Stop This Habbit RIGHT NOW If You Want To Be Successful

We're going to dive right into sort of the underbelly of fame. Many of you, myself included, we spend so much time building habits to become more and more successful. We all want success. I understand that. But for a select few who break through, the success is such that you have a platform and you're seen by millions, sometimes 10, tens of millions of people. You have a certain level of fame, and there are downsides. Tim Ferriss, many of you know, famous lifestyle designer, a term that he coined, talks about the downsides of fame. When his book first hit in 2007, he was pretty obscure. He'd had a few successes, but no one knew him. He could walk down the street, no big deal. He was 29 years old. And then his book took off. Here's the thing that was shocking. And again, I have to admire him for mentioning this. He told a friend of his when he was about 28 years old, if I'm not famous by 30, I might as well put a bullet in my head. Tim Ferriss really, really, really wanted to be famous. And he went about it in a strategic way. And he built habits to increase his platform and increase the odds that he would in fact, become famous. Now, he said he never seriously thought about killing himself when he wasn't famous, although apparently he was very depressed in college and had times in his life when he was suicidal. But here's what happened once he became famous, he still remembers. Just a couple of years after that, or a few years after that, he received a video from a friend of his who he'd met through the success of his work. And the friend then sent him a video where he says, I'm killing myself, and he blew his brains out, killed himself. Things like that don't happen to you and me. Typically, he talks about another person, sort of a regular, a regular follower who started speaking to him and almost stalking him. And I don't know what could be worse than seeing someone, you know, turn on camera and shoot themselves and kill themselves, and it's a message just for you. Other people were stalking him. Now, since he came out with his first book, he's had five books, a thousand blog posts, 500 million downloads in his podcast. So he's still fairly humble. He's saying, look, I'm not really famous. I'm not Brad Pitt, I'm not Angelina Jolie. I don't get mobbed if I'm walking down the street. But he defines himself as a micro public figure with a monthly audience in the millions or tens of millions. And he's giving this advice to people because he realizes because of platforms like TikTok, people can go from completely obscure to having millions of followers overnight. Typically doesn't happen when you're talking about personal development. Who issues? But it could. It could. There are some rewards. And he does point out a lot of opportunities have come to him. He's been able to invest in a lot of great companies that have made him a lot of money. Interestingly, he didn't point out, hey, one of the, one of the upsides of being famous is I'm really rich. Now. He doesn't say that. It's sort of implied. But he talks about all the great people he's met, the great early companies he's been able to invest in, organizations and causes he's been able to help, places he's been. And he even does mention that sometimes he gets nice seats at busy restaurants because of his name. But then he points out with fame there's a downside. Things can get very, very tricky. He remembers one of his college roommates had a very famous father who was a producer in Hollywood. And here was his advice. You want everyone to know your name and no one to know your face. That certainly is the axiom many people have shared over the years. He quotes Bill Murray, an actor that favorite to many. He says, I always wanted to say to people who want to be rich and famous, try being rich famous first. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24 hour job. The only good thing about fame is that I've gotten out of a couple speeding tickets. I've gotten into a restaurant when I didn't have a suit and tie on. That's really about it. This is from Bill Murray, the famed comedian, leading man and character actor who sprung out of Saturday night live some 40 plus years ago. Other things here's where it gets really dark. Death threats. He goes into explicit detail. Now, I'm no stranger to death threats. Fortunately, all of you are very nice and friendly. And now that I talk about personal development and habits, it's just not a topic that generates a lot of death threats as much. But there was a time in my life when I was a political commentator on the Internet and going on CNN and MSNBC and Fox and Cork TV and all these places. And yes, and hosting talk radio shows. And yes, that was a part of life. Getting death threats. Not exactly a lot of fun. A special hello to it's not The Anna and BH Viv joining us on TikTok and I will follow you on TikTok as well as OkLarry and Shaunabitz. Appreciate you joining us. And we're just having a conversation about good habits and unfortunately some of the downsides of a lifetime of good habits, which can be fame. And these are some insights shared to us by the well known author, personal development guru of sorts and podcast shared to us by the well known author, personal development guru of sorts and podcast host Tim Ferriss. And it's amazing the strength of the negativity from some people, he points out. He takes more of a statistical look at it. He says, imagine you're in junior high school. You're in a classroom with 30 people. How many of them are murderers or crazy or bizarre or dangerous? Chances are nobody if it's just you and 29 students in your high school or junior high school. But now think of it. In a city, if you're in a big city like New York City every single day, a certain percentage of people are murderers. A certain percentage of people are violent. A certain percentage of people are monsters. So he now points out that his monthly audience is bigger than the entire city of New York City. So it only makes sense that a part of his audience is made up of murderers, violent, crazy people deranged. I never really thought of it that way, but it is an excellent way to think about it. It's just a sheer function of numbers. If your podcast, your blog, your live stream show, your TikTok audience, your Instagram audience gets to a certain size, it's just statistically likely that you are