Why Almost Nobody Gets The Life They Want - Jett Franzen

I'm sorry it's taken so long, but merch is nearly here. This Friday, the 31st of July at 12 midday central time or 6 p.m. UK time, the brand new Modern Wisdom merch goes live. Head to mwmerch.com now to sign up. You'll get first access and once this is sold out, it's gone. Never to be printed again. You've only got 6 days to be able to buy. So, head to mwmerch.com now. I just did a 7-day silent meditation retreat. Um, one of the, uh, pitfalls that people tumble into when you're doing that much meditation, like multiple multiple like big sits per day for 7 days without talking, is when difficult emotions come up, they use the releasing technique inside of meditation to not engage with the emotion as opposed to embodying what they call conductivity. Conductivity is allowing the emotion to move through you. And if it makes you want to laugh, if it makes you want to cry, if it makes you feel great, if it makes you feel horrible, like if it arises and then you sort of release it from you by kind of it's a kind of pushing away. It's a sort of prophylactic. Um >> that's I'm sitting, I'm working on my mind. This is me being with my thoughts. I'm not being distracted. Yeah, but there's still little penicious ways >> that you can use even the most positive habit as a coping mechanism to get away from something. >> 100%. >> Yeah, I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Carl Jung and I just think every person needs to read some of his work at some point in their life, but specifically about like sort of confronting yourself and you know your own shadow. And I think that's kind of related to what you're saying because Carl Young was was believed that for a lot of people the the real danger in humans was not the evil that they're capable of but the evil that they're denying in themselves. And evil is kind of there's kind of like an ambiguous meaning there in the sense that evil could just be a bad habit. But if I go to the gym, that is allowing me to steer myself away from that bad habit or it's or it's becoming a mask. And it's this is all happening subconsciously. So it's very hard to diagnose it. But I think one of the most important things that people need to go through in their life is constantly confront themselves. Like I very very recently and trying to start this and it's almost like psychological suicide in a way. That's why it's so scary and dangerous is because you're basically trying to expose yourself to yourself, which potentially is harder than exposing yourself to other people. >> Correct. >> And you're like, "Hey, I have X, Y, and Z issue now. How am I trying to avoid addressing these issues?" And it's like, if you can't confront that shadow and then embrace that shadow, then it's gonna control your life subconsciously. You won't even realize it. Think about how uncomfortable it is to have done something that you have praised yourself for that was hard to do. >> To then have to face the realization that that was maybe a very sophisticated coping strategy. >> Yes. >> Like it's not a surprise that people don't really really want to face it. I had this conversation last night. You know, you ask people what's your why? Why do you do why do you work so hard? Why do you build this business? Why did you start to do content? Why do why why? And there's always a kind of PR answer. There's like a publicly acceptable one. It's usually quite positive some. It's uh even if it's negatively uh origined, it's got a positive outcome. It's like the underdog story. >> Yeah. >> Um but for a lot of people, it's like >> I didn't feel love as a kid unless I performed. And I now fear that people are going to abandon me if I'm not working as hard as I can all the time. >> Yeah. >> Or I was terrifying, terrified in my loneliness and I realized that if I'm useful, that's kind of the same as being loved because people want me. They don't need me. They want me and that's a good good enough proxy. So even in your wise you can kind of get to a level of awareness which is like ah I like to do this thing and I felt this way in school and now this is what I'm doing with my life. You go okay what if we take it just at a level or two deeper than that. The same thing about going to the gym why do you go to the gym? But almost everybody I think now when you look at someone who is an extreme in anything uh an extreme in terms of wealth an extreme in terms of beauty an extreme in terms of competence an extreme in terms of smart and intellect I would guess that almost in every situation the reason that those people have developed that is because they feel the opposite. The person who's made themselves very beautiful feels ugly on the inside. The person that has made themselves very wealthy always feels like they're not enough. The person who's made themselves very competent often feels like they're powerless. The person who's created all of this skill and these connections often feels like they're alone. >> Yeah. >> Like you are that shadow and it just some people turn it into something beautiful and alchemize it and obviously they get praised by everybody externally and they can kind of kid themselves and also as you said it's psychological suicide. Like who wants to? It's like dude I'm living in [ __ ] bliss. You're telling me I already overcame this thing that [ __ ] sucked and now I've turned into something that's great. And you're asking me to like go deeper, reveal this [ __ ] veil from myself to now make this thing that is undeniably and objectively good. My physique, my money, my intellect, my beauty, and the way that I bring my skills to the world. And you're asking me to go deeper and kind of completely remove that comforting like disbelief. >> Yeah. I mean, it's it's a story as old as time with you projecting the opposite of what you are in the sense that, oh, if I lack this thing, I must let everyone know that I have that thing. >> And it's interesting because I I don't even I don't know if it was on your podcast, but Naval Ravicon was talking about you should live life like a lion. You know, lions when they're hunting, they are 110% effort really viciously going after it, and then when they're not, they're they're resting. they're not really do they're kind of lazy for lack of better terms. >> And the interesting thing about that is I think that's what a lot of viciously ambitious entrepreneurs or whatever endeavor you have in life. That's what a lot of people are doing. It's like you have the one side that is the it's like yin and yang balance of the world. Like we different cultures over time have sort of established this sort of reality of the world that we live in where you know it's stark contrast. So there's certainly a psychological aspect of that and it's just so the the problem is with everyone is it's so hard to to go deep into your subconscious and like really grasp what you believe. Uh thing that I talk a lot about on my YouTube channel is the concept of self-belief. I think self-belief is perhaps the most important thing especially for a young person when they're trying to pursue whatever goal they have in life, whatever career, even in finding romantic partners, in friendships, whatever it is, you have to believe in yourself because if you don't believe in yourself, no one else is going to believe in you. >> And the problem is you're trying to convince yourself when you're the one that is the most critical of yourself. So you are the most aware of all your flaws and all of a sudden it's like now I need to almost brainwash myself into I'm capable of doing XYZ. I really like Alex or Mosy's advice on that where it's like self-belief is not going to just spawn out of nowhere, right? You have to do something which creates evidence which then not tricks your brain but convinces your brain that you're the type of person that's capable of doing that. Once you establish the identity, once you actually have the identity, that's all the momentum that you need. Like with me with social media, it's really straightforward. You start it, you suck at it. I posted 1,62 videos before I got 1,000 followers. I sucked. The month after I got 1,000 followers, I got 100,000 followers. So, it was just this huge like I was really a student of the game. Like I was genuinely trying. >> And the problem was it was like didn't have that identity. Didn't have that identity. I'm like I just got to keep throwing stuff at the wall. That's my only that's the only thing I could think of at the time. So, I keep throwing stuff at the wall. All of a sudden, you know, it's law of averages, chance something's going to hit. Okay, that hits. Okay, maybe it's somewhat possible. Then slowly but surely, things start to hit. They hit at a higher percentage. All of a sudden, I'm like, wait, I'm the type of guy that could go and record a video in my parents' basement and it gets hundreds of thousands, millions of views. And that just changed my identity and now I'm like, oh, that's I can totally do this. Now, the interesting thing is people want to speedrun the first thousand videos that get no plays. Same thing on the show. It took 400 episodes and three and a bit years for us to hit 100,000 subs. >> Wow. >> And then in the next 400 episodes, we did like 3 million subs. >> Yeah. Exponential growth. >> Yeah. Um and everybody wants to just get to the point where the growth is already exponential. Something I've kind of come to realize is the opportunity. You don't want the opportunity before you're ready for it. And you're ready for it far later than you think you are. I got to go on Rogan's show the first time the back end of 2022. And I think I'd done about 600 episodes at that point and we were maybe at million and a half subs, something like that. And I was saying for a long time to myself like, you deserve to be in the room with the big boys. I think that the show adds something to the world that's really beautiful. I think that you're having conversations that aren't being done elsewhere. You should be in that room, but I shouldn't have been. And if I'd been given the opportunity before I was given the opportunity, I wouldn't have been ready for it. And the desire for people to want to speedrun it and to not have what Jack Butcher calls latent leverage, like you've just accumulated, accumulated, accumulated. And that skill that you do, like staying ready, meaning that you don't need to get ready, uh that is what unlocks it when something finally hits. Cuz if it hit 30 videos in and your next video was at the quality of someone that had done 31 videos, like >> that was your chance. You blew it >> because you weren't ready. >> Good point. >> Speedrunning that. Interesting point on the on I guess like fake it until you make itish approach. Uh, I had this idea for a while that I'm kind of the poster boy for uh, imposter syndrome and there is a fake it until you make it thing. But there is an alternative which is make it until you believe it. And that is just developing the stack of proof so high that no matter how much you don't believe in yourself, it just crushed under the weight of evidence. >> Yeah. >> Does that make sense? >> Yeah. 100%. Well, I think those things go hand in hand. I don't think it's one or the other. I think you do. You're faking it till you make it. You're just trying to get up so many shots to then create the evidence. The whole goal is to transition nothing to something and you're like, "Can I do this? I don't know if I can do this." And you just show up every single day. Something has to hit. Eventually, it has to hit. You know, I was helping some people trying I was trying to encourage my friends and people that I met online that were smaller creators. Like I'm not any giant creator by any means, but I was like, well, this is what I learned. It's that you're not going to know what you're doing. I still don't know what I'm doing. But you start to pick up the pieces. It's kind of like Socrates philosophy. I know that I know nothing. You have to accept that there's so much that you don't know. But then you also need to accept that there's so much that you'll never know. That's just the human condition. So, I'm going to try the best that I can anyways and see what happens. And then all of a sudden the winds start to pile up and all of a sudden like you said you're just crushed by the weight of it. So in a way you are faking it till you make it and in a way you are >> making it until you believe it. >> Yes. It's kind it's kind of like both. And you know more you're right. I think >> the reason that I wanted to say it I said it >> the day that I did the biggest live show I've ever done which was the event in Apollo in London. That was three and a half thousand people and I was [ __ ] myself. And before I went on, this guy at the meet and greet that we do beforehand for VVIP ticket people said, "Do you ever think that you would be here?" Like, "No." Like I'm just the poster child for imposter syndrome. But the reason I wanted to that felt quite exposing to me is I was about to like supposedly go out on stage with a guy that's got it all together and the show went amazing and Standing O and all the rest of it like it was brilliant. But >> I feel like for some people >> believing that you need to have self-belief stops you from actually just doing the thing. And it would be easier for you to go, I can just show up with no self-belief. Yeah, I can do it when I'm tired, when I don't know what I'm doing, when I'm sure that it's going to go wrong, when no one around me believes in me, when everybody's mocking me for trying it. Like, I can just show up and do it anyway. And eventually the wins come. Yeah, I think at some point the the self-belief when people are like, you need self-belief, I think it's true, but it's not doesn't have to be true at the beginning. It's a journey. It's a character arc. Every TV show movie that you watch, every book you've ever read >> always starts with the main character in somehow someway being a little bit shaky with their confidence, not knowing what's going on, and then over time they just develop into that. