If You Not Happy With Your Life, Watch This!

When I first got into doing this work, actually when I first went off to college to start collecting debts, my father was buoyed by the idea that someday I might come back and I might be a doctor or a lawyer or a banker, something he thought would make sense. And when I came home from college and told him, dad, I want to study the science of happiness, he sat me down. My father is a neuroscientist at Baylor University down in Waco, Texas. And he told me that the average scientific paper, the average scientific journal article, is only read on average by seven people total, which is incredibly depressing for a researcher to hear because I know that that statistic also includes my mom. So I have to be honest, I could be thrilled about this research we're doing in this new field called positive psychology, where we found that we can actually raise your levels of happiness above your genetic set point. In doing so, turn on the human brain to its highest possible level, raising every single business and educational outcome and many of our health outcomes, and wirelessly tipping entire cultures, entire teams, towards the idea that happiness is a choice and that happiness is possible. The only problem is you're so busy with your work, you're so busy with your families, that you probably don't take time every morning to read through the top tier scientific journal articles to find out how you're supposed to be happier at work that day. So this gap starts to exist between what we've been studying and what we've been learning in this field. And what I wanted to do is to merge these two things together. I spent 12 years at Harvard studying positive psychology. And while I was there, I realized that a lot of this work that we were doing in the laboratory was flawed. Because if you study happiness in a laboratory where we can control all the variables, that's not how happiness works out in the real world. And if you can control the variables, that looks nothing what life looks like. So in the midst, at the beginning of the economic downturn, I started to go out and share this research out with the world. In fact, my very first talk was at a very large Swiss bank. And the introduction was not nearly as kind as Joe's introduction. They said, well, we don't have bonuses for everyone, but here's a talk on happiness from a guy from America.

But.

You can imagine the response. And with Swiss bankers. But what's amazing is as I started doing this research and we started to battle test these ideas, we realized that this research I'm about to get to share with you is so much More when you cannot control all the variables. And it turns out that we had that happiness success formula backwards. And we actually were able to solve two cultural myths that were holding us back within our society. But as soon as we start talking about happiness, everyone gets the wrong idea. I started all this work actually at the Divinity School. I fell backwards into doing this. I was studying Christian ethics at Harvard Divinity School and comparing it to Buddhist ethics, looking at how our beliefs change our actions in the world. And while I was doing this, some people in the psychology department said we can test those same ideas, but we can also at the same time quantify if somebody's becoming more compassion for somebody's becoming happier or more optimistic. And I got hooked. But one of the things I imported from the Divinity school was the definition of happiness. From the ancient Greeks, the modern world, we'd find happiness as pleasure, which is very short lived and then it's over, which is not worth spending even 10 minutes talking about here today. What I want to talk about is what the ancient Greeks defined it as. They defined happiness as the joy you feel moving towards your potential. I want to stop momentarily because that definition actually changes the pursuit of happiness for the people here in this room. Joy that moves us towards our potential. Joy is something we can feel even when life is not pleasurable. As you were hearing earlier today as Dave was talking about. He was talking about these ideas about how sometimes, as we're trying to reinvent our life, it can sometimes feel miserable. I don't think it necessarily has to feel miserable, but we won't feel high pleasure throughout the entire process. Joy is something you can experience even when life is not pleasurable. Even working 18 hours trying to build a business, you might not have high pleasure, but you can have high joy in the midst of it. Going on a long run for 10 miles, your legs could be burning, but you could still be feeling high joy. Same thing in the midst of childbirth. But we're terrified of happiness as a society, especially among the entrepreneurial class, because we think if I'm happy now, then I'm going to become complacent. If I'm happy now, I'm not going to push as hard. If I'm happy, I wouldn't nearly have been as successful as I am right now. That's what pleasure does. Joy does the exact opposite. Joy actually fuels us to see our potential. It makes us want to explore the world as much as possible. It makes us want to invest as deeply as possible and the people around us. So I got this call, though. From the Harvard Business Review a little over a year ago. And they said, shaun, we've been following this research you've been doing that I've been working out at these companies, trying to show them how if they focus on happiness, it actually can triple their levels of profits and raise their levels of productivity and sales and all those things. They said, we're going to put it on the COVID of the magazine, which I was thrilled about. People work 8, 14 hours a day. Find some way of getting them positive there. Think what will happen to our communities. But I said, let's talk about something serious here. Let's talk about something that's bending the tracks of human potential. Whatever you do on the COVID of the magazine, don't put a big yellow smiley face or something silly. They said, sean, we're the Harvard Business Review. We would never do something like that. I got the COVID of the Harvard Business Review in January and February of last year, which many of you probably read. And I looked at it, and there was a big yellow smiley face on the COVID of the magazine, of course, with dollar sign dimples. It's hbr. But I looked at the smiley face and I realized this is exactly the problem, because, look, the smiley face has no eyes. It's blind happiness. This is exactly the problem because as soon as we start talking about happiness, we think we have to be blind to the suffering we see people experiencing in this world. We have to be blind to the fact that we're caring for aging parents or for sick children. Blind to the fact that our lives might not have ended up like we expected them to. But it turns out, if you research it, ignorance leads directly away from bliss. What I want to talk about is the exact opposite. Last year, I got the privilege to go out and speak to A group of CEOs of Top Software companies. All software companies are leading this technological revolution we're living through. And afterwards, one of the CEOs of the top companies offered to drive me to the airport to talk about how we could cascade this research out throughout his entire company using these digital interventions, which I was so excited about. That's how you scale this information. So I got into this guy's really nice sports car, put on my seatbelt. He got on the other side, immediately started talking to me about how they've been growing so quickly. Stress levels had been rising. And while he was speeding towards the airport, that little bell was going off in his car, the seat belt bell. And eventually it stopped going off. It got tired, and I turned to him, I Said, you don't wear seat belts. He said, no, Sean, I listened to your talk. I love your research. I'm an optimist. I was like, oh, no, no, you're an idiot. But I'd love to work with you. Optimist. Optimism is great for a lot of things, but it doesn't stop cars from hitting us. It doesn't stop reality from impinging upon us. That's irrational optimism. If we sugarcoat the present, we make poor decisions for the future. What I want to talk about exactly exemplifies why you've come here. It's rational optimism. Rational optimism starts with realism, but you maintain the belief that your behavior matters if linked to the right people. Rational optimism starts with realism, but maintains the belief that your behavior matters if linked to the right people. The reason that's important is it allows you to see the problems you need to fix and also not sugarcoat the world. But at the same time, as you see, you don't think that they're permanent and pervasive, they're fixable. When you do that, people not only start believing in your vision, they actually start believing in your leadership as well. And that's what causes these long term changes to actually happen. So that's what we've been doing in positive psychology. What we've been doing is we've been studying these people called positive outliers. People that are above the curve for some reason. Because if you think about it, we normally study the average. We find out how many pills the average person should take if they get a headache. But already you should see a problem, regardless if you're £90 or £290, back of the bottle still says two pills. That's impossible. We metabolize in completely different ways. And if we keep studying what's aver, this society, this world, will remain merely average. Instead of deleting those positive outliers, we study them. Everyone in this room is a positive outlier. That's why you're at the genius event. We would have deleted you in the past. Now we realize we have to study you, because only by studying you can we find ways not how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and our schools worldwide. The reason why this is important, this is not the message our brains normally receive on a daily basis. If you try and find out what the world looks like in reality, you turn to your smartphone to find out what's going on in the world, and your brain is immediately bombarded by negative Information, murder and corruption and diseases and natural disasters, and very quickly your brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive. We can talk about happiness for 10 minutes here today, but let's get back to reality. Reality is mostly about suffering. And if you're not feeling it now, it's coming. We know it's a skewed ratio, but that's what our brains are experiencing. The way that I met Jo was actually in the back of Arianna Huffington's apartment where I was doing this work with her on thrive and my wife Michelle Gienal, and I just found out that if you watch three minutes of negative news in the morning compared to three minutes of still negative events, but with solution focused news, turns out that if you watch the three minute negative news eight hours later, six to eight hours later, we ask you about your mood, you have a 27% likelihood of having a worse day than somebody who had not been exposed to that negative news. It turns out three minutes each morning, we're actually corrupting part of the way that our brains process the entirety of the rest of the day. What we've been finding is it changes us. It creates what we call the medical school syndrome, which if you know people who have been through medical training during the first year of medical school, it's read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen to a human being. Suddenly, these brilliant and aspiring doctors start realizing they have of those symptoms and diseases, they'll actually start manifesting symptoms they were studying for for an exam. If you get bored during my last two minutes of my talk, you can just go on WebMD and just read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that are online. It becomes like a checklist, like dead hands. That's what I was feeling while he was talking. But what happens is if you do this, I have a brother in law named Bobo, which they didn't give me time here to talk about. But Bobo called me on the phone. Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School, which is our rival. And he said, sean, I, I have leprosy, which even at Yale is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he'd just gone over a week of menopause. What we're finding is that it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, the lens through which we view reality. Which is why when I was at Harvard, I saw something amazing. I applied to Harvard on Adair. I got in. I wasn't valedictorian my public high school, I was a volunteer firefighter. When I got in, I thought everyone would be happy there. I spent. You know, when you walk in there, this is the freshman dining hall. There, that's their cafeteria with vaulted wooden ceilings and Tiffany stained glass. It looks like something out of Hogwarts from the movie Harry Potter. This is Hogwarts from the movie Harry Potter and that's Harvard. And they see this and they say, why would you waste time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what do they possibly have to be unhappy about? Weren't you in the slums of Venezuela? Impoverished schools in Africa and children's cancer wards in Boston? Since then we've researched in all those places and here's what we found. We were wrong. Turns out it's not your genes and your environment that predict your levels of happiness. It turns out what predicts your long term levels of happiness are the conscious choices you make, the habits you make in your life and the mindset changes. Find ways to create some positive changes in your life life. And what we found is if you pick up one of these habits, think of three things you're grateful for each day. Doing two minutes of journaling about a positive experience. 15 minutes of fun mindful cardio activity a day, two minutes of meditation writing a single positive email. Turns out we can not only improve your levels of happiness above your genetic set point, we can put it throughout an entire organization. We can triple the productivity and triple the profit levels of that team, which is what we did nationwide Insurance increased the productivity levels by 31% and it turns out we can raise accuracy rates by 10%. But the real thing amazing about this is we found that all these things, if we can raise your levels of happiness, it turns out extends your life more. These are equally as predictive of how long you will live as obesity, high blood pressure or smoking. We fight so hard against the negative in our society and we forget to tell people how powerful the positive can be. That's ten minutes of happiness. But what we've been finding is if you just do two minutes of these positive habits over the course of the next 21 days in a row, turns out we can break your genes and your environment and allow happiness to be one of the greatest competitive advantages in the modern economy.

