Sask worldwide. What is your belief when it comes to the connection between money and
happiness? I think money is often.
I'm Erica Kohlberg. And you're listening to the Erica taught me podcast. So you've talked about with some things in your life realizing that you're in love with the result, but not the process. Can you take us through what that means?
The most common example from my life that I talked about, I originally went to music school. You know, all through my teenage years I was very serious and dedicated about music. I practiced all the time and wanted to be a professional. And what music school taught me was that there's, you know, it's easy to want, it's easy to want the reward. It's not easy to want the cost, and most, pretty much everybody wants the reward of something very few people want the cost and in the case of music it was I wanted the reward of I guess, the attention the validation, being on stage, people cheering you know, the whole rock star dream, but I didn't want to put in the hours. I didn't want practice scales. I didn't want to learn about gear I didn't want to study harmony or music theory, all those things felt very difficult and unfun to me and so for I ended up dropping out of music school and for a long time I kind of had this bitterness of like you know, damn you music school ruining my dream, but what you know when when I got older and a little bit more mature, I realized, you know, I actually didn't want to be a musician. I thought I wanted to be a musician. I thought I wanted to be on stage and people cheering and everything but I didn't want the process that was required to achieve that, right like whereas with writing it's kind of the opposite like I, I enjoy the cost. I enjoy sitting by myself in a room quietly, like rewriting a paragraph over and over and over again, like that feels very natural to me. And there's something exciting about that challenge to me in a way that there was never any excitement with the challenge of practicing scales or runs or anything. One thing that I always kind of implore to people is that it's it's easy to want the reward to like the reward. It's hard to like the struggle. And I think when most people ask themselves, like what do I want to do with my life or what am I passionate about? They think about the rewards they don't think about the struggle like you should be asking yourself, what what is the struggle that I like? What is the struggle that I'm passionate about? What is the challenge that excites me rather than drains me?
Do you think that the desire to get that reward can ever be strong enough to overpower the fact that you may not enjoy the struggle or do you think that if we want to reach those rewards, we always have to enjoy the struggle part of it too.
So the desire for the reward, you can overpower the struggle in the short run. So if you've got a goal next week, or next month, maybe a few if you're a person with like a lot of willpower maybe next month, maybe two months, but if we're talking 2345 10 years now like you're, if you don't like to struggle, you're gonna give up
at some point. Okay, so, as an example, I really want to become more healthy and work out but I hate working out. Yeah, at a certain point in my life, I enjoyed it. But now I've tried a few times and I just really don't like it. What do I do?
And this is a great example because I think this is this is like, this is one that so many people relate to. The best advice I ever got around health was from a random friend who's like super fit when I was in living in Boston and he said, make it fun, like find a way to make it fun, whether that is joining a class. You know the thing about exercise is like the just the fact that you do it is like 80% of the benefit, like exactly what you do is less important. So it's like finding the class, whether it's yoga or pilates or CrossFit or biking or surfing or running or like whatever it is like find the thing that's fun playing pickleball with your your friends, like find something that's fun, and then leverage the fun to get yourself to do it. And the funny thing is, is to like let's say, let's say pickleball right, let's say you know this is like apparently a trend. Yes. I've never played but it's it's a thing now. So like let's say you've discovered you love pickleball and you're playing it a few times a week and it's fun, and it's good exercise or whatever. Once you get really into the pickleball you'll start realizing you're like Well, damn, I want to be better at pickleball so how do I get better at pickleball? Maybe if I get up and run like once a week that'll make me a lot better pickleball because then I won't be tired when everybody else is tired and so then that like you can kind of piggyback off the fun thing and start adding the things that used to not be fun,
did it that applies for everything. So for example, instead of saying I want to become an author say I enjoy writing or I want to become a lawyer. I enjoy studying the law. I want to become a tick talker. I enjoy creating video content.
Sure, I think any again, anything long term, right? Like if we're talking about doing your taxes, like nothing's gonna make that fun. So you just suck it up, you know, block out an afternoon and you do it. But But yeah, all the things you mentioned are long term and what are they long term goals but they're like they're very their identity level. things right? So it's like, you don't ever like you don't stop being a writer like once you've written books and blogged and written hundreds of articles like you're a writer for the rest of your life. You know, if once you pass the bar, you're a lawyer for the rest of your life. So I think anything like that it's it's if you want to continue doing it over the long term, you have to find the part of the process or the struggle that you can make enjoyable for yourself and rely on that and this is a drum that I bang on quite a bit like there's so much advice out there about willpower and you know, habits and discipline and like wake up early and, you know, set up your desk this way and here's how to do your calendar and like that stuff's great, but I think what gets neglected is the emotional side of productivity, which is that if you're feeling like crap, if you're sad or depressed or anxious, like no tactic is going to solve that, or overcome that. Like you have to get yourself emotionally to a good place where you're excited and interested about what you're pursuing. Otherwise, nothing else is gonna move the needle for more than a few days or a few weeks.
So let's say that someone is in a job that they really aren't enjoying. Do you think the issue is the job they need to change his job or their mentality and their emotions around the job? Like what would be your advice if a friend comes to you and says, I really hate my job.
So it could be either or both. I think the easiest place to start is with your mentality or your approach to it. What I find a lot is that if you people who are very unhappy with their job, if you really dig into it, it it turns out that they're actually really unhappy with like a specific role in their job or a specific person in their job. Maybe a boss that they have that you know they liked their job until this new new guy took over and now they hate it. And so I think identifying specifically like what it is that you don't like, and it might just be the entire job like and that's fine too. But like at least ask yourself the questions of like, if I had a better boss would I like my job if I didn't have to do you know the one thing I hate doing? And I could just do all the other things but I like my job. I do think there are some like mental reframes that you can do. I think a lot of people will approach work with a very negative attitude or very transactional attitude, which is not approaching anything in life. transactionally is going to kill the joy of it, period. That's true for relationships. That's true for jobs. That's true for health issue for anything. So you know, be be wary of like, the the attitude that you're bringing to it. But with all that said, yeah, sometimes, you know, you thought you wanted to be a doctor, you become a doctor and you're like, wow, I hate being a doctor. I want to go do something else. You know, it happens. It's a very common thing and, and it happens in all walks of life. So
yeah, maybe you can help explain this to me because I think as we're thinking about this process and result what I do in terms of the social media making videos online to help people I enjoy the result a lot I enjoy feeling like I'm impacting people. Yeah, but if I'm being absolutely honest, like filming videos, talking to myself in my room, I don't really enjoy that process. Yeah, so is that a sign that I'm doing the wrong thing or is it okay to enjoy like the I just I live for the comments of people saying, oh, my gosh, this really helped me or I applied this or I send this my mom like, but the filming itself, I could care less.