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on destiny and fate? Like, do you think that you have sort of a a path that you're meant to follow and that you're going to get there? I'm I I'm always interested to hear people's opinions on it because I've heard people that are religious, people that are not religious, people that have grown up in different cultures, and it's I can't really find a a trend or like a pattern there where, oh, I'm religious, so I don't believe in fate or I'm not religious. I do believe in fate. It I'm always curious. So, what do you think about that? Fate's an interesting one because the personality trait that I care about most is agency, >> sovereignty over my own experience. >> Yeah. >> The ability to choose. >> Yeah. >> I happen to life. Life doesn't happen to me. >> But then there's times when you're happening to life, but it feels like you're kind of dancing to the wrong tune a little bit. you've branched off into some other universe that wasn't quite right and things aren't flowing as easily and your gut and your heart and your head don't feel as aligned in the same way. And there's three areas I think that don't remove agency but are interesting to think about. So victim mentality, life happens to me, agency mentality, I happen to life. And resonance mentality, life happens through me. and that like being able to open yourself up to what happens like it comes with a degree of releasing as well and I know you talk about having fun with the process not being not gripping things too tightly because I happen to life causes you to take things very very seriously and that's great and especially in the beginning you need to do a thousand videos you need to study >> all of the other creators and I'd be obsessive >> but after a while you actually because of the accumulation of all of your experience the tool that got you here isn't the one that gets you your blue belt or your Purple belt isn't the one that gets you to black belt. And after a while, you actually need to learn to let go. I'm sure you've seen the videos of Harland walking around the pitch. Like just like like a lion. Lazy. Like straight up lazy. Like distracted [ __ ] riding rodeos and stuff before he goes on. But when he needs to turn it on, he turns it on. And >> I don't think you can turn it on that much if you're gripping too tightly. >> Yes. So when it comes to fate, uh there's certainly there's certainly times where stuff happens in life and like there is no way that I actually made this happen. Like the convergence of the confluence of all of this stuff is way too serendipitous. >> Yeah. >> And then there's other times where you go, I need to swim into the stream here. Like I'm brushing up against the grain of life and it requires me to like steal myself. and the ability to move between those two to kind of like dance when you need to and like I'm feeling my rhythm here a little bit here and things are sort of moving nicely and I can release a little bit more and it's like I need to batten down the hatches and go in full [ __ ] demon mode and that balance between the two I think is is like it's a skill and all of this sounds incredibly fluffy and kind of unobjective >> and yet almost everybody has a sense of what it feels like to be in flow with life to be in resonance with life. So call it what you want. I'm aware that on the internet it's not as rational and as provable and as derivative from metrics as you would like it to be. >> Yeah. >> And yet everybody's felt experience knows that this thing can be true. >> Yeah. I mean metaphysics are fascinating. But it's I I really like what you were talking about agency. I really like what you said about Erlene Holland cuz I literally just made a video about about him and I don't Do you know the Olympic skater Alyssa Lou? >> No. She was she's got like the different colored hair like the pattern. She went insanely viral over the Olympics. But her whole thing why everyone was so drawn to her and attracted to her was she's just fun maxing as they would say like she literally >> Oh, I remember she wasn't she the lady somebody asked her did she win before and did somebody ask her like how is it going to feel like? Do you feel a pressure to win again? >> And she was like I'm >> I'm just lucky to be here. >> She was like I'm lucky to be here. I'm detached from the outcome but attached to myself or I think I'm I'm paraphrasing that but she did figure I I I think she did figure skating for many years was obviously really high performer and then she quit and I think the the nar the narrative online is that she didn't like it anymore and then she came back to it and then like within a year or two goes to the Olympics wins gold and in all of the videos she's just really soaking like I don't think you can fake her joy like she's just enjoying it so much. So I I just made a video that I'm going to post where Erlene Holland is very similar to Alyssa Lou and like he's having fun. He had an interview and they were like oh what like some question about France and he was like oh to be honest I think France will win the whole thing and then he he's like I'm just happy to be here whatever. That's not really what you'll hear from a competitor. Normally competitors are supposed to be like I believe in myself and I'm going all the way. But he's just authentic and he's just like having fun. And it's interesting you talk about Yeah. gripping. I mean, I I almost I call it suffocating the experience to death. >> So, when you want something so badly to happen, it's simply not going to happen because what you're doing is and and once again, this is getting into that metaphysical. There's not really an objective. It's hard to prove it. >> But the best way I can describe it is that you're operating from a frequency of abundance. You are not forcing anything to come to you. It's flowing. That's why people talk about the flow state. It's like your brain's on autopilot. You're not you're not really like >> it's not that you're not intentional, you're just not like hyper focused on one specific thing all the time cuz as you said, you can't be 100% all the time because you have a finite amount of resources, right? So time, energy, effort, mental capacity, whatever you want to call it. It's interesting because I used to be when I started out, I was recording 12 to 14 videos a day and I would get up, I would do my schoolwork, I would go to gym and the rest of the day, my goal is, okay, research, read books, figure out what videos I want to make, and I would make videos until 4:00 a.m. And I did this every sing I was so dedicated to it. >> But the thing that sucked was the more time that would pass, the more I felt like, okay, now I'm growing a little bit. There's more stakes. Now I got to somehow perform better. All of a sudden there's pressure involved. All of a sudden I really need to make this work right now. And my videos started to suck a little bit more. And I was like, "Wow, this sucks." And then one day, it's 3:00 a.m. It's the middle of winter. >> And I hadn't recorded a single video. I was doom scrolling. And I would kind of use the excuse, "Oh, I'm just trying to find inspiration and research." Yeah. >> And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go outside cuz it's freezing and the snow is falling and I'm just going to record videos cuz I know I can't stay out there forever because I'm going to have to go with my bare hand. I record eight videos and I'm like, you know, I'm just going to do these in one of two takes tops. Every single one of those videos got hundreds of thousands. Most of them got millions of views. And I put almost no effort into it. And I was just sitting there like, "Wow, like this is just sort of undeniable." Like I was like, "I just need to hit that quote of getting my 12 videos for the day." >> And then it just happened. You do understand though that people who see that and think, "Wow, all I need to do is just speak stream of consciousness, that doesn't work unless you've got the reps beforehand." >> The only way that you >> can only break the rules of the game once you've learned them, >> right? You can't leapfrog >> the >> I need to learn you. Do you know what woowoo is? You come across this. So, it's a confusion idea of trying not to try. It's effortless action, >> right? >> Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly 2,000 days of my life. And the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. That's because Whoop gives you a complete picture of your health every single day. Your sleep, your workouts, your recovery, your breathing, your heart rate, even your steps. And over time, you get to see what's working and what isn't. And the Whoop 5.0 is the best version yet. It's 7% smaller. You get more than 2 weeks of battery life from a single charge. It's got health span tracking to see how your daily habits affect your pace of aging. It's even got hormonal insights for the women that are listening. I'm a huge fan. This thing rules. It's been a huge part of my health journey. And it's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. Best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap. And you get your first month for free. And there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.woop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.woop.com/modernwisdom. There's this line that uh was in uh a book that I found about it. In the early stages of training, an aspiring Confucian gentleman needs to memorize entire shelves of archaic texts, learn the precise angle at which to bow, and learn the lengths of the steps with which he is to enter a room. His sitting mat must always be perfectly straight. All of this rigor and restraint, however, is ultimately aimed at producing a cultivated but nonetheless genuine form of spontaneity. Indeed, the process of training is not considered complete until the individual has passed completely beyond the need for thought or effort. And the kind of summary of this is the next stage of your development might not be more effort but more ease, right? It might not need more grind but more grace. And it sounds great to hear that dude you can just like stream of consciousness [ __ ] Michael Smoke wellness your way to just like like yapmax this stuff. But it's like if you haven't spent a long time removing your filler words and understanding what sort of ideas work well and understanding a good speaking cadence and realizing the sort of flow that you need to have, you're not breaking the rules of the game to level up mastery. You're just not playing the game at all. >> Yeah. >> And there's a an interesting analogy with the uh the skate ice skater lady that you talked about, NovakJovich nearly quit the he did quit the sport and same thing. too much pressure, didn't enjoy it, and then when asked uh how he got his uh passion back, just said, "I like hitting the ball. I just like hitting the ball." And that I just like hitting the ball thing only works when you've learned how to hit the [ __ ] ball. >> Yeah. Well, that's why I like to say putting your brain on autopilot, right? Because we'll we'll you'll we'll continue the sports metaphor, right? Literally what happens when if you ever played sports when you're younger and you've gotten really nervous. I played baseball. I would go to the plate and I would just be really tense. And what happens is there there's a lot of blood flow to your brain and then it doesn't function as it would if you were just chilling in your c on your couch or something and then you sort of now have to be consciously aware of what you're doing. But the problem is all your training and everything like that, it was developing skills for your brain to run on autopilot. So that's why people mess up or the choke. That's like the art of the choke. >> The yips. >> Yeah. And you're absolutely right. It's like you need to first develop that skill for it to almost become second nature to your brain to allow it to happen. And it is a very dangerous talking point when you tell people, especially when really successful people like entrepreneurs that make a bunch of money or athletes that have spent literally blood, sweat, and tears for 20 plus years of their life dedicated to something when they're like, "Oh, I'm just um Sheay, he has this one uh the MVP of the NBA, Shay Gilchrist Alexander." He's got this one like I It's kind of corny because I think he was just trying to be nonchalant, but he's like I feel like the game's just coming to me. I'm flowing. I'm It's just all natural, but it's like like you're saying, if you're a kid, that's not just going to happen for you. You have to develop the skills. And most people, they don't have that agency to then go and do that thing. A lot of people have asked me, what do you think is the one thing that has differentiated you when you started doing social media? And the truth is, I always told people it was agency, but specifically because a year ago from today, I was literally sleeping on the couch of some guy's apartment in Iowa. Like I was doing and I would get and I would get up every day and I I was doing streaming. I I started clipping. I started doing these random things. And it's like all of a sudden I start to build myself up and I started to realize, okay, I really want this. Like I really like this is not I feel like when people say they want something 95 maybe even more percentage of the time it's a bluff. Like sure every I want the hottest girl in the world. I want to be a millionaire but wanting something is being willing to pay the price that it requires to get it. >> And I realized that I was willing to pay the price. And so that was it was go mode. Like I was constantly go I was doing it so much that my parents were literally begging me not to work. They're like, "Jet, what are you doing just sitting in this basement? I got no sunlight like ever. I was just so dedicated to what I was doing." And then people will see me now and I see hate videos about me every day where it's like, "Why is this guy Jet? Why did he find a way to like hit the algorithm to do this?" Like, he's doing the same thing as everyone else. I was like, "You literally never saw you're not acknowledging the 1,62 videos it took me before I got 1,000 followers. you're not acknowledging the sheer amount of times where I posted something and I was wrong or I got embarrassed or what like all that stuff and then got up the next day and said I don't I don't give a [ __ ] I'm just going to keep doing it again. And what I'm realizing now, especially I just graduated college. I'm realizing that it's talk or action. It's you do or you don't. You know what I mean? There's there's no like, oh, I'm thinking about doing this cuz I had I I don't know who said this, but the most dangerous people are ambitious, lazy people. people that will lead you to believe that, oh, I'm down to to go and start this business idea with you and I'm going to go knock doors to to get leads or do whatever it is. I had a I had an old friend of mine who was just like that and he was constantly, oh, I'm down to do this and that with you, Jet. And I'm always like, I'm going to do it. And I'm like, all right, come to my house. Let's let's set up the plan. He would come to our house. He would set up the plan. And then slowly but surely the conversation goes towards girls, random stuff that that is not and and I sort of fell into that trap because you you act like the people that you're around. And then I realized, wow, that like the difference between the people that make it and the people that don't are you dedicated yourself for a ridiculous amount of time and and I'm not even including myself in that category, you know, like I I I have way bigger aspirations. cuz I'm nowhere near where I want to be. But I really saw after I put in the work, I was like, "Okay, it takes this much to get to that point and I am only, you know, a centimeter down the p down my path of where I want to be." And so then I look at someone like Alex or Mosie, like a Naval Robcon. I'm like, "Oh yeah, these guys, they put in their due time for so many years, probably got clowned on. Probably everyone that was in their previous life was looking at them like, "What is this guy doing?" you know, maybe he's like 25 years old and he doesn't have any job or he doesn't have anything going for him, but really behind the scenes he's relentlessly trying on this entrepreneurial endeavor. He's starting a business. No one really respects you. And so you have to be like, okay, do I have the agency to say screw their opinion, I'm going to do this and give it a shot or do you not? And honestly, that percentage is like may it's it's probably more than 95% of people are on the they think they want it, but they don't really want it. And then, you know, two to 3% 5% are like, I'm actually willing to do it. And and that's what I realized when I when I started the whole social media thing. I was like, okay, this is going to have to be a daily thing that I want to do. Right. Before you win, everyone will ask you why you're working so hard, and once you win, everyone will tell you how lucky you are. >> Yeah. >> It's so [ __ ] true, dude. And and talking about the thing and doing the thing v for the same resources, so you need to allocate yours