JAMES SMITH | How To Design A Life You Love | Modern Wisdom Podcast 205

1. 0:00 – 0:21

   Intro

   1. JSJames Smith0:00

      There's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it, but a lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth are preventing people from doing that. If I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint because ultimately I think it's letting a lot of people down.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:20

      James

2. 0:21 – 5:38

   James Smith

   1. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Bloody Smith in the building. How are you doing, man?

   2. JSJames Smith0:25

      I'm very well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. Uh, I think this has been quite long overdue.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:31

      Very, very, very long time coming, yes. So the internet, the internet is waiting on tenterhooks to hear what we've got to say today. So just to clarify, you're not a life coach, and you also didn't write a diet book.

   4. JSJames Smith0:46

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:46

      So who, who are you then?

   6. JSJames Smith0:48

      I'm still trying to figure that out myself, mate.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:50

      (laughs)

   8. JSJames Smith0:50

      I'm still... I, like, I, I, I felt like I was, uh, uh, someone that didn't belong to the fitness industry, but I was in it, uh, and then I, I certainly don't want to belong to the life coach industry, but I still want to venture into it. I feel like I'm a, almost like a lost, a lost sheep amongst everyone else, like, uh, getting into fitness I had such passion for it, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this, I fucking hated most of the people that I was with, and what I didn't want to do was recreate any of their work in the slightest. And funnily enough, the name for that first book came, I was pissed with my publishers at Hawksmoor, and you go at Hawksmoor for, like, a nice lunch in London, it's, like, 5:30 PM, we're doing shots at the table still with the last people in the restaurant, and someone's like, "Well, what are we going to call it because it's not a diet book?" And I was, like, smashed, I was like, "That's what we're gonna call it." (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson1:41

      (laughs) Yeah, fucking, fucking great that, mate.

   10. JSJames Smith1:44

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson1:44

       Uh, three more tequilas please.

   12. JSJames Smith1:46

       Yeah, that was pretty much it, and it was kind of like a nuanced title because everyone in the fitness industry brings out their own like fucking diet book or their system or whatever it was, and I wanted people straight from the off to think, "Oh, not another flipping personal trainer releasing another stupid book about broccoli and, and burpees," and what pained me was there are people in the fitness industry that I raised my eyebrows when I read their books and I was like, "Their, their book's perfectly right, they did talk about the calorie deficit, they did talk about this," but then the book was fucking boring, and I was like – and I'm not gonna name any names – and I was like, "How can I do this? How can I kind of come in with enough anecdotes, information, and not try and talk about broccoli?"

   13. CWChris Williamson2:31

       The big thing that I've realized upon doing this podcast and speaking to people, like multiple, multiple New York Times bestsellers and, and the guys that are the, the top writers in the world understand that context is important to deliver a key point. It's the same reason why when you're scrolling through Instagram you see an inspirational quote which might be the condensation of an entire life's work from one of the smartest people on the planet just synthesized into a single sentence, but why doesn't it change your life? Because it's in the wrong context. It's like booty picture, booty picture, dog photo, funny cat video, inspirational quote, booty picture, booty pic- you know, you're not in the right frame of mind. There's no context to it. So I think that you need to have that framing around the message that then actually delivers what people want, and that improves retention, which improves compliance, which actually means it becomes effective.

   14. JSJames Smith3:24

       Yeah, 100%. I mean, even Tim Ferriss, who I'm 50/50 with some of his work and others, in The 4-Hour Workweek, the way he butters up his points and uses stories, anecdotes, travel, uh, you know, all of these things and then brings you to a salient point and you're like, "Wow," you've, you've almost been, like, warmed up, like foreplay, and then that point when you read it is, it's so much better because you're, you're enthralled in it rather than, you know, if he was just to open the first chapter and go, "The opposite of happiness is boredom," you'd be like, "Ah, fuck off, you American cliché," you know.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:53

       (laughs)

   16. JSJames Smith3:53

       So you're, you're 100% correct. Um, and, and it's almost probably having a physical book, at first I didn't appreciate that you've got someone's full attention, whereas social media is, it's like, it's like chatting up a bird while someone else started chatting her up five minutes before and they've not finished talking.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:12

       (laughs) That's a good... That is a good analogy. So talk us through this new book. What's going on?

   18. JSJames Smith4:18

       So, um, the, the interesting thing that I found from the first book was when I met people on the tour and I traveled, uh, no one was... No one would sit with me and go, "Fucking hell, mate, that, the way you broke down 'if it fits your macro has changed my life.'" No one was really like, "Mate, the thermic effect of protein was fucking exciting." The, the things that, like, really, uh, made people excited, they were like, "James, I've realized the sunk cost fallacy is affecting me. I realized after reading your book that I've on- I'm only with my boyfriend because of how long I've already been with him, not because I want to be with him." And sh- there was one girl in particular and she was like, "I've just broken up with my boyfriend." I was like, "When?" She was like, "Yesterday." I was like, "How long have you been with him?" She's like, "Eight years." And I was like, "Holy shit." Like, uh, I was like... Uh, at the time I was like, "I'm sorry." She was like, "No, no, no, don't be sorry, don't be sorry." And the feeling I got from that was it wasn't the first time this has happened because I actually did this when I was a PT. When I was on the gym floor and someone would come in, they'd vent about their boyfriend, I'm like, "Why didn't you just break up with him?" "Oh, we've been together four years," (laughs) you know? And I was proactively doing it back then, that's how it found its way into the book, but to me it was, it was those conversations that I had with people that really resonated the most, and then when I stripped it back, I realized the, (laughs) the things that people liked from the first book wasn't fitness stuff, so I was like, "I might have to do this again without the

3. 5:38 – 8:35

   Dating

   1. JSJames Smith5:38

      fitness jargon."

   2. CWChris Williamson5:38

      Just as well it's not a diet book. Well, it should have been even less of a diet book, would have, would have-

   3. JSJames Smith5:44

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:44

      ... maybe hit even harder.

   5. JSJames Smith5:46

      But then I still think it would have been a perfect companion for someone starting that journey because I'm sure you're well aware that when you're trying to get people to start a new chapter or begin a new identity, they do need to strip away lo- often a lot of relationships, and, you know, I'm sure you probably ru- ran a lot of people the wrong way.... when becoming more successful. And, y- you know, and we were friends, but this person's gonna slow me down. And arming people, kind of, the knowledge to do that is, is one thing, and I suppose the second book, uh, Not A Life Coach gave me, I don't, I don't wanna be a, this guru, I don't wanna be there like, you know, "Hey guys, you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to." But I wanna step in and be like, right, there's a, there's an interesting part in the book where I talk about dating, and I say to people, "We live in a world where we don't chat each other up anymore, 'cause we're fucking petrified. We're petrified of engaging with people because of how social media has changed us." A DM is now the way you can be chivalrous, and (laughs) you know, instead of going, "Hey, I think you're beautiful, can I have your number?" we- we sound like, "What's- what's your Insta, babe?" And we've completely deconstructed this whole, uh, you know, approach to, to dating. And I personally f- see around me a huge dropout rate with first dates, based primarily around the fact there's a lot of anxiety from both parties. But the anxiety is shared. Catfishing is getting worse, both sides, through people not portraying a real identity of themself on dating apps. We've got Facetuning, we've got Angles, we've got Adobe Lightroom fucking pulling five years off of you, you know? And suddenly because of this, people are becoming more and more apprehensive to meet people, and they're worried about so many factors. So even in, even in one part of the book, I was like, here's a different approach. Don't go for drinks or dinner on a first date. Ask someone if you can walk them from their office to the Tube. Why don't you take the dog out for a walk? Why don't you grab a coffee? Why don't we deconstruct this kind of notion in society that we need to go balls in on a first date? Because we've all been on a date with a person in front of us with one drink in and we go, "Fucking hell, I'm gonna have to get smashed. I'm gonna have to get smashed to endure this." And I was like... There's one part of the book where I was like, why don't we just do something shorter, sweeter, you know, saying to someone, "Do you wanna get an ice cream? Oh, you train at the gym just a quarter mile from me, why don't we have a protein shake together or something?" Because then you can deconstruct that anxiety for that first proper date just in shortly meeting someone, and that's just a very small strategy to, to help someone with their life. And that's not Tony Robbins shit, that's just me going, "Hey, this is something that I've started doing, why don't you try it too?" And my friends around me are doing it, and I was like, "This is so valuable." And just changing the way that we approach things to improve their success rate is supposedly what the book's all about, and that's, that's just one of the bits. Like, have you ever found yourself doing that?

