How To Identify Your Internal Fears - Corey Wilks

1. 0:00 – 1:19

   Intro

   1. CWCorey Wilks0:00

      Up to 76% of people, they lay on their deathbeds with the exact same regret. They lived in mediocrity. They're like, "I wish I would have taken certain chances. I wish I would have faced my fears and went left instead of right, but I chose to be complacent. I chose to let fear stop me from living the life that I wanted to live and knew I was capable of doing. It just was too scary for me to do."

   2. CWChris Williamson0:23

      For the people that are watching, you will see that I'm back in my usual, uh, setting. I'm back in the UK. Uh, you'll also notice that I'm handholding a USB microphone, uh, and everything's just a little bit different. That's because I've been slowly fisted by British Airways over the last 24 hours. I left Austin about 24 hours ago. Um, two hours late, got to London Heathrow, that flight left another hour and a half late. Neither of my bags arrived, and then I've just got one bag and thankfully in that one bag is this USB microphone. Uh, like, I, I've been able to sort of piece together this very sort of rough-hewn way of putting stuff, but the show goes on, Corey. That's what we're fucking doing, okay? Uh, extracting-

   3. CWCorey Wilks1:06

      'Cause you're a fucking professional. (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson1:08

      Correct. I've extracted British Airways from my, my back passage and now we're gonna record a podcast.

   5. CWCorey Wilks1:15

      (laughs) I'm glad your rectum is clear. Let's fucking go.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:18

      Yes. Let's fucking

2. 1:19 – 10:08

   From Therapist to Coach

   1. CWChris Williamson1:19

      go, man. So, you are somebody that's transitioned from, uh, being a therapist to now being a coach, and one of the things that I find that's interesting about that is the fact that you've obviously dealt with people that was, uh, subclinical, I think is the term, so people that were suffering with, uh, issues, getting them from, um, illness to wellness rather than wellness to high performance. Um, and what I'm very, very interested about is what the common challenges are that you found that high performers deal with that you were never dealing with with your previous clients when you was working clinically and you were getting people from some sort of, um, social anxiety disorder, depression, whatever it might be, to get them back to the normal world. What is it that the high performers are dealing with that you didn't see and also what are the similarities between the two?

   2. CWCorey Wilks2:11

      Yeah, so back when I did therapy, you know, therapy's all about dysfunction, right? So, helping somebody overcome clinical depression or panic attacks, things like that. So before you can really flourish or start to tap more into your potential, you have to deal with that baseline functioning level of shit first, right? Because if you are, you know, acutely suicidal or, like I said, if you're having panic attacks so bad you can't leave your house, there's... I mean, your, your ceiling for potential is, is, is pretty low, right? So that's where a lot of therapy is about is how can we just help you function, period, to get you out the door and to just go to like a regular nine-to-five or just do, you know, just basic functioning shit, right? With a lot of high performers, they may, may struggle with like mood symptoms occasionally, right? Or they may have anxiety, everybody has anxiety to some extent in some situations, but it isn't necessarily crippling, right? So with a lot of the people that I work with and with coaching in general, it, it's much more about the assumption is you, you already function pretty well. What you need is these small tweaks to really optimize, okay? So, you know, sleep, diet, and exercise, those are probably pretty dialed in. Your stress management is probably relatively dialed in. So at this point it's like, okay, what do you need that, just that little bit extra, that edge, to really go further faster? That's really the, the main distinction is that there's just, they're at a higher level of functioning overall

   3. CWChris Williamson3:46

      What are the commonalities?

   4. CWCorey Wilks3:47

      ... is my question. Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:47

      Tell me the commonalities-

   6. CWCorey Wilks3:48

      Yeah, yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:48

      ... between high performers, 'cause everybody looks at the guys that go and get coaching from people like you and they think, "Well, their problems may be very different to mine." Uh, but increasingly as I've spent time around people that are super high performers, I realized that a lot of people's issues, they scale up, they might get bigger and the, um, consequences of them messing up might become larger. But the problems tend to usually fall into similar sort of categories.

   8. CWCorey Wilks4:15

      Yeah, and you know, I heard this, this quote the other day, new levels, new devils or different level, different devils sort of deal, right? So like as you level up, you... new problems kind of come your way, right? On a base level, we all kind of want the same thing, right? Like we want connection, we want to feel that we matter and we want to do something that on some level is meaningful or fulfilling for us, right? So whether you are... you know, so like, you know, we can go into my story, you know, at some point, but like, you know, I grew up on like welfare, like food stamps, public housing, you know, and again, like in America we don't have free health insurance, right? So the fact that I had free health insurance meant I was poor as fuck, right? (laughs) And like... So you would think, oh, well you, you're from this like lower echelon of society where people, they can't even think ahead of, you know, they, they don't want the same things as, as multimillionaires. They do. They may not believe it's possible, but uh, most of us want the exact same things. It's just what that looks like for each of us may differ, right? But again, we all want connection, we want fulfillment, we want to matter and that's what ultimately I, I've, I've seen that we all strive to achieve in some form or fashion.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:29

      What about when you're speaking to people that are at the absolute peak of their game? What is it that they're coming up against overall? 'Cause, you know, those people fundamentally what they want is to matter, to feel like they're contributing to a project that they care about and so on and so forth. But what about the, the, the fears or the doubts that those people have? Do they fall into, into common buckets as well? The sort of inner monologue, the texture of the environment that their mind goes through?

   10. CWCorey Wilks5:58

       Yeah, so this kind of gets into what I call the four horsemen of fear.... right? So, the, the four most common limiting beliefs that people struggle with, right? Fear of failure, we, we're all familiar with that one, right? And this is one of those things where no matter how much you've achieved, that fear doesn't necessarily go away. It changes, right? Like, I've, I've worked with people, again, tens of millions of dollars, uh, you know, millions of YouTube subscribers, all these other things, and one of the things you hear from so many people is, it's, and it's almost like the exact same phrase, they say, "I'm afraid it's just all gonna go up one... It's just all gonna collapse one day." Right? "It's all gonna go up in smoke. Like, all of a sudden, one day, I'm gonna be left with nothing." And, like, logically, that, that isn't gonna happen, right? 'Cause like even if all of your, you know, your, your accounts just went tits up, you still have what's in your bank account. You still have the skillset, right? It's highly unlikely that you're going to just be fucked the rest of your life, even if all of your businesses today collapse, right? But that's this fear, right? "Well, I've got, you know, 20 different income streams, and this and that, but what if tomorrow it all fails?" A lot of people struggle with that one. (gasps) Another big one is, is fear of uncertainty, right? This whole idea of, "Which path is right for me? Which decision should I make?" Right? "Well, I don't know if this," if, you know, with delegating, "I don't know if this person can handle these responsibilities." Right? "Which direction should I take my company?" So that's a huge one, right? Is, is this fear of uncertainty. So what happens with a lot of people is instead of... So they're at a fork in the road, right? So instead of risking making the wrong decision, they just sit down and make no decision. They become complacent. They stagnate, right? That's a big issue, uh, a lot of people struggle with. (sniffs) Another one is fear of ridicule, right? So, "What will other people think or say? How will people react? How will my audience react?" Right? Um, until they, you know, like with, with lower level people who aren't as, as, as, um, high achievers, if they haven't achieved success or anything yet, a lot of times the fear is, "What will my friends and family think?" Right? After you build a brand, you're not as concerned with that. Um, so a lot of times people stay small, right? Like, you've talked about embracing your weirdness and things like that, right? So this whole idea of, um, you know, "I, I don't want to risk ridicule, so I'm just gonna be as normal as possible, be as, as basic and, and just, you know, mediocre as possible to avoid, you know, that negative reaction from the public." (sniffs) But the biggest one that people aren't aware of that holds so many of us back is actually fear of success, right? You think, "Cory, why the fuck would I be afraid to achieve the thing that I claim to want?" And for so many people, if you haven't achieved major success, whatever that means to you, (coughs) most of us see success as a binary thing, of before and after. If you've never achieved major success, the only version of you that you know is pre-success, right? (coughs) So you drag your feet, you overcomplicate, you self-sabotage to prevent you from, from achieving success, because a lot of us think that, "Well, once I achieve success, I'm gonna change." Right? "What if I lose my ambition?" Right? "What if I become a completely different person?" Right? One of the people I worked with, you know, he's a Web3 founder, and he's like, "Look, man. I've been the underdog my entire life. What happens if I actually achieve this and I'm no longer that underdog? What if, in my, in my niche, I'm given too much authority to where my word carries way too much weight? I am afraid that, you know, the whole idea of power corrupts. I'm afraid I won't be able to, to handle that level of, of responsibility and, and, and sway. How do I deal with that?" So that's a huge fear a lot of people dr- really struggle with. So they say they want certain things, but they, not even actively, but they sort of, like, subconsciously self-sabotage to prevent them from facing these things that they're deeply afraid of. So those are the things that I see a lot, regardless of, of, of how high of an achiever people are. The most common limiting beliefs all kind of fall into one of those four, those four buckets.

