EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 22,450 words- 0:00 – 5:42
How the Economy Targets Vulnerability
- CWChris Williamson
People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left, and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything Modern Wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland, chriswilliamson.live. The economy is just smart people paying beautiful people to promote stuff to insecure people.
- SPShaan Puri
[chuckles] This episode is brought to you by [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I mean, isn't it, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Like, uh, y- once you see it, you kinda can't unsee it. But, you know, um, I don't know, I just kind of observed that one day, that, that a lot of the way the world works is you have a small group of people who have a, some sort of idea or an agenda. Um, and by the way, this is not always nefarious. They just might... They, maybe they believe that this product is really great or that this way of living is really great. But the way we transmit that to society is this weird f- food chain. It's like, it's like if aliens came and observed this ecosystem, these, how these animals work, it's like it seems like the sort of s- the smart ones seem to somehow bribe the, the beautiful, attractive ones with the big feathers, and then they're tapping into some fear in the general pop, uh, in gen pop. And so, you know, then you go through life, you listen to some commercials, you, you, you watch some ads, you, you see what's going on, and you re- you can kind of work backwards from that. And by the way, this is actually good business advice too. Um, and, and again, if your intentions are good, I think it's useful to use this advice.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Which is, uh, somebody said this. They were like, "You know, uh, you sell a mother, uh, safety." Like, you know, mom's number one fear is, like, the well-being of their child. So, like, if you're selling a mother, uh, you know, something, you should sell them safety of their children. Um, if you're, if it's a, if it's a woman, you might wanna sell her beauty or, uh, you know, uh, youth. If you're selling a man, you wanna sell him status. And so, like, you know, you've been a club promoter. You know how do you get somebody to buy a table.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
How do you get somebody to buy a bottle that they know if you walk across the street, it's $50, and they have to buy it for 500 here? Because you're selling them status, power, um, importance. And so you kinda have to know what root insecurity someone has-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- SPShaan Puri
... if you want to pull on their strongest lever.
- CWChris Williamson
Makes the economy sound very predatory to basically be this fear engine diagnosing and then attacking each person's individual vulnerability.
- SPShaan Puri
Well, the world is sort, sort of predatory, right? [chuckles] You go on Instagram, follow, like, nature is metal. [laughs] You, you go see what animals do to each other. I would say I think it is a bit foolish to see the world as you think it should be versus as it is. So I think by default, you view the world as it is, and then you get to decide with your agency if you wanna shift it towards what you view as a better world, how you think it should operate more like. But you're not gonna get very far if you don't understand human nature, if you don't understand what's gonna make people move and what's gonna make people, um, uh, uh, behave in a certain way. Uh, I think there's a great marketer, um, Gary Halbert. I don't know if you've ever seen this guy, but you can go watch his old school videos on YouTube. And anybody who wants to learn marketing, don't read the modern stuff. Go, go, go read the guys who could sell things through direct mail, like, you know, postcard, and they would drive millions of dollars in sales. These guys understood something about human nature.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And he said to a room of marketers, "Never has more money been lost than selling somebody what they should want versus what they do want." And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, that's great
- SPShaan Puri
... you have to meet people where they are. What do they want?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And how do you frame your offer, the benefits, the product that you believe improves their lives in such a way that it resonates with what they do want?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Half business advice, half just people advice, right? Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose the, the argument would be you're pushing people toward the thing which isn't necessarily best for them but is simply sort of playing to their most base instincts. But you go, "Well, okay, I... Do you want me to run an unsuccessful but virtuous business?" I think 'cause that's not the way that the market works.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. Uh, yeah, but I do think it's a false choice. So I think, uh, many, in many cases, you can run into this scenario where option one sounds bad and option two sounds bad.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And what people do is they waste all their time debating option one and two, whereas you've got a very clear signal that all you need to do is make option three. Like, you've correctly identified two poor options.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Don't waste your time on those.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
That's a clear stimulant that you need to go create another one. So what's the other option? If option one is kinda manipulate people, do maybe not what's in their best interest, but it's kind of their... you know, tap into the worst side of them, but you'll be successful.
- 5:42 – 12:06
Why You Should Adopt the ABZ Method
- CWChris Williamson
What's the ABZ Method?
- SPShaan Puri
ABZ, okay. This is a little framework that I think will help, uh, anybody who finds themself in a pattern where you want something, and you know you're smart and you're hardworking, but you seem to overthink things. And I think overthinking is a fucking disease. It's COVID, you know? It's everywhere. Uh, it's, it's tr- highly transmissible also-
- CWChris Williamson
[chuckles]
- SPShaan Puri
... 'cause one person's overthinking leads to another person's overthinking. Um- So what's the cure for overthinking? And I think the over... The cure for overthinking obviously is to simplify. How do you simplify getting what you want in life? I call it ABC. So the common trap with most people when they wanna do something is they say, "Okay, I need to know the first step, second step, third step. I need to know A, B, C. Then I'll do D, then I'll do E, then I'll do F." By the time they get halfway through the alphabet, A, they're exhausted, and B, like doubt has compounded. It has multiplied. I had a little doubt about A times doubt about B times doubt about C. By the time you get to the, you know, the end, you're just full of self-doubt, and it's paralysis. Here's the alternative. The alternative is you only need to know three letters in the alphabet, A, B, Z. A is where you're currently at, an honest reflection of reality. So if I'm, uh, yeah, let's say I wanna get in great shape. Z is great shape. Z is me with my shirt off, feeling confident and like enjoying looking at photos of myself and not feeling kinda like, "Who the hell is that guy?" Uh, Z is being able to run the race with my friends and not, you know, be the guy holding everybody back. Whatever is... Whatever your Z is. By the way, these are all personal anecdotes, so, so I know Z well. I speak from, from experience. But then you gotta know A. H- here's where I'm at. If you delude yourself about where you're at, you're not gonna get very far either. You'll be in denial. And then all you gotta know is B. What is the next incremental action that gets me towards Z? And then you repeat. [chuckles] Once you've done B, you got a new A, and you got a new B-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- SPShaan Puri
... and Z stays the same.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And you just go one foot in front of the other. The reason this works is the general advice of just take it one step at a time, what people do in their heads is they imagine all of the steps it's going to take when you tell them that.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
It's like, "Cool, I'll take one step at a time, but this one step doesn't get me there. I'm gonna have to do all these things." And instead, if you just start to give yourself some labels, A, B, Z, and if you had faith that that's true, like, um, I believe it's true. You know, for example, my trainer always uses this analogy with me 'cause he trains a lot of like, I don't know, successful Silicon Valley people, types, and so he notices patterns in that type of high achiever. And what he noticed was they're ca- uh, stressor achievers. They do achieve, but they, God, they stress the whole way. It's like you zap the fun out of the whole process. It's like what was the point of this whole thing if you kind of were stressed the entire way? You know, the journey is this long, and the destination is this small, so like the bulk of your, the vast majority of your experience was stress. Brief relief, new goalpost, new stress. And so he wants to help people. He's a tr- like a personal trainer for fitness, but he kind of notices these patterns, and so he said, um, "W- what if you had confidence that Z would happen? Like, do you believe that Z can happen?" "Yeah, of course, I believe it can happen." He goes, "Cool. Imagine walking to the corner store." So let's say you want some ice cream, and the ice cream's at the corner store. Well, today you're at your house. You're not at the corner store. That's fine. What do you start doing? You just start walking. And you know, "I'm gonna s- I'm gonna go this way, take a right, go straight for a little bit, take a left at the, at the, at the str- streetlight, and then the corner store is there." So you understand that you're not there today. You know where you wanna be. You want the ice cream. But because you don't doubt you're gonna get there, you just sort of focus on, "What's the next thing I need to do?" And you don't worry about all the other stuff that you couldn't do now even if you wanted to. And what he said was like, "More things in life should feel like that," this analogy of like the whole walk to the corner store, I'm not stressed. I'm not worried about if it'll happen, when it'll happen, how it'll happen, all these extra questions that are not serving me on the walk.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
And, um, so I found that analogy quite useful in pursuits that feel on the surface a lot more complicated than the corner store.
