May 22, 2025 • 55 mins
This week, Scott sits down with Sahil Bloom—investor, creator, and New York Times bestselling author of The Five Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
Sahil shares his powerful philosophy that the most meaningful transformations in life come not from finding the right answers, but from asking the right questions. Together, they explore practical tools, ideas, and frameworks for achieving not just financial success, but a well-rounded life enriched by health, wisdom, time, and relationships.
If you’re looking to reframe your understanding of success and take actionable steps toward a more intentional and fulfilling life, this conversation is a must-listen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
After making the big change in my own life and
stepping off the track I was on, which was the
track to financial wealth at the expense of many other things.
I went on a journey to try to understand what
were the elements or the pillars of building the sort
of good, content fulfilled life that I was after, And
(00:20):
then I believe most people are after. And I went
and spoke to you know, at this point, thousands of people,
but at that time, you know, a few hundred and
old people, young people, people from different backgrounds, different places
all over the world, and basically asked a common set
of questions around their hopes for the future, what they
wished they knew when they were younger, and what kept
(00:41):
coming up over and over again were these four themes time, people, purpose,
and health.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. I'm your host, doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, a Columbia professor, best selling author, and self
actualization coach. Today on the podcast we have New York
Times bestseller sa Hill bloom So. Hill believes that the
greatest things in life come not from finding the right answer,
(01:13):
but from asking the right questions. In this episode, we
discussed The Hill's latest book, The Five Types of Wealth,
a transformative guide to design your dream life. We discussed
as principles, tools, ideas, and frameworks for living a high performing, healthy,
wealthy life. This was a fun and informative chat. So,
without further ado, I bring you Sa Hill Bloom, so
(01:37):
he'll bloom. It's so great to chat with you, man.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I am thrilled to be here. This is a long
time coming.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it really as early as and I see you
talking to a lot of my other friends, I get jealous.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, I feel the same way, like I think.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I recently saw a conversation you had with Susan Kin
that I was like, very very jealous of because Susan's
one of the people I admire most in this world.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, weren't you on a fireside with her?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was, Yeah, she's She's been an incredible mentor and
source of support along this whole journey with writing a book. Actually,
her advice on how to show up and write on
a daily basis was one of the most formative pieces
of advice during my own book writing process because at
the time I was really struggling with taking like a
(02:22):
sort of linear chronological approach to the writing, starting from
the beginning of the book, and thinking I needed to
write from the beginning to the end. And she told
me that she just shows up and writes whatever section
she's kind of inspired by. And so I thought, oh,
why don't I try that? That sounds like an interesting
different approach. And I tried it, and it fundamentally changed
my entire book writing journey. And so I give her
(02:45):
a ton of credit because I don't know that I
would have finished it remotely on time if if not
for that single piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Was it Was there any resistance within you going that route?
Because you seem like a very organized You seem like
the kind of guy that likes to plan things out
ahead of time. So was it out of your comfort zone?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Very much?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So, although in general, I've found over the last several
years many things out of my comfort zone that ended
up being the most fruitful things on that journey, And
so I've learned to at least creatively lean into that
and embrace some of the discomfort that comes from breaking
those planning tendencies. You know, my general approach. Now, you
(03:27):
are absolutely right, my wiring as a human being is
to plan. And one thing that I've learned over the
last several years is that you cannot plan the.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Right course for your life or for your journey. And
the reason that.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I believe that is now because my understanding is that
the most interesting opportunities in life are inherently invisible to
you where you stand today. They are asymmetric, they are nonlinear,
and the only way that you uncover them is by
taking action, by actually moving and walking. So five years ago,
if you had asked me to write down one hundred
(04:03):
scenarios for where I would be in five years, I
would have written out one hundred scenarios, and not a
single one of them would have been right. Because I
was working in the world of investing. I hadn't started
writing yet. I had absolutely no clue that this was
a path. It wasn't even something I was interested in,
energized by, or passionate about. It only started to reveal
itself as I started taking action, as there was chaos,
(04:23):
and as things started to change. And so now I
no longer believe in the idea of planning out your
life course. I don't have a five year plan, I
don't have a ten year plan. I don't have a
fifteen year plan. I really just try to take actions
on a daily basis that I believe are going to
move me in the right direction towards my general vision
for the future, and I trust that those interesting opportunities
(04:43):
and people will reveal themselves along that journey.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I love that. I really resonate with that as well.
I'm not into the five to ten year plan. Yeah, so,
especially now with the how I'm certain in the world.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Is do you feel the world is more uncertain now
than it was?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I do? I feel that way. I don't know if
it's true, but it feels that way America.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Do you feel so?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I guess I struggle with this question. I get asked
this all the time, like how do you plan for
an uncertain future? I wrote a piece about this recently
because part of me says, yes, the future feels more
uncertain than ever before, But the history buff in me says,
if I was living during the Cold War, I would
probably have thought the future was very uncertain. If I
was living during the Industrial Revolution, I would have felt
(05:28):
the future was very uncertain. Like you know, they're always
massive uncertainties that we can point to, and this is
not the first time in American history that we've had
incredible polarization, you know, the Vietnam War era. There's a
new Netflix documentary on the Vietnam War that you watch
and you're like, oh my god, there's so many similarities
(05:51):
to how we feel about our country right now. So
I kind of go back and forth on this question
of is this time really different or is they are
a fund to mental kind of similarity or through line
through history.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, I'll say this, if you could and actually you
can freeze yourself and come back two hundred years from now.
Actually it's possible that you could have freeze yourself. I
don't know if you'd come back, but it is possible
these days to free But let's say you did and
you came back, and two hundred years from now, I
would say that the world because of AI. I'm thinking
(06:27):
AI in particular, it's going to be really different. I mean,
there's a lot of uncertainty about where it's going and
the sort of human machine fusions that are that were
that are already happening, and how that's going to change humanity.
I think there is some great uncertainty there.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But do you not think that if a person had
done that in eighteen hundred, that they would also wake
up today and feel like the world is dramatically different.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, that's true as well.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know, it's likely, you know that they would they
would wake up and there would be moving machines and
there would be you know, things that we're telling you,
they answers all your questions.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
It would it would feel crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh, they definitely be like what the fuck? Yeah, there's
a there's a like Siri, you know, talking to you.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it sort of relates to uh, like well, I
was at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting this weekend and
Warren Buffett often talks about the fact that this is
the most incredible time to be alive, Like you know
this this being born right now or being born when
he was was such an amazing time to be alive.
And one of my friends posed the thought experiment to
me of like, has that always been true that you
(07:31):
would much rather be born now than one hundred years
ago at every point in time throughout the course of
history or is that a unique kind of more recent phenomenon,
Because I do have one side of me that says, oh,
maybe I wouldn't want to be born right now, because
there's so many things that I don't know what the
future of work it's going to look like. I don't
know what my kids are gonna do when they're adults.
(07:54):
But when you have children, you're kind of, uh making
an optimistic bet on the future, right Like there you're
sort of going along the future through the act of
having children, and so you kind of have this like
juxtaposition of all these different tensions that you're that you're
playing off each other.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, for sure, you have two children, is that right?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I just won so far. I have a three year old,
a three year old little boy.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Wonderful. Do you still wake up at five in the
morning every day? Four?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
In fact? Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You go you're like an eight to four you go
to bet at e?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, I try, I try to. I mean eight to
four is probably like my ideal self. I would say
the majority of weekdays, I'm like a nine to four guy,
but eight to four in an ideal world.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Do you ever, like, do you find these parody videos
making fun of people like you funny or do you
take it personally?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think if I took it personally, I wouldn't get
very far in life. I think if you take anything
too personally in life, you're probably not gonna make it
very far.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, you know, it's like, if I can't make fun
of myself, I'd rather be like, I'll be the first
person to make fun of myself for cold plunging in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Look, I the great paradox of routines is that all
of these morning routines that were designed to serve us
end up owning us if we allow them to. And
I know many people, myself included, at times where the
routine that was supposed to be helping you get the
important work done became the work and started stressing you out.
(09:30):
You know, if you're not in bed on time, or
if your sleep scores off like you start thinking that
you are going to be unable to perform, when the
reality is that you can just wake up, drink a coffee,
and just go to your desk and start doing important work.
You don't need to go do the cold plunger of
the million other things in order to get the meaningful
work done. And that's a rather liberating realization that the
(09:52):
routine can be adjusted. You can have an a level,
a B level, and a C level to the routine,
which is what I do and depending on the situation
and how I feel, I don't need to do you know,
eight million things to be ready. I like doing it
because I'm a routine oriented creature. But I also can
understand the humor and all of this for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, what you've worked out really does work for you.
There's I mean that's undeniable based on your success and
and it seems like you're a happy guy. It seems
like you're well being as high as well, so it's
working for you. My million dollar question that I wanted
to discuss with you today is how compatible it is
(10:34):
with self actualization. My whole thing with self actualization is
that you have to find out what works for you,
you know, and so are you you know? Are you
giving like quote protocols? You know that It sounds like
you just said not everyone needs to wake up at
four am, So then therefore there's a higher principle at
play there, which is kind of like, fine, the time
(10:55):
that works best for you is that right?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean, I would say more than anything else, what
I attempt to do with all of my writing and
work is help people ask better questions so that they
can come to the right answers for their own lives.
I would never and I really attempt to avoid being
prescriptive with any solutions because my life and the way
(11:22):
that I approach things is not going to be for everybody.
I mean, first off, I am like a grade A
disciplined psychopath.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Throughout my entire life. I have been that way.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I've been able to turn on and flip a switch
that I wouldn't frankly wish on many people because it
gets you really blinded to a lot of other things
in life. Like I could go into a hole and
just do the one thing for a year if I
needed to. And I actually don't think that that. I
think that's a double edged sword. But no, I really
(11:56):
try to avoid being prescriptive with solutions for that reason.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I like that great a disciplined psychopath. I like that.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
I don't think I've ever articulated it that way before,
but I would.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Say, I would say type A discipline psych Yeah, I
know what you mean. I mean, Michael Jordan had it,
Kobe Bryant had it. I mean there is this uh
very I mean, you're you're able to have a single
mindedness about a certain goal that means a lot to you.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, And I think that the balance for me in
my own life has been in finding that I don't
need to harness that into the outcomes that everyone tells
you you should want, because the cultural bias or assumption
would be okay, you have that in you, go, you know,
(12:57):
be a billionaire, or go become a world class athlete,
or do these different things that you're supposed to want
to channel that into doing. And what that means often is,
you know, complete blindness to the other areas of your life.
And we see that, and you know, the people that
we write books about, we often talk about the hard
work and all of the you know, the sort of
(13:18):
the the list price of the things that they achieve,
the hard work, the you know, long night's discipline, et cetera.