3. 10:08 – 20:15

   Are Successful People Fearless?

   1. CWCorey Wilks10:08

   2. CWChris Williamson10:09

      Yeah. Uh, I've spent a lot of time around some really competent people. I was at Mikhaila Peterson's wedding this weekend and the table that I was sat on was me, uh, Jordan Peterson's CAA agent, Ari, Michael Malice, Douglas Murray, just coming off the back of a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and Amazon number one bestseller, Rob Henderson, who's, like, the hottest thing in social psychology at the moment, and, uh, two, two other people that were fascinating as well. And one of the things that I realized as I was having a conversation with these people, they have a lot of self-belief. And I can't work out whether the self-belief came before the success or the self-belief was driven by the success. Um, but I get the impression, certainly from having spent time with some of them, Douglas especially, he is so certain of his capabilities from years and years of iterating on what he does. And this may have always been there, but certainly from iterating millions of reps, right? Millions of words that he's written throughout his career. Five columns a week, uh, 1,000 words per column for the New York Post, America's longest running newspaper, and for, uh, The Spectator in the UK, and, you know, huge publications. And he simply doesn't have any of these four horsemen. Uh, I believe that he would be pretty open and honest. He may have had them in the past. They may creep up every so often, but it's not the sort of crippling inertia that it causes a lot of people to have.

   3. CWCorey Wilks11:34

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:35

      And I wonder whether you find many people that have one of them or whether most people have either all of them or none of them.

   5. CWCorey Wilks11:46

      So some people, there's typically one that sort of rises to the top. But for a lot of people, that actually cycles, right? So, like, as you're going up and you're achieving success, and, and, and a big caveat to all of this is these fears tend to kick in when we're doing work that we deeply care about, right? Um-... 'cause one of the, one of the people I've, I've worked with, they said, "Well, when I had my job, like, I don't, I wasn't really afraid of any of this. Like, none of these fears really kicked in." It's like, yeah, because if you don't connect with your work, these fears don't really kick in as much, right? You're just, you're kind of going through the motions, right? I'm not saying-

   6. CWChris Williamson12:19

      Yeah, why, why would you fear failure about something you don't care about?

   7. CWCorey Wilks12:22

      Exactly, right? And so, it, it's this idea of the, the, the more you're doing work that resonates with you, the more likely these are going to come up at some point. But different ones may come up at different points, right? So you're saying with this guy, he's w- he's, he's seasoned, right? Like, he's been through all this shit before. But more than likely, as he was coming up, he did struggle with these, and as he found ways to deal with them, to conquer them, they, like, that, that kind of became, like, a voice in the back of his head, like, way back, he, he kind of muted it, right? Rath- rather than it screaming at him. But no, that's a super good point because like, with, with this fear, a lot of, ultimately, we fear the unknown, right? With any kind of fear, right? What are people gonna say? What if I fail? What if I change? But once you face this fear, you realize, once you make the unknown known, you realize that it really wasn't as bad as you had made it out to be, right? So then the next time that fear comes around, you're like, "Listen, motherfucker, I've already dealt with this." Right? Like, because even if I fail, I know I can recover. Even if people don't like what I did, I know I can recover, right? Even if I succeed, I know how I can stay humble and, and keep, you know, grinding it out and keep this, this level of achievement that I know that I'm capable of having. So that's probably, I would assume, the transition that, the transformation he's went through, right? I'd, I'd love to, to hear more about his story.

   8. CWChris Williamson13:45

      Yeah, it's, it's very strange to look at these guys that are super, super competent now, and I think a lot of the time, one of the challenges we have as younger guys and girls listening to people like your Rogans and your Petersons and your Sam Harrises and your whatevers, and looking at them to model our behavior off, is that the realizations that they've come to now, they're kind of shouting down from on top of a mountain that they've walked up one step at a time. And Ali Abdaal, a mutual mate of ours, said, uh, really, really good idea that you want to be teaching somebody that's two steps behind you, not 10 steps behind you, because when you're 10, 10 steps ahead, you can't remember the challenges that you had all that time ago. You know, if you're at the top of the mountain as somebody that's lectured in front of students for three decades, w- uh, how much really can you resonate with someone that's got a fear of public speaking? Like, genuinely. You can resonate with them conceptually, but you don't actually know what it feels like. It wasn't, it wasn't last year, right? And I think that that's just something that I'm increasingly sort of trying to put a filter on when I'm hearing people, whether it's investment advice from Warren Buffett or, or lifestyle advice from Jocko Willink or something like that, that, th- th- that's something that they've arrived at and works for them at this stage of their life with this degree of realization, with this amount of experience under their belt, et cetera, et cetera. But that wasn't the route that they took to get to where they are, and sometimes I think that the path that people say is where they're at now, they believe is a more expedient way to get there, but perhaps the long way... You know, perhaps you have to take the stairway to Mount Olympus, perhaps you can't take the elevator. Perhaps you have to do this step by step by step, and, um, maybe earning your stripes by getting through ridicule and fear of failure and uncertainty in... and, and success and stuff like that, maybe those are the trials and tribulations that you got to go through in order to get there.

   9. CWCorey Wilks15:46

      Well, exactly, right? Like, we all have to kind of earn our way, right? And that's, I mean, that's the issue you see all the time online is, like, all these bullshit hacks, like life hacks, psychology hacks, and here's how to just, you know, fucking one, two, three your way to, to success in, you know, two weeks or whatever. You know, six-pack abs in 10 days. All this bullshit, right? Because people want the results without the putting in the work, right? And that's the thing, is when you have that, a lot of people looking for these hacks and these shortcuts and then getting disappointed when they don't work. But even when you, when you're talking about somebody, you know, like Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willink, all these other people who are proof that it works and they know what they're talking about, right? And they've built this huge following of people who, because they, they're, they're trustworthy, right? (sighs) But, you know, like, I'll take Jocko, right? Jocko, you, you know what Jocko's gonna say, right? Like back in the day you had those, you know, WWJD bracelets, right? Like it's, it's that shit now with Jocko, right? Like, what would Jocko do? What would Jocko say, right? You know what Jocko would tell you to do. But knowing and doing are two different things. So just because somebody like, like Jocko or Dr. Jordan Peterson or somebody tells you exactly what you need to do, which is the correct fucking answer, until you own that, until you actually put that shit into practice, it doesn't fucking make a difference. And that's the huge issue with, with anybody with any modicum of success is like, look, I ate shit, I grinded in obscurity for fucking years, right? And then I got to where I'm at or then I achieved this. And that's just, that's the, the fucking reality is you have to go through that period of just eating shit and grinding to get to the same fucking place, the same answer that somebody gave you five, 10 years ago. Like, think of all the shit that you and I were told in our early 20s that it took us until our early 30s to be like, "Fuck, that was right."

