Simon Sinek: What Society Gets Wrong About Relationships
Simon Sinek talks with Lewis Howes about what we get wrong in relationships, from boundaries to how fear spreads through groups. He reflects on 9/11 and family loss to argue that human connection matters more than productivity metrics.
Chapters
This whole idea of setting boundaries, it gets a little bit misunderstood. Like everybody thinks you have to set boundaries, which means keep people away. I refuse to do that. That's beyond my boundary. I'm not doing that. No, no, no, that's not what boundaries mean. What boundaries means are let me tell you what I imagine and what my limitations are. We have boundaries in relationship. You sit down with your partner, you co-create the relationship that you want to have. You discuss what the boundaries are that you both agree to obey. I hear what the boundaries are you want. You understand the things that I need.
And we come to an agreement.
Yes, those are the boundaries.
I think you got to have a dream.
School of Greatness. Really? Yeah.
Please welcome Lewis Howes. One of the things I love about you is how intelligent you are and also vulnerable you are. And I think that's a rare combination because usually people lean one way or the other, but you're really great at mixing both of them.
Oh, thank you.
And I wanted to ask you a question that I think has been an interesting conversation, specifically in the last three to six months. that includes relationships, work, AI and leadership. Okay, there's been a lot of, in my opinion, distractions over the last few years of all the new shiny things that come out that are available for us at work, at home, and in relationships. And I'm curious with everything that you've seen in the last few years, all the different distractions that have come out in life, Where do you see intimacy and relationships personally and also professionally in the workplace as AI starts to evolve in everywhere?
So.
Let'S just take one step back. The concept of AI is not new. It's an algorithm. Right? And our lives since the early days of the internet have been governed by algorithms.
Yes.
Right? What's an algorithm? Let's start there. Yeah. Right? We talk about algorithms every day. It's in our vernacular, but what is it? An algorithm is very simply a set of instructions. mathematical or computer code. It's a set of instructions. That's all it is, right? So a recipe is an algorithm. Two eggs, cup of milk, some flour, what you get is that. And so the algorithm, the set of instructions is, Lewis went on Amazon and bought this, show him that. That's all it is. It's a list of instructions to solve a problem or to to generate some sort of result. And so there's been artificial intelligence around us for a long time. If you go back to the early days of Ask Jeeves, which was pre-Google, right? Didn't work very well.
Right.
And you had to write in full sentences. And so Google was invented to a different algorithm that worked a different way that you could put in less information and you could get the thing that you're more likely to be looking for. Right? The goal is always that you'd find what you're looking for in the first page. Remember back in the early days, you'd sometimes have to scroll a few pages.
Yeah.
Right? So they're constantly improving these lists of instructions and tell the computer what to do with a certain input. I think the thing that's new is the generative AI, right? Where the machine can sort of, A, it sounds like Star Trek. It speaks in normal language that you don't have to you don't have to type in Google. Google is a language. You type in the keywords you want, you don't have to split in complete sentences, but now you talk to another human being and it tells you what you want. But it's still based on existing information. The thing that scares me about AI is the thing that I think scares everybody about generative AI and the speed at which this algorithm can work and the speed at which it can invent things.
And- But is that something to be scared about or more excited about?
Both. The answer is both. And I think anybody who comes on one side or the other of the equation is missing the point. You know, there's a cost for everything. And for all the benefits of anything in our lives, there's always a cost. You want to make a lot of money, that's your drive. You know, you want to get rich and become a millionaire. Okay, there's a cost for the money you make. You're going to sacrifice relationships, you're going to sacrifice sleep, you're going to sacrifice your health. Who knows what it is.
Right?
But you're going to pay for that in some way, shape or form. It's a balanced equation, right? So the more fantastic the benefits of any technology, the balanced equation has to be considered. Interesting. Is it worth all the benefits if it's going to cost this much?
Right?
And we're looking at climate change now and industrialization, like all the benefits industrialization, was it worth the cost? I think some of us would have preferred to maybe scale back some of that and not deal with what we're dealing with now, right? So I think we have to do a cost analysis, which is, I want this, but at what cost? I want this, but at the cost of undermining a democracy? Oh, that seems like a steep cost for something to write a book for me, you know?
Right, right.
Like, I'm not sure. And at least as it exists now, it's useless for original thoughts. So people ask me all the time, are you scared of it? I'm like, absolutely not, not scared of it at all. Because if you ask AI to write a book in the style of Simon Sinek, you know, on any subject, it can only draw from what I've already written. But it can't give them a new thought.
Doesn't bring new perspectives.
There's no new ideas, right? It will do some things that I think are really interesting. It'll change the balance of jobs. So, for example, if you work in public relations or if you're, you know, even a scriptwriter, whatever it is, You know, there is fear of AI, of course. Again, it can't do new ideas. But a lot of ideas are not new. You know, feel like an artist, package it. But let's take a PR company, for example, right? It takes a lot of time to write that first draft, right? And you need a good writer to write a first draft. What will happen with AI is AI can write the First draft instantaneously. So like in my world in writing, you know this from writing a book, the writer is the hero, the editors like the hired help.
Right.
Right. That'll switch, which not for new ideas, but for ideas that don't require novelty.
Sure.
Write a press release that, you know.
Has four bullet points, talks about the benefits. Right.
The editors will become the heroes because the AI can write the first draft.
Interesting.
So I think that balance will change. But to go back to your original question, to go back to your original question, one of the conversations that's not happening about any of this, we're not talking at all about social ripples. And there are always social ripples, right? And there's a blindness. People are blind when it comes to how we talk about new things, right? And when I talk about social ripples, what I mean is fear, right? Fear is an emotion. It is sometimes irrational, not always, sometimes irrational. And it can produce behaviors that can be antisocial. If you're afraid enough, you can hurt someone, right? You can hurt them with your words, you can hurt them with your actions based on fear, right? We've all said things in relationships out of fear, right? So let's take an analogy. A bunch of do-gooders come into a town in Ohio, coal town, and say, We're getting rid of this coal mine. It's bad for the environment. We're going to replace it with solar and wind. And it's the right thing to do. They're always surprised when the town of coal miners is angrily against it. Right. Now, the reality is they're not anti-winds, nor are they anti-solar. All I know is I'm a coal miner. My father was a coal miner. My father's father was a coal miner. All I know is how to do coal mining. And all I know is this mine down the street produces income for me to take care of my family. And you're coming in here and say, We're gonna take your income away.
Right.
We're not getting rid of coal, taking rid of your livelihood, and you have no discernible skill set. What you get is fear. And when somebody doesn't feel seen or heard and they feel afraid that you're coming in to take something away from them, they're going to put up a wall and say, you cannot do that. That's the same thing going on here, which is all the discussion is all the jobs that's going to take away, all the things it's going to destroy. And so what it's producing is fear. And when you have fear, you have emotional reactions that have nothing to do with computers, nothing to do with algorithms, nothing to do with generative AI, what it has to do with at the minimum is how I vote, but worse, it can get people so afraid that they start lashing out in antisocial ways, sometimes as individuals and sometimes as groups. And we are not talking about the social ripples. We're also living in a world where the haves and the have nots, the richest people and your frontline worker, the disparity, is so great, right? The average, so if you go back, I think 50 years or so, 40 years or so, on average a CEO made about 35 times what the lowest paid worker. And now you're talking 400, 500, 600, 700 times, 800 times the lowest paid workers, right? The disparity is so great. 1% of the population owns 80% of the stock, you know? I mean, it's just, It's so great. And when you have huge gaps between the wealthy and those who work to make the wealthy wealthy, that is a recipe for rebellion. So we already are living in a tinderbox right now where this is normal, right? And we've seen the rise of this populist message, I don't care you're a Republican or Democrat, we heard it from Trump, we heard it from Bernie Sanders.
Right?
They're pointing out the disparity and the liberals loved Bernie and the conservatives loved Trump, right? Because they're saying, look what's happening. And unfortunately, in both cases, a leveraging fear for a vote. But we're not talking about the fear that the discussion of AI is producing and the reactions that can have that has nothing to do with the computer.
Really?
We're not talking about that.
What are the fear conversations that you're hearing from people? And what are the emotions that are coming out of it at the early stages? And where do you think that's good ahead over the next few years?
Nobody's listening. Again, it goes back to that coal miner example. Well-intentioned people can come in and say, This is something that's important to the environment, but we understand that this is highly disruptive to your life. We're not gonna take anything away, but I wanna hear how you feel. They're not asking those questions. They're not asking questions, they're not trying.
To understand the fear.
They're not making people feel seen or heard or understood. They're just coming in, you know, they're barreling in. And by the way, this is both sides of the political aisle. Both sides of the political aisle are barreling in with their desires without listening to the people who it's gonna affect.
Right?
And then they're surprised that people are angry and put up a roadblock. And so to answer your question, it's not happening. Those conversations aren't happening. There is a total lack of listening in our nation. There's a total lack of empathy in our nation. You know, we're now living in a world of you're right and I'm right and you're wrong rather than We have a problem and we should be you and me against the problem rather than me against you. Which is like a healthy, conscious, intimate.
Relationship, but they teach you in therapy. Correct.
And you'll find a lot of overlaps in the stuff that we're gonna talk about if you wanna talk mass population. Yes. And intimate relationships. Interesting. It's human beings talking to human beings.