We very rarely talk about the real price, which also
includes all of the sacrifices made in the other areas
of life, the relationships foregone, the relationships lost, the stress levels,
the impact on their health, all of these other things.
(13:38):
And I have been very clear eyed about what price
I am willing to pay for the things.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That I want to achieve.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's very profound, and I think that's very important. I'm
bringing that down being not many people consciously map that out.
I wearn't a lot. I weren't, I believe or not,
we're a lot from you. Even just reading your tweets,
there is something very action oriented and then learn along
(14:08):
the way about you that I like, Like you're not
afraid of failure, that's for sure. I mean that's inspiring
in and of itself. I think so many people are
afraid of trying something that means a lot to them
and failing, And I don't think you're afraid of failing,
So that that's very good. There's just a bunch of
messages and things I think that that really run through
(14:29):
threads that run through all the things you say. A
big one you repeat a lot is that people aren't
thinking about you. So I don't feel like you're terribly
scared of judgment right like like you like if I
told you right now like something judge, I mean, would
your feelings get hurt? No?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
But that that's I don't know, that's been hardened in
me for a long time. I mean, I played, I was,
I was a baseball player, and I know I did.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
A deep dive in that in looking into that.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, and look, being a pitcher especially, you really have
to get comfortable with the fact that you are going
to have very public failure. All eyes are on you.
You are sort of asking the question on the field
over and over again, and the batter is sort of
responding to the question that you ask. But nothing moves
without the picture moving. And if you're not comfortable having
(15:25):
the judgment of a massive crowd and failing and then
continuing to think that you were capable of going out
and achieving and succeeding the next time, you will not
make it very far. You know, my friends that have
had long careers as baseball players, especially like Gon and
made a lot of money doing this, it was not
the people that were the most talented, it was the
(15:46):
most It was the people who had that little bit
of delusion that allows them to fail on an enormous
public stage and still be convinced that they are the
best player out there.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I mean, in a sense, you did fail. You dreamed
of being in the major leagues, right, so you failed
that goal and dream first of all, why like why
did you make the major leagues?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Talent and injury or sorry lack thereof and that injury.
I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Would say that was a slightly delusional dream in the
sense that I was probably just not talented enough to
do that at that level. There was maybe like a
two or three month period where I was sharp enough
where I could envision it maybe if that had just
continued that sort of pattern of improvement, But outside that,
(16:40):
I was just never quite good enough. And again that
little bit of delusion that I thought I was was
probably what allowed me to achieve at the level that
I did. If I had believed that I was never
good enough, I don't think I would have even ended
up having a successful college career. But then the other
piece was I got hurt, which sort of relates to talent,
because I think people that can endure long periods of
(17:02):
time and not get injured is a just like natural
genetic predisposition that is extremely advantageous for having an athletic
career at scale.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I read I did a deep dive of your whole
baseball career, and it correct me if I'm wrong, But
you had a year where you really didn't perform to
the standards you would have liked, because you admitted you
were too selfish you were too focused on your own goals.
So I think that's really revealing and I think that's
really interesting. Can you tell me about that, Am I right?
(17:33):
Did I do my research there properly? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
You're hearkening back to.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Two thousand and eight high school season, my junior season
of high school.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So I had had a really good freshman and sophomore season,
and between fresh between sophomore and junior season, I had
a big growth spurt and went from throwing eighty miles
an hour and being sort of maybe like a fringe
IVY League prospect to throwing about miles an hour and
suddenly having the attention of Stanford and all of these
professional scouts and being really considered a quote unquote prospect.
(18:09):
And that was rocket fuel for my insecurity as a
human being. I was very insecure, and the idea that
I was cool in some way sort of amplified that insecurity.
Like I puffed myself up. I developed a level of
arrogance and selfishness on the basis of this like very
(18:32):
public set of affirmations that I was suddenly getting and
I showed up for that junior season really, you know,
with this mentality that I was like I was the man.
And what happens in life, in baseball and in life
is anytime you start to think you have it figured
it out, life has a way of punching you squarely
in the face. And that season I got punched squarely
(18:56):
in the face in a very necessary and very public way.
And it was important in my own journey and humbling
and humbling in the realization that it established in me
for the future that you need to reduce the amplitude
of your wave. If you think of life as sort
of this wave of ups and downs, the goal is
(19:18):
to is not to avoid the ups and downs, but
to reduce the amplitude, like never get too high, never
get too low. You know, when things are going well,
remember that eventually they won't be. When things are going poorly,
remember that eventually they won't be. And just continue to
show up with your daily effort, show up with a
positive attitude, show up with energy, and good things will
(19:41):
happen over the long term.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So you course corrected that, I mean, you learned for
your lesson and you yeah, you got in Division one
Stanford baseball.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it's easier to reflect on these things in
hindsight than in the moment, of course. And you know, look,
that's not to say that was the last time I
ever made that missus. I've made that mistake several times
along my journey, not in the last few years, because
now I am very very clear.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
On avoiding that trap.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
You know, I like I just I know from enough
experiences that every time I get ahead of myself and
think that everything's good, something is coming around the bend
to knock you out.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And try to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Hill. I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
com out called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower
yourself and realize your full potential. In this book, I
offer a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your
(20:48):
living beliefs and take control of your life. Are you
tired of feeling helpless? This book will offer you hope,
not by identifying with the worst things that have happened
to you, but by empowering you to tap and to
the best that is within you. Rise Above is available
wherever you get your books. Are you a personal coach
looking to take your coaching to the next level. I'm
also excited to tell you there are Foundations of Self
(21:10):
Actualization Coaching. Three day immersive experience for coaches is back
by popular demand. Foundations of Self Actualization Coaching is a
course offered to enhance your coaching practice by offering you
evidence based tools and insights to equip you to more
effectively help your clients and walk their unique creative potential.
You can learn more about the course and register by
(21:31):
going to Center for Human Potential dot com slash SAC.
That's Center for Human Potential dot com slash sac. Okay,
now back to the show. You'd say a recipe for
a good life, and this is a you wish you
were in this earlier. It's perfectly okay to live a
life that's confusing to others. Go to bed at eight,
(21:54):
wake up before, eat real foods, go on long walks,
obsess over one thing, read old books, don't gossip, buy
a few recipe for a good life. Do you think
that a lot of things that people think are recipe
for a good life aren't as simple as as it
really could be? Like like I'm always constantly surprised by
how happiness and well being comes down to some of
(22:16):
the most simplest just gratitude for a moment that you're in,
as opposed to well, I'll only be happy when I
reach success of X, Y, and Z. Have you noticed that.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, the tendency to make your own happiness conditional is
a horrible tendency that humans have. You know, you say,
if I get X, or when I get X, then
I'll be happy, the conditional statement about your own journey
and your own happiness, when the reality is that you
(22:50):
can right now choose to be happy. I think it
was Voltaire that said the most important choice a man
can make is the choice to be in a good
mood or something like that, you know, like the daily
choice like choose to be in a good mood was
kind of the principle of it. And it's true, right,
(23:10):
you can do some pretty basic, free, for the most part,
things that will make you have a sort of pleasant
daily awareness of life. And that's not to say that
everyone has access to those things, and it's not to
say that money doesn't matter. And getting to the point
where you can think about those things, you know, obviously
(23:31):
like if you, you know, are living under a bridge,
there's a certain level of financial uh success that will
allow you to even think about, you know, these kind
of like simpler things in life. But once you get
above that level, the point is that continuing to just
chase more and more and more from a financial standpoint
is probably not going to be what leads to the
(23:52):
incremental happiness you are really seeking in life.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I see a lot of grown there between your the
wavelength of your thought and the wavelength of my new book,
Rise Above, which is about how to overcome a victim
mindset and power yourself and realize your full potential. I'd
love to actually send you a copy.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I would love to read it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I mean that is I never really use the phrase
victim mindset, Yeah, but it is. You know, this whole
idea of agency is really at the core of everything
that I write about.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
It is really about believing that you are at the
steering wheel of your own life, and not that life
happens to you, but that you happen to hit It's
why I talk about health. It's why I talk about
the impact that physical health has had on my own
journey in my life because I personally believe that the
fastest way to convince yourself that you have agency in
(24:45):
your own journey in life is to take advantage of
very you know, simple daily health rituals, and you will
experience very quickly the fact that you are capable of
taking an action and creating a desired outcome. And when
you do that, that has ripple effect into everything else.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, my man, And the exact opposite is true too,
you know, there's no this. I think we over use
the word trauma in our society right now. But the
more we keep reinforcing that one thing that happened to
us is holding us back in our lives, the more
we start to believe that we don't have that agency.
So I think the inverse is true as well. Yeah. Interesting, Yeah,
(25:26):
I can't.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Wait to read that. Please send me of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, no, I definitely see this, this agency and action
as two very core threads running through so much of
your work. So well, let's dive into some of these
types of wealth or all of them, the five types
of wealth that you talk about. First of all, where
did you come up with these five? Like? Why did
you decide you know why at ten? When at seven
(25:50):
why at two.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I, after making the big change in my own life
and stepping off the track I was on, which was
the track to financial wealth at the expense of many
other things, I went on a journey to try to
understand what were the elements or the pillars of building
the sort of good, content fulfilled life that I was
(26:13):
after and I believe most people are after. And I
went and spoke to you know, at this point, thousands
of people, but at that time, you know a few
hundred and old people, young people, people from different backgrounds,
different places all over the world, and basically asked a
common set of questions around their hopes for the future,
what they wish they knew when they were younger, and
(26:33):
what kept coming up over and over again were these
four themes time, people, purpose, and health. Money was an
enabler to some of those, but it was very rarely
an end in and of itself, And that was where
this whole idea of the five types of wealth was formulated.
It was around those four things that kept coming up,
plus money. And the reason money is one of them
(26:56):
is because we know money does directly buy happiness at
some level. You know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs clearly applies.
You need a certain amount of financial wealth in order
to build a life, to afford basic needs, food, shelter,
to take care of the people around you, to have
some of the basic pleasures that clearly drive incremental happiness.
(27:18):
But beyond those, there are clear diminishing returns to just
chasing incremental money. But the patterning from those early in
life happiness gains that you have achieved through financial wealth
accumulation is very hard to break. So I see this
happening to people all around me, and it happened to
me that those early years of your career, when you're
(27:40):
making more money, you do feel this enormous happiness gain
from it, and you create a pattern in your mind
that that ratio or that sort of incremental linear relationship
between money and happiness is going to continue in perpetuity.
But it doesn't. And you're very bad at breaking that
pattern in your mind. Once it has leveled off, you
continue chasing, thinking that the happiness is going to come.
