December 5, 2023 • 41 mins
So many of us grew up hearing from adults that work is necessarily hard, or that money is necessarily hard to come by. Yet younger generations have exceeded their parents in many ways, and work does not need to be an exception. In this episode, we share some principles for how to find meaning and...
The post What They Didn’t Teach You About Work and Money (Ep. 9) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.
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(00:00):
If I just kind of stayed in that
position longer Mhmm. I would not have to
work another day of my life. If you
can't pay your rent, if you can't pay
your food, if you're really up against it,
it becomes the all consuming problem that you
have to deal with all the time and
it's exhausting. If you are stuck in this
view that there isn't enough and there's never
gonna be enough and you're stuck the way
(00:21):
you are, welcome to how to be an
adult,
A show for people just like you who've
inadvertently become adults
and don't know what to do about it.
I'm Luke Chow. And I'm Pascal Langdale. And
whether you're 18 or 80,
we hope to give you the guide to
life that perhaps your parents never gave you
when you reached the age of majority.
(00:42):
We publicize all these ideas to democratize self
assurance. Today, we're gonna talk about some principles
for approaching work and approaching wealth. We're not
gonna give you tips and tricks or financial
advice, which you can get elsewhere on multitude
in this other podcasts.
Instead, we're gonna do our best to let
you into the mindset
(01:05):
that allows one to pursue and to keep
and to grow wealth
there are many of us who have a
mindset that is repellent
to opportunities, to wealth,
in your best interests
because we we want you to be as
well off as you can be. We hope
to instill these principles in you. I'll start
off by talking about my upbringing Mhmm. And
(01:28):
the way that money was talked about when
I was growing up.
So my parents
grew up during the cultural revolution in China.
So they were literally sent to the countryside
and my dad talked about having to eat
like bark or like locusts
just to not die of starvation
obviously
having those kinds of experiences in your formative
(01:49):
years makes an impact in adult life.
And then, you know, I was born in
1982.
We came to Canada in the mid 19
eighties.
My dad was getting his PhD
and my mom was working as a lab
tech to support the family. Then my dad
was getting his medical degree, and my mom
was working as a lab tech to support
the family.
And then he became a resident. Had then
(02:12):
my he was bringing in some money and
my mom was working as a lab tech
to support the family.
And only then did I graduate
from high school and then start my adult
life. So in many of my formative years,
we actually had very, very
little.
I graduated with a degree in English literature,
which admittedly is a kind of a bougie
(02:34):
degree, but also one that doesn't obviously lead
to a career path.
So I kinda like floated around for a
bit, took out on a number of odd
jobs the most rewarding of which was I
took notes in class for deaf and hard
of hearing students one of my earliest jobs
sent me to Los Angeles
to interview a hypnotherapist
actually
about
(02:54):
how how do you have a mindset that
is conducive to making money and keeping money
and becoming wealthy?
So at the age of 21 or 22,
I I co authored this book with Linda
Gabriel
in in Los Angeles.
She kind of did her best
to open up my mind
to
(03:14):
the possibilities ahead
and I understand more of what she was
trying to tell me today
than I did at the age of 21
because back then, I was very much mired
in this kind of poverty,
scarcity mindset.
Yeah. Yeah. And she was telling me about
all these possibilities and how you can make
more money and how money is this rather
arbitrary thing. It only started to make sense
(03:37):
later on in life. So at 23, I
started my business, the Morpheus Clinic for hypnosis.
And I I realized that I could actually
do things of
such value to others that they were paying
me 100 of dollars
to do these things.
And commercial validation
(03:57):
for for for your ideas is only one
form of validation. But it's quite an important
form of validation
when, you know, your passions and your interests
are commercially successful.
Fast forward a little bit.
Hypnotherapy
is not a lucrative
profession. I was not making a lot of
money through hypnotherapy.
(04:19):
Mhmm. And I heard in the year
2011,
I believe, about this invention
called Bitcoin. People
were trading these so called Bitcoins on the
Internet.
I bought and I mined a few of
these so called bitcoins.
Guess what I did with with my bitcoins?
(04:40):
Oh, you you waited until the peak of
the market and then you sold them. Right?
In 2014,
I cashed out $10,000
Mhmm. Of so called bitcoins
thinking that I was an investing genius.
So obviously I'm still doing hypnotherapy these days
and my experience with Bitcoin really
(05:02):
had taught me about the
arbitrariness
of money
and how someone like me
who just kind of thought
this Bitcoin
thing is cool. Mhmm.
You know, if I just kinda stayed
in that position longer Mhmm. I would not
have to work another day in my life.
(05:23):
Yeah.
In in my family I had a father
who who was a child during the 2nd
World War. He remembers his first banana,
which is like 1950 something because it was
still, you know, restricted.
So he grew up in basically in a
mindset of austerity,
and he still he still has that. He's
had that throughout his whole life. Save, save,
(05:43):
save,
don't use repair,
you know, the whole thing. On the other
side, my mother was, she used to carry
her shoes to school
so they wouldn't get worn. And then in
my family there's also this big story of
my great uncle who profited from the war
enormously
by making cases for bombs.
He was a furniture
maker in East London.
(06:05):
And then he passed on his wealth and
then it was just, you know, the family
tore itself apart like in, you know, some
TV show. So all those attitudes to money
were swirling around.
So I I yes, obviously, I I stepped
out in the world. At the age of
17, I had my first paycheck and I
remember it very very distinctly.
I didn't graduate from high school because I
(06:25):
left early.
I worked for 2 or 3 years in
theater, which is extraordinarily unpredictable. Obviously, I went
to to drama school and after that, again,
the perception of the starving artist was okay.
I live in in squats for a while.
I thought this was the that this was
a valid and worthy way of living. Right?
I'd equated
wealth, thanks to my
(06:46):
that's one part of my family, as being,
you know, the potential for moral corruption.
And all the rich people were mean. And
then I started doing commercials, and the commercials
were lucrative back then. And so I was
travelling all over the world, in fact, doing
so many commercials that sometimes I had to
remember which airport I'd come through to know
which country I was in. So in this
brilliant time, I I mean, I really enjoyed
it and it was a huge gift in
(07:07):
my life. But it also gave me the
idea of there's a consistency. This is always
going to be the case. This is always
going to be a presence. Now I bought
property and so I did well. But it
was an illusion in the sense that there's
changing demographic,
aging, economic downturn, COVID, you name it. And
suddenly, all the certainties
that seemed certainties of the past, the way
(07:29):
that a career might go,
just taken away, which is not necessarily a
bad thing incidentally.
There's a quote I love Mhmm. And it's
attributed to a number of people, but I
think the definitive source is atris kaufman
the quote is this
I've been poor and I've been rich rich
is better
And I
(07:50):
absolutely agree with that sentiment because, you know,
just like you,
I've been not so well off as an
English grad. I've also been better off.
It's far better in every way to be
better off. And this is a good segue,
I think, into our first
principle out of the 6 that we're gonna
share today
the first principle
(08:11):
is that wealth and morality
are not two ends of the same
spectrum or axis
wealth and morality are independent of each other
in other words
someone being wealthy
doesn't automatically or necessarily
make them into some corrupt
jerk
(08:31):
It is possible to be poor and a
total jerk.
When I look back on my life, I
was not as nice of a person when
I was impoverished
as I am
today when I'm better off. Just like if
I don't feel enough love in my heart,
then I'm not as nice to others as
if I do feel love in my heart.
(08:52):
If I have no money in my bank
account, I mean, how am I gonna tip
that well?
How am I going to, you know, be
like generous with friends?
1 can only be the best that they
can be
if
their needs are met. And in our world,
financial needs count as as needs. Mhmm. If
you can't pay your rent, if you can't
pay your food, if you're if you're really
(09:13):
up against it, which I know you've been
and I have as well. It becomes the
all consuming problem that you have to deal
with all the time and it's exhausting. I've
heard an analogy where
money is like oxygen. Mhmm. If you have
plenty of it, you don't even think about
it. Yeah. You don't notice that. You don't
notice. Yeah. But it's when you're lacking in
it that it's all you can think about.