appropriately. Like literally if you talk about the I'm sure you've come across this in neuroscience. If you talk about the thing it gives you pings of reward in the same way as if you've done it. >> Mhm. >> And yeah so few people are operators. Like this is what I learned in nightlife like club promo. >> Mhm. >> So few people can actually do what you need to do in order to become successful. And that's not some unbelievable level of talent. It's just actually doing the [ __ ] work on a consistent basis. It is so rare. And that's why people tend to be serial successes and people tend to be serial failures because the transferable skill of here is a thing that needs to be done. Here are the ways to do it and I show up and do those things. Like >> when I think back to the start of Modern Wisdom, there was days in 2018 where we did zero plays. Like we done multiple weeks of episodes and we had zero like a full day with no plays. And then I ruptured my Achilles at the back end of 2020 and constructed a special recording setup where I could have my foot still elevated above my heart so that I could still and then a mic that came in like this so that I could still record podcast episodes with my foot like behind the guest. It's like [ __ ] cam like straight from my crotch. And uh that was the level of that was the level of dedication that I had to this. So, I remember I spoke to this girl at a breath work class back end of last year and she hadn't seen me since I first moved to Austin like 4 years ago and she said, "It's so great to see you. Are you still are you still doing those ads?" What do you mean? He says, "Well, we we were talking a few years ago, and I remember we used to invite you on nights out to to like come and meet new people in in this city and country that you just moved to, and you'd send me these like photos of some audio software, and you were saying, and it was like 11:00 at night, and you were saying something about ads, and I was like, "Oh, [ __ ] I forgot that I recorded a fresh ad read on audio three times per episode for every episode." >> Wow. for 600 episodes like before we had dynamic insertion where you can pre-record it and then slot it in. >> Yeah, >> I did like 2,000 ad reads. That was the finished ad read. Think about how many times I failed. Like 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral pro, pre and probiotic, plus all the green super. It's like [ __ ] seared into my brain. And that's because at 12:00 at night, even though I was getting invited to go out, I was like, if I want to afford to live in this country that I've said is my dream, I need to do the ads. And the ads aren't that expensive, which means that I need to do three of them. And I need to make sure they perform well. So, I'm going to re-record them each time so I keep the sponsors happy. So, I have a great relationship with the sponsors. And I'm going to do it at 12:00 at night because I don't have anyone else to do it. It's me, my editor, and a Mormon assistant in a Facebook Messenger group chat. And that is like 600 episodes and [ __ ] 2 million subs. I'm like, "Okay, that's just what it needs. That's what needs to happen in order to get there." >> Yeah. >> The one thing that I wish that I'd done and I know that Alex feels the same like like I can give a nod to this like member of royalty over the far we um I know that Alex feels the same is I wish that I'd captured more content in the beginning. I wish that I'd captured more stuff in the first one year, two years. And it's I guess in some ways it's kind of cool because every thing that you make is put out online. It's not the same like if you're an artist like you should have your first pieces of art that was [ __ ] >> Um but more of the behind the scenes of what it was like of what the the shitty rigs recording setup and the >> like the sleeping on the couch because I you know Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones. I heard this interview with her and I think she was uh Arya Stark at like 10 years old or something in season one of Game of Thrones. Super young. So it was her basically all of her childhood is her being in this incredibly complicated production. >> Yeah. >> And somebody asked her, "What do you wish that you'd done?" She said, "I started journaling in season 4, but I I can't remember what it was like in season 1, 2, and three." And I really wish that I had I really wish that I had that for myself. I wish I had those memories. And I also wish that I was able to sort of show other people what it was like in the beginning. That's interesting because with me, I do have the documentation. Um I at least I have the documentation of what I posted. I didn't document when I would say the same thing a 100 times before I would be cool enough to post it. Um, but yeah, specifically on my on my YouTube, I have videos that it's funny while I was making it, I would tell myself, I was like, 10 years down the line, this is what I'm going to look back and I'm going to be showing people on like a yacht or something. Like, guys, this is where I started from, you know, cuz like my YouTube videos, they're they're so like it's so like, okay, this guy's on the bottom right now just literally trying to work his way up, being consistent every single day. But yeah, it's interesting the cope that people have specifically as it relates to success or you know sort of leveling up in life. Doesn't matter what you're pursuing. But I've been I think that's the one of the top things I've been getting flack for online is I truly believe if you live in America, it does not matter how far on the bottom you are. I believe that anyone is capable of clawing their way up the ladder. I'm not saying you're going to go all the way to the top, but you can go from the absolute bottom to at least bare minimum middle if you really have the agency to do it. There's a there's like a old I don't know if it's like a news interview with Morgan Freeman and he do you know what I'm talking about? And he was like the interviewer was I think it was like a white person telling him something about black people can't >> how oppressed they are >> like how oppressed they are like how they can't get to his position and he he literally goes [ __ ] and they're like what do you mean he's like he's like [ __ ] look at me like look at look at Denzel look at Obama look at all these people and I started to realize I was like you really have to just be viciously consistent and it's going to take a very long period of time. And granted, I I was fortunate growing up. I grew up in a working-class family. You know, I I never had to worry about paying the bills. So, I 100% recognize the privilege that I've had. But then I was out on my own sleeping on a carpet, literally not even a couch, a carpet a year a year ago today. And now I'm on this podcast. Did that happen out of thin air? Like I'm I'm a little bit confused there. But I I do have sympathy for these people, but I think this is a very it's a pain point that people don't like to be called out on if you in any way sort of and for me it's not even necessarily criticism so much as I believe in them. I wish they believe would believe in them as much as I believe in them. You know, people are like I'm not capable of doing this. There there's an old study that was done where they took a bunch of women and they said, "Hey, we want to we want to test or figure out whether or not that people with facial disfigurements get any type of oppression." Are you familiar with this study? >> Yeah. The Dartmouth scar experiment. >> Exactly. Yeah. So, they basically put makeup on them and they said, "Yeah, let us know if if you felt in any way discriminated discriminated against in this interview you're going into." And they had like high-end makeup. They put it on their face and these girls saw in the mirror. They're like, "Oh, yeah, I have it." And then right before they go in, they're like, "Hey, we just need to touch it up a little bit." They take it off. They don't know that. They go in and, you know, at the end they reported that they felt like they were discriminated against. And more than that, they could, you know, point out a specific thing that the interviewer said that they thought was referencing, you know, the scar on their face. And it really shows you the power of belief. Like, I'm not saying oppression doesn't exist, but what I am saying is a lot of it can be self-inflicted for sure. Like people genuinely are told by the media and this is what's so dangerous. It's so dangerous if everyone in the media is telling you that oh because you you aren't an epo baby that you can't make it. You're going to believe that. You're going to internalize that and subconsciously that's going to dictate the way that you move about the world. And that's such a dangerous talking point. And I understand why it exists because they're trying to be sympathetic. And I I get that. But you you once again you got to have the agency. You got to have the discipline to be like, "Fuck that. I'm going to bet on myself and I think that I can do it. And I wish these people would have a similar view about that. Granted, not all of them. I mean, how many examples are there of people that have gone from nothing to something? There there's simply too many, at least in America, that you could sit here and say it's literally impossible. I'm not It's very difficult. I'm not denying that. But you can't say it's impossible. This episode is brought to you by Gym Shark. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. Gym Shark makes the best men's and women's training gear on the planet. And here is something I realized a few years into training. When you actually like what you're wearing in the gym, you show up differently. You train harder. You stay longer. You get way more high fives. Their hybrid shorts are unreal. They're the perfect length. They're super lightweight. They're easy to wash and dry. And their sleeveless t-shirts are basically what I've trained in every day for a year now. They're the ideal fit. They're breathable. And they hold their shape perfectly. So, no more looking like Adam Sandlers, your stylist. Basically, everything they sell is unbelievable, well-designed, high quality, and you get 30-day free returns globally with global shipping, plus a 10% discount sitewide. Right now, you can get 10% off everything by going to the link in the description below by heading to gym.sh/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom10 a checkout. That's jim.sh/modernwisdom at modernwisdom10 a checkout. If you had disadvantages, I agree with you. You are right. It's harder to be successful if X happened to you. Replace X with gender, race, birth, deformity, different language, different country abuse, etc. The main point of the longer conversation is that despite the disadvantage, you only have one choice. What are you going to do about it? Number one, take action anyway and become proof to other people like you, your people also born into or abused into this tragedy that you were that they too can overcome it. Number two, blame and complain. And to be clear, you can do whatever you want. I support your choice, but only one of those decisions will make you better. And I wish I could say this without getting attacked. But you know who wins by you not being successful? Whoever or whatever you blame. And [ __ ] them or [ __ ] that. You can lead a rebellion of one and blame the one thing that you can control, which is you. In your mind, redefine the word blame as give power to. And when you do that, there's only one person you're going to want to give more power to, and that's you. For everyone who's had shitty circumstances, I'm on your side. Your long-term side, the side that wants you to win. So do it anyways with all the disadvantages. And still tell them to shove it and win. I want to be clear again. If you had tough [ __ ] happen to you, it sucks and it's not your fault. But now what? Why do we go? My two cents. win anyway and prove that you can win even when the chips are stacked against you or you're dealt a lousy hand because we can't get dealt a new hand. We've got to play the cards that we've got rather than hoping the dealer rules in our favor. So again, what are you going to do with your [ __ ] hand? The only thing possible. You play the best you can [ __ ] slam it, dude. So >> that's almost like that's almost like a modern day Marcus Aurelius quote. It sounds like >> yeah it's a little bit it's updated for 2026 but um yeah I mean that's I understand that there is this line that needs to be walked which is if somebody's been through a lot of [ __ ] not recognizing that feels callous >> and uncaring and unempathetic and yet if you look at what the real world impact of that is do those people really want to be coddled if they want to get out of this thing probably not and when you realize that there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in telling people that because of your ex disadvantage, you're not going to be able to do this thing, what is meant as empathy ends up being restriction. And I don't know, I I again like you like not cubrious but perfectly fine upbringing. Uh but no, like given no objective advantages, the fact that there are people who have had it worse doesn't negate the fact that most people most people exist in the middle of the bell curve. >> Yeah. >> Like they didn't grow up with extreme abuse, in extreme poverty, with the birth disfigurement. Like most people, and this is what becomes really penicious, you can use look at these people at the bottom end of the tail. you're not sufficiently recognizing their level of disadvantage and that gets like concept creeped out to include earlier parts of the tale as well and then actually bits of the bell curve in the middle. Does that make sense? Well, like people who haven't had those disadvantages pattern match themselves with the people who have. >> Yes. >> And they they take on board that sympathy as a self-fulfilling prophecy of restriction. >> You're like, "Oh, that's me." And this is one of the reasons that for a long time everyone's been real worried about pedestalizing victimhood because it turns the value system upside down. It says that being the most oppressed is actually the position that you want to try and be in because success is something that is only achieved through oppression and victimhood is more noble in some ways. >> Yeah. uh which is it's it's incentivizing people in this very penicious like presenting as pro-social but functioning as like a speed governor on a car. >> Yep. If you're a parent and you have a kid and your kid does something that isn't good, do you say, "Oh, that's okay." like you'll you'll get in next time or it's okay like you're a kid or do you tell your kid, hey, that's not how a good human operates and we need to do better than that. And and and do you give them constructive criticism? Well, if you're a good parent, you give them constructive criticism. Now, at that time, is the kid going to like it when you tell them they can't do it? Absolutely not. But why do parents do it? Because they love their kids and they're going to do the thing that's going to make them uncomfortable and maybe they're out in public and their kids's going to throw a fit. but they have to do it because they love their kids. And the only way that you can help someone grow is by unfortunately pointing out a lot of their faults. It's not the only way, but it's essential. And so I look at it's like I I call it, and this isn't my original phrase, suicidal empathy, where people are like, "Oh, I'm going to empathize with this person who is has self-destructive habits." And I'm going to say that