Modern WisdomThe Life-Changing Power Of Changing Your Perspective - Derek Sivers
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,078 words- 0:00 – 6:41
Useful But Not True
- CWChris Williamson
What do you mean when you talk about useful, not true?
- DSDerek Sivers
Oh, diving right in. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, yeah.
- DSDerek Sivers
Um, for years, I write things that are sharing my point of view on something. I share a point of view I find useful, and I state it as a fact. I say, for example, um, "Men and women are the same." And I choose that belief, for example, uh, to counterbalance my tendency to think of men and women as more different than they actually are. So, I would deliberately choose a belief that helps counteract my tendencies, right? In the same way that somebody who has a tendency to be late to things might leave, start leaving what seems unreasonably early, which helps them get there on time, right? So, there are many beliefs in life that I choose as a countermeasure. But when I express this belief publicly, there was often somebody saying, "But that's not true. Men and women are different." I'd say, "I know it's not true. True is not the point. What the hell is true anyway? I'm choosing this belief because it's useful to me, not because it's true." And this subject came up a few times, even when I was writing a book about business. I would say something like, "Marketing is just another way of being considerate," and there would always be somebody to say, "Hmm, well, that's not always true," and I'd say, "I know it's not true, but this is a nicer way of thinking of marketing. Instead of thinking, like, 'How can I annoy people and spam them?' If you think of marketing as whatever you're doing to be considerate, to help people remember you, to help people find you, uh, it's a better way of thinking about it. I find it more useful to think that way." So, I realized there was a theme underneath my previous four books, which is that I choose beliefs because they're useful, not because they're necessarily true.
- CWChris Williamson
I love this idea. So, you, uh, I think George Mack, a good friend of mine, uh, phenomenal writer, got a copy of your book before maybe it'd even been announced, or maybe early on, and, uh, we'd been talking about something which is literally true but functionally false for two years, two and a half years? Uh, or functionally true but literally false. And I was like, "Oh, Derek's got it. Like, he's nailed it. This is the exact thing that we've been talking about for ages." So, I was super excited to be able to have this conversation, because it's kind of a pet project of mine too. Um, the best examples that I've got, something which is, uh, functionally true but literally false, porcupines can throw their quills. No, they can't. They're not darts players. They can't throw their quills. But if you treat a porcupine as if it can throw its quills-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... you're less likely to go away from it. Um, walking under a ladder is bad luck. No, it's not. I- I- I- I am yet to see any evidence that people who have walked under a ladder result in worse luck over the next however many decades of their life. But if you evade walking under ladders, you are less likely to have paint cans, and plant pots, and humans dropped on your head. Uh, pigs are morally dirty creatures, and that means that you should never touch them or eat them. Not true- As far as I'm aware, the moral status of pigs is equivalent to that of cows and chickens and everything else. But their flesh does carry a higher pathogen load on average, so if you avoid eating it, adaptively, that's protective to you, especially if you were perhaps, let's say, in the Middle East, in a place which is quite warm and doesn't have great sanitary conditions, and it's the Middle Ages. Uh, and the reverse, something which would be, uh, literally true but functionally false, much harder to find, at least in my opinion, uh, would be free will doesn't exist. So, a deterministic view of the world, uh, one which may, laws of physics and a bit of philosophy kind of seems to say to people smarter than me that this might be the case. Uh, but when you actually try and functionally use that or usefully use that in your life, uh, it kind of results in a lot of people becoming nihilistic or fatalistic or apathetic or just a bit sad or something. Uh, and I guess another one, uh, sort of, like, always treating the gun like it's loaded is-
- DSDerek Sivers
Mmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's another sort of twist on this.
- DSDerek Sivers
Beautiful example.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, so yes, this is, uh, a topic that, uh, me and you and a couple of my friends have been pointing at from different directions. And I'm very glad that someone's finally come along and put it into a single piece of work.
- DSDerek Sivers
Thanks. And then the hard part for me was to make it catchy. I decided with this book I was aiming to be catchy because I wanted the little examples to stick in your head for years afterwards. So, my first drafts, I was trying to dump everything I knew about this subject, um, because I didn't know a lot about the subject beforehand. I went and read many books about pragmatism and skepticism and nihilism and then read, uh, every book I could about, um, uh, what do you call it? The- the study of religion? Theology. Uh, I read the Bible cover to cover, read every single page, and, uh, read books about Islam and Judaism, tried to read two books about Hinduism. I still don't get it. Um, and, uh, and on- And- and what you see in this little tiny hundred-page book that you can read in 90 minutes or less, uh, is me trying to take everything I learned about this subject and compressing it into short, memorable little fables.
- CWChris Williamson
I read it on a flight from Austin to Nashville, which for people-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... that have taken it, is not a long flight. And, uh, and I was taking notes. So yeah, uh, very parable-y. I love memes. I think that, uh, um, Steven Pressfield's books, uh, both of them are fantastic. That format's great. Oliver Burkeman's most recent one is very similar to yours. I think that we're zeroing in on a, a new, very concentrated, uh, type of sort of like purified version of, of writing. And I'm, I'm here for it. So kind of taking
- 6:41 – 13:08
Why is Reframing Important?
- CWChris Williamson
the, the thesis of the book overall, there's five sections I, I'm really excited to go through, and I wanna go through some of my favorite stories and, and, and chapters and lessons and stuff like that. But a lot of what we're talking about today is a kind of reframing in one form or another.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yes. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Why is reframing important?
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs) Reframing is everything. Reframing is not just a good way to feel better about things out of your control, but reframing helps concrete strategy. Uh, even just whether in business or just life and what you choose to do with your life and how you choose to approach anything, reframing is (laughs) it's what it's all about, man. Uh, I think reframing is what helps you look at any situation and understand that you've got a default instinctual reflective reaction to anything. But that's not the only way to see it. And it helps so much to detach from your first reaction and call it what it is, "It's just my first reaction. It's not the only way to see this," and to do good old-fashioned brainstorming techniques to say, "Okay, what are some other ways to look at this?" And not stop after the first two or three, but push yourself into going to the edges and thinking of some radically different ways to look at this. Um, and what you come out with is either a smarter strategy or a unique insight, uh, a different approach that most people don't take and hadn't thought of because it doesn't come naturally, it's not very intuitive.
- CWChris Williamson
Hm.
- DSDerek Sivers
Um, all of these. I think all of the best stuff, for me, in life has happened from these moments where I think harder and think past my first reaction to something and find a, a new approach to a business or a new approach to where I'm living in the world or a new approach to ha- parenting or whatnot. Uh, everything to me, all the best stuff in life has come from the deliberate process of conscious reframing.
- CWChris Williamson
What would you say to the people who go, "Well, that's all well and good, you, positive mental attitude and such, but it's wishful thinking? You know, the, the, the thing is the thing, and this sort of version of trying to recapitulate it into some other, uh, perspective, that doesn't fundamentally change the thing." What's your, what's your thoughts on that?