   10. CWChris Williamson17:43

       Yup. You know, it's like you hear a lesson and then over time, like a parasite, it gets inside of you and then stares out through your eyes and tells you that it was correct all along. Um, there is no way, I think, to expedite believing something, right? You need context, you need, um, stress testing in real life, you need buy-in.You don't get that from just hearing it, you know. I mean, if, if all it took was the pithy aphorism tweet to tell you what to do, everybody would be a millionaire because How To Get Rich Without Getting Lucky from Naval has existed for- forever, right? And it's... The Almanack of Naval Ravikant's one of my favorite books. Okay, well, why is it that I can't just take this set of instructions and then lead my life off the back of it? Well, it's because I need to believe it enough to motivate myself to make the behavior change. I need to work out what that strategy means i- in terms of how I apply that to my own life. You know, there's so many layers of filtering through this stuff, and I do think that this is one of the reasons that simple instructions, like Jordan Peterson's "clean up your room," they resonate a lot because you go, "Well..." It actually, it's something that you can do right now, today, in front of you, and maybe it's symbolic and, and downstream from that, good stuff happens. But you don't really need much context. Is the room clean or is it not clean? You know, you understand what a clean room looks like and what an unclean room looks like? Crack on. The ones that are more complex, the ones that understand about delegating and leverage and about how to help other people to raise you up and network, all that stuff, very difficult to, to bring into your own life. So yeah, I think, I think that when we're looking at the solutions that people give us, it's very easy to say, "You idiot, you knew this. You knew this already and you continue to not take the advice." And yet you also need to give yourself a little bit of a break, because that's literally how everybody works. If it was a case, if, if it was simply the case that the person who had the most information was the most successful, the person that reads the most books would be the richest on the planet. That's not the way it works. It's about taking stuff in. It's about understanding the context. It's about having the buy-in and the motivation that allows you to then deploy that, and it's about working out how this fits into the broader framework of your life and how you operate.

   11. CWCorey Wilks20:00

       But even this fucking conversation you and I are having, right? Somebody's gonna watch this episode, and then in 10 years be like, "Fuck, Core and Chris were right."

   12. CWChris Williamson20:08

       Yeah, maybe.

   13. CWCorey Wilks20:09

       This is the same shit. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson20:09

       Maybe, maybe, maybe that'll be us. Maybe we'll, like, l- look back at this episode and go, "You motherfucker. You motherfucker."

4. 20:15 – 30:36

   Spotting Self-Sabotaging Behaviour

   1. CWChris Williamson20:15

      All right, so we've got failure, ridicule, uncertainty, and success. Talk to me about how that relates to self-sabotaging behavior, right? 'Cause that's, that's a fear. That's something conceptually that's going on emotively inside of our brains. How does that manifest in people's real world behavior?

   2. CWCorey Wilks20:32

      Yeah, so, you know, for me, most self-sabotaging behaviors are actually rooted in fear. So, a lot of people don't even realize that they have this fear that's holding them back, but they can identify their behaviors, right? So, imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome and perfectionism, to me, are sort of two sides of the same coin, because both of these are rooted in a fear of ridicule. You're not a perfectionist. You don't just have, like, a high bar for quality, okay? Most people have a high bar for quality. But your, quote-unquote, "perfectionism" is an excuse to not hit publish, to not put yourself out there, to not put your product or service out there, right? It's an excuse, because the longer you say, "Oh, I'm a perfectionist, I need to tweak it a little bit more," all that is, is doing... As psychologists, we do, we do, uh, what's called a functional analysis with, with a behavior. All that means is, what function does this serve? What purpose does it have? So, the function of perfectionism is to allow you to continue to avoid this fear of ridicule. 'Cause the longer you, you put off hitting publish, the longer you tweak it, the, the longer you can avoid it actually being out there in the open, okay? Imposter syndrome is the same fucking thing. "Oh, you know, people are gonna think that I don't belong in this room," or, "People are gonna think that, you know, I'm wrong or I don't know enough." Okay, and? Either they do or they don't. If they do, they're fucking assholes and they're not in your corner. And why the fuck would you respect somebody or seek approval from somebody who's a shitbag? Or, they're not gonna think that, because they're gonna understand either you're new or they're there, they want to build you up because they've been in your same shoes. Like, that's the other thing. 'Cause like, I remember when I was in grad school, we did this, and again, I, I originally went for therapy. So, we did this out- this outreach event for people experiencing home- homelessness. So, this was in, like, West Virginia, like rural Appalachia in December. It was cold as fuck. And we were doing it out back in this, uh, church. So, people experiencing homelessness, they would come in, they would get, like, a medical checkup, they would get clothes, food, whatever. It was the School of Psychology, medical school, all these other schools, right, of health professions. So, all these people were there fighting for their fucking lives, right? Like, it's subfreezing temperatures, and they don't have a house. And I'm like, "Look, I get that they're here for a medical checkup or for clothing or whatever. What the fuck am I here to do?" These, these people do not need deep breathing techniques. They're fighting for their fucking lives, okay? So, I went up to two of my, my supervisors, who between them had like 50 years of experience, and I was like, "Look, when does this feeling like I don't know what the fuck I'm doing go away?" And they were like, "We'll let you know." Right? From that day, literally from that fucking day, I never had imposter syndrome again, because I'm like, "Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing." So, using that as, "Oh, I have imposter syndrome," that's a fucking excuse that is allowing you to avoid facing your fear of ridicule. So, like, th- those are two that I, I see all the time, right? Or I see people like, "Oh, yeah, just, I really struggle with procrastination." No, you fucking don't. You know what you need to do. You are perfectly capable of doing that when there's a deadline, right? Or I, I hear people, you know, like friends and shit all the time, like, "Oh, you know, at work, I'm really high functioning, but then in my personal life or trying to do this side hustle thing, I just, I can't. I keep procrastinating." That's a bullshit fucking excuse. What the fuck are you afraid of?... that procrastinating is allowing you to avoid. Right? Because if you're ultimately, what a lot of times is people are afraid of failure. "Well, I'm afraid it'll fail, so as long as I just drag my feet long enough, I don't ever risk failure, 'cause I never put anything out there." All right, so like these are some of the most common self-sabotaging behaviors you see from people, and it isn't the behavior. The behavior is a symptom. What the fuck are you afraid of? Right, so any time I start to s- like myself, that I, I'm seeing that I'm dragging my feet or I'm over-complicating something or I'm taking on too many projects, I say, "Hey, how might this be rooted in my fear? What the fuck might I be afraid of that this is allowing me to avoid?" Because the sooner I can pinpoint that, the sooner I can tar- start to take action to, to break down this fear, to, to try to overcome it in some way, because once that fear isn't holding me back, as lo- like once I rob that fear of its power over me, that behavior, that self-sabotaging behavior no longer serves a function, 'cause I'm not afraid to face that fear. So then that shit goes away.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:21

      I think you're right about procrastination and the link in with some of this stuff. I would say that there's definitely times in my life and in the people that I've worked with who are struggling with procrastination simply due to a lack of focus or bad habits or ease, ease of distraction, so I don't think that this is necessarily the only reason. Procrastination, I don't think only ever comes from fear. Um ...

