Why Almost Nobody Gets the Life They Want - Jett Franzen

1. 0:00 – 10:09

   Why You Need to Confront Your Shadows

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      I'm sorry it's taken so long, but merch is nearly here. This Friday, the 31st of July at 12:00 midday Central Time or 6:00 PM UK time, the brand new Modern Wisdom merch goes live. Head to mwmerch.com now to sign up. You'll get first access, and once this is sold out, it's gone. Never to be printed again. You've only got six days to be able to buy, so head to mwmerch.com now. I just did a seven-day silent meditation retreat. Um, one of the, uh, pitfalls that people tumble into when you're doing that much meditation, like multiple, multiple like big sits per day for seven days without talking, is when difficult emotions come up, they use the releasing technique inside of meditation to not engage with the emotion-

   2. JFJett Franzen0:42

      Hmm

   3. CWChris Williamson0:42

      ... as opposed to embodying what they call conductivity. Conductivity is allowing the emotion to move through you, and if it makes you wanna laugh, if it makes you wanna cry, if it makes you feel great, if it makes you feel horrible. Like if it arises and then you sort of release it from you by kind of... It's a kind of pushing away. It's a sort of prophylactic.

   4. JFJett Franzen1:00

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00

      Um, that's y- I'm sitting, I'm working on my mind. This is me being with my thoughts. I'm not being distracted.

   6. JFJett Franzen1:06

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:06

      And it's like, yeah, but there's still little pernicious ways that you can use even the most positive habit as a coping mechanism to get away from something.

   8. JFJett Franzen1:17

      100%.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:18

      Yeah.

   10. JFJett Franzen1:20

       I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Carl Jung, and I just think every person needs to read some of his work at some point in their life, but specifically about like sorta confronting yourself and, you know, your own shadow. And I think that's kind of related to what you're saying because Carl Jung was, was... believed that for a lot of people, the, the real danger in humans was not the evil that they're capable of, but the evil that they're denying in themselves.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:45

       Hmm.

   12. JFJett Franzen1:46

       And evil is kind of... I- there's kind of like an ambiguous meaning there in the sense that evil could just be a bad habit. But if I go to the gym, that is allowing me to steer myself away from that bad habit, or it's, or it's becoming a mask. And it's... This is all happening subconsciously, so it's very hard to diagnose it. But I think one of the most important things that people need to go through in their life is constantly confront themselves. Like I very, very recently am trying to start this, and it's almost like psychological suicide in a way. That's why it's so scary and dangerous, is because you're basically trying to expose yourself to yourself, which potentially is harder than exposing yourself to other people.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:26

       Right.

   14. JFJett Franzen2:26

       And you're like, "Yeah, I have X, Y, and Z issue. Now how am I trying to avoid addressing these issues?" And it's like if you can't confront that shadow and then embrace that shadow, then it's gonna control your life subconsciously. You won't even realize it.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:41

       Think about how uncomfortable it is to have done something that you have praised yourself for that was hard to do-

   16. JFJett Franzen2:48

       Mm-hmm

   17. CWChris Williamson2:49

       ... to then have to face the realization that that was maybe a very sophisticated coping strategy.

   18. JFJett Franzen2:54

       Yes.

   19. CWChris Williamson2:55

       Like, uh, it's not a surprise that people don't really, really wanna face it. I had this conversation last night. You know, you ask people, "What's your why? Why do you do... Why do you work so hard? Why do you build this business? Why did you start to do content? Why, why, why, why, why?" And there's always a kind of PR answer. There's like a publicly acceptable one. It's usually quite positive sum. It's, uh, even if it's n- negatively, uh, origined, it's got a positive outcome. It's like the underdog story.

   20. JFJett Franzen3:24

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:24

       Um, but for a lot of people, it's like I didn't feel love as a kid unless I performed, and I now fear that people are going to abandon me if I'm not working as hard as I can all the time.

   22. JFJett Franzen3:38

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson3:39

       Or I was terrifying, t- terrified in my loneliness, and I realized that if I'm useful, that's kind of the same as being loved because people want me. They don't need me-

   24. JFJett Franzen3:51

       Yeah

   25. CWChris Williamson3:51

       ... but they want me, and that's a good, good enough proxy. So even in your whys, you can kind of get to a level of awareness which is like, "Ah, you know, I, I, I like to do this thing, and I felt this way in school, and now this is what I'm doing with my life." You go, "Okay, what if we take it just a level or two deeper than that?" The same thing about going to the gym. Why do you go to the gym? For almost everybody, I think, that when you look at someone who is an extreme in anything, uh, an extreme in terms of wealth, an extreme in terms of beauty, an extreme in terms of competence, an extreme in terms of smart and intellect, I, I would guess that almost in every situation, the reason that those people have developed that is because they feel the opposite. The person who's made themselves very beautiful feels ugly on the inside. The person that has made themselves very wealthy always feels like they're not enough. The person who's made themselves very competent often feels like they're powerless. The person who's created all of this skill and these connections often feels like they're alone.

   26. JFJett Franzen4:44

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson4:45

       Like you are that shadow, and it just... Some people turn it into something beautiful and alchemize it, and obviously they get praised by everybody externally, and they can kind of kid themselves. And also, as you said, it's psychological suicide. Like who wants to-

   28. JFJett Franzen5:00

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson5:00

       It's like, "Dude, I'm living in fucking bliss. You telling me I already overcame this thing that fucking sucked, and now I've turned it into something that's great."

   30. JFJett Franzen5:06

       Yeah.
2. 10:09 – 22:19

   Make It Until You Believe It

   1. CWChris Williamson10:09

      The interesting point on the, um, I guess, like fake it until you make it-ish approach, uh, I had this idea for a while that I'm kind of the poster boy for, uh, imposter syndrome, and there is a fake it until you make it thing. But there is an alternative, which is make it until you believe it, and that is just developing the stack of proof so high that no matter how much you don't believe in yourself, it's just crushed under the weight of evidence.

   2. JFJett Franzen10:39

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:40

      Does that make sense?

   4. JFJett Franzen10:41

      Yeah, 100%. Well, I think those things go hand in hand. I don't think it's one or the other.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:45

      Mm.

   6. JFJett Franzen10:45

      I think you do. You're faking it till you make it. You're just trying to get up so many shots to then create the evidence. The whole goal is to transition nothing fr- to something and you're like, "Can I do this? I don't know if I can do this," and you just show up every single day. Something has to hit. Eventually it has to hit. You know, I was helping some people try... I was trying to encourage my friends and people that I met online that were smaller creators, like I'm not any giant creator by any means, but I was like, "Well, this is what I learned." It's that you're not gonna know what you're doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, but you start to pick up the pieces. It's kind of like Socrates' philosophy, "I know that I know nothing." You have to accept that there's so much that you don't know, but then you also need to accept that there's so much that you'll never know. That's just the human condition.

   7. CWChris Williamson11:33

      Mm.

   8. JFJett Franzen11:33

      So I'm gonna try the best that I can anyways and see what happens, and then all of a sudden the wins start to pile up and all of a sudden, like you said, you're just crushed by the weight of it. So in a way, you are faking it till you make it, and in a way, you are making it until you believe it.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:46

      Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   10. JFJett Franzen11:47

       It's kinda, it's kinda like both in, in one.

   11. CWChris Williamson11:48

       You're, you're, you're right. I think the reason that I wanted to say it, I said it the day that I did the biggest live show I've ever done, which was the event in Apollo in London. And that was three and a half thousand people, and I was shitting myself. And before I went on, this guy at the meet and greet that we do beforehand for VVIP ticket people said, "Do you ever think that you would be here?" Like, no. Like, I'm just the poster child for imposter syndrome. But the reason I wanted to... That felt quite exposing to me as I was about to, like, supposedly go out on stage-

   12. JFJett Franzen12:26

       Yeah

   13. CWChris Williamson12:26

       ... and be the guy that's got it all together.