- DSDerek Sivers
I'm trying to think of more day-to-day examples. Actually, I'm gonna think of one from a friend that just came to me this morning. Uh, Tim Ferriss, long ago, said that when he's trying to figure out a book to read on a certain subject, he wants to find a good book, book on any given subject, he'll go to Amazon and look at the well-rated books. But he said, "The, I look at other people's reviews," but he said, "I don't look at the good reviews. What I do is I find the top-rated critical review." He said, "Because I don't want to hear praise for the book." He said, "I want to hear criticism against the book." And I went, "Ooh, that's a nice technique. Look at the top-rated critical review, as they have them sorted into praise and critical." Um, and another one from Tim that came to mind is when brainstorming a book, he said, "I will hire a journalist to, to push back." He said, "Journalists and lawyers are the, the two that I've found are the best at pushing back on an idea and challenging an idea I have. So when I'm thinking of a new book to write, I don't want somebody to just tell me, 'This is a great idea.' I want somebody to push back and say, 'This is maybe a bad idea to be writing about,' and finding counter ideas to that." So both of those, uh, just, you know, this morning, uh, an hour before we hit record, I was looking for a book on Amazon and remembering Tim's technique of finding the critical reviews, and thought, "See, these are two very exam- good examples of approaches that would not come instinctually, but come after deeper thought and pushing harder to find a, a way of reframing what you're really doing here. Am I looking for encouragement or am I looking for discouragement so that I can push through?" So there, anyway, that's just one tiny example. Um, but more examples come up all the time in, uh, something I'd like to talk about in a minute that's not in the book. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts about it, is when we choose to think of something from scratch, to kind of break it down to say, "Okay, wait, hold on. What's the real point of what I'm doing here? Forget the norms and what most people do. Uh, what's the essence of what I'm trying to go for here?" And reframing can be a really good way to strip away the ceremony and the habits and the instincts and the norms and ask yourself what you're really doing and what's the real point.
- CWChris Williamson
The reason that I like reframing is, largely in life, things aren't what they are, things are what we think they are.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And we confuse the two. We get confused. We think that we have this precise, accurate, unbiased, transparent, perfectly recorded view of-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... of things that are happening, have happened to us, um, and we see so well the fallibility in other people, the- the- the way that they convince themselves or are manipulated by others or are- are- are swayed by their past experience. Uh, meanwhile, we assume that the way that we see the world upon first impressions, we have this sort of mass solipsism, mass individual solipsism or sort of egos- e- like narcissism, "I do... That's for other people, but me, me, my- my first impressions about the world, they're always correct."
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, my
- 13:08 – 23:11
Derek’s Car Accident
- CWChris Williamson
favorite, I think, example of this, can you retell your car accident story?
- DSDerek Sivers
Ooh. Yeah. That was, um, yeah. The past, we tend to think of the past like it's a concrete thing, like you just said. Uh, when I was 17, I was in a car crash, uh, in my neighborhood in Hinsdale, Illinois. Um, I blew off a yield sign, crashed into an oncoming car, and just in the confusion and days afterwards, somebody told me later that the woman in the oncoming car that I hit, that, uh, I broke her spine, and she will never walk again. But this was about a month before I went off to university in Boston, and so it's like I kind of left Hinsdale, Illinois and didn't go back. But I carried this burden with me, that every now and then I just think, "Man, that is so fucked up. Like, there is some woman somewhere that will never walk again because I blew off that yield sign." Ugh. I just like, just carried this burden with me. You know, you put it out of your head sometimes, and it comes back sometimes. And after 16 years, or somethin', in my mid-30s, I was back in Hinsdale, Illinois, and I thought, "I'm gonna go find that woman that I hit." So I went, like found her name into the old-fashioned Whitepages phone book, and I just showed up at her door, and knocked on the door, and she answered, and I said, "Hi, uh, my name's Derek. I'm the one that when I was a teenager I hit your car," and- and I like started crying. It was like all this like pent-up burden, uh, years of regret just like came out. I started crying on her doorstep, and she's like, "Oh, sweetie, sweetie, don't worry, don't worry. Here, come in." And she walked me into her living room, walked, and it took me a second to put this together because I was, you know, upset. I went, "Wait, what?" (laughs) And she explained that, yes, she broke a vertebrae in that crash, but she's been walking just fine, uh, and so it was misinformation that somebody told me that she'll never walk again. And, um, she said, "You know, I was a- I was a lot heavier then, I was a compulsive eater," and she said, "That's why I hit you, is I was eating and not paying attention to the road, I was eating while driving." And she said, "That accident really, um, turned me around, because I realized what a compulsive eater I was, that I actually, you know, hit some poor innocent teenager because I was eating." And I said, "Wait, you didn't hit me, I hit you, 'cause I blew off the yield sign," and she said, "No, sweetie, I hit you 'cause I was eating." And I said, and she goes, "Wait, all these years you thought that you hit me?" And then she started crying, and she goes, "So stupid, these stories," and- and, uh, yeah, it was just this moment where we realized like we had both been holding onto this story of what happened and both feeling guilty about it for 18 years, so...
- CWChris Williamson
What do you take away from that? What's the lesson?
- DSDerek Sivers
Every story anybody tells you about their past, "Here's what happened, my ex dumped me with no warning," (laughs) "Uh, this person wronged me, this person said they were gonna do something and then ran away with the money and didn't do what they said they were gonna do," uh, all these stories we carry with us of people who have wronged us and people who are just bad and evil, uh, it's a great reminder that there's always another perspective, there's always another version of that story. And the one that you've been carrying around or the one that somebody else tells you is probably not the only version of that story. And, uh, then you can even zoom out and think about, um, all the history that we learn in school and the tales of what happened in World War II, and all of these things have many different perspectives.
- CWChris Williamson
I never watched 500 Days of Summer, but I think you convinced me that I maybe should go back and watch it. For the people who haven't seen it, what's the- what's the thesis of that movie?
- DSDerek Sivers
It is a cute romance movie from, uh, maybe 15 years ago, and, uh, the point is that the whole movie is basically a guy saying, "Yeah, this girl, uh, we were s- we were in love, we were together, we'd been together for a few months, everything was great, I found the love of my life, and then just one day out of the blue, she just dumped me for no reason." And he spends most of the movie being s- feeling sorry for himself and down in the dumps and, "Why does this true love not... Why did she dump me out of the blue?" And it's not until his little sister near the end of the movie says, "You know, next time you look back, I think you should look again." And then what I love is the movie does something wonderful...... is it replays for you those same scenes it showed you earlier in the movie, but now the camera lingers just a little bit longer, and you see that, like, when earlier we saw him, like, we saw her look up and smile at him. Now, the camera stays a little longer, and you realize it was one of these smiles... that, like, lasts for one second and then completely drops when he's not looking. And you see them holding hands. You see them, like, this moment where they hold hands. But now the camera lingers a little longer, and you see that he reaches out to hold her hand and then she kind of pulls away. And now you realize, through the art of film editing, that she never, she was never into him. But our mind does the same thing as movies. Our mind picks single moments and finds tiny little moments where somebody that was otherwise nice did something bad, or somebody that was otherwise bad did something nice-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDerek Sivers
... and focuses in on the moments that we want to extract to tell the story that we want to tell ourselves or others. And we start ignoring all the other moments. And so, this is true also with any perspective anybody tells you about the world. I love this idea that the facts might be true, but the perspective is not. Somebody can say, uh, here's one I just heard yesterday, "The, the new Medicaid budget at the government is going to cost American taxpayers $380 billion. Look how wasteful that is." And that might be a true fact, that it's going to cost $380 billion. The fact that they're ignoring is that the current plan costs $490 billion.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDerek Sivers
And so they're choosing a perspective that it's wasteful by, by ch- selecting only this one specific fact and ignoring the other facts. And we all do this in life. When you, say you encounter a mean person or somebody being mean. Yeah, let's, even that, I just said, "A mean person," as if that's a character trait. But no, it might just be a person who was being unkind in that moment that you encounter, and especially, let's say, if you're traveling. You're on a holiday to, uh, Romania, a place you've never been before, and the first person you encounter is, uh, unkind to you. Say, "People in Romania are mean (laughs) and people here are bad." And we make these perspectives, like, uh, "The economy's going to hell," or, "AI is stealing everyone's jobs." You do this by selecting tiny little facts and using that to support an entire perspective. And what I love realizing, and this is the whole long answer to your question about the movie 500 Days of Summer and him focusing in on the little moments where she smiled at him and the little moments where they held hands. He's using those select moments to say, "She loved me." And we use these select moments to say, "Things are getting worse, because look at this fact." But you only choose that perspective when you ignore all the other facts. So you have to realize that there's a big difference between facts and perspective, that the facts can be true, but the perspective is never true. Because I, sorry, we didn't mention, maybe we should have said at the beginning, my definition of true is, like, absolutely, necessarily, objectively, empirically true, any creature or machine could observe it and agree. And only in that case, would I call something true, because whatever you consider true is closed. No further questioning, it's a fact, and that's that. So I think it's important to be careful with that word true and define it as narrowly as possible, because everything that's true is not up for negotiation. There's no other way to see it. Squares have four sides. That's that. Um, everything else, there can be different ways of looking at it. So it's nice to remind yourself what few things are actually true and that everything else is up for reframing.