Yeah, I mean, we'll see you love part of it. And then there's part that you don't and I think, you know, in your case, it's and by the way, I relate like I enjoy, there are a lot of processes within you know, I guess our field of being like online creators that I love and then there's parts that I don't and setting up video and all the cameras and like all this, like that's a huge part of it. And so unloading that off to somebody else who does enjoy it is like the first and most obvious thing but yeah, I mean, you know, I wrote this article a number of years ago called called screw finding your passion, but in it I had a thing that like people loved and they like, quoted and reposted a bunch which was I said even even in your dream job, you're gonna be annoyed 20% of the time. Like there's no such thing as a job or anything, a relationship and endeavor where you are happy all the time. Like, your dream relationship. You're still sick of the person, like 10% of the time, like it's just that's just life, like there's there's no escaping it completely. You know, so the, I think the goal here is not capital H happiness. It's more like how do we get that ratio to a really good place where it's, you know, four out of five days I'm really enjoying what I'm doing or three out of four workouts. I'm like, getting to the end feeling good, not having to like, you know, torture myself.
Yeah, as you were saying the for the Dream relationship. You still might dislike the person 10 of the time. My husband's in the background nodding. And I'm like what the
heck you're like you're not supposed to
what do you think has caused kind of these unrealistic expectations that we grew up with of this dream job or the dream relationship where we expect it to be 100% Perfect, therefore when it is only 80 or 90%? Perfect, we feel a bit of disappointment or maybe that it isn't the right fit.
Yeah, I think it's a combination of two things. I think one is just one is easy to market. You know, this is the solution to happiness. This is your dream job. This is how to be healthy and sexy and happy. You know, like that, that transmits very well. The the reality which we're discussing of like, look, no matter what you do, you're gonna be annoyed 20% of the time. That's not like a super marketable slogan, like you're not gonna see like, you know, a soda ad with that as its slogan. anytime soon, like, you know, 80% satisfaction. Just do it 80% of the time. So I you know, I think a lot of it gets kind of echoed around pop culture in that way. You know, I think the self help personal development industry is guilty of that as well, like it doesn't telling people that you can get them to be satisfied with their lives. 80% of the time, like that doesn't fill a seminar room, as well as, you know, promising them that you can make them happy all the time. So they're, you know, there's definitely like a marketing pop culture component of it. I also just think that some of it is being young and naive, you know, like I think part of this, what I noticed is, the younger the person, the more they kind of just blindly subscribe to this assumption that like, there's a dream job out there that they're going to be happy with all the time. Or there's a person there's a soulmate out there who's gonna they're gonna be happy with all the time. What I noticed is that once you start talking to people in their 40s and 50s, and specially 60s and 70s, they're very aware of this, like they're very aware like no, you Nobody puts up a perfect score, like life is always just going to suck sometimes. And that's just part of the deal.
Do you feel that way? Like, is there a little bit of pessimism in you?
Do you think you'll ever reach a point where you guys will be happy? 100% of the time?
No, because it's dishonest. It No, it really is like I I don't think and I mentioned this briefly in subtle art. But like, I don't think being happy all the time is the most adaptable strategy in life, right? Like, it's like if you think from an evolutionary perspective, if you have two creatures one is happy all the time and is always optimistic and it's like thinks everything is great, and everything's gonna go great. And then you have another creature who's a little bit paranoid, a little bit freaked out like every rustle rustle in the bush. They're like, Oh my God, that's a tiger. You know, which one's gonna survive longer. It's still it's the slightly paranoid one. It's the slightly anxious one. It's the one that's constantly dissatisfied. The one that's like, oh, this food's not enough. I need more like, that's the one that's going to survive and procreate. So I think it's in that sense, there's a moderate amount of dissatisfaction with our lives is actually from an evolutionary standpoint, highly adaptable. And so I'm very, I believe, very, very strongly. This is just an inherent part of our natures to be wildly dissatisfied most of the time like that's, and if you look at like research on happiness and wellbeing and stuff, like that's what you get back is like nobody's attend. Everybody's a seventh or eighth most Well, not everybody, most people are seven or eight most of the time and, and people go up to 10, or people go down the four or five, within a couple months, they come back to a seven or eight.
I feel like in just our short conversation thus far, I understand why you've had so much success because you're making me feel validated in so many ways. Like I am a complainer sometimes realizing oh, that's a good thing. I'm complaining. We hiked Runyon Canyon today. Oh, yeah. And I was miserable. Like I was complaining about every three minutes. I was so upset because I think we went up the wrong path and it was too steep and I was just so upset. And then there was this girl who was like jogging next to us and being like, life is amazing. I was thinking I wish I could be like her instead of complaining. But yeah, I feel like you're giving me permission to complain.
Yeah, I mean, you don't know if I give you permission to complain. I give you permission to be unhappy like that. That is fine. I think the complaining probably doesn't help anything.
Okay, so this pursuit of happiness. What do you think people are getting wrong when it comes to that?
I think people are way too focused on the feeling of happiness. I think they should be more focused on spending their time well doing things that are worth doing. You know, there's a funny thing with like, human emotions, which is that and we've all experienced this is like, let's say you're you're angry and you don't want to be angry anymore. Well, it just makes you more angry because you just get pissed off that you're pissed off, you know, or if you're anxious and you don't want to be anxious. You just get anxious that you're being so anxious. The funny thing with happiness is that if you stop and ask yourself constantly, am I happy? How can I be happy? I want to be happy. You make yourself less happy. And so it's one of the few things in life that putting more effort towards it or more focused attention towards it decreases the result. You know, it's one of the few things in life that you actually by just simply letting it go and not trying to control it. It happens more often. So I think a lot of people get very caught up in how they feel, which is fun, you know, emotions are important, but like you're gonna feel things all the time like you. You're all you're gonna always be anxious or angry or happy or sad or whatever, like life is always gonna put you in those situations. What matters is what you do. It's how you react to the emotion. And if you develop the capacity to consistently perform good actions, despite whatever emotion you're feeling, then more often than not, you're, you're gonna feel good about yourself.
Interesting. What about the people who swear by these gratitude journals where you write down the happy points of each day? Are they focusing too much on happiness? Or why does that work for them?