   14. JFJett Franzen12:28

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson12:28

       And the show went amazing and standing O and all the rest of it, like it was brilliant. But I feel like for some people, believing that you need to have self-belief stops you from actually just doing the thing, and it would be easier for you to go, "I can just show up with no self-belief."

   16. JFJett Franzen12:47

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson12:47

       "I can do it when I'm tired, when I don't know what I'm doing, when I'm sure that it's gonna go wrong, when no one around me believes in me, when everybody's mocking me for trying it. Like, I can just show up and do it anyway, and eventually the wins come."

   18. JFJett Franzen13:05

       Yeah, I think at some point the, the self-belief when people are like, "You need self-belief," I think it's true, but it's not, doesn't have to be true at the beginning. It's a journey.

   19. CWChris Williamson13:16

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JFJett Franzen13:16

       It's a character arc.

   21. CWChris Williamson13:17

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JFJett Franzen13:17

       Every TV show, movie that you watched, every book you've ever read always starts with the main character in somehow, some way being a little bit shaky with their confidence, not knowing what's going on, and then over time they just develop into that. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on destiny and fate? Like, do you think that you have sort of a, a path that you're meant to follow and that you're gonna get there? I'm, I, I'm always interested to hear people's opinions on it because I've heard people that are religious, people that are not religious, people that have grown up in different cultures, and it's... I can't really find a, a trend or, like, a pattern there where-

   23. CWChris Williamson13:54

       Hmm

   24. JFJett Franzen13:55

       ... "Oh, I'm religious, so I don't believe in fate," or, "I'm not religious, I do believe in fate." It- I, I'm always curious. So w- what do you think about that?

   25. CWChris Williamson14:04

       Fate's an interesting one because the personality trait that I care about most is agency.

   26. JFJett Franzen14:11

       Mm.

   27. CWChris Williamson14:12

       Sovereignty over my own experience.

   28. JFJett Franzen14:13

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson14:14

       The ability to choose.

   30. JFJett Franzen14:15

       Yeah.
3. 22:19 – 34:36

   Why Success Demands Real Work

   1. CWChris Williamson22:20

      There's this line that, uh, was in, uh, a, a book that I found about it. In the early stages of training, an aspiring Confucian gentleman needs to memorize entire shelves of archaic texts, learn the precise angle at which to bow, and learn the lengths of the steps with which he is to enter a room. His sitting mat must always be perfectly straight. All of this rigor and restraint, however, is ultimately aimed at producing a cultivated but nonetheless genuine form of spontaneity. Indeed, the process of training is not considered complete until the individual has passed completely beyond the need for thought or effort. And the kind of summary of this is the next stage of your development might not be more effort, but more ease, right? It might not need more grind, but more grace.

   2. JFJett Franzen23:02

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:02

      And it sounds great to hear that, dude, you can just, like, stream of consciousness, fucking Michael Smoke wellness your way to-

   4. JFJett Franzen23:10

      [laughs]

   5. CWChris Williamson23:10

      ... just g- like, like, like, yat max this stuff. But it's like if you haven't spent a long time removing your filler words and understanding what sort of ideas work well and understanding a good speaking cadence and realizing the sort of flow that you need to have, you're not breaking the rules of the game to level up mastery. You're just not playing the game at all.

   6. JFJett Franzen23:30

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson23:30

      And there's a, a, an interesting analogy with the, uh, the skate- ice skater lady that you talked about. Novak Djokovic nearly quit the s- he did quit the sport, and same thing. Too much pressure, didn't enjoy it, and then when asked, uh, how he got his, uh, passion back, just said, "I like hitting the ball. I just like hitting the ball." And that I just like hitting the ball thing only works when you've learned how to hit the fucking ball.

   8. JFJett Franzen23:57

      Yeah. Well, that's why I like to say putting your brain on autopilot, right? Because what, well, you... We'll, we'll continue the sports metaphor, right? Literally what happens when if you ever played sports when you're younger and you've gotten really nervous. I played baseball. I would go to the plate and I would just be really tense, and what happens is there, there's a lot of blood flow to your brain, and then it doesn't function As it would if you were just chilling in your cou- on your couch or something. And then you sort of now have to be consciously aware of what you're doing. But the problem is all your training and everything like that, it was developing skills for your brain to run on autopilot.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:38

      Right.

   10. JFJett Franzen24:38

       So that's why people mess up or they choke. That's like the art of the choke.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:42

       The yips.

   12. JFJett Franzen24:42

       Yeah. And you're absolutely right. It's like you need to first develop that skill for it to almost become second nature to your brain to allow it to happen. And, and it is a very dangerous talking point when you tell people, especially when really successful people, like entrepreneurs that make a bunch of money or athletes that have spent literally blood, sweat, and tears for 20-plus years of their life dedicated to something when they're like, "Oh, I'm just..." Sh- um, Shai, he has this one, uh, the MVP of the NBA, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, he's got this one, like, I- I-- it's, it's kind of corny because I think he was just trying to be nonchalant, but he's like, "I feel like the game's just coming to me. I'm flowing. I'm-- it's just all natural." But it's like, like you're saying, if you're a kid, that's not just gonna happen for you. You have to develop the skills. And most people, they don't have that agency to then go and do that thing. A lot of people have asked me, "What do you think is the one thing that has differentiated you when you started doing social media?" And the truth is, I always told people it was agency, but specifically because a year ago from today, I was literally sleeping on the couch of some guy's apartment in Iowa. Like I was doing-- and, and I would get, and I would get up every day and I, I was doing streaming. I s- I started clipping, I started doing these random things, and it's like all of a sudden I start to build myself up and I started to realize, okay, I really want this. Like, I real- like, this is not... I feel like when people say they want something, 95, maybe even more percentage of the time, it's a bluff. Like sure, every-- I, I want the hottest girl in the world. I want to be a millionaire. But wanting something is being willing to pay the price that it requires to get it.

   13. CWChris Williamson26:25

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JFJett Franzen26:26

       And I realized that I was willing to pay the price, and so that was, it was go mode. Like, I was constantly go-- I was doing it so much that my parents were literally begging me not to work. They were like, "Jett, what are you doing just sitting in this basement?" I got no sunlight, like, ever. I was just so dedicated to what I was doing. And then people will see me now, and I see hate videos about me every day where it's like, "Why is this guy Jett? Why did he find a way to like hit the algorithm and do this? Like, he's doing the same thing as everyone else." I was like, you literally never saw... You're not acknowledging the 1,162 videos it took me before I got 1,000 followers. You're not acknowledging the sheer amount of times where I posted something and I was wrong, or I got embarrassed, or what- like all that stuff, and then got up the next day and said, "I don't, I don't give a shit. I'm just gonna keep doing it again." And what I'm realizing now, especially I just graduated college, I'm realizing that i- it's talk or action. It's you do or you don't. You know what I mean? There's, there's no like, "Oh, I'm thinking about doing this," because I had... I, I don't know who said this, but the most dangerous people are ambitious, lazy people, people that will lead you to believe that, "Oh, I'm down to, to go and start this business idea with you, and I'm gonna go knock doors to, to get leads or do whatever it is." I had a, I had an old friend of mine who was just like that. He was constantly, "Oh, I'm down to do this and that with you, Jett." And I'm always like, "I'm gonna do it." And I'm like, "All right. Come to my house. Let's, let's set up the plan." He would come to our house, he would set up the plan, and then slowly but surely, the conversation goes towards girls, random stuff that, that is not... And, and I sort of fell into that trap because you, you act like the people that you're around. And then I realized, wow, the, like, the difference between the people that make it and the people that don't are you dedicated yourself for a ridiculous amount of time. And, and I'm not even including myself in that category. You know? Like I, I, I have way bigger aspirations. I'm nowhere near where I wanna be. But I really saw after I put in the work, I was like, okay, it takes this much to get to that point, and I'm only, you know, a centimeter down the pa- down my path of where I wanna be. And so then I look at someone like a Alex Hormozi, like a Naval Ravikant, I'm like, oh yeah, these guys, they put in their due time for so many years, probably got clowned on, probably everyone that was in their previous life was looking at them like, "What is this guy doing?" You know, maybe he's like 25 years old and he doesn't have a, any job or he doesn't have anything going for him, but really behind the scenes, he's relentlessly trying on this entrepreneurial endeavor. He's starting a business. No one really respects you, and so you have to be like, okay, do I have the agency to say, "Screw their opinion. I'm gonna do this and give it a shot," or do you not? And honestly, that percentage is like may- it's, it's probably more than 95% of people are on the they think they want it, but they don't really want it. And then, you know, 2 to 3%, 5% are like, "I'm actually willing to do it." And, and that's what I realized when I, when I started the whole social media thing. I was like, okay, this is gonna have to be a daily thing that I wanna do, right?