4. 8:35 – 12:13

   Life advice

   1. JSJames Smith8:35

   2. CWChris Williamson8:35

      Absolutely, yeah. I had a conversation with Amanda Kuder, who is a, um, female coach in America, dating, s- big into sobriety, which, uh, I am, uh, dip in and out of myself. And her number one idea for a date is a walking date. Like, she has a... So it's, you know, you've, you've stumbled upon something that's like that. So I've got a question here that was, why should anyone listen to life advice from you? But you've already answered it, and it's the same reason as to why I think people resonate with my content, and, and perhaps yours as well, is that if you live enough life and reflect on it and then iterate forward and allow an evolution of ideas to survive, the ones that you're left with inevitably end up being all right. And by the time that you've hit 30, 35, 40, you've got a bit of an idea of what's going on. Like, under the age of 25, you, you are completely clueless. Like, e- even the most actualized, transcendent individual, under the age of 25 years old is essentially just like a- a- a- a child stumbling through the world, desperately trying to work out what works. But after sufficient failures and successes, you start to see common themes, right? And I- I'd sort of like to try and get a bit of an insight as to what it is that you, or why it is that you think that you've been able to sort of get these insights. Are you particularly reflective? Do you tend to try and, uh, look for these common themes throughout stuff? Where's this come from?

   3. JSJames Smith10:07

      I think the, um, the part of your brain that really analyzes certain areas of your life, in, in my brain's certainly very active. So, uh, it's very easy for people to go, "Why are you giving me relationship advice? You've not been in any meaningful relationship that I've seen." And I'm like, "Okay, but have you ever seen me stay in a relationship I didn't wanna be in?" You know, and my friends say to me, they go, "Fair play, Sniffs." They're like, "Um, y- as soon as you realize a relationship's not right, you get out." And I think that, that comes back to being very appreciative of time. And then when it comes to business over the last few years, I've learned a lot of business lessons. I've learned, in essence, life is all about protecting, like, a little bubble that you have around you of energy, and also, I'm, I'm very big into how my soul feels about certain things. And it sounds quite of a hippy thing, but the dating thing, the business thing, everything revolves around to what's gonna make my soul happy. And me meeting someone for a very formal date with drinks, I feel a bit suffocated. I'm like, "What if I don't like this person? What if I don't like the energy they're giving off?" So by improvising that tactic to meet that person for a swim in the sea or an ice cream, it makes me feel better about having to go see someone. So it's like a tactic, it, that, that's kind of brought into play. And I have these tactics all around my life, you know? Um, and, you know, even, (laughs) even like when you're fucking pro- picking a time of day to have a wank. I mean, you gotta get that at the right time. You gotta have that at the right time. You've got to fit that in before a nap.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:35

      What happens if you get it wrong?

   5. JSJames Smith11:37

      Well, then you just fucking... You, you ruin, you ruin your... You, you don't wanna do it before a training session, right? 'Cause then you go into a training session, you're feeling lethargic, right? You do it just before a nap, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna go under pretty quick. You only need to set your podcast timer to eight minutes after one of those. And I know it sounds crass or whatever it is, but like, there is... I see so many people tripping themselves up. I suppose this is a good way to answer your question. It, to me, it's obvious where people trip themselves up but they don't see it, and people probably think both of us are very motivated, but we're probably not. We just probably don't trip ourselves up as much as the normal person.

5. 12:13 – 18:32

   Avoiding stupidity

   1. CWChris Williamson12:13

      The key in life isn't being clever, it's avoiding stupidity. That's a Shane Parrish-ism from Farnham Street, and it's totally correct. When people hear you as someone who does multiple solo IG Lives, sometimes in a day, and that takes, to the normal person, a, a huge amount of confidence and overcoming of anxiety and all this sort, sorts of stuff. But even that is just a craft that you've learned, and the fact that you're able to identify, "Well, actually, in order for me to feel a little bit more comfortable on a first date so that I am unconstrained and can free-flow and meet this person, I choose to do something which allows me to feel that way." Whereas someone might just say, "Oh, James has got bottomless pit of confidence and endless amounts of charisma and all this stuff." So if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for everybody else as well. So what are some of the most common mistakes that you think people make when designing their lives?

   2. JSJames Smith13:12

      So (exhales) there's, there's quite a few. First of all, I think that everyone's kind of following this blueprint to life which someone else has designed. And from generation to generation, I think it's quite dangerous that we take the blueprint from our parents because they lived in a very different life to us. And when people start at school, they go to school, and then when they finish school, they think that their time of development is done. People think that school's done, education's done. That's a, a very big flaw because the best things I learned in life all came from after school. Getting my teachers to expect me to fucking enjoy reading Of Mice and Men, for instance, that's the worst fucking book I've ever read, mate.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:50

      Bad book.

   4. JSJames Smith13:50

      Why the f- why the fuck is that in school curriculum? You can feel me getting annoyed about this. There are so many excellent-

   5. CWChris Williamson13:57

      (laughs)

   6. JSJames Smith13:57

      ... fiction books as well. Give me The Hunger Games, give me something that is, I'm gonna actually... From the start, the, we cannot rely on the educative system. But anyway, that, that's, that's one thing. And then suddenly, uh, our parents kind of have to lead us down the path of becoming the most fucking qualified. But really, who does that benefit? Fair enough, there are some people that need to have qualification, be a doctor or be a nurse, but for a lot of other people, they're doing it just to buy time. But then we hit the 20s and I feel that no one is ever really taught in life that if there's something they enjoy, they can do it. And one thing that Australia really helped me understand was people here are a lot happier doing their job. And you go to a coffee shop here, and you struggle to understand why someone who's 23 or 24 can enjoy making a coffee for someone so well. And the truth is that they love their life, their job is just a part of it. When I'm in the UK, I see a lot of people doing jobs they don't enjoy. And in Australia, that person is making that coffee, probably clocks off at 4:00 PM, goes for a surf, takes their dog for a walk, meets up with their friends, and, and does whatever. Whereas in the UK, the blueprint's a bit stronger to get into the nine-to-five, to aim for that six-figure salary, and this is actually the path that I was put on and no one ever stopped me or questioned me. I put on a suit to go to work for, like, four years, and I fucking hated every second of it. But in my head, I was like, "How am I gonna buy a house? How am I gonna support a family? How am I gonna, you know, uh, earn enough money so I can then go to rugby training in the evening?" And the biggest mistake I feel is that we're put on this trajectory, not once was, anyone ever stopped me and said, "Do you enjoy what you're doing?" Because if you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need to be motivated, you don't need an alarm to get out of bed. And I feel so many people just follow the fucking tracks of go to uni, do your best, get a 2:1, tell everyone you got a first, go find a, (laughs) you know, go to a fucking office job, and-

   7. CWChris Williamson15:51

      Bouncing in and out of unfortunate, bad relationships with people that you don't actually like and you realize after six weeks, but don't split up until after six months.

   8. JSJames Smith15:59

      Exactly. And then, and then, you know, get on the bags after work because you, you just need an escape. You're texting your dealer at 4:00 PM for fuck's sake, you haven't even had a beer yet. Then people are so worried about their pay slip and then fiddling their fucking LinkedIn profile and changing the months from 10 months to a year to the point that they don't even know how their fucking CV looks because they've lied to themself so much. And for what? For more money? So that you need more extravagant holidays to escape your dreary existence in life? And again, this is one of the points I wanted to make in the book, that wealth is subjective. It can't be quantified just in a bank account. Subjectively speaking it can, but subjectively speaking, I believe that someone who's hustling with their own business making 25,000 pounds a year is far more wealthy than the recruiter making 100 grand, so stressed, his dick doesn't work when he comes home to fuck his missus, and he does more bags a week than he does hard wanks. You know what I mean? And no one blinks at that. And it's going on all around us. And probably another fucking deep point is if you look at the biggest killer of people before retirement, it's suicide. All right? And people, no one's, no one's questioning people's professional lives. No one's-

   9. CWChris Williamson17:16

      Biggest cause of, biggest cause of death in men under the age of 40.

   10. JSJames Smith17:19

       Yeah. And, you know, everyone's like, "Oh, it'd be so good to retire at 45 and live my days, go here, go there." And I'm like, "Yeah, sweet, but fundamentally, I think there's something wrong." And, and no one's, no one's talking about it, everyone's just, like, brushing it off. And I was like, people fundamentally aren't enjoying their professional life. And they're, they're all dreaming about these big salaries, six figures in retirement, and to me, it overlooks the fucking, the, the best part. And that fundamentally is what I think people are doing wrong, and saving it all for the end is something that I can't get home with. I can't. And there's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it, but a lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth are preventing people from doing that. And if I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint, 'cause ultimately I think it's letting a lot of people down. But the thing is, it didn't let our parents down.... it, you know, my dad worked in the same business for 50 years, started at the bottom, made it to the top, and he's a very happy guy, and he's actually happily retired. But I don't think that generation is, is comparable to us.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:31

       I agree. I agree.

