how we should do that, and that's the messy part. But everybody's trying to. And if we have the empathy to see that and change the rules and say, let me tell you what my party did wrong and what your party did right. Let me tell you what my nation did wrong and what your nation did right. And if we can just flip the script and recognize that there's accountability in this thing for everybody.

I wonder.

Everybody's trying.

I wonder if you took a second pass at naming your company the Optimist company, which you just demonstrated brilliant optimism in the framing. If you would, if you would name it the Empathy Company, because. No, optimism is the first principle.

Optimism. No, empathy is soft important.

Yeah. What you just, you just anchored both of them and so optimism and empathy together feels like a superpower.

But you were saying that empathy, to me is a mechanism. Empathy is a thing you learn, a thing you do. It's a lever you pull. And it's necessary for all the things. It's one of the skills.

Yeah. It's optimism for connection.

Optimism is the outcome.

Yeah. So you.

Optimism is the direction, it's the vector.

How do you practice? I know it's a loaded question and kind of rounding through, how do I practice optimism? Yeah, how do you suggest people practice optimism?

Optimism, I think optimism is not blind positivity. It's not like everything's great. You know, that kind of positivity can be quite toxic in dark times or difficult times that some leader, well intentioned, bounces in and goes, this is great, guys. Like, we have each other. This is amazing. Like, everything's good. Like, look at the bright side. Like, you want to punch that person. Right.

It's dangerous.

It's dangerous. That's not optimism. That's. That's toxic positivity. Optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright. And optimism can exist in darkness. In fact, it thrives in darkness. You know, this is the darkest time we've ever been in. I don't remember a time this difficult. I don't know what to do. It's going to take a lot of effort and we're. There's going to be a lot of pain. But there's one thing that I know, which is if we stick together and we help each other out, I guarantee you we will come through this stronger, better and brighter than we went in. And that, to me, is optimism.

Does your capture of optimism embed a sense of agency? Agency, meaning this felt sense that I'm powerful, we're powerful.

I think it embeds a sense of responsibility to the other.

Yeah.

Which is I cannot be optimistic by myself. I don't have that kind of strength. But I can be optimistic for someone else.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Right. Because that's my responsibility. So, I mean, this is a trick for people who are afraid of flying. I don't know if you know this trick for people who are afraid of flying. If you're on a plane and the plane starts to bounce and you grip the seat and you freak out, they'll tell you, if a little child was sitting next to you who is having the fear you're having, what would you tell them? It's easy to find courage when you're looking after somebody younger and more fragile than you. And we're all fragile. And so I find it much easier to be optimistic when I have responsibility to a team or to a friend or to a loved one. But if you leave me by myself in a dark place. No, I'm not. I'll spiral.

Like anybody else in this conversation, you've been. You've demonstrated a sensitivity to yourself, to others, to like the hopes and dreams that you have. And you've allowed it to come right to the surface, which I really, really, really appreciate. And so thank you for the way that you've shared who you are more importantly than your insights. Your insights are always brilliant and clever and smart and actionable. But I've appreciated how you've showed up and the way you've done it today. So I just want to say thank you again, Simon. Appreciate you.

Thank you very much for having me. Always. Next time on Finding Mastery. You might think you know what makes a great leader or partner, but chances are you're getting one thing wrong. Tune in as Dr. Travis Bradbury joins Dr. Gervais to reveal why emotional intelligence is the real game changer. How to know if you're lacking it and the simple practices you need to build it. Join us Wednesday, September 10, 9am Pacific here on finding Mastery.

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