   4. CWCorey Wilks25:42

      Exactly.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:43

      But perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control. That's what I see a lot of the time, that people are scared of shipping their work, and the way that they can inoculate themselves from failing publicly is by assuring their failure privately. It means that nobody ever actually has to see them potentially fall flat on their face and the way that they can stop that from happening is by never actually going out onto the stadium floor, and that's something that's very difficult to get past, and a couple of the things that have been really effective for me, th- th- that I can reflect on with this show, 'cause that, that is me, man. I spent, uh, six months v- vacillating about how I was gonna start this show, um, w- when I was gonna start it, and what the name was going to be, and all of this stuff, and then once you get past that first little thing, the momentum continues to carry you forward. A couple of the things that I've found that have been really effective for me in terms of continuing to keep me accountable and to not allow myself to slip back into that is to have a regular cadence that I do the work at. So Modern Wisdom episodes go out Monday, Thursday, Saturday every single week. They have done for two and a half years now. Before that it was Monday, Thursday, and before that it was every Monday, so I built that up over time. The first year was one a week, the second year was two a week, and from the third year onwards, it was three a week. I built that up slowly over time. I also had external accountability, right? If I, if, if I don't put an episode up, the, I'm gonna feel like the audience is saying, "Well, hang on a second." Like, "Knock, knock, motherfucker. Where's the episode? I was expecting to listen to something." And you're also, you've got a sense of Parkinson's law comes in there, that you've time blocked things off, you need to get it done by a particular date. It's the same reason that people like me, uh, did their university assignments the night before they were due in throughout our entire university careers. Um, the same thing happens with my newsletter. So I wanted to start a newsletter. I'd been told for ages that it would be a good idea, own your audience, have direct access to them, send them stuff that's interesting and blah, blah, blah. And I'd never written regularly before ever. Two years ago, it's about this week actually coming up will be, uh, newsletter 100, so almost exactly two years, and I, I'd never written anything that was regular, so I did a couple of things there. Uh, I made it really short, so it's Three Minute Monday, which i- is three minutes to read, so it's about 900 words on average, which is, takes now around about 90 minutes to write-ish, as long as I've prepared some stuff during the week that I actually can draw on, uh, and I did it every week, same day, same time, uh, tried to write it at a similar sort of period. It happens between a Friday and a Monday when I'm gonna write it. All of that stuff, again, accountability externally to the audience, a sense of sort of obligation and, and almost fear and embarrassment. You don't, you can utilize embarrassment to kind of propel you to go forward, 'cause you're like, "Oh, I don't have to make up the excuse about why it's not happened." And I've never missed one. I've never, ever missed one, and I'm the exact type of person that would be the sort of person that would miss one.

   6. CWCorey Wilks28:37

      Mm.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:37

      Right? And, uh, it, it's, it almost blows my mind that there are other parts of, uh, other domains of my life, training, right? If I don't have a coach that's looking after my programming, I'll miss sessions all the time. Or diet, if I don't have somebody that I'm checking in with, with regards to my macros, I'll break my diet all the time. But the few things that I've stuck to those principles, regular cadence, um, build it up over time in terms of sort of difficulty or, or frequency, uh, and have external accountability, you know, have something, someone, some group, some audience that's there in the back of your mind and you think, "Oh, not only do I want to do this, but I'm also gonna be a little bit embarrassed if I don't do it." So those are some of the things that I've used that have helped me get past, uh, procrastination and the perfectionism side.

   8. CWCorey Wilks29:24

      Well, that and the uncertainty, right, man? So, um, with, like, exercise and, and eating right, right? So many people are intimidated by getting in shape whether it is, you know, well, what exercise should I do? Should I do, you know, this, you know, top down or should I buy... how many reps, how much weight, all this other shit, right? What you did, it sounds like, was instead of trying to figure, like perfect, like find the perfect workout, you know, regimen, you said, "I'm just gonna outsource that shit. I'm going to remove the uncertainty by hiring somebody to just, 'You tell me what the fuck my workouts are for the week. You tell me what macros I need to hit and give me so- some food, some diet templates and I'll plug and play.'" Right? So instead of you trying to f- to face that fear of, y- and, and trying to, you know, engage in all these self-sabotaging behaviors, which is what most people do...... right? Of I'm- I am uncertain, I don't know what is right for me, and they just, they, they sit there, they spend forever and a day, you know, Googling shit, or they just decide to do nothing and put it off and may, "Well, around New Year's I'll, I'll try it out," right? And the whole New Year's, you know, um, resolution shit. You were just like, "Fuck all this uncertainty, you just tell me how to do it." You removed that fear.

5. 30:36 – 35:07

   Problems of Independent Workers

   1. CWCorey Wilks30:37

   2. CWChris Williamson30:39

      It's strange to think about one of the challenges that entrepreneurs have, and, and, and people that are sort of, uh, solitary go-getters, generally. There's always two problems. The first one being that you have to go and do the work, but the second one, that actually occurs before that, being you have to decide what work it is that you're going to do. So, the- the- the- it's such an unseen pain of being a solo entrepreneur or a content creator, or somebody that just wants to go and do something different and, on their own and forge their own path. And you're right, wherever you can, just outsource that stuff, right?

   3. CWCorey Wilks31:12

      Well-

   4. CWChris Williamson31:13

      Y- y- you're going to need to do that a lot for yourself, so on the things that you can afford to not do that, by getting a coach or someone to write a program, just do it.

   5. CWCorey Wilks31:21

      That and, and the biggest, you know, advice I can give with the whole, like, creator entrepreneur journey, and the fears that that will inevitably, you know, provoke, is instead of seeing it as either I'm going to fail or I'm going to succeed, if you can learn to see it as more of an iterative process, that takes care of a lot. 'Cause like you said, like, you need to do the work yourself but you need to figure out what work is worth doing, or you need to create the content yourself and figure out, "What the fuck content do I create?" If you, instead of seeing it as, "Well, either it's going to be a super success or a complete failure" of, "How can I iterate? How can I just take that one fucking step and figure out what is, what data, what's the data telling me, what's the market telling me, what's my audience telling me?" And slowly iterating from there, that makes it way more approachable and allows you to be way more consistent, rather than this pass-fail false dichotomy people make it out to be.

   6. CWChris Williamson32:11

      Yeah, especially if you go back and look at Tim Ferriss's first episode, Rogan's first episode, my first episode. I'm recording it in the biggest, loudest, echoey-est room, recording on an old iPhone with a Blue Yeti in between me and my buddy who's telling me about he's gonna row the Atlantic naked. This is four and a half years ago. Um, th- I- I would say that there are certain things that, if you're, if you're getting serious about something, do require a little bit of time. Branding is one of those things, because if you end up having a runaway success, th- th- this show's been significantly more successful than I ever thought it was going to be, and if I'd locked in a name that I detested, that would be something that I would struggle with, right? I- I happen to love the brand, Modern Wisdom, I think it's great, it does exactly what I wanted it to do, um, but I've got other friends that are content creators who have kind of (laughs) created this monster that they're now sort of in the driver's seat of some huge locomotive. They can't stop it, they can't slow it down, they can't change it anymore. And every single time that they see their own name appear online, they sort of cringe inside a little bit. So I do think that there is a, there is an argument to be made, there's a kernel of truth in, look, spend a little bit of time thinking about what it's gonna be, but just once you've got that, get to an acceptable level and go. There's this great Tiago Forte tweet from a while ago saying, um, "Most people, uh, rely on perfectionism because it enables them to avoid shipping work at a rate that allows them to know what works," basically procrastination is, uh, perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control, and that the vast majority of people who are very, very high leverage individuals, they have kind of a rough-edged, half-assed quality to their work because they understand that polishing something to perfection is a low leverage activity. The difference between a 95% perfect and a 97% perfect podcast, in terms of the impact it's gonna have on the audience, is pretty negligible. But the effort it takes you to get from 95 to 97 is probably the same as doing another 95% podcast. It's like a- a- a- an exponential curve of difficulty to work out all of those imperfections, you know, to remove all of the clicks, to remove all of the vocal t- It's one of the reasons why with this show I've never, ever gone through and removed ticks, likes, filler words, any of that stuff. Tons of podcasters who you can even get algorithms now that automate that, that'll go through and pull out all of that stuff so it cleans up your audio. One reason is that I never wanted to have to rely on that. I wanted to walk the tightrope of that performance myself, because if I was lazy and relied on it, I would never actually build up the skill to be able to do it without that. It's like singing with auto-tune. Uh, and then on the other side of that as well, I think, well, how much effort is, uh, extra effort is that going to be for what is it going to add? Getting from that 95 to 97, okay, well maybe I- I go through and pick it out individually or whatever, I get an algorithm to do it now, well, how about I just do another podcast? And, and that really seems to work well.