- CWChris Williamson
I think going into November, this is probably quite an important thing to remind-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... everybody of. Um, you've
- 23:11 – 28:29
We Bond Over Our Perspectives
- CWChris Williamson
got this lovely idea about, uh, perspectives feel real, that one person's undeniable fact is another person's incorrect opinion, essentially. And, uh, I, I love the reality of that. People share perspectives, not facts. Nobody bonds over facts. I, I, I looked at a study recently, you basically get about three times as much retention after, uh, 24 hours from telling somebody a story than telling somebody a fact about the same story.
- DSDerek Sivers
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
So, you know, humans grew up in an environment that wasn't rich in facts, but was pretty rich in stories. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we're adapted to be able to hold onto the stories. So these perspectives, especially if it's got a compelling narrative behind it, feels real. It feels more real than the fact that we might actually be underlying that or might even be contradicting it, because the story, the, the way that you are brought into this, the framing of the landscape of this discussion is so much more compelling. And, uh, yeah, the fact that one person's undeniable fact is another person's incorrect opinion, I think is, um...I-I-It just shows how... It's the blind man touching the elephant thing, right?
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. Well, the way that I structure the book is the way that I would do it in conversation with somebody too, is to first point out other people's faults. 'Cause it's so easy to look at those people, those stupid people that think (laughs) that their politician is the good one, those stupid people that think that their, uh, whatever, social values, stance is the correct one. Uh, "What idiots. Look at them, like, spouting it as if it's the only way, when I think that's stupid." Uh, that's so much easier to see other people being wrong, and we can point at their faults. And even somebody who tells you a sob story about a, a breakup they had, uh, with somebody that wronged them, it's easier to look at that friend and say, "You know, that might not be the only way of looking at this. Maybe you were in the wrong." Um, it's easier to do that, and it is so hard to then turn that back at yourself and say, "Wait a minute. Maybe all of my social values and political opinions are really stupid." (laughs) "Maybe all of my perspectives on things that happened in the past are just me making myself the hero of a fictional story, um, or this, the, the noble victim." (laughs) "Um, maybe everything, every opinion I hold as fact is just not true, it's just one way of seeing it." And even though I've been completely focused on this subject for the last couple years writing this book, I still would catch myself in these moments. Like, I live in Wellington, New Zealand, which is like a, eh, it's like an okay little city in Wellington, and I catch myself saying things like, "Well, this is a bad place to do such and such." And I catch myself going, "Whoa, wait a second. I'm stating that like a fact. That's not a fact. That's not true. That's just one way of looking at it. Whoa, how else could I look at it?" And the important thing is, maybe the, where we need to go with this point next, is when you have a variety of opinions that you could adopt, you have to just notice in yourself which way of looking at it works for you, whether that makes you take smarter actions or whether that just helps you feel at peace with things that are out of your control. None of these perspectives are necessarily right or wrong. The real judge is your own actions. What does it do for you? How will you act if you adopt this perspective? How will you act if you adopt that perspective? Let's just say, if you decide that there are no good jobs out there, that there's, uh, nobody's making any money, nobody has any money, and there's no good work. Okay, if you choose to adopt that perspectives, what action does that create in you? If that makes you just sit on your couch eating chips and watching TV and giving up, maybe that's not working for you. Maybe you should try another perspective. Maybe, for some people, that idea that nobody's got any money, there are no good jobs out there, for somebody, that perspective makes them go, "Yeah, so I'm gonna start my own thing. I'm gonna do this. Like, I'm gonna fight against all the odds. You know, I've got my back against the ropes. I'm like the boxer in the 18th round or whatever who's gonna come back at this thing fighting." It all depends on how you respond to that perspective that you're going to choose, and then choose the perspective based on how it's making you respond.
- 28:29 – 36:35
Is it Right to Sometimes Break the Rules?
- DSDerek Sivers
- CWChris Williamson
So, given that the fact almost nothing people say is true, what is the relationship between that and rules that we have in society?
- DSDerek Sivers
I don't know, you tell me. What- (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You taught me the most interesting, one of the most interesting things that I've learned, especially again going into November. When the Founding Fathers of the United States of America were drafting the Constitution, it was assumed that this new country would have three, six, or 12 presidents. When someone proposed having only one president, most delegates were against it, since they had just left a kingdom and wanted nothing like a king. The issue was debated for weeks before finally agreeing by a seven-to-three vote to have just one president. It's a reminder that the way things are is arbitrary and not the only way. Seven-to-three vote resulted in the int- like, the most powerful, most influential country with the most humans on the planet, the- fundamentally being changed. That's so, that's so w- I didn't know that-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the Constitution had assumed that there would be this sort of, I don't know, like, council of presidents.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah, would have been a very different situation, huh?
- CWChris Williamson
Wildly.
- DSDerek Sivers
Um, thanks for that reminder. Yeah, that, that actually came from A.J. Jacobs, his new, newest book is called, I think, Living Constitutionally or something like that. He's the one that revealed that fact for me, so thanks, A.J. Jacobs. Um, rules, yeah, thanks for that reminder. It, um... Once you realize how arbitrary the world is, you can also see rules through this lens. Even just day-to-day rules, a business saying, "You can't do this." Uh, "No, you must go to this booth first and get your number, and then you must wait in line, and this is how this system works."Uh, there's so many examples, uh, where... Uh, uh, hopefully we all have examples from our own life where you bypassed the rules and thrived because of it. That you, you can understand why they're there, in the same way, I thought it was beautiful the way that you started this conversation with the examples of the ladder, uh, and the pork, that there are... Okay, we can understand there are reasons why people came up with these rules. It makes the system work better if everybody follows the rules. But if you understand that that's just most of the time, that there are some situations where it just makes sense for everything considered, and nobody's gonna be harmed by not following this rule in this moment. Classic example is, uh, a red stop light in the middle of nowhere at 3:00 in the morning, where you can just clearly see that there's nobody coming in any direction. It doesn't make logical sense to sit there (laughs) and wait for a whole minute for the light to turn green. You understand why it's there, but come on, it's 3:00 in the morning. There's nobody here. Um, except the aliens. (laughs) Uh, and, um, there's some rules like that where, yeah, I've, I've thrived in life by breaking some of these rules. And isn't there a, um... I don't usually do exact quotes, but something like, uh, "Reasonable men and the world depends on some people being unreasonable."
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, I'm not familiar-
- DSDerek Sivers
You know that one?
- CWChris Williamson
I'm not familiar with that, but it sounds a lot like, uh, the people that I like to hang around with, the on-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... the, the, the unreasonables.