- CWChris Williamson
How have you used this in your life?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, okay, let's take what I do. So I have a podcast. I wanna be the next big podcast. I wanna have... Okay, I got 30 million downloads this year. We need 100 million next year, right? Like, whatever the goal is, some Z, some happy ending that, uh, I have my own beautiful studio, and, uh, my dream guests are coming on, right? A, a relatable outcome that we both, you know, have, have pursued.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Well, what's my reality today? Today, uh, this is, these are the guests I reach. This is the type of show I have. This is my skill level. This is, um, you know, the amount of outreach that I'm doing. This is the amount of time I'm putting in to prepare. Cool. I can take an accurate view of reality, and then I know what my happy ending is, and it's very motivating. It pulls me towards it. I want that. Um, and instead of beating myself about, u- up about not having it yet, I'm just gonna label A, B, and Z. B, what's the next logical step? All right, 20 outreaches this week. What's the next logical step? Um, I'm gonna study Chris Williamson's intros 'cause I think he's better at that than I am. What does he do? Oh, he doesn't do this long-winded thing. He just asks... He reads them a tweet. Oh, interesting. What does this other guy do? What does this guy do? And so you just start to focus on the parts that are in your control, the parts that generate progress, and, um, progress equals happiness in my life. Like I, I just believe that to be true that, uh, any moment in life where I don't feel a sense of progress, regardless of objectively how good my life is, that somebody else might say, "Your life is amazing."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
"What are you complaining about?" Right? Like, and we all have that. If you're, if you're like have your limbs and you're in America, you know, you're, you're in a, not in like a third world slum, you know, with, with... Somebody else could say, "Your life is amazing. I can't believe you're not just waking up ecstatically happy every single day."
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- SPShaan Puri
But the reason we don't feel that way is not because we're assholes. It's because the human body is wired to feel happiness during progress, and it's just relative to wherever you're currently at. And so this is a kind of a formula for not just hitting your goals but feeling good while you're hitting your goals, which is the trick.
- CWChris Williamson
It also detects acceleration and deceleration as well.
- SPShaan Puri
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like changes in speed are like particularly palpable.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Yeah, like this is why the start of projects is so fun.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
Partially 'cause you don't know the pain to come, but a big part of it's 'cause you get... I- it's nonlinear. You get huge gains of, of momentum at the beginning, a huge acceleration from a cold start, uh, once you get going, and that feels really good.
- 12:06 – 20:26
Is Asking for Advice Just Asking for Permission?
- CWChris Williamson
All requests for advice are actually requests for permission.
- SPShaan Puri
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
They don't want information. They want a short-term loan on courage
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah, I think, uh, you probably get this a lot. People might ask for, for advice, or in my position, I've spent a lot of my life asking people for advice. I was big on mentors and trying to get advice, and I realized that actually people don't want information. They don't want advice. They're shopping for permission. What do I mean by that? Um, I don't know if you've ever noticed when you ask somebody for advice, you ask five people for advice, what are you really doing? Like, you're really looking for somebody to say the thing that you actually want. [laughs] You're looking for somebody to confirm that you're on the right track or be like, "It's okay. Yeah, you should break up in that relationship," or, "You should quit that job," or, "You should do this thing." You are looking... It's like you parked in this place, and you have your little parking thing, and you just want somebody to validate your parking so badly.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
Just punch a hole through this. Tell me it's, uh, tell me it's gonna be okay. Um, I've just noticed this in people, that very rarely is the thing that people actually want, is an, a useful new perspective to change their mind. I think more often than not, people want permission, and I don't mean that as a knock. I actually think it's a, a feature, not a bug, that actually what holds us back from, uh, from having the things we want in life is courage. It's not intelligence. Like, uh, I think I have a tweet that y- that I, I shared with you that's one of my favorite tweets, which is that the world is not intelligence-gated. The gates in your life are not, don't require intelligence to break through. Um, like the world is courage-gated. It's action-gated. It's wisdom-gated. Th- those are the true... Energy-gated. Those are the real gates of life. We all know people who are not smarter than us but get far further ahead, that have happier lives and better families and better marriages, and all the things that we want in the good life, and it takes energy. It takes, um, wisdom, choosing, uh, you know, one path versus the other. It takes courage to go do it, to try, to make a fool of yourself, to be a beginner. These, these are the things that it takes to actually have the things that you want, and so, um, often what we need is not information. We just need permission to go for it, permission to fail, permission to suck, permission to, to be alone, permission, whatever it is.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
Whatever the thing is in your life, and so it's actually worth asking yourself-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- SPShaan Puri
... instead of asking others for advice, "What permission am I seeking?" If, if God came down from the heavens and said, "Son, it's okay. You c- yes, you can do that, no problem. You'll be all right. Uh, that's the way. It's the right thing to do." It's not that you're really so confused about, "Should I go left, right, center, backwards? Which way should I go?" We often know [laughs] in our heart which direction we- we're called to go towards, and the reason we're not going is some version of fear. And so permission is, uh, uh, giving yourself permission to go do it is usually the thing you need and want.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think you need it from other people? Can you give that to yourself more readily? Is there a way to give yourself that more readily?
- SPShaan Puri
Well, that's the reason I share this is because once you're aware that that's the thing you want, you might realize, "Do I really need to go ask somebody for it?" [laughs] "Or can I just give myself the permission?" That doesn't mean it's not nice to be supported or get that from other people. I think we've all had moments in our lives where somebody believed bef- more than we believed, and we kind of took a short payday loan of courage from them, of their belief. Uh, like I often ask successful people, "Who was your first believer?" And they can answer like that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
"Oh, it was this guy. You know, he saw me..." Um, you know, I have a piano teacher right now, singing and piano teacher, and, um, I hired him for the piano. And then he's like, "You wanna sing?" And I was like, "I've wanted to sing my whole life, but no, I can't sing." He's like, "Who said you, who said you can't sing?" I was like, "Nobody said I can't sing. I just can't sing. I, I could show you I can't sing. You want me to do that? You want me to prove that to you?" And he's like, "Let's hear it." And I was like, "Oh, fuck." Um, fork in the road. Do I really just shut this down or whatever? Let's, let's give myself permission to look like a fool for this guy. If nothing else, to kind of rule myself out of the singing camp. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
So let me prove to you how much I can't sing.
- SPShaan Puri
Let me prove to... Yeah, I, I, I went in with that. Um, so I do it, and he's like, he's like, "Okay." He's like, "You could..." He's like, "Yeah, there's things we could work on." He's like, "But I've made people sing, people sing who started off way worse than you." "Really?" I don't know if it w- he could've s- told me a bag of lie, but it didn't matter.
- CWChris Williamson
You went home and told him his wife-
- SPShaan Puri
'Cause I've been singing for two months now
- CWChris Williamson
... he's like, "Dude, I found, I f- I found, I found the worst singer that I've ever worked with, and you wouldn't believe."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Exactly. And I've many times let doubt creep in along the way over the last two months and be like, "Look, listen, you can just tell me. If this is, if this is awful, we could just break up right now and just not do that."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
"We can just go back to playing the piano and reading the sheet music." And so, um, he told me a story about his life. He's like, "I grew..." He's a, a Black guy, and he said, "I grew up..." Uh, I said, "We're..." I said, "Well, it's easy for you. You've always been singing." And he's like, "Come on. Are you gonna do that it's easy for you to say shit?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
And he goes, "I was in, uh..." He goes, "I didn't sing till I was in high school." I was like, "What?" And he goes, uh, "Yeah, actually, I was afraid to sing. Uh, I thought I couldn't sing, and I..." He's like, "Actually, I grew up in a... Like, I'm a kid in this, you know, the city that I grew up in, Black guys like me, we play football. Singing? That's gay. You don't do that." And so he's like, "I got made fun of. I assumed I must be bad. Plus, I'm bad for even liking singing, even worse than being bad at singing. So I just shut it down." He's like, "Then I moved schools, and I was in this empty room one day, and I was... Uh, the talent show auditions were going on, and I liked the song, so I started singing along, but I was in the other room, practice room, like by the side just after school waiting for my ride. And the choir teacher poked her head in, and she was like, 'Was that you?'" And he's like, "Yeah." And she's like, she starts, like she listens to him, and he's like, "Would you tell me? Like hon- would you be honest with me? Like, can I sing?" And he sings, and she's like, she's like, "Who told you you can't sing?" And he's like, "Uh, uh..." And then he, you know, now he's, he's been on "American Idol." He's had this incredible thing, and he needed that believer. He needed that choir teacher to poke her head in and give him permission.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
"Yeah, you could do the thing you really wanna do inside." I asked him, I go, I go, um, "So did you al- did you always wanna sing, and then she gave you the thing?" And he goes, "It was killing me." He's like, "I didn't realize it. I just thought that's what life was." And then when I started doing it, I realized this, like, weight that was off me. Like, he's like, "It was killing me actually that I wasn't doing the thing I was kinda called to do." And I think we would all... I mean, like, how sad would it be if you go through life not doing what you're called to do?