Do you think that we will ever, as a nation, at least in this country, be able to say, Hey, how do we come together and focus on the problem, not you're right and you're wrong? Or do you think it's politics create so much of a division that people just, there'll be too much fear for people to actually listen to both sides? I'm not even talking about politics, but just about AI or relationships or business or wealth or whatever it might be. Do you think we'll ever be able to do that?
Do you know when people come together and put all their political differences aside? War? Correct.
That's kind of scary though.
When we are challenged by an external existential threat. Oh man. We come together, right? We saw it happen after September 11th. Osama bin Laden believed that by flying planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that it would fracture America. It did the absolute opposite, right? Because there's one thing greater than my fear of you, is the fear of that. And we saw it during the first rendition of the Cold War, the fear of the Soviet Union and the nuclear war, the Soviet Union. Even though there was politics and there was territoriality and the armed forces and all of the nonsense that still exists today, at the end of the day, we could all agree on one thing, that's worse. So we can put our differences aside because that's worse. And so the mistake that America made when the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union collapsed, because we falsely believed that we had won the war. There's no such thing as winning global politics. It's like the Roman Empire doesn't exist, but the physical land still exists. And the people who were Romans are now Italians. It's like nobody went away. They just changed forms. It's like the law of conservation of matter, law of conservation of energy, and there's a law of conservation of people.
Right.
Right. People don't just disappear because the empire is gone. The empire is a political construction. And so we didn't win anything. The Soviet Union collapsed, but the people are still there and the culture is still there and the land is still there. And America acted like victors. And what always happens in an infinite game, what always happens in a game that has no end, is new players will emerge. It's like when one company goes bankrupt, it doesn't mean the game of business is over, it means new companies will fill the space, while new nations fill the space. And so the threats that challenged America showed up in the form of North Korea, in the form of global terrorism, Al-Qaeda and ISIS and all other spin-offs. And I think that global competition is actually a very good thing. It's scary. It creates tension. But the irony is, is we as capitalists, because America believes in capitalism and democracy, we as capitalists believe that competition is ultimately good for the consumer, and we have laws against monopolies. Well, America for 30 years was acting like a monopoly, like the cable company. Everybody hated you, you had no choice. Right. You know, and you can impose your will on the consumer willy-nilly, in which America imposed its will on the world willy-nilly with no reaction. And so I actually think the rise of a balance of power, a competition, is probably the best thing that can happen to America. It doesn't have to be war. It doesn't have to be war, but it does have to be somebody who offers a legitimate challenge to the power structure.
Why do you think in our personal lives it takes a near-death experience to us or someone around us, a big health scare, a divorce, a breakup, or a massive breakdown in career or something for us to see a new path and start improving who we are, becoming better, transforming, overcoming this breakdown? And why does it sound like it takes war or conflict or something extremely scary out there for us to come together and start to transform as well as people?
You know, we're a myopic bunch, you know? Human beings are very dopamine driven, you know, find the food, look for shelter, you know, then do it again. And long-term planning is not really our strength as a species. Because long-term planning exists in our imaginations. I better save money for the day that I retire 60 years from now. It's just like, well, or I could just buy now. Because it feels better, right? We're bad at it. We're bad as governments at it. We're bad as individuals at it. We're just bad at it. We're not engineered for it. And so I think that's a part of it. And what near-death experiences do or competitive threats do is they're tangible reminders of what could be. Because again, we're tangibly driven animals, right? We love tangibility metrics, things we can see, you know, you hear a bump in the night, you have to go look for it, you know? And so it makes it real. So Even though global threats have existed since the fall of the Soviet Union, now that you can see one, you know, now you can give it a name and a flag, you know, in a language, it becomes a real thing. And I think the same goes for near-death experiences. It's like my mortality, which was something that I didn't think about is now real, which is why I ask old people for advice. They give the best advice because they don't give it. what you think about them. Because they're close, because they've accepted their own mortality.
The end is near.
The end is near. And so I'm not doing anything to please you anymore.
Yeah, I'm not trying to impress you.
Talk to a 20 year old and talk to a 70 year old and see what kind of advice you get. And it's not just experience and wisdom, of course, that factors in as well. One is much more concerned about what you think about them, the other one really doesn't care. So I think that's what these shocks do. And I think one of the things that storytelling does, one of the things that you do and I do and others do, is by telling the stories of other people's near-death experiences or other people's losses, hopefully inspires people to take on themselves without having to go through the challenge themselves. That's the ideal. But, you know, I remember after September 11th, I was in New York on September 11th and lived through it.
You were there? Yeah.
I watched the buildings fall. Really? Yeah, yeah. Where, what part of — I was downtown. I was in Soho. Really? So just about — I actually did the calculations, I figured out it was exactly one mile. You could see the buildings from my office. Yeah, I watched — I was walking, I took the subway and the subway stopped at 14th Street and I still had to get to Soho. So I walked down 7th Avenue. Which the end of 7th Avenue was the World Trade Center.
Wow.
And so I was walking down watching.
Them burning and- Holy cow.
And then got to work. And the view from my office was the World Trade Center.
No way.
And yeah, I remember the very strange... Yeah, that's embossed in my brain. I'm not gonna forget that image of it.
What was that? I mean, this is a little sidetrack here, but what was that day like? I mean, watching it at your office. What was the scene like? Were people paying attention? Was all eyes on the building?
Of course, of course, of course.
Wow.
We were, you know, at this point, we, when I woke up in the morning, because the first plane hit shortly after 8 a.m. and I hadn't left the house yet.
Had you already heard about it?
Well, it was on the news. A friend of mine called me and said, Turn on the news. So I turn on the news and there was a, hole in the World Trade Center and it was burning. But the scale of those buildings is so huge that we couldn't tell that it was an airliner. We thought it was a Cessna. So you saw a hole in the building. The buildings were so big, you literally just thought it was in, and it was a beautiful day. So it's not like there was a storm. It was a perfect day. So we just thought it was an idiot in a Cessna. And I went to work. And people started to talk about it on the bus. I was taking the cross-town bus, like, you know, did you see what happened? And by the time I got off the subway on 14th Street, 'cause, you know, media disappears under the ground. Now there were people sitting on the sides of the street listening to radios in their cars. And at this point now we started to realize this was terrorism. So we started to recognize what it was pretty quickly, but we didn't know what the implications were. And we also didn't expect the buildings to fall down. You know, it was a weird, flaw in how the buildings were made that made them, because most buildings had internal load-bearing structures. And what made the World Trade Center unique was all the load-bearing structures were on the outside. And so the floors basically floated in the middle. So except for the escalators, you could stand on one side of the World Trade Center inside and look clear over to the other side of the building. It was an amazing building. And so they collapsed on top of each other when they came down, which nobody knew what happened. And so I was in constant contact with my sister who worked also in Soho across town. Wow. And we were talking constantly. And after the second building fell, I called her up and said, I'm coming to get you. We're gonna go home. And we lived uptown. And so I walked across town to get her. And we were part of the mass exodus walking four miles uptown. And of all the thousands of images that were captured that day, one image I, and I went through all the books and everything, and I had one image that was really never captured was this, it was very quiet. We were all walking in one direction. Just imagine thousands of people, no cars on the road, walking north.
No one in the subway.
No.
Everyone's just standing.
Everybody's above ground. And all going, it was very quiet and speckled in between all of this exodus were people covered head to toe in soot. But other than that, everything was normal. They were holding their briefcase and their newspaper, and it was just covered in debris. They were covered. I mean, we saw the pictures of people covered, but they were just speckled. And my sister, she had two colleagues, which we dropped them off on the way. And I remember there was all four of us and we were coming up Park Avenue and there's a guy sitting on a stoop frantically calling somebody, I guess, to tell them that he was alive, frantically calling. And we walked up to him and we said, Give us the number. No words were spoken. I remember we just walked up and said, Give us the number, we'll help call. And he held up his Address book. He just pointed. He didn't have words. We all typed in the number into our phones and we're hitting, you know, send, send, send, send, send. And every single one of us was trying to call. We were all getting busy signals. My sister's phone got through. She hands him the phone. He takes it and he says, I'm okay. I'm okay. And gives the phone back and walks away. And we're all crying, obviously. We dropped off two of my sister's friends, her colleagues, and it was just my sister and me walking up the rest of the way. And we got to Grand Central Station, which blocks Park Avenue. So you have to go around it. And as we got there, somebody started screaming, run, run, run. And we saw the cops, 'cause there were fighter jets flying over. So you've heard planes, but you didn't know what they were. So you've heard planes flying over. And we looked down the street and the cops were going like this. And everybody started running and dropping things and shoes falling off. They thought another plane had hit. We don't know what it was. So I grabbed my sister and I'm thinking to myself, okay, there's gonna be a blast that's gonna come down like this. And I pulled her off the street and put our hands up against a building. And I look up and it's a huge glass, it's a shop window. And I was like, this is not gonna be good. So I grab her and we just start running and then eventually just sort of petered out. It was a bomb scare, it turned out later. And then we made our way to the rest, we made our way back up town and didn't leave for, you know, two weeks. You know, we just, like everybody just started watching television obsessively.
Nonstop, yeah. Holy cow. Did you guys, did you go back to work or was it like, work.
Was done for weeks? Work was done for weeks. And when it opened up, like nobody really wanted to go. And my office was in part of the town, in part of the New York that was shut down. like you couldn't, they couldn't get there.
Holy.
They wouldn't let you down.