6. 18:32 – 22:41

   A new long life

   1. CWChris Williamson18:32

      I had, um, Andrew Scott, if I've got his name wrong, I'm going to feel embarrassed. Andrew Scott, uh, who wrote a, recently wrote A New Long Life, which is a book talking about the economics of the fact that everyone, each generation lives eight years longer than the generation before. So you versus your great grandparents, you're actually going to live for another generation on top of them, which means even just from a temporal duration perspective, using the blueprint that came before isn't going to work. And then when you think particularly about the changes that people my age and your age have seen, you know, if you were born s- a, a millennial, if you were born early eigh- uh, late 80s, early 90s, you've seen such a huge paradigm shift from what your parents experienced to your, your life. And that means that all of the things, all the lessons that our parents taught us, like bless their hearts, like it was great and it was the best that they could give us, but really like fucking rules of the game have changed now, mate, like it's gravity boots and upside down basketball and all, you know what I mean? (laughs) Like it's, everyone's flying around in space and there's, you know, there's dick pics and all this sort of stuff, like... (laughs)

   2. JSJames Smith19:44

      (laughs) Mate, do you know what? It's, it's exactly that, and, and people are often comparative to being overweight in their genes and whatever, and I say to people, "Fuck you." I was like, even as a child, we would have to walk to the fish and chip shop to get fish and chips. Now when I order Uber Eats, I don't even want to go to the door to get it.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:01

      (laughs)

   4. JSJames Smith20:01

      I buy my housemates, I buy them something so I don't have to go to the door. When I'm hungover on a Sunday, I'm like, I'm like, "Oh boys, anyone want a McFlurry? Yeah, I'll get them a McFlurry." So when that door knocks, I don't have to go get it. I'm like, "Come on, mate, I got you a McFlurry, go get that." But it's funny you say that about dick pics. I had this conversation with someone the other day, and I was like, fair enough, if you send a dick pic to someone without consent, that's a bad, that's a dickish thing, pardon the pun. But in our lives, there are a lot of men probably listening to this right, that have sent a consensual dick pic and they worry about it. And I often think that you're, whenever we're wanking on our laptops, we always get scared for that second that the webcam's on. We all do. And anyone listening, you say it, you're a liar if not. And some people get really severe anxiety, and I got a bit of it. I was like, "Fucking hell, when I release this book, there are probably some videos from little rugby group chats."

   5. CWChris Williamson20:54

      Flurry, a flurry of dick pics that are just strewn around the internet, distributed across the f- the seven continents that could come back up here.

   6. JSJames Smith21:01

      De- deny it till you die. But then I was like, do you know what? And th- this again is another tactic I use to deconstruct that. I'm like, is it really that bad? Is it really that bad? It's, if I was the only person on the planet to send a dick pic as a, as a teenager when I was drunk to a girlfriend, then yeah, but I wasn't. And people need to get over themselves. And again, when I talk about cocaine, everyone's like, " (gasps) You're talking about..." I'm like, "Listen, it's a five billion pound industry in London."

   7. CWChris Williamson21:24

      (laughs)

   8. JSJames Smith21:25

      Who do you think, where do you think that's going? Your doctor, you know? You know, your fucking aunt and uncy- your aunt and uncle. Like everyone you know is doing this behind book- closed doors but no one talks about it. And again, psychedelics and, uh, people are like, "James, it's really irresponsible for you to talk about psychedelics." I was like, "No, everyone, when you talk to someone," even though there was a program on Netflix about all the celebrities that came out and, uh, were talking about it.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:50

      Yes, I saw, I saw that.

   10. JSJames Smith21:52

       And, and, and do you know what? That was liberating for me because it, it, I'm not saying that, you know, drugs again is such a broad spectrum of things. Some can make your life better, some make your life worse, some cure you from illness, some don't. And everyone's so quick to go, "Oh no, dick pics are bad." Well done. Someone might have sent one and somebody wanted one. Everyone's like webcam for porno. Everyone's watching porn. You know, these are big, big industries. And again, with like recreational drug use, it, it's going on. And uh, Elon Musk did a tweet where he goes, "Wow, five years ago marijuana, or maybe longer, was illegal in the States, but cannabis dispensaries remained open during COVID which means they are now an essential in the American way of living, yet people are still in jail serving their sentences from dealing it."

7. 22:41 – 26:24

   We are not evolutionarily fit

   1. CWChris Williamson22:41

      Paradigm shift, man. The world is moving significantly quicker than the policies that en- uh, uh, enclosing it, and even further than that, it's moving so much quicker than our e- than our evolution, which is a huge challenge, right? Because we are not evolutionarily fit for the environment that we're in. We're not built for hypernormal stimuli, bings and bongs and a million fucking messages, dopamine kicks from left, right and center. We're not built for the amount of radiation we take. We're not built e- we're not even built for fucking artificial light. Like it's supposed to be dark when it gets dark and light when it gets light, and there's not supposed to be some fucking ha... I've got over there, I've got a, a brand new, very good sleep mask like so that I can get better sleep between the hours of like 6:00 and fucking 7:00 on a morning when it, 'cause it's sunny in the UK. Like that, even that I'm not evolutionarily fit for that. So people that presume and talk like with so much fucking vehement certainty about how, how authentic we are or inauthentic stuff is, talking about how dirty it is to discuss drugs or how inappropriate it is to discuss dick pics and stuff like that, like it's fucking bollocks. Like look at the way that life manifests itself now. And I think me and you share an, uh, uh, the, the same stance on this which is that, if you lay out the way that the world is for people, they are free to interpret it however they want. We have to have faith that people are sovereign individuals who are able to make their own fucking decisions and their own, um, they have agency over their own lives, right? Like what, what's the alternative? To pretend that dick pics don't exist?... like to pretend that cocaine doesn't exist, to pretend that psychedelics aren't being used. Like how does that help prepare anybody? And it's actually really insulting to the people that it's talking to. It's basically saying, "You are so much of an infant who doesn't have any agency or control over what you think or believe, that I'm going to wrap you in cotton wool and put those little fucking foam cups that go on the edge of sharp stuff so that children don't run into it, I'm going to put all of them around and then, don't worry, uh, we'll just shuffle you into the fucking grave."

   2. JSJames Smith24:53

      If you see monkeys in the zoo, they're playing with their dicks in front of dozens of people, you get arrested for that these days.

   3. CWChris Williamson24:59

      They don't care.

   4. JSJames Smith24:59

      Yeah. And, and, and again, like you say, there's one thing that I've probably struggled with from, uh, from ... The only thing I worry about from a mental health perspective is this, this growing worry of when your brand and your identity increases, your, uh, ratio for what you're allowed to get wrong diminishes. And if someone out there sends a t- a racist tweet, and there are nobody, no one, no one does anything about it and that doesn't make it fine. But even the fact that, like, Ellen DeGeneres didn't quite get the hashtag right, people were demanding that she donated money to certain charities off the back of not getting the hashtag right. And you, you kind of worry that, you know, a, a dick pic from a random guy on Chatroulette, that's fine, but if it's a major celebrity, you know, suddenly everyone's out to get them, everyone ... But hold on, that's, that's the same offense between the two. And suddenly people saying something wrong, there's this very, it's a very scary time at the moment in social media, where I've noticed people's posting frequency since the black square diminishing massively, because people are petrified of doing something wrong, because the repercussions have never been worse. Have you felt, have you felt this kind of nervousness-

   5. CWChris Williamson26:15

      Absolutely.

   6. JSJames Smith26:15

      ... amongst social media?

   7. CWChris Williamson26:16

      Ambient anxiety.

   8. JSJames Smith26:18

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson26:19

      Ambient anxiety that we're all swimming through, man. Like,

8. 26:24 – 30:03

   Elon Musk on Joe Rogan

   1. CWChris Williamson26:24

      the, uh, uh, so Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan, did you see, have you ... the, the second one, did you listen to that?

   2. JSJames Smith26:29

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:30

      Yeah.

   4. JSJames Smith26:30

      Yeah, I have.

   5. CWChris Williamson26:30

      And he uses this term, and holy fucking shit if it's not correct, Joe asks him, "Why are you selling all of your possessions?" Elon waits for 45 seconds in silence, and then says, "I see it as an attack vector." That's what it is. It's an attack vector. Your fame now is an attack vector. My platform, so I said this yesterday, I launched a Patreon yesterday. We've got a, an academy launching which is like a, a different side of the, the Modern Wisdom universe launching in a couple of months' time, and I'm like feeling more and more anxious now, just low-key ambient anxiety, because I'm like before, when I was doing a thousand plays a month, it didn't matter, but when I'm doing half a million or a million plays a month, now everything has been ratcheted up. Everyone now, there's a reason for people to want to take you down, because people resent success, there's more people to see what you're doing, which means there's more likelihood of someone that takes offense seeing the thing that is going to then erupt into all of that. And once you leverage all of that together, you're like, "Hang on, I actually care about this now." You care about your academy, you care about your clients, you care about the content that you put out, you care about the message and the books that you write and all of this sort of stuff. And it's your legacy, right? You don't want someone on this increasingly large audience with this increasing disposition and reason to attack you to then take down what is now an increasingly large operation. Like everything, all of the fucking stakes have been raised.