- CWChris Williamson
Because you're afraid?
- SPShaan Puri
Of course. There's nothing else. There's literally nothing else. That is the only reason you don't do things. Whatever you say, if you just ask why, why, why, why, why? Afraid of failure. And then you ask why one more time, what happens if you fail? What's so bad about failure? Underneath all that is a fear that I'm not enough and I won't be loved. Nobody says that part out loud, but it's the true part underneath the fear of failure. And then we stack all kinds of fancy words on top, like, right? Like, stress is a fancy word for fear. What the fuck are you stressed about? What are you stressed about? It's fear. Fear that, you know, f- uh, you have... If you have stress, it's a code word for fear. If you have anxiety, it's a code word for fear. It's just fancy. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Procrastination, it's a code word for fear. What are you waiting on? Why are you worried to do... Why are you afraid of doing it? Of, uh, fear, fear. And so it's normal. Everybody has it.
- 20:26 – 24:17
The Battle Between Courage and Fear
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting to think about courage. I had this conversation with Jocko that, um, he says courage is not not feeling fear. Courage is feeling fear and then doing it in any case.
- SPShaan Puri
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
And that reframe is really interesting 'cause I think people assume that there is this precursor that's needed before you can go and do action. Like motivation is I feel like I want to do it, or I'm ready to do it, or I know that it'll go well or something.
- SPShaan Puri
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And courage is the absence of fear or uncertainty or doubt or whatever, but it's not. It's motivation is feeling that and then going through it in any case.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Courage is feeling that and then going through it in any case.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. You, you never say someone's courageous for taking the sip. Why? 'Cause they weren't a f- [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. There was nothing on the line
- SPShaan Puri
... they weren't at risk. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
There was nothing on the line.
- SPShaan Puri
They didn't perceive they were at risk doing it. Now, let's say I had never had a, a sip of this before in my life, and you knew that, and you knew that I actually had this weird condition where I was afraid of this. You might be proud of me for taking that sip. It's the same action.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- SPShaan Puri
But it's, you know, what's the person's internal state. And, like, I'm a dad, and so y- you learn these truths even more, and you feel, like, the pride when your kid wins in this way. Like, my son would never go in to like s- we would, like, sign him up for all these classes. Like, "Oh, go try jujitsu. Go try tennis. Go try basketball." Uh, but he's really scared to go in, and I think that's common. Like, kids, you're with your parent walking up, and it's like, "Let go of my hand. Go in. Here's a stranger and a bunch of kids that..." You know, just that's not what he was used to. He was, like, born during COVID and stuff like that, you know. So, so he was always scared to do it, and it frustrated the hell out of me. It's like, and I think, uh, it's probably normal to do this, where it's like, "Ugh, I drove you here. I paid for this shit. You did this last time."
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"I've been going in there the last three times with you, making a fool of myself. It's not allowed. The teacher emailed us saying, 'The parents please stay outside.'"
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He doesn't know any of this. He doesn't know what email is. Right? [laughs] But I'm like, that's my internal state, whereas his internal state is just like, "I don't know what the hell's g- I'm, I'm afraid to go in here. I'd rather stay with my parents."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And, um, so one day I took a different approach. I was like, all right, how about instead of getting frustrated with my son and being a shitty dad, I, uh... Let me... What, what does he need right now? Okay, what does he need? And I, I told him, I was like, "Look, I actually, I used to be, I used to be actually afraid. I used to go to gymnastics class and cry all the time." Actually, my mom has told me that. So I was like, "It's super common." And I... What I told him, I said, uh, "Hey, like, you know, do you feel scared sometimes? I do. Do... I feel, I feel it, like, right here." And he's like, "Yeah." And I'm like, um, um, "That's okay. And sometimes, like today, sometimes the fear wins. Like, we have courage here in our heart, and then we got fear right here in our stomach, and they fight." And he likes Pokémon, and he likes fighting. He likes any animals fight. He likes anything fighting. So I'm like, "They fight, and sometimes the fear wins, right? That happens. Sometimes Charizard beats Pikachu. That's what happens. Today, maybe the fear won, and we'll sit here outside. We'll watch this, and we'll hang out. And next time, maybe the, maybe, maybe courage can win. Maybe bravery can win." And so I say this to him. I still want him to go in right there. He just lets fear win, and I was, "Okay, whatever." Four weeks later, we go to, uh, we go back to that class, and he's s- three times in a row hasn't gone in. But I'm like, okay, whatever. Still go. He goes in. I'm like, "Wow, that was amazing." He comes out. I'm like, "I'm so proud of you," and he just says, he goes, "I didn't want to let the fear win today." And I'm like, "Put me in the dad hall of fame right now."
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Did you... I told him that a month ago. I forgot about it. He remembered it. He brought it back. Uh, I'm writing a book. [laughs] You know, I'm like, so, so that's how I felt. But when you see it in your kids, it's obviously just like a little tiny metaphor for, like, your own things, you know, in life.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And now I'm like, am I letting the fear win here, or am I... You know, I think we could all use a little bit of that.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, if you've been out-couraged by your child-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
... it's a particularly shameful place. You're asking your kid for permission. It's like, "Is it okay if I go and do this thing?" [laughs] That's
- 24:17 – 33:15
Is Your Environment Holding You Back?
- CWChris Williamson
funny. The single thing holding most 20-year-olds back is their hometown. Life is like jujitsu, position before submission. Even a small seed can grow if put in the right soil.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. It wouldn't be a podcast without a jujitsu reference, I feel. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Sure.