6. 35:07 – 44:19

   Dealing with Complacency

   1. CWChris Williamson35:07

      And then you've got complacency as well, 'cause the thing that we haven't talked about is fear of success and how that manifests in terms of self-defeating, self-sabotaging behavior.

   2. CWCorey Wilks35:16

      Yeah, so, so with complacency, right, for a lot of people, it's easier to say you don't care or that you, you quote unquote have enough, and I don't mean having enough as far as like being content, right? Being content and being complacent are two very different things. Being content is, means being grateful for everything that you have. Being complacent means you have chosen to stagnate and say, "Nope, this is good." Like, "This isn't actually enough, this isn't actually where I want my life to be, but in order for me to attain the life that I actually want to have requires me to face certain fears that I would rather just stay on this side of fear rather than pushing past my comfort zone and actually putting myself out there to take these risks. I would just rather say, 'No, I'm totally fine with my, you know, nine to five for 45 years of my life and the occasional week or two-week vacation once a year, 'cause then I'll retire at 65 and then I'll really enjoy life.'"Okay, but you're, statistically, you're going to die around 80. So you're gonna sacrifice 45 fucking years of your life to maybe enjoy the last 15. That's complacency. Again, not for everybody. Plenty of people fucking love their jobs, right? I'm not demonizing a normal job. But for many people, they fucking hate it and they know what they need to do, but it is terrifying to actually do. So they decide to say, "No, I'm just going to lower sort of like my ceiling for what I'm gonna tell myself is possible and just say, 'Nope, this is, this is good enough for me,'" right? That's complacency for a lot of people. And what you end up seeing, um, and there's this Cornell University study that they did, and they found that up to 76% of people are on their deathbeds, they, they lay on their deathbeds with the exact same regret, which equates to they lived in mediocrity and now they're on their deathbed, they're, they're full of regret. They're like, "Fuck, I wish I would have taken certain chances. I wish I would have faced my fears and went left instead of right. But I chose to be complacent. I chose to let fear stop me from living the life that I wanted to live and knew I was capable of doing. It just was too scary for me to do." Right? So, so those are, are some of the, the biggest issues, like, for me personally and why, you know, it, I think you and I, we, um, the whole, like, memento mori concept, right? It's a big thing in Stoicism. A lot of entrepreneurs gravitate towards Stoicism 'cause it's super practical. But that's the big thing for me, man, is with all of these fears, right? Whether you're afraid of success, failure, you know, whatever, ultimately one day you're going to fucking die, right? On that day, what do you w- what kind of life do you want to look back on? Right? Do you want to look back on a lifetime of regret or do you want to look back and be like, "Hey, I had some hits, I had some misses, but overall, I fucking love the life that I lived. I love that I took those chances, I love that I didn't let fear stop me. I love that I worked on myself and pushed through these self-sabotaging behaviors." Right? That's the big thing for me. Um, and I, you know, it's simple, we can get into my... how I almost died last year and how, you know, memento mori really kind of took a, uh, a literal turn for me. But, but that's the big thing for me, it, man, is all these fears keep people from, from doing the work that they're meant to do, and that they are the mo- the most unique person to do that work and to bring that value to the world. Right? That's, that's sort of like my whole mission in, in life for me personally, is to help people push past those fears, overcome those limiting beliefs, those self-sabotaging behaviors so that they can actually reach the fucking potential that they're capable of but have told themselves, or society has told them that they're not.

   3. CWChris Williamson39:04

      It's so sad when you think about that. The fact that there are people who are born, live, and die with fantastic potential, and then, uh, uh, this thing comes in. It's, it's like a, like a weight or a glass ceiling that comes down and restricts what it is that they go to go and do. And i- it's not, it, it doesn't, there's nothing there. G- you had the ability to do all of this stuff, and, and for some reason you didn't get there, and that's sad. That makes me sad to think that there's a lot of people for whom that's gonna be their life. I, I, I learned this story from Douglas while I was away with him in New York, and he told it on the podcast. It's so powerful. Had this friend who was, um, one of the editors of the first, one of the first newspapers that he worked at, Clive, somebody, legend in the publishing and, and, and journalism game. And he decided that he was going to release a play on the West End, uh, about Prince Charles, and it, the entire thing was going to be in rhyming couplets. Uh, p- p- perhaps, uh, not the broadest audience that he could tap into and he didn't think that it even made it past opening night. A- and there was nobody left including the cast by the first interval. And Douglas went up to his friend and he said, uh, "W- what, uh, y- Clive, whatever you, you know, this seems like a little bit of a, an error." And he was destroyed. This guy was like destroyed by it. He thought he was really gonna be doing well and so on and so forth, and Douglas said, "Well, uh, you know, how do you deal with the, the pain of, of putting up with this sort of very public failure on the West End?" He said, "Well, I followed my instincts, and you know, they may sometimes lead you wrong, but your instincts are the only things that have ever led you right." What I realized was that if you allow fear to come in and tamp down your ability to tap into that intuition and that instinctual nature that tells you about, very easily, tells you what to do, tells you to cross the street, tells you to stay with that relationship, it tells you to change careers, move to a different city, the more that you don't listen to that, the quieter it speaks, or the harder it is to hear. And over time you can habituate doing that less and less. And a lot of people that are very sort of cerebrally-minded and love the cognitive stuff, they can think themselves into or out of pretty much anything. Li- you, you have to be quite smart to be able to convince yourself that the thing that every fiber of your being is screaming at you to do is not the right thing to do. Like, you have to actually c- congratulations. Congratulations, you've managed to out-think your programming and your gut and you've managed to convince yourself that the thing that it's telling you to do isn't the right thing to do. But I do think that there's something to be said for allowing that instinct to kind of carry us through, and increasingly that's something that I'm trying to sort of tap into as well. Look, h- h- how do I get out of my own way? How- So this, and this whole idea of like metacognition, right? Like, thinking about how you think, thinking about the language that you use with yourself, like your personal narrative, right? So like, some people, their, their personal narrative is that they're broken or that they are a victim, regardless of what they've actually experienced one way or the other, right? Like, you know, back when I did therapy, some people, they went through heinous shit. Some of them identified as the victim, some of them identified as a survivor. And that one fucking word difference completely changed the trajectory of their lives-

   4. CWCorey Wilks42:24

      ... right? Because when you identify as a victim or you identify as broken, or in some way unlovable, worthless, helpless, hopeless, that dictates everything about your life, right? We talk about, like, rose-colored glasses or whatever, but when, when your internal monologue, when your personal narrative is super negative and toxic, that caps how, what you think about yourself, your truth, what is true about your potential, what is true about the world.