(28:03):
It doesn't. You continue to make those conditional statements. It
doesn't come in the durable and lasting way, and you've
lost sight of these other things that are clearly going
to drive it.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, I see that as related to dopamine, and that
just the chase, the chase for more and more and more,
thinking that we're going to expect that's going to constantly
give the same returns on our investment over time. And
as you rightly point out, that's not how it's not
how life works.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
You get the life really works is that you need
to enjoy an average Tuesday. I haven't really articulated it
this way.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, But I mean this is like my my call
it my average Tuesday theory on life. I mean it
is basically to say that your overall life satisfaction can
be adequately captured or summarized by how you feel waking
up on an average Tuesday. And I don't say Monday,
because Monday sometimes you have energy from the weekend and
(28:59):
it's like, okay, a new week.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
You feel energized.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're sort of getting close to the weekends.
You might feel like a little pull forward of the
happiness from that. But Tuesdays usually suck, right, Like, no
one really likes Tuesdays as a day.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
And if you wake up.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
On Tuesday morning feeling pretty good and energized about your life.
If like the if you were to map your average
satisfaction on Tuesdays over the course of your life and
it's steadily improving, that is a recipe for a good life.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You're on a good trajectory overall.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Wait, so I'm obsessed with this idea that you can
choose to have be in a good mood. And I'm
little key obsessed with your morning routine and I want
to try it. I kind of because like, I watched
a video of you. It's pitch dark, and you're in
the sauna. Not sorry, you're in the in an ice bath.
(29:49):
You're in a nice bath and you look happy. Now,
You're like, and what I want to understand because I
just think there's something very deep here if I could
master this. It seemed to be like, you chose to
be in a good mood at four in the morning
with a dark You're not dependent on the external world
to make you happy. And to me, that's and I
(30:11):
think most people are. You know, most people are dependent
on the external world to determine their mood. And you, you,
you kind of have mastered this art of choosing to
be in a good mood. Can you can you tell
us any of your secrets and to help us here
do that.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I really do think there is a there's something I've
been thinking about on this exact front, which is just
this idea that awareness is perishable. What I mean by
that is you probably and everyone listening to this probably
knows that. Okay, it's you know, it's important to feel
(30:48):
a level of gratitude for where you are on a
daily basis. You know it's important to feel gratitude, and
you have an awareness of that fact that gratitude is important,
but that aware is perishable, so knowing it in a
moment is much less important than knowing it in the
moment you know, your awareness is really tested at these
(31:10):
like testing points, And a testing point could be waking
up at four in the morning and you're kind of
tired and miserable and you can go and get into
this cold water well in that moment being able to
be aware, like, I am so lucky to be able
to do this. I'm in this house, you know, my
kid is happily asleep where generally healthy. I get to
(31:32):
like hopefully film this little video that may inspire five
people out in the world to have a better day
than they otherwise would This is what I get to
do and I get to call this work, And this
is much better than where I was five years ago
and what I was doing in the path I was on.
So if all I have to do is get up
early and get out and get into some cold water,
and I get to do and live this life, why
(31:52):
would I not be happy about that? But it's important
that I have that awareness in that one moment, because
awareness in the aggregate is much less important than awareness
in the specific moment when you really need it.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, this is This is so consistent with Christy Nelson's book,
Wake Up Grateful. I think you'd like that book.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
I should check it out. Wake Up Grateful. I'm gonna
pull it up.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, it's really good. And one of her exercises is
to instead of have two do lists, have I get
to do lists. And it just seems so consistent with
what you're talking about, you know, being being just reframing.
So you're you're really good at cognitive reframing.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't really think of myself as good at any
of these things. I would say I I practice a
lot of these things. You're consistent not to.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Say that I I don't get out of bed excited
to go get into cold plunch.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You know, it's not like I wake up and I'm
just like filled with immense gratitude that I get to
go get into the cold, you know, you get into
freezing water. But I am very consistently able to pull
forward how it feels after into the before. And I
think that that is really the key to doing anything consistently,
is the ability to sort of mentally time travel to say,
(33:11):
this is gonna suck when I walk out the door
into the cold air of the morning, this is gonna
suck when I step into the water and for the
first couple seconds, but in about three minutes, this is
going to make me feel pretty superhuman and I'm gonna
be really glad because I was able to inspire some
other people around it as well. And the ability to
pull that feeling forward into the before so that I
(33:31):
can open the door and go outside is it really
essential skill in life.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
That's it. That's it. It is such an essential skill.
It's also very much in a line with the act
approach to therapy psychotherapy, where you act in line with
your values when you don't feel like it even when
you don't feel like it, And it seems like you're
really good at not letting your emotions or mood dictate
(33:59):
you and your higher values.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, you know, I have this idea in the book
which I would for me personally. I think it's the
most transformative idea, which is this idea of a life raiser,
like a single identity defining statement for your life of
how your ideal self shows up in the world during
this season of your life. I just have it written
out in a bunch of places in front of me,
(34:23):
so it'll be at my desk, it'll be in my bedroom.
I just have a little card with it written on there.
You know mine is I know. I will coach my
son's sports teams. And it has nothing to do with sports.
My son is three years old. He's not on any
sports teams. It has everything to do with the type
of person I want to be, The type of person
who prioritizes his family, who shows up for his community,
(34:43):
for his responsibilities, who never puts money before these these
values that I hold closely. I would never jeopardize my character,
or my integrity, or my morals to chase things that
would jeopardize those relationships. It means a lot to me
with a single statement. Having that in front of me
is really important because again, at the testing point, to
(35:05):
be able to have the awareness to ask the question,
what would the type of person who coaches his son's
sports teams do in this situation? That is an essential
question for me to ask, because very quickly I can
trigger and step into my ideal self and say, okay,
how would my ideal self respond here? And then it
becomes much easier to act in line with my real
(35:27):
values and the things that I hold dear, rather than
allowing it to be an emotional spur of the moment
thing that may or may not, you know, pull me
in a different direction from that.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, are you inspired or influenced it all by the stoics?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
I am? You know.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I've read and read all of those you know, meditations
I've read. Yeah, I've read I've read Ryan Holiday stuff.
I personally, I always I love reading the source on
a lot of things. So like I read a lot
of old books, you know, modern translations on old books,
I suppose in most of those cases. But I love,
(36:09):
you know, I like love letters, Seneca's letters.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I love meditations.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I would say I in general am just a fan
of sort of history and ancient wisdom. So, like I mean,
throughout my book, there's stuff from Stoicism, there's stuff from Buddhism,
there's stuff from the Bible, from the bagavad Gita, like
it's it's sort of all over the map because I
sort of believe in this, you know, like Niciem te Lebs,
like the Lindi effect, Right, it's like this idea that
(36:38):
these things that have lasted have lasted for a reason,
and most of self improvement or self help or personal
development as a category can be traced back to things
that were said thousands of years ago. And there's kind
of like ten core concepts in sort of number that
that basically have been said in different ways and connect
(36:58):
with people in different ways across us. Everyone from the
most ancient wisdom and you know, the Bible and the
ancient books and all those things on through you know,
the ancient philosophers, on through the earliest self help people
like the Jim rohnesig Zigglers, et cetera, on through modern
self help people. So tracing back to the source on
most of those I find to be really informative.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah really, yeah, me too. Yeah. Still a lot of
stuff you're sayings outed very consistent with stoicism. Yeah, but
what makes what is shole boomhism? What what is the
core to your philosophy that you feel like is missing
(37:41):
from the self help world, Like, what what makes you
unique in the self help world.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I think there's probably a couple of things here that
I would point to. First and foremost is what I
said at the outset, which is questions over answers. The
entirety of the self help cat and this goes back
to the ancients, has been the answer to all of
your problems. It is to say, here's the one way
(38:07):
that you should live your life in order to be
happy or content or fulfilled. Here's the one way that
you can make money, here's the one way to be healthy,
here's whatever. It's a forcing an answer down your throat.
I try to invert that and help people ask better
questions so that you can come to the answers for yourself.
And the reason that I believe that is I don't
think that anyone else has the answers for your life.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
And I think that the.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I think that the assumption that someone else has an
answer for your life is relinquishing your agency to other people,
versus I need help wrestling with the question, and I
already have the answer within me. I just need to
unlock and then act upon it. And I can help
people do that, and I can help frame things in
a way that connect with people and share a story
(38:51):
or a visual or a perspective that maybe just connect
with you at the right moment, at the right time
that allows you to then go and act upon it.
I think that that is a necessarily slower path. I
think I would probably accumulate a significantly bigger following much
faster than I have if I took a very hard, clear,
niche perspective on a single thing and hammered it home
(39:13):
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
But I don't really care about that.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I care about impacting people and creating these positive ripples
in the world, So I'm happy to take the long,
slow path to doing that.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
I mean, is it possible to be more popular than you?
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yes, certainly, I mean I like, you know, I think
if I if I, if you told me, like, hey,
I'm gonna put a gun to your head. And if
you don't, you know, you know ten x you're following.
By next year, I'm going to kill you. I would
do things a lot differently than what I'm doing now.
You know, I would pick some hot take and I
would just say it over and over again, regardless of
(39:49):
how many people I pissed off, and frankly, in order
to piss people off, because that's how you actually get
views and shares. Now, is like, you have some people
that love you and a bunch of people that are
like aggressive, angrily against you, and that's what you do.
And I'm not interested in playing that game or doing
that well.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
You're by any metric, wildly successful, and there's some reason
why so many people are resonating with what you do.
I do notice that there's a very unique art style
to you. You have these visuals you put up, and
I assume that it's something that you sat down and
thoughtfully worked with a designer on. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I wish I could say it was more thoughtful than
it was.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I am a big believer that when it comes to
reaching people and impacting people with a message, you need
to be willing to adapt and experiment quickly and iterate
quickly what normally happens to people on you know, the
kind of like journey with social media or with content
in general, is they have a style that works. You know,
(40:55):
these platforms are effectively free markets. So what happens is
if it's working, a million people that have way less
credibility will start doing it because they see it working.
And then what happens to the original person is they
get clouded out, you know, like drowned out by the
noise of all the other people coming in, and they're
unable to adapt, and they kind of fade into oblivion
and these amazing ideas that they were sharing now no
(41:17):
longer get seen on the same level. I've always sort
of understood and recognized that, and so what I've always
said is I don't really care what the format is
of how the idea gets shared. I just want to
make sure it reaches and impacts people. So if I'm
able to create and have an idea, I want to
make sure that we are adaptable in the way that
that idea is disseminated so that it reaches and impacts
(41:38):
the maximum number of people possible in a positive way.