   6. JSJames Smith28:05

      Mate, it's crazy. At the moment, there's, uh, currently, uh, it's probably happened about four or five times, there is a organized group of people that jump on my Instagram Lives to try and get me to say words that are racist by breaking them into names, two part names, and then they come on and say ... they're trying to catch me out and they're obviously stream recording.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:24

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JSJames Smith28:25

      So they're trying to get me and catch me out and go, "You need to apologize to this person." And I've checked these accounts and they're real, so there's an organized group of people trying to trip me up. They're-

   9. CWChris Williamson28:34

      Jesus fucking Christ. (laughs)

   10. JSJames Smith28:35

       They're then saying to me, "Oh, we've seen the t- we've seen the tweet. We've seen it. It's come up. We've found the old tweet." And they were saying, they were making these accusations. And on the Live, I was like, "Nah, I deleted all my cr- Twitter accounts, don't you worry about that. I've got nothing. (laughs) I've buried those." And, um, yeah, like, and I was like, "Fucking hell." I was like, "This is pathetic and this is the world we live in at the moment, where, where people would actually try and out you on something like that?" And then the other day, my issue is not rising to something, and I had a picture up, uh, from our IFS, uh, events in Barcelona, and someone went to the trouble of counting how many people, uh, in the picture were Black, and sad face, sad face. "Oh, I can't believe there's only three Black people in this photo." And at first, I was like, "Okay." And then I went and I did a, a, a s- I looked at statistics of, uh, skin colors of non-UK citizens that reside in the UK, and from a statistical standpoint, it was actually spot on, the amount. So if you say that that was just broadly UK following that were attending a seminar, uh, in Spain, for the amount of people in the crowd, for the amount of Black people, that was actually perfectly acceptable. Yet someone had proactively gone and tried ... This is maybe four weeks after I posted the picture. Someone's gone back. They must have scrolled. "What can I be offended about? What can I be offended about? Here we go. There's only bl- three Black people in this photo. I'm really upset that there's no mor- not more Black people in this photo." I was like, "What's going on? What, what world do we live in?"

9. 30:03 – 34:17

   Other mistakes people make

   1. JSJames Smith30:03

   2. CWChris Williamson30:03

      I don't know, man. Like, uh, to me, I don't, I, I don't think like that, so when I see people acting like that, like this whole, the, the, the, the real kind of, uh, malicious, uh, online atmosphere that's been occurring recently, I...I, like I, I understand the principles behind it, but the people that are taking these sorts of things that are just virtue signaling and trying to find a problem with anything, I'm like, I, I, I don't even, I can't map their mode of thinking into my existence. It almost feels like I'm watching, like that person, it almost feels like I'm watching a different species or a different universe or something. Like what, what is this-

   3. JSJames Smith30:47

      It's like that Black Mirror.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:48

      Yeah. It's so strange. So let's, let's get back to the, the, the life thing. So you talked about the, the sort of blueprint, this classic upbringing. What are some of the other mistakes that you think people make when it comes to life design?

   5. JSJames Smith31:02

      So, um, I would say (exhales sharply) relationships is a big one, which I touched on there before. Um, a lot of people are in almost like relationships that have ... they're more platonic. They almost go away from sexual, and then after a while they share a mortgage together, and there's so much on the line. They've been together for so long, they struggle to walk away. Now this is another thing that conflicts with kind of the other blueprint in which we have of having a family life, but I sometimes think to myself, people are staying together in a miserable existence to bring up a family. And it's a tough one because it's, it's like a double-edged sword when, when kids are involved. But you have to question whether or not two happy entities bringing up one or two children or whatever would be better than staying together for the wrong reason. (smacks lips) I see that happening, uh, a lot as well as far as professional life. Uh, one of my favorite areas would actually be sport. (smacks lips) I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I think that if you're in any form of martial art, there is this sense of humility. No matter what you do, you turn up to training, black belts, brown belts, purple belts, blue belts, white belts. No matter what your income, what your ethnicity, your religion, whatever it is, you line up in order for how good a student you are. Not on athletic ability either, 'cause someone can be 30 kilograms lighter than you, squat half of what you do, but if they're two belts above you, you're gonna, you know, you're not gonna call them out for a role. And I feel that a lot of people become lost on this path of being a student, and when you ... Even playing rugby, I never really got better playing game on game. You're just out there with the boys, you know, getting on the piss on the Saturday night, you go training, you learn your line-outs. And I feel that what's amazing about jiu-jitsu is you can set your own rules for success, so I suppose values. I don't want to be the best jiu-jitsu athlete in the world, and I know I'm not gonna be there, but just the process of improving where I'm at is what I love. And you know, the same with your podcast, the one we're speaking on right now. Although you know Joe Rogan's there, you're not there like, "Oh, how long til I can pip him off for the top spot?" You appreciate it's there, but you're just working on you. You're like, "Who can I get my next guest? What kind of engaging conversation can we have?" And your podcast won't exist more than one conversation at a time. Like in jiu-jitsu, nothing exists more than one session at a time. One transition, "Oh, that's interesting." One new way to take the back, "Oh, that's interesting." And being a student and only transitioning in this blinkers down mentality is one of the most satisfying things I've ever experienced in my life, and I feel like a lot of people don't have that. And when training for physique or going to the gym to be in shape, fundamentally, I see this big flaw that people don't really enjoy their trainings, they don't really enjoy the process. They're stalemating a bit, and they're in this constant state of battling off, "Do I want to enjoy the quality of my life and drink wine and eat crisps, or do I wanna be lean and hungry and, you know, not feel fucking energized the whole time?" And if people could just find something, whatever it is, taekwondo, kickboxing, boxing, jiu-jitsu, something where they can become a student, it can distract you from all areas of life. And again, a big part of the book is to get people into just trying jiu-jitsu,

10. 34:17 – 37:13

    Being humble

    1. JSJames Smith34:17

       just trying it out.

    2. CWChris Williamson34:18

       Are you, uh, are you the front end of the funnel for every jiu-jitsu, uh, gym that's across the world?

    3. JSJames Smith34:24

       Do you know, do you know what? It's, it's honestly been such a great place for my mind to wander, and for me, I, I don't take my phone near the mats often. I go out there, nothing else exists apart from the training, and there's a lot of being humble, keep your shoes away from the mat, keep your hygiene high, shake hands with everyone. And you know we were saying before about a monkey wanking in a zoo, and we're in this world where everyone seems to think they're perfect. No matter what human you find, we're all s- kind of apes at heart, and there's a certain amount of times you can flick someone on the forehead before they just twat you in the face. All right? You could be the fucking nicest person in the world, Mother Teresa, you piss her off, you could piss her off enough, she'd fucking twat you in the nose. And I think from a primitive standpoint, humans have always been combative. They've always wanted to go toe-to-toe, but we live in this society where you're not allowed to express your emotions anymore. You're not even allowed to be angry. Being angry is a very normal fucking human emotion, and we have these social and professional hierarchies that suppress a lot of people's emotions. If your boss is a cunt to you, you can't call him a cunt. And people sit on these emotions all the time and they suppress them, which I believe amplifies them. But when you go into like a combat sport or a jiu-jitsu gym, you have somewhere you can channel that and you can vent it, and I think that's very healthy. And a lot of people can't understand why the nice girl from the office loves boxing, or why, uh, you know, this dude loves jiu-jitsu or whatever.

    4. CWChris Williamson35:51

       But she seems, she seems so sweet.

    5. JSJames Smith35:54

       Wait, did you grow up with any brothers?

    6. CWChris Williamson35:55

       No. Only child.

    7. JSJames Smith35:57

       Okay. Did you ever ... When you were a kid, did you ever have any, like, play fights?

    8. CWChris Williamson36:00

       Yeah.

    9. JSJames Smith36:00

       Like ... And, and play fights were fun. The mom and dad's in the house, if it was yours or someone else's, they'd stick their head round and be like, "Right, there's no punching, but, you know-"

    10. CWChris Williamson36:08

        (laughs)

    11. JSJames Smith36:08

        "... just, just don't break anything, right?" And we have all these things taken away from us in these social constructs, but having a play fight with your mate, he puts the cricket on, you wanna watch the football, you're there, you're like, "Let's go. Let's do this. Let's settle this." And looking back, they're some of my favorite pastimes. Now I get to experience that as an adult, and I think there's something hugely healthy from a mental health perspective of engaging in combat with other humans. And you never wanted to hurt your friend, but you wanted to make them suffer.... and that's almost the whole sport of jujitsu, and-

    12. CWChris Williamson36:35

        That is the sport of jujitsu, precisely, yeah.