- SPShaan Puri
It wouldn't be an Austin podcast without one at least. Um, yeah, I- the most impactful thing I did in my life was I moved to San Francisco. I wanted to be a successful entrepreneur, and I was pretty dumb about a lot of things, but at least s- part of my kind of s- caveman way of thinking was, "Go there," right? Like, if, if they go there, I go there, right? Like, if everybody smart is going there, and that's where all the companies are built, maybe I should just go there and see what's up, what's in the water. And I think that moving is an extremely underrated thing, that we like to attribute most of the kind of successes in our life to our personal attributes and decisions and all this stuff, and I was of our own making. And we, you know, we think we're this beautiful flower, and we forget about the soil, and the soil matters a lot. You know, um, there's a phrase in business which is that when a great founder meets a bad market, only one of them retains their reputation.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
It's the bad market. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And, um, and so you, you would always r- e- even if you think you're a great founder, you would always rather be in a great market. And same thing for life, like you want to be in great soil. Um, it is far easier to succeed in great soil. And we feel an attachment to the familiar, you know, where you grew up, your hometown, your friends, your family, your job, whatever it is that's keeping you where you happened to grow up. Like if you und- if you zoomed out and, you know, it was just like life just said, "Hey, choose the best place for you," you probably wouldn't choose, you know, this random spot in Kansas, you know, Kansas. But you're already there, and inertia is a very powerful force. You know, object which stays in motion. You will stay where you are, um, even if it wasn't the right thing for you. And so I think this, this is kind of my advice to everyone in their 20s. It's like, look, I don't know what you should do, but here's what I do know. Whatever you have an interest in, you should go move to the white hot center of wherever that is, um, because you will be around other people who are very motivating to you. Proximity is power. Uh, being near, very close, literally like living in the same house ideally, with other people who are s- have similar dreams and passions as you is gonna be... It, it's gonna do more for you than any book, than any podcast, than anything that you could do.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
It's the single greatest variable you can change in your life. And so I think there's probably a lot of people that, uh, whose life would go very differently if they just moved. Um, I remember when I moved to San Francisco, I had this very shocking sort of realization. The first day I get there, I don't have like a place to go, so I just go to this coffee shop. I sit in the coffee shop all day 'cause I'm just like with my suitcase. And the table next to me was like, um, cliché San Francisco thing. It was like founder, investor. Founder's like, "Peptides for dogs." And like, you know, 30 minutes later, it's like the next, you know, brain dead idea after, like terrible idea after terrible idea, and the investor's sitting there listening, and they're, they're... And I'm just listening. I'm like, "Wow, this is... What a bizarre place." And what I realized was in San Francisco it's very normal to be weird about ideas, about business, about your career. That night I went to an event, and there was a guy who worked at, uh, JPMorgan Chase, and he was at this like startup event. [laughs] And he was introducing himself shamefully. He was like, "I work at JPMorgan," which normally anywhere else it's a badge of prestige. And he was like, "But, but I'm gonna leave soon." He's like, you know, he immediately had to hedge. He was like, "I just, my cousin asked me to be there and, but I'm, I'm... I got my own idea. I got my own startup." It's low status to be at JPMorgan in San Francisco. It's high status to be working on peptides for dogs-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... and to have a crazy idea that you're chasing. So simply by moving to a place where status is given for chasing a startup idea and status is revoked for working at big corp was so opposite to anything else I'd ever experienced, where before I was the weird cat for not having a job, being unemployed, and going to try to do entrepreneurship.
- CWChris Williamson
What was home for you?
- SPShaan Puri
Well, I was in Australia before I went to San Francisco, but I've moved around a lot. So Houston, Denver, Australia, those are the places I was at. Um, and in all those places normal was reversed. Um, and so I, I think it's extremely underrated to move. I mean, you moved. I, uh... Did you, did you experience that or do you-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, massively. Massively. I mean, the northeast of the UK is not exactly a hotbed for entrepreneurship. Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
I, I did. I managed to make it so, at least in part, I guess, with some of the guys that, that I found and, and that I started my business with. But yeah, I mean, it's a, a rarity. This is the kind of place that people are born, live, work, and die within a 20 or, you know, 40-mile radius of.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's not a knock on that. Like, you know, in many ways you could say that that's a more elevated life without having to be-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... travel across the Atlantic to build this cathedral of bullshit in an attempt to be like, "Oh, you know, I fit in," or whatever. But I think a lot of people, and this is certainly my experience, I felt like there was a chord that was being played on a piano, and there was one note that was out.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And I was the note that was out, and all of the rest of them were in harmony.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like bing, ing, and there was one that's off.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's like, why am I that note? Why is that me? And okay, well, I'll, I'll try-
- SPShaan Puri
Am I a bad note?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, like maybe it's a me, it's a me thing. Maybe I should fit the chord. And you go, okay, well, maybe there's just other chords being played somewhere that the note that you get to be fits into perfectly or fits into more. And I think a lot of people feel like, huh, am I? Like, there's that Reddit subreddit, like am I the asshole?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- 33:15 – 42:21
Why You Should Listen to Your Obsessions
- SPShaan Puri
that call.
- CWChris Williamson
I've been having this, uh, pretty obsessed with this idea about obsession actually.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, um, discipline, motivation, and obsession. Discipline as is I will make myself do the thing. Motivation is I want to do the thing, and obsession is I can't not do the thing.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So it's all about friction. Uh, discipline is friction accepted, motivation is friction removed, and obsession is friction inverted.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So you're pulled toward the thing-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... and you can't not do it. And I think a lot of the time people, if you, if you don't listen to your obsessions, and they can be negative ones, right? Politics, porn, your toxic ex. But if you've got something, uh, e- e- even tangential to a positive obsession, maybe it's to do with fitness or maybe it's to do with learning to sing or maybe it's this new band or whatever, like just something that's like a-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... really, really intense passion, it's the freest discipline and motivation that you're ever going to get. And if you don't move with your obsessions, presume caveat they are positive, if you don't move with your positive obsessions, you're just giving up free fuel.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, it's the freest fuel that you're ever going to get. You know, when I started this show, all I wanted to do was learn podcasting. I wanted to listen to it. I was taking YouTube courses on my own. I've still got the notes in here, 3,982 Apple notes, and somewhere down, like number 500 or some shit, is going to be me obsessively taking notes about how thumbnails work in YouTube and like click-through rate and watch time, and I didn't know any of this and I'm gonna learn it, and I'm not gonna have friends around me that are gonna teach me. I'm not gonna be able to ring Paddy Galloway or fucking-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, whoever, whichever consultant we're friends with-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... so that I can get... Oh, no, I'm gonna go and find the course and then take the course on my own in my bedroom in Newcastle, and I'm gonna write all of this stuff down because I just wanted to. And now what looks like talent or momentum or, uh, privilege or, uh, motivation or discipline is much closer to the cooled remnant of what was once hot lava that was an obsession.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
This thing was burning hot, and now it's just me. It just is me. The same thing with training. I wanted to gain weight because I'd been bullied in school, and I wanted to be good-looking and maybe girls would like me, and wouldn't that be great? And I'm 18 and I'm in the Center for Sporting Excellence at Newcastle University. And I'm like, huh, like if I lift and I learn how to do this thing, and I'm like not going on nights out when I'm 19 to read bodybuilding.com forums-
- SPShaan Puri
Forums, yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... and maybe this fucking blueberry extract is actually the secret to my chest gains or whatever it might be. And I was obsessed. I was really, really obsessed with going to the gym and learning about training and muscle gaining and protein and stuff like that. And now it's just who I am. Training is just a part of me, and it's even more a part of me 'cause I have like the physical remnants of all of that time-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... which are like baked into my physiology. I guess you can see it in some ways with like... Well, the subscriber count is kind of that, but it's a little bit less sort of, you know, grand and, and artistic in that way. Um, but yeah, if you've got the obsession, if now is telling you go and do this thing, that won't be there forever, and if you let that obsession energy pass you by, you're... You don't get to get it back. You don't get to put it on pause and go like, "Hey, just hang there for a second."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"I'm gonna do the safe thing or the obvious thing or the whatever." And that doesn't mean that you're supposed to just be blown around by the winds of the next obsession that comes careening into your consciousness.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
But at the same time, if you let all of them go, you will spend your life working against friction as opposed to with it, and you will end up missing these things that are just you kind of very quickly lazy rivering your way through what ... is most compelling and most interesting to you at the time
- SPShaan Puri
Well, what I like about that is you, you're gonna get your calories from something. So you're gonna have fuel in the tank to do something. If you choose that the fuel is discipline and you make, you know, Goggins makes that as his identity-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- 42:21 – 55:51
Don’t Keep Your “Iron John” in the Cage
- CWChris Williamson
checkout. What's the story of Iron John?