How did that moment of being there, Ground Zero, really shape you emotionally after that, after experiencing it in person? You know, I was a freshman in college when I saw it on TV and it was like, it was a big deal in Minnesota when I was in college there. It was like, you know, the whole city came together, it was the whole thing, but you were there. How did that shape you?
My story is one of literally, you know, a couple million. I mean, there was a lot of people in New York that day. And they're all pretty unique stories, but they're all deeply touching and deeply personal for all of us. I mean, you said it. I mean, it reminds you of humanity and it reminds you, you know, and I remember that was, September 11th was very important to me in my career, 'cause I worked in advertising and I struggled to go back to that stupid job in that stupid industry. Really?
Yeah.
I really, once I did go back to work, I'm like, what am I doing with my life? It's like a lot of people signed up for the military because they're like, I gotta do something with my life. And I think a lot of people had the realization that the life that I live is stupid and I wanna do something that matters. And that's when I started thinking, this is the stupidest industry in the world. I come to work to help people sell s*** they don't need. What the f*** are they doing with my life? And my entrepreneurial venture started pretty shortly after that so I could do things that way.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And do things with purpose and started talking about things in a very different way. So yeah, it was pretty formative.
I mean, and it took, unfortunately, a big breakdown to happen for you to start seeing, maybe you had already noticed it, but that was really the eye opening, like, okay, I've got to make a change.
But go back to your original question, which is why does it require these things? I think that's not interesting to me. I mean, I think that's sort of like, I get it. I think what is interesting is why does it go back?
Right?
What do you mean?
When you have that life-changing experience and then you- you- don't make a change. You do? No, no, you do make a change, but then it runs out. So I saw this happen after September 11th in New York for quite a long time, I would say months. New York was utopia. There was no crime.
Everyone came together.
Everyone came together. There was literally no crime.
Everyone loved each other. Strangers, what do you need? I'm here for you.
There's nothing. And the total number of racially motivated crimes in New York after September 11th was zero. So nobody took their anger out on an Arab population, for example. It just didn't happen.
And.
I remember thinking to myself, this is gonna go away. We're gonna forget, and we're just gonna go back to being New York again. And sure enough, in enough time, we got distracted by the short term. COVID was no different. In the middle of COVID we're all thinking, oh my God, I have to reevaluate my life, my work-life balance. I don't want to work like a crazy person like I used to anymore. Productivity is not going to be my primary metric of whether I'm having a good day or not. And that went away. We're working like idiots again, and productivity is like people look down on you now if you're not having a productive day. We forget. Again, it's the biology of the dopamine driven animal that is more driven by the short term and the visual. That to me upsets me more. It's not that you need some sort of shock to convert, but that the conversion doesn't last. And so, you were joking about my orange watch, and I use symbols to remind me. And so I'm surrounded. I'm like, I've got an orange belt and like, you know, I keep things around me to remind me that these things matter. And I tell the stories. And I tell the story of going to Afghanistan with the Air Force. I tell the story of, you know, my experience at CENTCOM, and it's not, it's in part to remind others, but it's also in part to remind me.
Yeah.
You know, my sister, suffered a horrible tragedy many years ago where she lost her fiance. He was killed right in front of her two weeks before her wedding.
Oh my goodness.
And during COVID she came to me and said, I think I want to talk about my experience on the podcast because I know a lot of people are losing loved ones and perhaps my experience can help them. And, you know, again, it's in part for others, but reliving that horrible day with her, is a reminder to us as well that our relationship matters and our friends matter and our lives matter and long-term matters and, you know, and, and productivity is not the primary metric of the good day and the ability to, I think, you know, it talked about the 20 year old versus the 70 year old, you know, it's the ability to shut out the noise, the peer pressure that judges you based on how much have you accomplished, how much money have you made, how many promotions have you had, what's your salary? You know? Like we're judging our self-worth based on what other people pay us. And sure, everybody wants to make more money. I got it, you know?
What should we judge our self-worth on?
The life that we live. I think we should judge our self-worth on the value we have in the lives of others. Do other people think of you as a good friend, a good sibling, a good son or daughter, a good father, a good mother, a good colleague, a good teammate? I think that I would rather judge myself on that. And again, we're dopamine-tangible driven animals, and it's much easier to judge myself based on number in a bank account because I can see it and I can count it. And if there's a lot in there, it must be valuable. If there's little in there, it must be unvaluable, which is nonsense because I can tell you I know a lot of rich people who have no value in the world and rich people aren't necessarily the hardest working. I know a lot of very rich people who are lazy, and I don't criticize them for that. Just don't think the book because someone's rich that they're incredibly hard working. And please stop calling the homeless lazy. You go be homeless for a day, see how lazy you have to be to survive with no money, no resources. Good luck. Laziness isn't, that's not it. Like you actually have to work hard at surviving when you have nothing. And I think we have all of these metrics screwed up and they're all based on what I can count and what I can see rather than the value I have in the lives of others. And by the way, you don't even get to judge that, because the only way you know you have value in the lives of others is if others say you have value in their lives.
Right.
So that's a thing, right?
I'm curious about your sister's story. That's really heartbreaking, but also fascinating that she wanted to say, Hey, maybe I can help other people through my own tragedy, through my heartbreak, through my loss.
And the person she is.
What was the lesson that you learned from you not going through it yourself, but witnessing someone that you loved go through a loss like that? What was the lesson for you?
You know, I'm, there's a civil, I talk about balance all the time. There's a silver lining in every cloud. There's a cost for everything we gain in life, but at the same time there's goodness that comes out of every loss. My sister and I were already pretty close. I mean, it made us even closer. My family and I were, my family and us were also already pretty close. We got even closer. I think tragedy brings families together in a way that nothing else can. Perspective. The stupid stuff that we got stressed about just isn't that important. There's something called post-traumatic growth. We love talking about post-traumatic stress, but there's also post-traumatic growth. There's a lot of growth that comes out of loss and tragedy as well. I think, yeah, I think these things, I mean, you said it right at the top, right? It's the fragility of why do we need these reminders? So I think that was a big one. Yeah. And, you know, my sister's happily married, she's got two kids, you know, built a new life, and that's super inspiring.
That's right.
That, you know, people go through breakups. or divorces and they think that's it, their life is over, they'll never find love again. I'm like, well, here to tell you...
She created it, yeah.
You can find love again, you know? And she has a picture of her fiance that she lost in her office, on her desk. And it's like, I see it there and it's a nice reminder for all of us, you know? His loss is a nice reminder to all of us that live life. Love life. Easier said than done. I mean, you and I write books about this stuff and it's hard. It is hard work. And I get a kick out of that, by the way. You know, it's very easy to be a cat. Cats don't think about being cats. They're just cats, right? But you have to actually work really hard to be a human being. Being a good human being actually requires so much work.
Yes.
You know? And that's funny to me. you know, like to be the best version of human being is actually very difficult and requires studying and accurate risk and discomfort and all those things that, you know, I think this young generation is, tries to avoid. Yeah. Not the work part, the discomfort part.
Yeah. You mentioned about, you know, we shouldn't.
Be.
I can't remember exactly what you said, but we shouldn't be focusing on our, a good day being on how productive we are.
Yeah.
We should have a different metric of what a good day is. How do we measure what a good day is then if it's not a productive day?
So this is the problem with things that are hard to measure. It doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means they're hard to measure. You know, you're in love with your girlfriend, you know, show me the metric. Show me the number that proves to me, you know, that that she is the love of your life. Well, you can't. You can show me a bunch of behaviors and I can ask her if she feels secure, if she feels safe, if she feels seen and heard, if she feels she can be her best self because the space you provide her. But I got no number. So just because you can't measure something or just because something's difficult to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? So that's an important lesson. I learned that in my career too. So I had this meeting At the Pentagon, I was sitting in the foyer waiting for the general to come in when he was ready to see me. And we've all had this experience where you're waiting in a foyer, waiting in a waiting area, and somebody will come and get you, and they take you to the conference room or the office. And because being quiet is uncomfortable, we feel the dead air.
Yeah, how's your day?
Exactly.
What's going on?
Exactly. Exactly. How was your flight?
So hot out here.
So hot out. Exactly. Exactly right. It's hallway talk. All it is is designed to fill dead air. That's it. And the minute you walk in the office, it just stops. Nobody actually cared.
Right.
Well, that's what happened to me. The general came to get me. We start walking to his office, and the hallway talk begins. And he says, you, know, Simon, I had everybody in my office read your book. And I said, My publisher thanks you. And he said, Tell them not to bother. I had them read my copy. Total book sales, one. Total impact, huge. Compared to I go to an event and they give away 500 free copies of the book, total book sales 500, but they use them as doorstops and coasters, total impact zero.
Maybe three or four people read it, right? Right, yeah.
So it was that experience that I realized that I can't measure impact simply based on book sales or dollars or income or anything like that. Now, over the long term, I think you can. the book is sustainable, but in the short term it's really a useless metric. So I had to get comfortable with the fact that I was doing things that I couldn't measure the impact, but I knew had an impact. And you've heard me talk about these things before. I talk about exercise, where you go to the gym and you come home and you don't see anything. And you go to the gym the next day and you come home and you don't see anything. And so you're like, it's not working. And you're in pain.
Right?
And you want to eat a cheeseburger.