   15. CWChris Williamson29:26

       Before you win, everyone will ask you why you're working so hard, and once you win, everyone will tell you how lucky you are.

   16. JFJett Franzen29:33

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:33

       It's so fucking true, dude. And, and talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources, so you need to allocate yours appropriately. Like literally, if you talk about this, I'm sure you've come across this in neuroscience-

   18. JFJett Franzen29:43

       100%

   19. CWChris Williamson29:43

       ... if you, if you talk about the thing, it gives you pings of reward in the same way as if you'd done it.

   20. JFJett Franzen29:47

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson29:48

       And yet so few people are operators. Like this is what I learned in nightlife, like club promo.

   22. JFJett Franzen29:56

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson29:57

       So few people can actually do what you need to do in order to become successful. And that's not some unbelievable level of talent. It's just actually doing the fucking work on a consistent basis. It is so rare, and that's why people tend to be serial successes and people-

   24. JFJett Franzen30:13

       Of course

   25. CWChris Williamson30:13

       ... tend to be serial failures because the transferable skill of here is a thing that needs to be done, here are the ways to do it, and I show up and do those things. Like when I think back to the start of Modern Wisdom, there was days in 2018 where we did zero plays. Like we'd done multiple weeks of episodes, and we had zero, n- like a, a full day with no plays. And then- I ruptured my Achilles at the back end of 2020 and constructed a special recording setup where I could have my foot still elevated above my heart so that I could still-- And then a mic that came in like this so that I could still record podcast episodes with my foot, like, behind the guest. It's like blowjob cam, like straight from my crotch.

   26. JFJett Franzen30:54

       [laughs]

   27. CWChris Williamson30:54

       And, uh, that was the level of, that was the level of dedication that I had to this. I remember I spoke to this girl at a breathwork class back end of last year, and she hadn't seen me since I first moved to Austin like four years ago. And she said, "It's so great to see you. Are you still, are you still doing those ads?" "What do you mean?" She says, "Well, we, we were talking a few years ago, and I remember we used to invite you on nights out to, to, like, come and meet new people in, in this city and country that you'd just moved to, and you'd send me these, like, photos of some audio software, and you were saying..." And it was like 11 o'clock at night, and you were saying something about ads. And I was like, oh, fuck. I forgot that I recorded a fresh ad read on audio three times per episode for every episode-

   28. JFJett Franzen31:45

       Wow

   29. CWChris Williamson31:45

       ... for 600 episodes. Like, before we had dynamic insertion where you can pre-record it-

   30. JFJett Franzen31:50

       Yeah
4. 34:36 – 39:19

   Can Anyone Go From Nothing to Something?

   1. JFJett Franzen34:36

      But yeah, it's interesting the cope that people have, specifically as it relates to success or, you know, sort of leveling up in life. Doesn't matter what you're pursuing, but I've been-- I think that's the n- one of the top things I've been getting flack for online is I truly believe if you live in America, it does not matter how far on the bottom you are, I believe that anyone is capable of clawing their way up the ladder. I'm not saying you're gonna go all the way to the top, but you can go from the absolute bottom to at least bare minimum middle if you really have the agency to do it. There's a, there's like a old, I don't know if it's like a news interview with Morgan Freeman and he... Do you know what I'm talking about? And he was like-- The interviewer was, I think it was like a white person telling him something about Black people can't-

   2. CWChris Williamson35:26

      How oppressed they are

   3. JFJett Franzen35:27

      ... like how oppressed they are, like how they can't get to his position.

   4. CWChris Williamson35:30

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JFJett Franzen35:30

      And he, he literally goes, "Bullshit." And they're like, "What do you mean?" He's like, he's like, "Bullshit. Look at me. Like look at, look at Denzel, look at Obama, look at all these people." And I started to realize, I was like, you really have to just be viciously consistent, and it's gonna take a very long period of time. And granted, I, I was fortunate growing up. I grew up in a working class family. You know, I, I never had to worry about paying the bills, so I 100% recognize the privilege that I've had. But then I was out on my own sleeping on a carpet, literally not even a couch, a carpet, a year, a year ago today, and now I'm on this podcast. Did that happen out of thin air? Like I'm, I'm a little bit confused there. But I, I do have sympathy for these people, but I think this is a very... It's a pain point that people don't like to be called out on. If you in any way sort of... And for me, it's not even necessarily criticism so much as I believe in them. I wish they beli- would believe in them as much as I believe in them.

   6. CWChris Williamson36:30

      Yep. Yep.

   7. JFJett Franzen36:30

      You know, people are like-

   8. CWChris Williamson36:31

      Yep

   9. JFJett Franzen36:31

      ... "I'm not capable of doing this." There, there's a old study that was done where they took A bunch of women and they said, "Hey, we wanna, we wanna test or figure out whether or not that people with facial disfigurements get any s- type of oppression." Are you familiar with this study?

   10. CWChris Williamson36:47

       Yeah, the Dartmouth Scar Experiment.

   11. JFJett Franzen36:49

       Exactly, yeah. So they basically put makeup on them and they said, "Yeah, let us know if, if you felt in any way discriminated, discriminated against in this interview you're going into." And they had, like, high-end makeup. They put it on their face, and these girls saw in the mirror. They're like, "Oh, I, yeah, I have it." And then right before they go in, they're like, "Hey, we just need to touch it up a little bit." They take it off. They don't know that. They go in, and, you know, at the end they reported that they felt like they were discriminated against. And more than that, they could, you know, point out a specific thing that the interviewer said that they thought was referencing, you know, the scar on their face. And it really shows you the power of belief. Like, I'm not saying oppression doesn't exist, but what I am saying is a lot of it can be self-inflicted for sure. Like, people genuinely are told by the media... And this is what's so dangerous. It's so dangerous. If everyone in the media is telling you that, oh, because you, you aren't an EPO baby that you can't make it, you're gonna believe that. You're gonna internalize that, and subconsciously that's gonna dictate the way that you move about the world, and that's such a dangerous talking point. And I understand why it exists, because they're trying to be sympathetic, and I, I get that. But you c- you... Once again, you gotta have the agency, you gotta have the discipline to be like, "Fuck that. I'm gonna bet on myself, and I think that I can do it." And I wish these people would have a similar view about that. Granted, not all of them. I mean, th- how many examples are there of people that have gone from nothing to something? There, there's simply too many, at least in America, that you could sit here and say it's literally impossible. I'm not... It, it's very difficult, I'm not denying that, but you can't say it's impossible.