(09:36):
This is why often people abandon their principles
when money is involved,
and it's only if you're impoverished
and you also happen to have no ethics
that then it's it's not a good combination
it's a Christian idea
that the love of money is the root
of all evil now that the quote is
(09:56):
not actually as it's often said, it's often
said as money is the root of all
evil, but that's not a complete quote. The
full quote is that the love of money
is the root of all evil and I
think that full quote actually is truthful
Maybe not all evil. I think that's an
exaggeration
But money in itself
is a it's a tool.
(10:19):
So one can be well off
and a good moral loving decent person.
I've even kind of made the argument that
it's more easy to be a good loving
kind decent person if you're financially well off.
And I think also, I think we could
even separate
to some degree the idea that money is
money is a tool, but it's not necessarily
(10:40):
the thing that is going to feed you.
You can't eat money. So
if for instance you are lucky enough to
be able to
supply your own food and
you live in a place where you can
build your own house, you could say, well,
you're wealthy to the degree that you are
able to control
those basic needs and you have power of
that. That is actually wealth. The money is
(11:02):
actually only a representation
of
what that means. It's just a it's it's
not the thing itself, you know. And you
can't take it with you, of course. And
perhaps that's also
why, you know, when they read out wills
that families get torn apart by by what
money goes to who. It's like you've got
a double whammy of both grief, then possibly
(11:23):
anger, sibling rivalry,
and then this
scarce resource mentality
as well comes in, you know. And yeah,
it's so extraordinary.
Part of the reason we keep harping on
principles, I think,
is that
if one is all consumed by, let's say,
grief
or let's
say fear, or let's say greed,
(11:46):
that's where people make decisions that could harm
other people or that could tear families apart
because, you know, you're acting emotionally and not
in a principled way that lasts over time.
The second principle I want to share, and
my experience with Bitcoin really made this real
for me,
it's that money is
a tool or a technology
(12:07):
for us to understand and use and master
money is not our master
the so called almighty
dollar
is a great tool for us to use
to improve our lives
it's not so good for worshiping.
As we were saying, if if you can't,
(12:29):
pay for the roof of your head, you're,
you know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs not
being met. And money is the tool for
that. It's easy to confuse money and become
make money your master because it's the most
it's like you're jumping a step. You're
It's it's like oxygen in that analogy I
used earlier,
(12:49):
where it's only if you don't have enough
of it that it feels
all consuming and all powerful and like a
matter of life or death
most people listening to this podcast
however
wealthy or poor you feel relative to your
peers
you're probably in the global one percent you
probably have
(13:11):
enough food to eat. You probably have a
place to sleep that's safe enough that you
can sleep in, you probably have a tap
where when you turn it, oh, there's clean
water that comes out.
You probably have your at least most basic
physiological
needs
taken care of
(13:31):
which means that lack of money is never
actually life or death often we feel like
it's life or death, but for most of
us we're lucky enough
living in a time and place like this
that our most basic needs are met we
can kind of take a step back and
see money as a tool we use and
(13:53):
none of us or few of us are
literally
drowning.
So that means if you're lucky enough to
be in a situation where all your basic
needs are met, and even perhaps if you
live in a society where there is a
safety net should things go wrong,
then it's not a life or death situation.
So you don't need to make that sort
of correlation between money and your very existence
(14:13):
or even the worth of your existence as
well for that matter.
But that you can actually start to say,
well, that bit's covered.
So I need to learn how to the
how to make the most of the surplus
beyond that. Is that right? I believe that
a cool detachment
when thinking about money is within the reach
of most people listening to this podcast.
(14:36):
If you do have your most basic needs
provided for, I do believe that this kind
of
cool headed detachment where you can view money
as a tool not a master
is possible
that this is not just for people much
better off than you I believe that you
probably being in the global 1%.
You can kind of have this
(14:58):
cool rational detachment about money and you don't
actually have to freak out about it. And
perhaps even that cool attachment
doesn't matter whether it's over $20
or 20 Bitcoin. That cool detachment remains true
regardless of the amount of money you're talking
about. Well, bitcoin for me personally is what
really made the point that money is a
(15:20):
tool or a technology.
It's got no intrinsic value. It's got no
intrinsic worth. It's not at all my master.
It's just this made up thing that human
beings invented
now what we're talking about here to some
listeners ears
might sound like heresy
because if they are in a situation where
(15:40):
they feel
impoverished and utterly deprived of of money and
material wealth,
then for for me to almost glibly say
that it's magic internet money
it might seem
like I'm out of touch or something
but I want you
as the listener to actually end up thinking
(16:04):
like someone
who will make more money in your future.
And, you know, if you kind of look
at people who are fantastic with money, they'll
talk about deploying capital, for example. Mhmm. That's
basically just spending money well. And usually, if
you're using that word capital, it's large amounts
of money that you're spending well for for
a return in in the future.
(16:25):
If you are
stuck in this view that there isn't enough
and there's never gonna be enough and you're
stuck the way you are and you're never
gonna end up a better off than you
are, then you you're not even trying.
And I want you to do better than
that. I want you to try.
So the third principle that we're talking about
is that
(16:46):
as a defining
characteristic of adulthood,
we are not merely
consumers of other people's productivity.
We are ourselves
productive, or you could say creative, human beings
where we are adding to the world
through whatever work it is that we do.
If we're only choosing half a dozen principles
(17:09):
to share with our listeners,
then this one's definitely making it near the
top of our list
where
money flows
from the
consumers
to the creators,
not the other way around.
So if you want to make money, if
you wanna make good money, if you even
want to accumulate wealth,
(17:30):
you absolutely
have to be on the creator or producer
side
of that equation.
By the time that you're able
or in other words educated
enough
that you can do something of value to
society
then you can spend the next 40 years
not being like a kid being as the
(17:52):
podcast title says
like an adult
and it's a source of pride I would
add
that you are
adding to the world being a so called
productive member of society, and in whatever job
you have.
One misconception,
I think, about people who are wealthy
is that
(18:13):
they're tremendously
consumptive.
They are, if anything,
tremendously
productive.
So the prolific artists who make a lot
of paintings and shake a lot of hands
and go to a lot of galleries
are weighing the odds in their favor
when it comes to being a successful artist.
The right order of things is to first
(18:34):
ask yourself
what
products or services
of immense value
can you create for the world?
And then to ask
how do you let people
know about this awesome product or service that
you've created
and then
to ask how much money are you gonna
(18:54):
charge for it?
Our 4th principle that we're gonna present
is that an abundance mentality, the
view that wealth is plentiful,
it's more conducive to your well-being and your
financial health than the opposing view, which is
a scarcity mindset that suggests that wealth and
(19:14):
money and riches are scarce and hard to
come by the analogy that I'll use is
That because you're like a baker, right? You're
a creator
You're not actually just gonna divide up the
pizza pies
that everyone else baked
like you're a kid.
Instead,
(19:35):
you're gonna be making more pizza pies
for you and for your family and for
society to consume.
And this is why
the abundance mentality,
this view that there's more, there's more money,
there's more wealth
is an accurate modeling.
It's because
(19:57):
we are not merely consumptive
beings.
We are creative beings.
The artist
who takes
the canvas and the paints and his or
her ingenuity and creates a $10,000 painting from
it.
They've not taken the $10,000
from anyone.
(20:18):
They've added
$10,000 of value to the world.
Yeah. I I think that's the thing. I
have something of value. I need to know
if the world values it. I suppose what
I'm saying is is that the again, I'm
trying to dislocate the idea
that
wealth will naturally
flow to something that you have that's of
value. Because there's a lot of work involved
(20:38):
in letting the world know that it's of
value. If you see what I mean. It's
not an automatic correlation. No. In the same
way that there are made there are plenty
of artists who are absolutely
superb geniuses perhaps,
who we will never know. There are hypnotists
who may be doing incredible work on the
other side of the world,
that we may never know.