I think gratitude journals are useful gratitude in general is useful because it is it is forcing you to take a certain perspective of just being appreciative of the things that you have, you know, I would describe gratitude is slightly different than happiness that the two often coincide or happen together. But it's, I think gratitude is more like an antidote, an antidote to misery than it is a cause of happiness, right? Like it's generally when you feel miserable, you're like so focused on the one thing that you don't like that you're forgetting the 100 things that are good. And so the the practice of gratitude forces you to like, take your attention off that one thing you don't like, and realize like Oh, my life's pretty sweet. Like maybe I should chill.
How do you see mental health being connected to happiness are people who have mental health issues? I have anxiety? I have depression in the past, like, are we more inclined to be less happy? I don't know if that's the right word. But yeah, I
you know, I would say happiness is I generally think that happiness tends to get overrated. You know, I think happiness is a natural side effect of getting the other things right of getting kind of the mental health stuff right. And mental health is mostly it's around being able to respond well to situations being able to respond to adversity, well, being resilient, having a decent amount of self esteem, having respect and boundaries in your relationships, having like people around you who care about you, you know, most of those things kind of regulate your mental health and happiness kind of just, if you get those things right, happiness just just starts happening as a side effect. I think people get too caught up on the trying to be happy and they like neglect. You know a lot of the nitty gritty stuff that actually needs most of the focus.
So what I'm getting is don't focus so much on the happiness focus on things that you enjoy. Yeah, make you happy?
Yeah, I mean, it's it's really I tweeted this out recently. I said like the majority of our wellbeing really boils down to three questions. What are we spending our time working on? Who are we spending our time with? And how much are we taking care of our bodies? And it's like, if you can answer all three of those things. Somewhat decently. You're probably a happy person. Most of the time, like all these other questions, these kind of philosophical questions or productivity questions, you know, it's, they're, they're like window dressing, like they're, you know, they're not the real thing. It's get a few good relationships in your life. work on a project that you care about and feels important to you and don't treat your body like shit. And it's like, that's the 20 that drives 80% of happiness
for that second question that who are we spending time with? I guess my question for you is who should we be spending time with how do we find those good relationships and understand whether they are in fact good relations
man that's like a whole I guess the quick answer to that is, we all need people who a we deeply care about and who deeply, deeply care about us and then be and this is usually the harder thing get is who we respect and admire and who I respect and admire us. You know, the second part, the way I define an unhealthy relationship is people who approach who view relationships as power struggles, who see it as who are constantly trying to prove themselves as being worthy to the other person. And this happens you know, in parent child relationships, it happens in romantic relationships. It happens in friendships, in all cases, it is that is what is toxic is when one or both people are constantly trying to manipulate or control the affection or validation that they're getting from the other person. It's very similar to the happiness thing it's like a healthy relationship is when both people are able to let go and be like, I trust you. They have my interests in mind and treat me well. I'm not going to try to force you or control you into treating me well. And it's hard to find that, you know, it's like there's a whole learning curve of having and maintaining healthy relationships. I mean, for those people there, a certain percentage of people are very fortunate and that they grow up with parents who have very healthy and functional relationships and are good at relationships and those people probably grow up knowing how to have healthy and functional relationships. But for the rest of us, we have to figure it out the hard way. Which is, you know, you know, dumpster fire after dumpster fire of romantic relationships, usually in a bunch of toxic friendships. So it's it's a long process for a lot of people but you know, ultimately in the long run again, if you look at the research around happiness, well being life satisfaction, quantity and caliber of your close relationships has OLT is ultimately like the largest factor on all of those things.
Besides seeing and identifying that there's some kind of power dynamic. Are there any other red flags that people should be looking for in determining whether they're in a good relationship or a bad relationship?
Another kind of heuristic to look at is what I call conditionality. So people who, if you're in a relationship and again it can be family romantic or friendship, who their affection or approval is conditional on you doing something or achieving something or saying the right thing or whatever. Yeah, that's it's not a healthy relationship. It's it's fundamentally because you're not free to be yourself. And if you're doing that to them, they're not free to be themselves and so and then as soon as manipulation enters into the picture, now you've got a power struggle and it's, everything goes downhill. So healthy relationships are unconditional. It's you be who you are. You don't have to do anything to prove your worth to me. I appreciate you. I care about you. I love you. I like spending time with you, regardless of you know, whether you're happy or sad or gotten to the right school or make enough money or drive the right car, whatever. So that's another like very simple. Yes, no way to look at it.
I'm thinking of my own childhood right now. And thinking obviously my mom loves me unconditionally, but some things did seem conditional like it was when I got good grades. She was very proud of me when I did not she was not happy about it and yeah, is that bad or is that okay parenting because obviously she challenged me to get to a place of
It's hard with kids because obviously, you need to set conditions, make sure that they grow up and not, you know, just like kill like kill themselves doing something stupid. So you have to set boundaries and limits around children and create incentives for them. There is a fine line I would say the healthy way to do it is to you put conditions, you can set up conditions within a relationship. The love is unconditional. It's this is one thing you know, I get a lot of emails asking me about this and I always say like in the context of romantic relationships, the romantic relationship is always conditional like there are things my wife can do that like I will divorce her. Like it's, that's just the fact and it shouldn't be that way. But my love and affection for her is unconditional. Like she doesn't need to earn my love. She doesn't need to prove something to get my approval. And I think the same is true with like a parent child relationship. Like it's your parent needs, that the love needs to be unconditional, but there needs to be conditions around approval activity behavior, you know, so it's like if you get bad grades, then yeah, you know, you don't go to Disneyland. Like that's how it works. I still love you but go clean your room. So it's it's the conditionalities around the affection in the in the love that's toxic.
How do you establish those conditions that you have in your friendships or romantic relationships or with your parents or with your children? And then what do you do? Or do you establish the punishment at the same time to the consequence for not following those conditions?
