Hey friends, you're tuned in to the learn or be learn podcast, a show where wisdom meets curiosity in order to discover the human experience. I'm your host, Shiva D. And remember, you either learn from or you learn from. Now, let's get back to the show.
All right, welcome back, everybody to another great episode. This is episode 91. And it is an inline Nomad monologue episode from the inline Nomad series. And without further ado, let's just jump right in. This is the one trait that I believe will will either make or break you in life. And what is that one trait? Well, you know, there's so many out there, but I believe one of the biggest ones is reputation. Because I was reading this book called burn the boats by Matt Higgins, he was a former shark on the, you know, the show sharks where they do the business acquisitions and stuff. And he was one of the judges. And he wrote this book, and he was talking about how, and you see this repeated through a lot of books and a lot of entrepreneurs, and thought leaders talk about how it's all about the people, not the ideas, right to not how all sorts of key key words, phrases, such as this. And I honestly wholeheartedly agree. I know Simon Sinek also talks a lot about this. Yeah, I mean, as someone who studied anthropology medicine, went to Kenya and did biological anthropology against many different semi nomadic pastoralists groups, and constantly see the comparison between Eastern and Western cultures of India, and the United States, etc, etc. Right? So I truly believe it's all about understanding people. And reputation is one of the most powerful things when it comes to people correct. And then there's two sections here that I want to dive into one is this reputation with yourself, and the other is reputation with others. Now, I will say that this episode was inspired by Bedros. Cool Ian, he has an awesome podcast, and I was listening to his topic about reputation. And I wholeheartedly agree with it, which is why I wanted to get my two cents in on this topic. Right? So here, we have the idea of reputation with yourself. And I think this is so important, because I've spoken with many friends before and they talk about, I have all these aspirations and goals and things I want to do, but I just can't get myself to do it. Why can't I get myself to get to that next level, that higher level of myself that I know I could be that I dream of being. And personally, I believe it's the same ideology as Alex homos, he says all the time, which is, you need to create a stack of undeniable proof in order to increase your competency. And your competency leads to confidence, right? Confidence is created through competency and competency is created through a stack of undeniable proof in whatever category you are considering, right. So for example, in let's say, in the podcast space, my confidence will grow with time, not just because of time, because of the stack of proof or wins, that I have developed over that time period, which creates competency. And that competency is what's fueling the confidence. And that competency of wins only happens when you have a solid reputation with yourself. You say what you're going to do, and you do what you're going to say, I love this thing where Patrick David says, I want to recreate myself. And you know, in his 20s, he said, From now on, I'm the guy that if I say it, I'm doing it. I want to be known as that guy. If he says it, it's done. And I love that I think it's so powerful. Because it creates not only such a strong reputation with yourself, it creates strong reputation with others. Now if we get a little bit philosophical here, the idea of reputation with self is actually so intriguing to think about, right? Because it's, it's so it's such an interesting topic, you are having a relationship with yourself, your ego, your whatever you want to call it, your consciousness, the voice in your head that you talk to right, you have a ongoing battle with yourself. So wouldn't it make sense to befriend the person closest to you, which is your own self? And if you and yourself right, feels very philosophical saying all this, but if you are befriending yourself and have a strong, loyal, trusting relation chip with yourself because you know you will do what you say and say what you do. It creates immense amount of confidence in every field of life, it bleeds over, right? For example for me, in order to gain that competency confidence loop back that, that what do we call it feedback loop. In order to get back on the upward spiral, I had to start small, right? compound growth is important, the 1% better every day is important. So I first I focused on like many other greats, I focused on health and fitness first, you'll see many people like David Goggins, talk about this, Andrew Huberman. They all talk about how you know, fitness and health is very important. Because