And so and so that's why I wanted
(20:58):
to separate the idea. There there there are
4 year degrees people could take
in marketing to answer that question and to
answer it thoroughly with lots of research backing
it up. For for most people, it's it's
actually not sales and marketing, actually. It's it's
mostly
sending resumes and doing interviews. Yeah. So that
that's a much more masterable skill set than,
(21:19):
you know, having to figure out all all
of marketing and keep up with marketing. Yeah.
Because for most people, if you get a
job, if you
keep a job, someone else is doing the
sales and marketing and someone else is bringing
in the revenue that they split with you.
But I would also say that's also again
comes under the, the point of being
wise about money. In other words, wise about
how you get it. So for instance, you
(21:40):
know, being having a good resume and having
a good interview, for example, is part of
the
whole game, if you like.
That's gonna come up. The whole game where
an employer is gonna pay you for time
because,
you know, otherwise you're not gonna do it.
Mhmm. And that's again being not intimidated by
or not dismissing the idea that even to
(22:01):
think in that way is somehow either corrupt
or that somehow that it's unfair or that
you have no agency or power over
how to make money basically. So it's not
a zero sum game. It's not the case
that if I earn money then somebody else
somewhere is earning less.
And I will anticipate that there will be
somebody saying, well,
(22:22):
the world is getting cell phones, for example.
This is
an increase
in the wealth of the world. Poverty
rates have gone down
historically over time. There's less and less poverty
in the world. These are good things to
be applauded.
And I can anticipate somebody saying, oh, well,
you know, if you've got an iPhone then
there
are children slaves mining the lithium for the
(22:43):
batteries.
I say, well, it's not money's fault.
In the sense that it's humans that make
those decisions of the supply chains, of the
the way that you hire and create things.
And that actually, if you have good principles
in other aspects of your life, that makes
you a good principled CEO,
a good principled leader, or a good principled
(23:05):
shareholder,
in fact. And that that I would argue
that if there is a correlation between wealth
and suffering, it comes back to the principles
of the human being that is in control
of the wealth, not the wealth itself, not
the money itself. It's kind of like if
you have a chef's knife, right? It's
supposed to be used to like make sushi
(23:26):
and to like dice vegetables and to make
a good stew or something
but then of course
the very same tool with no alterations
whatsoever
used
carelessly or thoughtlessly or negligently
could
hurt you and cut you.
So, yeah, money could be used to like
in slave people in
(23:47):
mineral mines
But that's not actually money
used the way it's supposed to be used
to facilitate
trade and to go to those who provide
the better service or the better working conditions.
But the reason we have to kind of
talk about
how money is not zero sum
(24:08):
is because there is a very very prevalent
view
that billionaires
are personally causing the rest of us to
suffer. Mhmm.
Now, let's say Elon Musk tomorrow just dies.
Right?
I'm not gonna be any better off Mhmm.
If if every billionaire in the world
(24:29):
just went away tomorrow
or if the government confiscates their weather if
they force a sale of their assets
I am not going to be better off
in any way what whatsoever, and my investments
might actually go down if that were to
happen. Yeah. And again, I would bring it
back to the human that has that wealth.
Their principles and their code and perspectives become
(24:51):
the defining factor in factors to whether that
accrual of wealth is a net benefit. Musk
has kind of revealed himself to be kind
of a jerk. Mhmm. But I'll point I'll
point to someone like Warren Buffett. Mhmm. Right?
You know, he as so he's one of
the billionaires who pledged to give away 99%
of his wealth.
He's an example of someone who I would
(25:12):
say
deploys capital properly.
He's I mean, he's very known
to deploy capital properly, but not just in
the sense that it makes more money or
that's good capitalism, but also in the sense
that he's like a decent person and he
treats people well.
He is a living example of how we
don't have to choose
between
wealth and being good. Yeah. We can be
(25:35):
both. And and I think it it works
the other way around in that
your underlying principles
also count when you have no money
on the other side. Is that to speak
to what you said earlier, is that it's
possible to be a jerk, a rich jerk
or a poor jerk. Mhmm. The common the
common factor
is the jerk. It's not it's not the
(25:56):
amount of money. Exactly. The money's independent of,
of how much of a jerk they are.
Yeah.
So Steven Pinker has written a number of
books and some of his more recent ones
are about how,
let's say, global poverty,
extreme poverty is on the decline.
And this is a reality. If you kind
of look at the levels of extreme poverty
(26:16):
in the world, like, you know, people living
in the countryside having to eat locusts,
it has been declining over the past many
decades
now if the money or the wealth in
the world were just this fixed amount
then how come we're not worse off
just because people overseas can eat enough food
and have cell phones or maybe even save
(26:38):
up enough to have a car
the the world itself
is consistent with the idea that each person
is creating more wealth through productive activity
these observations for example that you know poverty
is declining worldwide that's inconsistent
with the view
that
if there's a winner on one side, there's
(26:59):
a loser on a different side. What's actually
happening is that the rising tide is lifting
all boats.
So here's 0.5.
It's that markets are
roughly efficient,
and I'll have to explain what that means.
There's a hypothesis
called the efficient market
(27:20):
hypothesis.
And what it says is that in any
market where there's the free flow of information
then everything is priced correctly.
So in other words,
if I'm a hypnotherapist
and I'm charging, let's say, $3.50
per session,
that's the right price
(27:41):
because
people can look me up, people can research
me, and people are paying it.
I am not overpriced
and that there are few inefficiencies
to be found
where you are able to make easy money
that everyone else has missed.
So obviously,
(28:02):
you know, there is such a thing as
arbitrageurs
who buy cheap and sell expensive, basically, almost
instantaneously.
There is such a thing as rent seeking
where, you know, let's say you hope that
the laws pass in your favor so you
make money at the expense of others with
the government backing you up. But it is
because there there are people
(28:24):
who will notice
the inefficiencies
and then take advantage of them that it's
very unlikely that you'll be the first. It
also means that if hypnotherapy
were such an easy way to make money,
then my prices would have been driven down.
Mhmm. Right? I would only be charging $100
(28:44):
because my competitors forced me to, you know,
charge only
$100 to compete. Mhmm.
But the reality
is that I do charge what I do,
and people are paying it because there's actually
a scarcity of hypnotherapists
that my clients feel
are trustworthy enough that they're gonna hire at
all.
So what this means is that there's a
(29:05):
term that's abbreviated
with this really long acronym, but it expands
to there ain't no such thing as a
free lunch.
But if you do this simple internet hack,
I can show you how to make a
$100,000
in a year, $10,000 a month if you
use affiliate links. Let me just show you
on Amazon. You just have to buy Pascal's
course for $97
(29:25):
if you sign up right now.
Yeah. We've seen them all. They've been snake
oil salesman at hucksters for as long as
there's been humans. Right. Well, the the term
there ain't no such thing as a free
lunch goes back to I think like the
19 twenties or the 19 thirties in America
where they would, you know, restaurants would advertise
a free lunch, and then you would sit
down for the very salty free lunch, and
(29:47):
they had to buy a drink and the
drinks are overpriced.
Often, I think people who are looking to
make more money, people who are trying to
improve their financial lot,
they fall for these free lunch tricks Yeah.
Assuming that essentially we can find these opportunities
that everyone else has missed.
If you instead assume
(30:07):
that the markets are roughly efficient, that whatever
the price is for something that that is
what it is or whatever someone will pay
you to do the thing, you know, that's
roughly about what it is if there's enough
people who pay you for that thing at
that price. You know, if you kind of
assume that, then you're closer,
I think,
to having your feet on the ground.
But if in your head you have a
(30:30):
certain price for the painting that you made
and people are only willing to pay you
$200
for that painting then that is the price
the market has set. If as a hypnotherapist,
I'm only able to charge, let's say, $100
because no one would pay more than a
105,
then my price would be at a 100
(30:50):
Mhmm. Dollars.
Something you touched upon earlier
is that it can be quite hard to
make a living as an artist. Mhmm. Right?
Part of the reason, I think, relates to
something else you said,
which is that
that which can be commercialized
represents only a thin slice of any endeavor
or anything.