So yeah, so this is where we get in the boundaries, right? So it's, if something is, and this is actually a very healthy thing. So let's say there's something that my wife does that bugs me or triggers me or makes me upset or whatever. And obviously, like, I don't want to be upset, she doesn't want me to be upset. And so what you do is you kind of explicitly state Hey, when you do that behavior, like it's, it's very upsetting to me like it, you know, triggers some old baggage of mine and you know, I have trouble handling it. Do you mind like not doing that because when you do that, I don't want to be around you or I don't want to it makes me not want to spend time with you. And so you kind of set this like, Hey, this is like we're going to create kind of a an if then statement within our relationship. of, you know, this thing drives me crazy. Please don't do it. And if you do it, then like, this is how I'm gonna react. It's actually very healthy because it sets expectations for both people. Now my wife knows Oh, that's the thing that pisses mark off. And then if she does it, she knows how I'm gonna respond. She knows how I'm gonna behave. She she does it. There's no like ambiguity or uncertainty around it, you know, much more extreme example or Yeah, I guess intense examples, like just around monogamy, right? It's like, if you cheat on me, I'm gonna leave you right like that's a very clear if then. boundary. I'm still gonna love you. I'm still gonna care about you. Like that's unconditional. But we've set these boundaries. We've set these expectations and if you don't live up to them, then like, we don't have a relationship anymore. And so it's I think a lot of people generally people who are enmeshed in a lot of unhealthy relationships they have they struggled to set boundaries because they don't like displeasing or potentially displeasing their partner like they don't want to create unnecessary drama or, you know, start a fight over something. But what they don't realize is that by setting that boundary, even though it's a very uncomfortable conversation, and maybe you might fight a little bit about it, once that expectation is set, you're preventing, like, dozens of future fights. So it's like, it's the one fight that prevents the next 20 fights. And I think the other thing too, is that once both people get good at that, you actually both people start welcoming it. So it's like, it's a very welcome thing. Like if my wife tells me like, Hey, can I ask you to do this thing because or, like, Stop doing this thing? Because it really pisses me off. And it makes me like, you know, it ruins my afternoon. Like, okay, cool. Like, got it. You know, it's not a problem.
Yeah. You were talking earlier about how, when people are fortunate enough to grow up seeing a good relationship modeled, then they're more likely to be able to spot or get into these good relationships. How do people who didn't necessarily have a childhood where they were seeing a lot of good relationships model? How can they get over it to then find their own good relationships?
I think a lot of it, it's a combination of two things. I think one is look for people in your life who seem to have healthy relationships and just be around them. You know? Be friends with them, but also watch them with their partners, talk to them. And then you know, the second way is, is to read books. You know, there's there's a lot of great resources online for these topics. Now, there's a lot of great courses and seminars and teachers and therapists on these topics. The other thing I will point out too, is that typically, pop culture is depicted horribly, horribly unhealthy relationship dynamics like every rom com ever, is exactly what you should not do and what you should not be attracted to like it's just completely it's funny because like once I like studied all this stuff for a long time and learned all this stuff. I can't watch rom coms anymore. I'm like, Oh, my God, he is gaslighting out of her and like she's violating his boundaries here and here and here and wow, he is so codependent like it's just the whole movies ruined. For me
talking about gaslighting because I use that term but someone didn't know what it was.
Yeah, it's it's a little bit abstract, but it's basically like, it's when you behave in such a way that triggers somebody else emotionally. And then you act like they're crazy for getting emotional. about it. Right? So it's like, let's say I just took your car after this interview and like took it for a joyride, and then brought it back and you were like, what the mark, what are you doing? And I'm like, What's the deal? Like? I thought we were buds. Why can I think wow, you're like totally overreacting. What's your problem, Eric? And she's like, okay, relax. Like it's just the car. Oh, my God, you know, where it's like, you're totally in the right like I just did something very inappropriate, completely, like invaded your life and did something without your permission, but I'm acting like you're the weird one, for being mad about it. And that's what gaslighting is. It's like violating a boundary and then acting like you're a weirdo for being upset about the violated boundary.
It's so common to like, looking back at my past relationships. There's so many times I was gaslighted. Before I knew what that term was. Yeah, and now that I know that's what the term is. It's like that was cast. What about for communication? I am also very blunt. However, my husband prefers a softer way of, of communication. So when I say things, they sometimes come off too aggressively. Sure, just because I'm the lawyer and Muse just like I want to say things as they are and I don't like process of having to think about words to sugarcoat certain things. Does that mean I should improve or he should be better at taking my bluntness
I'm sitting between both of you. I need to be careful. I think people have communication styles. And I think it's useful to understand those styles. It's almost like a form of translation. So in my opinion, my wife so my wife and I were both very blunt, but like, she's Brazilian, so she's very fiery and emotional. And so she'll like on a, an emotional odometer show go from zero to 10 in like two seconds. And for many years, I was like, calm. But eventually, I don't know it's you. You kind of learned to adapt, like I learned. I'm like, okay, to me, that's a 10 but to her, that's a five, you know, and, and so now I need to interpret it as a five. Right? And I think I think every couple, especially once you've been together for a long time, you start learning those aspects of each other, you know, and so, he's probably like, Okay, that was pretty blunt, but like, you know, that's just how she is it doesn't mean she's being mean or, you know, abrasive or whatever, and you just learn and understand after a while, it's like, okay, take some a little bit longer to like, land on the thing, but he gets there. So just given the space to get there. A lot of that is just simply learning each other's personalities and communication styles. I'm not a huge fan of the idea that there is a right style of communication or a wrong style of communication. Like we're all very individual and we have like very individual emotions and we process our emotions individually and then we express them individually. I think there are universal principles of communication. They honestly respect trust, but ultimately, it's we all have our own ways of letting things out.
How do they become so wise? I feel like every question I've thrown at you we've gone through like the whole spectrum of things that have podcasts. Because you you started as a relationship coach, is that right?
I did. I did. And that happened completely on accident. I started blogging in 2007. I was 23. had just finished college and I was blogging about my own dating life, and some of the crazy situations I got myself into, and I developed a readership. And then readers started asking me for dating and relationship advice, and I started giving it and at a certain point, I was like, Oh, I think I have a job like, I should probably do some research and like know what I'm talking about. But it's I've always been very fascinated with human psychology. I've always, you know, read a lot of philosophy and psychology read a lot of self help when I was younger. So it's a it's a subject like this, this subject area was always a passion of mine. And even though I went to college for a bunch of other stuff, you know, I It's that fun little hobby thing that I was doing that turned into the job.
And that's how you knew it was the that was the passion. I guess. Like
I just kept following it, you know, like it. I kind of, you know, early on, I always thought I'm like, you know, I'll do this for a few years. Again, I was 2324 You know, I'll do this for a few years. I'll make some money on you know, make some internet money, go travel, just have a good time. And a few years went by and it just kept growing and growing and growing. And I think it was by the time I was like 27 or 28 I was like wait a second, I think I have a career. And I need to actually sit down and kind of seriously ask myself, Where am I going? Who am I going to be? What am I going to stand for what are like my principles and my message? And so I started figuring it, that was like 2011 2012 So that was when I started to kind of take it a lot more seriously and really figure out like, who am I going to be in this world?
So at this point, I assume with 15 16 million copies of your best seller the subtle art of not giving an F sold most people have read it and understand what the principles in there are but if you were to summarize it for someone who has not read it, what what is this about?