Pizza and ice cream. And you keep doing it and you still don't really see anything until you maybe look down and read a scale, and sometimes that's weight isn't even the thing. You're replacing fat with muscle. Your weight might go up until people start saying to you, you look really good. You look young. But you never saw it happen. It's like you never see yourself get older until you look at a picture of you from when you were younger. And so you believe, we know from the science and we know from experience, that if I exercise, it's a process and it's good for me, even though I can't measure it in the short term. And if I eat well and I keep doing that, I know it'll keep me healthy for the long term of eating more leafy greens and less sugar. I know I just have to stick to this process that 100% of the time it works. How long does it take to get into shape if you start exercising? Nobody knows. Neither does any doctor. Sometimes a little less time for some people and sometimes a little more time for others. We don't know. We just know 100% that it works. And so I had to get used to the idea professionally that I'm going to do things that I know work, but I won't be able to measure them. And I just have to be okay with the fact that it works, like exercise, like eating right. And so that's where learning an infant mindset and letting go of annual goals So people are like, what's your annual goal? I don't have any because I can't predict what I'm going to achieve based on arbitrary timelines. So I have guidelines. I run a marathon. I like to know the speed I'm going at. I do look at numbers. They matter to me. They help me measure speed and distance. But I don't get happy or sad if I hit or miss a number.
Why do you think so many people get sad or happy based on if they hit their goals. And sometimes you hit your goals and you're still not happy.
Because we're dopamine driven, short term visual animals. I mean, it's going to go in a circle, right? And because we can create, if you create a goal and you hit it, you get a shot of dopamine. That is what happens, right? Any kind of beginning, middle and end, if you reach the end, you'll get the dopamine. Like, find food, found it. Ah, it feels good. I lost my keys, found them. Oh my God, it feels so good, right? This is why we often confuse on a first date. We do this, like falling in love on the first date. Not really true. That's not oxytocin and serotonin, that's actually dopamine. Because you think you found the thing you're looking for. So you have a list of things in your head that you want in your relationship. This person seems to have a bunch of them and you have, you know, New relationship energy. All you see is the stuff that you want that's on your brain. Perfect stuff. And you're literally like, I think this is the one. I think they're the one. I'm like, congratulations. You are getting- you-'re flooded with dopamine- on date one. Or date two. And you are not in love. We've all made the mistake. You're not in love. I've made it too many times. Of course. Go out a bunch more. Go out a bunch more. You realize, what the- was I thinking?
Right.
And they've said that about me. We can't help ourselves. And I think that if you recognize these things, and let's go right back to the question where you started, which is you talked about the condition of the human relationship, right? And I think when the human relationship declines, when our feelings of love and friendship and closeness and deep meaningful relationships decline, we become more obsessed with the external validations, the clicks, the likes, the followers, you know? To the point where it's literally become a career. I'm an influencer, which means I have more clicks than you, more likes than you, more followers than you. And that makes me an alpha in our society, you know? I went to an event recently and there was this pretty girl who was, I was sitting in my seat at this event and she was posing for pictures as her friend took pictures of her. And somebody leans over to me and she goes, She's a very famous influencer. And I said, you, mean she's a freelance employee of an algorithm? Because that's what an influencer is. They're freelance employees for algorithms. They might make a lot of money. Some freelancers make a lot of money and they work for the algorithm. The algorithm is their boss.
They have to feed the algorithm.
Or they have to feed the algorithm. If the algorithm changes, it could destroy their whole income. And you never get to rest.
You never get to rest, because the.
Algorithm doesn't rest, you don't get to rest. And it could influence their self-worth. So the smart influencers, if they're making coin, right, bank that coin, invest that coin, because you are going to burn out, or the algorithm will change, or somebody else will do it better than you. More likely you're going to burn out. Nobody can maintain that pace of recording your life every moment for content, content, content, because the algorithm never rests. Think of it like CNN. It's a 24-hour news cycle for your life. Crazy. Right? And we saw what happened to the quality of news when we went to a 24-hour news cycle, 24-hour news cycle. Nothing goes with the quality of life when you go to a 24-hour content production schedule. Your vacations, you have to bring your camera with you.
You're always on.
You're always on your relationships. You're bringing your camera with you. You're gonna burn out. And if you've been saving your money and investing your money, you'll be just fine. But if you're spending that money, it's not gonna be good.
How does someone manage their own life's motivation while making sure they're being somewhat productive to have a career that pays them an income and can cultivate growth within a career or their own business, while also creating the metric of a good day. How can we balance those three of staying motivated, not being lazy, having a balanced, healthy, beautiful day, while also being productive?
What's wrong with being lazy? Nothing's wrong with being lazy. What does lazy mean? What does it mean to be lazy?
I think Well, I think my definition of I'm being thinking about right now is more of like not caring about anything. It would be my definition of lazy. Like not caring.
Caring, okay. But I think it's clear that we use that. Yes. Because lazy to some people might be sitting on the couch watching TV all day.
Ah, right?
Now, if I've been working with a crazy person- that's relaxing, that sounds good. That sounds good to me. Or maybe I'm watching documentaries and I'm generating ideas.
Right. Yeah, it's not lazy to me.
To somebody that I haven't produced something at the end of the day, that's tangible because this being things being produced all the time here, right? Ideas. Then, so let's be clear that what we mean by is not lazy, but we mean by is how do you live a life where you care? People who don't care.
So.
I think older generations, and I count myself amongst them, Our generation is pretty judgy because we believe you go to work, you get the promotion, you move up the ladder, and we kind of understand people who don't have ambition.
Right.
What do you mean you're not interested in moving up the ladder and getting more responsibility and one day achieving a leadership position?
Or they feel entitled to just be a leader at 24.
Right.
Without working for it.
Right. We're, but we're pretty judgy, right? And I think we have to recognize that Raw ambition is fine for some. And some people want to just come to work, get a paycheck, and have that paycheck pay for their lifestyle. And they're not interested in moving up the ladder. They're interested in fair compensation. It's not that they don't care. They do care. They still do good work. They're just not career minded. They're lifestyle minded. And so, We can't judge them as unproductive and lazy just because they don't have any aspirations to move up through the ladder. But they can't get all if they haven't been giving massive raises when they're just managing. And I know a lot of people who are very happy, they make a decent living, they spend their money and they go on vacations and they save enough. and it's all balanced. And I think they live fantastic lives. They care. They care about the work and they care about the quality of their work. They care about their lives and the quality of their lives. And they want the two to coexist. But remember, we said cost. There's a cost for everything. So if you want to be highly, highly ambitious and make all that money and get all that charm, that comes at a cost to your personal life. If all you want is go on vacations, well, that came as a cost sometimes to your income. or your professional stability, right? So the goal is to find the balance that you're comfortable with. You know, some may tilt a little more towards ambition and some may tilt a little more towards lifestyle, and it's not for us to judge, it's for us to understand. And if I can understand that's how somebody on my team wants to live a life, then I'm okay with that. And as long as they do good work and they care, I think that's a very good and important thing, as long as they care. I'm not going to overload them with stuff that they can prove to me that they can do it, but I want them to do good work within those boundaries. And I'm cool with it. But when we talk about, I think this whole idea of setting boundaries, it gets a little bit misunderstood. Ah, right? Like everybody thinks you have to set boundaries, which means keep people away. I refuse to do that. That's beyond my boundary. I'm not doing that. No, no, no, that's not what boundaries mean. What boundaries means are, Let me tell you what I imagine and what my limitations are. We have boundaries in relationships, right? You sit down with your partner, you co-create the relationship that you want to have, and if you're a good relationship, you discuss what the boundaries are that you both agree to obey. And it's not for us to judge the boundaries of other relationships based on the boundaries of our relationships, and vice versa.
Right?
We create the boundaries that make us comfortable and we agree to stay within those boundaries. We can do whatever we want inside those boundaries, but we cannot step outside those boundaries. Whatever relationship style you want to have, you've got to have boundaries, and that is a discussion. And I think that is the right thing to do in a professional circumstance as well. It was always assumed that there's only one kind of boundary, which is the one I have.
Right, right, right.
And if you go to work till 10 o'clock at night and work on a Saturday, you do it.
Make it happen.
Right? Yeah. But that's not the reality of a young generation anymore. But we're not having the discussion. What we've confused is boundaries as a conversation versus boundaries as a unilateral wall that says, I'm not doing that, and you kind of asked me to do that. It should be a conversation, which is somebody says, look, I'm not interested in moving up the ranks. I want to be treated fairly. I want to be paid fairly. I'm going to do good work. But I don't want to work late at night and I don't want to work on weekends because I want to live a lifestyle. And I'll say, okay, like an only relationship, let's have a negotiation, right? Which is, I'm cool with that. Every now and then, every now and then, when there's a lot of stress and things have gone haywire or we have a huge deadline, I may need you to stay late a couple nights or the occasional Saturday, but I'll give you Monday off. I'll make it up to you. I'm not gonna take away from you without giving you back, and I won't do it a lot. I won't abuse it, but every now.
And then, are you okay with that boundary?
The flexible boundary, yes. Right? So I hear what the boundaries are you want. You understand the things that I need, and we come to an agreement, say, yes, those are the boundaries.
We're all cool with that.
We're in alignment. We're in alignment. And that becomes more productive. But that's not what's happening. Usually the discussion of boundaries is me telling you, as opposed to, and by the way, try that in your relationship.
Not gonna go well.
Me telling you what my boundaries are in my relationship, as opposed to a discussion where I can understand where the boundaries are coming from, and maybe your past experiences, or maybe you've had bosses that took advantage of you, or maybe you were underpaid and somebody abused the fact that you were salary or whatever it is. It's just a conversation because we don't know what somebody's previous experience is that makes them create the boundary that they have now. And they're usually based on some sort of preventing something from happening again.