Whether that is you know, Twitter threads originally, which were
an enormous thing that no longer are whether it's talking
head videos which were a big thing and kind of
no longer are. You know, these images now that we've
been doing that are clearly working. I have no illusion
that that will continue to always work, because I know
(41:59):
that people see it working, and now chat GBT makes
it easier than ever to replicate a people's style and images.
There's already a whole bunch of people trying to do
the exact same style because they've seen it working. That
eventually will no longer stand out as a result, and
I'll need to have a different format and a different
adjustment to the approach. I would say in general, I
lean towards kind of simple, clean, aesthetic things because I
(42:21):
think it's I don't want to like obfuscate the message
with all sorts of complexity, but I am super happy
to be dynamic in the way it's delivered.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Scientists are very good at obfuscating complex dynamics.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, it's the reason that I think, you know, oftentimes
the smartest people have the biggest struggles in having their
ideas shared. I mean, I mean, look like, my dad
is a professor and has probably written twenty thirty books
in his life. He's an economist, and demographer, most well
(42:58):
known for an idea or a theory called the demographic dividend,
which is this idea that a population, as it grows growth,
goes through this period of having a very high working
age to dependent age ratio, which creates a sort of
natural set of conditions for extreme economic growth if harnessed
well with government policies. And you know, he's written all
(43:21):
these academic papers and books over the years, and we
laugh about it because he was like, I think you
sold more books in your initial pre order launch than
I've sold cumulatively across my entire life.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
And he's much smarter than me.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
But like, the ability to disseminate ideas in a way
that clicks with people so that they can go and
act upon it is a separate entire skill from intelligence,
and I think it's the reason why you see people
that are able to do both really reach people on
an extraordinarily elevated plane.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's so funny that you said you're your dad's a
professor of economics. Is a lot of the way you talk.
I was gonna say, it sounds like economics.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I definitely grew up around it. I mean, my yeah,
my dad, I mean My dad's one of the smartest
people that I know.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
You know, David David Bloom, Yeah, David Bloom at Harvard
for the last I don't know, twenty five or so years.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but you obviously got some
of that genes and uh, the way that you think
about you do like putting things into formulas, and you
do like putting things into you like you like systematizing things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I like having a model for thinking about different things
in the world. I mean really, it sort of is
like the Charlie Munger Lattice work of mental models school
of thinking. I wouldn't say that I ever think about
what that Lattice work is. You know, A lot of
people will ask me, like, oh, you have all these
mental models and framework. You must just be overwhelmed by
(45:02):
them all like in your brain. And I never feel
that way, because they're just things that I sort of
think about or know. But that doesn't mean that I'm
like having to filter through them somewhere in some software
database every single time something comes up. I just know
when I see certain things in the world, I'm like, oh,
I recognize this, And it's really helpful to have a
(45:23):
way of thinking about whatever different patterns you see out
there in front of you. You know, to be able
to kind of quickly understand someone, relate to them a
little bit more, you know, understand some dynamics, some struggle
that you're going through. I have found that very helpful
for just like navigating the human journey.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Oh are you so? Huh?
Speaker 3 (45:44):
I'm thirty four.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I've been thinking a lot about aging and energy. I'm
now forty five. I definitely don't have the same energy
I wish I did, But I don't have the same
energy I had when I was thirty four or thirty five.
Do you think you're going to be able to kind
of keep this up the rest of your life?
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Are there going to be like? Are you do? You
think it's harder for people who are older and have
a different sort of temperament and biological thing as you
do to choose your mood and you know, do the
kind of things you're doing.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
I think it becomes significantly more difficult with age to
scatter your energy across a bunch of things. I I
in general, if I were to take a cross section
of my days, feel like I have significantly less energy
now than I had at twenty five. My ability to
(46:45):
go out to multiple dinners a week and then still
feel good the next day, or my ability to do
really hard workouts and still feel good physically still have
the cognitive energy, those things have all declined for sure.
What I've gotten better at, though, is the wisdom and
appreciation of that, so I'm able to navigate it significantly
(47:07):
better than I did, which is to say, I know
that my creative energy basically spikes in the morning very early,
so now I make sure that I'm not working out
during my one creative block of the day. I need
to be working on something creative during that early morning
set of hours. I know that physically I feel very
good in the middle of the morning after having breakfast,
so That's when I'm going to make sure that I'm
(47:28):
working out. So I've gotten more thoughtful about where I
actually structure and place things during the day, and I've
gotten much better at just saying no to things that
drain my energy enormously. And I would say that what
that's done in the aggregate is that despite a sort
of slowly declining overall energy base, my sort of effective
(47:48):
energy is significantly higher than it was because of how
it's actually like on an adjusted basis, gotten much better.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
But it's definitely going to be fit different when you're
like fifty right, or you're anticipating it won't be.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
No, I mean, I would I would assume that I
will have significantly less energy for things in general, and
I will need to continue to whittle down the things
that I deploy my energy into. But I hope that
I'm doing that. I mean, I mean, I would say
if you think of life as kind of just like
this big funnel where you start at the very beginning
with tons of different opportunities and you're kind of slowly
(48:28):
narrowing as you figure out what the right ones are
and the places where you want to deploy your energy
and attention. I hope that that continues happening, and that
my finite energy is kind of deployed into a smaller
set of things that really matter to me.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Where do you place yourself within the biohacking community. Do
you see yourself as like biohacking, hacking friendly adjacent in it?
Where are you?
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I do not self identify as a biohacker in any way.
I would say that I I generally do very few
of the things that biohackers spend time or energy or
cognitive load on. Yes, I do a cold plunge. I
actually don't think many biohackers are cold plunging anymore, mostly
(49:13):
because it actually is quite hard and there's not a
ton of science around the physical benefits. Plenty around the
mental benefits, but not around the physical and it's also
just really painful and hard, and I think most people
aren't willing to do that. I do a sauna every day,
but I do that because it's my way of unwinding
in the evening, and the health benefits are positive.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I want to say, you inspired me to go to
the sauna every day at six pm.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Oh amazing, that was you.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
That was you inspired me to do that, So thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It is I think it is the single highest ROI
purchase that I've made.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I agree, it's changed my life.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah, I just it is my way of like unwinding
at the end of the day. I bring reading in
there every night. I journal. It is an enormous life
improvement for me. But again, the health benefits that it
might have are sort of upside to all of the
daily benefits that I actually experience from it. And so
you know, I don't wear a sleep tracker, I don't
do red light there. There's very few things that I do.
(50:09):
What I would say I do is that I really
care about how I look and feel. That matters to me,
and so I really pay attention to what I eat
and I track and I understand it. But that goes
back to my athlete days. I mean, I've been an
athlete my whole life, and so I always understood I
took training seriously. I really enjoy the training and the
process of getting better at things. But like a biohacker
(50:30):
won't run a marathon because they'll say, oh, it's not
actually good for me, I don't care because I really
enjoy the process of getting better and going after a big,
ambitious goal. So I'm not like, you know, my training
isn't optimized for some you know level of whatever, you know,
longevity or health. It's optimized for my overall return on
(50:50):
life that I'm getting from it.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
So you're not getting all Brian Johnson over there.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
I'm not getting all Brian Johnson over there.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
I know Brian, and I think that what he's done
for overall, you know, appreciation of investing in your health
is really positive for the world, but it's not for everyone.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Not for everyone. Well, I think that's a really important
to reiterate that. That is your message, is that none
of the stuff you're talking about is a protocol, is
a thing that will work for everyone. But there are
these general principles that I think are inspiring people no
matter what.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yes, that is.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
I think that's very well articulated and said. What I
would just say is that the underlying principles or sort
of most distilled pillars of each of these things may
constitute a protocol, but they are like the least sexy
sounding protocol I could give you. And look, I mean,
(51:48):
if if I was being a cynic, what I would
say is that it is very hard to sell you
the protocol I would sell you on health. You know,
what I would tell you is that if you move
for thirty minutes a day, if you eat like eighty
or ninety percent whole unprocessed foods, and if you sleep
for seven to eight hours a night, you're going to
be pretty darn healthy, probably healthier than like ninety percent
(52:10):
of the population. I can't sell you an ebook on that.
I can't sell you a course. You're not going to
buy my training program, and so it is not advantageous
to any social media guru or you know influencer out
there for that to be the basis of their protocol.
The protocol needs to sound complicated and sexy so that
you have to come to me to get it right.
(52:31):
It's the same as financial advisors. No financial advisor wants
to sell you the plan that's just like hey, dollar
cost average into the Vanguard index funds, because then they
won't need to be paid in order to do that
for you, they need to sell you a really complicated
sort of like you know, wealth planning, arbitrage, you know,
covered call option, whatever, all the million things, so that
(52:52):
you're willing to pay them fees. That's the cynical side
of me is going to say that, like, the incentives
in all of these systems are to give you the
complicated protocol. So people give you the complicated protocol. My
incentives are to help people get better at whatever it
is that they're doing, and to help them ask better questions.
And if I can, you know, if I can write books,
(53:13):
and if I can share ideas, and if I can
build trust with people, I'm certain that I'm going to
do just fine in my overall life along that journey,
but that is a very different goal and approach, and
it's not a goal that is really driven around building
some you know, massive billion dollar empire of.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
X, right, But these five things are, yeah, they are
really quite simple at the end of the day, but
they're profoundly important. The five times. We didn't even mention
the five times of wealth, and we're going to end
this interview now, so i'd i'd better mention them time, wealth,
social wealth, mental health, physical wealth, and financial wealth. And
just to give people an example, I mean, it is
a pretty simple protocol to say, invest in your relationships
(53:56):
and community. But let's just call it an important reminder.
Not everything has to be a protocol. Not everything has
to be a protocol. Some things that are valuable are
just reminders, right, And so in a lot of ways,
you're reminding people about some of the things that are
tried and true and will be to the end of
humanity of time important for our well being and our
(54:18):
whole person functioning. Right.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
It goes to the point that I made earlier on awareness,
which is to say that awareness really matters most at
the testing point, and what I can do and what
I can add to the conversation here is give you
a framework that allows you to sort of package that
awareness so that you have it with you in your
mind when that testing point comes in whatever area, when
you're making a decision to spend another late night at
(54:42):
the office instead of having that date night with your
with your partner, you might have that awareness. I read
the five types of wealth. I know that this really
matters much more than this late night that I might
spend again. And so you make the decision to go
and spend time with that person, or you call your
mom that one extra time, you do the trip with
your friends, or you invest in your mend mental health
and mental well being, or you do the run, whatever
(55:02):
that thing is. Having that frame of reference in your
mind at the moment when it really counts is more
important than just having it in some general abstract sense.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Yeah, for sure. Hey, thanks man so much for being
on my podcast. Finally, I have a whole list of
notes of things we didn't get to, but to be
continued to keep up the conversation. Really respect and admire
what you're doing, so up, keep up the great work.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Thank you so much. I can't wait to meet in person.