Fundamentally, it's about? Well, it's a lot about what we talked about in the first part of this interview. Ultimately, it's a book about values and priorities. It's a book, basically telling people to focus less on their emotions and less on happiness and more on prioritizing what what is good and important, and just doing good actions and understanding that if they do good actions consistently, then the happiness and the success and stuff will like happen as a byproduct. And I guess the trick of it is that you know, if I wrote a book about values, nobody would buy it. So I called it giving, you know, we're not giving. So you have to give about something. It's just a question of what you're choosing to give a about and like, what is the prioritization of the things that you're giving when you weren't it that way? I mean, it seemed like it's just, it works like people are suddenly open to it and like, eat it up. So I'm very fortunate that I kind of stumbled upon this like silly phrasing that gets actually a very important philosophical concept across the people. In a way that they can understand.
What's the principle in there that the most number of people write you about and say, this changed my life because you told me this in the book.
So one of the one of the most popular parts of the book is what we opened up with, which is like finding the struggle that you enjoy that's in there, the other one is, I talk about responsibility about halfway through the book. And one of the things that I talk about is, you know, the the advice that you should take responsibility for everything in your life. It's a very common piece of advice, but the most common resistance to advice is like Well, bad things happen to good people. What if I've been screwed over? What if I've been, you know, some something tragic has happened? That's, that's not my fault. Why am I responsible for that? And so, in one of the chapters I kind of differentiate between fault and responsibility, I think we we assume that fault and responsibility are the same thing and I guess legally, they often are the same thing. But from a personal psychological point of view. You can be responsible for a lot of things that are not your fault. I think the example I use in the book is that if if somebody leaves a newborn baby on your daughter's doorstep, it is not your fault, but it's absolutely your responsibility to do something. Similarly, if you get hit by a car and end up in the hospital, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to recover and take care of your health and listen to the doctor and do everything you can to get healthy again. So there are a lot of situations in life that we are still very responsible for. But we're it's not our fault. Like we had nothing to do with how it happened. And so I think it's I think it opened a lot of people's eyes to like remove the fault component from it, and it helped people I guess, sit sit better with that. That piece of advice.
You mentioned growing up that you were reading a lot of self help books. What is the one piece of self help advice that just drives you? Absolutely, not fundamentally disagree?
Okay, there's a tie for this one. I don't know how to choose between these two. The first one is kind of the traditional law of attraction, the secret, you know, manifestation, you know, just just visualize and believe something and it will happen. It's that it's not that it's entirely wrong. Like there are I wrote a big article about this on my website years ago, actually, the article is called the staggering. It's a secret, but it's basically so there's a thing called there's a thing in psychology called confirmation bias, which is so like if we went down the Santa Monica Boulevard here and hung out walked few blocks. And then I asked you, what type of cars went by, you'd probably be like, I have no idea. I wasn't paying attention. But like, let's pretend you want to buy a car and been doing a lot of research on cars. You've been thinking about different cars. Different companies. And then we go down the Santa Monica Boulevard and walk around for a while. And I asked you what kind of cars drove by, you would probably remember and notice a bunch that went by because you've been thinking about cars. You want to buy a car. And so because you're you've been researching cars and want to buy one suddenly you start noticing all these cars around you that you never paid attention to before. This is known as confirmation bias. We all do. It happens constantly. And essentially what the law of attraction is, is it's it's just leveraging confirmation bias in our in our favor, right? So it's like, if you tell people think about your goal all the time, you know, like, let's say my goal is, I want to I don't know, I want to be rich or whatever, then you will start noticing opportunities all over the place. It's not that those opportunities weren't there before. It's just, you weren't noticing them. Because you hadn't been thinking about your goal. So in that sense, it works because you are simply like priming your brain to notice the opportunities that relate to your goal because you're thinking about your goal. There's nothing magical about the universe. That's happening. There's nothing like cosmic or, you know, it's like quantum mechanics or whatever. It's just it's a very common and well documented perceptual bias that we all have. And when when used effectively, the secret kind of trains you to use your confirmation bias in a way that helps you the problem with it. Is that it comes with all this kind of like cosmic jargon. And it goes further than simply like, just think about your goal, because it doesn't differentiate between think about your goal and think about who you want to be. So like, let's say, I decide. I want to be seven feet tall and play in the NBA. I can think about that all day and night. I can even convince myself that it's real that I am seven feet tall and I play in the NBA. That doesn't make me successful. That makes me crazy. And I think this happens to a certain extent because it's people don't realize that there's a very important distinction between focusing thinking and focusing on some external goal that you're pursuing in thinking and external thinking and focusing on an identity you want to inhabit. You're kind of playing with fire psychologically when you start asking yourself to like believe in things that don't exist. Because it might increase the chance of something good happening. So yeah, I I've like have a lot of problems with the law of attraction stuff. And I've been very critical of it. I think there's like a nugget of good advice there. And there's just like this outer shell around it. tied for first is the just a positive advice. Like it's, I get why people say it, I get why it became a thing. I think there's again, there's a nugget of good advice there which is you should always look for the positive in anything that happens to you, you know, so mom gets hit by a bus and dies. I'm sure you can find some sort of positive side effect. There. Maybe, but like, let's not kid ourselves. That's a horrible, tragic thing, and you should be sad. And it's completely normal and healthy to be sad.
You know what's interesting, though, what you were saying about confirmation bias really resonated with me because when my very first videos on YouTube, it was titled something like how I'll build $200,000 of passive income this year. Yes. And it wasn't, I think two things one, right. And it wasn't that I manifested it. It was one the confirmation bias of of now I was actively looking for more opportunities to make passive income, whereas I would not have seen them before and I started researching more about passive income, which allowed me to learn more about it and saw those opportunities. But then to I think, for me, the accountability was very important to the fact that I had broadcasts on YouTube that I was gonna make this money. It made me feel accountable to actually trying to go make it
which and this is the thing is that I think what most people experience as the law of attraction working is easily explainable by all these other things, right. So confirmation bias, you brought up another one accountability, which when you look at if you want somebody to develop a new habit or break a bad habit, accountability is like one of the most effective things to get a person to change their behavior. Then there's another thing which is goal setting, right? And it's the value of goal setting isn't so much that it motivates you. It's that you're setting like a finish line. Right? If you just want to be like I want to make a bunch of money. Well, what does that mean is that 50 bucks is that 50,000 bucks, like, who knows and because you don't know you don't know how to gauge your actions and like, scale, whatever you're doing, but when you decide I want $200,000 and X amount of time, now you can start working your way back of like, Okay, how much is that each month? Okay? How like, how many views do I need to get? How many sponsors do I need to get you know, yada, yada, yada? And it's, and again, it's, that's not the law of attraction. That's just like, setting a goal and then like breaking that down into subtasks, making yourself accountable and using confirmation bias to help you it's it's, I get why people like it. I get why people like it. It's just I've seen so many people. It doesn't work if you're not working. Right, like and I think that's not being communicated well, like it's the law of attraction. requires a lot of activity to be happening in the background. Like you can't just sit on your couch and be like, I'm gonna make a bunch of money. It's gonna be great.