That already happened in the past.
Right? It happened to me. I'm never letting that happen to me again. Bingo.
My boundary, yeah, yeah.
Right? Like everything, this is gonna be a circular conversation for us. It's human beings interacting with human beings.
Yeah.
And like, We have to do this together. Like, the relationship is ours. My girlfriend and I joke that, you know, when we first showed up in our relationship, you know, I wanted her to fit the blueprint that I expected of her, what I expected of a girlfriend.
Which was...
I mean, we all have our own-.
Yeah, your own definition of it.
We all have our own blueprints of what we want. Right, right. And she wanted me to fit the blueprint of what- Her definition of what a boyfriend should be and what my definition of a relationship should look like. And we were both failing miserably to live up to each other's blueprint.
Really? Of course.
How did you fail?
Were you failing after it was discussed?
Here's what I- There's no discussion. Everybody shows up with a blueprint in.
Their head, and you either fit it or you don't.
Right. Okay. So that's where the conflict started. Of course. And then they're constantly letting you down, or you're picking fights, or whatever it is. It didn't go very well until we sat down and be like, this is not working. And so we agreed that I have to throw out my blueprint, and you have to throw out your blueprint. We like each other a lot. So we know that. So it's a good basis. We respect each other, we care about each other, we have the same values. Why don't we agree to write a new blueprint together? And co-creation became our mantra.
That's beautiful, right?
That the relationship will not be mine and it will not be yours, it'll be ours. And I can no longer make a unilateral decision about what I want in this relationship. Because the relationship doesn't belong to me, it belongs to us. We have joint custody of this relationship.
Interesting.
Right?
And by the way, you can make unilateral decisions about what happens in this relationship because it doesn't belong to you. I got 50% of this.
Right.
Right. And the result has been amazing and it requires lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of communication and boundary setting and discussions. And I think professional relationships should be the same. Which is, I have a blueprint in my head of what an employee should do. An employee has a blueprint in their head of what a company or a boss should do. And the problem is, is hopefully that goes well, sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it completely falls apart. Versus saying, I got this job. You got this, you know, you're, you got this, you're my boss. Can we have a discussion about what we want this relationship to be? I'm not going to get everything I want. You're not getting everything you want. It's not because that's the boundary like I declare, right? That's just not going to work.
Right.
But can we... This is why I think it's important for companies to talk about their why and their values. I think it's important for companies to set expectations, what it's like to work here. And don't give me this, work hard, play hard. Like any company that tells you we work hard, play hard, please run in the opposite direction. Right? Why not work smart, play always?
Right?
Because working hard sounds unhealthy and playing hard sounds very unhealthy. Right. It's like, I worked too hard this week, so now I'm gonna get face this weekend. Very unhealthy at work, very unhealthy on the weekend. Yeah.
Sounds like burnout recipe.
Work hard, play hard is a stupid philosophy.
Right?
Work smart, play always.
Right?
And the point is, that's why I think it's important for companies to talk about their why, talk about their values, be honest about them, because you'll attract people who will more likely want to work within the boundaries that you're setting. So for example, people often ask me about Amazon. Isn't Amazon a horrible place to work? And I'll say, well, They never lied.
This is the expectation.
They never lied. They didn't say, oh my God, it's a party here every day. Everybody's like, it's just like unicorns and rainbows. No, you work three hours and you go home. They never lied. They're pretty public about it's a really demanding job with ridiculous hours. And even the people who love it over the last two years, you know, like it's a really hard place to work. But if you like those conditions, Then go work there.
And here are some benefits with those conditions.
And there's benefits. Where people talk about Steve Jobs was an a. Yes. But people who worked there, people who worked at Apple under Steve Jobs, will all tell you that they were pushed harder than they've ever been pushed in their careers, and the things that they accomplished, they wouldn't have been able to accomplish anywhere else but there. Right. Right? So if you're okay with those boundaries, then go work there. But the point is, is these companies tell you what their expectations are and what it's like to work there up front. And the reason it's important to do that is to attract people who are more likely to want to work within those boundaries.
Yes.
But it's still an act of co-creation, right? And if you don't like it, then you should leave. Yes.
Right?
Now, enter a different relationship.
Now, if the company lied to you, that's different.
Yes.
Right? Then you do actually have the right to complain and point fingers. And sometimes even like at Amazon, it got a little too far. Sure. To reel it back a little bit.
Sure.
Sure, sure.
Why do you think, I don't want to, I mean, I guess I am generalizing a little bit, but obviously this isn't the case for everyone in the younger generation. But why does it seem like there is a conversation happening about the younger generation where there is a, an entitlement or demand energy towards, okay, this is my first year in this job, you know, out of college, two years out, I don't have all the skills or the experience or the results to show that I'm, capable of getting this, but I demand and want all of these things that the younger, the older generation wasn't able to do. And then they constantly, not generalizing, but a conversation of them wanting raises within the first month, more, you know, limited time off.
Sure.
This kind of lazy mentality and entitlement.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's multiple factors, of course. Parents is one of them. You know, it's the parenting philosophies of the generation. That was a big part of it. You know, when you and I got in trouble at school, our parents said, what did you do now? If a lot of people get in trouble at school now, their parents say, what's wrong with your teacher?
Right. I got suspended. You know, I was like punished for weeks.
Right. And you know, again, sometimes it is the school and the teacher, but There's bad kids too. You know, where kids do stupid things.
Sure, sure. No, I cheated, so I cheated on.
A test, so I got the consequence.
Quite rightfully so. But it wasn't like, well, you know, they shouldn't punish you, let's just, you.
Know, do this or make any excuse for me. So, parents is part of it. Social media is part of it, because we're constantly comparing. My sister had somebody who worked for her back in a previous job, and he walked into her office and said, Can you give me a promotion? and my sister's like, you didn't work hard for that loan.
Right.
And he's like, well, hold on. No, no, no. You don't have to give me the additional responsibility, and I don't even need a salary raise. I just need the new title so I can put it on LinkedIn so.
My friends can see, Come on. Yeah? Holy cow.
After, like, a few months, whatever it was. But it was really about the display, the display. So it became one of those metrics, like followers or likes. which is how many promotions have you had on LinkedIn? You know?
It's a false sense of accomplishment, though.
And it's really funny because there's a corollary here, which is we know that when there is conspicuous displays of wealth, so name brands, when you wear your little Gucci or, you know... Or your Gucci or Chanel bag, there's a reason they put the logos on the outside, right? is because we like that everybody knows, right? And there's data on this that when you wear your fancy stuff and you put it on and it makes you feel, you actually get shots of, you get bursts of serotonin because it makes you feel proud and like you're, you know, your higher status in the community and all of that. That's what conspicuous displays of wealth do. Makes us feel good. We also know that when you wear a fake, Everybody may think that you got that Chanel bag, but you actually get no serotonin. So you have a fake. You know. You actually don't get the feeling of, I'm the sh*t. Right?
'Cause you didn't earn it.
'Cause it's not real.
It's not the real thing.
So I wonder if it seems to make sense that when you have a fake promotion for the title to show your friends, that though your friends may be impressed because they're looking at the logo, that you actually know that it's fake, so you actually don't get a feeling of self-confidence and I think that this is good and in other words, there's no growth that comes from it. In fact, it might do the opposite, it might make you insecure.
Wow.
Right? We know this from kids who get medals who come in last, which is great, you gave them a medal. They know they didn't deserve it, actually makes them not feel good. Interesting. Right? Because they didn't deserve it, they know that. And the kids who did earn it, It's devalued because you gave one to somebody else as well. So parenting is part of it, social media is part of it. But I think the other part of it, which is not considered by older generations, my business partner talks about this all the time, which is when I entered the work field, when you entered the work field back in the day, we were legit. When we came out of college, we were legit. Idiots. Right?
We had no clue.
We thought we had no skill set whatsoever. No discernible value whatsoever. You know, we all started making photocopies.
Right.
And we had to look up to the people we worked for because they were going to teach us everything that we needed to know. And we learned a skill set from working in from the people who we worked for, right? That was how it worked. You have a young generation now that's graduating high school and college that enters the workforce with a skill set. And sometimes it's a skill set that the older generation doesn't have. They understand personal branding, they understand social media, they understand how computers work.
Photography.
Video editing. They understand the algorithms. They can game the algorithms better than anybody. Look at Mr. Beast, he's what, 22, 23? Billions of views, right? His numbers are better than every top movie ever. Ever. Yeah. Right? I went to an event once where there were all these fancy actors and Mr. Beast was there and none of them knew who he was. And I was looking at it and I was doing the numbers, which is if you took one of the A-list celebrities and added up the total number of people that have seen all of his movies ever, It doesn't even come close to like one video from Mr. Beast.
Crazy. Right?
And yet none of them knew who he was. And they all think they're hot. And like, no, this kid's the hot.
Right?
So I think that's another problem. It's not a problem, but that's another consideration, which is that 21-year-old actually does have a skill set. And they know that that skill set has value. And so they are entering the workforce knowing that they know something that you don't know. And so they're not coming in as total idiots. And they, though there is still the need for them to learn and to there's the sense that I already know something and so you should start giving me more upfront. Wow. Right? And so I think it's right for older generations to recognize that they actually know stuff we don't know and they're actually good at things better than we were when we were their age. And that has value, just not as much value as they may think because there's still a lot more for them to learn.