How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? So 10 is a feeling of well being and 0 is the pits. What's your happiness number and how do you get more of that? During today's talk, you're going to know what the happiness rules are.

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How to implement happiness rules into your life so that you can become happier. You're going to get a detailed handout of all the material in the presentation. And ideally, if this makes sense to you, you're going to come out of this happier. You've been misled. You were given a formula that told you that success, that happiness was the result of hard work and success. Happiness came from working hard and becoming successful. Success is defined as the progressive realization of a worthy goal by Earl Nightingale. He's a motivational speaker. I followed those rules. I followed that formula. I wanted to become a doctor. I worked hard, college, med school, residency, started a private practice, became successful. What I found at the end was burnout. And burnout is defined as exhaustion detached from work, becoming bitter, becoming cynical, and losing effectiveness at work. My burnout got really bad. It got to a point that something had to change. In September 2008, I was sitting in a darkened room. I was staring across at a picture. My sister Magdalena. We're twins. And in this picture, she's beaming. And what you can't tell is that she's wearing a wig because she's going through chemotherapy. Three years before, she'd been diagnosed with brain cancer and had a terrible prognosis. And the month before, on August 24, 2008, she had passed away. It was so striking to me. In that moment, I was healthy, I was successful, I had a thriving private practice, and I was miserable. And Magdalena, with a terrible prognosis, lived life with a smile on her face. In that moment, there was a line in the sand, a moment of truth. I committed to enjoying the ride and becoming happy, no matter what. And over the years, that's what I've been able to do. And now that's what I like to teach other people. What I've come to discover is that happiness is really the engine that drives success instead of the outcome of success. Here's a definition of you from Sean Achor. He's a happiness researcher from Harvard. The feeling of joy that you get as you strive to fulfill your potential. The definition of happiness, what I love about that definition is it's got embedded two key parts. Number one, embrace the sock. And number two is Dan Sullivan's elegant idea. Make your future bigger than your past.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Now, the happiness rules do not work. They get broken. If what you're dealing with are things like, you know, PTSD or clinical depression or anxiety, they can be helpful. But with those conditions, you need to get some professional help as well. There's a whole area of psychology that's opened up which is called the positive psychology movement. And there's many theories about how to flourish and how to have happiness. And they're all working with the same basic ingredients that we pick and choose from. And we put these ingredients together and that's how we define or achieve happiness. Where happiness rules stands out. What's completely different from the happiness rules and other methods is that they were not named by a psychiatrist who's listened to 417 episodes of I Love Marketing. We've got three big rules, two parts to each rule. First, fitness rules. Part one of fitness rules are the physical fitness rules. Sleep optimized for eight or more hours a day. Move more. Eat well. Mental fitness. Cut out negativity in your life as much as you can. Limit your exposure to negativity. We've got a lot of negative thoughts frequently in our head. Don't wrestle and try to push them out of your head. Put a blinders to them. When you try to push the thoughts out, they get bigger. Develop a gratitude.

Practice.