As much as that would be lovely. Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about a lot of people that I talked to had that I've made a lot of money in their career, we'll say the first $100,000 is most the most difficult Church and the first million dollars of the most difficult and then it gets easier. And I think one of the things that just clicked as I was listening to you is, if the first one or $1,000 is the most difficult because you're starting to train yourself and develop that skill of how to look for opportunities to make money. And then it gets easier because you've kind of developed that skill. And I remember reading one of your articles that was saying that you should focus most on the skill and not so much on the result.
Yeah, it's again, if you develop the skills the result will happen as a byproduct, right like money just starts happening as a byproduct. It's also the reason that first 100k is the hardest. It's not just that you haven't developed the skill of looking for like finding opportunities. It's also you just you haven't developed skills yet, right? Like, it's you haven't gotten excellent at something like that's what gets you paid is becoming excellent or finding an opportunity like a niche for yourself. And that requires a lot of time and effort and work to get there. And then once you've built that skill, you can just keep running it over and over and over again. And that's why it gets easier. And there's a lot of reasons why it gets easier, but like fundamentally that's that's the main reason is like, you've learned what works and you've learned how to find what works.
Yeah. So a lot of my audience knows me for talking about money a lot. And so I wanted to ask if you have any strong beliefs on the connection between money and happiness, because obviously there's a lot of research out there for years the research was after $70,000 Your any more money doesn't increase your happiness, which is wrong. I know. Well, and then I recently I saw the after it's actually you guys after $500,000 but there's so many like conflicting reports. What is your belief when it comes to the connection between money and happiness?
I feel like my dad put it the best. At least this is what I believe. He says money doesn't buy happiness. It buys away unhappiness, which is a very subtle distinction. Another way to think about it is that money doesn't necessarily make you happy it buys you opportunities to be happy. So it gives you access to things if you are the type of person who attitude and mentality just makes you a very miserable person. There's no amount of money that's going to fix that. But it's, you know, it helps. Absolutely it is absolutely a huge thing. And I think the curve, for most people, the significance of added money to their life. It's going to have a diminishing returns, the more you get, and depending on the person and depending on their ambition, or you know their goals for themselves like most people are going to probably hop off that curve around low six figures like it's just once you have all your basic needs met and you're living well and you've like you're able to take cool trips and your kids are in a good school. I think most people find it hard. Like most people are going to find little added value to like pushing past that. But then there's like a small percentage of people who are just, you know, psychos and just want as many zeros as possible.
Their money happiness correlation stops around that low six figure mark in your opinion.
I don't think it stops. It definitely levels off right. So it's like the the gap the difference between $1,000 year and 10,000 is massive. Difference between say 10 and 100 is also massive difference between 100 and a million. It's significant, but it's not like it's not going to change that it's not nearly the as drastic is from 10 to 100. And then from a million to 10 million. It's like, I don't know what the differences between the like, doesn't really matter. So I think it it does probably increase but like it just levels off. A lot and that leveling off. Probably happens around six figures I imagined like the optimal amount of money to for happiness is probably low six figure somewhere that would be my guess, unless you just love working your ass off which some people do
for money. I know we talked a lot about how you shouldn't be thinking about the result you should be thinking about the process. Is it okay to say I want to become rich or I want to make a million dollars? Or should we figure out the process that we like to get there?
I think it's totally fine to say I want to be rich or I want to be a millionaire or whatever. You know, just to be clear, I'm not against being results oriented. At all. I just think there needs to be a weighting or prioritization towards process oriented goals versus you know, it's, it's results oriented goals are fun, like it's fun to hit a number. It's fun to hit 100,000 subscribers. It's fun to hit a million dollars like that. It's those are nice, celebratory moments. And I think those moments are important. I just, I don't think they're the point. The point is the process. The the fun results based moments are just like the nice little side effects that you get to celebrate now and then. So to answer your question, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a goal like I wouldn't be a millionaire. I think there are wrong reasons to have that goal. And I think they're, I don't want to say wrong reasons. I will say unhealthy reasons to have that goal. And there are healthy reasons to have that goal. I think examples of unhealthy reasons to have that goal is I want to be a millionaire because then people will like me or then they'll respect me or then you know, my family will approve of me or I can show you know, I can have power dominate others or whatever. I think those are bad reasons to want to be a millionaire. Like that's probably not if those are your reasons, then it's not really going to solve much for you good reasons to want to be a millionaire is I want to build something that impacts people enough to justify making a million dollars. I think it'd be fun to build something that earns a million dollars. I would like to get good at a skill so good at a skill that people are willing to pay me a million dollars like I think those are healthy reasons to want to be a millionaire.
Why do you think money can cause so much conflict? I mean, it's very known that one of the biggest reasons for divorce is money. What is the reason that money can create that conflict?
I think money is often a very easy proxy for us. to project our self worth issues, especially for people who maybe grew up without much money, but it's like let's be honest, there's there's a weird tension because how much you get paid in a sense is, in one sense, not a total sense, but in one sense, it is how much the world is valuing you and as humans we all have these open questions of like, am I worth the person? Am I is my life meaningful? And do I have value to others? Like these are all difficult questions that we all wrestle with. And so when the world is showing you showing up and being like 30k for you like that's, it comes with you, right? And it And conversely, I mean it's there's you can there are people on the opposite side of that, where you know, they do one thing and suddenly millions of dollars get dumped on them and they start wondering why me Why do I deserve this like they have intense imposter syndrome, right? Like, I get lucky like, in my business, okay. So I think it's money is is it's the most it's the easiest proxy of status and self worth that we have and it's but it's not really accurate. And it's, but it's hard to like remind ourselves of that sometimes.
If we shouldn't derive all of our self worth from money and the amount of money we make or we have, where do you think we should be deriving our self worth from?