(31:11):
So pursuits
like
painting,
acting,
and even hypnotherapy,
where there are non monetary rewards,
where we feel good about doing the thing,
or there's some kind of prestige in it,
for example.
These pursuits usually come with lower monetary rewards.
(31:32):
I just finished listening to an audiobook this
morning called The Creative Act, I believe, by
Rick Rubin. Mhmm. And Rick Rubin is a
record producer. He produced a number of records,
so he's very authoritative on the subject of
creativity.
And
he says
that it's perfectly legitimate
to keep your art
(31:52):
untainted
and uncommercialized
to work a job that pays the bills
and then to keep your art pure.
Yeah. In in fact, I think that in
some ways the
notion that we have of the starving artist
that doesn't compromise
their art with the filth of money, I
think is something that we've got from the
(32:13):
romantics. And most of those were already bloody
rich.
They were lords, they had property, they had
an income, but they chose And then we
have the beatenicks in in the States as
well who take that, then turn it
into subsisting in one of the wealthiest countries
in the world. I mean, it's an illusion
this idea, in fact, that
(32:34):
creativity and art can only thrive if you're
poor and then refusing money.
Or alternatively, that somehow
the creative act
in itself, it has enough worth that you
should do it. And if the world doesn't
value it, that doesn't mean that it's not
of any worth. It simply means it doesn't
have a commercial immediate commercial value.
But that doesn't mean that if you do
(32:57):
other things to put a roof over your
head, to feed your family,
to survive well, that somehow that diminishes you
as an artist.
Some of the best actors I know
do not act all the time. 1 of
the best actors I know actually moved to
Egypt to teach
and learn about storytelling. And he's he's living
(33:17):
his life
on the premise that he does other stuff
to to make money for sure. But he's
got that balance that he has negotiated with
his desire to live. And that's what any
artist has to do is to be be
able to figure out that balance between the
need to put a roof over your head,
be a responsible adult, supplying what your family
needs, what you need, looking after yourself.
And then to say that, oh, if I'm
(33:38):
doing that, then somehow I'm not gonna be
able to be a great writer, that somehow
I'm not gonna be able to be a
great artist is a false contradiction.
Something I say to new hypnotherapists
Mhmm. Is that if you're already financially independent,
you're gonna be a better and more ethical
hypnotherapist.
Because you're doing things in service of the
client then and you're not just doing things
(33:58):
because you need to pay for your mortgage.
Art is maintained
by the creator being independently wealthy and hypnotherapy
is also it's going to be more of
a client centered practice.
If the practitioner
doesn't absolutely
need
the client's money. That used to be the
case for the sciences as well. Yeah. Now
(34:19):
it's all like p hacking and trying to
get into prestigious
journals
and falsifying data and everything.
So I want to introduce this concept
called
ikigai. And I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly.
It's a Japanese term that means a reason
for being, or I guess in the French,
raison d'etre.
The concept is a Venn diagram.
(34:41):
And there's 4 circles:
what you love,
what the world needs,
what you can be paid for
and what you are good at
and ikigai
is that very small center of the Venn
diagram where you're doing something you love, that
the world needs, that you can be paid
(35:02):
for and that you are good at. That
is the sweet spot. So, if you're thinking
that you're gonna become a millionaire writing poetry
collections,
you might have to look at your guy
somewhere else. Exactly.
So our 6th point
is that unless you're very fortunate, and I'll
count myself among the very fortunate,
work is just
(35:23):
a game you play for money.
It's not authentic living.
It's not something you have to lose sleep
over.
You only do the things you do for
work because you're being paid for it. And
once the paychecks stop, there's not a chance.
You're looking at that report for your boss.
There's not a chance You're gonna smile at
(35:45):
the people you only smile at because they're
at the cubicle next to you. So the
things we kind of only do because we're
paid to do them
are never going to be what our heart
truly desires.
But there are some things we did as
children
that we're gonna do as retirees
and that in your productive years you get
(36:06):
to do in your evenings and on your
weekends and on your holidays and on vacation
and during all the many hours you've not
sold to your employer.
Most of us have only sold 35 to
40 out of a 168.
So, yes, you get to sleep well at
night during those many hours you've not sold.
You get to play with your dog
(36:28):
irrespective of what happened at work
because
you've not sold those hours you're playing with
your dog. Could it also be the case
that you could bring the sense of,
of a game to your job as well?
In the sense that you're being paid for
your time doing something that otherwise you wouldn't
wanna do perhaps?
And that there's no
judgment to that. In fact, I would say
that for the most of the people on
(36:48):
earth, that's probably the reality is that you're
doing things to make money because you have
to make money. And so then that that
makes me think, well, if you treat it
all in the spirit of play or in
the spirit of game, at least you can
maybe find some way
to make
the everyday job non onerous one, at least
not onerous.
(37:08):
It adds a bit of levity.
Yeah. To something
that you're only doing because of the paycheck.
Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna do something
only because of a paycheck,
you could do it while hating it, or
you could do it and see it as
only just a game you're playing for money.
So I don't want to trivialize
people's professions
(37:29):
and occupations
because if you look at, let's say, a
professional
hockey player,
they're literally playing a literal game for money,
but they do take it seriously.
They do, at least we hope, they try
to be a good sport.
So I'm not trying to trivialize people's work
(37:49):
and occupations
by using the term game
because, you know, even people who literally play
a game can't take it seriously while they
recognize that what happens on the rink is
not real life. They're only doing it
because that's what they do for a living.
So many
of our clients
reduce their sense of value and worth
(38:11):
to their commercial value to their employer
but if you
told your best friend
that they get $80,000
a year instead of you
and they can never see you again
They're probably
not gonna be that happy with the trade.
I mean, obviously, if someone is actually like
(38:33):
really hard up on cash that's where their
principles might be compromised as we discussed before
but if your friend is you know if
his cup is full
if he's alright,
then he's gonna rather have you than the
money. And your friend sees you clearly in
not just reducing you to a dollar figure
the way your boss does.
(38:54):
For better or for worse, the people you
deal with at work
colleagues, your employer, customers,
they see you as in some way instrumental
to them.
So, you know how much do you cost
for the company and how much money can
you bring in and let's hope you bring
in more than you cost or else how
could we keep you there?
(39:16):
None of your friends see you like this.
I hope dogs don't even see you like
this.
So it's your friends and dogs who see
you clearly. It's your boss who sees you
through a lens of how much money. Perhaps
there's like a hierarchy
of values we say. So we start off
with the intrinsic self worth that is inviolable
and it is simply because you are a
living breathing human being.
And then you've got the familial or your
(39:38):
friends as well.
Maybe close friends would be in that. You
have value to them, they have value to
you. And then after that you have social,
that's the
greater value that you provide to the society
around you. And then perhaps then it's economic
value after that. But
if you define
the other 3 by your economic value, you're
(39:59):
gonna be in trouble. Yep. And I wanna
point out you don't really treat your loved
ones like this.
Right? So
if your partner loses their job, you're probably
gonna be supportive.
You're probably gonna help them find a new
one. You're probably going to help them feel
that they're worthy even though they just lost
their job if you're a decent partner at
all to treat yourself is also having intrinsic
(40:22):
and still your value to your family and
still social value irrespective
of your economic contributions to the world. This
is unhippocritical.
This is the height of inclusivity.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope
we've been able to offer some value to
you.
The kinds of things we talk about on
this podcast,
we do give to clients privately in hypnotherapy
(40:43):
sessions.
If you are interested in working with either
me or Pascal, please contact the Morpheus Clinic
for hypnosis
at www.morpheusclinic.com.
And if you like
the sorts of things that we're saying and
proposing, then you can
continue to follow us
on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis
(41:04):
or podcast Spotify, Apple Podcasts and so on,
wherever you get your podcasts.
And, we look forward to sharing our thoughts
in the next episode which I believe is
Episode 10 is going to be about
how to be a leader.
Now if you're in the working world enough
years and you handle yourself well and you
catch the attention of people who want you
(41:25):
to lead groups, then you're gonna end up
as a leader. You're gonna end up having
to do public speaking.