R and R Play time off. But this is also where resiliency lives. So techniques like Jason teaches us, breathing, meditation, taking a walk. Adding five minutes four to six times a day of active recovery is incredibly helpful. Resets your nervous system. Develop a sense of awe. Cultivate a sense of wonder. Second set of rules, growth rules. First part of growth rules learning and growing. Work with a growth mindset. We are never finished products. We can always get better. We talked about this last month's meeting. Jim Rohn Work on yourself as hard as you work on your business. The past is for learning. This comes from the promises of alcoholics Anonymous. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door of on it. Second part of growth rules connection. We've been talking about that all day long, today and yesterday. There's an incredibly tight correlation as we age with our health and happiness and the quality of the connections that we have. Focus on your relationships. Find your tribe. One of the big findings of all of the positive psychology research that's been done is that other people matter. Purpose rules. First, blaze your own trail. This is where courage lives. But Weissen was talking about that. What are you interested in? What's your vision? Not that vision, this vision. What's the impact that you want to have in your life? What are you curious about? What are you good at? David Evans and Bill Burnett are teachers at Stanford. They've got a course. In the book Designing your life, David Evans was asked to summarize how to design your life. He came up with a 10 word answer. Get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story. In the last section, committing to enjoying the ride, I have two quotes for you. The first from Viktor Frankel, man's search for meaning. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way. And the second is more recent. It's from Jason Sudukas. I saw this quote recently. Jason Sudukas is the actor on Ted Lasso. He said, if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an avenger. All these concepts are familiar to Yuam. The happiness rules gives you a handle and a way to think about them so that you can remember them. Things that are easy to do are also easy not to do. According to Jim Rohn. For the next week, commit to living life intentionally by design, putting the happiness rules at the center. And if it makes sense, share the happiness rules with the people around you. Family, friends, loved ones. And imagine in a year we get back together and everybody has moved up their level of happiness and the people around them have moved your level of happiness up. What the world starts to look like. Living the happiness rules can change your life. I know it's changed mine and it can change yours. So go out there and be happy.

Well, I'm not a marketing person, so I'm going to talk to you about marketing. So think about it. There's nothing more powerful than a changed mind. And I'm not talking about changing your client's mind, I'm talking about changing your own mind. Because success is in your mind. You decide when you are happy, you decide when you are unhappy. You may think it's your children, it's your client, it's someone else who gives you happiness. But imagine if someone who gives you happiness, you're giving the remote control of your happiness to them. The same people who make you happy have a power to make you unhappy. Happy, unhappy, happy, unhappy. Right? You don't ever want to give control of your happiness. Every one of Us here is so focused on going out and becoming successful that they forget that after being successful you still have to go out and become significant. How do you become significant? How do you find the happiness? How do you find the fulfillment? Interestingly, the human body, our DNA is designed for us to be generous because we realize when we were way back when in the tribes, we realized if we didn't help each other, we all die. Our DNA says the only way we survive in the long term is when we take care of each other. Then why is it that we constantly trying to play tricks on our mind or play tricks on our client's mind for them to do something that they are not intended to do. Think about when we hire people, what do we do? We take advantage of basic chemical in our brain called dopamine. We give them a goal. If you meet this goal, you get this bonus. If you do this, you get a promotion. If you do this, you get this. It's a constant dopamine hit. And what happens is they get addicted to the dopamine and they constantly keep doing it. And at the end of the end of the day they all feel unfulfilled because dopamine only lasts for very little time, short time. And they all feel down because you have let them down. The only way you can build relationship is like thinking of your employees, thinking of your clients, same as your children. So I'm going to say that being an entrepreneur and the best successful marketing is treating everyone around you just like you will treat your children. Interesting thing about being a parent is there is nothing that you do gives you the instant result. You don't go to your children and do something and hoping something will change. Nothing changes. But guess what happens five years later, 10 years later, you look and say, oh my God, what a wonderful kids they have grown up to be. And that's what it takes. In fact, building that trust and safety that you do for your children is what creates the long term sustainable relationships. And if you don't do that, what you have a short term relationship. Imagine. So what I can tell you is that as a father, one of the things we have done with our children is amazing. We let them know that our love for them is unconditional. They have to ever worry about do we love them, but our approval is not approval. They have to earn, but they never have to worry about do we love them. And one thing that I have absolutely religiously followed, there is never a time when our children will call that I will not answer, that never will happen. So Imagine if ever they call you. It doesn't matter what I am doing. There's nothing more important to me than taking that call. I want them to know that I am willing to give them my time because that's one thing I don't have enough of, is the time. But they have that. That is a true love. In some sense. When you're thinking about as a parent, you have to start thinking about what is it that's important and what lessons can you possibly give impart to them that is meaningful. So one thing that I've learned is the living a life of significance and teaching our children about how to grow up in a family that actually is doing really well. So for me, growing up in India was easy. We were poor, we didn't have food, we could struggle and came to this country with $5 in my pocket. And God has been amazingly kind to us with that kindness. There was tremendous amount of burden that I feel. And the burden came because there were so many people in my life who helped me become who I am. I tried to find these people, tried to help them. They didn't need my help. And that was really way for me to figure out what can I do to pay my debt back. And I realized if I can't pay back, I can certainly pay forward. And I decided I'm going to do what I can to help as many people as I can. And one of the things I learned was that fulfillment only comes from something that is so basic about truly caring about others. And just like you would take care of your children. And only story I can tell you what true care is a story that my mother told me when I was young. Remember my mother was completely illiterate. She cared that even though we were poor, she was illiterate that I study. She will wake me up at 5 in the morning, ask me, read this and tell me what the answer to this question is in the math. I didn't know that she couldn't read. I will say mom, the answer is seven. She said don't make me look, do it again and I'll do it again. Say mom, answer is seven. She's good. Now go to the next one. Point was she cared. The story that she told me that I still touches my heart. She said there was one kid who grew up and wanted to join a gang. And the part of joining the gang, the gang says I don't think you are quite ready. And I know you are ready when you can go in, take your mother, cut her off and take the heart out and I want a beating heart. And if you can bring that, we know you're ready to do what it takes. The young man goes there, finds a mother, stops her from breathing, cuts her heart, brings the beating heart in his own hand and he's walking back and he trips over and the heart says, son, are you okay? She didn't care what he did. What she cared was, is he okay? And that's what the unconditional love is about. So if you think about it, can you truly care for people who are employees in your company? Don't think of them as resources by calling having a department called human resources. They are not a resource for you, they are your family. So when you tell them you're joining a family, do you really mean it? And if you treat your family that way, I worry about you. I really honestly worry about you that if you treat your family that way. So one of the things we do always in our family is that what we do out of love for our children is not necessarily right. So I can give you some really example that I think we did for our children that I think is fundamentally, I think you guys can at least get some wisdom out of it. When our daughter was 16 year old, she came to me and said, dad, I found my true passion. I know what I want to do. And I know you love science and technology. I want nothing to do with it. As a father, my easiest thing for me to do would have been, you know, my doll, what is it that you want to do? I will find you the world's best and pursue your passion. To me, that was same as saying, I don't give a shit, just do whatever you want. You know what I did, I cared. And I said, you know, you have to let me do a job as a father. What's father's job? Father's job is really simple. Let me expose you to enough things because you don't even know what you don't know yet. And she said, well, so what is it that you would like me to do? And I say, I would like you to go to Singularity University, learn about neuroscience, learn about artificial intelligence, learn about nanotechnology. And said, dad, I know you don't hear me one word. I say, did I just not tell you I have no interest in science and technology? And I said, well, if you make me a promise, you're going to go there for four weeks, learn about all these things with an open mind, wanting to learn and wanting to like. I make you a promise that when you come back you get to do what you want. She came back. The first thing she did was open the door and said, dad, I made up my mind. You know what I told her? I said, doll, first thing my word honestly was, was, oh, shit. Then I said, well, I gave you my word. Tell me, what is it you would like to do? She said, dad, I've decided I'm going to be either a neuroscientist or a genetist. And I imagine that I said, doll, at the risk of changing your mind, would you tell me what made you change your mind? He said, dad, you're so dumb, you don't realize that. I go to high school, I mix these chemicals, I learn these science, and I say, why do I really care? When I went to Singularity University, I realized, you knew I care about girls education. I realized until I learned about the human brain, how can I change education? Until I learn about genetics, how can I change take care of their health? So I realized science and technology is not a destination, it's simply a tool in my tool chest to do what I care about. Imagine that 16 year old, and if I didn't do what I did, the world would have lost out on a great scientist and she would have never found her true passion. So at the end, what I would tell you would be as Peter said, if I ask people, what would you die for? Is there anything who would tell me, what would you die for in this room? I tell you, most people will say what I would say, our children, there is nothing else in our life we would die for. And if I were to ask you, what are you living for? These very few of them say, I live for my children. Imagine if there's one thing you could go out and learn is live for your children. If you're willing to die for them, live for them. Give them your time, treat your employees like children. Don't think anything when you go out with, you know, I go out with my wife and tell my children, don't call me because I'm having my private time. Guess what happens when they grow up. Don't call me. I'm having a private time. Right.

