Ben Affleck says experience, not just success, defines you. Evan Carmichael shares Jeff Bezos's Regret Minimization Framework: imagine yourself old and pick the choice you'll regret less. He used it to decide between a safe job and a risky biotech startup, choosing the path with fewer unknowns.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is live your life. Over to you, Ben Affleck. If you could give advice to your 25-year-old self, what would you say?
You know, I'd be inclined to say, you know, watch out for this guy and don't spend money on this and buy real estate right up until 2007 and then dump it all, that kind of thing.
Oh, that's good advice.
But the truth is about youth and experience and success and failure is that you just have to go live it and experience it. And if you don't, it doesn't make you a mature adult. I think that you're defined by how you rise more than how you fall.
One of the most important lessons that I ever learned as a human being was from Jeff Bezos. And I've told this story a couple times on the channel. But the idea is to live life with no regrets. He was a guy who was having massive success at his firm where he was the youngest vice president ever at his company, and he left it, he threw it all away to start a business called Amazon where people thought he was crazy. Who would ever buy books online? Why are you throwing away this successful career to do this thing? And his answer was he didn't want to live with regret. He could live with it not working, but he did not want to live with regret. And so he calls it, in a very technical term, The regret minimization framework, where basically whenever you're afraid to make a decision, fast-forward your life to age 70, you're looking back, or maybe by the time we get there, 90, 150, look back on your life, say, am I going to regret saying yes or saying no to this? And if you're going to regret it, then take the opposite action. Do it. And so this really came into play into my life when I was in Paris and I was a tourist and this girl came up and asked me for directions, and I wanted to ask her out, and I was too afraid to do it, and I just pointed her in the direction she wanted to go, and I didn't ask her out. And then I took a picture as she was walking across the bridge to the other side of the street, and I didn't actually get her in the picture. I couldn't tell because it wasn't digital at the time. And I put that picture— I printed it off big and I put it on my wall at home, put it in my bedroom as a reminder not to live with regret, as a reminder the next time that I get in that situation where I want to do something but I'm too afraid, to do it, because the alternative is not knowing. And you can deal with a little bit of short-term pain, right? Maybe you get rejected, maybe it doesn't work out, maybe she laughs at you, whatever it is. You can deal with a little bit of short-term pain versus a lifetime of not knowing. And so I had that picture on my wall, and people thought it was this beautiful French picture, like, yes. I didn't tell anybody the story behind it. And then an opportunity came later on that year where I had a chance to go work at the dream company that I thought I wanted to work at versus being involved in this startup biotech company that wasn't making a lot of money and making $300 a month. And that was part of what helped me decide to stick with the company and not go get the job where I would be making $80,000 to $100,000 a year. Lots of opportunities. The thing that all my friends wanted and the companies fly me to New York and put me up in fancy hotels and wining and dining and all of that stuff. Saying no to do this small company that had a little chance of success, hadn't proven itself at all, I wasn't making any kind of real money from it. Why would I do that? Because I could live with the company failing, but I couldn't live with not knowing. And so I try to live my life ever since that point of reducing as many regrets as possible. And every time I ask myself, am I going to regret this? As soon as I get an honest answer, then I know what I have to do. So that's my story. And the question today, today is, what advice would you give your 25-year-old self, just like Ben Affleck did? Leave in the comments below, super curious to find out. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Liliana. Liliana, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. Really, really, really means a lot to me, and I hope you're enjoying the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you and hope you continue to believe in yourself. And I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
<LYRICS>I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.</LYRICS> We have only this one life, and we should make the best of it. That's what I try to. To do the best is not to enjoy each day as it's the last, or celebrating, drinking, whatever, because tomorrow it could be the end. No, no, no, it's to make it a better place. I think it's only possible in your surroundings. Come in a room, try that the people don't feel worse when you come in. So that's what I try to— that's how I understand life.
And I think a lot of times you think that the great writers are the people, they just write hit after hit after hit, and they do, but it's also because they get through all the terrible songs first. And I mean, I think that's kind of every single artist's story. And, uh, and I, I mean, I love to tell when people ask, what's your best advice for, you know, upcoming musician or anybody? I think it's that you have to be able to rise from the failures is what makes a successful person. Cuz everybody's gonna have mishaps, they're gonna fall down. And it's, you know, the people that continuously pick themselves up that are the ones that are gonna find their voice, make it, whatever you wanna call it.