I think it's two things you know, one is comes with, it's funny because we're just going to keep coming back to the same two or three things, right, that drives 80%. But it's get good at something, develop a skill set, you know, become excellent whether it doesn't matter, like whether it's coding or plumbing. or digital art, you know, writing marketing emails, whatever it is, pick something get excellent at it. That process of working towards excellence builds a sense of self esteem and self worth. And you will as you get better at that you will see that worth reflected in how the market values you. So that's where a little bit of that connection between money and self worth comes in. But it shouldn't be about the money. It should be about getting excellent at something just because you love it, you care about it. It's important to you. The second thing is is have good relationships. You know, it's when you have when there are people that you deeply care about and you see that they deeply care about you. It reminds you I'm a worthy person. I'm a valuable person. People care about me, I matter in people's lives, and it's just it's a fundamental human need. So again, it's like, you nail those things, you know, develop a skill set that's valuable and that you care about, develop relationships that you value care about. Don't treat your body like it goes to the rest of this stuff takes care of itself. The happiness takes care of itself. The Money takes care of itself. The feeling loves, takes care of itself. Like you don't have to chase those things directly.
Do you think you mentioned before imposter syndrome? Does imposter syndrome syndrome get solved with those same things?
I think so. Because I think it's imposter syndrome is first of all, I have a very like contrarian take on impostor syndrome, which is I think it's healthy. I think if you made a bunch of money very quickly you should have impostor syndrome. You should be asking yourself, Do I deserve this that I work hard enough for this? Because that is the opposite of taking it for granted. And being arrogant. It's the opposite of arrogance, right? It's gonna it's it's not fun to feel that and I definitely went through some impostor syndrome after subtle art, but it's not fun to feel it but ultimately, keeps you humble. It keeps you a little bit hungry, like, Okay, I feel like I should, I should do something again. So, like, kind of show that this was, this wasn't a fluke, and it keeps you grounded. Like it. It reminds you of like, hey, you know, you're not necessarily better or worse than, you know, your buddies that you hung out with last year, you know, who are still making the same amount of money they did before. So I think a little bit of impostor syndrome is is actually healthy. And as long as it's like not debilitating you but yeah, I mean, it's look like at the end of the day, any sort of self worth issue. It comes back to the same thing. Are you doing good work? Are you surrounded by good people? And are you treating yourself well? And you know, if you can say yes, more often than note all three of those questions like you're eventually you're going to be in a good spot.
Yeah. What was it about the success of the year baesler subtle art that gave you that impostor syndrome? And then how did you get over it?
It's so funny. I almost say I think he's just the velocity of it. My career. So my my career and in blogging and social media, it was very incremental. It was like every year was 10 to 20% better than the year before. And by almost every metric, and then 2020 13 2014 it was there was a pretty big jump, you know, maybe 100% better or whatever. And then right after that subtle art came out, and it just like, the money started showing up, and I think those three or four years, were everything. 10x I think it's just the magnitude of that jump, like it disorients it disorients you, you like when everything's 10% a year, you're like, Yeah, this year is a little bit better than last year and I worked hard, so I deserve this. Like there's no like, ambiguity or like uncertainty or anxiety about it. When one year is 10x better than the year before. You're like, what did I do? Like, how did this happen? I didn't work that hard, you know, especially when you like for me where it's, I worked really, really hard for eight years leading up to that. And then a 10x is and I'm like, Well, I didn't work any harder last year. Than I did the first day. So like, Where the hell did this come from? And so I just think our brains are very bad at handling, you know, curves that steep and in terms of like how I got over it, honestly, I think I just needed a few years for real like for my brain to catch up to reality. I think it helped to do some, a few projects afterwards. That went really well. You know, I had another number one New York Times bestseller a few years later I did Will Smith's book, which was the number one New York Times bestseller. Just did a movie like once you see like boom, boom, boom. Okay, all this stuff is doing well. Okay. It's not a fluke. This is I built the skill set. It's the skill set. It's not luck. It helps you, I guess sleep better at night.
Interesting because I think as I I spend a lot of time thinking about money and that connection with psychology and why people are happy or unhappy about money. It is like the disconnect between expectations and reality that causes a lot of the unhappiness and so, you know, if you're at work and your expectation is that you should be getting a 20% raise, and then the reality is that you do not you feel underappreciated, and there's that it's always that gap and that I think the larger the gap is, the more it kind of throws you off and for you, your expectation was that you're going to increase by 10% a year that growth, the reality was that you went like, you know, increased exponentially and so even that cause some kind of disconnect,
pause the gap. And it's it's funny too. I actually asked, Will Smith about this, and he told me, he said Quincy Jones, the famous music producer used to call this altitude sickness, because he said that throughout the 70s and 80s. You know, Quincy produced a ton of huge musical, like pop stars and stuff. And he said that if they got too famous too fast, it's like going climbing a mountain too fast like you, you you get altitude sickness and you you can die pass out and fall back down the mountain. And so he started calling it that because it's like you have to the same way to climb a mountain effectively. You need to stop and acclimate. Every couple miles or whatever. You need to do that. It's almost like the brain needs that with with success and money into it. Like you can't just go from 100k a year to 10 million a year like it just it scrambles you I mean, it's like lottery winners, right like that's exactly what I think yeah, like it's it's there's a reason why most of them go broke. And it's, they're not. It's like they got a helicopter ride to the peak of the mountain. And they never learned the climb, and they never learned to you know any of the skills or how to deal with the setbacks or the stress.
The one thing that we haven't really talked about is the thing that there's that third question that you've brought up about treating your body. Well, are you treating your body? Well? Yeah. What have you learned about that, that we should take away?
This is definitely the area that so I spent most of my adult life up until a year ago, like hyper focused on the first two questions. I guess first the relationship question and then the career pursuit, skill person. Question. The physical health thing is something that I and it's so funny because I feel like maybe it's more obvious to other people, but like, I didn't really start thinking about my physical health until about a year ago. And I not only did I not think about it, but I really had bad lifestyle habits like I was a big partier in my 20s and early 30s. I lived in New York so a lot of nights out a lot and fine restaurants, you know, a lot of bottles of wine. I traveled constantly for work. I was like never sleeping well. So yeah, I got really unhealthy in my mid 30s. To the point that, you know, I started having health scares and things started showing up in bloodwork and stuff that doctors were like, Dude, you should maybe cut back on the wine. So when I moved to LA, I really, I was really during the pandemic I started focusing on it but then when I moved to LA last year, I was like okay, I'm gonna make this top priority for like the next two years basically, is to get myself to like the healthiest I've ever been and then and then try to maintain that going forward. And and I feel like such an idiot like I've been writing about these topics for so long. And I've been studying this stuff for so long. And as soon as I quit drinking, start exercising somewhat regularly, and spend more time outside, like slept better, like everything in my life got like 20% better like my energy at 20% better my work got 20% better. My I was in a better mood all the time. My I was happier hanging out with friends. And I just I kind of had this moment maybe six months ago where I'm like, Wow, I'm such an idiot. Like I just I know it's obvious like this. This is it's such it's like a cliche how obvious it is but I'm like man, I've been like I've been writing and researching about wellbeing and happiness and emotional health for so many years, like over a decade. And like the most obvious thing you know, the biggest one of the biggest levers you can pull on was in front of me the entire time and I've ignored it. So it's, I can't really overstate it, especially, you know, once you get over over 30 or over 40. Like it's, it's impossible to overstate how important it is to like develop those habits in and maintain them.