You've been studying a lot lately about happiness. I mean, you're public about that and that, you know, money doesn't provide. I believe that a lot of things that can be purchased and that money gives you access to can put a big smile on your face. That could bring some levels of happiness, but it can't buy true friends. It cannot get you your health back. If you let your health deteriorate, but you're really big on this whole concept of just feeling good and being happy. What are some things you can speak to about that? That seems sort of like some people might say that's sort of a weird thing for a CEO of a billion dollar company to be. One of his primary focuses is happiness.

Well, it makes sense from a business perspective because if you can make employees happy and customers happy, then employees are going to be more productive, customers are going to be more loyal. So I don't think it's really. I mean, I think every CEO should be thinking about how to do that, but it's. Yeah. What's interesting is there's a couple great books, there's Good to Great by Jim Collins, and there's also Tribal Leadership. And both of those studied companies, different types of companies in different industries, and looked at what separated the great companies from just the good ones. And what they found was one of the things was about having a vision that has meaning, that has a greater purpose than just making money or being number one in the market. So it's not just saying, oh, you should figure out a greater purpose or something you're passionate about just for your own personal happiness. It's actually good business, like figuring out those are the companies that actually end up becoming great. And on the whole science of happiness thing, like research has shown that the same thing is true on the personal side. If you believe that you're leading a meaningful life that has a higher purpose and you're part of something that's beyond just focusing on you yourself. The research has shown those people are actually happier, so they kind of run in parallel. And so it's just kind of interesting how for me, I'm really viewing it from the scientific and research perspective, like this is just what the data says. I'm not out there trying to say you should join a charity or anything like that, but that's just what the research shows. That's just how we're designed.

Well, so for all of these thousands of employees and customers and everything that Zappos reaches, touches, is going to, over the years, when it's all said and done, what would you like to to have been said about Zappos 20 years from now? What would you like people to say? This is what this organization has done for me. This is what it represents.

I like them to say that, you know, beyond just our employees and our customers, that we've helped improve people's lives and made them happier, whether it's through, you know, what we do with them. Or, you know, there's just so many ways it can happen. Whether they call us and maybe they're having a bad day and they get off the phone and now their mood is lifted because they were laughing or because other organizations are learning that culture is important and learning how to improve their company culture and getting their employees happier or just sharing the stuff that we're learning about the signs of happiness with people that want to learn that stuff and apply it to their own lives or their own businesses.

Well, you know, one of the things I think is cool here that you do is for one, I've had a couple of public speeches that I've given and I've said, you know, let's call Zappos on, you know, speakerphone and just listen to this. And you know, it's amazing because it is really amazing customer service. And I tell people, you know, just call them. If you don't even know what the heck to come company does, just call them. And their phone number is right on their page. Of all the pages, I think on your website have your phone number right there. You literally encourage people to call you. Not just try to be an order taking online service, but when people see the tours and they come down here in person, everything from picking people up at the airport to bringing them in. One of the coolest things that impress me is you have bookshelves filled with business books and inspirational books and books that you think are just really awesome. You and other people in the company and you just say, take whatever books.

Okay, here I am at the front entrance of Zappos and there's a bookshelf behind me. And so when people do a tour, they actually let the people take any of the books that they like off the shelf. For instance, here's a book by Seth Godin. Tony talked about this on our interview Tribes and any book that you want because they believe that educate people, give them knowledge. And so check it out.

So you're really big on a philosophy that I don't know if you would think of it this way, but I believe that leave people in a better place than they were before you came into their life. If you're going to rent somebody's house, don't trash it. When you're done, leave it in hopefully a better condition than it was before you showed up. And it seems that's kind of the theme that happens with Zappos. I mean, you want to put a smile on people's faces. You want people to come here and not only be impressed because part of it's marketing, because hopefully they'll do business with you. But really, you want to impact people. You say, take whatever book you want. We're trying to do good stuff. So, I mean, you're really using entrepreneurism to create better, happier human beings, which I think is awesome. And so it's part of the reasons I wanted to interview you and talk about this stuff. If someone has not done that before, I asked you first, if you had started in business, what would you do? If you're already in business and you're kind of just not at all happy with it, it's frustrating. You're at a place where you're just not where you want to be. What sort of advice would you say to that person? Do they need to step back? Do they. I mean, what sort of actions would you suggest that they.

They take?