    13. JSJames Smith36:38

        And, uh, I, I wish that more people would do that because it's, it's been when work's tough, when I'm stressed, when I've got that, and Darren and I are the same grade, we can go out on the mats and there's no egos. There's, there's nothing apart from this game of human chess. And when I'm working in the mornings, I do a lot of work, when my food comes, I shut off my phone, I get rid of WhatsApp and I get a YouTube video up and I'll study like a 10-minute YouTube video of jujitsu while I eat my food. And for me, it's just nice to dream off into another state and learn something. And, um, I think that I couldn't imagine life without it.

    14. CWChris Williamson37:12

        That's beautiful,

11. 37:13 – 42:14

    Your calling in life

    1. CWChris Williamson37:13

       man. That really, really is. I think you having found something which is a common architecture outside of the thing which most people would presume is your calling in life, being what has now become James Smith, um, having that is what allows you to do everything else, right? Like it's the foundation that allows you to pull yourself out of that. For me, it's, it's podcasting and learning about myself and the world around me. When you rang on Skype earlier on before I was ready and a whole, all hell broke loose, everyone that's been FaceTimed knows this, like your two phones go off and your iPad and your laptop and it started all coming from everywhere, and I thought, "What the fuck's going on?" Uh, and I was listening to Ben Shapiro and I'm in full fucking flow listening to him talking about Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore over the weekend. I don't really care, but at some point on a podcast over the next two months, I'm gonna get to drop some stat from that and I'm gonna go, "Yes, fucking nailed it. You didn't know that, did you, you cunt?" Like (laughs) that's, that's what I wanna do. I got this one here about the hustle memory. So you were talking earlier on about how you don't want to necessarily, uh, even go to the door. The level of convenience has been hyper-normalized in modern society to the point where we don't wanna even fucking... We Netflix the best films on the planet to our iPad so we don't need to leave bed and then we Uber our way to the date so that we can go home to Deliveroo our food and all the rest of the stuff. But everyone that's listening, think about some of your favorite memories to do with any project that you've been involved with. It was never when the project was going super, super well and super, super easy. The best memories you have from anything that you do, and this will include you, will be the night before you launch jamessmithacademy.com and you rushed until 5:00 in the morning and we nearly didn't make it and the coder, the code all broke down and we got the dominoes in and, "Oh fuck, we did it, we did it. Look, and we, we made it and it went really, really well." That is the meaning, that struggle is the meaning, the obstacle is the way, you know? Like that's, that's what, that's how it works. And finding something which is both challenging and worthwhile, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow state, right, like that is, we are chasing that. We are chasing something that's just at the right, the right distance of our domain of competence, just hard enough for us to believe that we can continue to do it, but just s- like hard, so much hard that we want to do more.

    2. JSJames Smith39:37

       There's, um, uh, yeah, and it, there's, I can't remember who said it, where they said we need to spend 30% of our time with people at the same level as us, 30% of our time with people above us and 30% of our time with people below us. And for me, that's 30% rolling with white belts where I can fuck 'em up and try new stuff.

    3. CWChris Williamson39:54

       (laughs)

    4. JSJames Smith39:54

       30% of my time with blue belts of equal ability where I've really got to bring my A-game. But then 30% of the time with purple belts where I'm humbled by them. But, and, and to me that's the perfect balance and that's like the hierarchy to life where black belts roll with higher black belts. But you've, just a second ago, your excitement of listening to that podcast reminded me of another part in the book which I call the invisible game. I play lots of games every day that no one else knows about. Other people are involved in them, but the people involved with them don't even know that I'm playing it. And I did this throughout my whole career very early on, where you listening to that podcast, you've, you've probably, without knowing it, gamified your life a bit. And I used to love gaming when I was younger. I still play Call of Duty now. And it's all about waiting for that right time for those points to be played. And I found myself, I even made a list of all my competitors when I first started out as a PT, and everything that I did became a process to beat them. But it wasn't about an ego or a cock-off 'cause they never knew that I was doing it. And I really like gamifying certain parts of my life so that I can remove myself from them in the daily actions of it. Getting out of bed on time, that's 10 points, you know, like, or, you know, when you start studying for something, and I bet sometimes you're there listening to a podcast and you're like, "Fuck, this is dull." I remember listening to a 57-minute podcast on caffeine and it was dull as fuck. The guy was the most boring fuck in the world, but I was like, "No one else is listening to this."

    5. CWChris Williamson41:20

       Yeah. (laughs)

    6. JSJames Smith41:21

       And when someone asks me on a fucking live and I can recite this thing about caffeine, holy fuck, that's when I'll, I'll pull the, the

    7. CWChris Williamson41:29

       When I drop the adenosine pathway bomb on everyone, they're gonna go, "Aah." (laughs)

    8. JSJames Smith41:35

       Yeah. And that's it, and I've, I've, I saw a bit of myself then when you were doing that because to me, there are, there are quite dull and dreary processes in life, probably like Trump's fucking speech, but if you remove yourself from it and think, "Someone else could be playing this game and I gotta make sure that I get the high score," it, uh, it really helps me, uh, you know, stay on top of things. And that's, that's, um, it's not an ego thing, it's just my way of how I approach things. And, um, you know, that, there's no top score really. Like, like in Call of Duty, you just keep prestiging. Just keep prestiging. There's never, you're never gonna be the best, but you might as well keep going.

    9. CWChris Williamson42:13

       It's interesting

12. 42:14 – 46:31

    How to externalise motivation

    1. CWChris Williamson42:14

       that creating those structures is such an important way to externalize motivation. I think that's what helps me. Like I have, man, those invisible games are everywhere, from how long I'm prepared to count down in a cold shower from, and like if I, if I start to bitch out, then I'll add 10 on.... like if I think, if I think, "Oh, I should leave, I should just leave early," then I add 10 seconds on. And I'm like, "Oh, for fuck's sake, you did it again." You stood there and you're like, "This sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks." Like, wrote a bunch of ... I've got this academy thing launching in a few weeks' time. So yesterday I wrote a bunch of agreements to myself. I wrote promises to myself about what I would and wouldn't accept. Like, I'm going to get up at this time, I'm going to make sure I go for a morning and an evening walk. I'm going to ... Just like the little basic structures. So one of the things I wanted to try and get from you are, what are the principles or the daily structures that you try not to compromise on, ever? What do you need to do in your day-to-day life to ensure that everything else goes well?

    2. JSJames Smith43:18

       Um, so from a business perspective, inbo- business, it sounds really basic, but my inbox. And my inbox is actually a lot more open to people than they think. And because it's so open, I think it helps me, where if any of my members need my help, they can always come to me direct. And I've always said that. Um, so I like- I love to clear that. Then my email marketing campaign. Email marketing is one of the biggest overlooked areas of business that everyone overlooks, and if I don't write an email, I almost feel dirty. I feel like I haven't accomplished anything. If I'm too hungover and I don't get that done.

    3. CWChris Williamson43:49

       That's the Paul Morton effect, that.

    4. JSJames Smith43:51

       Uh ... Yeah, it is, mate, big time.

    5. CWChris Williamson43:53

       (laughs)

    6. JSJames Smith43:53

       I know.

    7. CWChris Williamson43:53

       "James."

    8. JSJames Smith43:54

       Yeah, so ...

    9. CWChris Williamson43:54

       "Have you sent that fucking email?" "In here." "Paul." Uh ... (laughs)

    10. JSJames Smith44:00

        Yeah. (laughs) Mate, it's, it's send emails, get paid. I know. (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson44:04

        (laughs)

    12. JSJames Smith44:05

        Mate, it's, it does, that one of my non-negotiables, but do you know what, in the last year or two, um, quite a lot of my daily things don't revolve around work. It's about having time to myself, training, learning something, uh, having a bit of downtime. But, uh, yeah, as far as like the, the business part of things, I suppose in my mind, clearing inboxes, I probably spend about an hour a day in my social media inboxes, which is tough 'cause I can't read them all, but I, I like spending time there. Um, and just having conversations with the right people. I'm very fortunate now that I've got my business partner, I've got my events manager, I've got all these people, and if I talk to them and just have conversations with them every day, everything looks after itself. Um, I'm not actually that organized. I've been very fortunate over COVID where I haven't set an alarm to wake up in about three months, and, uh, it, the ... Funnily enough, I still wake up about 6:00, 6:30, but not having an alarm gives me peace when I go to sleep. (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson45:00

        That's interesting, man. That's how everyone that I've spoken to that knows what they're talking about to do with sleep, that's their suggestion.

    14. JSJames Smith45:07

        Just wake up.