After making the big change in my own life and
stepping off the track I was on, which was the
track to financial wealth at the expense of many other things.
I went on a journey to try to understand what
were the elements or the pillars of building the sort
of good, content fulfilled life that I was after, And
(00:20):
then I believe most people are after. And I went
and spoke to you know, at this point, thousands of people,
but at that time, you know, a few hundred and
old people, young people, people from different backgrounds, different places
all over the world, and basically asked a common set
of questions around their hopes for the future, what they
wished they knew when they were younger, and what kept
(00:41):
coming up over and over again were these four themes time, people, purpose,
and health.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. I'm your host, doctor Scott
Barry Kaufman, a Columbia professor, best selling author, and self
actualization coach. Today on the podcast we have New York
Times bestseller sa Hill bloom So. Hill believes that the
greatest things in life come not from finding the right answer,
(01:13):
but from asking the right questions. In this episode, we
discussed The Hill's latest book, The Five Types of Wealth,
a transformative guide to design your dream life. We discussed
as principles, tools, ideas, and frameworks for living a high performing, healthy,
wealthy life. This was a fun and informative chat. So,
without further ado, I bring you Sa Hill Bloom, so
(01:37):
he'll bloom. It's so great to chat with you, man.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I am thrilled to be here. This is a long
time coming.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it really as early as and I see you
talking to a lot of my other friends, I get jealous.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, I feel the same way, like I think.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I recently saw a conversation you had with Susan Kin
that I was like, very very jealous of because Susan's
one of the people I admire most in this world.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, weren't you on a fireside with her?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was, Yeah, she's She's been an incredible mentor and
source of support along this whole journey with writing a book. Actually,
her advice on how to show up and write on
a daily basis was one of the most formative pieces
of advice during my own book writing process because at
the time I was really struggling with taking like a
(02:22):
sort of linear chronological approach to the writing, starting from
the beginning of the book, and thinking I needed to
write from the beginning to the end. And she told
me that she just shows up and writes whatever section
she's kind of inspired by. And so I thought, oh,
why don't I try that? That sounds like an interesting
different approach. And I tried it, and it fundamentally changed
my entire book writing journey. And so I give her
(02:45):
a ton of credit because I don't know that I
would have finished it remotely on time if if not
for that single piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Was it Was there any resistance within you going that route?
Because you seem like a very organized You seem like
the kind of guy that likes to plan things out
ahead of time. So was it out of your comfort zone?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Very much?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So, although in general, I've found over the last several
years many things out of my comfort zone that ended
up being the most fruitful things on that journey, And
so I've learned to at least creatively lean into that
and embrace some of the discomfort that comes from breaking
those planning tendencies. You know, my general approach. Now, you
(03:27):
are absolutely right, my wiring as a human being is
to plan. And one thing that I've learned over the
last several years is that you cannot plan the.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Right course for your life or for your journey. And
the reason that.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I believe that is now because my understanding is that
the most interesting opportunities in life are inherently invisible to
you where you stand today. They are asymmetric, they are nonlinear,
and the only way that you uncover them is by
taking action, by actually moving and walking. So five years ago,
if you had asked me to write down one hundred
(04:03):
scenarios for where I would be in five years, I
would have written out one hundred scenarios, and not a
single one of them would have been right. Because I
was working in the world of investing. I hadn't started
writing yet. I had absolutely no clue that this was
a path. It wasn't even something I was interested in,
energized by, or passionate about. It only started to reveal
itself as I started taking action, as there was chaos,
(04:23):
and as things started to change. And so now I
no longer believe in the idea of planning out your
life course. I don't have a five year plan, I
don't have a ten year plan. I don't have a
fifteen year plan. I really just try to take actions
on a daily basis that I believe are going to
move me in the right direction towards my general vision
for the future, and I trust that those interesting opportunities
(04:43):
and people will reveal themselves along that journey.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I love that. I really resonate with that as well.
I'm not into the five to ten year plan. Yeah, so,
especially now with the how I'm certain in the world.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Is do you feel the world is more uncertain now
than it was?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I do? I feel that way. I don't know if
it's true, but it feels that way America.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Do you feel so?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I guess I struggle with this question. I get asked
this all the time, like how do you plan for
an uncertain future? I wrote a piece about this recently
because part of me says, yes, the future feels more
uncertain than ever before, But the history buff in me says,
if I was living during the Cold War, I would
probably have thought the future was very uncertain. If I
was living during the Industrial Revolution, I would have felt
(05:28):
the future was very uncertain. Like you know, they're always
massive uncertainties that we can point to, and this is
not the first time in American history that we've had
incredible polarization, you know, the Vietnam War era. There's a
new Netflix documentary on the Vietnam War that you watch
and you're like, oh my god, there's so many similarities
(05:51):
to how we feel about our country right now. So
I kind of go back and forth on this question
of is this time really different or is they are
a fund to mental kind of similarity or through line
through history.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, I'll say this, if you could and actually you
can freeze yourself and come back two hundred years from now.
Actually it's possible that you could have freeze yourself. I
don't know if you'd come back, but it is possible
these days to free But let's say you did and
you came back, and two hundred years from now, I
would say that the world because of AI. I'm thinking
(06:27):
AI in particular, it's going to be really different. I mean,
there's a lot of uncertainty about where it's going and
the sort of human machine fusions that are that were
that are already happening, and how that's going to change humanity.
I think there is some great uncertainty there.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
But do you not think that if a person had
done that in eighteen hundred, that they would also wake
up today and feel like the world is dramatically different.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, that's true as well.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know, it's likely, you know that they would they
would wake up and there would be moving machines and
there would be you know, things that we're telling you,
they answers all your questions.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
It would it would feel crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh, they definitely be like what the fuck? Yeah, there's
a there's a like Siri, you know, talking to you.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it sort of relates to uh, like well, I
was at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting this weekend and
Warren Buffett often talks about the fact that this is
the most incredible time to be alive, Like you know
this this being born right now or being born when
he was was such an amazing time to be alive.
And one of my friends posed the thought experiment to
me of like, has that always been true that you
(07:31):
would much rather be born now than one hundred years
ago at every point in time throughout the course of
history or is that a unique kind of more recent phenomenon,
Because I do have one side of me that says, oh,
maybe I wouldn't want to be born right now, because
there's so many things that I don't know what the
future of work it's going to look like. I don't
know what my kids are gonna do when they're adults.
(07:54):
But when you have children, you're kind of, uh making
an optimistic bet on the future, right Like there you're
sort of going along the future through the act of
having children, and so you kind of have this like
juxtaposition of all these different tensions that you're that you're
playing off each other.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, for sure, you have two children, is that right?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I just won so far. I have a three year old,
a three year old little boy.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Wonderful. Do you still wake up at five in the
morning every day? Four?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
In fact? Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You go you're like an eight to four you go
to bet at e?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, I try, I try to. I mean eight to
four is probably like my ideal self. I would say
the majority of weekdays, I'm like a nine to four guy,
but eight to four in an ideal world.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Do you ever, like, do you find these parody videos
making fun of people like you funny or do you
take it personally?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think if I took it personally, I wouldn't get
very far in life. I think if you take anything
too personally in life, you're probably not gonna make it
very far.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, you know, it's like, if I can't make fun
of myself, I'd rather be like, I'll be the first
person to make fun of myself for cold plunging in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Look, I the great paradox of routines is that all
of these morning routines that were designed to serve us
end up owning us if we allow them to. And
I know many people, myself included, at times where the
routine that was supposed to be helping you get the
important work done became the work and started stressing you out.
(09:30):
You know, if you're not in bed on time, or
if your sleep scores off like you start thinking that
you are going to be unable to perform, when the
reality is that you can just wake up, drink a coffee,
and just go to your desk and start doing important work.
You don't need to go do the cold plunger of
the million other things in order to get the meaningful
work done. And that's a rather liberating realization that the
(09:52):
routine can be adjusted. You can have an a level,
a B level, and a C level to the routine,
which is what I do and depending on the situation
and how I feel, I don't need to do you know,
eight million things to be ready. I like doing it
because I'm a routine oriented creature. But I also can
understand the humor and all of this for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, what you've worked out really does work for you.
There's I mean that's undeniable based on your success and
and it seems like you're a happy guy. It seems
like you're well being as high as well, so it's
working for you. My million dollar question that I wanted
to discuss with you today is how compatible it is
(10:34):
with self actualization. My whole thing with self actualization is
that you have to find out what works for you,
you know, and so are you you know? Are you
giving like quote protocols? You know that It sounds like
you just said not everyone needs to wake up at
four am, So then therefore there's a higher principle at
play there, which is kind of like, fine, the time
(10:55):
that works best for you is that right?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean, I would say more than anything else, what
I attempt to do with all of my writing and
work is help people ask better questions so that they
can come to the right answers for their own lives.
I would never and I really attempt to avoid being
prescriptive with any solutions because my life and the way
(11:22):
that I approach things is not going to be for everybody.
I mean, first off, I am like a grade A
disciplined psychopath.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Throughout my entire life. I have been that way.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I've been able to turn on and flip a switch
that I wouldn't frankly wish on many people because it
gets you really blinded to a lot of other things
in life. Like I could go into a hole and
just do the one thing for a year if I
needed to. And I actually don't think that that. I
think that's a double edged sword. But no, I really
(11:56):
try to avoid being prescriptive with solutions for that reason.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I like that great a disciplined psychopath. I like that.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
I don't think I've ever articulated it that way before,
but I would.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Say, I would say type A discipline psych Yeah, I
know what you mean. I mean, Michael Jordan had it,
Kobe Bryant had it. I mean there is this uh
very I mean, you're you're able to have a single
mindedness about a certain goal that means a lot to you.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, And I think that the balance for me in
my own life has been in finding that I don't
need to harness that into the outcomes that everyone tells
you you should want, because the cultural bias or assumption
would be okay, you have that in you, go, you know,
(12:57):
be a billionaire, or go become a world class athlete,
or do these different things that you're supposed to want
to channel that into doing. And what that means often is,
you know, complete blindness to the other areas of your life.
And we see that, and you know, the people that
we write books about, we often talk about the hard
work and all of the you know, the sort of
(13:18):
the the list price of the things that they achieve,
the hard work, the you know, long night's discipline, et cetera.
We very rarely talk about the real price, which also
includes all of the sacrifices made in the other areas
of life, the relationships foregone, the relationships lost, the stress levels,
the impact on their health, all of these other things.