I would say it's true for. For anyone. Yeah. I would say step back and really evaluate your life. And. And I think a lot of people get stuck in, you know, well, so I wrote a blog post about playing how poker has analogies to. To business. And. And I would say a lot of people think the most important thing in poker is how well you bluff or how you bet or so on. But actually, when you go into a poker room, the most important decision that's going to have the biggest impact on how much money you make or lose that night is none of that. It's what table you decide to sit at. And if you sit at a table where, with bad poker players, you're going to make a lot more money than if you sit at a table with really good poker players. And so if you think of that as an analogy to life, and one table is about making as much money as possible, and another table might be about, say, really just improving your own personal happiness, like, which one is the table, which game do you want to be playing? And so I think most people just, you know, without even really thinking about it, they're just of the mindset of, you know, some people want to play the money game and they want to personally earn as much money as possible. Some people want to play the fame game and just be recognized and be, you know, be a celebrity, when really, I think the underlying motivation of all of this is what they really want to play is the happiness game and maximize their happiness. And so if you're not happy with what you're doing, then just take a step back and ask yourself, what are the assumptions of why you're doing what you're doing right now? And if you really honest with yourself. I think a lot of people will realize. I, I think a lot of people just assume that making more money is going to make them happier, even though historically that hasn't been the case. Maybe they're happy the day of or a week after. But there's a saying where a raise is only a raise for a month and after that it's just what you're paid.

No, it's like anyone's ever went out and bought what they think is the most amazing car in the world. There's a probably a couple of weeks where you're like, yeah, this is really cool. Then it tends to go back to normal.

Yeah. And the research actually supports all this. So they've done lots of studies and basically what they found is money actually does affect your happiness level when you don't have enough money to have your basic needs met, like food and shelter and so on. But once your basic needs are met, really any incremental amount of money does not, like they've measured it, different income levels and so on, and it actually does not make people happier.

Yeah. So the key is, as long as you're not in total struggle survival mode, once you've gotten to that level, the amount of impact is incremental at best.

With more money or none at all. Yeah, okay, but that's a very hard concept too. I mean, even you and I might rationally understand that. But it's still, you know, I think emotionally we're very tied to the just thinking more is better.

I absolutely agree. I agree. I mean, if we were to sit.

In front of a room of people.

And say, we've got a million dollars in this hand, or we've got a book on how to make millions and millions of dollars or just how to be happy, you know, but you got to learn it, you got to put time and understand it. You got to develop practices in your life. You know, most people are just going to take the money. They're not to going, going to say, well, let's do that. So I think, yeah, just understanding.

But they've done so many studies on lottery winners where, you know, you look at their happiness level right before winning the lottery and a year later and it's the same or even lower. And actually the reverse is true too. You know, people that are dismembered or become blind a year later, they're just as happy as they were before that happened.

Which.

But I bet if we, you know, ask your viewers to, how many of them would be willing to go blind for the rest of their lives probably wouldn't get many papers.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a good thing.

And I wouldn't do it either. And so that's interesting. Right. So I don't think either of us would do it, even though we know the research has shown that's not going to affect our happiness level.

Well, the key, you said it earlier though, it's about adaptation. So human beings adapt to lots of different stuff. So part of it, I think a lot of people adapt to misery, they adapt to suffering, they adapt to struggle. And I don't know if people really consciously adapt to becoming more happy. I mean, I think you really, because you say it's just been the way it is. I mean, there's a lot of cultural influences that cause companies and individuals to kind of be the way they are. And I think you almost need to break away from what everyone else is doing and kind of create your own thing, which is exactly what you're doing at Zappos. I mean, you're a complete opposite. Opposite of how most companies run. And look what's happened so far.

Yeah, but there's people where their assumption might be, oh, I have to make so much money so that I can one day go travel around the world. And there's a great book, Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, where he basically woke up one day and realized, that's what I want, I should just go do it. And I don't need a lot of money to be able to do that.

Tim is not a very happy guy, though. I don't really like him.

No, I'm kidding.

No, he was. We were just hanging out two weeks ago. I spent nine days with him on vacation in Vietnam. So Tim's got some very good insights. The book is fantastic. I've actually interviewed him before. We were talking before the cameras were rolling about relationships and you had some insights on that.

So what are your thoughts? Well, for us, I just think it's interesting. There's a lot of analogies between personal and business and what works in each. And so our whole philosophy at Zappos is we want to hire for culture. And that basically breaks down into we have these 10 core values and we want people that basically have the same personal core values. And that's how we interview people and that's what we hire for. And so I think the same thing is probably true in relationships, really. It's about finding someone that has the same values and then you guys just have the same long term vision of where you want to go. And I think what a lot of people, when they first meet people, they may find them, maybe it's because of circumstance or they're physically attractive or whatever. And you don't really discover till you're kind of, you know, six months later or three years later that really your values aren't aligned. And so if there was a discussion about values, what your own personal values are, and then you could see how much overlap there is, that might actually prevent a lot of things from going wrong or even from getting the relationship in the first.

Right.

So, you know, what's, and what's interesting is. No, I mean, I've never thought to myself, oh, what are my personal values? But it's actually a tough exercise. And we actually just had a group of entrepreneurs here today where we went through that exercise this morning and asked them, you know, just write down your personal values, you know, in terms of, you know, either who you are or who you want to be. And it's, it's tough. It requires a lot of introspection. And the idea it's not just something you could do in five minutes, but if you spend time at it, the goal is you want to eventually come up with a list where someone looks at you, look at that list and you're like, yeah, that's who I am or who I want to be. And then what would be interesting is if for people that are in relationships to have your partner do that same exercise and then compare notes afterwards and it'd be interesting to see the differences.

What if I told you that there wasn't a personal or business problem in the world that couldn't be solved by five words? I'm curious, by a show of hands, how many of you do things you don't want to do? Raise your hands. Yeah, all right, cool. Yeah. Three years ago, I'd have raised my hand as well. But today I'm going to share with you the five words that completely transformed my life, tripled my net worth, and allow me to show up in a big way. For those who count on me, I want to be very clear. This was a very expensive lesson to learn. It cost me my money, my health and my life. It cost me everything. But today, it's only going to cost you 10 minutes of your undivided attention. So let's dive in to how a series of misfortunes followed by a life altering terminal illness has brought me more joy than any other life experience to date. I'm going to take you through a quick journey, one that lasted over three years in Real life. But I'll do my best to summarize in just a few minutes. Imagine yourself. It's 2019. Your entire body is shutting down. You have major issues with your left lung, liver failure, thyroid failure, kidney failure, and brain edema. None of the 196 doctors you've seen could tell you how to fix what's wrong.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Only that you should get your affairs in order and plan for the worst. At this point, you'd spent almost a million dollars out of pocket and over 9,000 hours spent on trying to heal. Fast forward to 2021. Nothing changed. Every day is torture. At that point. You're just praying for death. A few months go by. The date is March 23, 2021. You finally get a moment of clarity. You decide to talk to your significant other. She's actually in the back, right over there. You say, my love, this isn't getting any better. I'm draining our finances and being tortured to death for our family. I think I'm going to kill myself. It was the only sense of control you felt in years. Now, if you told that to most people, they'd try to lock you up in a mental institution. But your partner didn't. Instead, they told you, I love you and I understand, but let's spend the next 30 days getting ready. Let's stop trying to heal and only do things that you find fun. After those 30 days, we can make a decision as a family. And over the next 30 days, you do. You get your affairs in order. You shoot videos for your mom, your brother, your partner, your friends and your team. You want them to know that they will be taken care of and not to worry about you. After you pass, you get a will and a trust. You talk to your employees about what the business is going to look like when you're gone. You do several hours of research and what the most painless way to kill yourself is. It's heroin. It is heroin. Yeah. You also start doing things you've always wanted to do. It's hard to imagine the free time you get when you stop trying to save your life. This is the best 30 days you've ever had. You finally get to do everything in your bucket list. You get to have long, deep conversations with your partner, your family and your friends. The type of conversations you can only have when you know the end is near. You feel the most free you've ever felt, like you opened the door to the torture chamber room. You start to live by the five words that I'll reveal to you in a minute. And the craziest thing happens. You start to feel a little better. Not 100% all at once, but little.