it's okay. Why? Because that's the culture. That's the narrative that we live in. Everything everyone does is okay. there there's there's nothing that is not allowed except for you telling me that there's something not allowed and then all of a sudden, you know, 10 20 years goes down the line, this person doesn't have the life that they want. They still have these self-destructive habits that are causing to some extent their inability to succeed. And then they're like, "Oh, it's the system. It's let me let me place the blame on everyone else." Again, if you were a parent, you loved your kid, would you not criticize them out of a place of love? I think that you would. I think that you would. And you have to do that as a friend. You have to do that as a peer. You have to do that as a member of society. But the problem is it's a story as old as time. Everyone's going to hate you. Everyone's going to hate you. No, everyone wants to live in their own little world that you know everybody else is against them. And are you familiar with Nichzche's idea of resenting man the slave and master morality? >> No. Tell me. >> So Nietze basically believed and I agree with him that pe like we we'll apply it to modern day context. poor and middle class people, not all of them, but some of them, they seem to be obsessed with the concept of morality and virtue. And it's not that morality or virtue are bad, but they weren't able to get external success. They weren't able to get money. They weren't able to get the good wife, whatever, the the nice house. So, they don't really have the life that they want. And so what they do is they move the goalpost from external success to internal virtue which they conveniently get to define. So now I don't have to win in life. Instead what I can do is I can just say oh but I'm a good person. Who defines what a good person is? You. Because it's subjective to you. So it's almost like a free copout. Now I'm not saying by any means that you shouldn't want to be a good person or that virtue and character aren't I feel like my dad's going to listen to this and he's going to be like, "Oh my gosh." Yeah. What are you saying? Like >> shout out shout out Jet's dad to >> Yeah, shout out shout out my dad. But >> you have to understand that like the people are constantly coping. It's subconscious. It's they're not even aware of it. And then I for me I just can't stand these people because they're so obsessed with morality and virtue and they're like I hate all these people. When it's like I don't think you're aware that what you're doing is just co because you couldn't get the external success. I'm not saying external success is everything in life, right? There's nuance to this, of course, but Nietze recognized this. He realized that it's like, hey, these people, they're kind of just making up some [ __ ] to make themselves feel better. And that's what happens. And I mean, I'm a Christian myself, but a lot of Christians do this where they're like, oh, you know, people online say that Jesus is the personification of slave morality. You know, the person, they have resentment built up against the people that are successful, then they switch. They they get to choose what's actually right. But the thing is is that Jesus is not slave morality at all because slave morality comes from a place of resentment and Jesus didn't have resentment. So I really hate that narrative online. But it's like you'll you I will admit that you see this a lot in Christian communities or whatever where they'll kind of be like h like you know it's it's harder for surely I tell you that it's harder to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to walk through a needle whatever that Bible verse is. And they're like you shouldn't get money. Like that's anti-Christian. And it's like, well, you could do amazing things with money. You can help people with money. It's not inherently. Yeah. It's cope. It's cope. So >> hope. So the problem is you go online, you say that you are. It's funny because I I've posted a few videos on this over the over my time on social media and every time I get stitched a hundred times, everyone's like, you know, [ __ ] this guy, Jeff. >> Out of touch. >> Yeah. And it's funny because they'll be like, you know, you'll get a comment, he actually thought we were going to agree with him. No, I I didn't think you were going to agree with me. I was just willing to say what needed to be said. But these people are it's just everywhere you go you see cope co cope. I used to be that guy. That's how I know. Right. And I'm not saying everyone does this. I'm not saying everyone that is concerned about being a good person is doing it out of resentment for people that have external success. Not saying that at all. But a very large percentage of them surely are. >> It's such a cheap shot as well. >> It like it's so predictable. Before you look at the comment section, you can already see like this is out of touch. He doesn't understand. And he thinks that the only thing that matters is materialism. And yeah, there's this idea idea from Isaiah Berlin called the inner citadel. Familiar with that? Very similar to what you're talking about. So he says um when the path to human fulfillment is blocked, we retreat into ourselves into a kind of inner citadel where we're walled off against all of the fearful ills of the world and we make our own laws. So, an example of this would be um your leg gets injured in a battle and you have the choice to either try and rehabilitate the leg, but if you can't rehabilitate the leg, then you cut your leg off and denounce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like this. We see it everywhere. People that say weight has no bearing on health because they've struggled to lose weight. People who say that jobs are for suckers because they've struggled to hold one down and they turn to a life of crime. people who have been uh cheated on and found it difficult to get a relationship to work. So they turn to polyamory or they become incelss. Like at each of these different I guess it would be volells. Uh at each of these different junctures what somebody is doing is saying the world's denied me that which I want. I'm going to rewrite the rules, retreat into myself so that I no longer need to face the reality that I could get it if I did something different. And again, like this is there's two very very unpopular things to talk about online. There's many, but like two that are kind of reliable philosophically. One of them is that and the other is the arrival fallacy. If you say the view from the top of the mountain that you're climbing up is not going to be as satisfying as you think it is. >> You sound like a fat guy at a buffet telling someone who's starving that food doesn't taste that good. Yeah. Like you suck the engine out of them and the oxygen gets pulled out of the room. it it's seen as uh like a bourgeoa. It's seen as judgmental, as opulent, and rightly so. You, a person who has the thing that I want, are telling me, a person who doesn't have that thing and wants it, that the thing I want won't satisfy me. But how many people that have got a problem with their selfworth or a scarcity mindset reach some level of success or fame or monetary notoriety and then go man >> all my inner problems were solved. It was so great. Like so one of two things is happening with that which is the first one it is true >> that when you achieve something that you try to fill an internal void with an external success it's not going to reliably work. >> Yeah. >> The other one is that everybody that reaches a level of success is part of some weird cult cabal that's all cartelling to convince other people to like pull the ladder up after them so that they it's like >> no one else can win. >> Exactly. Exactly. It's like oh it's not that good. [ __ ] idiots. Like, no, that's obviously not the case. It's obviously the case that people can't fill internal voids with external accolades. >> Yeah. And this is like you were saying, it's >> any time that you'll see an interview with a really successful person, this seems to be a common trend. Well, they'll say, you know, the favorite days of my life were when I was going through the struggle, when I was, you know, building every single day, was unsure whether or not I was going to make it because that made me who I am. or you know they'll say like wow like it really was the journey the whole time. I' I've said this before. I think winning a championship as a professional athlete has to be literally one of the most underwhelming feelings ever because you just worked however whatever percentage of your life this was your main goal or so so at least they say and all of a sudden you have it but now you have this thing and it's okay my life is the same. It's like, are you familiar with Lan's theory of desire? >> So, in order to desire something, the object of obsession must be perpetually absent. You can't have that thing because the moment you have it, you can no longer want it. This is this can apply to anything in life. Relationships is the biggest one. This is why it's people are always talking about why is it that like right when I express to this girl that I'm interested or or tell this guy that I like him, it seems like they pull away. Well, because now they know they have you and it's not really they don't have that fantasy in their head. Well, the same concept sort of applies when you have this big goal and you want it and you're convincing yourself like that's going to be the thing and it never is. And this is I I I I've never really seen an interview where I felt like the successful person was being genuine where they didn't in some way, shape or form acknowledge that if they were asked. But it all goes back down to Albert Kimu has this quote. It's the end of the myth of Seisphus. I'm paraphrasing it here, but he says the struggle towards heights uh is enough to fill any man's heart. And he's basically say like it it's literally the journey. It is Seephus relentlessly pushing that boulder up. He knows he's never going to get it to the top, but it's the process of pushing that boulder up. That's everything. When you think about life, if you if your life is a timeline, right? But let's say you start going towards your goals when you're 18 years old or maybe 22 when you graduate college. So you have like 22. If you're lucky, you live till 75, 80, but probably you're going to tap out at like 60. So 99.9% of like actual time, the metric of time is going to be chasing the thing and then you're going to get it. So why in the world would it make sense to just be like, "Oh, I can only enjoy myself once I'm there." Cuz you won the cosmic lottery to be alive, right? It's like one in 43 trillion or something. Like you're winning the lottery multiple times to just be alive. And so why would you then be like, "Oh, I'm only gonna do what I have to do to enjoy a 0.0000001% of my life to be like, ah, I did it." And then probably after that, you might be underwhelmed or depressed or something like that. I think you need to enjoy that 99.9%. And and that is enough to fill a man's heart. From the meditation retreat, one of the biggest takeaways I had was for many of us, goals are contracts to self-criticize until we succeed. like running away from a monster that never gets tired. This contract makes permanent success necessary to avoid being swallowed by misery. Like desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. And yeah, you're right. Almost all of your time is going to be in the pursuit. And and what that means is you are going to be underwhelmed. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. 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And right now you can get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdism and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom >> and modern wisdom a checkout. Have you ever seen uh Scotty Sheffller the golfer talk about what happens when he won the championship? That's one of the few pattern breaks in somebody winning. >> I know exactly what you're I made a video on it. I know I know exactly what you're talking about. >> [ __ ] awesome. So yeah, I mean he wins the masters or a grand slam perhaps some huge illustrious title and he gets to do the press juncture at the end and he's sitting down and everyone's going dude like how's this going to be like how does this feel and yeah he he has a slightly surprising response >> end of the day was like I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers I don't I'm not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world because what's the point, you know? This is not a fulfilling life. It's it's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of like the deepest, you know, places of your heart. You know, there's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world, and then they're like, "What's the point?" And, you know, I I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point? Perhaps if you could be satisfied simply by hitting the goal, you would kill yourself. >> That's the mo most Jet Franen response to that video that I could ever but you're not far off, right? Like the reason that the arrival fallacy exists and the reason that we have adaptation is that if the first time you had sex, you were done with sex for the rest of your life or the first time that you killed uh a deer, you would be satisfied with that. we wouldn't be chasing >> the next piece of progress. It's like, >> yeah, >> there's this uh dooka d u k k h a uh it's this line from the Buddha and a lot of people here um uh life is unhappiness uh like is one of the translations of this but dooka can actually be translated as uh unsatisfactoriness uh so it's not sorry uh life is suffering like life is suffering is a line from the Buddha but it can also duka could also be translated as life is unsatisfactory iness like >> Morgan Hel has this story about when him and his family went away on holiday and he'd been planning this trip for ages and it was the first one him and his wife had got to do with the kids and they they knew exactly where they were going to sit at this resort. They they they looked at the menu in advance. They knew what drinks they wanted to get. They' done everything. And they arrived. They sat down the first night and he thought about what the experience was like and he's like, "Well, the drink was nice, but there was like a little bit too much ice and I probably should have got it blended as opposed to as opposed to on the rocks." And like it was really beautiful. The table that we chose was great, but like there was some sand between my feet and that that sort of was irritating a bit. And I I I look, the ve was lovely, but the salmon also could have been a little bit better. And then he walks out onto the balcony and he has this thought like as they've arrived the first day that they're there. He's like, "This is so great. We should come back here next year." Like immediately in the process of enjoying the thing, he's already moving the goalpost to the next thing. The experience is unsatisfactory and the uh enjoyment of the thing is primarily based around recreating the anticipation of it again during the experience of it. It's kind of deranged. You know, I was I a couple months ago I went out to eat dinner and I ordered a steak and they gave me a chicken and I was happy that they gave me the chicken because I was like, "Wow." I was like expecting the steak and I just got a chicken which is like a curveball. And I started to realize that this is like your the ability my my uh my sophomore year AP US history teacher always had this quote roll with the punches. You've probably heard