(13:38):
And I have been very clear eyed about what price
I am willing to pay for the things.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That I want to achieve.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's very profound, and I think that's very important. I'm
bringing that down being not many people consciously map that out.
I wearn't a lot. I weren't, I believe or not,
we're a lot from you. Even just reading your tweets,
there is something very action oriented and then learn along
(14:08):
the way about you that I like, Like you're not
afraid of failure, that's for sure. I mean that's inspiring
in and of itself. I think so many people are
afraid of trying something that means a lot to them
and failing, And I don't think you're afraid of failing,
So that that's very good. There's just a bunch of
messages and things I think that that really run through
(14:29):
threads that run through all the things you say. A
big one you repeat a lot is that people aren't
thinking about you. So I don't feel like you're terribly
scared of judgment right like like you like if I
told you right now like something judge, I mean, would
your feelings get hurt? No?
Speaker 1 (14:50):
But that that's I don't know, that's been hardened in
me for a long time. I mean, I played, I was,
I was a baseball player, and I know I did.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
A deep dive in that in looking into that.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, and look, being a pitcher especially, you really have
to get comfortable with the fact that you are going
to have very public failure. All eyes are on you.
You are sort of asking the question on the field
over and over again, and the batter is sort of
responding to the question that you ask. But nothing moves
without the picture moving. And if you're not comfortable having
(15:25):
the judgment of a massive crowd and failing and then
continuing to think that you were capable of going out
and achieving and succeeding the next time, you will not
make it very far. You know, my friends that have
had long careers as baseball players, especially like Gon and
made a lot of money doing this, it was not
the people that were the most talented, it was the
(15:46):
most It was the people who had that little bit
of delusion that allows them to fail on an enormous
public stage and still be convinced that they are the
best player out there.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I mean, in a sense, you did fail. You dreamed
of being in the major leagues, right, so you failed
that goal and dream first of all, why like why
did you make the major leagues?
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Talent and injury or sorry lack thereof and that injury.
I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Would say that was a slightly delusional dream in the
sense that I was probably just not talented enough to
do that at that level. There was maybe like a
two or three month period where I was sharp enough
where I could envision it maybe if that had just
continued that sort of pattern of improvement, But outside that,
(16:40):
I was just never quite good enough. And again that
little bit of delusion that I thought I was was
probably what allowed me to achieve at the level that
I did. If I had believed that I was never
good enough, I don't think I would have even ended
up having a successful college career. But then the other
piece was I got hurt, which sort of relates to talent,
because I think people that can endure long periods of
(17:02):
time and not get injured is a just like natural
genetic predisposition that is extremely advantageous for having an athletic
career at scale.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I read I did a deep dive of your whole
baseball career, and it correct me if I'm wrong, But
you had a year where you really didn't perform to
the standards you would have liked, because you admitted you
were too selfish you were too focused on your own goals.
So I think that's really revealing and I think that's
really interesting. Can you tell me about that, Am I right?
(17:33):
Did I do my research there properly? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
You're hearkening back to.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Two thousand and eight high school season, my junior season
of high school.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So I had had a really good freshman and sophomore season,
and between fresh between sophomore and junior season, I had
a big growth spurt and went from throwing eighty miles
an hour and being sort of maybe like a fringe
IVY League prospect to throwing about miles an hour and
suddenly having the attention of Stanford and all of these
professional scouts and being really considered a quote unquote prospect.
(18:09):
And that was rocket fuel for my insecurity as a
human being. I was very insecure, and the idea that
I was cool in some way sort of amplified that insecurity.
Like I puffed myself up. I developed a level of
arrogance and selfishness on the basis of this like very
(18:32):
public set of affirmations that I was suddenly getting and
I showed up for that junior season really, you know,
with this mentality that I was like I was the man.
And what happens in life, in baseball and in life
is anytime you start to think you have it figured
it out, life has a way of punching you squarely
in the face. And that season I got punched squarely
(18:56):
in the face in a very necessary and very public way.
And it was important in my own journey and humbling
and humbling in the realization that it established in me
for the future that you need to reduce the amplitude
of your wave. If you think of life as sort
of this wave of ups and downs, the goal is
(19:18):
to is not to avoid the ups and downs, but
to reduce the amplitude, like never get too high, never
get too low. You know, when things are going well,
remember that eventually they won't be. When things are going poorly,
remember that eventually they won't be. And just continue to
show up with your daily effort, show up with a
positive attitude, show up with energy, and good things will
(19:41):
happen over the long term.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
So you course corrected that, I mean, you learned for
your lesson and you yeah, you got in Division one
Stanford baseball.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I think it's easier to reflect on these things in
hindsight than in the moment, of course. And you know, look,
that's not to say that was the last time I
ever made that missus. I've made that mistake several times
along my journey, not in the last few years, because
now I am very very clear.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
On avoiding that trap.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
You know, I like I just I know from enough
experiences that every time I get ahead of myself and
think that everything's good, something is coming around the bend
to knock you out.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And try to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Hill. I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
com out called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower
yourself and realize your full potential. In this book, I
offer a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your
(20:48):
living beliefs and take control of your life. Are you
tired of feeling helpless? This book will offer you hope,
not by identifying with the worst things that have happened
to you, but by empowering you to tap and to
the best that is within you. Rise Above is available
wherever you get your books. Are you a personal coach
looking to take your coaching to the next level. I'm
also excited to tell you there are Foundations of Self
(21:10):
Actualization Coaching. Three day immersive experience for coaches is back
by popular demand. Foundations of Self Actualization Coaching is a
course offered to enhance your coaching practice by offering you
evidence based tools and insights to equip you to more
effectively help your clients and walk their unique creative potential.
You can learn more about the course and register by
(21:31):
going to Center for Human Potential dot com slash SAC.
That's Center for Human Potential dot com slash sac. Okay,
now back to the show. You'd say a recipe for
a good life, and this is a you wish you
were in this earlier. It's perfectly okay to live a
life that's confusing to others. Go to bed at eight,
(21:54):
wake up before, eat real foods, go on long walks,
obsess over one thing, read old books, don't gossip, buy
a few recipe for a good life. Do you think
that a lot of things that people think are recipe
for a good life aren't as simple as as it
really could be? Like like I'm always constantly surprised by
how happiness and well being comes down to some of
(22:16):
the most simplest just gratitude for a moment that you're in,
as opposed to well, I'll only be happy when I
reach success of X, Y, and Z. Have you noticed that.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, the tendency to make your own happiness conditional is
a horrible tendency that humans have. You know, you say,
if I get X, or when I get X, then
I'll be happy, the conditional statement about your own journey
and your own happiness, when the reality is that you
(22:50):
can right now choose to be happy. I think it
was Voltaire that said the most important choice a man
can make is the choice to be in a good
mood or something like that, you know, like the daily
choice like choose to be in a good mood was
kind of the principle of it. And it's true, right,
(23:10):
you can do some pretty basic, free, for the most part,
things that will make you have a sort of pleasant
daily awareness of life. And that's not to say that
everyone has access to those things, and it's not to
say that money doesn't matter. And getting to the point
where you can think about those things, you know, obviously
(23:31):
like if you, you know, are living under a bridge,
there's a certain level of financial uh success that will
allow you to even think about, you know, these kind
of like simpler things in life. But once you get
above that level, the point is that continuing to just
chase more and more and more from a financial standpoint
is probably not going to be what leads to the
(23:52):
incremental happiness you are really seeking in life.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I see a lot of grown there between your the
wavelength of your thought and the wavelength of my new book,
Rise Above, which is about how to overcome a victim
mindset and power yourself and realize your full potential. I'd
love to actually send you a copy.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I would love to read it.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I mean that is I never really use the phrase
victim mindset, Yeah, but it is. You know, this whole
idea of agency is really at the core of everything
that I write about.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
It is really about believing that you are at the
steering wheel of your own life, and not that life
happens to you, but that you happen to hit It's
why I talk about health. It's why I talk about
the impact that physical health has had on my own
journey in my life because I personally believe that the
fastest way to convince yourself that you have agency in
(24:45):
your own journey in life is to take advantage of
very you know, simple daily health rituals, and you will
experience very quickly the fact that you are capable of
taking an action and creating a desired outcome. And when
you do that, that has ripple effect into everything else.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, my man, And the exact opposite is true too,
you know, there's no this. I think we over use
the word trauma in our society right now. But the
more we keep reinforcing that one thing that happened to
us is holding us back in our lives, the more
we start to believe that we don't have that agency.
So I think the inverse is true as well. Yeah. Interesting, Yeah,
(25:26):
I can't.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Wait to read that. Please send me of course, of course.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, no, I definitely see this, this agency and action
as two very core threads running through so much of
your work. So well, let's dive into some of these
types of wealth or all of them, the five types
of wealth that you talk about. First of all, where
did you come up with these five? Like? Why did
you decide you know why at ten? When at seven
(25:50):
why at two.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I, after making the big change in my own life
and stepping off the track I was on, which was
the track to financial wealth at the expense of many
other things, I went on a journey to try to
understand what were the elements or the pillars of building
the sort of good, content fulfilled life that I was
(26:13):
after and I believe most people are after. And I
went and spoke to you know, at this point, thousands
of people, but at that time, you know a few
hundred and old people, young people, people from different backgrounds,
different places all over the world, and basically asked a
common set of questions around their hopes for the future,
what they wish they knew when they were younger, and
(26:33):
what kept coming up over and over again were these
four themes time, people, purpose, and health. Money was an
enabler to some of those, but it was very rarely
an end in and of itself, And that was where
this whole idea of the five types of wealth was formulated.
It was around those four things that kept coming up,
plus money. And the reason money is one of them
(26:56):
is because we know money does directly buy happiness at
some level. You know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs clearly applies.
You need a certain amount of financial wealth in order
to build a life, to afford basic needs, food, shelter,
to take care of the people around you, to have
some of the basic pleasures that clearly drive incremental happiness.
(27:18):
But beyond those, there are clear diminishing returns to just
chasing incremental money. But the patterning from those early in
life happiness gains that you have achieved through financial wealth
accumulation is very hard to break. So I see this
happening to people all around me, and it happened to
me that those early years of your career, when you're
(27:40):
making more money, you do feel this enormous happiness gain
from it, and you create a pattern in your mind
that that ratio or that sort of incremental linear relationship
between money and happiness is going to continue in perpetuity.
But it doesn't. And you're very bad at breaking that
pattern in your mind. Once it has leveled off, you
continue chasing, thinking that the happiness is going to come.