By little.

Enough to postpone killing yourself. Obviously, I'm here. Fast forward to one year later, which is around today, and I am almost 100%. Over the course of your three year ordeal, you get a gift that, sadly, many people in the world do. You get to find rock bottom, the place where life doesn't have value anymore. And you find five deceivingly simple words that have solved every problem you've ever had. Are you ready for the big reveal? Good hooks, right?

Try it out a little longer.

The biggest question you ask yourself before you do anything now is, does this bring me joy? But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. And I have a framework that I'll share that once you apply it, you'll learn how to think about it and start using it daily. It will make you wonder how you lived your life any other way. Here's the framework. It's very simple. You ask your question, does this bring me joy? If not, can I delegate it to someone that will find joy in it? If not, can I personally reframe it to find joy in it? If not, get rid of it like your life depended on it. So let's apply it to five real life examples. The first example, how many of you hate firing people by a raise of hands? Come on, there's got to be more than that. How many people hate firing people? All right. Yeah, me too. Right? So I asked myself, does this bring me joy?

Hell no.

Hell no. Can I delegate it? Not sustainably. Does it need to be done? Yes. So how can I refrain letting someone go to bring me joy? Here's how I did it. I hopped on a call with someone recently that needed to be let go. I asked them, hey, is this job bringing you joy? You know what they said? Hell no.

Right?

I said, that's great. That is great. Let's figure out what does bring you joy. What do you want to do? It just happened that they always dreamed of working for one of their heroes, who I happen to be friends with actually met them here at Genius Network. I made a quick call and I got that person their dream job. Till this day, they still thank me. I now do this for every team member transition. Are there any team members that don't bring you joy that could find joy at another job? My second example. Who here hates working out? Okay, yeah, me too. I know it's hard to believe with this buff ass body, but seriously, it brings me absolutely no joy and I can't delegate it, so I had to reframe it. I decided to find an activity that I really love doing in order to motivate me to work out and really get better at it. That's why I discovered that that I love rock climbing. In fact, I took third place in a super intermediate climbing competition, which is one of the most joyful experiences I've ever had. Yeah. Is there any physical activity that does bring you joy? My third example. How many of you have daily chores that you hate doing? No, seriously, how many people? Okay, yeah, quite a few. For me, it's laundry, but I used to pick up that basket and load up the washer like I absolutely had to do it. You could try to delegate it to your spouse. I really, really wouldn't recommend it. I tried it and I'm not sure our relationship is still recovered. But I do have someone who comes to the house. They do all our laundry now, put it away, and even do other things around the house that I don't find joy in. And you know what? It's not super expensive. Is there anything in your daily life that you feel doesn't bring you joy that you can delegate? My fourth example. How many people here have someone in their life because they feel obligated to or because they feel like they're supposed to? A brother, a parent, an old friend, or a business partner? For me, it was my dad. I tried my entire life to fix things with him. I had a lot of child protective services called on me as a child. It's safe to say that I did not have a great relationship with him. At first, I tried to delegate to a counselor. Didn't work. Then I decided to see if I could reframe it. And maybe I was the one who was the problem. But in the end, it brought me more joy to cut him out. Everyone says you have to fix a relationship with your parents. However, nobody tells you the joy of letting them go. Is there anyone in your life that would bring you joy to cut them out? My fifth and last example. My last example is a client. I'm sure we all have that. There was a client my company had when I was sick that really didn't bring me joy. They were late paying. They always complained they were incredibly stressful. You know the type. However, they were a huge client. They were paying us over half a million dollars a year. That client would always take credit for all the success, but would blame us for all the problems. I tried delegating to the team, and that definitely didn't bring them joy. Then I tried reframing it to thinking maybe we were the issue. But again, in the end, it was hard as hell to fire a client that's paying us over $500,000 a year. However, it bought me things that money can't. I bought my soul back. My team members got their faith back in me. I gained more happiness. And of course, it brought us a shitload more money. We filled this client spot with three other clients at the same price with the same amount of team members. Because good clients take less work. We tripled our profit from firing a single client. Are there any customers that don't bring you joy? The main point I want to drive home is to start eliminating or delegating things that don't bring you joy. When you walk out of here, just find one thing that you're currently doing and ask yourself to be like my hero, Marie Kondo. Does this bring me joy? If it doesn't, ask yourself, is there a way for this to bring me joy? And if the answer is no, cut it out. And if you're feeling bold, do it again and again and again. Watch how your life transforms. Your income increases, and you become more wealthy in time. Happiness, freedom, and, of course, money.

So let me see here. What else here? It's one thing to achieve and be successful and another to be fulfilled. What do you think makes a fulfillment?

Well, I think you know, at the end of your life, when you're on your deathbed, it's only going to come down to two ideas. And it's not going to be whether you had the right handbag title, whether your social network thought you were cool and sexy, your neighborhood, your bank account. It's going to come down to number one. As compared to the potential talent and genius you were born into, how much of it did you leverage through your days to unleash onto the world? And number two, how many people did you lift up with you? When I was growing up, my dad took out this quote from Rabindranath Tagore and he said it all the time to me, and it was, son, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. And, and that might sound very idealistic, but actually it's an amazing driving force as an entrepreneur or business builder or game changer, which is ultimately our calling is to use our lives to birth genius level value into the world and lift the world with us by the time we get to the end of our lives. And I think that's really all that matters because otherwise, like, you know, think about all the people who thought they were great emperors. You don't even think about them now.

Well, you know, so you, you probably hear continuously how much your ideas and your writings and your speaking has been.

Beneficial and encourages other people.

How do you take that in? How do you interpret it when people.

Come up and ask you for an autograph?

I mean, to me it's the weirdest thing in the world. And, you know, and I'm not a fan.

It's just when I'll do seminars, people.

Come up and I do my best. Like, I'm not a guru.

I mean, you have no idea.

I have plenty of personal problems and nothing special because I want people to actually feel that, hey, you can do.

So much more than you actually believe you can do.

And you're a guy, that's a huge encourager. How do you take all of this stuff in? Because you put out millions of people read your works.