- DSDerek Sivers
It's one of those classic, like, 200-year-old kind of quotes that said, like, "All progress just depends on the unreasonable man." Um, like society depends on people being reasonable, but all progress depends on the, the occasional person being unreasonable. Because you realize that rules are not etched in stone. They're ever-changing, and they're adapting, and that if everybody only ever follows the rules, then nothing ever progresses. Sometimes you need somebody to break the rules or point out that that rule is immoral. And let's look at, say, like, Rosa Parks or, uh, slavery rules or apartheid rules, uh, that were good thing that somebody started breaking those rules and pointed out that those rules are no longer, um... We should no longer follow those.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's very useful to have a set of rules that are unwaveringly followed because it gives most people a largely, uh, pitfall-avoiding rubric for how they can go about life, right? Like, you, you might not expedite success, but you'll kind of avoid catastrophe for the most part.
- DSDerek Sivers
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Perfect example, I was at the, uh, uh, Uffizi Gallery in, uh, Florence a couple of weeks ago, and there is a large line for the bathroom, uh, for the ladies, and there was no disabled people around. But there was a, a disabled stall that was being unused by both men and women, so one of the women skipped out of the queue, went down, went into the disabled thing, and I thought, well, there is a rule that disabled people should be the people to use the disabled toilet. But if there's no disabled people around, and if the queue for the ladies is so long that it's holding up other people who might actually be old or something or m- needs to get to the bathroom more quickly than you do, then that seems kind of almost like the virtuous thing to do. I, I guess the virtuous thing would've been to have got one of the older women and put them in the disabled toilet, but that's kind of a little bit weird. So, um-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... you know what I mean? So it's, it's agency.
- DSDerek Sivers
I love this.
- CWChris Williamson
It's, it's, it's playing, playing with the rules when it's safe to do so, knowing the ones that are meant to be bent, and sometimes the ones that are meant to be ignored and broken entirely, uh, and then also-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... sticking to them too. But I, I think the, you know, the reason that we have this, it's a coordination, uh, problem. It's trying to get society-
- DSDerek Sivers
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to work. It wouldn't do for us to say to... The, the reason that rules are there is so that you don't need to, from first principles, work out what you're supposed to do each time. It's not a free-for-all royal rumble to see who gets the-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... bathroom stall first. You have person that arrives first, stands first, and then second, stands second, and then third, and so on and so forth. Uh, but yeah, that... I, I saw that happen only a couple of weeks ago, and I immediately thought of this sort of idea of rule followers and rule benders in the same scenario.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah. One of my favorite things about writing a book is when you discover new insights in the writing. So it's not just sitting down to tell you what I already know. It's me sitting down to dive into this subject for, you know, 12 hours a day for two years. And in doing that, I came up with this insight. I went, "Oh, rules themselves are useful, not true." The rules except... You know, the rules are not like a law of gravity. It's, they're not laws of nature. They are useful guidelines to keep society running well. They're useful, and it really helps you to see it from the system's point of view, to see, like you just did, why is this rule useful? This rule is useful because if somebody comes up in a wheelchair and needs the bathroom, they shouldn't have to wait in this long queue with everybody else. But if you look around, nobody's in a wheelchair, and if you're going to be quick, then we... If we understand the, the purpose of that rule, and nobody is harmed by us breaking that rule, then it can actually be both logical and even moral to ignore that rule right now. Not harming the system, not harming anybody.... yeah.
- 36:35 – 47:28
Your Own Thoughts Are Untrue
- DSDerek Sivers
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so if we've convinced, uh, most people that what other people say, almost nothing of what other people say is true, how do we take them to the next step, which is that their thoughts, their own thoughts, are also not true?
- DSDerek Sivers
Well, first just realize that you are them. (laughs) That y- that y- you are them to somebody else, that from everybody else's point of view, you are the- the odd one. Um, (laughs) my two favorite little examples of this are an old joke of a- a man is traveling through the countryside and comes to a river, he can't figure out how to cross, there's a woman on the other side of the river and he says, "Excuse me, madam," (laughs) "how do I get to the other side of the river?" And she goes, "You are on the other side of the river." (laughs) And I was like, well, from her point of view, it... And, uh, and another one is an American woman goes to Scotland for her first time, and she's just be- in a bar full of people and she's talking to these guys and she goes, "I just love your all accent." (laughs) And they go, "We don't have an accent, you do." (laughs) It's like, oh, right, all of us have an accent. We all think that our- the way we speak is the normal one, and it's the other people that have an accent, but no, I am speaking with an American accent right now. Uh, it's a nice reminder. So yeah, you are the other to everyone else, so you are them.
- CWChris Williamson
So all of the rules that you've just happily taken onboard to identify how illogical and irrational and flawed and biased everybody else is needs to be s- f- turned around and pointed at yourself?
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah. Uh, yeah, then we can get into if- do you wanna get into that stuff about the- the split brain patients and how we lie to ourselves?
- CWChris Williamson
That would be great.
- DSDerek Sivers
This was a mind-blower. So we all believe our brain, but our brain makes up things. (laughs) Confabulation. Uh, and this was revealed very clearly in tests with split brain patients, people who have had some kind of problem with their brains so that the left and right hemispheres that are connected through, uh, a pretty surprisingly narrow, uh, connection in the middle, um, if there's a problem, uh, brain surgeons can, uh, disconnect that middle, uh, sorry, I forget the- the Latin official term.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDerek Sivers
The thing that connects your left and right halves of your brain. And surprisingly, once that's severed, the people can live surprisingly normal lives, and they're just like you and me. Except they- psychologists use them for studies to say, "Okay, well, hey, you're one of the rare people on Earth whose right and left hemispheres of your brain are not communicating with each other directly. Can I ask you a question?" And so they would show a message to one eye saying, uh, "Please get up and close the door." And the person would get up and close the door. And then they'd show a question to the other eye saying, "Why did you close the door?" And the person would say, "Oh, I just- sorry, it just seemed like we needed more privacy in here." And they would s- put a message in the headphones in just their right ear saying, uh, you know, "Please walk around the room." To the other one, "Why did you walk around the room?" "Oh, I just needed to stretch my legs." What's amazing is these people weren't lying. They completely, like all of us, believed that that is why they did what they did. Their brain told them, "This is why you did it," because the brain never says, "I don't know." Anything you ask it, "Why?" it will come up with a reason. But this is hard to prove for most of us, but in this very controlled situation of left and right hemispheres, it was revealed that this is something that all of us do all the time. Any time you've ever told yourself why you did something, it's very likely not the real reason. You might've just been making that up. And when you r- (laughs) when you then now replay your choices in life, your choice of career, spouse, meal, (laughs) everything, uh, why did you do this? You realize the only wise answer is, "I don't know. I have no idea why I do anything." And so you stop asking why, and you just look at your actions. You say, "Well, this is what I did. Why? I don't know. Why would I know?" (laughs) "I don't know my own brain. My brain lies to me. I d- I will never know the real reasons why I did something. Who knows what subliminal, subconscious motivations drove me to do that?" The reason we call them subconscious is because they're not conscious. (laughs) There's no way of knowing them, otherwise they'd be conscious. So, "I don't know." And then you realize anybody else telling you why they did something also doesn't know, but they think they know. So, we can just ignore the reasons that anybody gives us, ignore the reasons in ourself, and just judge things only through their actions.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I suppose that we need to- we need to at least be able to believe that we know why we did the things that we did, because if we didn't, we would sound to all of the humans around us like a mental patient. We'd sound like somebody who needed to be sectioned. So there's a- a- a theory around, uh, consciousness, I think...... one of the reasons that it's potentially put forward is that social groups are very important to humans. It's one of the reasons that our brains grew so quickly, so that we could deal with larger group and tribe sizes. As that grows, I need to know Derek, but I also need to know Tim, and I need to know the strength of their friendship. I need to know that Tim did that thing and Derek got angry, but that was a few weeks ago and it seems like they're a little bit better. And basically, in order for me to be able to model what you're thinking, I need to be able to think. So theory of mind is, it allows us to project how you and everybody else may get on together. Now, one of the problems is that if we saw our motivations and our actions and the beliefs that we have about the world not being facts, just being these kind of cobbled-together lawyer's attorney justification for why we did a thing that's kind of pulled out of nowhere, that would sound, to a lot of the people around us, very unpredictable. We would sound like an unreliable ally to a lot of people because what, what was the reason that Derek went and lit that fire over there? "I don't know. I asked him, and he came back and he just sort of said, like, 'Ooh, I don't know, I was just a little ... '" You know, he d- he said exactly what it was, which is this totally unsatisfying answer that isn't drawn into a, a single coherent narrative about someone, that isn't wrapped into their personality and all of the rest of it. So, I think it's important to see the fact that we don't have full transparency about our motivations, the fact that we don't understand why we do the things that we do fully, and that we never can. As an adaptive mechanism, we can feel, um, uh, resentment or, or frustration at the fact that we don't have this level of self-insight that we think might be useful. But it's actually not that useful to have it like that, because it wouldn't be adaptive for the way that we need to show up for everybody else. If every time anybody asked us why we did a thing, we just said, "I don't know," or gave some, like, you know, ridiculous explanation about it, that wouldn't ... Th- th- that would make them very uncomfortable because that's not the way that humans are supposed to be. We need to be able to be predictable, consistent, uh, animals moving forward, and I think that, yeah, uh, not getting too frustrated at the fact that we don't have it and realizing where it comes from, or at least my bro-science theory about why I think it might come from, um, I think is at least a good place to start.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs) You did just say bro-science, did you?