Sure.
Or there's the application of that skill set that needs to be honed. Or maybe that skill set has no value in this job.
Right.
You shouldn't have to get a job to do that. So I, it's, it's- what is the.
I mean, we're generalizing this, but what is the greatest skill that the younger generation has going into the workforce? and the thing that will hold them back the most?
Oh, that's a good question. I think they're probably one in the same, to be honest. I think it's a complete comfort and facility with technology integrated into their lives, fully integrated, which is a blessing and a curse. It's gonna, I'm just a repeating record, which is there's a balance and there's a cost for everything. And the cost for that facility and that ease and that comfort with technology is deep meaningful relationships.
Interesting. Because they're on the phone 20 hours a day as opposed to connecting in person.
Or worse, they think being connected and connecting are the same thing. I had a fight with a 16-year-old a couple of years ago that her and her friends send voice messages to each other. And I said, why don't you just pick up the phone and call each other? She goes, We are. I'm like, no, you're not. You're sending voice men was to each other. She genuinely believed that that was a conversation. Mm. Right? It's not a conversation.
It's a disjointed- It's listening to my.
Answering machine and then leaving somebody as a message on their answering machine. And that's what it is just in real time. It's just quicker, right? But I think that, and when we feel a little lonelier down because we have such facility with the stuff, we go to the stuff to be a balm for that feeling of loss or loneliness we have. It's not that different for any white alcoholics drink or, you know, which is alcoholics drink only for a finite number of reasons, which is social stress, career stress and social stress. It's pretty much it. Did I say financial? And, you know, when And we see it all the time, right? You see, you know, Brené Brown talks about this as well, which is we've confused vulnerability in broadcasting, which is making a video by yourself in your room of you crying because you're depressed or you got broken up with or whatever, you know, and you just being vulnerable, and then you have that expression validated by likes and views.
That's not vulnerability.
It's not vulnerability. That's simply broadcasting your emotions by yourself. By the way, you're by yourself in your room with your phone, right? That's literally what's happening. Now I challenge people who do that. Go have that exact conversation, say all the same words to a friend in the same room as them, and you'll find that much more difficult.
Is it harder to broadcast to a million people your emotions than it is to one person in person?
No, it's easier.
It's easier to do to broadcast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Than it is to have a conversation with a friend, a family member, or someone close to you.
I can go on, I can hit play, I can hit record on FaceTime, and I can look in my computer and be like, I'm struggling. I'm really having a hard time. Stop play. I'm gonna do that again. Record. Wow. I'm struggling. I'm really having a hard time real talk here, just talking real talk. You know, just speaking my truth here, you know? And I want you guys to know that, you know, I'll get through this.
And then analyze it afterwards and then.
Post it, pick a picture to go on it, you know, versus going a friend and sitting across a table from somebody and going, I'm struggling and I don't know what's going on. That's excruciating.
Wow.
That's true vulnerability because there is no vulnerability doing it by yourself. There's a perception of vulnerability just the same way I can turn on a movie and watch an actor playing vulnerability, right? And I'm like, oh my God, they're so vulnerable. Well, I'm watching the performance of vulnerability. So for me, the viewer, it's real.
Right.
And for, and I have no doubt that the person making the video is feeling something. I get it.
But they're creating a piece of art.
But they're, but they're, but they're not, it's not that they're creating a piece of art, it's that they're not, the thing that will help them, the thing that will help them get over that feeling and feel safe is not the number of likes that validate the expression. The thing that will make them feel safe is for them to have the incredibly uncomfortable, awful, conversation with somebody where they say the same things and that person sits there and goes, I got you. I got you. Right? And like, I remember I have a friend who's, he's, he's an impressive, if he's an impressive dude. And, and I love him to death. And I didn't want to show him vulnerability because I am so impressed by him. I wanted him to be impressed by me.
Interesting.
He's so strong, I want him to know that I'm strong, right? I don't want him... And it's not because I intellectually understand the importance of vulnerability, but it's still... I want my friend to like me. My amazingly impressive friend that I think is super impressive to think I'm impressed up too, and I'm on his level. And I remember I was struggling, I called him up and I go, I'm not in a good place. And he was like, what do you got, bud? What do you need? And I remember we were out once and I said to him, you know, you're one of those friends that I would call in a hard time. And he said to me, I'd be mad if you didn't. And we have this magical relationship now where we open up to each other. And we open to each other, and it doesn't at all do any damage to what I think about him. In fact, it makes me think more of him.
That's beautiful. The interesting thing Not to interrupt you there, but the interesting thing that you said intellectually, I think all of us think, I don't want to be on their level. I want to be strong or make sure that I'm representing myself in a way that is at their level. And if I'm vulnerable or showing that I'm struggling, then will I be less than that?
Correct.
Why is that when actually vulnerability brings us closer together?
Well, it's also a story we say in our own heads, right? 'Cause it turns out he's not all buttoned up. And it turns out he's not got every answer. And it turns out everything he touches doesn't turn to gold. And it turns out he's got insecurities. And it turns out he's got fears. And it turns out he's got anger. And he's got frustration. And he's got all those things too. It turns out he's human. And this is where the relationship became beautiful, which is He is more impressive than me. He's a much more impressive guy than I am. And I love him to death and he loves me to death. Not because we're comparing our resumes. It's because we trust each other and hold space for each other. And I've seen him at his worst and he's seen me at my worst. And that's the point. And I think that's what social media doesn't allow. And again, forget about the people who they're broadcasting to. I have absolutely You've helped me, seeing this has helped me. I know that when I broadcast things- It helps people. I know that. And that has value.
Yes.
I'm talking about the person who's making the video, who's struggling themselves, how they find safety and salvation. They will not find it in the broadcast. They will at some point have to go to a friend and ask for help. And they can still make the broadcast to serve others, not anti the broadcast. But that person is kidding themselves if they think that is the way to find peace and calm in a life.
There's something that I wanted to go back to. I'm loving all this, by the way. Thank you for sharing so openly, which is about the breakdown in life. And the breakdown, the scenario, the situation that causes us to either fall apart or come together or start to look differently about our life and ask what's the point of the direction we're heading? I'm curious in your mind, again, there's been a lot that's happened in the last few years. Pandemic, war, and AI, which is being talked about more. Obviously it's been around for a long time, but now it's being talked about more.
And then it's moving at a pace that's ridiculous, which is very, very scary. I don't mean to diminish it. It's of course, you know, when the internet showed up, the adoption for internet, Was years. Yes. The adoption for most technologies is decades. This thing is increasing its potential and its speed in weeks and months, which is not giving us time to consider that balanced equation. That's the part I find scary, is not the technology, it's the speed of adoption. Right. And the social ripples.
Social ripples.
Yes. And remember, governments have to adopt it. They don't have a choice.
Right.
Right? So like nuclear weapons, Right? When nuclear weapons showed up, governments had to. Whether they wanted to or not was relevant. They had to because of the other one does. We don't have a choice. It's the same thing here. Like all of the defensive and offensive weapons and AI, governments have to, they have no choice. But we actually do have the ability to set pace and we're not. And there is fear of being left out. There's massive FOMO. So one company's investing in a heavenly, the other one's like, we have to invest in a heavenly because they are, so we have to.
Right.
Right. And so there's FOMO and fear of being left behind. And some of it's true, but not necessarily the pace and blindness which we're throwing the technology at our companies and our businesses. And I think history always repeats itself, which is when you do something blindly and too quickly, at some point it's gonna break.
Right. Right.
And so we don't know what or how that looks. when it's going to happen, but it's probably going to happen. I mean, think, you know, nature of war is imbalance and seeks equilibrium at all times. This is why when there's a stock market crash, we call it a correction, right? Because there is imbalance and it finds correction. Like that's how Mother Nature works. She always finds balance at some point, right? You don't know when, but if you don't know when, but it is going to happen. Yeah.
Right.
And I think that the imbalance that we're creating with the speed of the adoption of the technology that we don't.
Fully understand the balance is gonna happen.
I don't know how, I don't know what, I don't know what it's gonna look like. No one can predict it. There's a lot of people trying, and there's no way to slow it down because now the genie's out of the bag. No one's gonna be like, you know what? I'll be the one to slow it down. Let's stop this. Yeah, yeah. Government can put some guardrails on. Europe is actually attempting to put some guardrails on, which I think is helpful. Interesting, yeah. America, not so much. We think guardrails are anti-capitalist, which They're not, they're just guardrails.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
We can debate where the guardrails are, but guardrails are good.
Sure, sure, sure. You mentioned early on, I like that you talked about the fear that causes a lot of social ripples with these different things that happen, right? Especially around AI or around pandemics or around war, right? You've mentioned a few of these things. With everything we've seen in the last few years, Which one do you think will cause more fear and more emotional reactions or social ripples between another virus or pandemic like experience.
War.
Or AI and the acceleration of AI?
I think income inequality is bigger than all of them.
What is that?
Income inequality.
Income inequality. will create more social ripples and fear than these three.
Yeah, just look at what's been happening over the past 30, 40 years. The rise of populism, the rise of strongman leaders, the cynicism about democracy. And it's not that democracy or capitalism are bad. It's that this version of democracy, this version of capitalism, not democracy, this version of capitalism that we have that was largely engineered in the 80s and 90s by people like Jack Welch and Republican and Democratic presidents at the time is woefully imbalanced.
And.