The moment you think you're a master is the moment you become a beginner. And you know, I run an event called the Titan Summit, which we run every year. And there's a model I teach which is called the Titans Decline. Like, I'm really, I'm not really fascinated by people who get to the top, whether it's the billionaires I work with or who show up at those events, or the pop icons or the great athletes. That's great. What I'm fascinated about is what makes a legend versus a fad. And we haven't talked so much about my business philosophy of. But to me, you know, what makes an iconic brand or company that endures the generations versus a company that's really cool for three years.

Well, what's great, we're talking about it right now.

Well, okay, so it's the Titans Decline. And really, I mean, the starting point is the moment you think you know everything and the moment you fall in love with your success is the beginning of obsolescence. So when people come up to me and they send me this or whatever on the social media, media, they're saying things. I say, thank you because that shows respect and I'm humbled and privileged to get to do what I get to do. But, you know, when I go home, I'm just dad to my kids, you know, like they, I'm not some kind of something special aside from their father, you know, I spent a lot of time with my parents. They're in their 70s. My friends are very wonderful people, but they're not really in the circle that we talk about in the sense of, you know, being at the events we talk about. I spend a lot of time alone, a lot of time praying. You know, I don't share that very often, but, you know, prayer, affirmation, reading the great books of wisdom and philosophy, journaling, walking in nature, trying to keep my feet on the ground. Because I think the moment, you know, ego and arrogance sets in, you know, again I mentioned, but it's so profound, I think, important, I think, because if your attention and your focus is on how many people are going to like me on Facebook, how many best sellers will I have, how much money am I making this launch, how much, whatever, your attention and your point of being is actually off being of service, creativity, lifting the world, transforming, transforming people, which paradoxically makes you iconic in the world. And if I could, because we've talked about a lot of big ideas, but people are probably wondering like, so what are the tactics? Well, one thing is to remember that self mastery and leadership and these are skills, like, if someone were to say, well, I want to be heavyweight boxing champion of the world and I read a book on it and afterwards I didn't change, we'd call them crazy. But how many people do we talk to in leadership and high performance? They go, I read the book and nothing worked. Well, the book worked, the ideas worked, you just didn't have the guts and commitment and discipline and follow through and self sacrifice to do the work. So bravery is a skill. It doesn't show up one day, it shows up after 10,000 hours of people don't think about that. Bravery, confidence, all of those internal things, being loving is a skill. You don't just get it, you earn it. And you know, yeah, I wear my scars on my sleeve because everything I've earned, whether it's the character I have, and I'm not saying it's so special, but the character I have, the thinking I have, the energy I have, the bravery I have, the love that I have. Like, I mean, love is a very powerful word that has Been very, very, very hard earned.

So what are four or five of.

The best business or entrepreneurial lessons you've.

Learned, learned over your life that you.

Feel have served you the most? I mean, when you were early on.

Trying to figure out what to do, what were those things that you.

So whatever your position is, commit yourself to bringing your A game to it every single day. One of my publishers is HarperCollins. The former head of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman, started off as a secretary, but I bet you when she was a secretary, she was world class. How many people do you know? It's like, when I become CEO, then I'll bring my A game. So whatever you do, lead without a title, outwork everyone around, you know more about what you do than anyone else. Put, you know, effort like good old hard work is unbelievably important. Second, business building idea. You want to get your plumbing right, you know, so I can take this.

In a lot of different ways.

Well, so you want to. Yeah. This is not a GI gastrointestinal tract piece of advice. It's really get your architecture right. You know, like the time to build your business is not when you're on fire. It's get the right people, get the right financial systems, get the right culture, get the right so get the architecture right. Third, entrepreneurship be all about creating value. There is a database of the world's happiest people called the German socio political panel database. World's largest database of happiness happiest people. Yeah, it's not where they live, it's not what they eat, it's not what they do. They all see themselves as contributors of value. So make it your obsession and your mission to be contributing value. And that just means if you're, if you're flipping pizza, you know, you're doing pizzas like just say, I'm gonna create great value for the people out there expecting my pizza. What else? Innovation. Right. Like, you know, it's so easy to become complacent and yet you want to say in a consistent basis, how can I do bring products out in the world or do work that scares me and that people would probably laugh at and that that's probably what you have to do. That's probably what you have to do.

That is a great insight right there earlier about talking about earning things. Confidence does not just happen like, oh, I'm going to think I'm confident and be confident. Because if you act like you're confident but you're scared, you're really kind of arrogant.

You're sort of Disguising it.

But it starts with courage. Courage never feels good. But confidence feels good.

Good.

But courage is usually what you have to go through when you're scared, when.

You'Re in that position. And then if you do it and.

You master it, then you get to a point where you feel confident and then you're, you know, then it's a good feeling. But there's the thing, a lot of people, they just don't want to have.

To feel any pain.

They don't want to have to feel any fear, any uncomfortableness. And they don't do shit in their.

Lives in that, in that state.

Yeah. Pain is the result of potential unexpressed. And why are so many people addicted to to their phones? Why are so many people addicted to tv? Why are so many people addicted to chit chat versus executing around their goals and all the things we've talked about. They will sell you a story which is no, no, I love that TV show. I love my addiction to distraction. But it's unconscious. And I think this is like one of the most important things I wish people would understand which is most of us actually have a broken heart. We are in such pain as you're suggesting of potential betrayed. Why? Because as little kids we had such connection to love, such connection to talent, such connection to the meaning of life, such connection to our potential. And we could have done amazing things. And then our mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, et cetera, et cetera well intentioned as the world is started matrix pulling the wool over the veil over our eyes. And we actually became hypnotized into believing that icons are cut from a different cloth. And what that did was it created this well of deep subconscious pain because we saw that self betrayal. And what do we do now? We keep really busy, busy being busy, always busy, busy. But it's an escape mechanism of a frightened person and the real work of a leader and an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. It's not building that external business that's all important. Like we could talk hours on the right team culture. Like I teach all that stuff. The real work of leadership and to be an icon, it's all within. To get to a place where you own your power, you own your talent, you figure out your values. You don't care if people laugh at you, because if they don't laugh at you, you're playing too small. And then you go out in the world and you show up the way you can.

So how, how did you resource yourself? It's one thing to have confidence, it's another with courage. My buddy Dan Sullivan says courage or fear is peeing your pants. Courage is doing what you need to do with wet pants.

Yeah.

That's so good.

Yeah.

And so there are times where when our life sucks, or we think or interpret it as sucking or we hate it, where we actually have to operate with courage. And courage, in my experience, never feels good because you're having to kind of, like, fight.

Mine neither. Yeah.

You're going to ask someone out and you're scared because they may reject you.

Well, courage always indicates the presence of fear, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's why it doesn't feel good, right? 100%.

Yeah. You can't have fear without excitement. You can't have excitement without fear. Maybe you can, but I think cases you don't. So.

Yeah.

So, Mike, so what was the turning point? Because it's one thing where we can say all this, but the person watching and listening, I'd love for them to. You know, getting your body to do the things that your brain or your mouth is telling you to do are two different things.