    15. CWChris Williamson45:08

        Wake up without an alarm. That's what it, that's how it should be. The alarm is cutting into your sleep. Presumably, you want to sleep as much as you need, not as much as you wa- uh, like your, your alarm should tell you.

    16. JSJames Smith45:19

        Yeah, I got, um, I got on it a bit at the weekend, and, uh, I woke up at like really late on Monday. Yeah, what day is it today? Yesterday, I woke up at 7:45 and I was like, "James, you dirty bastard."

    17. CWChris Williamson45:32

        (laughs)

    18. JSJames Smith45:32

        And I got to the café, right, I got to the café and they were like, the girls at the café were like, "Have you gone for a coffee somewhere before this?" And I was like, "No, no, no."

    19. CWChris Williamson45:39

        (laughs)

    20. JSJames Smith45:39

        I was like, "I've just woken up," but there were no seats 'cause it had got too busy. And I was like, "You fucking deserve this, James. You wait outside like the dirty fucking stockout that you are."

    21. CWChris Williamson45:47

        (laughs)

    22. JSJames Smith45:47

        "Wait outside for a table." Um, but yeah, I, I really like that, and, um, again, the people around me, they, they don't know how to talk to me in the mornings too much. Uh, sleep is actually probably my biggest non-negotiable, where, um, first of all, I'm really weird about sharing a bed with, with people. Um, I'm not sure if this is a lie that I told women so they'd leave, and that I've actually started to believe (laughs) myself. Um, but sleep's like a, a big one that e- even if I'm on a date, I'm like, "Come on, let's meet a bit earlier so I can, you know, get back to bed." And they're like, "You fucking kidding me?" Like, I like every- lights out 10:00 PM every night if I can. Uh, and prioritizing my sleep has improved my quality of life massively.

13. 46:31 – 48:13

    James Smiths pregnancy pillow

    1. CWChris Williamson46:31

       I think very few people realize what life could be like if they got eight hours of sleep every night.

    2. JSJames Smith46:37

       And this pregnancy pillow that the viewers will be able to see, I first of all just had like a tubular, long pregnancy pillow.

    3. CWChris Williamson46:43

       Mm-hmm.

    4. JSJames Smith46:44

       Uh, I think I could've been one of the first people ever to fly business class with a full-sized pregnancy pillow.

    5. CWChris Williamson46:49

       (laughs)

    6. JSJames Smith46:49

       And the air stewardess said to me, she goes, "Is that a pregnancy pillow?" I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Where do you keep it?" I was like, "In my backpack." And she was like, "Is there anything else in it?" I was like, "No, my whole backpack was for my passport, my headphones and my pregnancy pillow."

    7. CWChris Williamson47:01

       (laughs)

    8. JSJames Smith47:02

       (laughs) I slept for about 13 out of 14 hours from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, and, uh, she was, at the end, she was like, "Fair play." But now I've got one of the C-sha- shaped pregnancy pillows, which is better, but this is gonna be another kettle of fish to get on a flight. But for anyone that is-

    9. CWChris Williamson47:17

       You're gonna have to go in wearing it like a mid-'90s rapper would wear, you know, like one of the old like mink coat things. You can just wear it as ... What, what do you mean? What do you mean? This is just-

    10. JSJames Smith47:28

        Yeah, I've-

    11. CWChris Williamson47:28

        ... this is just part of my outfit.

    12. JSJames Smith47:30

        I've been thinking about this already because at some point I'm gonna have to come back to the UK and I was like, maybe I can go to the lounge and say, "Excuse me, can I keep this here?" But no one at an airport's gonna let me leave a fucking bag in a lounge, are they?

    13. CWChris Williamson47:40

        (laughs) It's huge.

    14. JSJames Smith47:41

        But I'd be like, I'd be like, "It's, it's a pillow, relax." And then I was like, maybe I could check it in and, and ask them to take it to my seat or whatever. But now that I've done it, I cannot fathom the idea of flying without my own pillow because what, what strikes me as, as crazy is, let's say you fly ... return to Sydney is, is about £4,000, which is extortionate amount of money, but I value my sleep that much. I'm not even being a diva. The idea of not sleeping on top of jet lag now, now kills me. I would rather, I'd rather have one less whole day to Ibiza and fly laying down than I would, um,

14. 48:13 – 49:32

    Price to pay

    1. JSJames Smith48:13

       any other way. And-

    2. CWChris Williamson48:13

       That's the price to pay. That's how, that's the equivalency there. Ibiza.

    3. JSJames Smith48:17

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson48:17

       How many Ibiza trips is it? I don't want to know how much it cost you, I want to know how many Ibiza trips it is.

    5. JSJames Smith48:21

       (laughs) The funny thing in, uh, in Sydney, it's $300 for a bag. It's about 150 quid if you want a bag coat, so a friend told me, wink. And, um, like, we had to get the washing machine fixed once and (laughs) I was like, "How much is it?" "Two bags." And you're like, "Two grand?"

    6. CWChris Williamson48:36

       (laughs)

    7. JSJames Smith48:36

       I said, "No, two bags are $600." All right, thank god.

    8. CWChris Williamson48:39

       (laughs) It's just-

    9. JSJames Smith48:40

       You know. People are like-

    10. CWChris Williamson48:40

        ... everything gets equivalence, yeah.

    11. JSJames Smith48:42

        Yeah, I bought, I bought nine square meters of jujitsu mats in COVID, and I was like, "$600." And someone would be like, "Oh, that's only two bags."

    12. CWChris Williamson48:49

        (laughs)

    13. JSJames Smith48:49

        Like, it, it's quite a funny way of doing it.

    14. CWChris Williamson48:51

        (laughs)

    15. JSJames Smith48:52

        But, uh, what, what's crazy is that people... I, I once said to myself, I was like, "Right, I'm gonna take this pregnancy pillow on a plane." And the thing cost, the most expensive one cost 40 pounds. So if you weigh it up against the cost of the flight, even if you left it on the plane and had it as, like, a disposable pillow-

    16. CWChris Williamson49:06

        Single use pillow. (laughs)

    17. JSJames Smith49:07

        ... it's like fucking... Yeah. And, and obviously I took it home and I've used it, and now my mum's like, "James, you've got pregnancy pillows all around the world." I've got them in Sydney, I've got them in London. Um, but like, you know, four grand on a flight, fine, but you get a pillow that's fucking half the size of a travel pillow. You're supposed to sleep on that for 12 hours? No chance. So for anyone out there, if you, uh, if you're gonna stretch your legs on the plane, take your own pillow game.

    18. CWChris Williamson49:29

        Pregnancy pillow, man.

    19. JSJames Smith49:30

        My go-

    20. CWChris Williamson49:31

        Pregnancy pillow.

    21. JSJames Smith49:31

        Hey, this,

15. 49:32 – 51:23

    Pregnancy pillow

    1. JSJames Smith49:32

       it... We need to change the name of it so it's not just for pregnant people.

    2. CWChris Williamson49:35

       I know, it, it-

    3. JSJames Smith49:36

       Pregnant out there. I'm sure-

    4. CWChris Williamson49:37

       ... it's just big lad. It's big lad pillow, isn't it? It's achy shoulders pillow. That's what it is.

    5. JSJames Smith49:41

       That's right.

    6. CWChris Williamson49:42

       Um, anyone who... So I played the pl- pregnancy pillow game for a long time. The challenge I had was, and you'll be familiar with this, if you want to change from side to side, often you wake up because of the complexity of having to pull your arm out from underneath to then turn, to then slide the other arm in and under. Like it's, it's moderately comp- I mean, it's complex to do when you're awake, let alone, like, when you're asleep. So-

    7. JSJames Smith50:07

       It's a s- it's a jujitsu move. It's called a hip escape. So you re- re- (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson50:11

       Okay, so you're drilling the hip escape-

    9. JSJames Smith50:14

       Yeah. (laughs)

    10. CWChris Williamson50:14

        ... in the middle of your sleep at five... Well, I mean, that's one way, that's one way to maximize your gains. So what I've actually upgraded to now is a hourglass shaped memory foam pillow that slots between your legs right up against the, the gooch. Like right-

    11. JSJames Smith50:29

        Yep.

    12. CWChris Williamson50:29

        ... right up against the gooch. And that still does the same as your memory, your, uh, pregnancy pillow will do for your legs, and it separates your thighs. Which, especially for guys, like, until you've slept with something between your legs, like something big, bigger than it is now, like something really big that separates your thighs, you do not know what true comfort is when you go to bed. Like, it is just, it's wonderful.

    13. JSJames Smith50:51

        It's, it's not a day that goes by where I think, from an evolutionary perspective, what the fuck were we sleeping on for so many thousand years?

    14. CWChris Williamson50:58

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JSJames Smith50:58

        Like, what were we... Like, what we... Before cotton, before wool, before springs, I'd... And you think from, like, a biomechanics standpoint, my back hurts laying on the beach. How did...