that before. Roll with the punches, guys. roll with the punches. But truly, that's one of the best skills to develop or personality traits. I I don't know if it's, >> you know, genetic, but your ability to just go with the flow >> is makes things so much better. My f I come from a very anxious family. My family's very anxious. They like to plan everything in advance and love them to death, but like sometimes it's like, wow. Like we're I feel like like we're suffocating the experience. And it's one of those things where it's like if you just kind of let it happen, then you're going to like it more. My brother is not a very anxious person. And I always find that like being just in the presence of my brother when you're like going and doing things relaxes you and it's just like better. It's like if I could have anybody on a road trip with me, it'd be my brother cuz he's just let me just go with the flow. It's not too serious. >> He just he's very practical about the way that he approaches things. And yeah, I think life you just I don't know the expectations and wanting something to be a certain way. It kills it and suffering lives. So you have the expectation of how the world should be and which is personal to you and the reality of the world, the delta between those two points. That's where suffering lives >> because you're like, well, it was supposed to be like this and it wasn't like that. And so in other words, if you can just eliminate the expectations, which in all fairness, you probably can eliminate expectations, but you can at least lower your expectations, you'll be pleasantly surprised a lot of time. >> It's only suffering for as long as reality underdelivers on your expectations. Exactly. If reality overdelivers on your expectations, >> that's that's pleasure. Yeah. Exactly. But so yeah, I mean low low expectations are kind of the key to a good life, but also it's a revolutionary thing to say in the modern world, I'm good with that or I'm satisfied. That's good enough for me. Like satisfaction is kind of seen as surrender. >> Mhm. >> And that's again creating this like inverted motivation. >> It's not biological to us. I'll tell you that much. Are you familiar with the hyonic treadmill? Yeah. So, it's like I I was always when I found out about the Hy hadonic treadmill, I like so much of life just made sense to me right there because I was like the moment like everything has to regress to the meat. It has to. So, think about our ancestors, right? A lot of our ancestors lived in tribes and they would hunt for game to get the food that they would need to survive. Let's say you fought a bear. You and some of the other men of the village went out, fought a bear. This that's a huge achievement. That's like awesome. You're probably you probably have you're high on life at that point, right? You just killed a bear and now your village has meat or whatever and you're feeling really good. It's like so what? You're just going to put your guard down now? Like you're just that's it. And so then you would not care and then all of a sudden you know there's infinite amount of predators out in the world and then they would just >> next comes along and [ __ ] you up. >> Exactly. And so you you literally have to regress back to the me like so many people I'm sure people ask you this. It's like oh what's it like having so many followers? And it's like, dude, I don't know why, but when I had less than a thousand followers and I gained two, three followers in a day, that almost felt better than right now where I'm, you know, getting thousands of followers a day. And it's like that's just how it goes. It it has to rest. I mean, it's, you know, the easiest metaphor, whatever you want to call it, is like developing tolerance for drugs. Like eventually you're just it's not going to be enough. You just need to keep pushing it more and more. Well, the ruthless thing I think about people that are competent and that drive themselves is that every new level of success becomes the minimum level of acceptable performance moving forward. This is the curse of competence. Yeah. >> Right. If you're good at things and you regularly do well, then success doesn't become a cause for celebration. It's simply the minimum baseline entry that you're allowed to pursue. >> Like anything less than success would be failure and success itself becomes nothing more than acceptable. like that. There's a line from a John Bellian and Luke Holmes song which is uh if the higher I climb is the further I fall then why love anything at all? And he's talking about falling in love with somebody and opening himself up. But I think the same thing is true for a lot of people in pursuits and it sounds very morbid. Like I'm aware that this sounds morbid but it's good because you do existentialism and I'm British so it's kind of the same thing. Um >> but a lot of the time the I I realized this last year. This podcast is the eighth biggest podcast in the world. Eighth biggest in the world. Spotify chart last year. [ __ ] unbelievable, right? Spotify wrapped. I wake up one day. We found out one day before and I'm like, "Holy [ __ ] that is >> insane." The just so [ __ ] insane to be this guy who's not been a part of a network, who's never taken money from outside investment, who started it in his bedroom and still does it with the same editor he had 8 years ago. To get to that point is so [ __ ] phenomenal. And that lasted for about half an hour. And then this thought crept in which was, dude, if I'm if I'm not in the top 10 next year, I might as well kill myself. >> Yeah. >> Like eighth would be just about okay. Seventh would be good, but presumably only for about half an hour before I realized that was the new baseline. And if I'm not in the top 10, then it's a failure. >> Yeah. And that's the same way other people will perceive you as well. >> Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Carr's got this [ __ ] wonderful line where he says, "Trajectory is more important than position." So if you are number 300th in the world but last year you were number 600th people are like wow dude you're on the things are moving right but if you're third in the world last year being first that is almost toxic and I think a big part of it is that we have such recency bias we can only really remember what's going on. We also want to be someone that's moving in the right direction has to be popular in the moment. And there's always this sense there's a kind of like nepotism I suppose or like inheriting daddy's money. There's this sense that if it hasn't happened recently maybe the underlying signals that are supposed to be the reliable uh indicator that you're good at doing the thing maybe they've fallen away. I've been fascinated obviously because of this this number eight in the world thing last year and and that creates a new kind of >> pressure a different kind of pressure but I've been fascinated about the difference between having never made it and having fallen off >> the perception of those two things and the gold medalist syndrome is exactly that. Gold medalist syndrome is >> having fallen off and I think I'm sure you've seen the studies that say uh bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists. Yeah. >> Which is just [ __ ] hilarious. Like just about nearly being there and not getting it. >> Yeah. >> Is worse than being a few a few steps away. >> Exactly. Yeah. Well, first off, congrats on number eight in the world, bro. That's like ridiculously impressive, especially like you were saying, you started on your own. You didn't take money from outside investors, which is huge. Are you familiar with author Schoenhower's The will to live, the will of life? So the will is basically it's almost like this metaphysical part inside of you that it creates your desires. He he argued that you're not the one that creates your desires. It's just created by the will and then you sort of recognize those desires or or you realize that they exist and then this sort of subtly dictates the decisions that you make in your life. And the will is not concerned about you being happy at all. As a matter of fact, he almost argues he does argue that happiness is a temporary state. You cannot always be happy. And happiness, even when you do get it, it's it's very short short-lived happiness. And it's really because the will just wants more and more and more. And the des the the desire of the will, it just wants to replicate itself. So that's like drawing you to have sex and reproduce. And basically, the will is just telling you, oh, you got to do all these things. And it just relentlessly pushes the goalpost more and more. And that's why author Shopenhau is widely regarded as, you know, a pessimist. People say if you're going to get into philosophy, don't start by reading him. >> That's a very interesting talking point to me. It seems like the internet hates pessimism, which I understand why. You don't want to be around negativity. >> It's a boner killer. >> Yeah. But they you you got to acknowledge that to some extent there's a lot of truth behind some of the talking points in relation to pessimism. And that's what I tried to I I tackle that idea on my YouTube channel. But yeah, even people will be like, "Oh, Jet France and he's he's he's a doomer. He hates all this stuff." Even though at the end of my videos, I'll try to, you know, be like, "Okay, but >> have an uplifting uncle." >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Have you looked at instrumental goods versus ultimate goods? >> Maybe. >> That stinks of a video that you should do. Uh that's I'm putting a request into the DJ for you to do a So, uh instrumental goods doing something for something. ultimate good's doing something for itself. And if you ask the why do you do that thing for any pursuit, >> eventually you get to an ultimate good, >> right? And typically it's something like to feel peaceful, to feel happy, to be loved, to be enough, to be able to rest. But instrumental goods are uh why do you get up and go to the gym? Well, to have a good body. Why do you want a good body? It makes me feel fit. Well, why do you want to feel fit? And you just keep on going down, down, down, down, down to something close to an ultimate good. And my concern for a lot of people, including myself, is that we live instrumental lives. Our entire lives are instrumental. >> Yeah. >> We are doing the thing to do the thing, to get the thing, to do the thing, to get as opposed to a radically revolutionary belief, which is maybe I can just sidestep all of this and go straight to the ultimate. like what is the what is the feeling that I'm trying to get? And typically it's a feeling. And this is another idea that I've been so [ __ ] obsessed with and it came out of the it came out of the meditation retreat last week that if as a guy you pray at the altar of [ __ ] your feelings, just work harder, how can you be surprised when you achieve but you don't feel? >> Yeah. Like the route that has gotten you there, the fuel that has arrived you at the destination has robbed you of the satisfaction of being there. >> Yeah. >> And that to me is just it's this game. It's this game that's always going to be played. And what we've done, I'm going to sound incredibly leftwing here, in modern society with a meritocracy and capitalism, is we've encoded, we have uh like canonized and and and created an architecture of pushing the hyonic adaptation button as much as possible. It's a it's an instrumental life. It is an instrumental life. Why do you want a the next rung on the job ladder? Why is it that you want that? Or a bigger paycheck. I'm going to get more respect from people. It's like, well, what are you sacrificing? Oh, I'm going to be home less with my kids and my relationship might suffer and I'll sleep worse and my health might degrade, but like you know the thing, like what about the thing? >> And yeah, it is radically revolutionary to just go, "Fuck it." Like, I'm good. I'm good. I like I like this. I like where I'm at. >> The scariest place to be, and this is what this is my biggest fear. I I I'm absolutely horrified of it is waiting all day for 5:00 p.m. all week for Friday, you wait each summer for the winter and so on and so forth. It's like you've probably heard those people say, "Oh, you know, once I once I graduate high school, then I'll be away from my parents, then I can do what I want." Oh, well, now I'm in I I just got I just got to finish college. I finished college up and then you know what? I'm going to go travel the world. But you know what? Then then they graduate college. I I got to work on my career right now. I just And it's there's always something. There's always something and that you never live your life. And there is a talking point online where people will say happiness is just not wanting any moment to be anything other than what it is. >> Things to be different. >> Yeah. You're you're not stuck in the past. You're not anxious about the future. You're fully accepting the moment. If you go outside and there's construction and it's like really loud, this goes back to what we were talking about before. It's like you had the expectation that there was a world that existed that there wouldn't be construction. And the fact that there is construction, the delta between those two points, that's where you're suffering. You're getting pissed off. >> You know what's an interesting indicator, early indicator of this, how much somebody complains. >> Somebody who complains a lot is basically admitting that they have a poor model of reality. >> Yes. >> Why is there all of this traffic? It's because reality has traffic. Yeah. >> And your model of the world was a reality that didn't have traffic. Your model of the world is wrong. Reality is undefeated. >> Yes, >> it's a million and0 a million knockouts, right? Reality is undefeated. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance. 