   5. CWChris Williamson42:50

      What you deserve.

   6. CWCorey Wilks42:50

      Is the world dangerous? What you deserve, right? If you don't think you deserve something, you're not going to, to reach for it, so you won't fucking get it, right? But it's, you know, it's this whole idea, man. It's like, I'll take you for an example, right? Like, you, you know, you've talked about how, you know, you, you're, you, you prioritize your physical health, you know, you were a model, you did the whole, like, you know, Love Island or whatever thing, right? Like, aesthetically, you're a handsome dude, right? Like, that is, like, sort of like an objective, objective thing, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson43:18

      Complimentary.

   8. CWCorey Wilks43:18

      I know, it's okay. (laughs) But here's the thing, man. I promise you that if you, every day, even just once a day, every morning as part of your fucking morning routine, you looked in the mirror and you said, "I am fat, I am stupid, and I am ugly," uh, if you did that every fucking day for a year, at th- at the 365th day, your "truth," quote-unquote, in air quotes, your truth would be that you are fat, stupid, and ugly, regardless of your physical fucking appearance or intellectual capability. And that's some shit that so many people struggle with, but don't even recognize that because of the skill of meta-cognition, of learning to, to examine the fucking thoughts that rattle through your head. Because everything that you are capable of starts inside your fucking head, because if you don't think you're capable, you won't strive. If you don't strive, you won't achieve. So everything comes... it originates in your fucking personal narrative and the thoughts you tell yourself.

7. 44:19 – 50:07

   Being Raised in a Low-Income Home

   1. CWCorey Wilks44:19

   2. CWChris Williamson44:19

      Something that I noticed in myself, and coming from a, a working class background, you may be able to resonate with this as well, um, me and a bunch of my friends really struggle to spend money, uh, really, really struggle to spend money. I'm trying to work this out at the moment. It's something like the working class mindset or the, the, the perils of the working class mindset, and I had a, a fantastic start to the year. We've been working, me and Dean have been working super, super hard on the show, and we had a great few, few months of, of plays and, and ad revenue and, and new sponsors and stuff like that, and I haven't bought myself anything in ages, uh, so I thought, "Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna treat myself." I couldn't get a car in America because I, uh, didn't have a Social Security number, which meant that I couldn't go and get any finance, so I was like, "Well..." The, they do these electric scrambler bikes. It looks like an old-style café, café racer motorbike, but it's actually just an e-bike that does 30 miles an hour, so you don't need a license, you can ride them on, uh, cycle paths, and they're, they're pretty cool. I was like, "Oh, yeah." It's like, "I, I, I have earned this. I spent (laughs) hours and hours and hours in a room on my own researching, reading, editing, publishing, scheduling, eh, all of that stuff. I deserve this." Bought it. Within two weeks, sent an email saying, "Uh, eh, I, I don't... Just cancel the order. Take it back." Because I, I, for some- there was something about me that couldn't deal with the fact that I was doing that.

   3. CWCorey Wilks45:38

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson45:39

      Now, today, the flight that was partly hugely delayed, I flew business class for the first time, that I'd booked it in advance, and for some reason, that felt a little bit different. But there's something about that working class mindset, what do you deserve, um, that means that you'll go into the supermarket, even as you're, you know, earning a, a very comfortable wage, and look for the multi-buy deal on the pasta sauce, which will take up five minutes of your afternoon, which you should be spending working and earning way more than the saving that you're going to get on the fucking pasta sauce.

   5. CWCorey Wilks46:11

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson46:12

      But it's the thing that you'll do. The, and, and it's so fascinating. I mean, do you find this in yourself? You know, going from somebody that food stamps and, and sort of welfare state-y stuff, to now being somebody with money? Is this still a, a pervasive element of your spending habits as well?

   7. CWCorey Wilks46:28

      Yeah, like, (sighs) and it's also weird for me too, like, if it's, if it's something for the business, I'm like, "Cool," right?

   8. CWChris Williamson46:36

      It's like business class flights?

   9. CWCorey Wilks46:37

      It's a business expense. Well, like, I don't really fly right now, but like if it's like, "Oh, I need to get some new equipment," or, "I need to do this," or, "I need to take this new course," I'm like, "Oh, $3,000 course. Fuck it, fine, it's a business expense." But then if I'm like, "Okay, well, I can, you know, if I'm gonna get, like, the AmazonBasics shorts, like, just to wear around the house or go to the gym," I'm like, "Well, fuck, okay. Well, a three-pack is this much and a six-pack is, is that much. Like, how much am I actually... Whatever." I'm like, "I just spent $3,000 or $7,000 on a fucking course, but I'm, I'm quibbling over, like, 20 cents or five bucks over here or there." Right? I'm like, "Okay, well, you know, this rib eye at the store is, you know, $17.98, and then, but this package over here is $18.24. Like, is it really that much more?" Like, it's like, what the fuck are you doing? Right? And, like, 'cause, uh, whether it's working class or, you know, poverty, whatever, 'cause, like, growing up, like, my parents worked to, to a certain point, but then, like, they both had, like, significant, like, medical issues that, that took them out of the workforce, right? (sniffs) So, (clears throat) um, for us, it wasn't even like, you know, "Oh, well, you know, we're, we're ma-" Like, man, I remember the first girl I dated, her, her family made like $40K a year, right? Which is like lower middle class. And I'm like, "This bitch is rich." (laughs) 'Cause I'm like, "Fuck, like we made, we brought in like $12,000 for the year," right? And that sticks with you, I think, because that's very formative, right? Like, how you evaluate what something is worth is, is that, right? And, uh, I think you've talked about this too, this whole idea of if you do client work, it's really easy to devalue yourself and not charge what you know you're worth, right? And, uh, so I think for a lot of people who come from like a lower or like middle class income threshold, that is something that is really hard to overcome when you're going out and doing your own thing, building up your business, and, and you, you achieve a modicum of success, because like this is the thing. Like, you're still used to nickel and diming everything.... and it just... No, man, like I, I struggle with it too.

   10. CWChris Williamson48:36

       It does get easier. I mean, uh, there was this one time where I remember I'd spent at least a minute looking at the w- w- working out whether I could justify the value of the finest range of yogurts in a supermarket. This was like five years ago, and that was a v- that was a formative experience. Talk about strategic learning opportunity. I'll never forget that. Staring at these yogurts going, "What on earth are you doing? You work all the hours that God sends, and you're terrified of buying the- the slightly nicer yogurt." Um, so I think that you're right. I think that it- it's probably a combination of a bunch of different things, but it does get better. If there's someone that's listening that goes, "Fuck, that's me down to a T. I- I- I still really struggle to spend money on myself," um, a couple of ways that you can get around that, I- I think increasingly try to justify things as facilitating, um, w- your passion or the thing that actually brings the money in. So for me, it was much easier to justify the business, uh, class flight because I knew I had this podcast with you today. Like, oh, if- if I get... Even if I only catch four hours sleep on that flight over, that means that I can properly do this episode with Cory without looking like a- a- a sleep-deprived- deprived zombie, right? And okay, well that- that... There we go. That- that justifies it for me, that feels a little bit better. So that's one thing. Uh, uh, and- and another thing I think is to realize that you probably do deserve this, like all of the time that you've spent working, all of the effort that you put in, all of the hours that you do stuff. But, I mean, I'm saying this to myself as the guy that just sent back a- a Scrambler e-bike, the only thing that he really treated himself to so far this year. Okay, so we've-

8. 50:07 – 55:04

   Strategies to Mitigate Internal Fears

   1. CWChris Williamson50:07

      we've gone through the different horsemen, we've gone through some of the ways that that fear can manifest in terms of activity. How can people inoculate themselves from this moving forward? What are the strategies that they can put in place so that they're going to, uh, mitigate these fears when they come up?