    16. CWChris Williamson51:09

        (laughs)

    17. JSJames Smith51:09

        How (laughs) , how, how have we gone that wrong? Like, my hip flexors, I'm so fucking lordotic that, like, I get a sore lower back laying on the beach.

    18. CWChris Williamson51:16

        (laughs)

    19. JSJames Smith51:16

        And there, there are human... 25,000 years ago, first oven was being made. What were they sleeping on?

    20. CWChris Williamson51:22

        We need to

16. 51:23 – 53:15

    Sleeping on the floor

    1. CWChris Williamson51:23

       find out, man. Uh, one of the regular guests on the show, Yousef, slept on the floor for three months. Nearly, nearly broke his relationship apart because he wouldn't end an experiment of him sleeping on the floor, and his girlfriend refused to sleep on the floor, quite rightly. Like she-

    2. JSJames Smith51:38

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson51:38

       ... she doesn't have to be a part of this bizarre th- experiment.

    4. JSJames Smith51:43

       Did he have a pillow?

    5. CWChris Williamson51:44

       Uh, so he put a mattress topper on the floor. So, like, this, this much. And the reason for the mattress topper was simply so that when he went into his bedroom, people didn't think it was weird. Um, and he slept on the floor for three months and did... But there's, there's some fairly good arguments for it, like firmer beds, better for s- posture and all the rest of it. But yeah, man, I don't know. As well, there's an interesting, um... You'll have seen these advertised online, uh, anxiety blankets, weighted, weighted anxiety blankets. You seen these? Like, hyper heavy-

    6. JSJames Smith52:16

       Mm-hmm.

    7. CWChris Williamson52:16

       ... blankets. And they've, they've been advertised everywhere. And it's supposed to afford some sort of calming effect. Like, what's the pathway that that's operating on? Because that's not someone thinking, "I really want someone heavy to lie on me." So it has to be instantiated from our evolutionary heritage.

    8. JSJames Smith52:34

       Uh, that, that reminded me of something like sleep paralysis, where if some people take too much MDMA, they feel like someone's sat on their chest, don't they? (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson52:42

       (laughs)

    10. JSJames Smith52:42

        Like, but I don't know, uh, I don't know, uh, where that would stem from. That's quite an interesting one. Uh, I, I funnily enough, uh, I think it was Bret Contreras that goes, "You sleep in the same position for eight hours, you don't wake up stuck in it. So shut the fuck up about your, like, posture." And, uh, you know, like, people are like, "Oh, don't sit like that, 'cause you're gonna get f- you're gonna get froze. Them hamstrings are gonna shorten." He was like, "Fuck off." He was like, "You lot are weak."

    11. CWChris Williamson53:05

        (laughs)

    12. JSJames Smith53:05

        He was like, "You lot are weak, that's why you're stood like that." Um, which I don't, I haven't read any of the studies behind it, but it's not like we get out of bed in the morning like, "I'm fucking stuck." (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson53:13

        Yeah, I can- I can't move.

17. 53:15 – 57:40

    Life lessons

    1. CWChris Williamson53:15

       Uh, what life lessons do you wish that James from 10 years ago knew? Any big ones?

    2. JSJames Smith53:22

       It, it sounds really reductive, but not to worry about stuff. Uh, you know, I d- and this is something, this is a bit morbid. It's another topic in the book. Like, me and my mate, we, we had this... We had a few too many beers one night, and we came to this agreement where we said if we ever found out that we're going to die, we had to look at each other... We had to get a room for... Say you're there with your family, your friends, your loved ones, and the doctor goes, "You're gonna die in a week." We had to say as loud as we could, "Fair play." That was it. To everyone's shock. "Fair fucking play." And he said to me, "If we don't live our life that way, that we can happily say that when we find out we're going to die, then we've really got to change the way we're living." And I don't think there are many people out there that can say fair play if they were gonna find out they're gonna die next week. So I've been making sure the last 10 years that I've been living that way, where not been giving a fuck about mortgages, not been giving a fuck about savings. I don't care about the stock market. I would rather spend my money on a pretentious dinner with my friends than I would invest it in stocks, because, uh, you know, this whole saving it for later mentality that so many people are caught up about, I, I don't see the point in worrying about it. You know, that's... Why bring tomorrow's problems to today? And yeah, I'm, I'm literally just going through life, just taking it as it comes, doing what I want. I don't know what I fucking want for dinner tonight, let alone what I wanna do tomorrow. And everyone's so caught up in the future. And to be quite honest, we don't know what it's gonna hold. And the last 10 years, I've become a lot more-... more focused on the present, and whenever I take psychedelics, that's the only thing I think about. And I wish so many people could let go of the past because shit's happened. Um, from a, um ... And I use space facts quite a bit in, in (laughs) the second book. When we think of our planet going around the solar system, it sounds kind of weird, this is going to be psychedelic talk, we think of all the planets going around the sun but we fail to neglect the fact that the sun is also moving around the Milky Way, takes about 800,000 years for it to do a full circle. And I was like, when something happened in the past, it physically existed on a spinning ball, going around a spinning ball of fire that went around a spinning fucking black hole. That point in time, in space time, we're not gonna revisit that as a planet ever again. So why are you revisiting it every day with your thoughts? I may have come across that in a DMT trip, but anyway. And people... Then we get caught up about the future, and we, we have no idea what's coming, so why worry about it? And, you know, we have today's problems to deal with that. We have today's obligations, we have today's, uh, you know, state of mind to look after. Just look after that, and even tomorrow is another day's today. So for people that are worrying about stuff, just, just don't.

    3. CWChris Williamson56:04

       What are some of the ways that people can try and instantiate that, or what are some of the tactics that you used that helped you to actually make that happen? 'Cause it's all well and good someone listening and going, "Oh, that sounds fucking great that mate." Like, but I, I am worried about my mortgage, I am worried about my job, I am worried about whether or not I've got enough money, or whether I'm gonna beat someone-

    4. JSJames Smith56:24

       The thing is that-

    5. CWChris Williamson56:25

       ... and stuff like that.

    6. JSJames Smith56:27

       ... the worst case scenario for a lot of what we think is the worst case scenario, it isn't. And an elephant in the room that I've found is when people face adversity, which is what they're worried about, they often do their best. (laughs) And we're worried about this point in time where we can't afford to do things, we worry about this time where our business does go tits up. I worry about the time, and I'm sure you do, that everything's gonna fucking internally combust. But I tell you what, should it do that, I'll probably get out of bed that bit earlier, I'll probably hustle that bit harder, and I'll probably try harder. And everyone can sit back and go, "Oh, it's all right for you," but everyone's capable of it. No one... I've not come across anyone that's... You know what, I don't even think we have stupid people on the planet. We don't. I, I don't think we come in different engine sizes, you know. Uh, people seem to think, "Oh, they're a 1.2 Punto and someone else is a V8 Supercharged." We're not. We've, we've all got the same fucking brains and the same fucking heads, and people need to understand that. And you know what? If the worst case scenario comes, I'm sure you'll buck your fucking ideas up and have a new set of... and have a, have a better attitude on you. And yeah, there's no point in fearing that. And you said again, "Obstacle is the way." If things go good, great. If they go shit, I'm sure you'll sort it out.

18. 57:40 – 1:10:18

    Trust your future self

    1. JSJames Smith57:40

    2. CWChris Williamson57:40

       There's a, an interesting concept. Everyone that listened to the episode I did with Olly March on... will know this example. There's a guy called Andrew Tate. Do you know who he is? British guy.

    3. JSJames Smith57:48

       Heard the name.

    4. CWChris Williamson57:49

       Okay. So he's kind of like, um... If James Bond was an evil super villain, um, son of a chess grandmaster, world kickbox champion, multimillionaire, who lives in a-

    5. JSJames Smith57:59

       (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson57:59

       ... a fortress, a bat fortress in Romania, driving fast cars, uh, and like fucking porn stars. Like that's, that's his life. Uh, and he's got this concept where he, um, he talks about having faith that future Andrew will sort it. So he spends money very freely, buy a new car, do a this, and he doesn't worry about that. He says the reason is because he's like, "Look, I, I, I have faith in my future self. I have faith that the future version of me will make the money back. If everything went to shit, I have faith that the future version of me will make the money back." And I think it, it comes... It kind of loops around to what you're talking about there. It's trusting your future self to sort whatever challenges arise. But for a lot of people, if you haven't built that trust up in yourself, why would you trust your own word? If you keep making promises to yourselves about, "I'm gonna start a diet. I'm gonna stop cheating on my boyfriend. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that," and you don't do it, inevitably you're not going to have faith in your word. The same as a friend. If a friend kept breaking promises to you, you wouldn't have faith in them either.