   12. CWChris Williamson38:19

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5. 39:19 – 52:39

   Don’t Let Empathy Hold You Back

   1. CWChris Williamson39:19

      If you had disadvantages, I agree with you. You are right. It's harder to be successful if X happened to you. Replace X with gender, race, birth deformity, different language, different country, abuse, et cetera. The main point of the longer conversation is that despite the disadvantage, you only have one choice. What are you gonna do about it? Number one, take action anyway and become proof to other people like you, your people, also born into or abused into this tragedy that you were, that they too can overcome it. Number two, blame and complain. And to be clear, you can do whatever you want. I support your choice. But only one of those decisions will make you better, and I wish I could say this without getting attacked. But you know who wins by you not being successful? Whoever or whatever you blame. And fuck them or fuck that. You can lead a rebellion of one and blame the one thing that you can control, which is you. In your mind, redefine the word blame as give power to. And when you do that, there's only one person you're gonna wanna give more power to, and that's you. For everyone who's had shitty circumstances, I'm on your side, your long-term side, the side that wants you to win. So do it anyways with all the disadvantages and still tell them to shove it and win. I wanna be clear again. If you had tough shit happen to you, it sucks, and it's not your fault. But now what? Where do we go? My two cents, win anyway and prove that you can win even when the chips are stacked against you or you're dealt a lousy hand. Because we can't get dealt a new hand, we've gotta play the cards that we've got rather than hoping the dealer rules in our favor. So again, what are you gonna do with your shit hand? The only thing possible. You play it the best you can. Homie, fucking slammer, dude. So, so good.

   2. JFJett Franzen41:06

      That's almost like a, that's almost like a modern day Marcus Aurelius quote, that sounds like [chuckles] .

   3. CWChris Williamson41:09

      Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a little bit, it's updated for 2026. But-

   4. JFJett Franzen41:12

      Yeah

   5. CWChris Williamson41:12

      ... um, yeah, I mean, the, the, that's... I understand that there is this line that needs to be walked, which is if somebody's been through a lot of shit, not recognizing that feels callous-

   6. JFJett Franzen41:23

      Yeah

   7. CWChris Williamson41:23

      ... and uncaring and unempathetic. And yet, if you look at what the real world impact of that is, do those people really want to be coddled if they want to get out of this thing? Probably not. And when you realize that there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in telling people that because of your X disadvantage you're not going to be able to do this thing, what is meant as empathy ends up being restriction. And I don't know. I, I, again, like you, like, g- not salubrious but perfectly fine upbringing. Uh, but no, like, given no objective advantages. The fact that there are people who have had it worse doesn't negate the fact that most people, most people exist in the middle of the bell curve.

   8. JFJett Franzen42:15

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson42:15

      Like, they didn't grow up with extreme abuse, in extreme poverty, with the birth disfigurement. Like, most people, and this is what becomes really pernicious, you can use... Look at these people at the bottom end of the tail. You're not sufficiently recognizing their level of disadvantage, and that gets, like, concept creeped out to include earlier parts of the tail as well, and then actually bits of the bell curve in the middle Does that make sense? Well, like people who haven't had those disadvantages pattern match themselves with the people who have.

   10. JFJett Franzen42:50

       Yes.

   11. CWChris Williamson42:50

       And they-

   12. JFJett Franzen42:51

       Yes

   13. CWChris Williamson42:51

       ... they take on board that sympathy as a self-fulfilling prophecy of restriction. You're like, "Oh, that's me." And this is one of the reasons that for a long time everyone's been real worried about pe- pedestalizing victimhood, because it turns the value system upside down. It says that being the most oppressed is actually the position that you want to try and be in, because success is something that is only achieved through oppression, and victimhood is more noble in some ways.

   14. JFJett Franzen43:23

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson43:23

       Uh, which is... It's, it's incentivizing people in this very pernicious, like, presenting as pro-social, but functioning as, like, a speed governor on a car.

   16. JFJett Franzen43:41

       Yep. If you're a parent and you have a kid, and your kid does something that isn't good, do you say, "Oh, that's okay," like, "You'll, you'll get it next time," or, "It's okay, like, you're a kid," or do you tell your kid, "Hey, that's not how a good human operates, and we need to do better than that"? And, and, and do you give them constructive criticism? Well, if you're a good parent, you give them constructive criticism. Now, at that time, is the kid gonna like it when you tell them they can't do it? Absolutely not. But why do parents do it? Because they love their kids, and they're gonna do the thing that's gonna make them uncomfortable and maybe m- uh, they're out in public and their kid's gonna throw a fit. But they have to do it because they love their kids, and the only way that you can help someone grow is by, unfortunately, pointing out a lot of their faults. It's not the only way, but it's essential. And so I look at... It's like, I, I call it, and this isn't my original phrase, suicidal empathy, where people are like, "Oh, I'm gonna empathize with this person who is, has self-destructive habits, and I'm gonna say that it's okay." Why? Because that's the culture, that's the narrative that we live in. Everything everyone does is okay. There, there's, there's nothing that is not allowed except for you telling me that there's something not allowed. And then all of a sudden, you know, 10, 20 years goes down the line, this person doesn't have the life that they want and they still have these self-destructive habits that are causing, to some extent, their inability to succeed. And then they're like, "Oh, it's the system. It's, let me, let me place the blame on everyone else." Again, if you were a parent and you loved your kid, would you not criticize them out of a place of love? I think that you would. I think that you would, and you have to do that as a friend, you have to do that as a peer, you have to do that as a member of society. But the problem is, it's a story as old as time, everyone's gonna hate you. Everyone's gonna hate you. N- everyone wants to live in their own little world that, you know, everybody else is against them. And are you familiar with Nietzsche's idea of ressentiment and the slave and master morality?

   17. CWChris Williamson45:36

       No, tell me.

   18. JFJett Franzen45:37

       So Nietzsche basically believed, and, and I agree with him, that peop- like, w- we'll, we'll apply it to modern day context. Poor and middle class people, not all of them, but some of them, they seem to be obsessed with the concept of morality and virtue. And it's not that morality or virtue are bad, but they weren't able to get external success. They weren't able to get money. They weren't able to get the good wife, whatever, the, the nice house. So they don't really have the life that they want. And so what they do is they move the goalpost from external success to internal virtue, which they conveniently get to define.

   19. CWChris Williamson46:14

       Mm.

   20. JFJett Franzen46:15

       So now I don't have to win in life. Instead, what I can do is I can just say, "Oh, but I'm a good person." Who defines what a good person is? You, because it's subjective to you.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:24

       Yeah.

   22. JFJett Franzen46:24

       So it's almost like a free cop-out. Now, I'm not saying by any means that you shouldn't want to be a good person or that virtue and character aren't... I feel like my dad's gonna listen to this and he's gonna be like, "Oh my gosh, yeah, what are you saying?" Like, you-

   23. CWChris Williamson46:35

       Shout out, shout out Jett's dad, too.

   24. JFJett Franzen46:37

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:37

       Shout out.

   26. JFJett Franzen46:38

       Shout out, shout out my dad.

   27. CWChris Williamson46:38

       Yeah.

   28. JFJett Franzen46:38

       But you have to understand that th- th- like, the, people are constantly coping. It's subconscious. It's, they're not even aware of it. And then I, for me, I just can't stand these people because they're so obsessed with morality and virtue and they're like, "Oh, I hate all these people," when it's like, I don't think you're aware that what you're doing is just cope because you couldn't get the external success. I'm not saying external success is everything in life, right? There's nuance to this, of course. But Nietzsche recognized this. He realized that it's like, hey, these people, they're kind of just making up some bullshit to make themselves feel better, and that's what happens in... And I mean, I'm a Christian myself, but a lot of Christians do this, where they're like, "Oh, you know," people online say that Jesus is the personification of slave morality. You know, the, the pers- they have resentment built up against the people that are successful, then they switch, they, they get to choose what's actually right.