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs) Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the highest form of science, Derek.
- DSDerek Sivers
I entered that, I like... Um, well, for what it's worth, you're catching me off guard. I haven't ... I hadn't heard this idea that we need to have reasons why. And I'm not fully convinced that ... I ... It's been over a year since I've asked anybody why anything, and it's been over a year or two since I've told anybody why anything. Um ...
- CWChris Williamson
Just to linger on that, that sounds-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... like an unbelievable, uh, lifestyle right turn to make.
- DSDerek Sivers
I don't know, I think maybe I was already a very skeptical person. I haven't yet read, uh, Michel M- is it Montaigne or Montania? The French, uh, philosopher that, uh, just kind of wrote these diaries. Um, but apparently ... I read a book about him, but I haven't read the original source yet of his diaries, but ... Essays, that's it. He, he coined the term essay as essayer, the French word for to try. And so Michel Montaigne, Montaigne's essays, um, very, uh, apparently would very often end with a little, uh, "But what do I know?" (laughs) Like, he would kind of state his point of view, and, "Here's how I see it, and this is what I think, and therefore this and that," and at the very end, "But what do I know? Who knows? Maybe it's all wrong." I think I've been operating in that mindset for years, of, "Hey, I'll say a thing now. I'll say that this is why, uh, I'm, I've decided to do what I'm doing or go where I'm going. But what do I know? Maybe it's wrong. I don't know. Maybe there's some other reason that I said no to this, or some other reason I said yes to this that I'm unaware of. I don't know." Uh, I think I've already been in that mindset for years, uh, and, um ... Yeah, so I, I ... It's been years since I've bothered to ask anybody why anything. I think it is very possible to just judge people by their, their actions.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems like you're still functioning.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah, (laughs) for now. Yeah.
- 47:28 – 55:39
Evaluating Beliefs Fuelled By Emotion
- DSDerek Sivers
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Wh- what do you mean when you talk about the more emotional the belief, the less likely it's true?
- DSDerek Sivers
Oh. That's an interesting one. Uh ... All right, well, we have to just rewind one second to remind anybody still listening, (laughs) that ... that definition of true. That when I say true, it really means absolutely, necessarily, objectively, observably, empirically 100% true. The idea that, that an alien from outer space and an octopus underwater could both observe this thing and agree. That's what I call true. Uh, things of the mind are never true because there can be another way of looking at it. If it's a thing of the mind, even that's moral statements like, "Uh, it's bad to kill," uh, there is another way of looking at that. There are some situations where it can be good to kill. Like, there are way too many bunnies here in New Zealand that shouldn't be here. (laughs) Every Easter ...... the kids in Ota-Otago, uh, go out to kill as many bunnies as they can. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You're kidding me.
- DSDerek Sivers
No, serious, because it's like completely overrun. If you just drive through the countryside of Otago, um, in the southern, uh, South Island of New Zealand, uh, there's just thousands of bunnies, eh, that are not native to this environment, and so they have no predators, kind of like the, um, cane toads in Australia, that whoever brought that first one or maybe two in should not have done that because now there's just an overrun of cane toads in Australia.
- CWChris Williamson
It's, uh, pythons in the Everglades and axis deer in Maui as well, all doing the-
- DSDerek Sivers
There you go.
- CWChris Williamson
... same thing.
- DSDerek Sivers
So there are some situations where it is good to kill. So any moral, uh, or value statement, basically anything of the mind, we can't say it's necessarily objectively absolutely true, because there could be another way of looking at it. So you have to realize that all those things in the mind are just one perspective and that other perspectives exist. So when you notice that somebody's getting very emotional about their point of view, uh, it seems to imply that there's something else going on, that this is triggering some other underlying emotions, or there, it has some extra meaning to them, uh, that their value system that they, they strongly believe, uh, even if somebody has to say, "I believe," the reason they have to say "I believe" is because they're communicating what's inside their mind to you. Uh, you don't, you don't say, uh, "I believe I am holding glasses in my hand right now." You just say, "Well, that's just a fact. I'm holding glasses in my hand right now."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- DSDerek Sivers
That's not a belief. We don't have to say, "I believe," because it's just a fact. Uh, which means that there's also, for the things that are truly just a fact, there's no need to get all emotional about it. There you g- that's a fact, and that's that. There's no emotional persuasion. Uh, it's just, there it is. And so it seems to me to be an indicator that the more emotional somebody is getting about something, the more this ties into their sense of self-identity, um, how they present to the world, how they think things should be. Uh, it's usually just things of the mind and of the emotion that are not just objective facts. So yeah, the more emotional somebody gets about something, the less likely it seems to be true.
- CWChris Williamson
High emotionality is like putting the caveat "I believe" before then making their statement about whatever it is. Yes.
- DSDerek Sivers
Well put.
- CWChris Williamson
There is a, um, I think there's an equivalent, another bro science rule, which is, uh, any field which has got the word science in it is not a real science.
- DSDerek Sivers
Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
That it's- it's not called chemistry science or physics science-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... or biology science.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but it is called social science. (laughs) Uh-
- DSDerek Sivers
Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, so yeah, uh, this odd sense that the more emotional somebody is getting about something, it- it tends to be things that can be contested, and the reason that the emotion is there is to act as a, um, additional form of evidence on the side of the person that's trying to convince you of their point of view. But if it was true, especially something which was absolutely, self-evidently, objectively outside of space and time true, well, like how much more evidence does this need?
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, no one's fighting like that for gravity.