   2. CWCorey Wilks50:24

      Yeah, so like I said before, ultimately we fear the unknown. So if you can make the unknown knowable, fear kind of loses it- its- its power over you. All right. So fear inoculation, for me, it kind of works similar to- to a vaccine, right? And I'm not that kind of doctor, but my elementary understanding of vaccines is you introduce a little bit of the bad thing so then you can build up a tolerance or an immunity to it if it ever comes around again, all right? So let's say you're afraid of failure. So fear inoculation is, okay, let's assume you fucking fail. Your worst-case scenario actually happens. With that assumption in place, what the fuck are you gonna do? How are you going to recover? How can you learn to see it as sort of, like, thinking like a scientist of it wasn't like a- a pass-fail necessarily, of what does the data tell me? How can I, like, identify patterns in what worked and what didn't to take that and iterate for version two, all right? Because again, like, it isn't that you outright failed irrevocably so much as this one thing told you that your approach didn't work for some reason, right? So how can you make tweaks, how can you analyze the data, and then do a V2 and iterate? If you're afraid of ridicule, assume whatever the fuck you did, people are talking shit on, or you're getting canceled, or some other kinda shit, right? With that assumption in place, how are you gonna do damage control? How are you gonna get ahead of the narrative, right? How are you... Even evaluating where this ridicule is coming from. Are the people ridiculing you people whose opinions you give a shit about in the first place? Most of the time, they're not. All right. S- there's this, you know, Nipsey Hussle quote, "You will never be criticized by somebody doing more than you. You will only ever be criticized by somebody doing less than you." So all these motherfuckers who are talking shit, are they just miserable shitbags who wanna troll and find something to be offended over, or is this an audience that you actually respect and you care about? If that's the case, how can you do damage control and learn from what happened? All right. If you're afraid of uncertainty, let's assume you made the wrong fucking decision. How can you co- course correct, right? How can you gain more information to make a better decision, right? Or let's say you're afraid of uncertainty to the point you make no decision. So instead of risking taking the wrong way, you- you did nothing and you've stagnated and you made no progress for five years. Okay. What's preventing you from making progress? What is fueling this uncertainty, right? What is the minimum amount of information you need to move forward to take one fucking step forward, right? This whole idea of just-in-case versus just-in-time learning, right? So just-in-case is you just collect all this information perpetually, right? You- you try to read 3,000 books a year or some bullshit. Versus just-in-time is I am actively building something and I have now hit a wall because I don't know what to do next. What is the one piece that if I found this information, I can move forward? That's just-in-time learning. So c- how can you adopt a just-in-time learning mindset, right? With- with success, let's say you succeed and you lose all your ambition or you become this super cocky asshole that fucking nobody likes. Cool. How can you develop humility? Who can you surround yourself with who are other high achievers who have already achieved big shit but continue to push themselves forward, all right? Like you. I am sure the people you hang out with now are different than the people you hung out with in high school or undergrad or whatever, right? As you level up, your circle... And I don't mean necessarily you have to find different people, but your circle tends to level up with you, right? That's a b- a huge thing with the internet. Now like, the majority of people I've met that have- have helped me in, you know, as an entrepreneur and a content creator, whatever, I've met since December 2020 when I got fired from my fucking job and other issues prevented me from getting another job, and I was like, "Fuck, I gotta learn how to blaze my own fucking trail." And I don't have a business background, my undergrad's in fucking psychology, how do I do this? It was the people I met, right? So how can you surround yourself with better people who are humble, who are hungry?... that can help you level up and go th- in the direction you wanna go. So, no matter what the fuck you're afraid of, there is some way that you can inoculate yourself against it by saying, "Okay, if this happened, how would I recover?" Because as soon as you realize that you can recover from any of these worst case scenarios, that worst case scenario is no longer terrifying. It can no longer hold you back because you know how the fuck to deal with it.

9. 55:04 – 1:06:12

   Importance of a Support Group

   1. CWChris Williamson55:04

      One of the common challenges I think people face in situations like this is that they don't have an adequate support system around them and role models that they can look up to, especially ones that are close to them. And it's great to have a role model that you have a parasocial relationship with, right? You know, Jocko Willink or David Goggins or someone who's your hero and whatever. But, eh, it is a degree of importance to be able to have a dialogue with someone, right? To see them and, and to have a conversation with them, even if it's o- only over the internet. And, um, I was having this chat last week with someone who was asking me about what, what you do if you don't have any good role models around you, and I realized that I, I kind of wanted a lot more positive role models when I was growing up too, and I was around a lot of people that I really didn't want to be like. Then I realized that that was actually a really good influence on me. Like, okay, I didn't have many people in the town that I grew up in that were the sort of people that I wanted to grow up to be like, but I had a ton of signals that told me the sort of things that I didn't want to do. So, this is the negative r- role model, or the reverse role model, right? Avoiding stupidity can get you a really, really long way in life. You can get really, really far by just not having unforced errors that you continue to hit into the net over and over again. Like, how many people do you know that got some girl pregnant that they weren't in a relationship with? Or how many people crashed a car when they'd had a couple too many beers and now they're banned from driving and have got a criminal record on their license? You know, d- like, easy things that you can avoid to do, and all of these were examples that I had said to me when I was growing up. So, yes, it sucks if you don't have a fantastic role model, if you're not in New York or LA surrounded by interesting, cool people that can tell you exactly what you want, you know. If you're in the arse end of Virginia or in the, you know, the town in the UK with the s- highest teen pregnancy rating, which it then lost, so it didn't even have that anymore, um-

   2. CWCorey Wilks56:55

      That was my state. We had that too. Yeah, you're good. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson56:57

      Nice. High five. So, that, eh, the fact that you don't have that sucks, but the fact that there are tons of people around you that are showing you exactly what you don't want to do is equally useful. It genuinely is. Yes, it feels kind of icky and it's annoying and it's kind of, uh, uh, it's a slimier version of it, because you feel like you're having to sort of trudge through. It's not as inspirational or aspirational or sort of upwardly mobile, but it's one hell of a learning lesson, you know? That you know the m- mental model never multiply by zero, that you can take 500,000 times by 40,000 times by 10 times by three times by zero. If you multiply anything by zero, you get zero. So, you need to avoid huge failures. You need to not be driving without your seatbelt on. You need to not get a girl pregnant or get yourself pregnant when you're 16 years old and you have absolutely no support system around you at all. Like, these are things that are multiplying by zero, right, because they completely curtail tons of options in your life. That's a pretty good signal. So, reverse m- role models aren't as inspirational, but they're certainly very useful.

   4. CWCorey Wilks58:10

      Well, and just this whole idea of especially, you know, when, when you're growing up in a toxic environment, do you want to be where these people are? Because if you do what they did, you will, for better or worse, right? Like, there's this whole idea of if you want to be successful, do what successful people do. If you want to be unsuccessful, don't do what unsuccessful people do, right? So like, even like with parenting, right? Like if, if you want to be a good parent, it doesn't actually matter if you have, if you had good parents or, or toxic parents, 'cause if you had good parents, do what they did. If you had toxic parents, do the opposite of what the fuck they did (laughs) right? So, uh, no, I fully agree. Like, you can draw inspiration from your environment in one way or the other, but I do... And a- again, like, I came from that environment, right? Like, you know, drug use and, and, and domestic violence and a lot of, you know, fucked up shit. That was just, that was normal for me, right? And I had supportive family members and things, but I also had toxic ones, and I had toxic... You know, all of my friends growing up are in prison or have been in and out of prison, right? Like, I, I understand that life. But between that, you know, anti-role model or that reverse role model, mental model, but also you can meet so many people online fr- with fucking Twitter or, you know, eh, some, whatever the fuck-

   5. CWChris Williamson59:30

      Reddit.