Yeah, yeah.

You can give yourself affirmations, you can go to motivational seminars, but to actually affect that change, like when that happened for you, like, what was the thing? What was. What did you actually do? If that is a teachable thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think it is a teachable thing. I really started studying emotions and, like, how to process them through and really understanding that an emotion, if you allow an emotion, it has a beginning and an end. And the beginning and the end, in my experience, is not 60 seconds. Sometimes it's three days for me. But I learned the difference between resisting and emotion, which just makes it bigger but less in your own awareness. Like, I. I have so many clients, they just say they feel numb, Right. Because they're just constantly escaping or resisting. And what I learned is that you can. And I use this, like, this imagery in my own mind. If somebody had, like, a vial or a syringe of, like, an emotion, and they said, hey, I'm going to inject you with fear right now.

Or.

Or I'm going to inject you with shame. Are you ready? Can you experience it? And then I injected you. And you knew that it would last a certain amount of time. You would be able to kind of witness yourself experiencing the emotion instead of actually being so engaged in it. And so when I realized that, I started teaching my clients and myself to be the witness of my own emotion as I'm experiencing it. And in that becoming the witness of it, you get some relief. From it without resisting it. And that, that is what changed everything. But step one has to be. And this is the challenging piece. And you know this with addiction, right, you can stop drinking, you can stop doing drugs, you can stop eating with willpower, which is just resisting emotion. And that's why so many people are so ineffective with being able to kind of out will themselves.

Oh, yeah, no, willpower doesn't work.

It just doesn't.

Ben Hardy even wrote a book to that title. And the other thing it's interesting about this conversation is I'm sitting here thinking about the alcohol, the food. For me, it was sex, it was work, it was drugs. My first addiction was addiction to drugs. I was a cocaine addict, but it wasn't the cocaine. The cocaine was the solution. The sex was the solution. The workaholism was a solution. I say that addiction is a solution to pain.

Yes.

The real problem is the pain. Trying to escape the pain. And when you can find healthier ways to address or you can eliminate the pain. And sometimes you can do that intellectually. Other times it's in the body. You know, that whole saying the issues are in the tissues.

But I actually think that's a mistake many of us make is we think, okay, we start to understand, okay, the addiction is a solution to pain. So, so the solution is to eliminate the pain. And eliminating pain, especially if it's trauma, pain, like eliminating it quickly and easily, which is what we all want to do, is sometimes not available. And I've actually found that if you. If you're not in a hurry to eliminate the pain because you have a willingness to be able to experience it, then it is so much more sustainable for the rest of your life in all areas.

Well, okay, let me say it this way then and tell me what you think of this, because I listen to try to. I'm always doing stuff to try to learn.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And to unlearn.

Right.

Because I think what helped me with my recovery was not learning, it was the unlearning. And the thing that was most interesting is when you are often getting better, the people around you that are hooked into your crazy making. Yes, they start losing their shit, right? And they become, in many cases, unsupportive of your progress. And so the thing with pain, for me, if I get into a sauna or a cold plunge, which I do almost daily, and when I first started doing it, hated it. Because what I think humans want. I learned this from Poe Bronson at.

A bookstore years ago.

He said, you know, what people want is More woo and less ah. And I, and I love that.

Right.

Because like everything we do.

Yeah.

It's like, like anyone watching this right now, they're hoping we're going to say something that's going to get more woo. Dave is going to go eat whatever weird food he's going to eat later. And it's hoping, you know, woo. People have sex for woo. People pursue business for woo. And they do things, I don't want any ah. And some people give us woo. Other people's crate, ah. Certain jobs and careers are woo. Others are ah. But the thing is, getting into a cold plunge or a sauna is ah in the beginning. But if I sit with it, I become heat adapted or cold adapted. And it's kind of like what you're saying, sitting with your emotional pain. And so for me, if you try to numb it or make it go away, it actually makes it worse and you don't.

I totally agree.

And in some cases, that's the spiral. And so what I often think about is in the first chapter of my book, did you notice the subtle plug for my book again, what's in it for them?

What's in it for them?

Not to title. The question to always be running through your head is be a pain detective, because pain is a messenger. And if you want to help other people, look at where they're suffering and how you can either reduce it, eliminate it, or sit with it. And there's many different experiences, but your own pain, if you're unaware of your own pain, you will do all kinds of bizarre crap so true to avoid it. And so pain is. Can be. Pain is one of the deepest bonding mechanisms of humans. And when you're sitting with someone who's been through the trenches and like in recovery groups, you know what's, what's interesting in recovery, no matter what. And when I say recovery groups, most well known, even though there's many for Recovery groups, are 12 steps, you know, started in the 30s by Dr. Bob and Bill W. And one of the things that they did when the addicts would start healing, they would sit with each other and they would have an instant rapport with people that they just met. And oftentimes no one around them understood them because those people understood the crazy making of their own addiction. And it started with alcoholism and, and now it's been adapted to many other things. But the, the interesting thing about it is once the addicts started getting sober, not all of them did, but the ones that did, the family that, you know, the husbands, the wives, the family members would start losing their. Losing their shit because they were addicted to the. To the crazy making. That's where they started Al Anon. So that.

So for all the codependents. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in a lot of ways, when you started going through this cocoon butterfly effect of your own life, what were the biggest challenges of that in order to sustain you and keep you going? Because what I see happens is people can often come to an event, one of our events. They get close, they stick their head out of the pit of crap that they've built for themselves, and they're like, I have a new vision. And they're excited. And then something around them, their environment, their dopamine in their head, because so much. Much of this is biochemical sphere of influence pulls them right back down and they go back to it. So what was it that got you out of it and kept you out of it or started.

I mean, I think for me, and this. This probably won't help other people. This was my life's work. Right. So I was. Every time I learned something, I was always thinking about it for myself and for my clients. Always for myself and my clients. But I did have a lot of backlash. I will say one of the things that. That even now is so fascinating is when you really become kind of a master of your own emotions, and you're willing to experience any emotion and you know that you can process it through your level of confidence is, like, radically higher than anyone, than anyone who's unwilling to do that. Then this is what you're talking about. There's a lot of people who have a lot of success that are still afraid of their own emotions. And so the level of confidence that they're portraying is not how they actually feel. And I. I will say that my level of confidence in myself and in my life and how I feel about myself now is really kind of uncomfortable for a lot of other people, especially, like, in my immediate family. Like, and, you know, people will say to me all the time, oh, must be so nice to think you're so great. And I'm like, it is so nice. And I'll tell you why. Because I spent a lot of my life hating myself. And if these are my choices, I can either hate myself or think that I'm fantastic. I'm gonna pick that I'm fantastic every single time because. And it's crazy that we can criticize someone for thinking they're great.

Yeah.

Like, it's wild. Like, people will hate on me for me saying that. I think what I've done is incredible and amazing and I love myself. Right.

So, okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.