- DSDerek Sivers
Right. Right, fighting. Yeah. Yeah, by the way, thanks for remembering the, um, outside of space and time. Uh, I'd never heard it put like that, but you're right, I forgot that my definition of true includes for everyone, everywhere, always. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah.
- DSDerek Sivers
And if it's not true for everyone, everywhere, always, then it's not necessarily true.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, we can't even re-
- DSDerek Sivers
It's true for you for now.
- CWChris Williamson
You open up-
- 55:39 – 1:06:05
Judge the Content & Not the Box
- CWChris Williamson
I liked the idea of judging the contents, not the box, when it comes to, uh, things that are useful but not true. I spoke to Eric Weinstein a couple of weeks ago, and he has this, uh, this concept of an accuracy budget. And his accuracy budget is basically that people that are playing with ideas in public should be allowed to get things wrong. Uh, not all the time, that would make for a pretty poor, uh, expert. But, um, an accuracy budget means that it- it makes you less scared about playing with ideas and pushing the edges of things, for fear of one misstep coloring all of your body of work. "Well, you see-"
- DSDerek Sivers
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"... he, he wasn't right on such and such, the meteorological, uh, the- the Vietnamese weather tomorrow," or whatever it was. Or, "You know, he mis- he misquoted that guy that explained about how men that are unreasonable move the world forward. That means that their, his entire body of work can't be trusted." Uh, and I- I think that he's true. There's an odd, an odd sense that people should only ever speak about their area of absolute expertise, that there is not very much that can be contributed to by people outside of some, like, odd formal training, plus apprenticeship, plus time spent within an area, uh, in an age where credentialism is actually kind of, uh, quite highly criticized. So, these two things are existing in- in, uh, time and space at the same time. Uh, but yes, uh, experts only, and this idea of an accuracy budget, I think, is similar to your idea of judging the contents, not the box.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah. This was one of the original inspirations for writing The Useful Not True Book, is how I saw, um, what do we call it, cancel culture? Where somebody who's made 20 years of great movies ... Uh, I- I'll pick Woody Allen, for example. Woody Allen has made some objectively, empirically, observably great movies. It's just a fact.
- CWChris Williamson
Outside of space and time. (laughs)
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs) For everyone, everywhere, always.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDerek Sivers
Woody Allen has made some great movies.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- DSDerek Sivers
Uh, maybe, uh, what Woody Allen's, uh... is it son or daughter? I don't remember. I think, th- there are allegations against Woody Allen, that Woody Allen has, uh ... there's a- a chance that Woody Allen has done something bad in his private life. Um, let's say probably true. Um, but then people use that to say, uh, "Remove all his movies, ban them from the store. They must never be shown. Nobody should be able to see these movies anymore. I will never, certainly never watch these movies ever again, because of those allegations." Okay, so that's an extreme example, but sometimes it even comes to little examples, where, like, somebody can write a really useful book about psychology. Uh, and if you read this book, and if you applied what it said to your life, you would live a better life by your own standards. You would benefit from reading this book. "Oh, but I heard that author on a podcast, and he has a social view I disagree with, therefore fuck that book. I'm never reading that book." (laughs) Uh, I can see how it's useful for people to discard somebody, because if you say, "That 600-page book, I know it might benefit me, but I don't like something that author said, therefore I'm not gonna read it," well, lucky, lucky you. One less thing to do in life now. You can just stay in happy, proud ignorance that I'm not even going to look at that book (laughs) because I don't like something that that person said. Uh, that, to me, is judging the box, not the contents. You're taking this, um, package of a person, uh, an author or a public figure, a media, uh, figure, and saying, "Well, that person is not perfect, therefore everything inside their box is bad." That whole container is now bad, and what did you say, d- disreputable? Um, uh, I'm going to discard everything inside that entire container. I think that's doing a huge disservice to yourself. For one, it's just stupid. (laughs) And by stupid, my definition of stupid is avoiding thinking. Stupid isn't an inherent trait. It's something that you do. You are being stupid when you avoid thinking. And to take an entire container of a- a person and just decide that that entire, everything inside that container is bad is being stupid. It's avoiding thinking.... that the individual ideas inside that container might be worth adopting. But we tend to get this like identity politics kind of, um, d- deciding that I am a person who is against, uh, this social... I am against abuse, and therefore, if somebody's a- uh, accused this person of abuse, I need to show that I am against abuse by showing that I will never again look the direction of that person that was accused of abuse. And it's understandable, and it's maybe éis- uh, even righteous and maybe even admirable, but it's doing a disservice to yourself to refuse to think further or think about the complexities, or just pick the individual ideas from somebody's body of work without needing that to be an endorsement of the total package.
- CWChris Williamson
You are at a massive disadvantage if the only people that you can learn from are people that you usually agree with.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs) Well put.
- CWChris Williamson
Huge disadvantage. You know, this is the main problem with, uh, tribalism for anybody that is into personal growth. You, you are going to struggle to find anybody that is sufficiently pure, uh, that they have met all of the criteria for you, if you're very sensitive with this, to be able to accept them onboard. Uh, so I actually wrote something on the plane, uh, that was inspired by, uh, uh, what you were talking about. Um, I went to a retreat in California last year. During it, I met a business owner whose YouTube content I used to watch a long time ago. When I asked him why he stopped making videos, he said, "I started feeling like I had to live up to in private the things which I was saying in public." And I've come to think about this all the time. I've also come to realize that there's two sides to "Fake it until you make it." One is positing an ideal or better version of yourself, which you are motivated to live up to due to the need for social consistency. But this stake in the ground acts as much like a tether as it does a finish line. If you commit yourself to a worldview or life philosophy, what happens if you stop agreeing with it? Sure, you might want to change, but everyone around you has grown accustomed to the previous version of you. Whether it's lifestyle changes like a dietary approach or training methodology, worldview changes like religious belief or political affiliation, or personality changes like commitments to personal growth, going sober, or changing friend groups. Social consistency bias is a double-edged sword. A while ago, some of the leading influencers in the ex-paleo diet movement, then the carnivore diet movement, started to add fruit into their food. The aptly called meat and fruit diet caused uproar, not because of (laughs) the evidence that the diet is based on, but because new proponents had ardently stated a different belief in the past, and the change caused people around them to feel uncomfortable. This is the danger, the social incentives align for you to not change in public even if you grow out of your beliefs in private. Stupid people see someone changing their mind as an indication of unsophistication because they don't understand that updating your worldview when you grow is a sign of intelligence, not fickleness, and that an unwavering commitment to a narrow worldview is not cleverness, but a substitute for it, which unfortunately means that changing your mind in public often results in you being attacked by large numbers of mostly stupid people. And the more public you are about it, the harder it is to reverse. And this is what I thought you'd quoted in your book, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Kurt Vonnegut.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yes. That Kurt Vonnegut, I misremembered that Kurt Vonnegut quote for many years, uh, and I just remembered it as, um, "You are whatever you pretend to be." And when I found the original quote, I went, "Mm, I like my version better."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DSDerek Sivers
So (laughs) because... By the way, Chris, I gotta say, I love what you just read there. That was-
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you.
- DSDerek Sivers
... wonderful.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you.
- DSDerek Sivers
That was really wonderful. It's, you beautifully said what I was trying to say.
- CWChris Williamson
Way more words though. That would have taken up six pages-
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of your book. Your, your book's like 90 pages.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
There's not enough room for it.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah, the... So hey, listeners, the, uh, if you haven't read Useful Natural yet, the average chapter length is 21 sentences. (laughs) That was, uh, a lot... I did the work, you know, the old quote, like, "Forgive me for the long letter. If I had more time, I would've written a shorter one."
- CWChris Williamson
Would've written a shorter one.