- SPShaan Puri
This is a story I got obsessed. Okay, so here's, uh, [laughs] here's the, the sh- the, the, the interesting way that this came into my life. Um, I recently, uh, sold a company and, uh, as one does when you achieve what you want in life, you get lost [laughs] and you don't know what to do. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I had all the money I'll ever need for me and my kids and their kids or whatever, and now What do I do? Who am I, if not the guy who's chasing that? [chuckles] You know? Like, the dog who was chasing the car, and then I caught the car, and I have no idea why I was barking at this car the whole time. So I hired this guy who has this reputation for being, like, this, um, sort of like this epic, like... Life coach is the wrong way to say it. He, uh... If you ask him, he's like, "I, I just read people's souls. I know, uh... I, I can understand people's gifts and what they're called to do, and then I help them see that for themselves." So I'd heard about this guy five years ago, but it wasn't the right time, and, uh, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So somehow, he shows up on my feed with a little TikTok clip with 10 views, but he says something very profound in that. I say, "I think I need to look this guy up." So I go pay this guy some money, and I say, "Tell me, what, what should I do with my life now?" And, um, he's very mu- He's, he's the first person I've ever met like this that's like Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid. So you know, he's got me doing wax on, wax off, and I'm like, "Hey, I wanted to learn karate." And he's like, "You are learning karate by..." You know, and I'm like, "Am I? How does this work?" He's like, "It'll all make sense later." So I show up to this session. His name's Jack Skeen, Dr. Jack Skeen. And he goes, "I wanna tell you a story. Can I tell you a story?" I guess that's what I'm paying you for. [chuckles] These calls ain't cheap. Go ahead. [laughs] You know? Like, what are we doing? And so he says, "I'm gonna tell you the story of Iron John. Have you heard this story?" I said, "No." He goes, "It's a fable, like a old fable." And fables are great because it's wisdom that's just packaged in a beautiful, simple story that can survive like a mushroom. It can survive, like, thousands of years in a way that, that normal advice doesn't. So he goes, "Here's the story of Iron John. Um, there was a kingdom. Near the kingdom, um, was this, like, giant forest. And, um, so one day, this dog goes into... This guy's dog runs into the forest, chases a deer, never comes back. And guy's like, 'Oh, I gotta go find my dog.' So the guy goes into the forest to get his dog. Guy doesn't come back. His buddies are like, 'What happened to, what happened to Steve?' So four friends go out. 'Let's go get... Let's go find Steve.' They don't come back. All right. So now people start to suspect [chuckles] something's up. Something's mysterious, powerful is in this forest. Why isn't anyone coming back? So the king says, uh... He sends his... He's like, 'Don't worry.' Sends his top knights battalion. 'We'll go figure this out.' They don't come back. At this point, people just stop going in the forest. And so [chuckles] for many years, nobody goes in the forest. They don't know what's going on there. They know there's something powerful, but they don't know what it is. Now, one day there's a teenager, and as teenagers are, you know, full of piss and vinegar, and they're bored, and they're looking for something to do. Looking to cause a little bit of trouble. He asks the king, he says, 'Is there anything f- anything to do around here?' And he goes, 'Well, you could go figure out what's going on in that forest. Nobody's been in there for 10 years.' And, um-"
- CWChris Williamson
There's a dog and Steve and four of his friends.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. We'd love to hear what happened to the t- [chuckles] to the dog at least. And so he goes, and he brings his dog, and he, he walks in the forest, and he's walking through the trees, and he sees this kind of, like, swamp, like this little pond. And as he's walking by, this arm reaches out, grabs the dog, takes the dog. Dog's gone. And the boy says to himself, "This must be the place." Interesting comment by this boy. "This must be the place." So he goes back, and he tells his buddies, he says, "Hey, um, we gotta figure out what's going on in this pond." They get- grab some buckets, like, "We're gonna bail the whole... all the water out. We will get to the bottom of this." So they go, bail it out. Takes forever. And when they get there, at the bottom of the pond, they see a wild man. Um, he's covered head to toe in hair, red hair actually, so they call him Iron John. He's rust... He looks like he's rusted. This wild, strong man at the bottom of the pond. And the author, Robert Bly, uh, this guy who's t- who has retold the story many times, and this guy Robert spent his whole life basically working with men all around the world. Men's groups, men's work. He like really pioneered that movement, like, you know, uh, in the past. And he says, uh, he says Iron John is, um... In the story, Iron John represents, um, wild, masculine energy. And Iron John is, like, the manifestation of the wild man, and he b- he says e- in every man is the wild man, uh, but most of us h- um, have never met him. We've never seen him. He's in the bottom of the pond. So they lock up, uh, Iron John. They bring him back to the palace, tell the king, "We found him. We got him. He's locked in the cage." And, um, so everybody moves on. Iron John's m- "We're all safe now. The kingdom can be happy." Now, the king is getting older, and he's got a little boy, son. This boy's gonna become the king someday. And, um, as Jack says, he goes, "This boy, he's a good old boy. He's a good boy." He's like, "You know a good boy. A good boy, you know, they say please and thank you. They dress up properly for court. He listens to his mommy and daddy, and, um, you know, he, he does everything that a good boy does. He listens, and one day the good boy's gonna become the king. If he does everything right, if he pleases everybody, he gets to be the king." And the boy was given this ball, and in the story, the ball, this golden ball that the boy has represents, like, the boy's vitality. His, his... Like, the, kind of the, the golden ball that, let's say all of us have something that's, like, that's our life energy, our vitality. So he's got this golden ball. It's his favorite toy. Dad gave it to him. One day he's playing with the ball. Ball slips out of his hand, rolls into Iron John's cage. Boy says, "Uh, Mr. John, can I have the ball back?" Iron John laughs and says, "I'll give you the ball back, but you gotta let me out." He says, "I can't do that. You know that." He says, "All right. No ball." Next day, boy comes back, and he's starting to get worried, like, "If I really lost this golden ball, my parents are gonna be pissed." And he's so used to being a good boy, he doesn't wanna get in trouble. So he says, "Please, Iron John, give me the ball back." Iron John says, "I told you. Let me out of the cage." He says, "Look, I... Even if I wanted to let you out of the cage, I don't know how. I don't have the key. I couldn't do it if I wanted to." And he says, "The key to the cage is under your mother's pillow." Kind of Freudian. Um, and you know, in the story, Robert Bly talks about how for, for every good boy, the key to the wild man, the key to the cage is where the mother rests her head at night, where she sleeps and has her dreams, and hopes and dreams for the boy. And mothers don't dream of The, their b- young boy becoming a pirate or, um, you know, a wild man. They want him to become something safe, something proper. And so he's gotta go steal the key. Steals the key, lets Iron John out. Iron John is ready to go back to the forest, gives him the ball. The boy realizes what he's done, this trade that he's made, and he's like, "Pe- they're gonna kill me when they find out I let this powerful wild man back out on the loose." He's really worried, and Iron John says, "Why don't I... I'm not getting back in the cage." Um, but he goes, "You know, even though I was in the cage, it's you who's trapped. So why don't you come with me?" The boy says, "What are you talking about? I, I was trapped." He goes, "You were trapped." He goes, "I live in a palace." And Iron John says, "You may live in a palace, but I know riches which far greater than you've ever seen. Come with me." Puts him on his shoulders, and he goes back out in the forest. Now, this is chapter one of the Iron John story. So he tells me this story, and I'm like, "So what's chapter two? What's the end?" Like, "What does it all mean?" And he goes, "Let's stay on chapter one for a second." And, um, he taught me a very profound lesson about the world. So he goes, "In life, there's three types of men. There's good boys, there's wild men, and great kings." We all know what a good boy is. A good boy is a pleaser. A good boy does what's expected of them. A good boy does what they feel is gonna please other people. So whether it's their wife that they're, they think their job is to bend over backwards and please their wife or their parents or society or, you know, they dress a certain way and they're told, like, you know, life is go to school, get good grades, get a good job. Get a good job, then you're gonna, you know, meet a good girl. Meet a good girl, go buy a house, have two children, get the fence, get a country club, and by God, haven't we done it? And, like, n-nowhere along the way did the good boy ever really ask, like, "Is this what my soul wanted to do in life? Is this what I wanted to do, or is this just what I thought I was supposed to do in life?" And they live their whole life that way. And even further, it comes out in weird ways. 'Cause even though they're not aware of the wild man, he is in there.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And so then they start doing all kinds of behavior, self-sabotage and sort of odd behaviors, and they're dissatisfied even though they have everything they were supposed to have. Why are they so dissatisfied? Life is good, right? And the dissatisfaction comes because they've never let the, let the wild man out of the cage. So there's the wild man. Wild man, what most people think is the opposite of a good boy is a, is a bad man. No, it's a wild man. A wild man is a free man, and the wild man is ferocious. He goes for what he wants. He's courageous. He's disciplined. He, uh, is, has principles. Um, he serves his needs. But he only serves his needs. And then you have great kings, which is what we all really wanna be in life. I think we would all wanna be great, and we all wanna be great men. I think if you ask somebody, "Would you rather be a great man or not?" They'll choose it. But how many great men do you really know? Like, if I ask you, how many truly great men do you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Not many.