   6. CWCorey Wilks59:31

      ... your pref- yeah, whatever the fuck your preferred platform is, man. Like, there's this whole idea of like, it, it's not gated anymore. Like, there aren't gatekeepers like there used to be. Like, I have met so many people either in cohort-based courses I've taken or just through Twitter in general, and these are people that, you know, whether they're, they're major, major players, you know, quote unquote, in the, in the space or just normal fucking people who are supportive. You can surround yourself with, with a digital community like no time before. There's no excuse. As long as you have internet or you just have access to books or some kind of shit, regardless of your current situation, I promise you there are ways for you to learn and grind your way out of it on some level.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

      I hope that it makes people realize that, that that is an option, and it does make me sad thinking about how many people are in a place that doesn't support their goals and dreams that they've got, especially in the UK. This is something I've noticed that's a really big difference between the UK and the US. UK is, uh, like, really, really good at satire and taking the piss and making sure that people's feet are kept on the ground, right? Like, the, uh, uh, it's great. The problem that you get with that is that it's a tall poppy syndrome. It discourages people from doing different things. Now, in America, you end up with...... blue sky vision, you can achieve anything you want to, you've got the American dream is at your feet, and stuff like that. Now, that's great for encouraging kids to go and do what they want, especially when they're young. The problem that you have is when they grow up and they look around at the world and they say, "Well, hang on, this, this wasn't what I was promised. I was promised th- th- the earth at my feet, and I've got something else." And the delta between those two is, is often painful, and I think that this is one of the reasons why the, uh, sort of victim culture mentality doesn't happen quite so much in the UK, because that's kind of already been beaten out of you as a kid. But the problem that you have with that is that there's less enthusiasm an- and encouragement when you want to go and do different things. So I think that the, the blend is between the two. And I've seen this since being in America, that most of my British friends that have gone over to America have really enjoyed the culture, and that their influence on the American people around them has been really good as well, because it's brought them down to earth a little bit and the Americans have sort of given the Brits a little bit of self-belief. So, that is great. But it does make me sad to think about the fact, in the same way as the, the, the fears and the limiting beliefs, they constrain somebody's potential and it kind of isn't really a thing, it- it- it's not really something that exists and yet it's able to restrict what somebody achieves in life. It's kind of the same thing with this lack of community supportive sense around them as well. That you go, "Look, this person could be this." And yet, due to no fault of their own, simply by the, you know, lack of fortune of the area that they're born in or the time that they were born in or the street that they were born on, they don't have the support that allows them to do something that would make them lead a radically more fulfilled and different life.

   8. CWCorey Wilks1:02:33

      On just, man, going back to this, this personal narrative idea, the simple sentence of, or the simple belief of people like me don't do that, right? People from where I'm from don't do X, Y or Z. Like, I- I wrote this article a while ago, this whole idea of... So I'm from rural Appalachia, like I'm, I'm from a town called Leesage, West Virginia. The only people who pronounce it Leesage are people from there, everybody else pronounces is LeSage, like some fancy French shit. It ain't, it's Leesage. And I remember growing up, the people who sounded like me weren't entrepreneurs, they weren't, you know, doctors, right? Like, those people, they spoke differently, right? We, we talk different. If you wanna be successful, you need to speak differently. So when I went to, to college and I was, you know, with a four-year degree, I was the first person in my family, um, with a, with a college degree, with a four-year degree. I actively tried to lose my accent, 'cause I was like, "Well, successful people don't sound like me." Like, I'm from up a holler, nobody, nobody s- sounds like that who's successful. So I actively tried to lose my accent and, and, and sort of disconnect myself from my roots, from, from my home. And what I realized was a lot of the people that I met, at one p- there was like, there was like a party we were all at, like a fraternity party at one point, and like all of a sudden people's accents started coming out. These people are drinking, whatever, and we're like, "Holy shit. Like, you're from so and so and, you know, wherever too." And everyone was like-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:04:01

      You're a redneck as well.

   10. CWCorey Wilks1:04:02

       Dude, and everyone was like, "Holy shit." And we realized all of us had tried to lose our fucking accents to fit in.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:04:09

       Yeah.

   12. CWCorey Wilks1:04:10

       And like, slowly I came to terms with that and like, I- I- I allowed more of my accent, my draw to come out. And, and you know, the, the, the article kind of ended with like, you know, "My name is... Let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Corey Wilkes. I'm an entrepreneur." And I say, "Y'all, I'm from up a holler," right? Like, and it's just, it's this idea, man. It's like, this, this... And I think you and, and Ali Abdaal talked about this, of having role models, so people who look like you or people who talk like you. That's so fucking important, man, and it's, it's such a glaringly missing thing, especially if you wanna talk about like, men and masculinity type shit. But just that idea of like, either finding these, these para-role models or, you know, whatever, or just trying to connect with other people online. I promise you there are other people who get where you're coming from who can help support you on the journey you want to take.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

       It's only since I've been in Austin that I've been around men's groups a lot. This isn't really something... I don't know, maybe they exist in the UK but I- I- I've never heard about them or whatever. Maybe they exist, uh, outside of Newcastle, which is where I'm living. Um, but, yeah, you see these men's groups, and I've been to a, a good few of them now, and man, you've got some of the most competent guys, who, people that have already retired, that live in gorgeous mansions, that spend their days investing in companies and doing cool stuff, and they still need every single week on a Wednesday for four hours in the middle of an afternoon, they still need their boys to come round and for everybody to be kind of calm and, and not playing games and, and just a space that they hold for everybody else. You go, "What is this? Is this some hippie shit?" And yet it's the same guys that are absolute killers, uh, and th- that, that was kind of a bit of an eye-opener to me, that you see people that you really wouldn't think would be the sort of people that would need a, broadly a support group, you know?

   14. CWCorey Wilks1:06:02

       Connection.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:06:02

       Yeah.

   16. CWCorey Wilks1:06:03

       You need connection.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:06:03

       Yeah.

   18. CWCorey Wilks1:06:03

       That's one of those universal things, man, we need connection, yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:06:06

       You wouldn't think it. So, yeah, man, it's, it's an interesting one. I, um,

10. 1:06:12 – 1:07:18

    Where to Find Corey

    1. CWChris Williamson1:06:12

       I really appreciate your work, I really appreciate the input that you've got, I appreciate the insight that you bring as well. I like the fact that you're bridging the, the sort of the clinical with the coaching side too. What have you got coming up? Anything that you wanna direct people to, anything they should know about?

    2. CWCorey Wilks1:06:25

       Um, so I'm actually finishing up the first cohort of a cohort-based course, it's, um, called Intentional Life Design, so it's all about how do you overcome limiting beliefs, think bigger and, and do work that matters, do work that resonates with you. Um, cohort two will probably come out around late August, early September, um, so I can give you a link for that, um, page so people can check it out. Otherwise, people can just follow me either on Twitter, my website, whatever. My, my handle's the same, coreywilkessid everywhere.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:06:55

       Awesome, man.

    4. CWCorey Wilks1:06:56

       That's pretty much it.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:57

       I appreciate you. Cheers, man.

    6. CWCorey Wilks1:06:58

       Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:07:00

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:07:19