(28:03):
It doesn't. You continue to make those conditional statements. It
doesn't come in the durable and lasting way, and you've
lost sight of these other things that are clearly going
to drive it.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, I see that as related to dopamine, and that
just the chase, the chase for more and more and more,
thinking that we're going to expect that's going to constantly
give the same returns on our investment over time. And
as you rightly point out, that's not how it's not
how life works.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
You get the life really works is that you need
to enjoy an average Tuesday. I haven't really articulated it
this way.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, But I mean this is like my my call
it my average Tuesday theory on life. I mean it
is basically to say that your overall life satisfaction can
be adequately captured or summarized by how you feel waking
up on an average Tuesday. And I don't say Monday,
because Monday sometimes you have energy from the weekend and
(28:59):
it's like, okay, a new week.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
You feel energized.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're sort of getting close to the weekends.
You might feel like a little pull forward of the
happiness from that. But Tuesdays usually suck, right, Like, no
one really likes Tuesdays as a day.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
And if you wake up.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
On Tuesday morning feeling pretty good and energized about your life.
If like the if you were to map your average
satisfaction on Tuesdays over the course of your life and
it's steadily improving, that is a recipe for a good life.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You're on a good trajectory overall.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Wait, so I'm obsessed with this idea that you can
choose to have be in a good mood. And I'm
little key obsessed with your morning routine and I want
to try it. I kind of because like, I watched
a video of you. It's pitch dark, and you're in
the sauna. Not sorry, you're in the in an ice bath.
(29:49):
You're in a nice bath and you look happy. Now,
You're like, and what I want to understand because I
just think there's something very deep here if I could
master this. It seemed to be like, you chose to
be in a good mood at four in the morning
with a dark You're not dependent on the external world
to make you happy. And to me, that's and I
(30:11):
think most people are. You know, most people are dependent
on the external world to determine their mood. And you, you,
you kind of have mastered this art of choosing to
be in a good mood. Can you can you tell
us any of your secrets and to help us here
do that.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I really do think there is a there's something I've
been thinking about on this exact front, which is just
this idea that awareness is perishable. What I mean by
that is you probably and everyone listening to this probably
knows that. Okay, it's you know, it's important to feel
(30:48):
a level of gratitude for where you are on a
daily basis. You know it's important to feel gratitude, and
you have an awareness of that fact that gratitude is important,
but that aware is perishable, so knowing it in a
moment is much less important than knowing it in the
moment you know, your awareness is really tested at these
(31:10):
like testing points, And a testing point could be waking
up at four in the morning and you're kind of
tired and miserable and you can go and get into
this cold water well in that moment being able to
be aware, like, I am so lucky to be able
to do this. I'm in this house, you know, my
kid is happily asleep where generally healthy. I get to
(31:32):
like hopefully film this little video that may inspire five
people out in the world to have a better day
than they otherwise would This is what I get to
do and I get to call this work, And this
is much better than where I was five years ago
and what I was doing in the path I was on.
So if all I have to do is get up
early and get out and get into some cold water,
and I get to do and live this life, why
(31:52):
would I not be happy about that? But it's important
that I have that awareness in that one moment, because
awareness in the aggregate is much less important than awareness
in the specific moment when you really need it.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, this is This is so consistent with Christy Nelson's book,
Wake Up Grateful. I think you'd like that book.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
I should check it out. Wake Up Grateful. I'm gonna
pull it up.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, it's really good. And one of her exercises is
to instead of have two do lists, have I get
to do lists. And it just seems so consistent with
what you're talking about, you know, being being just reframing.
So you're you're really good at cognitive reframing.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
I don't really think of myself as good at any
of these things. I would say I I practice a
lot of these things. You're consistent not to.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Say that I I don't get out of bed excited
to go get into cold plunch.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Let's put it that way.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
You know, it's not like I wake up and I'm
just like filled with immense gratitude that I get to
go get into the cold, you know, you get into
freezing water. But I am very consistently able to pull
forward how it feels after into the before. And I
think that that is really the key to doing anything consistently,
is the ability to sort of mentally time travel to say,
(33:11):
this is gonna suck when I walk out the door
into the cold air of the morning, this is gonna
suck when I step into the water and for the
first couple seconds, but in about three minutes, this is
going to make me feel pretty superhuman and I'm gonna
be really glad because I was able to inspire some
other people around it as well. And the ability to
pull that feeling forward into the before so that I
(33:31):
can open the door and go outside is it really
essential skill in life.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
That's it. That's it. It is such an essential skill.
It's also very much in a line with the act
approach to therapy psychotherapy, where you act in line with
your values when you don't feel like it even when
you don't feel like it, And it seems like you're
really good at not letting your emotions or mood dictate
(33:59):
you and your higher values.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, you know, I have this idea in the book
which I would for me personally. I think it's the
most transformative idea, which is this idea of a life raiser,
like a single identity defining statement for your life of
how your ideal self shows up in the world during
this season of your life. I just have it written
out in a bunch of places in front of me,
(34:23):
so it'll be at my desk, it'll be in my bedroom.
I just have a little card with it written on there.
You know mine is I know. I will coach my
son's sports teams. And it has nothing to do with sports.
My son is three years old. He's not on any
sports teams. It has everything to do with the type
of person I want to be, The type of person
who prioritizes his family, who shows up for his community,
(34:43):
for his responsibilities, who never puts money before these these
values that I hold closely. I would never jeopardize my character,
or my integrity, or my morals to chase things that
would jeopardize those relationships. It means a lot to me
with a single statement. Having that in front of me
is really important because again, at the testing point, to
(35:05):
be able to have the awareness to ask the question,
what would the type of person who coaches his son's
sports teams do in this situation? That is an essential
question for me to ask, because very quickly I can
trigger and step into my ideal self and say, okay,
how would my ideal self respond here? And then it
becomes much easier to act in line with my real
(35:27):
values and the things that I hold dear, rather than
allowing it to be an emotional spur of the moment
thing that may or may not, you know, pull me
in a different direction from that.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, are you inspired or influenced it all by the stoics?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
I am? You know.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I've read and read all of those you know, meditations
I've read. Yeah, I've read I've read Ryan Holiday stuff.
I personally, I always I love reading the source on
a lot of things. So like I read a lot
of old books, you know, modern translations on old books,
I suppose in most of those cases. But I love,
(36:09):
you know, I like love letters, Seneca's letters.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I love meditations.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I would say I in general am just a fan
of sort of history and ancient wisdom. So, like I mean,
throughout my book, there's stuff from Stoicism, there's stuff from Buddhism,
there's stuff from the Bible, from the bagavad Gita, like
it's it's sort of all over the map because I
sort of believe in this, you know, like Niciem te Lebs,
like the Lindi effect, Right, it's like this idea that
(36:38):
these things that have lasted have lasted for a reason,
and most of self improvement or self help or personal
development as a category can be traced back to things
that were said thousands of years ago. And there's kind
of like ten core concepts in sort of number that
that basically have been said in different ways and connect
(36:58):
with people in different ways across us. Everyone from the
most ancient wisdom and you know, the Bible and the
ancient books and all those things on through you know,
the ancient philosophers, on through the earliest self help people
like the Jim rohnesig Zigglers, et cetera, on through modern
self help people. So tracing back to the source on
most of those I find to be really informative.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah really, yeah, me too. Yeah. Still a lot of
stuff you're sayings outed very consistent with stoicism. Yeah, but
what makes what is shole boomhism? What what is the
core to your philosophy that you feel like is missing
(37:41):
from the self help world, Like, what what makes you
unique in the self help world.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I think there's probably a couple of things here that
I would point to. First and foremost is what I
said at the outset, which is questions over answers. The
entirety of the self help cat and this goes back
to the ancients, has been the answer to all of
your problems. It is to say, here's the one way
(38:07):
that you should live your life in order to be
happy or content or fulfilled. Here's the one way that
you can make money, here's the one way to be healthy,
here's whatever. It's a forcing an answer down your throat.
I try to invert that and help people ask better
questions so that you can come to the answers for yourself.
And the reason that I believe that is I don't
think that anyone else has the answers for your life.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
And I think that the.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
I think that the assumption that someone else has an
answer for your life is relinquishing your agency to other people,
versus I need help wrestling with the question, and I
already have the answer within me. I just need to
unlock and then act upon it. And I can help
people do that, and I can help frame things in
a way that connect with people and share a story
(38:51):
or a visual or a perspective that maybe just connect
with you at the right moment, at the right time
that allows you to then go and act upon it.
I think that that is a necessarily slower path. I
think I would probably accumulate a significantly bigger following much
faster than I have if I took a very hard, clear,
niche perspective on a single thing and hammered it home
(39:13):
over and over again.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
But I don't really care about that.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I care about impacting people and creating these positive ripples
in the world, So I'm happy to take the long,
slow path to doing that.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
I mean, is it possible to be more popular than you?
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yes, certainly, I mean I like, you know, I think
if I if I, if you told me, like, hey,
I'm gonna put a gun to your head. And if
you don't, you know, you know ten x you're following.
By next year, I'm going to kill you. I would
do things a lot differently than what I'm doing now.
You know, I would pick some hot take and I
would just say it over and over again, regardless of
(39:49):
how many people I pissed off, and frankly, in order
to piss people off, because that's how you actually get
views and shares. Now, is like, you have some people
that love you and a bunch of people that are
like aggressive, angrily against you, and that's what you do.
And I'm not interested in playing that game or doing
that well.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
You're by any metric, wildly successful, and there's some reason
why so many people are resonating with what you do.
I do notice that there's a very unique art style
to you. You have these visuals you put up, and
I assume that it's something that you sat down and
thoughtfully worked with a designer on. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
I wish I could say it was more thoughtful than
it was.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
I am a big believer that when it comes to
reaching people and impacting people with a message, you need
to be willing to adapt and experiment quickly and iterate
quickly what normally happens to people on you know, the
kind of like journey with social media or with content
in general, is they have a style that works. You know,
(40:55):
these platforms are effectively free markets. So what happens is
if it's working, a million people that have way less
credibility will start doing it because they see it working.
And then what happens to the original person is they
get clouded out, you know, like drowned out by the
noise of all the other people coming in, and they're
unable to adapt, and they kind of fade into oblivion
and these amazing ideas that they were sharing now no
(41:17):
longer get seen on the same level. I've always sort
of understood and recognized that, and so what I've always
said is I don't really care what the format is
of how the idea gets shared. I just want to
make sure it reaches and impacts people. So if I'm
able to create and have an idea, I want to
make sure that we are adaptable in the way that
that idea is disseminated so that it reaches and impacts
(41:38):
the maximum number of people possible in a positive way.
Whether that is you know, Twitter threads originally, which were
an enormous thing that no longer are whether it's talking
head videos which were a big thing and kind of
no longer are. You know, these images now that we've
been doing that are clearly working. I have no illusion
that that will continue to always work, because I know
(41:59):
that people see it working, and now chat GBT makes
it easier than ever to replicate a people's style and images.