It is lopsided. You know, the stock market used to be a place that the average working American could share in the wealth of the nation. And now the stock market has become the bastion for the few. You know, CEOs who are incentivized by the price of inequity work hard to make other people rich, and often don't include the workers, or worse, use the workers to help balance those books, the use of mass layoffs, which was a relatively modern phenomenon that didn't exist in the United States prior to the 1980s. Really? Didn't exist. I mean, there were layoffs, but not to balance the books. They were used for existential reasons, like, We're going bankrupt. We have to do something drastic. Right. Versus, oh, we missed our numbers. You lose your job. Wow. That didn't exist. And so we have a very woefully flawed version of capitalism that is not the capitalism that made America great, nor is it capitalism, the kind of capitalism that Thomas Jefferson was enamored by as written by Adam Smith. And I think that disparity, and we're seeing it play out now in The strikes, the writers strike and the actors strike. The actors strike, which is people working hard to make a small group of people very wealthy and being left out. Nobody minds that a CEO is highly paid. The problem is that it's the system of how they get paid that you're not including and bringing people with you. That's the problem. that you're making money off of their backs without them letting feel like they're sharing in the spoils that they help create. That's the problem. And we know how we got here. It's because, again, this goes back to metrics, right? The way we measured money was very easy, this sort of going off on a tangent, if we really want to talk about it.
I like your tangents.
Yeah. You know, which is, I used, it's very easy, right? And this has been talked about, this is not this is not a new.
Idea.
I would broadcast a TV show and I could count how many people viewed it, right? Ratings. And then I could get picked up for syndication and I can count everything and I can give you a percentage of all the things that I can count, right? Whereas when we went to streaming and everybody, when streaming first showed up, they thought it would be minor, so it wasn't built into contracts. It was considered an alternative media. Don't worry about it.
Yeah.
But now when something gets a billion views, there's no direct advertising dollars applied to that show, and there's no syndication applied to that show. And even though that show may, we can't tell that that's why somebody subscribed, because the subscription made the money, not the show, even though the show gets more views than everybody else. And so, and Netflix and none of the streamers tell you the numbers of the views, which is really a bad idea because it goes back to metrics and numbers, which is if you can count it, you need to share the numbers so that we can establish a value. And if we can establish a value, we can say what it's worth.
Right?
So hiding numbers is never a good thing when it comes to playing with people's income.
Where do you think capitalism should be? The new definition of capitalism should be then?
Well, it's everything that I write about in every single one of my books.
The infinite game.
The infinite game, leaders eat last, and start with why all are attempting to chip away that, you know, start with why was that companies should be driven by higher calling and higher purpose, not just making money. It's totally anti Milton Friedman and Jack Welch. I mean, I hope to undo everything Jack Welch ever did. Leaders Eat Last was about taking care of the people in our care. That leadership is not about being in charge, but taking care of those in your charge. And the Infinite Game is recognizing that this game of business cannot be won, so stop playing it like it's a finite game, and stop using people as pawns and start being grateful that they're helping you advance something bigger than yourself. And I lay it out there, I lay out what the principles of capitalism should be, In the chapter where I wrote on Milton Friedman, I offer an alternative list of hierarchy and priorities. Can't remember what they are.
I mean, I'm hearing you say, go ahead, yeah, feel free to share it.
Chapter five. What page is it on? Capitalism should advance a cause. Protect people and generate profit in that order.
One more time?
Advance a purpose, protect people, generate profit. So the responsibility of business is to use its will and resources to advance a greater cause than itself, protect the people and places in which it operates, and generate more resources so that it can continue doing all those things for as long as possible. An organization can do whatever it likes to build its business so long as it is responsible for the consequences of its actions. That is for me what capitalism should be.
And we're not seeing that right now.
No.
It's the opposite order. It's generate profit, you know, advance purpose on your website. It's called marketing. And protect people, you know, when it suits us.
Interesting.
Not, no, like version of capitalism we have right now is pretty bastardized.
So the, I'm hearing you say the income inequality and where that's heading is a greater fear and risk than another pandemic, AI and war.
Whenever you have a huge delta between those that have and those that don't have, You have revolution.
Wow. But this is happening all over the world, not just in America, right?
Of course.
I mean, other countries, there's a rise.
Of populism around the world. There's a rejection of democratic values because they've confused democratic values and the version of capitalism we have. They've conflated the two. Right.
So what usually happens in a scenario like this and how long does it take for that thing to occur? What has history taught us?
There's gonna be a revolution, really?
Around the whole world?
Come on. No, I mean, come on. I mean, January 6th, these are not the signs. I mean, listen to the messaging of the populists. It's the haves versus the have-nots. Yeah. You know? And the left needs to listen. You know, they're quick to, the left and the right are both quick to criticize the leaders of each other's movements. But they're missing, they're not listening to why people are interested in those messages. They both sides think the other side are sheeple. Both think the other side are blind, deaf, and dumb. And yet neither side is paying attention as to why they both have their own rabid followings. And problem is most of the country is moderate. Plaint. Most of our nation is pretty moderate. Most of our nation is pretty fine, in between willing to find compromises, not really, you know, reasonable. And yet the angry extremes on both sides have seemed to set the tone.
They're playing a finite game.
But, you know, I'm genuinely afraid of, and I don't know how it looks or when it happens or, But I think, yeah, I think when we start ripping, when we start accusing each other of being traitors, I mean, the left and the right literally say, call each other traitors or un-American.
That's not good.
That's not good.
That's not good.
It's not good.
I've got a few final questions for you. This has been powerful. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for opening up and sharing. I could go on for hours. I don't know if you remember this. Last time we talked on the show six, seven years ago.
Oh, yeah, sure. I remember it intimately.
I reference.
I can't even remember what I ate yesterday.
I reference this part of the conversation. I don't remember the whole talk, but I remember asking you one question about self-confidence and self-belief because I, at the end of the day, still think that when we as individuals learn to have more self-belief, self-confidence through actually building it, not a false sense of it, we can make better decisions. We create better lives for ourselves and those around us, all these things.
Yeah, I agree.
And so I think a lot of it comes back to building belief in self and self-worth by overcoming challenging things, by being consistent with your word, all these different things that we talk about.
Yeah.
And I said, how do we build self-worth? if we're really struggling. And you gave me an answer that I think I wrote in my last book, even about at some point. And I don't know if you remember what you said.
What did I say?
You said, you know, I would have tried to speak like you. You said, you know well, interesting thought here. I used to, you know, I used to think that it was like instilling confidence in someone else by, like, speaking up to them and motivating them, you know, telling them you're great and you can do this and coaching them up. But I had a friend who just always struggled. They would call me. Oh, yeah, yeah, a female friend, I think it was. They would call me and I would try to coach them up and say, you got it. You've got the skills, you got the, you've got the degrees, you've got everything. You can do this. Yeah.
And she just couldn't do it.
It would last for like two or three days. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And then eventually she'd come back and doubting herself and insecure and I can't do this.
Yeah.
And you were like, Huh, am I failing as a motivator or a leader or a coach or something? Yeah. Something off on me. And then you said, you know what? There was something I was struggling with that I needed help with in my life. And I actually thought she could be someone that could help me with this thing. And I asked her to help coach me or guide me or something like that. And it helped build her confidence by using something and helping me overcome my challenge. I thought that was interesting. And I've remembered that and I've referenced that in a lot of different things. to inspire others to help their friends by coaching them, not trying to motivate them.
If you're struggling with somebody, go help somebody who's struggling with the same thing.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is. The first step is admitting you have a problem, but the 12th step, which is the most essential step, is help another alcoholic.
Yeah.
And so if you're struggling with competence, help somebody else build their competence. If you're struggling with finding love, help somebody else find love. If you're struggling to find who you are, help somebody else find who they are. And the amazing thing is we will solve our own problems by helping others solve the same. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it works and it's for real. And by the way, it's because we're social animals and it's the fabric of humanity. Yeah. Service. Yeah. And there's a few things that we've forgotten in our modern society. We've forgotten about service. You know, I think service is essential and we don't really do it much anymore and we've forgotten about honor. You know, honor is not a thing anymore. You know, chivalry is gone. There used to be a time where your word was everything and the reason you did what you said is because if people heard that you didn't have honor, they wouldn't do business with you. Right. They wouldn't do anything with you. Like your word is what you had. And honor is a thing that we've forgotten in our country. So let me give you an example of what honor looked Right.
So.
I'll put it simply. So, dishonor is taking advantage of somebody else's pain for personal gain. Honor is putting your selfish interests aside to serve somebody who's in need.
Right?
And so for example, if the company is struggling and like a whole bunch of people have quit and you're the last person left in your department while the company is really struggling. A lot of people use that leverage to ask for a raise because they know that you can't lose me because I'm essential. That's dishonorable. Work hard, help the company figure things out. Then when you're out of the hole, then absolutely go back and say, Hey, look, I was really good. I stuck with you through thick and thin. I know that it was brutal and now I like So, raised totally fine with this.
Right?
But taking advantage of someone's pain and misfortune for personal gain, using that as leverage is dishonorable. And so, I want to see a return to honor where we use, we seem with someone's pain or struggle as an opportunity to support. Doesn't mean putting our needs and desires aside. It means putting them aside, temporarily putting them aside. And I just believe in honor. And one of the things I love about the military is they still use the term honor. Like, somebody can be smart, somebody can be reliable, somebody can be really good at their job, but dishonorable. It has nothing to do with trustworthiness or intelligence or any of those things. It's a separate thing that we don't talk about. And I love the military. People like, you know, introductions will get made, and somebody say, you, got to.