   29. CWChris Williamson47:30

       Mm.

   30. JFJett Franzen47:30

       But the thing is is that Jesus is not slave morality at all because slave morality comes from a place of resentment, and Jesus didn't have resentment. So I really hate that narrative online. But it's like y- y- you'll s- you, I will admit that you see this a lot in Christian communities or whatever, where they'll kind of be like, "Ah," like, you know, it's, it's harder for, surely I tell you that it's harder to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to walk through a needle, whatever that Bible verse is. And they're like, "You shouldn't get money. Like, that's a- anti-Christian." And it's like, well, you could do amazing things with money. You can help people with money.
6. 52:39 – 56:31

   Are We Addicted to the Next Win?

   1. JFJett Franzen52:39

      It's like, are you familiar with Lacan's theory of desire? So in order to desire something, the object of obsession must be perpetually absent. You can't have that thing-

   2. CWChris Williamson52:49

      Yeah

   3. JFJett Franzen52:50

      ... because the moment you have it, you can no longer want it. This is-- this can apply to anything in life. Relationships is the biggest one. This is why it's... People are always talking about why is it that, like, right when I express to this girl that I'm interested or, or tell this guy that I like him, it seems like they pull away? Well, because now they know they have you, and it's not really... They don't have that fantasy in their head. Well, the same concept sort of applies when you have this big goal, and you want it, and you're convincing yourself like, "That's gonna be the thing," and it never is. And this is... I, I, I've never really seen an interview where I felt like the successful person was being genuine, where they didn't in some way, shape, or form acknowledge that if they were asked. But it, it all goes back down to Albert Camus has this quote, it's the end of The Myth of Sisyphus. I'm paraphrasing it here, but he says, "The struggle towards heights, uh, is enough to fill any man's heart." And he's basically say- Like, it, it's literally the journey. It is Sisyphus relentlessly pushing that boulder up. He knows he's never gonna get it to the top, but it's the process of pushing that boulder up that's everything. When you think about life, if y- if your life is a timeline, right? Well, let's say you start going towards your goals when you're 18 years old or maybe 22 when you graduate college. So you have, like, 22. If you're lucky, you live till 75, 80, but probably you're gonna tap out at, like, 60. So 99.9% of, like, actual time, the metric of time, is going to be chasing the thing, and then you're gonna get it. So why in the world would it make sense to just be like, "Oh, I can only enjoy myself once I'm there"? Because you won the cosmic lottery to be alive, right? It's like one in 43 trillion or something. Like, you're winning the lottery multiple times to just be alive. And so why would you then be like, "Oh, I'm only gonna do what I have to do to enjoy a 0.000001% of my life," to be like, "Ah, I did it," and then probably after that you might be underwhelmed or depressed or something like that? I think you need to enjoy that 99.9%, and, and that is enough to fill a man's heart.

   4. CWChris Williamson54:47

      From the meditation retreat, one of the biggest takeaways I had was for many of us, goals are contracts to self-criticize until we succeed. Like running away from a monster that never gets tired, this contract makes permanent success necessary to avoid being swallowed by misery. Like desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

   5. JFJett Franzen55:06

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson55:07

      And yeah, you're right. Almost all of your time is gonna be in the pursuit and, and what that means is you are going to be underwhelmed. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink, and that is why I'm such a huge fan of Timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover effectively changes even if your habits stay strong. Mitopure from Timeline contains the only clinically validated form of urethelin A used in human trials. It promotes mitophagy, which is your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones. In studies, this supported mitochondrial function and muscle strength in older adults. It's not about pushing harder, it's about actually supporting the cellular machinery underneath your training. If you care about staying strong into your 30s, 40s, and 50s and beyond, this is foundational. Best of all, there is a 30-day money back guarantee, plus free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. And right now you can get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout.

7. 56:31 – 1:08:59

   Progress vs Position: What Matters More?

   1. CWChris Williamson56:31

      Have you ever seen, uh, Scottie Scheffler, the golfer talk-

   2. JFJett Franzen56:36

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson56:36

      ... about what happens when he won the championship?

   4. JFJett Franzen56:37

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson56:38

      That's one of the few pattern breaks-

   6. JFJett Franzen56:39

      Yes

   7. CWChris Williamson56:40

      ... in somebody winning.

   8. JFJett Franzen56:41

      I know exactly what you're ta- I made a video on it. I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.

   9. CWChris Williamson56:44

      Fucking awesome. So yeah, I mean, he wins the Masters or a Grand Slam, perhaps some huge illustrious title, and he gets to do the press juncture at the end. And he's sitting down and everyone's going, "Dude," like, "How's this gonna be?" Like, "How, how, how does this feel?" And yeah, he, he has a slightly surprising response.

   10. JFJett Franzen57:09

       End of the day, it's like I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I don't... I'm not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world because what's the point? You know, this is not a fulfilling life. It's, it's fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it's not fulfilling from a sense of like the deepest, you know, places of your heart. You know, there's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was gonna fulfill them in life, and then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world and then they're like, "What's the point?" And you know, I, I really do believe that because, you know, what, what is the point?

   11. CWChris Williamson57:42

       Perhaps if you could be satisfied simply by hitting the goal, you would kill yourself. That's the mo- most Jett Franzen response to that video that [laughs] I could ever... You, you... But you're not far off, right? Like the reason that the arrival fallacy exists and the reason that we have hedonic adaptation is that if the first time you had sex, you were done with sex for the rest of your life or the first time that you killed, uh, a deer, you would be satisfied with that. You wouldn't be chasing-

   12. JFJett Franzen58:10

       Yeah

   13. CWChris Williamson58:10

       ... the next piece of progress. Like-

   14. JFJett Franzen58:11

       Yeah

   15. CWChris Williamson58:12

       ... there's this, uh, dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A. Uh, uh, it's this line from the Buddha and, uh, a lot of people hear, um, uh, "Life is unhappiness," uh, like is one of the translations of this. But dukkha can actually be translated as, uh, unsatisfactoriness. Uh, so it's not... Sorry, uh, life is suffering. Like life is suffering is the line from the Buddha. But it can also... Dukkha could also be translated as life is unsatisfactoriness. Like-

   16. JFJett Franzen58:42

       Yeah

   17. CWChris Williamson58:44

       ... Morgan Housel has this story about when him and his family went away on holiday and he'd been planning this trip for ages and it was the first one that him and his wife had got to do with the kids and they, they knew exactly where they were going to sit at this resort. They, they, they'd looked at the menu in advance. They knew what drinks they wanted to get. They'd done everything. And they arrived and they sat down the first night and he thought about what the experience was like and he said, "Well, the drink was nice, but there was like a little bit too much ice in it and I probably should have got it blended as opposed to, as opposed to on the rocks. And like, it was really beautiful. The table that we chose was great, but like there was some sand between my feet and that, that sort of was irritating a bit. And I, I, I... Look, the veal was lovely, but the salmon also could have been a little bit better." And then he walks out onto the balcony and he has this thought like as they've arrived the first day that they're there and he's like, "This is so great. We should come back here next year." Like immediately in the process of enjoying the thing, he's already moving the goalposts-

   18. JFJett Franzen59:42

       Yeah

   19. CWChris Williamson59:42

       ... to the next thing.

   20. JFJett Franzen59:43

       Yep.