    7. JSJames Smith59:05

       Uh, Joe, that's, that's exactly what it is. Yeah, I couldn't put it better into words, and Andrew Tate sounds like a fucking legend. And I had this discussion with Darren where, um, two years ago, three years ago, I would have told you that flying business class was a fucking waste of money. Like, "What the fuck?" I said, "Gimme that money. When I land, I'll go out and spend it." But first time, um, I flew... Or actually, first time I flew anything apart from economy, I flew first and I... And it was fucking crazy, I was like, "When do we eat?" And she was like, "Excuse me?" And, uh, when I sat there, I couldn't afford it. I made... I did a se- I did two seminars back to back, and I thought, "Oh, with the money I've earned from that, I'll just buy this ticket." But I hadn't taken into account tax, costs, the fact that I couldn't expense things I could, my accounts were all fucked. So pretty much I spent five grand on a flight that I couldn't afford. And from the outside, pragmatically looking at that, that was fucking stupid, but I can never explain to someone the emotions that I felt sat in that seat. First of all, I felt like I'd won the seat. Even though I spent 5,000 pounds on a one-way ticket, I felt like I'd won it and I couldn't get rid of this... I couldn't shake this feeling that I didn't belong in that seat. But then after a while, 'cause it's a long fucking flight to Sydney, I was like, "I best start fucking enjoying this." So I had some champagne, I had some wine, I'm sat there on my own, I'm watching a film. I've only ever flown economy before. And I... Not even that I got a taste for it, I made a promise to myself that from this day on, I'm gonna do whatever it takes on a daily basis to ensure that this isn't the last time I do it. And I got... I actually got really emotional on my first ever first class flight. I sat there and I literally felt like welling up. I was like, "This is fucking crazy. This is mad. I've got a shower on a plane." And everyone who spoke to me, "Oh, it's one of few you could fucking affor-" I couldn't afford it. And looking back now, I think that making that leap and doing that fucking stupid thing, and I actually got a blessing from my dad when I did it, and I went into the kitchen, I was like... I was hoping he'd push back. I was like, "Dad, I'm thinking of spending a fucking stupid amount of money on a flight." And he was like, "You're a long time dead, son, you might as well fucking enjoy it."And he didn't say, he doesn't swear. But, um, (laughs) I went on it, and sitting there was such a wonderful thing. And I said this to Darren. I said, "Darren, buy that fucking flight even if you can't afford it, because once you sit in that part of the plane, you will find a way to afford it. And you will hustle harder. It'll improve your self-worth. It will enable you to do so much." And I wish more people did that, because even those people that are worried saving for a house, saving for a mortgage, hey, guess what? If you rent till you're 40, if you rent till you're 50, if you rent every single day you're on the planet, not only do you not have to worry if the boiler breaks, it's not your problem, you know, no one can take that away from you, that you have the freedom to rent. That doesn't make you a failure. If you rent a house with a smile on your face, then fucking hat's off to you, because it's, it's not something that we need to get caught up about. And I feel that so many people are wasting their positive energy on their living situation or on something trivial or on money they were supposed to save. But like you say, the future version of yourself is, is gonna have your fucking back. And if they don't-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:02:11

       (laughs)

    9. JSJames Smith1:02:11

       ... move in with your parents. (laughs)

    10. CWChris Williamson1:02:12

        (laughs) Yeah, fuck it. There's always a s- there's always a spare room, isn't there? Um, everyone that's listening has been fine so far by virtue of the fact they've made it here to this very point with me and James Smith coming in your ears. You have made it. (laughs)

    11. JSJames Smith1:02:30

        (laughs)

    12. CWChris Williamson1:02:30

        You have been fine. Like, that is reality reflecting to you that you are a capable, competent human being. Yes, maybe you've fucked up tons. Yes, maybe you aren't everything that you could be. Yes, maybe your potential is unfulfilled. But you're actually fine, aren't you? You're here with a set of headphones in or in the car driving or whatever it might be. You are okay. Why would you not presume that that is going to be the way that everything continues to scale moving forward? Like, you will be fine. A situation will occur, a challenge will happen, a tragedy will strike, and you'll be fine. You'll deal with it when it happens. Cool quote relating to what you were talking about there for, uh, materialism, "It is easier to fulfill your material desires than to renounce them." It's Naval Ravikant. And what he means by that is that it's significantly easier for you to say, "I don't need the Ferrari," when you just sold a Ferrari, or, "I don't need to live in Australia," when you've just left Australia. You want to complete these things. A lot of people moving through a, a, an ascetic life where they have renounced all of their worldly possessions and say, "I don't, I don't really care about this," or, "I don't really care about that," that is a very easy excuse for you to just not play the game. It's a very easy excuse for you to just decide, "I don't want to compete on a material level."

    13. JSJames Smith1:03:49

        Yeah, I agree, uh, completely with that. And, uh, again, what you're saying there about people that might have these worries in life, like, if people aren't happy in life, I, I always like to challenge them on whether it's because they're trying so hard to do things that they don't actually need to do. And people need to be very conscious of what makes them happy, and I don't think people often ask themselves that question. And, uh, funnily enough, I was in Norway about eight years ago. I was seeing a Norwegian girl. And, uh, there was a guy on a checkout, and he was a good-looking lad on a checkout in a SuperStore for, like, 23, 24. And when I left, I said, I was like, "It's mad. Like, he seemed really happy doing what I thought was quite an average job." I was a lot more naive at this point. And the girl's dad said to me, "Some people have a very complex life where they just need a simple job." And I never thought of it like that. And I was like, "Fuck, do you know what? If he was caught up about what everyone else was thinking about what he should be doing, he probably wouldn't be enjoying his day half as much as he was, but he was just enjoying it." And I never remember, like, getting schooled by, (laughs) by a Norwegian girl's dad. And I was like, "Fuck." I was like, "So many people out there, if they've got complexities, troubles, things going on with their life, you know, they might wanna have a simple job. They might wanna do simple things." Who's to say that you walking your neighbor's dog can't be the thing that makes you happy in life? And, uh, people really need to try and, uh, connect with that, because it's almost like people are looking to other people to say, "Oh, my friend bought a Rolex. I need a Rolex to be happy. My friend just did, uh, two weeks in Ibiza. I need to go to Ibiza to be happy." When really, all these values are, are selected by ourselves.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:05:23

        Absolutely, man. What question do you wish people would stop asking you?

    15. JSJames Smith1:05:28

        (inhales deeply) Hmm. Probably about whether or not I'm going bald, 'cause I'm not sure myself.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:05:33

        (laughs)

    17. JSJames Smith1:05:34

        You know?

    18. CWChris Williamson1:05:34

        You're just in this, this hair purgatory where it could go either way for the rest of your life.

    19. JSJames Smith1:05:39

        The thing is, my mate's been giving me banter about going bald for about 10 years. I've just got very fine hair. Um, but, you know, I'm, I'm not even sure. They go, "Are you gonna have a hair transplant?" I go, "Do, do you know what? I probably won't." I'll probably just shave my head, if I'm honest. Like, and, and even then, you know, this is, this is something that people ask me questions about, and we could get a fucking another hour of this. Going bald is n- is normal for a lot of blokes, yet it's become the norm to go, "Are you getting a hair transplant?" Like, well, no, this is pretty fucking normal. Same with women and cellulite and, and again, with wrinkles. I've never had a problem with wrinkles. I'll throw Sonny Webster under the bus.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:06:15

        (laughs)

    21. JSJames Smith1:06:15

        He had fucking Botox this week.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:18

        No way. (laughs)

    23. JSJames Smith1:06:18

        He's, like, 25.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:06:20

        Shit the bed. Sonny, man.

    25. JSJames Smith1:06:23

        I was like, "Mate, mate, it's fucking normal. Wrinkles, you go a bit bald, whatever it is, it's fucking normal. Just leave it." But yeah, there are people who are like, "Are you gonna have a hair transplant?" I was like, "I don't fucking know." Like, you had the opportunity to ask me any point you wanted about life, happiness, psychedelics, and you asked about my fucking hair follicles.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:06:41

        Uh, do you remember when Alan Shearer hadn't committed to the fact that he was going bald and he was still doing, I think it was Match of the Day, and he had-

    27. JSJames Smith1:06:49

        (laughs)

    28. CWChris Williamson1:06:49

        ... he had, like, uh, different districts of hair that were still existing-

    29. JSJames Smith1:06:55

        (laughs)

    30. CWChris Williamson1:06:55

        ... around his head. (laughs) Uh, but he hadn't, he just hadn't embraced it. And everyone, everyone was screaming at the TV, didn't care about the football anymore, just screaming at the TV, pleading Alan Shearer to accept the fact that he was going bald and shave his head. You don't wanna be that guy. Like, don't cling onto ... The comb-over is fucking 60 years too late now.

Episode duration: 1:13:36