Meet this guy, Simon. And I'm like a good guy.
They're like, yep, honorable. I'm like, yep, I'll meet him. Wow. What's the difference between honorable and trustworthy? Trustworthy simply means I'm I'm going to say what I'm going to do. I'll do what I say. So, like, somebody who they're a good employee.
They're not lying.
They're not lying. They're not liars.
They're just- They could be dishonorable.
Sure, sure. You're not a liar. I don't think you're a liar when, like, it's, I mean, you take it into a personal, like when somebody's, like, let's go, somebody's going through, like, serious financial times. And there's this say whatever you want. There's a thing that you've always coveted that they have. And when they're going through really tough times is the time you lean and be like, I'll give you a thousand bucks for that. That's dishonorable.
It's taking advantage.
It's taking advantage of somebody's pain or misfortune for personal gain. That is dishonorable. And I believe in honor. I believe in honor.
Now what's the difference between someone saying, Hey, I'm in a tough spot, and I'm willing to sell this at a discount.
That's different. That's different.
That's them presenting it to you.
That's not you taking advantage.
Right.
That's not you seeing a point of leverage. Mm-.
Right?
Powerful.
It's not you saying, I've got all the cards.
Right.
And so to me, honor is important. I expect honor from the folks on my team. I expect honor from the people I work with, from the vendors we use, you know? And I'd rather suffer in the short term than work with somebody who is dishonorable.
That's beautiful. I love that. And what is something you've learned or maybe observed in the last... I keep thinking it's five, six years when our last conversation was, but in the last six years on how we can better improve our self-worth and our belief in selves with everything that has occurred in the world and in life in these last six years. Something else you've observed through hard times.
Through confusion, through- There's nothing new, it's just been reinforced. Which is double down on relationships. Double down on friendship. We talk about how to measure a day on productivity. It's like, you got a lot done, fool, you got a lot done. Did you call anybody today and just tell them you love them? I'll sometimes call a friend and be like, Hey, I just want to call you and tell you I really, really like you and value the year of my life. on my drive here. As I was driving here, I took the time in the car to call a friend and say, I just wanted to call you and tell you how much I value our friendship and want you to know that I will do everything to protect this friendship for the rest of my life. And I went through all the reasons why this friendship was important to me and why I'll fight for it. And I just, there was nothing that I wanted, I just wanted them to know. That's all.
It's hard to have a bad day when we do that.
So, you know, if all I did was come on a podcast and do that?
Pretty good day. It's a good day.
So I think we have to start weighing the value of a day based on... So there's this thing that I did for a while. My ADHD prevents me from doing anything for a long period of time. I come up with a system, do it really well for a while, and then it goes back. They cycle around. But I had a fishbowl. I had two fishbowls in my bedroom. And We can calculate how long we have to live. We know the average American male living in this part of the world will live to about this age. So you and I can calculate statistically how many weeks we have left to live. So what I did was I did that calculation and I put one marble for every week. I can't remember if I did one marble, I started with one marble for every day, believe it or not. But I bought all these marbles. one marble for every day that represented how many days I have left statistically on the planet Earth, and then had an empty fishbowl next to it. And I would hold up one marble at the end of the day and say, Did I live a day worth living? And if the answer was yes, I put it in the fishbowl. If the answer was no, I threw it in the garbage. I wasted a day. Wow. And I made it, and by the way, the standard was whatever I wanted it to be. The standard was my own. So if I felt today was a good day, today was an inspiring day, I did something to inspire someone, and I didn't trick myself and be like, oh, well, you know, like, I was honest with myself. And the goal was, and it was just a nice little reminder that every day I had to do something for somebody. That was my standard, that I had to do something for someone every day. And so I literally would hold up the marble and think about the day, think about the week, and then put it in or I wouldn't. I didn't throw away many because when you start now, I have a metric.
You-'re intentional, yeah.
But I made my day tangible. My day is an intangible thing until it becomes a marble.
Interesting.
Now my day was tangibilized.
Yeah.
That's a great.
Now it became a thing.
I like that system. Are you doing that again?
Yeah, it'll come up. Like everything in my life, they cycle through.
Yeah. This is a question I asked you before that is called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It is that last day on earth for you. And you get to live as long as you want, extend your life as long as you want, and create and do all the things you want to do.
Yeah.
But for whatever reason, it's the last day, and you've accomplished everything or not, and just lived beautiful days without accomplishments, but you can't take, or excuse me, everything you've created has to go with you. This conversation gone. Your books, they're gone. It's on to another world or somewhere else. They're not in this world. everything you've ever said or done we don't have access to anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons. I call it the three truths. Three things that you know from your experiences are true to you that you would want to leave behind as lessons to the world. What would be those three truths for you?
Really love the people who love you. Really love them. Learn all the human skills that you need to be a good human being. Because being human is hard.
And.
Have as much fun as possible. And what I mean by having much fun as possible doesn't mean playing video games and taking vacations every moment. But make jokes, have a sense of humor. You can't be angry and laugh at the same time. Stephen Colbert talks about this. You can't. There's something magical in a high-stress situation as a joke. And whether it's gallows humor or whether you find the absurdity in something, It's like just make sure to maintain your sense of humor. Yeah, so love those who love you desperately. Learn the human skills to be a great human being and make sure that you appreciate that life really is fun.
Over a thousand conversations, I don't think I've heard them in that way, those three truths. I've asked it every time and I didn't expect that from you, so that was really beautiful. I appreciate you sharing those three. I want to acknowledge you, Simon, for your constant personal growth.
No, thank you.
Your constant personal growth. I've watched you for years be a phenom on the internet with TED Talk and books and all the things and accolades. I've been at events with you. I've had you on the show. We know a lot of the same people. But I really love just watching you personally grow as a human being and speak about these things, loving people desperately. having as much fun as possible. You know, being someone who's looked at as an intellectual and extremely smart, talking about humor and fun is awesome for me to hear. And being the best human you can be, knowing that this is a challenging existence or it can be unless you choose to learn skills and overcome it. So I'm really acknowledging you for your personal growth. Thank you. And hope now that we're more neighbors, I'll run into you more frequently. and get to give you more hugs. So I really acknowledge you for everything. And I also acknowledge you for this, which I think is interesting. Asked you before you came on here today. I acknowledge you for not having something to be productive in right now. Of course, you've got, you know, book and your podcast and, you know, content that you're creating, but you're not like, I'm working on this massive project and I've got to do it. I've got this deadline and it's got to be this way. You're like, yeah, I'm allowing ideas to come to I'm allowing things to form. I'm building deeper relationships. I'm connecting with my girlfriend. I'm doing these things. I acknowledge you for that because I think it's hard at times to allow ourselves to not be overly productive and always creating something and always trying to strive to be on top. So I acknowledge you for being in that space. I think it's a beautiful thing, too.
Well, that's very nice of you. I think it's important to know who you work for, right? So I would only have stress to come up to write another book if I believed that I worked for my publisher. But I don't. And I would only have stress about the amount of content creation I have to produce if I believed I worked for the algorithm. But I don't. I work for the people who share this world with me. I work for my friends. I work for my family. I work for the people who see the world the way I see it. And I live, try to work very hard to live a life of service. And the way I manage my social media is I say something that I think is additive. I never pile on, because there's no point. I'm very prescriptive that I will speak if I have something that I believe is additive. And I have nothing to say and I have nothing to write. then I'm gonna say nothing and I'm gonna write nothing. And I think you have to know who your customer is and then be fiercely customer oriented. And I use the word customer in quotes. Like if you're a parent, your kids are your customer. If you're a teacher, your students are your customer. If you're a nurse, your patients are your customer. And I think you have to be fiercely, fiercely customer focused.
And.
In my chosen line of work. My customer is the army who chooses to stand shoulder to shoulder with me to build the world that we imagine. A world in which people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and in the day fulfilled by the work that they do.
Yeah.
I love it, man. I want everyone to support you, and you've got a number of great books. The Infinite Game is one that I think the themes have been spoken about throughout here over and over again of how we can start reimagining our own personal lives or career, industries, you know, everything, the world. So I want people to get this. Start with why, obviously, as a phenom that everyone should have as well if they haven't got it. Your simonsinek.com has got all your content and information. I love your Instagram and your LinkedIn is massive as well. If you guys are over there, you're.
All focused on human skills.
Exactly. So if you want to develop better human skills, follow wherever you're on social.
Media and places, all the things, all.
The things, the podcast. Bit of optimism. You can check it out there if you want to go deeper as well. But how else can we be of service to you today?
Do the things. Like the being of service to me is that I'm one person who puts out a vision of the world and some tools to help build it. But until leaders lead with those tools, until we, and by leader I don't mean those in charge, I mean those who choose to take on the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise, which can happen at alien level, inside an organization or in our society. And what I need people to do is do it. Because my work is intangible and I need people to make it tangible.
Yeah. Final question.
Yep.
What's your definition of greatness?
I think it's everything we've talked about. My definition of greatness is living a life of service. And, you know, the people that I think are great devoted themselves to the lives of others. I'm a great believer that if a message has value, you. It has to be simple, understandable, and repeatable. Because if you can make it simple, that means somebody else can understand it. And if somebody else can understand it, that means they can repeat it without you there and without reading the words from a book. So my goal.
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