- DSDerek Sivers
Uh, I, I took the time. I did the work. I made it as short as it could be, um-
- CWChris Williamson
It is a lean being. It's stage ready for the Mister Olympia competition.
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- 1:06:05 – 1:17:30
The Value of Diverse Worldviews
- DSDerek Sivers
the, my previous book called How to Live was a deliberate exercise in contradicting myself. Every chapter contradicted every other chapter. Uh, each chap- there were 27 chapters, and each one was completely convinced that it had the answer on how you should live your life, and therefore, every chapter disagreed with every other chapter. And it was such a fun format because of the thing that you just read. It was a way of saying, uh, "I am not picking just one thing and saying, 'This is the answer.'" I am stating upfront that I believe in opposites, I believe in contradiction-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- DSDerek Sivers
... for a, a few reasons. Uh, but the most visual one, or I should say audible one, is an orchestra. The book ends with an image of an orchestra seating chart with 27 different types of instruments to match for the 27 chapters, and the idea is if you are a composer or a conductor...Nobody would say, "Hey, composer, what is the best instrument?" You'd say, "Well, (laughs) for when? For what?" It's, there is no correct answer. Uh, you use instruments for their purposes. You bring in the clarinets when you want the clarinets, and you bring in the trumpets for that effect, and you hit the timpanis for that effect, and sometimes you combine them. Sometimes you have the cello and the oboe playing at the same time, and what you like is the combination. So of course, you know, this is the Modern Wisdom podcast, you know where I'm going with this. The, this is what philosophies are to us. Philosophies are not an argument about which is the correct way to see the world. That's like asking the composer, "What is the best instrument?" Philosophies are tools that we use for purposes and at different times in our life. You know, music is time. Uh, you bring them in at different times. You use stoicism sometimes, not always. You use skepticism sometimes. Maybe you have, like, stoicism and skepticism combined, like an, like an oboe and a cello at the same time, and you, and you use them, and then maybe you put them to bed before you go to sleep at night, and you flip to a different philosophy that helps you sleep at night, and a different philosophy helps you get up in the morning, and a different philosophy helps you succeed in business, and a different philosophy helps you focus on your family. That there is no one right answer. These are tools that we use. And same thing with worldviews. I mean, the conservatives versus the liberals. Well, as I said, neither one is the right answer. They have their different purposes, and you can approach all of these as an and, not an or.
- CWChris Williamson
You also, you know, just to really drill it home, you are so on the back foot if you only learn from people that you always agree with. And also, if I know one of your perspectives, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, you're probably not a serious thinker.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Because you shouldn't be taking your entire worldview wholesale. You shouldn't be putting it on-
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... like a onesie, right? It should be an incredibly eclectic New Orleans, you've got this crazy feather boa and this hat and a cane and a pair of high heels. You know, that's what we all are. We're all idiosyncratic. We've all got very sort of unique life experiences that have brought us to this point. And it shouldn't be ... I mean, there are some people that, whose worldviews and beliefs will fall slap bang into the middle of the normal distribution of normal, but that's not, uh, it's far fewer people actually than it should be. It should be a very flat sort of hill that everything is going over. So getting-
- DSDerek Sivers
Wait, wait, Chris, I wanna take this, uh, astray here for a minute.
- CWChris Williamson
Feel free.
- DSDerek Sivers
Where, where are you living now?
- CWChris Williamson
Austin, Texas.
- DSDerek Sivers
Okay, thought so. Where did you grow up?
- CWChris Williamson
Nu- uh, Stockton-on-Tees in the northeast of the UK.
- DSDerek Sivers
Northeast, I didn't, okay, wow. Uh, very different mindsets in these two places.
- CWChris Williamson
Slightly, yeah.
- DSDerek Sivers
Uh, did you live other places in between?
- CWChris Williamson
Newcastle, northeast, uh, small summers in Thailand, in Bali, in Ibiza.
- DSDerek Sivers
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Stuff like that, little bits.
- DSDerek Sivers
Okay. Did you spend enough time in Thailand and Bali to kind of get to know the worldview or did you kind of just stay vacationy?
- CWChris Williamson
No. Vacationy.
- DSDerek Sivers
Okay. Um, do you have investments into stocks or ETFs?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DSDerek Sivers
Okay. So you've heard that the big idea with investing is to not put all your eggs in one basket, but you should have a diversified portfolio, right? So, you should have some of your investments in tech stocks maybe and some in commodities and some in international real estate. Uh, the big idea being that if any one sector of the world economy goes up or crashes that you won't be too hurt because you've got a broad diversified investment portfolio, right? You've heard this?
- CWChris Williamson
I'm in the S&P 500. That's all I do. I'm Morgan Housel-pilled, so yes, I- I guess-
- DSDerek Sivers
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... I've, I've, uh, uh, tried to spread risk as much as possible.
- DSDerek Sivers
So, I started thinking about this in terms of what you were just saying, our thought portfolio.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm...
- 1:17:30 – 1:32:22
How to Better Reframe Your Experiences
- CWChris Williamson
Getting practical, moving forward into how people can actually reframe and find better perspectives. How do you advise people to do that?
- DSDerek Sivers
Oh. Um, well, the how is quite basic (laughs) . The how is to just put aside the time to think. Whether that's talking with a friend or just laying in a hammock staring at the sky thinking of different points of view, or in my case, I like to journal. I spend most of my waking hours with my fingers on keys typing, whether I'm typing emails or I'm typing code or I'm writing a book, or very often, I just flip over to my diary, whether it's my daily diary or I have a thoughts journal, like, on certain subjects. Like, if I keep coming back to certain subjects, like, I don't know, China, I've got a- a separate document that's my thoughts on China so that every time I'm like, "Hmm, having some more thoughts about China," I just flip open that document and I start typing my current thoughts. And I'll have... Which might just be a sentence or it might be, like, I've got some unresolved stuff in there that I need to work out. But either way, the question that I, that helps to keep asking yourself is, "What's another way to look at this?" So especially if it's a disempowering belief. Let's say if you have a certain belief that's really working well for you, that makes you very happy, that makes you very productive or, uh, successful by your own definition, maybe you don't need to challenge that one so much. That's working-
- CWChris Williamson
Don't mess with it. Don't mess with it.
- DSDerek Sivers
Don't mess with it. It's working. It's fine. But I'm sure we all have...... a number of perspectives and beliefs and thought habits that we'd be good to challenge. Um, we'd benefit from doing the good old-fashioned brainstorming technique of asking yourself, "Okay, well, what's another way of looking at it? Well, now I've got three that I've written down here. Let me come up with five more." (laughs) Even if it seems like I can't, let me just push harder, even if it becomes silly ones. Um, I'm sure that... Imagine a poet long ago who, uh, was used to, um, paying people to read his poems and, and was feeling very upset by, he was spending so much money paying people to read his poems. At a certain point, he had the radical, crazy idea of like, "Wait a minute, what if people paid me to read my poems? Oh my God, what a weird idea." Um, and now the poet has made a good living because people, (laughs) like paying money to read his poems. Uh, all of us have a version of this, of something that can be inverted and taken to a weird extreme that you never would have considered, uh, that only comes from that brainstorming process of pushing past the first few obvious answers, pushing past the next few ones that took a little effort, and then going far into the ones that you only get to if you really spend the time to think harder and push a little more extreme.