going to attract crazy people. Here's what Ferris says. The averages will dictate that you get a certain number of crazies, con artists, extortionists, possible or actual murderers, and so on. In fairness, we should also point out there's a certain number of geniuses, a certain number of Good Samaritans, and so on. Sure, your subject matter and content matters, but it doesn't matter as much as you'd like to think. The bigger the population, the more opportunities and problems you will have. A small, self contained town in Idaho might not have a Pulitzer Prize winner among its residents, but it probably doesn't need a SWAT team either. Great way of looking at it. Now here are some of the downsides he talks about that are a direct result of his habits of success. It was his tenacity at marketing his book, at creating his vision this whole four hour work week theme that he turned into a huge empire created stalkers. He talks about one where he lived in San Francisco. A fan on the east coast thought I was sending him secret personalized messages embedded in my Facebook post. Kind of sounds like a problem the Beatles had. He believed I was talking, asking him to move into my house and work for me. He told his co worker. So clearly a crazy person. But the person started stalking him at his house. He finally had to move out of his house, which seems seems a shame. Now the next thing I don't like to talk about this either, but death threats, it's a very real thing. Tim Ferriss says as a result of his work habits, quote I get regular death threats and this is common for public figures. I would estimate I get at least one per month via some channels. Sometimes they're related to extortion, but they're most often from people who are mentally unstable. What are they angry about? Once again, therein lies the rub. It is rarely in response to anything I've said or done. This is the scariest thing. And it's also why the Tribe Village City metaphor is so apt. The people sending death threats are normally suffering from psychotic episodes and there is nothing you can do to prevent them. Totally bizarre. He talks about people who've stalked him, claiming that he's humiliated people he never ever met. Now unfortunately, and I'm not going to drive to the same conclusions, he talks about the time a fan from Austin, Texas drove 11 hours to see him with guns and because of that he now has a gun. I'm not advocating, we're not going to get into the whole gun debate here on this program, but I'm just sharing with you what Tim Ferriss has said. He also points out that he's had harassment of family members. He says there are at least two categories of people who want to find you fundamentally nice people, although they could be over enthusiastic and fundamentally malevolent people. I hate to put it that way, but I've learned that there are people in the world who derive great pleasure from hurting or threatening others. If either group can't easily get to you, whether to find you or harm you, they will often go after your family or loved ones. So he recommends never writing about talking about any loved ones. I cannot relate to this because I'm not single. He talks about dating woes. As you might imagine, dating can be a quagmire of liabilities and bear traps. It could be someone hoping to write a clickbait article about their date with you and without disclosing such or it could be much worse. If you're a female, this is where things can once again become physically dangerous. If you're a male, this is where things can become legally dangerous. There are many predators for both sides and it can make you lose your faith in humanity. He also talks about extortion attempts. He regularly has people write to him and say, pay me X now or I will ddos your site. Doxing his site, basically destroying his website now. He said he was confident in his infrastructure, the security for his website, but there have been times when he's ignored extortion attempts and they escalated it to bomb threats, just horrific. He also interviews some other female bloggers and well known personalities. He's changed their names, but he says whatever he's getting, it could be 10 times worse for a woman in terms of daily death threats and threats of sexual attacks just for being famous. Talking about things of how to help people, quite often kidnappings, one of the categories. He suggests that anytime he travels anywhere, he doesn't let people know where he is. He travels under an assume. I thought this was something only the Beatles did. Or really famous movie stars. But he's saying he has to use a different name. If he has a car service picking him up, he uses a different name. He talks about once in South America, he was picked up by someone who asked him by his name, are you there? And he realized he had not booked the car service in his own name. He said, I'll be back in a moment. He went and made a quick phone call. Sure enough, it was not the company he'd hired to pick him up. Whether it was someone who was about to kidnap him, extort him, or just an overzealous fan, don't know. So many, many, many problems. Invasions of privacy, people always wanting things again. For you and me and those of us who are not wildly famous, it can still seem like, okay, these are small little things to have to pay. If you're also famous and rich and you can go anywhere in the world and people like Tim ferriss, you get $100,000 just for showing up to talk for an hour, it still seems to many people that it's a bargain worth taking. But question it. Ask yourself, is this how you want to live your life? The thing that struck me the most there was the comment from Bill Murray about this is really a 24 hour a day job. If you are famous, everyone wants something, everyone wants to talk to you, everyone wants to take a selfie with you and folks. I'm not famous, so I don't have to worry about that. But ask yourself, is this what you are working toward? The habits of success, is it to propel you to this? Now, there are ways you can mitigate that. You can lessen the impact of fame. You see it from Hollywood stars all the time. They just take a few years off, go live in Idaho, no one cares about you anymore. So you can become unfamous relatively easily. But you also get addicted. You're in that habit of creating and being in the spotlight and doing things and getting praise. Can you just cut it off? It can be a hard thing.