if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you need to first suffice in the external 3d reality of the world, right? Your survival needs your food, shelter, physical health, things like that, only then do you go higher, higher up to, you know, needing belonging, and community and things like that only go higher up in the pyramid. So it's really important that you get the foundation's right first. And I think there's some real power to keeping promises to yourself more than anybody else, I understand that there, it can be a bigger motivator to have promises to others. But if you can create that relationship with yourself, it is astronomically beneficial. Because being someone who had to develop that, again, over the years, after losing that reputation with myself, I know how important is looking at the before and after. And seeing how much more confidence you have, when you have that stack of undeniable proof of I was able to give this up, I was able to give up junk food, I was able to give up smoking, I was able to give up drinking all sorts of stuff, right? I was able to give up going out at night or, or hanging out with friends or whatever it may be, you start to stack those winds to build that competency of better winds, right? I believe there is a strong power to the long term commitment of holding that relationship with yourself. But let's get on to that other section, right, which is reputation with others, which I think is also very important, if not equally as important, because one, I do believe your internal reality reflects your external reality. Right? So how you think of yourself as how others will treat you. If you think of yourself a lowly? How would you expect others to think of you highly? Right? So if you think of yourself highly, I mean, we see it all the time, people that walk in with confidence, people treat them better, just because they think you know, it's a subconscious thing as humans, we think, Well, why is that person confident there must be a reason that are confident, right. And for that reason, I do believe there is a reflection of your inner self to the outer world. Which is why section one is really important, what we talked about reputation with yourself. Now let's get on to the reputation with others, right. I do believe there's three key points here that I wanted to touch on. One. I'm very strong about reputation through financial responsibility, and integrity. And what I mean by that is if you borrow money from somebody, however big or small, I believe it's important to repay them as soon as possible. And in all honesty, I believe it's more important than paying back the bank, even if you're paying APR interest. I know, there's probably some financial gurus or financial experts out there that are telling that would probably fight me on this. And I'd love to have that kind of conversation. But this is a monologue episode. So it's just me. So you're just gonna have to hear my thoughts out. But, you know, hear me out for a second, right? Yeah, you logically it makes more sense for you to pay off the bank first, because you're paying interest. And you're probably for the most part, not paying interest with people, right? Whether you owe family or friends or a business partner, whatever. But one thing is for sure, the bank never cared about you to begin with your friends, family, whoever loaned you that money did. And that reputation is hard to recover if you're the guy that either doesn't pay back, or takes for ever to pay back. Right? So I take that very seriously. Because I can always win over my relationship with the bank again, right, you can always pay that interest, eventually pay off all your debts, start making money, and then the bank will forgive you because all they cared about was money to begin with. But the people will remember those days, and they'll be a little bit more hesitant next time to help you out. Right. So I believe the reputation is actually more important. And it's the philosophy I follow. I mean, I owe people. I've owed money to the bank and people before and I always prioritize people first, I always do. And I've actually had people come to me and say that they appreciate how quickly I repaid them. And we're talking large sums of money. So not like $10 Venmo but like, you get what I'm saying like I prioritize people first because the relationship means more to me than a sum all day on your credit score that can recover over time. Because those are just logical numbers at the end of the day, and humans are a bit more intricate, right? We're much more multivariable with emotions and, and spirituality and all sorts of things. So it's like, I believe it's far more important to uphold that financial integrity with people over the bank. And you know, only you know, your personal situation, if you owe $100,000 to the bank and you owe $3,000, to your friend.