- CWChris Williamson
You say that to change, you need to reach past what comes naturally, and I've had this in my head for a little while, that, um, kind of like type one and type two thinking, we have type one and type two reactions as well. So, uh, type one being automatic, this is, uh, your habitual way that you go about things. Type two is more effortful, it's deliberate, you need to kind of get in there and, and tinker with it and be very, uh, very sort of, uh, conscious and focused. And then the goal over time is that the type two becomes the type one, that through deliberate practice, you can then... Anybody that's ever got better at anything knows this. Playing an instrument or, or, or driving a car or playing pickleball or doing whatever. Um, but I also think about this sort of in terms of, uh, uh, reactions, which I guess is still the same, but it's a much quicker version of that. If you get yourself into the habit of not reacting quite so quickly, that the type two reaction is the one that gives you that space to breathe, and actually type two reacting gives type two thinking the opportunity to step in and actually go through it. So I think that the skill that people need to learn a lot of the time isn't just type one and type two thinking, but it's type one and type two reactions, because that then sort of unlocks the next level. But yeah, reaching past what comes naturally, that's how you, uh, suggest that people look at changing their perspective.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Reaction, reactions as well, which might come from communication, meaning, uh, say if somebody texts you a question, "Hey, Chris, uh, need an answer. What do you think about this?" You might have to get in the habit of saying, "Let me think about that. I'll get back to you in the next few days."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DSDerek Sivers
Even though it's a text, which we think of as urgent, it's communicating that you're not just gonna give your quick, impulsive response to this just because somebody's texting. And making that a habit, um, insisting on a little more time as a habit, uh, say, (laughs) reading the terms and conditions of something before agreeing to it so y- you know... Uh, maybe not every little app that you download, but, uh, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
What about not jumping to a conclusion when you ask yourself why you did a thing?
- DSDerek Sivers
Well, there, you're jumping to the... Now, that's the more advanced stuff. (laughs) The, for your, then even for your own thoughts, yes, to, to challenge yourself to not just jump to that conclusion, but to give yourself a little longer. Ideally if you make a habit of journaling so you're used to... I'm sorry, I say journaling, but you know, again, it could be, it could mean you call a friend. Maybe you've got a best friend that you talk about everything with, and every time you're confused with a decision, you just call up your friend and you say, "Hey, what are your thoughts on this? I've got a question for you. What, how am I thinking about this wrong?" You know, it doesn't have to be journaling. That works for me, but whatever works for you. Talking with friends, staring at the sky, uh, you know, putting a rubber duck on top of your computer monitor and asking the rubber duck, um, whatever works for you. (laughs) Shit, ask, I mean, uh, the new LLM AI tools are wonderful at this. If you open Claude.ai or ChatGPT.com and you say, "What are some other ways of thinking of this?" It's a, it's a great way to get started on this process, uh, because it's used to coming up with different ways of looking at things. Uh, it can be a great tool for that.
- CWChris Williamson
My favorite, uh, different perspective or reframing is your example of the different perspective of a silver medalist versus a bronze medalist. Can you just explain what that is, what they're thinking while they're stood on the podium?
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah. I didn't come up with this. I don't remember where I heard it. But the idea is that the gold medalist is happy, yes, but the silver medalist is the most unhappy because the silver medalist can't help but think, "Ugh, if I was milliseconds faster, I could have been the gold medalist." Whereas the bronze medalist is sitting there happy 'cause it's like, "Whoa, I just made it. (laughs) If I was milliseconds slower-"... I would have got nothing at all. But look at me, I'm standing on the podium in front of the- the whole Olympics. (laughs) I did it, I'm the- I'm one of the- I'm a, whatever, bronze medalist, I'm a- I'm a finalist. I did it, I- I won an Olympic medal. The fact that it's bronze, whatever, that's great, I made it. Uh, whereas the civi- silver medalist has the toughest spot.
- CWChris Williamson
I really love that because it shows just, I- I think so much of our experience is mediated by the thoughts that we have about it.
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And there's this sort of, I think there is, for people that are thoughtful or a bit introspective or they ruminate a lot, they can kind of look at, um, people who don't as much, and there's a degree of jealousy, or at least I- I- I used to have this a lot, and I think in my less gracious moments I still sort of do. You know, it's- it's this weird kind of narcissism where you think, "Oh, you know, the depth of my consciousness, it just causes me to suffer, man." And you go, well, if you were that smart, you'd figure it out. Like...
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's the Naval thing, "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?"
- DSDerek Sivers
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but, you know, looking at that scenario there, uh, "Look at how close I was to winning, I'm so despondent. Look at how close I was to not getting a medal, I'm so happy." Uh, like, the person that's feeling worse got a quicker time. Objectively they performed better, uh, compared with the person who has stood so grateful that they just s- slipped in and managed to get themselves on the podium. And, uh, yeah, I think about, like, quite a lot, um, trying to... George Mack often talks about the midwit meme and he says, "There's no way that you can be the guy on the right," which is the guy that's the sage, the super smart guy. All you can ever become is the guy on the left. So my entire life now is me trying to be the simple guy on the left, not the smart guy on the right. Do you know the meme I'm talking about? The midwit memes?
- DSDerek Sivers
No, sorry. No.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So, imagine that you've got an IQ distribution bell curve. Uh, on the left-hand side you have a guy that looks like, it's a meme, he looks like a Neanderthal, he's got a heavy brow, kind of like me. And, uh, he- he's sort of, he always comes up with a simple answer. On the right, you have a sage that looks a little bit like a Jedi with a hood up, uh, and he obviously comes up with the most ascended answer. And in the middle, at the top of the IQ bell curve is the midwit. And the midwit is this sort of raging, screaming, lib type person. And the joke-
- DSDerek Sivers
Love it.
- CWChris Williamson
... is that the guy on the left and the guy on the right always come up with the same answer, and the guy in the middle is the one that over-complicates everything. So if it was for gaining muscle, the guy on the left would say, "Lift weights, eat protein," the guy on the right would say, "Lift weights, eat protein," and the guy in the middle would say, "I must ensure that my pre-digested enzymes are consumed within 30 minutes of performing an anaerobic, scientifically backed," you know, overthinking it.
- DSDerek Sivers
Right. Beautiful.
- CWChris Williamson
"Lift weights, eat protein." Uh, and almost all of the time I think, uh, when we get too confused is, we're trying to be the guy on the right as opposed to, "Dude, I'm stood on the podium, oh, that's amazing."
- DSDerek Sivers
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You know (laughs) ? The guy on the left would think, "Wow, I'm stood on a podium." The guy in the middle would think, "If only I'd optimized my sleep a little bit better, and the red light glasses at night, and melatonin release with cortisol and blah, blah. Oh my God, I'm stood on a podium." Uh...
- DSDerek Sivers
Right. It's... And if you're navel gazing enough to (laughs) to realize this about yourself, as I imagine almost anybody that listens this far into a podcast called Modern Wisdom, uh, is, then you can realize which perspective helps you feel better or act better, and just decide to adopt it. "That this is the way I'm going to choose to look at things." Uh, so this comes up a lot with, for me, with, um, money. That Morgan Housel and Mark Manson were in a conversation that I heard where they were saying on Mark's podcast, I think, that, um, they were saying, "You know, it's just human nature, we can't help but constantly try to strive for more. We just, you know, you can't help it, you have one million, you want 10 million, you have 10 million, you want 50 million, you have 50, you want 100, you can't help it." And I was just thinking, "Yeah, you can (laughs) ," b- because you just realize that that's a recipe for disaster, and so you choose to not do that. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
How easily have you found being able to put aside the desire for more, more, more?
- DSDerek Sivers
Uh, 100%, completely. I have no desire for more, more, more. I think of it like a fraction. And let's remember, a fraction is anything with a, you know, a- what do you call, a numerator and a divisor? A gu-
Episode duration: 2:02:51
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