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There's this uh little essay that I want to read to you. Don't wait. Life is happening right now. I become obsessed with the belief that life's duties will one day be out of the way and then you can finally start doing the thing you want to and living your life. It's a myth. It's a lie. Marie Louise von France talks about the provisional life. She says there is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being one is doing this or that. There is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about. Similar to another idea called deferred happiness syndrome. The common feeling that your life has not begun. That your present reality is a mere prelude to some idilic future. This idil is a mirage that'll fade as you approach. revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death. It's strange. I regularly have this sense of foroding and guilt about time slipping away, that I'm not making enough of my days, especially when I look back on a week and I know that I've done things and dedicated myself to pursuits and working hard, but I can't fully recall how I spent my time. So, I worry that this is just a one week microcosm of how I look back on my entire life as time having passed but me not really noticing it. of existence occurring but living not actually having got going. >> Wow. You know, I when I was in later years of high school, I was trying to save up money for college. So, I picked up all these jobs. One of the jobs I picked up was, you know, that stereotypical factory job. And I was in Chicago. It's middle of winter, freezing. I'm working the graveyard shift, so middle of the night. And I worked this job and I remember I would sit there and I'd be like pissed off because all my peers, all the people that I knew, none of them were working a fraction as hard as me >> and I knew their parents were going to pay for their college or whatever it is. They they were living life up. >> That's the temptation of the victim mindset. >> Yeah. Exactly. And so, well, I fell in I was the victim mindset because I would be it would be 1:00 a.m. and I'm in this trailer lifting heavy boxes. It's like 30° in this cuz they literally don't have heaters and I'm like life just sucks man. Like I'm I'm just like sitting there. I'm like why why does this got to happen? Whatever. >> And there was every once most of the time you'd be alone but every once in a while you'd work with another person and this I became friends with this other guy and me and him it was like the double the victim mindset but he was kind of playful with it which I liked. He was like you know life is so [ __ ] and then we'd joke about how [ __ ] it was or whatever. And you know, I remember like sitting there and I and I built up resentment cuz I was like, man, these other people, they're not working as hard as me. I'm I'm just trying so much more than them. And yeah, and that went on for for years. And that wasn't the only job I had. I was working three jobs over the summer. I was just constantly doing stuff. And then we get to college and these people, I had better grades than them and they would go to a nicer school because they could afford it. And I'm like, "Ah, man. >> I really keep drawing the short end of the stick." Joe Rogan, he has this this one clip. I don't think it's like viral or anything, but he's like he's like those people that always say I can't catch a break. He's like you need to get away from those people. I can tell you as someone who used to be that person, you need to get away from those people cuz like you're saying if you complain that this is all of a sudden you're just making your life worse. And then I eventually I ended up it was super cliche but ended up reading meditations by Marcus Reelis and I was like wow like this is this is incredible. >> The ancient clean your room by Jordan Peterson. >> Yeah, exactly. So, it's like, okay. Um, and then event like, you know, and and I sort of was that way for a while. I mean, it it was years. It wasn't like I just flipped a switch and boom, now I'm not victim mindset anymore. It was, well, let me take a hard look on my life. I have no friends. I have nothing going for me. I'm just going to school, minding my business, and that's it. Okay, we need to make some some sort of change. And to amplify this, what makes everything so much worse is that for millennia, the only people you compared yourself to were the other people in your tribe, right? You couldn't you couldn't know what was going on with Kelsey when she was studying like you you didn't know you didn't we didn't have any was going on in the [ __ ] valley over there a 30 person pod in 150 person Dunar group that's >> exactly and so what's happened is social media just rapidly hit us our brains have not psychologically adapted to under to comprehend this. So, a guy like you, you get millions, potentially billions of views every month. It's like all of a sudden all these people have opinions on you, but more than that, what do you do? You doom scroll. Everyone doom scrolls to some extent. Or you're going online. And what does what does online feed you? The top 1% of everyone. You're you you're seeing the most attractive people, the funniest people, the richest people, the most well spoken, articulate people, and on and on. And then you're like, "Wow, my life sucks." Like I like I was sitting down there and it would be like Andrew Tate starts getting popular like like I see the Milk Boys like everyone just seems to be living this amazing life and it would really piss me off because you you see these degenerates and and I was why do they get that? That's not fair. Like they're not doing anything that's worthy of, you know, making all this money or having all this attention and being in the public eye. And I wanted that and I wanted it bad. And it literally wasn't until I actually let all of that go that I was like, you know what, I don't have resentment. I can accept that I am who I am. All of a sudden, all those things started to fall into my lap. And it's like that's really how it works. You you I feel like you have to let go. Kind of like what we were saying before because otherwise in a way you're paralyzing yourself. You're not going to take action. You you're just going to feel bad about yourself and have pity. And that's uh if you carry that on through your 20s, through your 30s, all of a sudden you're going to be 35 years old and look back and be like, "Wow, I wish I would have had the ability to just accept who I am." But you can't really blame I mean, we're the first generation that's had this. So, can I give you a bit of advice for what I think is going to come next for you, >> please? So, you've got yourself to the stage now where the wheels will start to spin on their own and there will be a lot of opportunities that will come your way, different things. Maybe I'm going to start a business. You've already got an app, right? Well, I need to run the app. Like, that's important. I need to have a dev team. Like, well, we need to do marketing. Like, maybe we need to take some outside investment. and you'll start to take investor calls and you maybe look at acquisition and you'll start to pay a little bit of more attention to well there's a competing app that's just started and well you know I I I need to make a little bit more money because my lifestyle should inflate because I'm I'm growing up and like I worked at this like I worked hard. Do you not remember when I was doing the thousand videos and nobody watched like I should start to do some sponsors. you take sponsor calls, those will begin to rack up a little bit more, but they'll be worth money and you'll do the just connect with me dinners and you'll start to make more impressive friends. And one of the things that you need to be incredibly cautious of is not doing the thing that got you here. Now, you shouldn't hold on to the working modes that don't serve the principal output. So that's you don't need to uh play the game the way that you used to. But there are a few key uh areas of contribution that if you let those slide, all of the competitive advantage goes and that for you is likely going to be reading. It's like if you don't protect your reading time, if you're not constantly feeding yourself with new ideas, you're going to become stale and you're not going to have new stuff to talk about. And what it's going to feel like is growth. It's going to feel like growth because all of the objective metrics are going to continue to expand and continue to get better. But what made you differentiated was this very particular kind of obsession with learning interesting ideas, scrutinizing them, and then communicating them. Right. That's kind of it. Like that's the engine. That's the engine that both me and you have used. >> Yeah. >> And maybe you'll get some staff. You need to manage the staff. Like that's kind of you've got an editor. Ah, [ __ ] The the edit wasn't quite right on that thing, so I need to negotiate with him. And like, he needs his motivation jing up, so I I'll take him out for dinner. And well, the editor needs an assistant, so like I might as well get him. Before you know it, you've built this very unwieldy spaghetti monster. And that's fine as long as you protect what the main thing was. And the reason I say it is I've noticed as I've sort of swung to and fro on the show, when I've protected the first couple of hours of the day, which is typically when I'll sit and when I'll read, when I'll think about stuff, and I might do a little bit of writing. If I just get a few hours, maybe even just one hour of that, like I'm nourished for the day. I'm continuing to have new ideas. I'm continuing to come up with stuff. Everything feels fresh on the pod and I go, "Oh, that's Scott [ __ ] Shefflla video. Like, isn't that good? That that's something to pull out." Yeah. >> Uh that will be a temptation of growth. It's a strange kind of paradox that the more leverage you have, the more distractions you have. That sounds great because it allows you to not need to focus on things, but it can tempt you to not focus on the main thing. And the only thing that matters is keeping that that little flame, that sort of kernel that was the beginning of the inspiration. Like that's what's important. And if you do that, dude, you're going to continue to [ __ ] rip. But that's the thing that you need to protect. You have to have to have to protect your reading time. You have to protect your new idea time. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that that's makes a lot of like you just saying that I'm like, "Yeah, I think you're right." And the the the reading and in the researching was that was what I think is allowed me from the get-go. I mean, obvious like I was reading and researching well before I started making videos. And even when I started making videos, I was making more feel-good comedy videos. I wasn't doing philosophy or societal commentary or talking about the implications that X Y or Z event has on your life. I was just genuinely a kid that was interested in in these things more so classic books, not even necessarily philosophy. And all of a sudden, it's like, okay, I'm going to talk about this. Let's see if people like it. And then it happened. And so, yeah, that's definitely my roots. So, I think you're right. I definitely do need to save time. And it's hard cuz I've been, you know, started to make a little higher value friends, started to do a little bit of traveling, not a lot, but I'm like, hey, it's easy for me to no longer read or I'm tired on the flight, so I just going to put my head down when that's like a prime opportunity where I can't really do anything else. So, >> and that's what you would have done in the past as well. Exactly. >> And the limited amount of >> motivation that you have, which everybody does have, uh that becomes degraded by having to do things that aren't the main thing. Yeah, >> last year I did 100,000 miles, so it's like three times around the world. This year so far, we're not even we're just about halfway through the year and I've done like 70,000 miles on flights. And like that was not what I was doing when I first started the show, which means that I need to be even more aggressive at protecting some areas of my time at a time when there's more compelling seductions that are going to pull you away. So, Alex talks about, you know, the scene in the Matrix where Neo is first brought into it and he's walking down the street and there's a woman in the red dress. >> Yeah. >> And Morpheus says, "No, were you paying attention to me or were you paying attention to the woman in the red dress?" And he says, "Look again." He turns around. It's Agent Smith with a gun. >> Says, "Okay, being able to say no, your capacity to say no is not looking at the woman in the red dress." But now imagine as you get more successful that it's not a hypothetical 10. It's a thousand hypothetical 1000s. >> Yeah. >> Your capacity to say no needs to scale more quickly than your ability to be successful. And if you don't get out ahead of it, you're going to be seduced by all of these new pulls on your time. That's fine. And that's cool. All right. It affords you the opportunity to go to the Super Bowl and and and hang in this special box because someone loves your videos or whatever it is. But if you do that too much, you will lose the thing that kept you sharp. And I think that that's why a kind of monastic lifestyle that you see a lot of sports stars have. Like even Harland, for all of his fun, when it comes to preseason training, I bet that guy's a [ __ ] monk. Yeah. >> Like there will not be a stone that's not over like that's not turned over and locked underneath. and uh if he was having all of this fun but not looking after his sleep, not looking after his diet. He's loose when he's able to be loose, but he's not distracted. There's a difference between those two things. >> And uh yeah, it's it's another curse of competence as you get more effective and there are more opportunities in front of you, >> you need to learn to be able to say no to something that you would have begged to have had the opportunity to say yes to only two years ago. >> It's crazy. Yeah, it's a trip and and I've seen I've gotten a little bit of a taste of it already, you know? It's like everybody wants to >> I don't know like leech is not the right word because a lot of these people that I've become friends with are much bigger, much more successful than me. >> Associate, >> but yeah, it's like they the moment that people see that you have some sort of momentum, that's very attractive trait. You know, everyone everyone wants to be your friend now. You know, I was very much I wasn't even wouldn't even say antisocial cuz I tried to be social, but I never necessarily fit in in my like my later years of high school through college. And that has been my biggest advantage ever. I would not be sitting here right now if I did not spend all that time alone >> just really trying to confront myself, trying to be honest with myself and figuring out what I wanted to do and then having the balls to to go and start doing it. And that's been my biggest advantage. But now all of a sudden this guy that I looked up to when I was a kid slid into my DMs and he's like, "Yo, let's go hang out. Let's go do this trip." >> Yeah. Heroes become rivals and then rivals become friends. >> Exactly. And so it's like, "Wow." Okay. But yeah, for me, like I said, I've just I gotten so used to being alone that I'm very comfortable with it. But yeah, you're right. It's going to be tempting if someone's like, "Jet, do you want to go to the Super Bowl?" Yeah, I want to go to the Super Bowl. Like >> Yeah. And that happens to a state at a frequency that can end up sapping a lot of what it was that you used to do. But yeah, it's uh the it is one of the reasons for solace that anybody that's alone should rely on, which is you have an opportunity now to focus on developing yourself in a way that you can't if too many people want you. One of the weird things I talking as a horrendously unpopular kid and an only child and someone that basically started to learn how to become a human at 18 when I moved to university. Uh I wonder whether it's giving you the realization it did for me which is kind of the fickless of sociality. >> Yeah. >> That well I'm the same person y >> as I was before. The difference is the trappings and the trimmings that are on the outside. And sure, I'm sure you've developed yourself into a more uh socially fluid person. You've got interesting things to say and you've become more self-conscious and self-aware and that brings a kind of uh authentic sincerity and earnestness to a conversation and that's kind of compelling, right? Like that's beguiling like oo like there's something going on here that's cool which you wouldn't have had before if you were posturing and you were having to play a role and let people kind of have a bit of a version. So, some of it will be the development, some of it will be the understanding and the information, but a good bit of it is Jet's [ __ ] like he's ripping at the moment. Should we invite He should come to the thing with And you go, well, you didn't [ __ ] want me before. >> Yeah, >> you didn't want me before. >> Yeah. >> Kanye West's got this thing. It's like there's a metro boom in edit which I've never been able to refind again. But um it's Kanye West talking about how uh people say that they loved the work that I did in the beginning, but they didn't love it back then though. >> Yeah. >> Yep. Like uh every time like I'm cracking you a smile in 2023, but I'm giving you a frown for 2013. And um it's just he you know Yay's vacasillated somewhat over the last few years. Uh but yeah, I mean growing up North Chicago always been the biggest Kanye West fan. Always like that dude that his concept of self-belief. I would literally go to I'm not I'm not even making this up. It sounds cringy. I would go to sleep with a compilation of Kanye West basically being a narcissist. I just I just loved it. I just love the way this guy would talk about himself. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that because man, everybody hates so narcissism. The way that I look at this is that I think everybody's a narcissist, but it's a spectrum and there's a healthy side of it and there's an unhealthy side of it. And what society calls narcissism or that person's a narcissist. They're specifically referring to the more extreme end of that spectrum where it's dangerous, where you negatively impact other people's lives. But innately, humans are selfish creatures. We always have our own best interest at hand with the exception of maybe, you know, you're a parent, so you're looking out for your kids or a loved one. >> But I've made videos on this, very unpopular, as you could assume. And I just think if you lean into your narcissism in a healthy way, which sounds crazy, but that is the ultimate propeller to where you want to go. So imagine you're climbing a mountain and you know very metaphorically the mountain is where you want to go in life. You're wearing a backpack. You could either have an empty backpack which is just having a neutral sense of self. You could have rocks that are put in the backpack which is self-doubt or any way that you think that maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome. Oh, I'm not I'm not that guy. Or you could have self-belief. You could lean into your narcissism in a healthy manner and that backpack turns into a jetpack and then it propels you up that mountain. And so I've recognized that like growing up people have always always been like, "Jet, you got you're a little bit of a narcissist." Not that I would ever negatively impact other people, but it was more like you're very self-absorbed. Very self-absorbed. And I said, "Well, I have to bet on myself that's the only workable solution. I think >> it's the only workable solution. You have to lean into every aspect of yourself. Build up that belief system." Not that you should walk around saying, "Wow, I'm more valuable of a human than that person." Not that's not what I'm talking about at all. But you need to just relentlessly try to increase your self-belief because everything regresses to the mean in life and the mean is your identity, right? And your like your self-belief creates that identity. And so I think that you have to figure out, okay, what is what is the healthy narcissism and how do I accomplish that? Because these people that try to be, it's kind of what we were saying before, the the really humble ones, a lot of them are coping. A lot of them are coping for the fact that they didn't go where they wanted to be. This is a very unpopular opinion within my family. They don't like when I talk about this cuz my I I come from a humble family and I'm not really like them. But you ha you have to bet on yourself. You have to think that you're capable of doing this. I told my my best friend when I was going to do the social media thing, I said, "I don't know what it is about this. I've failed at all the other things that I've tried in my life, but there's something about this. I just I believe I could I can do it. I just know if I don't quit, I can do it." It's funny. Once I started gaining two to three followers a day, I was 100% certain that I was going to hit 100K because I told myself I literally would not quit until I hit 100K. And there's enough days that I'm going to live to hit that. Well, the interesting thing about survivorship bias is that survivorship bias assumes that you die before you win. >> Yeah. >> And if you just don't stop, eventually you've rolled the dice enough times to have something that hits. >> Yes. >> Uh on the ego humility thing, it's interesting. Ego is quite antisocial and humility is quite pro-social in a way in the way that it's interpreted interpreted that um ego causes people around you a lot of the time to have their own shortcomings and self-criticism thrown into harsh contrast. Uh, it also is quite confronting because people think, "Wow, he's going to go do that thing that leaves me behind. I don't want him to do that thing. If I can claw him back or if I can behind his back sort of vent about [ __ ] who does Jet think he is?" >> Yeah. >> Talking about himself like that, dude. That's not even going to work. Like that's [ __ ] lame or whatever in the hopes that that might just slow it down. Whereas humility, even performative humility is seen as, "Oh, he's got his feet on the ground. It's it's nice that he's got not got too big for his boots. This is very much a a British concern that someone who thinks too highly of themselves is really not liked. Like it's very very a rigid class structure in the UK. You know, it's this oified country that's not been [ __ ] invaded for a thousand years. Like that's a long time for these power structures to start to drop in. Like you can tell, I don't know whether the same thing is true in America. I don't think it is. I can tell just by hearing somebody speak what class they were from, like underass, working class, middle class, upper class, and have a good a good indication of what sort of school they went to because it's it's had time >> to like segment out like stratified like [ __ ] sedimentary rock or something. And um it's determined a lot of the time by the way that somebody speaks and the way that they dress and stuff like that. But yeah, humility is pro-social because it doesn't it it binds the group together by not making anybody be confronted by a differential in the in in the power structure. And ego is confronting for the exact opposite reason. What's what's interesting is I I do believe strongly in the idea that you need to be rooable for you want to be a person that other people want to see win. A perfect example of this over the past year or so, Timothy Shaé went from this guy that everyone was like, I love this dude and he's so there's something about him. He's just got that swag. He's in the way that he walks and then all of a sudden he goes on one of those award shows after he wins and he says, "I'm really on the pursuit of greatness." Which to me, I loved. I was like I like when when >> [ __ ] yeah. Timothy Sham. >> Yeah. It's like it's like it you you have a goal and clearly you're on the path to do it. So yeah, like go up there and say what you want to do. And I felt like he still did it in a humble way. >> But you'll find a lot of insecure people or non-confident people, they really don't like that even if it like they don't want to have the nuance. They people believe what they want to believe. And so if they listen to that, they'd rather believe that Timothy Shalomé is a narcissist than someone that's betting on himself and is like really putting himself out there and trying. >> Have you looked at ascending in the incel community? Do you know what that word means? ascending like like just getting better in life >> getting laid typically or getting attention from women on the sort of lower end. So if you're inside of some of the incel communities, I think most of them, uh, ascending would be getting attention from maybe even as little as the barista in Starbucks. Her eyes sort of lingered on me a little bit longer than I think maybe she was flirting with me. And ascending is you're seen as persona non grata if you do that inside of the insel community. And the reason I think that's the case is that if somebody that I saw as my equal who was afflicted with the same uh issue that I believe that I have is able to bring themselves out of this issue that now makes it the potential for hope for me becomes uh it's brought into reality and that means that now maybe the fact that I feel like I'm afflicted with this thing is not a life sentence, but it's actually inside of my control and I have agency over this. And the fact that I haven't gotten out of this problem. So they're seen they're literally seen as fake cells as somebody who ascends is say, "Well, you weren't truly an insult. You weren't like us." So there's an immediate othering of somebody who doesn't comport with the same issue that everybody else has. It couldn't be that everybody has the potential to do this. it has to be that that person wasn't a part of our group in the first place. And uh yeah, I I when you think about the how much people are held back by the fear of others judging them for having self-belief, I think that far more people fail due to a lack of support than a lack of competence. And if you just had a couple more people in your life that believed in you, you'd probably be able to get 10 times further. >> Yeah. There's a line from George Mack, my housemate, that says, "There is a guy out there with half your talent and five times your self-belief making 10 times the money." >> Yep. >> And it's just Yeah. >> Well, I think the way that I look at it in in the the support side of things is honestly, [ __ ] support. Like, it'd be not it's nice to have it, but I'm going to go to where I want to go regardless. and all all those nights, those consecutive nights where I would stay up till 4:00 a.m. just grinding. >> Mhm. >> Whether or not my friend who lives on, you know, my family moved out of my hometown and I don't live I haven't been in my hometown in years and I don't talk to those people that much anymore. So, if they support me or not, I could give a [ __ ] And then I have no friends where I moved. And so, it's like, okay, I'm just going to do this on my own because like you were saying, like we were talking about before, it's like optimal game theory. Okay, you got dealt [ __ ] cards. I'm not saying I got del [ __ ] cards, but you're not in the optimal position now. So, what are you going to fuss about it or do you going to like just do something? And it's interesting you talk about the idea that, oh, if you see someone else doing it, then it's like, oh, you know, I have agency, I can do it. People really don't want to support you if you do well because especially if they grow up near you because you you you become a mirror to them, right? If I come from the same place as other people and then more or less got the same opportunities, we go to the same school, but now they go on Instagram, they see that Jet is getting some views, he's getting recognition, get put in the public eye, whatever. That's going to tell them, well, I'm really no different than Jet. We came from the same place. He's there. I'm not. So now they get, you know, pissed about it and they're projecting and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I hate this guy." because you were talking about the incels and I have I had a YouTube channel. I started at the beginning of this year and it gained traction pretty fast. I got like 200,000 subscribers in the first two and a half three months and I became very popular amongst that sort of underground people that felt like the system was against them community >> and a lot of that community is incelss. And of course, I never went on these on my YouTube videos and said, "Oh, I'm an incel." I never claimed that or anything like that. But what happened was long and and in my videos, I would talk about I mean, yeah, like naturally, if I have a lot of followers on Instagram, yeah, girls are going to slide into my DMs. I wasn't being cocky about it, but I there's really no good way to address it because they'll be mad if you don't address it because then they're like, he's lying. Yeah. >> And if you do address it, then you're seen as cocky. So you got to, you know, >> if you addressed it and had said that there were no girls in your DMs, that would have been fine. >> Well, it would have been fake. It would have been a lie, but it would have been fine. That would have been like, oh, actually, yeah, okay. I'm not thrown into >> Are you familiar with the term laring? >> Yeah. So, everyone's like, "Oh, Jets Jet's like the biggest LAR ever." Cuz what ended up happening was, and I never, this is what I hate. I never lied about it. I was always truthful about my life. I become friends with this big influencer, very wealthy. I end up going to um his birthday party. It's on the east coast. I go there and some I there were some girls there. I don't know if they were Instagram models or whatever. They wanted to take a picture of me. It it it was not that deep at all. Goes on social media. And then I posted a video where I was like, "Oh, it was like kind of like a motivational video." If you work hard at a specific thing, you have to be smart about what you work hard on because if you work hard in corporate, yeah, maybe life is not you're you're not going to be rich because you're selling your time for money. You can never get rich off doing that. You need there needs to be the potential for, you know, an increase in an appreciation over time. But I went and I posted that video and, you know, my entire community turned their back against me. They they they had a they were throwing a [ __ ] show. They were mad about it and they were like, "Oh, this jet guy, he's faking it. He's laring. He's too good-looking to have been socially excluded growing up." It's like there's not a picture of like I I'll I'll give you my life savings right now. If you can find a picture of me going to any school, dance, prom, I didn't go to graduation. I didn't go to anything. I truly was isolated. But these people could not comprehend the fact that now that I started to level up in life, it's like you either die here or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. And they just came after me. And they were like, "This guy, he's 65." Like I never even lied about my height online. and they just when you go online and just like you're 65 that's like oh that's cocky or they would say I'm lying. So I was like so I just like wouldn't mention it. I I was on a very popular looks maxer stream and they were like asking me how tall I was. I was like I'm 6'5 and everyone thought I was bullshitting. Everyone on the internet was like this dude's not 6'5. And then a picture came out with me working out with some fitness influencers and they're like dude this guy's 6'5. Like there's no way that he has life heart. It's like what do you like? So you can't win with these people. But anyways, they really were mad about me basically leveling up and they're like, "Yeah, he always had friends." It's like, "So this guy was an influencer. Why would you think that I would be friends with them before I ever started doing content?" Or like, I don't know. But like you were saying about that whole like incel community. It's kind It kind of the same thing happened for me, but I've never been a part of the incel community. I've always been a part of the okay like male loneliness epidemic. That that was more my target audience. >> Well, it's the narcissism of small differences, right? If you go to the same school as somebody else and you have ostensibly similar skills, the difference in your outcomes is on them. It's on their like imagine a split test universe in which one of them you end up being a real success and in another one you end up being a real failure. The guy that was the failure would feel really bad because he