- SPShaan Puri
And you have a world-class network. You invite world-class people. You talk to them three days a week or whatever, right? [chuckles] Like, and it's not many for you. Imagine just a normal person in life, how many great men they know. So what he says is that a good boy never becomes a great king. A wild man can become a great king if he starts to care about things beyond himself. So this is part of the lesson. Now, the, I asked the, I asked him, I said, "Look, I love the fable," um, "but, like, how do I apply?" I was like, "I don't think I'm a good boy. I, I think I am more of a wild man, but I, I am not a great king. I think I'm a wild man right now." And he goes, "Well," um, he goes, "I'll tell..." I, I was like, "Can you make it, like, or do you feel you're a great king? Like, where, what are you trying to say here?" And he tells me this great story, and I hope he doesn't mind if I share this, but he tells me this great story. He goes, "I remember the first day I, I encountered the wild man." I said, "All right. Tell me." He goes, "I was 15 years old, and I liked this girl at school, and I mustered up the courage to ask her out on a date. So I wanna take this girl out. Only problem is I don't have a car." [chuckles] And so he's like, "I gotta go ask my older brother." Let's call him Tommy in this example. "I'm gonna go ask Tommy, 'Hey, will you drive us to dinner and a movie?'" Like, and he goes, "Well, now Tommy was always a... He's a big brother. He's always messing with me, punking me. He doesn't really take me seriously. But I thought surely, surely he knows how important this is. He's not gonna screw with me on this one." So Tommy says, "Yeah, I'll take you." He's smirking, so he's, starts to get a little worried. He goes on the date. They drive to dinner. At dinner, he pays for the dinner 'cause he's trying to be a man. He's not trying to be a boy anymore. And so he pays for the dinner. Waitress brings back the change. It, but, you know, the way Tommy, he's sitting closer to the waitress. He's older. She just gives him the change, and he puts it in his pocket. Kind of bothers him, but he doesn't say anything. Um, he goes out to the movie. After the movie, they drop her off at the house. He walks her to the front step, gives her the peck. It's been an amazing day. Everything he wanted. He's walking back to the car, and now Tommy does what big brothers do. He starts to fuck with him. And so he's walking back to the car. He just moves the car up five feet. Now, he's, he wants him to ch- have to chase the car in front of the girl and, like, punk him. So he keeps doing it. Um, and then, but he doesn't, uh, he refuses to chase. And so he, uh, instead, the guy's driving the car. He reaches out his hand, and the antenna comes in, and he just rips it off. It just breaks off. Brother stops the car. He's like, "What the hell? I was just messing. It was a joke. What are you doing? You've messed up my car." So they, he gets in the car, and he goes, "What, what are you doing?" And he goes, "Give me the change." "What change?" "The change from dinner." He goes, "The change from dinner? What are you talking about, the change? Like, you just broke my car. That change pays for the, for, for what you just did to my car." He goes, "Give me the change." He goes, "I would have never done this. I would have never s- acted like this. This was totally unfamiliar, and I didn't even decide to. It just happened." The wild man showed that he was there, and he goes, um, he took the, the brother takes the change, throws it into the street, and go... He said, "Go get your change if you want it." He says, "No, you go pick it up, bring it back, give it to me." The brother's like, "I don't know who you think you are or what has happened to my brother, but this is-"
- CWChris Williamson
[chuckles]
- SPShaan Puri
Y- and, and so they drive home. Leave the change in the street. Don't care. Drive home. Don't talk the whole way. 15 minutes, they get home. They're both still pissed. They start wrestling. They start fighting. Big brothers beat him up a little bit, but he's punching him back in the face, and he's getting beat up. But he's like, "Unlike most times when I was getting beat up, and, you know, ev- eventually I call for mercy and I kinda capitulate and mom has to save me," um, Tommy realized that I'm not capitulating. I'm not winning, but I'm not, I'm not gonna stop this fight. He's gonna kill me if he wants this, if he wants this to, to end. He realized it. He's like, "He realized it and I realized it. I don't know why something changed in me that day." And, uh, and so he described, he goes, "That was the first time I ever met the Wild Man." And he goes, then he's like, "But I didn't let him out for good till 15 years later." So he's telling me this story, and it honestly has inspired me. It's got me thinking a lot about this. I think every guy should start to look at areas in your life where you're being the Good Boy, areas in your life where you've seen the Wild Man, and notice him. Give it energy. Don't leave Iron John in the cage.
- 55:51 – 59:21
How to Go From Good Boy to Great King
- SPShaan Puri
And then further, obviously the last step is ask yourself, how do you become a Great King? How do you, how does the Wild Man... How do you use the energy of the Wild Man to become a Great King?
- CWChris Williamson
How do you do that?
- SPShaan Puri
You start to care about things bigger than yourself. So another model that this guy has is this idea of, uh, your circle. So he says like, you know, when you're born, you're a baby. You only care about your- like, your, literally yourself and your just needs. You need milk, you need a diaper, you need a nap. That's all you need when you're a baby, and you cry if you don't have it. And over time, you start to care about, you know, more things in life. Maybe you start to care about your appearance. Maybe you start to care about your grades. May- you start to care about more things. And every time you care about something, you have to grow to meet that need that you now have. So when you said, "I got bullied and I decided I don't wanna be that guy anymore. I wanna become, I wanna build myself," you had to become more because you now cared about something more than you cared about your comfort, more than you cared about your, your safety, your familiarity. So when that scale tips and you care about it more than you care about your comfort, you have to ch- you, it forces you to change. You become more. Uh, letting out the Wild Man is one great way to do it because it carries with it tremendous power and energy and ferocity. Um, you know, he told me another story where he's like, uh, the ending of... Forget the story. The ending was, "I chewed off my leg to save my life." Like, he sacrificed something, and he goes, "And now I was a three-legged wolf, and I'll, I'll forever be a three-legged wolf 'cause I lost something by doing that."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
"But I'm a free wolf and I'm a fierce wolf now." And I, you know, you hear these things and you start to realize there are moments in life, these little crucible moments, where you can like let the, let, let Iron John out of the cage, and you won't be the same again. It's like a r- it's a one-way street. You will become more because of this. And so how do you go from Wild Man to Great King is when you realize that being a king is m- about more than serving your needs. It's about having a kingdom. You want people in, the people of your kingdom to be happy and thriving, whether that's a family, it's your friends, it's thy neighbor, it's strangers on the internet, it's people in your community, it's people who have this rare disease that you've decided to serve. You've decided to apply your f- fierce wild, uh, energy to something that is worth more to you in terms of meaning than your comfort and your lifestyle and your whatever. And that's the message I needed to hear, 'cause I got a beautiful lifestyle. And he said it. He was like, "Dude, you got three kids. I've talked to your wife. You have a h- happy marriage. You're healthy. You got all the money you need. You h- you got hobbies."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
"You got a podcast. You're famous. What do you, what do you want? We're still talking. Isn't that interesting? Why are we still talking? Because you know there's more."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SPShaan Puri
"And there's something more, and there's something more that's beyond you."