And that's what we're gonna talk about
next episode. Click the subscribe button, and we
look forward to sharing some more stuff in
the next session.
If I just kind of stayed in that
position longer Mhmm. I would not have to
work another day of my life. If you
can't pay your rent, if you can't pay
your food, if you're really up against it,
it becomes the all consuming problem that you
have to deal with all the time and
it's exhausting. If you are stuck in this
view that there isn't enough and there's never
gonna be enough and you're stuck the way
(00:21):
you are, welcome to how to be an
adult,
A show for people just like you who've
inadvertently become adults
and don't know what to do about it.
I'm Luke Chow. And I'm Pascal Langdale. And
whether you're 18 or 80,
we hope to give you the guide to
life that perhaps your parents never gave you
when you reached the age of majority.
(00:42):
We publicize all these ideas to democratize self
assurance. Today, we're gonna talk about some principles
for approaching work and approaching wealth. We're not
gonna give you tips and tricks or financial
advice, which you can get elsewhere on multitude
in this other podcasts.
Instead, we're gonna do our best to let
you into the mindset
(01:05):
that allows one to pursue and to keep
and to grow wealth
there are many of us who have a
mindset that is repellent
to opportunities, to wealth,
in your best interests
because we we want you to be as
well off as you can be. We hope
to instill these principles in you. I'll start
off by talking about my upbringing Mhmm. And
(01:28):
the way that money was talked about when
I was growing up.
So my parents
grew up during the cultural revolution in China.
So they were literally sent to the countryside
and my dad talked about having to eat
like bark or like locusts
just to not die of starvation
obviously
having those kinds of experiences in your formative
(01:49):
years makes an impact in adult life.
And then, you know, I was born in
1982.
We came to Canada in the mid 19
eighties.
My dad was getting his PhD
and my mom was working as a lab
tech to support the family. Then my dad
was getting his medical degree, and my mom
was working as a lab tech to support
the family.
And then he became a resident. Had then
(02:12):
my he was bringing in some money and
my mom was working as a lab tech
to support the family.
And only then did I graduate
from high school and then start my adult
life. So in many of my formative years,
we actually had very, very
little.
I graduated with a degree in English literature,
which admittedly is a kind of a bougie
(02:34):
degree, but also one that doesn't obviously lead
to a career path.
So I kinda like floated around for a
bit, took out on a number of odd
jobs the most rewarding of which was I
took notes in class for deaf and hard
of hearing students one of my earliest jobs
sent me to Los Angeles
to interview a hypnotherapist
actually
about
(02:54):
how how do you have a mindset that
is conducive to making money and keeping money
and becoming wealthy?
So at the age of 21 or 22,
I I co authored this book with Linda
Gabriel
in in Los Angeles.
She kind of did her best
to open up my mind
to
(03:14):
the possibilities ahead
and I understand more of what she was
trying to tell me today
than I did at the age of 21
because back then, I was very much mired
in this kind of poverty,
scarcity mindset.
Yeah. Yeah. And she was telling me about
all these possibilities and how you can make
more money and how money is this rather
arbitrary thing. It only started to make sense
(03:37):
later on in life. So at 23, I
started my business, the Morpheus Clinic for hypnosis.
And I I realized that I could actually
do things of
such value to others that they were paying
me 100 of dollars
to do these things.
And commercial validation
(03:57):
for for for your ideas is only one
form of validation. But it's quite an important
form of validation
when, you know, your passions and your interests
are commercially successful.
Fast forward a little bit.
Hypnotherapy
is not a lucrative
profession. I was not making a lot of
money through hypnotherapy.
(04:19):
Mhmm. And I heard in the year
2011,
I believe, about this invention
called Bitcoin. People
were trading these so called Bitcoins on the
Internet.
I bought and I mined a few of
these so called bitcoins.
Guess what I did with with my bitcoins?
(04:40):
Oh, you you waited until the peak of
the market and then you sold them. Right?
In 2014,
I cashed out $10,000
Mhmm. Of so called bitcoins
thinking that I was an investing genius.
So obviously I'm still doing hypnotherapy these days
and my experience with Bitcoin really
(05:02):
had taught me about the
arbitrariness
of money
and how someone like me
who just kind of thought
this Bitcoin
thing is cool. Mhmm.
You know, if I just kinda stayed
in that position longer Mhmm. I would not
have to work another day in my life.
(05:23):
Yeah.
In in my family I had a father
who who was a child during the 2nd
World War. He remembers his first banana,
which is like 1950 something because it was
still, you know, restricted.
So he grew up in basically in a
mindset of austerity,
and he still he still has that. He's
had that throughout his whole life. Save, save,
(05:43):
save,
don't use repair,
you know, the whole thing. On the other
side, my mother was, she used to carry
her shoes to school
so they wouldn't get worn. And then in
my family there's also this big story of
my great uncle who profited from the war
enormously
by making cases for bombs.
He was a furniture
maker in East London.
(06:05):
And then he passed on his wealth and
then it was just, you know, the family
tore itself apart like in, you know, some
TV show. So all those attitudes to money
were swirling around.
So I I yes, obviously, I I stepped
out in the world. At the age of
17, I had my first paycheck and I
remember it very very distinctly.
I didn't graduate from high school because I
(06:25):
left early.
I worked for 2 or 3 years in
theater, which is extraordinarily unpredictable. Obviously, I went
to to drama school and after that, again,
the perception of the starving artist was okay.
I live in in squats for a while.
I thought this was the that this was
a valid and worthy way of living. Right?
I'd equated
wealth, thanks to my
(06:46):
that's one part of my family, as being,
you know, the potential for moral corruption.
And all the rich people were mean. And
then I started doing commercials, and the commercials
were lucrative back then. And so I was
travelling all over the world, in fact, doing
so many commercials that sometimes I had to
remember which airport I'd come through to know
which country I was in. So in this
brilliant time, I I mean, I really enjoyed
it and it was a huge gift in
(07:07):
my life. But it also gave me the
idea of there's a consistency. This is always
going to be the case. This is always
going to be a presence. Now I bought
property and so I did well. But it
was an illusion in the sense that there's
changing demographic,
aging, economic downturn, COVID, you name it. And
suddenly, all the certainties
that seemed certainties of the past, the way
(07:29):
that a career might go,
just taken away, which is not necessarily a
bad thing incidentally.
There's a quote I love Mhmm. And it's
attributed to a number of people, but I
think the definitive source is atris kaufman
the quote is this
I've been poor and I've been rich rich
is better
And I
(07:50):
absolutely agree with that sentiment because, you know,
just like you,
I've been not so well off as an
English grad. I've also been better off.
It's far better in every way to be
better off. And this is a good segue,
I think, into our first
principle out of the 6 that we're gonna
share today
the first principle
(08:11):
is that wealth and morality
are not two ends of the same
spectrum or axis
wealth and morality are independent of each other
in other words
someone being wealthy
doesn't automatically or necessarily
make them into some corrupt
jerk
(08:31):
It is possible to be poor and a
total jerk.
When I look back on my life, I
was not as nice of a person when
I was impoverished
as I am
today when I'm better off. Just like if
I don't feel enough love in my heart,
then I'm not as nice to others as
if I do feel love in my heart.
(08:52):
If I have no money in my bank
account, I mean, how am I gonna tip
that well?
How am I going to, you know, be
like generous with friends?
1 can only be the best that they
can be
if
their needs are met. And in our world,
financial needs count as as needs. Mhmm. If
you can't pay your rent, if you can't
pay your food, if you're if you're really
(09:13):
up against it, which I know you've been
and I have as well. It becomes the
all consuming problem that you have to deal
with all the time and it's exhausting. I've
heard an analogy where
money is like oxygen. Mhmm. If you have
plenty of it, you don't even think about
it. Yeah. You don't notice that. You don't
notice. Yeah. But it's when you're lacking in
it that it's all you can think about.