You know, you make the decision for yourself. I'm no financial expert. I'm just telling you what I've done and what I do. This is my philosophy of how I operate in this world. And it's proven me Well, I mean, regardless of the stress, regardless of the issues that may come up, I value human connection more than anything. And because I understand this world runs on humans, right, no matter what company you are investing in, no matter what you're doing, you're investing in humans. That's the world we live in, no matter what tech no matter what, medical advancement, whatever you're investing, you're investing in people, right at the end of the day, somebody's vision, a human's vision humans dream. So I don't know, I, I'd love to have a conversation with somebody about this. But I do believe that there is some merit to what I'm saying about having a reputation with others to financial integrity. And another point is hypocrisy. Right. I it's one of my biggest pet peeves is hypocrisy. I hate when people say something, and just don't do it themselves. Right, because I believe actions speak louder than words. And I believe hypocrisy ruins your reputation. Because you are known as the person that's always throwing out vomiting advice to others, but never taking it yourself. Because for many reasons, but one of it being it's much easier to say and give advice than it is to take it and actually go with it. Because but that's where that's where I believe the people that should be giving advice are the ones that actually take action, which is another reason I never share anything that I don't believe, or I do. So I'm very cautious with what I share and what I advise, because advise talk about, you know, because I want to uphold myself with that level of integrity as well. I refrain from hypocrisy, I will never tell you, for example, for example, I don't normally give financial advice, because I'm still in the early phases of understanding finances, understanding investments, real estate, stocks, stocks, I have a bit of understanding, but I won't get into it. But you get what I'm saying passive investments and things like that I'm in that trenches right now. So I don't believe it's righteous or right for me to be giving that advice. Yet, there are some amazing people out there that can give you that advice. And I'm sure someday I will, but just not right now. So, you know, I take my words very carefully and seriously. And lastly, I do believe the downside to this is when you don't uphold your reputation with yourself, you start to fall into vices or escape behaviors, because you feel this dichotomy between this cognitive dissonance between who you are and who you ought to be. So that's where you find many people drinking their problems away, or, you know, such such as this. And I also believe it's where you start to struggle to keep not only your word to yourself, but then you start to struggle to keep your word to others, because you're in the spiral downward loop of not even filling the baseline, which is yourself, and then you can't uphold the reputation without it's, you start to feel like you're putting on a play, right? Because you have this cognitive dissonance of who you're trying to be to others. But deep down, you know, that you can't keep this commitment even with yourself. Right? So this is where the idea of authenticity comes in. And I actually, it's one of the most attractive qualities, in my opinion, is authenticity. Because a lot of people out there put on a facade or put on a play to be who's somebody who they're not or somebody who they're trying to be. And at the end of the day, right, we're all just trying to learn and there's no life rulebook or guide on how to do things, but I do believe success leaves clues, and if you listen to enough people and you start looking at patterns, which I believe is one of my strong suits is pattern recognition. You start to see where the success is. And that's why I like to talk about ideas such as these, because I've seen it be fruitful in my life, of holding my own purse. So reputation and my reputation with others, it's gotten me into rooms that I would have never even dreamed of it got me into relationships I never would have dreamed of, especially at such a young age in my, in my even starting my early 20s. My reputation has helped me get into positions with the CDC and many other things amongst my, you know, Cv of accomplishments, my undeniable stack of proof, right, as Alex for most he would say, it's where my confidence comes from. And I've been, you know, doing stuff like this, as early as I can remember, stalking wins. And that's what gives me the confidence to, you know, fight another day and find more wins. And ultimately, it'll attract more people to you. And people want to work with you, because they see that confidence. You know, it's one of those qualities that people notice, that attracts them to you and wants to do, you know, projects with you wants to do work with you, because people want to be surrounded by competent people, because it's reassuring, it's makes you feel makes you feel safe. It makes you feel comfortable. If you feel like somebody else can help, and they can, you know, fight the battle with you. Because as humans, you know, we're always in this dissonance between our biological and cultural evolution where we've expanded our consciousness so quickly, but we still operate in such a primitive body, right? Primitive hind brain, that still looking for survival. So we are looking for knit commute, close knit communities of trust, and competency and confidence. And these are very deep rooted traits that we're looking for in people, whether it's friendships, relationships, business partnerships, etc. Right. So I think this was a really cool, short, little topic. I hope that this all made sense. And this wasn't kind of all over the place. I tried to keep it kind of concise. And, you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Even the idea about the you know, financial integrity. I know that one's probably the most iffy of all the points that I've made, but I'm just curious on your guys's thoughts, and I appreciate your time investing it with me and listening here. And remember everybody you either learn from or you learn from thanks.