- CWChris Williamson
In other news, have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to buy while some feel infinitely harder? Back in my day, I had to walk 10 miles to the local store. Aren't you younger than me? Yeah, but my dad got a DUI. Anyway, the reality is most businesses just get the website wrong, and if your setup is messy, you lose a ton of sales, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Shopify. They power 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including brands like Gymshark, Skims, Alo, and Neutonic. Because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout's 36% better on average compared to other platforms, and with Shop Pay can boost conversions by 50%. So upgrade your business and get the exact same checkout that we use at Neutonic with Shopify. You can sign up for a free trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com/modernwisdom. That's shopify.com/modernwisdom.
- 59:21 – 1:12:26
Why Finding Success Creates More Work
- CWChris Williamson
Have you ever seen Tom Hardy talking about when he was training to do Bronson, the movie, and he was trying to get Charles Bronson on the phone?
- SPShaan Puri
No. What did he say?
- CWChris Williamson
Can you pull this up, Mark? There's a, a video. It should be about maybe three minutes long, two minutes long. Here it is.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow. Dude, the speed, that was incredible.
- SPSpeaker
My relationship with Charlie grew, um, from phone calls. I remember he first called me up. Uh, he goes... He used to leave message after message on my answerphone about three years ago. His next message was like, "Goff, fucking hell, Tom. It's easier to get hold of fucking Santa Claus than you are." You know, and then you send. He goes, "Oh, well, you know, everybody wants ya." I call again, and he called. It's like boop, "Message 18." And eventually, he goes... I pick up the phone. It's six o'clock. He goes, "Oh, I got ya. I fucking got ya, ain't I?" I said, "Charlie." He goes, "Hello, mate. How you doing?" I go, "I'm good." He goes, uh, "What's going on?" And I thought, um... And I'd just split up with my girlfriend at the time, and I thought, "Oh, well, do you know what? I'm gonna beat around the bush. I'm just gonna fucking tell him straight 'cause, you know, break the ice. You know, I'm in a bit of a bad way at the moment." He goes, "Oh, yeah? What's the matter?" I go, "Yeah." I say, "You know, I'm not, you know, I'm just not, um, you know, I'm just not, not comfortable, you know. I'm, I'm saying goodbye to somebody that, you know, that I, I really love and I, I'm not, I'm not happy. I'm not in a good space and..." [sniffles] Do you know what I mean? "I can't be with a woman, and yet I can't be without one, and I realized that, you know, I probably have a relationship with my mother." [laughs] Do you know what I mean? Uh, that, listen, she was, you know, and, and, you know- Infiltrated all my relationships with women. I always find myself stuck in a triangle, that I'm trying to break this pattern, and it's really painful. And it's like therapy 101. Charlie Bronson, [laughs] the first time he ever spoke to me, you know, "I find myself repeating the same pattern, expecting a different outcome. The insanity, you know? And I just need releasing from this, you know. Like, uh, I gotta release myself. I gotta do the work on it. I, you know, I, I don't know how to," blah, blah, blah. He goes, "Right, right." He goes, "Tom." I went, "Yeah?" He goes, "Did you, uh... Did you s- do you remember the floods?" I went, "When, when Oxford?" He goes, "Yeah, the floods. Do you remember the floods?" I was like, "Y- yeah." He goes, "Do you remember that boy who got his foot stuck in the grate and the river kept rising, and it kept rising, and it kept rising, and eventually they tried to get him out, but he drowned?" "Yeah." He goes, "Well, that wouldn't have happened to me." "Right." He goes, "Do you wanna know why?" I went, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure." He goes, "Because I'd have said, 'Cut it off now.' Tom, what I'm trying to say is, right, what I'm trying to say, son, is sometimes, yeah, you've gotta cut a little piece of yourself off, yeah, no matter how much it hurts, in order to grow, yeah? In order to move on. Do you know what I mean? What are you having for your tea?" I went, "I'm having a steak." He goes, [laughs] "Oh, you cunt." He goes, "I fucking love a steak, mate. What's going on outside your window?" And I was like, "Fucking hell, this guy is dope." [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Is it? Isn't that the sickest clip?
- SPSpeaker
So good. So good.
- CWChris Williamson
15-year-old clip of Tom Hardy.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that, that idea of I need to sacrifice a little bit of myself in a- in, in order to be able to move-
- SPShaan Puri
D- does that resonate for you? I don't know if I'm just at a time in my life where-
- CWChris Williamson
No, massively
- SPShaan Puri
... this Iron John story got me thinking in a way that most stories h- don't have me thinking.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think as guys get a little bit older, this... a- and especially as you touch some bits of success, because there's alwa- the, the promise of success is the fears you have, the insufficiencies you have, the need for validation, all of that will be sated if only you build the castle big enough, if only the mountain that you climb is high enough. And I think for a lot of people, they get there and they go, "Okay, I kind of had an inclination that this probably wasn't gonna fix my pro- I hoped that it might do. It's a shame that it hasn't, or that it's achieved something, but that there's this much bigger challenge that I'm facing. And now there's new challenges, which is when that fuel source and that destinat- uh, the fuel source has been spent, destination's been reached, where the fuck do I go now and how do I get there?" Uh, so yeah, the, this existential, like the founder's existential crisis. Um, I mean, I'm pretty sure Andrew Wilkinson told me about, like he's part of some men's group, and it's exclusively like nine and 10 figure founder exit people who are in the, the most, you know, salubrious version of PTSD that you can imagine. [laughs] You know? It's entrepre-
- SPShaan Puri
By the way, that's how I met Jack, through Andrew. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Right, yeah. Entrepreneur PTSD. In fact, this may be part, part of the same sort of a thing. And, um, he's like, "Why is it that so many people, when they achieve everything that they want, they s- they encounter more challenges than beforehand?"
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, well, it's because they are now cast adrift, and they're, they're sort of directionless and rudderless, and they don't know where to go. And they start to ask themselves questions about, "Okay, well, what was, what was the reason for me getting there in the first place? Like, what was the fuel that got me there?"
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"And what did I sacrifice? What parts of myself did I sacrifice? And now, what calluses have been built up psychically in me? What are the coping mechanisms and, and the paths of least resistance and the ways that I've avoided things that I needed to feel and the ways that I felt things that I shouldn't have done?"
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
All of these patterns that I have, and now if I want to not be at the mercy of w- how I've got here, with no longer a destination for me to get to, I need to either get rid of the calluses and the patterns and the fears and the insufficiencies, or I can just run it back and get gold medalist syndrome-
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... and think, "Oh, ah, uh, that was it." What it, what it really is is I need to do it twice.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Because the once could have just been luck, and now what it r- well, I need to prove, 'cause if I do it again, if I do it the se- well, you know, two, two, 'cause two can still kind of be, so thr- I'm pretty sure that thr- and you're like, "Yeah, but-"
- SPShaan Puri
Elon's done it four.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
So-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know. It is a trillion dollar. You know. But, and then you're like, okay, but you do-
- 1:12:26 – 1:24:25
The Hidden Cost of Greatness
- SPShaan Puri
helpful in life.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. You've got this line that's similar. "Anything extreme is not worth doing. Bodybuilding, mega celebrities, billionaires, Olympians. The final 10% costs more than the first 90%. The internet has created a greatness bubble. Extremism is highly visible but highly undesirable. We confuse an extraordinary result with an extraordinary life."
- SPShaan Puri
Did I say that? That sounds good. No, [laughs] I, I, I mean, that's how I feel. I... And it's hard because I'm like you. I, I do podcasts where I interview those people. I watch podcasts where I, you know, I listen to those people, and it is intoxicating [laughs] when you h- when you hear it.
- CWChris Williamson
It is.