(09:36):
This is why often people abandon their principles
when money is involved,
and it's only if you're impoverished
and you also happen to have no ethics
that then it's it's not a good combination
it's a Christian idea
that the love of money is the root
of all evil now that the quote is
(09:56):
not actually as it's often said, it's often
said as money is the root of all
evil, but that's not a complete quote. The
full quote is that the love of money
is the root of all evil and I
think that full quote actually is truthful
Maybe not all evil. I think that's an
exaggeration
But money in itself
is a it's a tool.
(10:19):
So one can be well off
and a good moral loving decent person.
I've even kind of made the argument that
it's more easy to be a good loving
kind decent person if you're financially well off.
And I think also, I think we could
even separate
to some degree the idea that money is
money is a tool, but it's not necessarily
(10:40):
the thing that is going to feed you.
You can't eat money. So
if for instance you are lucky enough to
be able to
supply your own food and
you live in a place where you can
build your own house, you could say, well,
you're wealthy to the degree that you are
able to control
those basic needs and you have power of
that. That is actually wealth. The money is
(11:02):
actually only a representation
of
what that means. It's just a it's it's
not the thing itself, you know. And you
can't take it with you, of course. And
perhaps that's also
why, you know, when they read out wills
that families get torn apart by by what
money goes to who. It's like you've got
a double whammy of both grief, then possibly
(11:23):
anger, sibling rivalry,
and then this
scarce resource mentality
as well comes in, you know. And yeah,
it's so extraordinary.
Part of the reason we keep harping on
principles, I think,
is that
if one is all consumed by, let's say,
grief
or let's
say fear, or let's say greed,
(11:46):
that's where people make decisions that could harm
other people or that could tear families apart
because, you know, you're acting emotionally and not
in a principled way that lasts over time.
The second principle I want to share, and
my experience with Bitcoin really made this real
for me,
it's that money is
a tool or a technology
(12:07):
for us to understand and use and master
money is not our master
the so called almighty
dollar
is a great tool for us to use
to improve our lives
it's not so good for worshiping.
As we were saying, if if you can't,
(12:29):
pay for the roof of your head, you're,
you know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs not
being met. And money is the tool for
that. It's easy to confuse money and become
make money your master because it's the most
it's like you're jumping a step. You're
It's it's like oxygen in that analogy I
used earlier,
(12:49):
where it's only if you don't have enough
of it that it feels
all consuming and all powerful and like a
matter of life or death
most people listening to this podcast
however
wealthy or poor you feel relative to your
peers
you're probably in the global one percent you
probably have
(13:11):
enough food to eat. You probably have a
place to sleep that's safe enough that you
can sleep in, you probably have a tap
where when you turn it, oh, there's clean
water that comes out.
You probably have your at least most basic
physiological
needs
taken care of
(13:31):
which means that lack of money is never
actually life or death often we feel like
it's life or death, but for most of
us we're lucky enough
living in a time and place like this
that our most basic needs are met we
can kind of take a step back and
see money as a tool we use and
(13:53):
none of us or few of us are
literally
drowning.
So that means if you're lucky enough to
be in a situation where all your basic
needs are met, and even perhaps if you
live in a society where there is a
safety net should things go wrong,
then it's not a life or death situation.
So you don't need to make that sort
of correlation between money and your very existence
(14:13):
or even the worth of your existence as
well for that matter.
But that you can actually start to say,
well, that bit's covered.
So I need to learn how to the
how to make the most of the surplus
beyond that. Is that right? I believe that
a cool detachment
when thinking about money is within the reach
of most people listening to this podcast.
(14:36):
If you do have your most basic needs
provided for, I do believe that this kind
of
cool headed detachment where you can view money
as a tool not a master
is possible
that this is not just for people much
better off than you I believe that you
probably being in the global 1%.
You can kind of have this
(14:58):
cool rational detachment about money and you don't
actually have to freak out about it. And
perhaps even that cool attachment
doesn't matter whether it's over $20
or 20 Bitcoin. That cool detachment remains true
regardless of the amount of money you're talking
about. Well, bitcoin for me personally is what
really made the point that money is a
(15:20):
tool or a technology.
It's got no intrinsic value. It's got no
intrinsic worth. It's not at all my master.
It's just this made up thing that human
beings invented
now what we're talking about here to some
listeners ears
might sound like heresy
because if they are in a situation where
(15:40):
they feel
impoverished and utterly deprived of of money and
material wealth,
then for for me to almost glibly say
that it's magic internet money
it might seem
like I'm out of touch or something
but I want you
as the listener to actually end up thinking
(16:04):
like someone
who will make more money in your future.
And, you know, if you kind of look
at people who are fantastic with money, they'll
talk about deploying capital, for example. Mhmm. That's
basically just spending money well. And usually, if
you're using that word capital, it's large amounts
of money that you're spending well for for
a return in in the future.
(16:25):
If you are
stuck in this view that there isn't enough
and there's never gonna be enough and you're
stuck the way you are and you're never
gonna end up a better off than you
are, then you you're not even trying.
And I want you to do better than
that. I want you to try.
So the third principle that we're talking about
is that
(16:46):
as a defining
characteristic of adulthood,
we are not merely
consumers of other people's productivity.
We are ourselves
productive, or you could say creative, human beings
where we are adding to the world
through whatever work it is that we do.
If we're only choosing half a dozen principles
(17:09):
to share with our listeners,
then this one's definitely making it near the
top of our list
where
money flows
from the
consumers
to the creators,
not the other way around.
So if you want to make money, if
you wanna make good money, if you even
want to accumulate wealth,
(17:30):
you absolutely
have to be on the creator or producer
side
of that equation.
By the time that you're able
or in other words educated
enough
that you can do something of value to
society
then you can spend the next 40 years
not being like a kid being as the
(17:52):
podcast title says
like an adult
and it's a source of pride I would
add
that you are
adding to the world being a so called
productive member of society, and in whatever job
you have.
One misconception,
I think, about people who are wealthy
is that
(18:13):
they're tremendously
consumptive.
They are, if anything,
tremendously
productive.
So the prolific artists who make a lot
of paintings and shake a lot of hands
and go to a lot of galleries
are weighing the odds in their favor
when it comes to being a successful artist.
The right order of things is to first
(18:34):
ask yourself
what
products or services
of immense value
can you create for the world?
And then to ask
how do you let people
know about this awesome product or service that
you've created
and then
to ask how much money are you gonna
(18:54):
charge for it?
Our 4th principle that we're gonna present
is that an abundance mentality, the
view that wealth is plentiful,
it's more conducive to your well-being and your
financial health than the opposing view, which is
a scarcity mindset that suggests that wealth and
(19:14):
money and riches are scarce and hard to
come by the analogy that I'll use is
That because you're like a baker, right? You're
a creator
You're not actually just gonna divide up the
pizza pies
that everyone else baked
like you're a kid.
Instead,
(19:35):
you're gonna be making more pizza pies
for you and for your family and for
society to consume.
And this is why
the abundance mentality,
this view that there's more, there's more money,
there's more wealth
is an accurate modeling.
It's because
(19:57):
we are not merely consumptive
beings.
We are creative beings.
The artist
who takes
the canvas and the paints and his or
her ingenuity and creates a $10,000 painting from
it.
They've not taken the $10,000
from anyone.
(20:18):
They've added
$10,000 of value to the world.
Yeah. I I think that's the thing. I
have something of value. I need to know
if the world values it. I suppose what
I'm saying is is that the again, I'm
trying to dislocate the idea
that
wealth will naturally
flow to something that you have that's of
value. Because there's a lot of work involved
(20:38):
in letting the world know that it's of
value. If you see what I mean. It's
not an automatic correlation. No. In the same
way that there are made there are plenty
of artists who are absolutely
superb geniuses perhaps,
who we will never know. There are hypnotists
who may be doing incredible work on the
other side of the world,
that we may never know.
And so and so that's why I wanted
(20:58):
to separate the idea. There there there are
4 year degrees people could take
in marketing to answer that question and to
answer it thoroughly with lots of research backing
it up. For for most people, it's it's
actually not sales and marketing, actually. It's it's
mostly
sending resumes and doing interviews. Yeah. So that
that's a much more masterable skill set than,
(21:19):
you know, having to figure out all all
of marketing and keep up with marketing. Yeah.