   21. CWChris Williamson59:43

       The experience is unsatisfactory and the, uh, enjoyment of the thing is primarily based around recreating the anticipation of it again during the experience of it. It's kind of deranged.

   22. JFJett Franzen59:57

       You know, I was... I... A couple months ago, I went out to eat dinner and I ordered a steak and they gave me a chicken and I was happy that they gave me the chicken because I was like, "Wow," I was like expecting the steak and I just got a chicken, which is like a curveball. And I started to realize that this is the, like, your, the ability... My, my, uh, my sophomore year AP US His- History teacher always had this quote, "Roll with the punches." You've probably heard that before. "Roll with the punches, guys. Roll with the punches." But truly that's one of the best skills to develop or personality traits. I don't, I don't know if it's, you know, genetic, but your ability to just go with the flow-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

       Mm

   24. JFJett Franzen1:00:37

       ... is, makes things so much better. My fa- I come from a very anxious family. My family's very anxious. They like to plan everything in advance and love them to death, but like sometimes it's like, wow, like we're... I feel like w- like we're suffocating the experience and it's one of those things where it's like i- if you just kinda let it happen Then you're gonna like it more. My brother is not a very anxious person and I always find that like being just in the presence of my brother when you're like going and doing things relaxes you and it's just like better. It's like if I could have anybody on a road trip with me-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:01:09

       Mm

   26. JFJett Franzen1:01:10

       ... it'd be my brother, 'cause he's just let me just go with the flow. It's not too serious. He just, he's very practical about the way that he approaches things. And yeah, I think life you just... I don't know, the expectations and wanting something to be a certain way, it kills it. And suffering lives so you have the expectation of how the world should be and which is personal to you and the reality of the world. The delta between those two points, that's where suffering lives.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:01:36

       Hmm.

   28. JFJett Franzen1:01:37

       Because you're like, "Well, it was supposed to be like this and it wasn't like that." And so in other words if you can just eliminate the expectations which in all fairness you probably can't eliminate expectations but you can at least lower your expectations, you'll be pr- pleasantly surprised-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:51

       It's only-

   30. JFJett Franzen1:01:51

       ... a lot of the time
8. 1:08:59 – 1:14:05

   Why Happiness Comes From Acceptance

   1. JFJett Franzen1:08:59

      exactly.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

      Have you looked at instrumental goods versus ultimate goods?

   3. JFJett Franzen1:09:03

      Mmm, maybe.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:09:04

      That stinks of a video that you should do. Uh, that's... I'm putting a request into the DJ for you to do a-

   5. JFJett Franzen1:09:10

      [laughs]

   6. CWChris Williamson1:09:10

      So, uh, instrumental goods, doing something for something.

   7. JFJett Franzen1:09:13

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:09:13

      Ultimate goods, doing something for, for itself.

   9. JFJett Franzen1:09:16

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:09:16

       And if you ask the why do you do that thing for any pursuit, eventually you get to an ultimate good, right? And typically it's something like to feel peaceful, to feel happy, to be loved, to be enough, to be able to rest. But instrumental goods are, uh, why'd you get up and go to the gym? Well, to have a good body. Well, why do you want a good body? It makes me feel fit. Well, why do you wanna feel fit? And you just keep on going down, down, down, down, down to something close to an ultimate good. And my concern for a lot of people, including myself, is that we live instrumental lives. Our entire lives are instrumental.

   11. JFJett Franzen1:09:52

       Yep.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:09:53

       We are doing the thing to do the thing to get the thing, to do the thing to get... As opposed to a radically revolutionary belief, which is maybe I can just sidestep all of this and go straight to the ultimate. Like, what is the f- what is the feeling that I'm trying to get? And typically it's a feeling, and this is another idea that I've been so fucking obsessed with, and it came out of the, it came out of the meditation retreat last week that if, as a guy, you pray at the altar of, "Fuck your feelings, just work harder," how can you be surprised when you achieve but you don't feel?

   13. JFJett Franzen1:10:31

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:10:32

       Like, the route that has gotten you there, the fuel that has arrived you at the destination-

   15. JFJett Franzen1:10:37

       Yeah, no, mm-hmm

   16. CWChris Williamson1:10:37

       ... has robbed you of the satisfaction of being there.

   17. JFJett Franzen1:10:39

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:10:40

       And that to me is just... It's this game, it's this game that's always going to be played, and what we've done, I'm gonna sound incredibly left-wing here, in modern society with the meritocracy and capitalism, is we've encoded, we have, uh, like canonized and, and, and created an architecture of pushing the hedonic adaptation button as much as possible. It's a, it's an instrumental life. It is an instrumental life. Why do you want a, a, the next rung on the job ladder? Why is it that you want that? Well, a bigger paycheck, and I'm gonna get more respect from people. And it's like, but what are you sacrificing? Oh, I'm gonna be homeless with my kids, and my relationship might suffer, and I'll have sleepless, and my health might degrade. But like, you know, the, the thing.

   19. JFJett Franzen1:11:23

       Exactly.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:11:23

       Like, what about the thing? And yet it is radically revolutionary to just go, "Fuck it," like, "I'm good."

   21. JFJett Franzen1:11:32

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:11:32

       "I'm good. I like, I like this. I like where I'm at."

   23. JFJett Franzen1:11:35

       The scariest place to be, and this is what... This is my biggest fear. I, I'm absolutely horrified of it, is waiting all day for 5:00 PM, all week for Friday. You wait each summer for the winter and so on and so forth. It's like, you've probably heard those people say, "Oh, you know, once I, once I graduate high school, then I'll be away from my parents, then I can do what I want. Oh, well, now I'm in co- I, I just got, I just gotta finish college. I finish college up, and then you know what? I'm gonna go travel the world." But you know what? Then, then they graduate college. "Ah, I, I gotta work on my career right now. I just..." And it's al- there's always something. There's always something, and then you never live your life. And there is a talking point online where people will say happiness is just not wanting any moment to be anything other than what it is. You're not-

   24. CWChris Williamson1:12:23

       Not wanting things to be different.

   25. JFJett Franzen1:12:24

       Yeah. You're, you're not stuck in the past. You're not anxious about the future. You're fully accepting the moment. If you go outside and there's construction, and it's like really loud, this goes back to what we were talking about before. It's like you had the expectation that there was a world that existed that there-

   26. CWChris Williamson1:12:39

       There was no construction

   27. JFJett Franzen1:12:39

       ... wouldn't be construction, and the fact that there is construction, the delta between those two points, that's where you're suffering and you're getting pissed off.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:12:45

       You know what's an interesting indicator, early indicator of this? How much somebody complains.

   29. JFJett Franzen1:12:50

       Mm.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:12:50

       Somebody who complains a lot-
9. 1:14:05 – 1:19:54

   Escaping the Victim Mindset

   1. CWChris Williamson1:14:06

      There's this, uh, little essay that I want to read to you. "Don't wait. Life is happening right now. I've become obsessed with the belief that life's duties will one day be out of the way and then you can finally start doing the thing you want to and living your life. It's a myth. It's a lie." Marie-Louise von Franz talks about the provisional life. She says, "There is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being, one is doing this or that, but there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about." Similar to another idea called deferred happiness syndrome, the common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death. It's strange, I regularly have this sense of foreboding and guilt about time slipping away, that I'm not making enough of my days, especially when I look back on a week and I know that I've done things and dedicated myself to pursuits and working hard, but I can't fully recall how I spent my time. So I worry that this is just a one week microcosm of how I look back on my entire life as time having passed but me not really noticing it, of existence occurring but living not actually having got going.