- SPShaan Puri
And you start to think, like, "I could do that. I could... If I just lock in. If I just sleep under the desk." It's like, do I really wanna sleep under the desk? Or Can I, uh, surrender? So I love Kevin, Kevin Kelly, who's a very interesting guy. He started Wired magazine, and he, you know, does all these projects like The Long Now project, where they build a 10,000-year clock in a mountain-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- SPShaan Puri
... as an ode to long-term thinking, like a, a really cool art project with Bezos, and he, he edited the whole Earth Catalog, and he did all these, like, really interesting things in his life, and somebody asked him, my friend David Perell asked him a question. He go- he goes, "What was the cost of being Kevin Kelly?" He said, "That's a great question." And he goes, "The cost was greatness." And I thought when he said it, he was gonna say like, you know, "I just had to, I had to work hard. I had to be obsessed." I thought that's what he was trying to say, like normal greatness porn. And instead he goes, um, "I was happiest being like a gadfly, like just floating from thing to thing and spending a stint there. But nev- I didn't build the biggest magazine empire, and I didn't build the best this, and I didn't become the richest guy or the most famous guy, but I wrote a book that I thought was good, and I did this, and I did that." He goes, "I had to surrender to greatness. I had to surrender that, that, that idea of me, that version of me that could maybe have existed."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
"I surrendered that because I didn't want the price that comes with it."
- CWChris Williamson
The final 10%.
- SPShaan Puri
The final 10%. And our brains are pretty bad at nonlinear. Like, there's all these stories about like, oh, you s- you know, the guy who was negotiating with the king, he's like, "I'll take a grain of rice, but double it every day." And the king's like, "That's it? Um, sure." And then like within 30 days he's got like, he owns all the gold in the empire, right? Because we don't understand compounding or exponentials or nonlinear progress. We think you do a little, you get a little. You do a little more, you get a little more. Do, do a little more, you get a little bit more. And all of... And if, if you just do a lot, you finally get a lot. That's not really how anything works. Like, the way progress works is this weird curve where when you start, you get this initial burst. So you do a little, you actually kinda get a lot of gains right away. You get all of the beginner's gains that, that come with starting a thing. Then you're gonna plateau for a while, and more work doesn't, you know, it's very incremental. And then you can get to this 80%, 85, 90% mark on things without massive sacrifice. But getting that last 10% and the last 1% to go be Michael Phelps and go be, you know, all the greats, you do what Michael Phelps did, and you don't miss a day of swimming for whatever-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, yeah, of course
- SPShaan Puri
... 15 years and everything
- CWChris Williamson
In, in order to get to that level, you are competing with people who are prepared to pay that price.
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly. It is s-selected down-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... to the other maniacs.
- CWChris Williamson
There will be someone else who would... I mean, I think it's, uh, 25% of Olympians say that they would exch- they would happily die... or not happily, but they would trade dying in four years' time for a gold medal.
- SPShaan Puri
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
One quarter of them would say, "I'll happily-"
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
"... be dead four years after the Olympics if I get to win it."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And okay, are you prepared to be that person?
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And we-
- SPShaan Puri
How shiny is that medal for you, you know? For some people it's the ring.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's okay. It's okay-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... for you to say yes, but it's also okay for you to say no, and we don't have a very good culture of-
- 1:24:25 – 1:36:49
The Ultimate Test of a Successful Relationship
- CWChris Williamson
You can predict the long-term health of a relationship by whether each cut heals to 99% or 101%.
- SPShaan Puri
How good is that? Um, have you, you've, you've, you've heard about, like, Gottman, Dr. Gottman? Uh, you'll probably explain it better than I do. But maybe give the, give the context of Gottman. I think this is very interesting. I only recently learned about this.
- CWChris Williamson
So the Gottmans are a couple who are basically kind of gold standard for relationship, uh, studies, and they brought lots of married couples at varying states of love and disrepair into the lab, and then they've done assessments around them, and they've come up with a variety of different theories. There's one other couple that has done something similar, but when it comes to sort of modern marriage, relational dynamics, they're kind of the, the, they're the GOATs.
- SPShaan Puri
And he had this, like, parlor trick where he could watch a couple for some short amount of time, what was it, like a minute or five minutes or something like that, and predict with 90% accuracy if the couple would stay together or not. Which is incredible. And it, it, it's a credible proof point. He did it many, many times, like they've, they've kind of studied it. And the whole thing, it was not, um, you know, how compatible are they? Do they have similar hobbies and interests? And, uh, do they, do they share core values? His understanding of how relationships work was basically how well do you fight?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
When you argue, when you disagree, how do the two people behave? And it's basically when there's a cut, do you heal to 99% or do you heal to 101? And if you're healing to 99%, over time your relationship is degrading, and it's just a matter of when and how often those cuts happen. But if you can go to 101, and like what a simple thing to strive for, just this little 2% swing. What does it take to just make that 2% difference? Probably not that much. And you learn the things that were in his research about what the couples who were healthy did versus the couples who were inhealth- uh, unhealthy did. Um, I just think that's like a very powerful idea of... 'Cause when you're in that moment of the cut, you're not focused on the healing. You're focused on the cut-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- SPShaan Puri
... and how dare you? And I can't believe you did this again. And like, yeah, I might have cut you, but like it's only because you earlier cut me. And so we always just focus on that, and it, it's just the shift of perspective to, uh, all right, how do I get this to 101 instead of 99? What would that take?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Probably not much, but if I know, I know if I do that, I'm, I'm, I'm made. You know, this relationship is gonna be, gonna be great. It's gonna be great over the long term. It's gonna get greater and greater o- as the years go by, and who doesn't want that?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Visakan Veerasamy talks about how, uh, w- the marriage paradox or the divorce paradox, how is it that lots of people who around dinner were seemingly each other's favorite person end up getting separated? And he says because bad times are a far bit better predictor of relationship outcomes than good times are.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's the arguments, not the glories that work out the duration of a relationship's existence. That, uh, almost no relationship has broken up because there were too few peak experiences.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Far more of them break up because there are too many low experiences.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And you go, okay, well, how do you relate when things are going badly? 'Cause that is the predictor, right? Like it... God, I mean, think about how many people are in relationships that are predicated mostly on conflict. Uh, it's, it's-
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... they would kill to be at neutral.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Neutral for them would be bliss.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And should you strive for more than neutral? Yeah, absolutely.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Of course. But there are many, many, many circles of hell below that, and there are people who are in less than neutral marriages that stay together for life. And you go, okay, so if I, if minus can stay together, neutral should be like-
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
... fucking easy work. And then on top of that we can actually start to look to build.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
I think there is an interesting question of like what healing a cut during the argument to 101 instead of 99, like what that looks like.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- 1:36:49 – 1:38:31
What’s Next For Shaan?
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Shaan Puri, ladies and gentlemen. Shaan, you're the best, dude. I appreciate you. I'm excited to do Rabbit Hole as well.
- SPShaan Puri
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what is going on now that you are post-economic?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
What the fuck, what the fuck you doing?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] I'm, uh, I'm finding my ways of doing, um, a f- fun things that will bring me back to the b-bottom of a mountain.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Reinvent myself. So I'm, uh, making a movie right now and working on other, uh, we're building this amazing kinda crazy magic thing in New York that I think is really fun. So I'm trying to do creative projects with people who are super inspiring, 'cause I kn-I know, I was like, you know, you do a little soul searching, and after all the soul searching, my, like, answer was like, I love doing projects with the boys. That's my, that's my happy place. And so like, who are the boys? So who are those people that I just wanna spend a bunch of time with, find excuses, and what projects will bring the best out of us? What projects will bring something new out of us? What projects will have some meaning in the world? Either make people have a lot of joy or maybe have them be, be great in a way that they weren't if th-they weren't otherwise.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
Like push people. Like I think we aim far too low, and if I can help people aim a little higher, but, um, towards, you know, like going for it and whatever their version of going for it is, I would feel really happy if I did that. So I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm gonna play around with projects like that and, uh, yeah, do projects with the boys is the idea.
- CWChris Williamson
Unreal. Projects with the boys LLC. Appreciate you, man.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Until next time.
- SPShaan Puri
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
All right. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude, on fucking fire. A quick note. Lots of people tell us that YouTube unsubscribes them from the channel even though they already pressed it. So just check down there and see if the subscribe button is pressed. You get access to episodes before anybody else if you do. Supports me and the show, helps me to bring you bigger and better guests, uh, and it makes me very happy, so just go and give it a tap for me. I thank you. [blows kiss]
Episode duration: 1:38:31
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