Because for most people, if you get a
job, if you
keep a job, someone else is doing the
sales and marketing and someone else is bringing
in the revenue that they split with you.
But I would also say that's also again
comes under the, the point of being
wise about money. In other words, wise about
how you get it. So for instance, you
(21:40):
know, being having a good resume and having
a good interview, for example, is part of
the
whole game, if you like.
That's gonna come up. The whole game where
an employer is gonna pay you for time
because,
you know, otherwise you're not gonna do it.
Mhmm. And that's again being not intimidated by
or not dismissing the idea that even to
(22:01):
think in that way is somehow either corrupt
or that somehow that it's unfair or that
you have no agency or power over
how to make money basically. So it's not
a zero sum game. It's not the case
that if I earn money then somebody else
somewhere is earning less.
And I will anticipate that there will be
somebody saying, well,
(22:22):
the world is getting cell phones, for example.
This is
an increase
in the wealth of the world. Poverty
rates have gone down
historically over time. There's less and less poverty
in the world. These are good things to
be applauded.
And I can anticipate somebody saying, oh, well,
you know, if you've got an iPhone then
there
are children slaves mining the lithium for the
(22:43):
batteries.
I say, well, it's not money's fault.
In the sense that it's humans that make
those decisions of the supply chains, of the
the way that you hire and create things.
And that actually, if you have good principles
in other aspects of your life, that makes
you a good principled CEO,
a good principled leader, or a good principled
(23:05):
shareholder,
in fact. And that that I would argue
that if there is a correlation between wealth
and suffering, it comes back to the principles
of the human being that is in control
of the wealth, not the wealth itself, not
the money itself. It's kind of like if
you have a chef's knife, right? It's
supposed to be used to like make sushi
(23:26):
and to like dice vegetables and to make
a good stew or something
but then of course
the very same tool with no alterations
whatsoever
used
carelessly or thoughtlessly or negligently
could
hurt you and cut you.
So, yeah, money could be used to like
in slave people in
(23:47):
mineral mines
But that's not actually money
used the way it's supposed to be used
to facilitate
trade and to go to those who provide
the better service or the better working conditions.
But the reason we have to kind of
talk about
how money is not zero sum
(24:08):
is because there is a very very prevalent
view
that billionaires
are personally causing the rest of us to
suffer. Mhmm.
Now, let's say Elon Musk tomorrow just dies.
Right?
I'm not gonna be any better off Mhmm.
If if every billionaire in the world
(24:29):
just went away tomorrow
or if the government confiscates their weather if
they force a sale of their assets
I am not going to be better off
in any way what whatsoever, and my investments
might actually go down if that were to
happen. Yeah. And again, I would bring it
back to the human that has that wealth.
Their principles and their code and perspectives become
(24:51):
the defining factor in factors to whether that
accrual of wealth is a net benefit. Musk
has kind of revealed himself to be kind
of a jerk. Mhmm. But I'll point I'll
point to someone like Warren Buffett. Mhmm. Right?
You know, he as so he's one of
the billionaires who pledged to give away 99%
of his wealth.
He's an example of someone who I would
(25:12):
say
deploys capital properly.
He's I mean, he's very known
to deploy capital properly, but not just in
the sense that it makes more money or
that's good capitalism, but also in the sense
that he's like a decent person and he
treats people well.
He is a living example of how we
don't have to choose
between
wealth and being good. Yeah. We can be
(25:35):
both. And and I think it it works
the other way around in that
your underlying principles
also count when you have no money
on the other side. Is that to speak
to what you said earlier, is that it's
possible to be a jerk, a rich jerk
or a poor jerk. Mhmm. The common the
common factor
is the jerk. It's not it's not the
(25:56):
amount of money. Exactly. The money's independent of,
of how much of a jerk they are.
Yeah.
So Steven Pinker has written a number of
books and some of his more recent ones
are about how,
let's say, global poverty,
extreme poverty is on the decline.
And this is a reality. If you kind
of look at the levels of extreme poverty
(26:16):
in the world, like, you know, people living
in the countryside having to eat locusts,
it has been declining over the past many
decades
now if the money or the wealth in
the world were just this fixed amount
then how come we're not worse off
just because people overseas can eat enough food
and have cell phones or maybe even save
(26:38):
up enough to have a car
the the world itself
is consistent with the idea that each person
is creating more wealth through productive activity
these observations for example that you know poverty
is declining worldwide that's inconsistent
with the view
that
if there's a winner on one side, there's
(26:59):
a loser on a different side. What's actually
happening is that the rising tide is lifting
all boats.
So here's 0.5.
It's that markets are
roughly efficient,
and I'll have to explain what that means.
There's a hypothesis
called the efficient market
(27:20):
hypothesis.
And what it says is that in any
market where there's the free flow of information
then everything is priced correctly.
So in other words,
if I'm a hypnotherapist
and I'm charging, let's say, $3.50
per session,
that's the right price
(27:41):
because
people can look me up, people can research
me, and people are paying it.
I am not overpriced
and that there are few inefficiencies
to be found
where you are able to make easy money
that everyone else has missed.
So obviously,
(28:02):
you know, there is such a thing as
arbitrageurs
who buy cheap and sell expensive, basically, almost
instantaneously.
There is such a thing as rent seeking
where, you know, let's say you hope that
the laws pass in your favor so you
make money at the expense of others with
the government backing you up. But it is
because there there are people
(28:24):
who will notice
the inefficiencies
and then take advantage of them that it's
very unlikely that you'll be the first. It
also means that if hypnotherapy
were such an easy way to make money,
then my prices would have been driven down.
Mhmm. Right? I would only be charging $100
(28:44):
because my competitors forced me to, you know,
charge only
$100 to compete. Mhmm.
But the reality
is that I do charge what I do,
and people are paying it because there's actually
a scarcity of hypnotherapists
that my clients feel
are trustworthy enough that they're gonna hire at
all.
So what this means is that there's a
(29:05):
term that's abbreviated
with this really long acronym, but it expands
to there ain't no such thing as a
free lunch.
But if you do this simple internet hack,
I can show you how to make a
$100,000
in a year, $10,000 a month if you
use affiliate links. Let me just show you
on Amazon. You just have to buy Pascal's
course for $97
(29:25):
if you sign up right now.
Yeah. We've seen them all. They've been snake
oil salesman at hucksters for as long as
there's been humans. Right. Well, the the term
there ain't no such thing as a free
lunch goes back to I think like the
19 twenties or the 19 thirties in America
where they would, you know, restaurants would advertise
a free lunch, and then you would sit
down for the very salty free lunch, and
(29:47):
they had to buy a drink and the
drinks are overpriced.
Often, I think people who are looking to
make more money, people who are trying to
improve their financial lot,
they fall for these free lunch tricks Yeah.
Assuming that essentially we can find these opportunities
that everyone else has missed.
If you instead assume
(30:07):
that the markets are roughly efficient, that whatever
the price is for something that that is
what it is or whatever someone will pay
you to do the thing, you know, that's
roughly about what it is if there's enough
people who pay you for that thing at
that price. You know, if you kind of
assume that, then you're closer,
I think,
to having your feet on the ground.
But if in your head you have a
(30:30):
certain price for the painting that you made
and people are only willing to pay you
$200
for that painting then that is the price
the market has set. If as a hypnotherapist,
I'm only able to charge, let's say, $100
because no one would pay more than a
105,
then my price would be at a 100
(30:50):
Mhmm. Dollars.
Something you touched upon earlier
is that it can be quite hard to
make a living as an artist. Mhmm. Right?
Part of the reason, I think, relates to
something else you said,
which is that
that which can be commercialized
represents only a thin slice of any endeavor
or anything.
(31:11):
So pursuits
like
painting,
acting,
and even hypnotherapy,
where there are non monetary rewards,
where we feel good about doing the thing,
or there's some kind of prestige in it,
for example.