So the health thing is so important. I feel like I too, have just now started to realize this, and I'm trying to do the hikes. I'm trying to be a little better for my body. I imagine as a self help expert. There's a lot of pressure on you to have everything in your life figured out and you almost have to you almost with your profession have to give that facade almost Is there anything that you feel like you really have not yet figured
out? Well, first of all, I I try to nip that in the bud in all my work. I'm like very there's a reason if you read my books, it's all the stories I share our my biggest mistakes, pains, tragedies. GupS because it's I realized very early on that if I start taking on that expectation of like, I'm supposed to have this all figured out. Not only am I going to disappoint people but I'm going to drive myself insane because I'm not going to allow myself to be a messy, fallible human, which I am so I actually I take the alternative tack which is I make a point to be extra open about all the dumb stuff I do. And which is why I've been talking about this health thing quite a bit. You know, it's this has been the biggest weakness slash failure mine, I would say over like the last five or six years. I'd say the other thing that I've struggled a lot with or struggled with recently, I mean, we talked about the imposter syndrome, but there was kind of a phase after that, where they're like, I just got inundated with all these opportunities. And everything was so new and shiny and sexy that I just started saying yes to everything. And I mean as we both know like that, that gets you into trouble is when you stop saying no to stuff like you. You're just giving yourself away all the time. So I it's funny too because that that's that's an issue that I thought I solved in early in my career like I did solve that early in my career. What I didn't account for is that when you jump up the mountain really quickly. There's a whole new set of opportunities that are very tempting to say yes to that you have to learn to say no, it's like each level you go up you got to learn how to say no again, and I didn't realize that at the time and so that's that's been another big lesson that it's it's there's there's like layers for this stuff.
That's so relatable I think I'm always scared of saying no to the wrong thing. Things that I should have said yes to Yeah, but you have to because otherwise, I think when you reach a certain level, everyone wants to just take take take take from you and if you allow them to by saying yes to everything, assume there's very little left.
Yeah, yeah. And it's it's your ultimately your time and energy are your are the only real resources you have. Everything else is just a an exchange of your time and energy. And I think the other thing that is hard is that you you reach certain points like once you've built up your career to a certain point, you start running into situations where an opportunity that the 25 year old you would dream about which fantasize about is actually something you should say no to now, and that messes with your head too. And yeah, so there was there was a lot of struggle with that over the past couple years and then and then the health thing, but it's so funny to this is a little bit of a tangent but like moving to LA like really helped with both of those things. I think there's we underestimate the power of our context or environment. And there's something about starting over in a new physical location. That kind of forces you to assess all the other things in your life and say like, do I want to keep doing that? Yes or no? Actually, no. And yeah, so there are a lot of surprises that way too. i
My dad was in the military growing up so I moved around every three years. And now if I live in somewhere longer than three years, I just get this itch to move. And I think I like it because it's just a new start and get to form new relationships and it's also out of your comfort zone. I don't like the feeling of being too comfortable anywhere. Yeah, I've been living this very transient life. So it's like, I love the feeling of being somewhere new and plopped in and you have no friends and you're to make friends and to like establish connections there. I really like yeah, I see why LA was good for you. If you were to write a letter to your 18 year old self, now, what would you write in it?
The harder question is, is there anything I could say? That my 18 year old self would actually listen to? This this question is always so hard, because, you know, ultimately, it's like, and I hate it when people give this answer to but I'm gonna start with this answer, which is it's, it's hard because so many of the failures and mistakes, even though they hurt like they brought me here, so it's hard. It's hard to warn too much against certain things. I guess what I would say to my 18 year old self is I was very socially anxious when I was in my as a teenager, and I would tell him, that people are not paying attention to nearly as much as you think they are. Doesn't matter. And I probably tell them to trust themselves a little bit more. I definitely struggled with a lot of self esteem issues when I was younger, and I think I underestimated myself for a long time. I actually think it's funny. Like you said, when you started like you set this extremely ambitious goal publicly, like that is something I never would have done. When I started out like I, I have a history of under like expecting too little of myself. You know, I probably should have been expecting more when I started blogging, and I started getting an audience I probably should have set more ambitious goals than I did. My goal was just like, go live in Thailand for six months. You know, like, I was like, sweet, I did it. Whereas if I think if I had been aiming higher, I maybe I could have done done a lot more quicker. But yeah, I'd say people, people aren't paying attention to you as much as you think they are in and shoot higher than you think you can.
And that's really good. I also realized what you were saying with advice is so true. It doesn't really matter. I've had so many people give me advice in my life that looking back was really good advice that I wish I would have applied, but it was just the wrong time. I wasn't ready to accept that. And I imagine in the self help world, too. It's not just about picking up your books. It's about picking them up at the right time where it would be applicable to your life in a very actionable way. Yeah, you know,
I see it as this is another thing I learned very early in my career, because I would get frustrated. I'm like, I'm telling this guy all the things he needs to do and he's not doing them or he's not getting it. And what I realized that some years went on is stuff like that started happening. You know, like, there would be a client that I had two years before that. It was like banging my head against the wall. And then two years later, I get an email and he was like, Hey, man, you were right about everything like it. Just it took me a year to like, digest it and then go do it. And so now I really think about it. Like what I do, it's I'm not trying to get people to like change anything. It's more it's like I'm just like, throwing out seeds. And a lot of those seeds aren't going to find fertile ground, but a lot of them will. And some of them will sprout very quickly and some of them will sprout a year, two years, five years, 10 years from now, and that's fine too. It's actually kind of none of my business like how how or when my advice is taken. It's like it's just my job just to throw the seeds out.
I love that. So we have a little closing tradition the podcast is called Erica taught me but really today's all about Mark taught me so what do you want people to be able to walk away from the podcast thing Mark taught me this?
I guess the three the three questions drive mostly results in anything. You know what people are you around? What skill or goal are you pursuing? And how are you treating yourself? Don't overcomplicate things. Happiness is overrated. Money is not going to solve your problems. Relationships are hard, so get good at them. That's kind of it. We cover anything else. That's most of it.
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