   2. JFJett Franzen1:15:20

      Wow. You know, I, I... When I was in later years of high school, I was trying to save up money for college, so I picked up all these jobs. One of the jobs I picked up was, you know, that stereotypical factory job, and I was in Chicago. It's middle of winter, freezing. I'm working the graveyard shift, so middle of the night. And I worked this job, and I remember I would sit there and I'd be, like, pissed off because all my peers, all the people that I knew, none of them were working a fraction as hard as me.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:15:54

      Mm.

   4. JFJett Franzen1:15:54

      And I knew their parents were gonna pay for their college or whatever it is. They, they were living life up.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:15:59

      That's the temptation of the victim mindset.

   6. JFJett Franzen1:16:01

      Yeah, exactly. And so, well, I felt it... I was the victim mindset because I would be... It would be 1:00 a.m. and I'm in this trailer lifting heavy boxes. It's like 30 degrees in this tra- because they, they literally don't have heaters.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:16:14

      Mm.

   8. JFJett Franzen1:16:14

      And I'm like, "Life just sucks, man." Like, I'm, I'm just, like, sitting there. I'm like, "Why, why does this gotta happen?" Whatever. And there was every once-- Most of the time you'd be alone, but every once in a while you'd work with another person, and this... I became friends with this other guy, and me and him, it was like the double the victim mindset. But he was kind of playful with it, which I liked. He was like-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:16:32

      Mm-hmm

   10. JFJett Franzen1:16:32

       ... you know, "Life is so fucked," and then we'd joke about how fucked it was or whatever. And, you know, I, I remember, like, sitting there and I w- and I built up resentment because I was like, "Man, these other people, they're not working as hard as me. I'm, I'm just trying so much more than them." And yeah, and that went on for, for years, and that wasn't the only job I had. I was working three jobs over the summer. I was just constantly doing stuff, and then we get to college and these people, I had better grades than them and they would go to a nicer school because they could afford it, and I'm like, "Ah, man."

   11. CWChris Williamson1:17:00

       Mm.

   12. JFJett Franzen1:17:01

       "Man, I really keep drawing the, the short end of the stick." Joe Rogan, he has this, this one clip. I don't think it's, like, viral or anything, but he's like, he's like, "Those people that always say, 'I can't catch a break,'" he's like, "You need to get away from those people." I can tell you as someone who used to be that person, you need to get away from those people because like you're saying, if you complain that th- this is... All of a sudden you're just making your life worse. And then I eventually, I ended up, like, it was super cliché, but ended up reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and I was like, "Wow," like, "this is, this is incredible."

   13. CWChris Williamson1:17:30

       It's the ancient Clean Your Room by Jordan Peterson.

   14. JFJett Franzen1:17:32

       Yeah, exactly. So it's like, okay, um, and then even- like, you know, and I, and I sort of was that way for a while. I mean, it w- it was years. It wasn't like I just flipped a switch and boom, now I'm not victim mindset anymore. It was, well, let me take a hard look on my life. I have no friends. I have nothing going for me. I'm just going to school, minding my business, and that's it. Okay, we need to make some, some sort of change. And to amplify this, what makes everything so much worse is that for millennia, the only people you compared yourself to were the other people in your tribe, right? You couldn't, you couldn't know what was going on with Kelsey when she was studying... Like, you di- you didn't know. You didn't, we didn't have Instagram.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:18:09

       You didn't know what was going on in the fucking valley over.

   16. JFJett Franzen1:18:11

       Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:18:11

       It was a, a 30 person pod in 150 person Dunbar group. That's it.

   18. JFJett Franzen1:18:15

       Exactly. And so what's happened is social media just rapidly hit us. Our brains have not psychologically adapted to under- to, to comprehend this. So a guy like you, you get millions, potentially billions of views every month. It's like all of a sudden all these people have opinions on you. But more than that, what do you do? You, you doom scroll. Everyone doom scrolls to some extent or you're going online. And what does, what does online feed you? The top 1% of everyone. You're, you, you're seeing the most attractive people, the funniest people, the richest people, the most well-spoken, articulate people, and on and on, and then you're like, "Wow, my life sucks." Like, I re- like, I was sitting down there and it would be like Andrew Tate starts getting popular. Like, like, I see the Nelk Boys. Like, everyone just seems to be living this amazing life, and it would really piss me off because you, you see these degenerates and you're, and I was, "Why do they get that? That's not fair." Like, they're not doing anything that's worthy of You know, making all this money or having all this attention and being in the public eye. And I wanted that, and I wanted it bad. And it literally wasn't until I actually let all that go that I was like, "You know what? I don't have resentment. I can accept that I am who I am." All of a sudden, all those things started to fall into my lap. And it's like that's really how it works. You, you... I feel like you have to let go, kinda like what we were saying before, because otherwise in a way you're paralyzing yourself. You're not gonna take action.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:19:35

       Mm.

   20. JFJett Franzen1:19:35

       You, you're just gonna feel bad about yourself and have pity, and that's, uh, if you carry that on through your 20s, through your 30s, all of a sudden you're gonna be 35 years old and look back and be like, "Wow, I wish I woulda had the ability to just accept who I am." But you can't really blame- I, I mean, we're the first generation that's had this, so.

10. 1:19:54 – 1:29:40

    Protect What Makes You Unique

    1. CWChris Williamson1:19:54

       Can I give you a bit of advice for what I think is gonna come next for you?

    2. JFJett Franzen1:19:58

       Please.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:19:59

       So you've got yourself to the stage now where the wheels will start to spin on their own, and there will be a lot of opportunities that'll come your way, different things. Maybe I'm gonna start a business. You've already got an app, right? Well, I need to run the app. Like, that's important. I need to have a dev team. Like, well, we need to do marketing. Like-

    4. JFJett Franzen1:20:16

       Yeah

    5. CWChris Williamson1:20:16

       ... maybe we need to take some te- outside investment, and you'll start to take investor calls, and you'll maybe look at acquisition, and you'll start to pay a little bit of more attention to, well, there's a competing app that's just started. And, uh, well, you know, I, I, I, I need to make a little bit more money because my lifestyle should inflate because I'm, I'm growing up, and, like, I worked at this. Like, I worked hard. Do you not remember when I was doing the thousand videos and nobody watched?

    6. JFJett Franzen1:20:35

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:35

       Like, I should start to do some sponsors. And you'll take sponsor calls, and those will begin to rack up a little bit more, but they'll be worth money. And you'll do the just connect with me dinners, and you'll start to make more impressive friends. And one of the things that you need to be incredibly cautious of is not doing the thing that got you here. Now, you shouldn't hold onto the working modes that don't serve the principal output, so that's you don't need to, uh, play the game the way that you used to. But there are a few key, uh, areas of contribution that if you let those slide, all of the competitive advantage goes, and that for you is likely going to be reading. It's like if you don't protect your reading time, if you're not con- constantly feeding yourself with new ideas, you're going to become stale, and you're not gonna have new stuff to talk about. And what it's gonna feel like is growth. It's gonna feel like growth because all of the objective metrics are gonna continue to expand and continue to get better. But what made you differentiated was this very particular kind of obsession with learning interesting ideas, scrutinizing them, and then communicating them, right? That's kind of it.

    8. JFJett Franzen1:21:46

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:21:46

       Like, that's the engine. That's the engine that both me and you have used.

    10. JFJett Franzen1:21:50

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:21:50

        And maybe you'll get some staff, but you need to manage the staff. Like, that's kind of it. Well, well, yeah, you know, you've got a, an editor. Ah, fuck, the, the edit wasn't quite right on that thing, so I need to negotiate with him and, like, he needs his motivation ging up, so I, I'll take him out for dinner. And well, the editor needs an assistant, so, like, I might as well get him. And before you know it, you've built this very unwieldy spaghetti monster, and that's fine as long as you protect what the main thing was. And the reason that I say it is I've noticed as I've sort of swung to and fro on the show when I've protected the first couple of hours of the day, which is typically when I'll sit and when I'll read and when I'll think about stuff and I might do a little bit of writing. If I just get a few hours, maybe even just one hour of that, like, I'm nourished for the day. I'm continuing to have new ideas. I'm continuing to come up with stuff.