These pursuits usually come with lower monetary rewards.
(31:32):
I just finished listening to an audiobook this
morning called The Creative Act, I believe, by
Rick Rubin. Mhmm. And Rick Rubin is a
record producer. He produced a number of records,
so he's very authoritative on the subject of
creativity.
And
he says
that it's perfectly legitimate
to keep your art
(31:52):
untainted
and uncommercialized
to work a job that pays the bills
and then to keep your art pure.
Yeah. In in fact, I think that in
some ways the
notion that we have of the starving artist
that doesn't compromise
their art with the filth of money, I
think is something that we've got from the
(32:13):
romantics. And most of those were already bloody
rich.
They were lords, they had property, they had
an income, but they chose And then we
have the beatenicks in in the States as
well who take that, then turn it
into subsisting in one of the wealthiest countries
in the world. I mean, it's an illusion
this idea, in fact, that
(32:34):
creativity and art can only thrive if you're
poor and then refusing money.
Or alternatively, that somehow
the creative act
in itself, it has enough worth that you
should do it. And if the world doesn't
value it, that doesn't mean that it's not
of any worth. It simply means it doesn't
have a commercial immediate commercial value.
But that doesn't mean that if you do
(32:57):
other things to put a roof over your
head, to feed your family,
to survive well, that somehow that diminishes you
as an artist.
Some of the best actors I know
do not act all the time. 1 of
the best actors I know actually moved to
Egypt to teach
and learn about storytelling. And he's he's living
(33:17):
his life
on the premise that he does other stuff
to to make money for sure. But he's
got that balance that he has negotiated with
his desire to live. And that's what any
artist has to do is to be be
able to figure out that balance between the
need to put a roof over your head,
be a responsible adult, supplying what your family
needs, what you need, looking after yourself.
And then to say that, oh, if I'm
(33:38):
doing that, then somehow I'm not gonna be
able to be a great writer, that somehow
I'm not gonna be able to be a
great artist is a false contradiction.
Something I say to new hypnotherapists
Mhmm. Is that if you're already financially independent,
you're gonna be a better and more ethical
hypnotherapist.
Because you're doing things in service of the
client then and you're not just doing things
(33:58):
because you need to pay for your mortgage.
Art is maintained
by the creator being independently wealthy and hypnotherapy
is also it's going to be more of
a client centered practice.
If the practitioner
doesn't absolutely
need
the client's money. That used to be the
case for the sciences as well. Yeah. Now
(34:19):
it's all like p hacking and trying to
get into prestigious
journals
and falsifying data and everything.
So I want to introduce this concept
called
ikigai. And I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly.
It's a Japanese term that means a reason
for being, or I guess in the French,
raison d'etre.
The concept is a Venn diagram.
(34:41):
And there's 4 circles:
what you love,
what the world needs,
what you can be paid for
and what you are good at
and ikigai
is that very small center of the Venn
diagram where you're doing something you love, that
the world needs, that you can be paid
(35:02):
for and that you are good at. That
is the sweet spot. So, if you're thinking
that you're gonna become a millionaire writing poetry
collections,
you might have to look at your guy
somewhere else. Exactly.
So our 6th point
is that unless you're very fortunate, and I'll
count myself among the very fortunate,
work is just
(35:23):
a game you play for money.
It's not authentic living.
It's not something you have to lose sleep
over.
You only do the things you do for
work because you're being paid for it. And
once the paychecks stop, there's not a chance.
You're looking at that report for your boss.
There's not a chance You're gonna smile at
(35:45):
the people you only smile at because they're
at the cubicle next to you. So the
things we kind of only do because we're
paid to do them
are never going to be what our heart
truly desires.
But there are some things we did as
children
that we're gonna do as retirees
and that in your productive years you get
(36:06):
to do in your evenings and on your
weekends and on your holidays and on vacation
and during all the many hours you've not
sold to your employer.
Most of us have only sold 35 to
40 out of a 168.
So, yes, you get to sleep well at
night during those many hours you've not sold.
You get to play with your dog
(36:28):
irrespective of what happened at work
because
you've not sold those hours you're playing with
your dog. Could it also be the case
that you could bring the sense of,
of a game to your job as well?
In the sense that you're being paid for
your time doing something that otherwise you wouldn't
wanna do perhaps?
And that there's no
judgment to that. In fact, I would say
that for the most of the people on
(36:48):
earth, that's probably the reality is that you're
doing things to make money because you have
to make money. And so then that that
makes me think, well, if you treat it
all in the spirit of play or in
the spirit of game, at least you can
maybe find some way
to make
the everyday job non onerous one, at least
not onerous.
(37:08):
It adds a bit of levity.
Yeah. To something
that you're only doing because of the paycheck.
Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna do something
only because of a paycheck,
you could do it while hating it, or
you could do it and see it as
only just a game you're playing for money.
So I don't want to trivialize
people's professions
(37:29):
and occupations
because if you look at, let's say, a
professional
hockey player,
they're literally playing a literal game for money,
but they do take it seriously.
They do, at least we hope, they try
to be a good sport.
So I'm not trying to trivialize people's work
(37:49):
and occupations
by using the term game
because, you know, even people who literally play
a game can't take it seriously while they
recognize that what happens on the rink is
not real life. They're only doing it
because that's what they do for a living.
So many
of our clients
reduce their sense of value and worth
(38:11):
to their commercial value to their employer
but if you
told your best friend
that they get $80,000
a year instead of you
and they can never see you again
They're probably
not gonna be that happy with the trade.
I mean, obviously, if someone is actually like
(38:33):
really hard up on cash that's where their
principles might be compromised as we discussed before
but if your friend is you know if
his cup is full
if he's alright,
then he's gonna rather have you than the
money. And your friend sees you clearly in
not just reducing you to a dollar figure
the way your boss does.
(38:54):
For better or for worse, the people you
deal with at work
colleagues, your employer, customers,
they see you as in some way instrumental
to them.
So, you know how much do you cost
for the company and how much money can
you bring in and let's hope you bring
in more than you cost or else how
could we keep you there?
(39:16):
None of your friends see you like this.
I hope dogs don't even see you like
this.
So it's your friends and dogs who see
you clearly. It's your boss who sees you
through a lens of how much money. Perhaps
there's like a hierarchy
of values we say. So we start off
with the intrinsic self worth that is inviolable
and it is simply because you are a
living breathing human being.
And then you've got the familial or your
(39:38):
friends as well.
Maybe close friends would be in that. You
have value to them, they have value to
you. And then after that you have social,
that's the
greater value that you provide to the society
around you. And then perhaps then it's economic
value after that. But
if you define
the other 3 by your economic value, you're
(39:59):
gonna be in trouble. Yep. And I wanna
point out you don't really treat your loved
ones like this.
Right? So
if your partner loses their job, you're probably
gonna be supportive.
You're probably gonna help them find a new
one. You're probably going to help them feel
that they're worthy even though they just lost
their job if you're a decent partner at
all to treat yourself is also having intrinsic
(40:22):
and still your value to your family and
still social value irrespective
of your economic contributions to the world. This
is unhippocritical.
This is the height of inclusivity.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope
we've been able to offer some value to
you.
The kinds of things we talk about on
this podcast,
we do give to clients privately in hypnotherapy
(40:43):
sessions.
If you are interested in working with either
me or Pascal, please contact the Morpheus Clinic
for hypnosis
at www.morpheusclinic.com.
And if you like
the sorts of things that we're saying and
proposing, then you can
continue to follow us
on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis
(41:04):
or podcast Spotify, Apple Podcasts and so on,
wherever you get your podcasts.
And, we look forward to sharing our thoughts
in the next episode which I believe is
Episode 10 is going to be about
how to be a leader.
Now if you're in the working world enough
years and you handle yourself well and you
catch the attention of people who want you
(41:25):
to lead groups, then you're gonna end up
as a leader. You're gonna end up having
to do public speaking.
And that's what we're gonna talk about
next episode. Click the subscribe button, and we
look forward to sharing some more stuff in
the next session.
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