had all of the raw materials to become the guy that was the success. Like true hell is when the person that you are meets the person that you could have been. And yeah, a lot of the time people feel like, well, I grew up with that guy and he was no more special than I was. This is one of the things I think is kind of interesting about uh content creation generally and the fact that lots of people consume lots of podcasts, YouTube, Instagram. And the issue that you have there is the talent delta is not as obvious as doing something that is more refined like playing a musical instrument or being great at basketball. Most people I mean if you sat anybody down with two microphones they have technically recorded a podcast no matter how big of a car crash that could be. If you give somebody a saxophone they cannot reliably make a note come out of it especially if they're untrained. So because the expertise skill delta doesn't feel as inaccessible, the small differences become even smaller. Like very few people are looking at Steph Curry and going [ __ ] Steph Curry, dude. Like the only reason that he got that is because his dad was in the NBA. It's like no, the dude's a generational talent who literally changed the points game of NBA of of of basketball the way that that game's played regardless of whether his dad was great or not, which he was. But Steph went and did his own thing. No one's looking at that and saying the only reason that he's got that because no one can do what he does. The more that people think that they can do what you do, the less respect they have for you doing it. >> Yep. >> Does that make sense? >> 100% 100%. Because I I've seen so many videos that this one guy made a video and it got like 300,000 views and he, you know, said he was going to sexually assault me in a more graphic using more graphic terms. >> Okay, cool. And he he literally >> like video is a statistical outlier on his channel. You know, all of my haters are going to go watch that video. >> And then he makes another one, another statistical outlier. And he's not really making any points. He's just like, I hate this guy. And then eventually he makes a video and he goes, you know, the real reason why I hate this Jet guy is because I make the same content as him. And he's like, I do the same. And it's like you go, it's not the same. This guy is completely delusional. It's object. Like he's recording on it if it's like a android from like 2010 or something. I'm like first off your camera quality sucks. But he's like yeah this guy he he he's just as basic as everyone else. He just has better face. So that's why everyone and it's like okay first off holy cope. But second off it's like if people assume that they can do what you're doing but you're getting big off it. They're hitting you more. Like you said do you know who the streamer Rakai is? Oh, is that the dude that did the Beast thing and was kind of the villain? He was like the the He's like a bit of a villain dude. >> Mr. Beast? >> No, Rakai. He did a a 100 streamers compete for cash. I swear he's like kind of a bit of a nuisance. Or >> he is he Well, he Okay, >> I swear he was I'm not like super familiar with him, but he's very young. Very young. I don't even think he's graduated high school yet. and he's just kind of hollowheaded trying to find like he's he's he's not the sharpest tool in the shed >> and but he just he acts crazy. He doesn't really speak English so he he like he speaks English that's his language but you can't understand him and that's the joke about him online but anyways this kid is he has a >> it is the one that I meant streamer Rakai participate in the highly publicized Mr. beast $1 million streamer challenge video. His intensely competitive, aggressive play style and interaction with other the creator has made him one of the most talked about and controversial figures in the event. Yes, I do know what you mean. >> Yeah. So, so this guy is one of the most hated people on the internet. And just the reason to sum it up and people are they don't understand they don't understand this. They don't consciously know that this is why. But this guy doesn't even talk good English. He doesn't do anything necessarily exceptional. But so they look at that and they're like, "Well, >> I could do that. >> I could do that, but not only that, I could do it better. I'm smarter than him." >> But >> yeah, you don't I I have feel no negative way towards that guy. I'm not trying to knock him in any way, >> but yeah, of course. So people are like, "Oh, I can I can easily be that type of guy." Like with the streamer stuff, I have a I have a friend of mine who is trying to make it as a streamer. And the thing about it is all these underground streamers, these people that are trying to come up, it's just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. And I was telling him, I was like, respectfully, how in the world are you ever going to make it if you are the product and there's no product differentiation? How in the world are you going to make it? You know, he went to streamer university. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but Kai, one of the biggest, not even just streamers, content creators in the world, does this thing once a year now where he invites out all these streamers to this like school for like a week or something and it's like class. It's just an entertainment thing. It's nothing too serious, but people literally quit their jobs. They drive across the country to go to these auditions. But the thing is, Kaisenat only lets in already known people. >> Y >> and all these other people, it's like you you you watch the videos and the footage and you know, the cops had to shut it down. It's just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. These people have the same personalities. And I was telling my friend, I was like, I'm I'm obviously going to support you and I've always been like, "Hey, you need to keep doing this thing." But it's like, if you're doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, how do you how in the world do you think at some point there's going to be like a a switch that's flipped? Because back in the day, you could record you could get three viral videos and all of a sudden, you're a known person on Vine. Nowadays, you record 50 and you're still and then you don't drop something for a week and you fell off. So, like things have to you just have to keep on relentlessly getting these viral clips, but what makes clips for the big people go viral is the fact that it's the big people in the clip, not that they're necessarily entertaining in and of itself. So, you have to push your time in the game. And yeah, people are just really mad because they're like, I don't understand why I can't be where I want to be. Well, you have to find a way to product differentiate. And you know, maybe the the reason that you're not succeeding as much as me or as much as someone else is simply because you're you're not that person. Like you you didn't do like you think you are, but you're not that person. And that's the biggest issue. Everyone is just projecting, oh, I deserve to be X, Y, and Z. When I was at the bottom, I would when I when I had, you know, less than 10,000 followers, I would find other creators in a somewhat similar niche as me that had around a little bit more followers than me. And I would literally look at their videos and be like, that is [ __ ] >> I would be like, I am so much better. Like, I would convince I'm like, my videos are so much better. And slowly but surely, I start getting past them and then I'm like, all right, the ne who's the next one? Who's the next one? And like we were talking about before, that goal post never ends. There's always someone else. >> Correct. But I was like I would get I would get mad at it and I thought I was better. But I didn't really do nothing about it. I did something about it. And that's sort of the difference. Well, the difference is between simulating what somebody else does and learning inspiration that can help you improve, right? The the best that you can hope for if you're trying to be somebody else is to be the second best in the world. >> Yeah. >> Right. At being them. >> Yeah. >> And you are the zeroth in the world at being yourself. Naval Ravicon. He said, "You escape competition through authenticity." Yeah. >> And what's h what's that? There's Peter Teal has a quote where he what is it? I made a video about this. I'm trying to think about it. He he said um competition is for losers. >> Mhm. >> And so, in other words, you're a loser if you're not being authentic. If you if you correlate that with what Naval Robin said, because you know, you're it like you beat competition by being authentic. So you be being a loser by being authentic. >> And so I I was like, "Wow, that's just it's such a basic simple thing, but people don't really internalize it. They don't understand it." >> Authenticity is an interesting one because what everybody likes the idea of is seeing a person who is just being themselves. There's no filter. They're not playing a game. They're not trying to perform. They're not trying to finesse me into believing that they're something that they're not or pretend that they're not something that they are. But there's kind of a there's like a a a window of tolerance that people are prepared to live inside of. And as soon as you get outside of it, what you realize is that the internet is desperate for authenticity, but it's allergic to sincerity. >> Yeah, that's interesting. Like if you are genuinely sincere, genuinely earnest about something like you go through a hard time and you talk about it in with some beautiful montage over the top and it it's sort of all fluffy and bubbly at the end. It's the wise question, right? Like how deep do you go with the why. Whereas if you see a dude do an Instagram video and he breaks down crying in it. Oh no, that's too much sincerity. I didn't I wasn't that I have an aversion to that. And this kind of just goes to show how limited the internet's preparedness for empathy is and also how uh narrow most people's tolerance for an emotional window is. It's like you're allergic to somebody genuinely showing their emotions, especially when they're out of control. If it doesn't seem like they are in control of the way that they're operating anymore, that seems like a lack of congruence, a lack of competence. Uh yeah. Yeah. internet is desperate for authenticity and allergic to sincerity. >> You know, it's interesting. Robert Green says that authenticity is [ __ ] and it doesn't exist. And I was thinking about that and to I think when people say authenticity or that person is authentic, it's like let's say there's a spectrum and they're closer to their genuine self than the average person and then you're like, "Oh, that person's authentic." But they're not truly, if you take it in the absolute sense of the word, they're not truly authentic because I think that would probably be social suicide, right? Like if you really just say what you believe. >> Listen, I was when I was in high school, this was the whole thing. I wasn't very wellliked when I was in high school. And kind of the reason was because I was part of it was I was resentful. I started reading a lot of books and and I got smart. And it's like the Dunning Krueger effect. I thought I was I was a lot smarter than everyone else when in reality I really didn't know much. But a big thing was I really thought that honesty was completely virtuous and just being as raw and as honest with someone was like the best thing you could do which now is just not true. Like now I know that to be not true. To give you an example, this is going to make me this this sounds crazy and I do not like anyone that's listening to this do not do this, but we were at a one of those football games on a Friday night and I went there and this girl probably I think she was under the influence and she was like she she just straight up asked me, "Do you think I'm pretty?" And I'm like, "Here we go with this like fishing bullshit." Like I was I was like I was like no, but I didn't say it in a mean way. I was just like, "No, in a very neutral way." And she's like, "What do you mean? Do you think I'm ugly?" And I was like, "Yes." Which is insanely immature, but that was how I felt. And I thought that that was okay. And also, I wouldn't go out of my way to say that to someone ever, but she asked me, so I thought it was right away. That didn't go over well. So that didn't go over well. I got a a bunch of push back. And I remember I would go home and I'd be like, "Oh my god, these these people Yeah. push back for whatever that means in high school." and and uh and yeah, I mean, no wonder these people didn't like me. I think they were totally valid for not liking me. But I would go home and I would be like, I was in the right there. I was in the right. But it's like, okay, what do you like, this is such kindergarten, like what? This is such psychologically infantile type of activity. I don't know. >> Yeah. It's I mean, look, have you ever read Sam Harris's essay, Lying? It's a hourong book. He wrote it. He wrote it with his wife. It's [ __ ] great. It's like a a a 60-page treatise on why you should never >> Wait, is this the one where he says if your wife is pregnant and she asks you if she looks good? Oh, yes. I I read that a long time ago. >> It's pretty good. People should people should revisit it. I think you can get it for free online and there's an audible version, too. It's like basically a long podcast. It's just an essay and he wrote it with his wife, interestingly enough. >> Um >> there is definitely a like philosophical underpinning where you can say any lie including a white lie at any time is a bad idea. Like the an in the attic thing. It's like just go up and get her, no worries. But functionally, it can put you in situations like this, right? And I think that you can have a kind of decorum. You can be classy in the way that you sort of show. You can say things that don't fully like look >> there's a a type of girl for everyone and I'm sure that I'm not for you. Uh but you know, I I I don't think that we'd make a great couple. You're like whatever the [ __ ] And then you're like, "Okay, I managed to get out of that scot-free." Um, but there is like if you take the like the autism pill and decide like I am going to completely [ __ ] tell the truth at all times, you end up in situations like this where a girl that's drunk on a Friday night at a football game just wants to hear from some boy that she's like cute or whatever >> and what she gets is like a existential kick in the nuts. >> Um, so dude, you're [ __ ] awesome. I think everyone should go and subscribe to your channel. Where should people go to check out everything you got going on? >> Uh Jet Franen with JT2T's on social media with Instagram, Tik Tok, and then yeah, if you just search up my name on on YouTube, it should show up. I think it's got like a some other [ __ ] in the name, but just search up Jeff Frans and and you'll probably get a 50 videos of people [ __ ] on me. So that's >> Well, I searched you and it seems to be your content and your stuff rules. I think you're great, man. And uh keep going. I'm going to be I'm going to be watching. I'm going to be supporting from the sidelines. Shout out your dad as well. Shout out. >> Shout out my dad. Thank you so much for having me, bro. This is honest. This is an honor. Seriously, >> he crushed it, man. He crushed it. All right. Goodbye, my beauties. See you next time, >> bro. Yes. [ __ ] Yes, dude. Sick. Well done, >> dude. I enjoyed that. >> Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you love is just here.