There's already a whole bunch of people trying to do
the exact same style because they've seen it working. That
eventually will no longer stand out as a result, and
I'll need to have a different format and a different
adjustment to the approach. I would say in general, I
lean towards kind of simple, clean, aesthetic things because I
(42:21):
think it's I don't want to like obfuscate the message
with all sorts of complexity, but I am super happy
to be dynamic in the way it's delivered.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Scientists are very good at obfuscating complex dynamics.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, it's the reason that I think, you know, oftentimes
the smartest people have the biggest struggles in having their
ideas shared. I mean, I mean, look like, my dad
is a professor and has probably written twenty thirty books
in his life. He's an economist, and demographer, most well
(42:58):
known for an idea or a theory called the demographic dividend,
which is this idea that a population, as it grows growth,
goes through this period of having a very high working
age to dependent age ratio, which creates a sort of
natural set of conditions for extreme economic growth if harnessed
well with government policies. And you know, he's written all
(43:21):
these academic papers and books over the years, and we
laugh about it because he was like, I think you
sold more books in your initial pre order launch than
I've sold cumulatively across my entire life.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
And he's much smarter than me.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
But like, the ability to disseminate ideas in a way
that clicks with people so that they can go and
act upon it is a separate entire skill from intelligence,
and I think it's the reason why you see people
that are able to do both really reach people on
an extraordinarily elevated plane.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's so funny that you said you're your dad's a
professor of economics. Is a lot of the way you talk.
I was gonna say, it sounds like economics.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I definitely grew up around it. I mean, my yeah,
my dad, I mean My dad's one of the smartest
people that I know.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
You know, David David Bloom, Yeah, David Bloom at Harvard
for the last I don't know, twenty five or so years.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but you obviously got some
of that genes and uh, the way that you think
about you do like putting things into formulas, and you
do like putting things into you like you like systematizing things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I like having a model for thinking about different things
in the world. I mean really, it sort of is
like the Charlie Munger Lattice work of mental models school
of thinking. I wouldn't say that I ever think about
what that Lattice work is. You know, A lot of
people will ask me, like, oh, you have all these
mental models and framework. You must just be overwhelmed by
(45:02):
them all like in your brain. And I never feel
that way, because they're just things that I sort of
think about or know. But that doesn't mean that I'm
like having to filter through them somewhere in some software
database every single time something comes up. I just know
when I see certain things in the world, I'm like, oh,
I recognize this, And it's really helpful to have a
(45:23):
way of thinking about whatever different patterns you see out
there in front of you. You know, to be able
to kind of quickly understand someone, relate to them a
little bit more, you know, understand some dynamics, some struggle
that you're going through. I have found that very helpful
for just like navigating the human journey.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Oh are you so? Huh?
Speaker 3 (45:44):
I'm thirty four.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I've been thinking a lot about aging and energy. I'm
now forty five. I definitely don't have the same energy
I wish I did, But I don't have the same
energy I had when I was thirty four or thirty five.
Do you think you're going to be able to kind
of keep this up the rest of your life?
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Like?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Are there going to be like? Are you do? You
think it's harder for people who are older and have
a different sort of temperament and biological thing as you
do to choose your mood and you know, do the
kind of things you're doing.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
I think it becomes significantly more difficult with age to
scatter your energy across a bunch of things. I I
in general, if I were to take a cross section
of my days, feel like I have significantly less energy
now than I had at twenty five. My ability to
(46:45):
go out to multiple dinners a week and then still
feel good the next day, or my ability to do
really hard workouts and still feel good physically still have
the cognitive energy, those things have all declined for sure.
What I've gotten better at, though, is the wisdom and
appreciation of that, so I'm able to navigate it significantly
(47:07):
better than I did, which is to say, I know
that my creative energy basically spikes in the morning very early,
so now I make sure that I'm not working out
during my one creative block of the day. I need
to be working on something creative during that early morning
set of hours. I know that physically I feel very
good in the middle of the morning after having breakfast,
so That's when I'm going to make sure that I'm
(47:28):
working out. So I've gotten more thoughtful about where I
actually structure and place things during the day, and I've
gotten much better at just saying no to things that
drain my energy enormously. And I would say that what
that's done in the aggregate is that despite a sort
of slowly declining overall energy base, my sort of effective
(47:48):
energy is significantly higher than it was because of how
it's actually like on an adjusted basis, gotten much better.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
But it's definitely going to be fit different when you're
like fifty right, or you're anticipating it won't be.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
No, I mean, I would I would assume that I
will have significantly less energy for things in general, and
I will need to continue to whittle down the things
that I deploy my energy into. But I hope that
I'm doing that. I mean, I mean, I would say
if you think of life as kind of just like
this big funnel where you start at the very beginning
with tons of different opportunities and you're kind of slowly
(48:28):
narrowing as you figure out what the right ones are
and the places where you want to deploy your energy
and attention. I hope that that continues happening, and that
my finite energy is kind of deployed into a smaller
set of things that really matter to me.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Where do you place yourself within the biohacking community. Do
you see yourself as like biohacking, hacking friendly adjacent in it?
Where are you?
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I do not self identify as a biohacker in any way.
I would say that I I generally do very few
of the things that biohackers spend time or energy or
cognitive load on. Yes, I do a cold plunge. I
actually don't think many biohackers are cold plunging anymore, mostly
(49:13):
because it actually is quite hard and there's not a
ton of science around the physical benefits. Plenty around the
mental benefits, but not around the physical and it's also
just really painful and hard, and I think most people
aren't willing to do that. I do a sauna every day,
but I do that because it's my way of unwinding
in the evening, and the health benefits are positive.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I want to say, you inspired me to go to
the sauna every day at six pm.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Oh amazing, that was you.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
That was you inspired me to do that, So thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It is I think it is the single highest ROI
purchase that I've made.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I agree, it's changed my life.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah, I just it is my way of like unwinding
at the end of the day. I bring reading in
there every night. I journal. It is an enormous life
improvement for me. But again, the health benefits that it
might have are sort of upside to all of the
daily benefits that I actually experience from it. And so
you know, I don't wear a sleep tracker, I don't
do red light there. There's very few things that I do.
(50:09):
What I would say I do is that I really
care about how I look and feel. That matters to me,
and so I really pay attention to what I eat
and I track and I understand it. But that goes
back to my athlete days. I mean, I've been an
athlete my whole life, and so I always understood I
took training seriously. I really enjoy the training and the
process of getting better at things. But like a biohacker
(50:30):
won't run a marathon because they'll say, oh, it's not
actually good for me, I don't care because I really
enjoy the process of getting better and going after a big,
ambitious goal. So I'm not like, you know, my training
isn't optimized for some you know level of whatever, you know,
longevity or health. It's optimized for my overall return on
(50:50):
life that I'm getting from it.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
So you're not getting all Brian Johnson over there.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
I'm not getting all Brian Johnson over there.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
I know Brian, and I think that what he's done
for overall, you know, appreciation of investing in your health
is really positive for the world, but it's not for everyone.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Not for everyone. Well, I think that's a really important
to reiterate that. That is your message, is that none
of the stuff you're talking about is a protocol, is
a thing that will work for everyone. But there are
these general principles that I think are inspiring people no
matter what.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yes, that is.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
I think that's very well articulated and said. What I
would just say is that the underlying principles or sort
of most distilled pillars of each of these things may
constitute a protocol, but they are like the least sexy
sounding protocol I could give you. And look, I mean,
(51:48):
if if I was being a cynic, what I would
say is that it is very hard to sell you
the protocol I would sell you on health. You know,
what I would tell you is that if you move
for thirty minutes a day, if you eat like eighty
or ninety percent whole unprocessed foods, and if you sleep
for seven to eight hours a night, you're going to
be pretty darn healthy, probably healthier than like ninety percent
(52:10):
of the population. I can't sell you an ebook on that.
I can't sell you a course. You're not going to
buy my training program, and so it is not advantageous
to any social media guru or you know influencer out
there for that to be the basis of their protocol.
The protocol needs to sound complicated and sexy so that
you have to come to me to get it right.
(52:31):
It's the same as financial advisors. No financial advisor wants
to sell you the plan that's just like hey, dollar
cost average into the Vanguard index funds, because then they
won't need to be paid in order to do that
for you, they need to sell you a really complicated
sort of like you know, wealth planning, arbitrage, you know,
covered call option, whatever, all the million things, so that
(52:52):
you're willing to pay them fees. That's the cynical side
of me is going to say that, like, the incentives
in all of these systems are to give you the
complicated protocol. So people give you the complicated protocol. My
incentives are to help people get better at whatever it
is that they're doing, and to help them ask better questions.
And if I can, you know, if I can write books,
(53:13):
and if I can share ideas, and if I can
build trust with people, I'm certain that I'm going to
do just fine in my overall life along that journey,
but that is a very different goal and approach, and
it's not a goal that is really driven around building
some you know, massive billion dollar empire of.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
X, right, But these five things are, yeah, they are
really quite simple at the end of the day, but
they're profoundly important. The five times. We didn't even mention
the five times of wealth, and we're going to end
this interview now, so i'd i'd better mention them time, wealth,
social wealth, mental health, physical wealth, and financial wealth. And
just to give people an example, I mean, it is
a pretty simple protocol to say, invest in your relationships
(53:56):
and community. But let's just call it an important reminder.
Not everything has to be a protocol. Not everything has
to be a protocol. Some things that are valuable are
just reminders, right, And so in a lot of ways,
you're reminding people about some of the things that are
tried and true and will be to the end of
humanity of time important for our well being and our
(54:18):
whole person functioning. Right.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
It goes to the point that I made earlier on awareness,
which is to say that awareness really matters most at
the testing point, and what I can do and what
I can add to the conversation here is give you
a framework that allows you to sort of package that
awareness so that you have it with you in your
mind when that testing point comes in whatever area, when
you're making a decision to spend another late night at
(54:42):
the office instead of having that date night with your
with your partner, you might have that awareness. I read
the five types of wealth. I know that this really
matters much more than this late night that I might
spend again. And so you make the decision to go
and spend time with that person, or you call your
mom that one extra time, you do the trip with
your friends, or you invest in your mend mental health
and mental well being, or you do the run, whatever
(55:02):
that thing is. Having that frame of reference in your
mind at the moment when it really counts is more
important than just having it in some general abstract sense.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Yeah, for sure. Hey, thanks man so much for being
on my podcast. Finally, I have a whole list of
notes of things we didn't get to, but to be
continued to keep up the conversation. Really respect and admire
what you're doing, so up, keep up the great work.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Thank you so much. I can't wait to meet in person.
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