    12. JFJett Franzen1:22:37

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:22:37

        Everything feels fresh on the pod, and I go, "Oh, that's got fucking Scheffler video. Like, isn't that good? That, that's something to pull out."

    14. JFJett Franzen1:22:42

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:22:43

        Uh, that will be a temptation of growth. Now, it's a strange kind of paradox that the more leverage you have, the more distractions you have. And that sounds great because it allows you to not need to focus on things, but it can tempt you to not focus on the main thing. And the only thing that matters is keeping that, that little flame, that sort of kernel that was the beginning of the inspiration. Like, that's what's important, and if you do that, dude, you're gonna continue to fucking rip. But that's the thing that you need to protect. You have to, have to, have to protect your reading time. You have to protect your new idea time.

    16. JFJett Franzen1:23:15

        Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that, that's makes a lot of... Like, you just saying that, I'm like, "Yeah, I think you're right." And the, the, the reading and, and the researching was... That was what I think has allowed me from the get-go. I mean, obvi- Like, I was reading and researching well before I started making videos. And even when I started making videos, I was making more feel-good comedy videos. I wasn't doing philosophy or societal commentary or talking about the implications that X, Y, or Z event has on your life. I was just genuinely a kid that was interested in, in these things, more so classic books, not even necessarily philosophy. And all of a sudden it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna talk about this. Let's see if people like it," and then it happened. And so yeah, that's definitely my roots. So I think you're right. I definitely do need to save time. And, and it's hard 'cause I've been tr- you know, started to make a little higher value friends, started to do a little bit of traveling. Not a lot, but I'm like, "Hey, it's easy for me to no longer read," or, "I'm tired on the flight."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:24:17

        Mm-hmm.

    18. JFJett Franzen1:24:17

        "So I'm just gonna put my head down when that's, like, a prime opportunity where I can't really do anything else," so.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:24:22

        And that's what you would have done in the past as well.

    20. JFJett Franzen1:24:24

        Yeah, exactly.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:24:25

        And the limited amount of motivation that you have, which everybody does have, uh, that becomes degraded by having to do things that aren't the main thing.

    22. JFJett Franzen1:24:35

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:24:35

        Like, last year I did 100,000 miles, so it's like three times around the world. This year so far we're not even... We're just about halfway through the year, and I've done, like, 70,000 miles on flights. And, like, that was not what I was doing when I first started the show.

    24. JFJett Franzen1:24:49

        Yeah.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:24:49

        Which means that I need to be even more aggressive at protecting some areas of my time at a time when there's more, uh, compelling seductions that are gonna pull you away. So Alex talks about, you know the scene in The Matrix where, uh, Neo is first brought into it, and he's walking down the street, and there's a woman in the red dress?

    26. JFJett Franzen1:25:07

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:25:07

        And Morpheus says, "Neo, were you paying attention to me or were you paying attention to the woman in the red dress?" And he says, "Like again?" He turns around. It's Agent Smith with a gun.

    28. JFJett Franzen1:25:16

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:25:16

        He says, "Okay." Being able to say no, your capacity to say no is not looking at the woman in the r- red dress. But now imagine as you get more successful that it's not a hypothetical 10, it's 1,000 hypothetical 1,000s.

    30. JFJett Franzen1:25:31

        Yeah.
11. 1:29:40 – 1:36:57

    How to Use Ego As a Strength

    1. JFJett Franzen1:29:40

       Yeah.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:29:40

       Kanye West's got this thing. It's like there's a Metro Boomin edit, which I've never been able to refind again, but, um, it's Kanye West talking about how, uh, people say that they loved the work that I did in the beginning, but they didn't love it back then, though.

    3. JFJett Franzen1:29:58

       Yeah. Yep.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:30:00

       Like, uh, every time, like I'm cracking you a smile in 2023, but I'm giving you a frown for 2013. And, um, it's just, a- a-- you know, Ye's vacillated somewhat over the last few years. Uh, but-

    5. JFJett Franzen1:30:18

       Yeah, I mean, growing up North Chicago, always been the biggest Kanye West fan. Always. Like that dude, that-- His concept of self-belief, I would literally go to... I'm not, I'm not even making this up. It sounds cringey. I would go to sleep with a compilation of Kanye West basically being a narcissist.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:30:37

       [chuckles]

    7. JFJett Franzen1:30:37

       I just, I just loved it. I just loved the way this guy would talk about himself. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that, because, man, everybody hates... So narcissism, the way that I look at this, is that I think everybody's a narcissist, but it's a spectrum, and there's a healthy side of it, and there's an unhealthy side of it. And what society calls narcissism or that person's a narcissist, they're specifically referring to the more extreme end of that spectrum where it's dangerous, where you negatively impact other people's lives. But innately, humans are selfish creatures.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:31:09

       Mm.

    9. JFJett Franzen1:31:09

       We always have our own best interests at hand, with the exception of maybe, you know, you're a parent, so you're looking out for your kids or a loved one. But I've made videos on this, very unpopular, as you could assume. And I just think If you lean into your narcissism in a healthy way, which sounds crazy, but that is the ultimate propeller to where you wanna go. So imagine you're climbing a mountain and, you know, very metaphorically, the mountain is where you wanna go in life. You're wearing a backpack. You could either have an empty backpack, which is just having a neutral sense of self. You could have rocks that are put in the backpack, which is self-doubt or any way that you think that maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome. "Oh, I'm not, I'm not that guy." Or you could have self-belief. You could lean into your narcissism in a healthy manner, and that backpack turns into a jetpack, and then it propels you up that mountain.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:32:02

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JFJett Franzen1:32:02

        And so I've recognized that, like growing up, people have always, always been like, "Jett, you, you got... You're a little bit of a narcissist." Not that I would ever negatively impact other people, but it was more like, "You're very self-absorbed, very self-absorbed." And I said, "Well, I have to bet on myself. That's the only workable solution, I think."

    12. CWChris Williamson1:32:20

        Hmm.

    13. JFJett Franzen1:32:20

        It's the only workable solution. You have to lean into every aspect of yourself, build up that belief system. Not that you should walk around saying, "Wow, I'm more valuable of a human than that person."

    14. CWChris Williamson1:32:31

        Hmm.

    15. JFJett Franzen1:32:31

        Not... That, that's not what I'm talking about at all, but you need to just relentlessly try to increase your self-belief because everything regresses to the mean in life, and the mean is your identity, right? And your iden- like, your self-belief creates that identity. And so I think that you have to figure out, okay, what is, what is the healthy narcissism and how do I accomplish that? Because these people that try to be... It's kinda what we were saying before. The, the really humble ones, a lot of them are coping. A lot of them are coping for the fact that they didn't go where they wanted to be. This is a very unpopular opinion within my family. They don't like when I talk about this, 'cause my... I, I come from a humble family and I'm not really like them.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:33:12

        Hmm.

    17. JFJett Franzen1:33:12

        But you ha- you have to bet on yourself. You have to think that you're capable of doing this. I told my, my best friend when I was going to do the social media thing, I said, "I don't know what it is about this. I've failed at all the other things that I've tried in my life, but there's something about this. I just, I believe I could, I can do it. I just know if I don't quit, I can do it." It's funny, once I started gaining two to three followers a day, I was 100% certain that I was gonna hit 100K because I told myself I literally would not quit until I hit 100K, and there's enough days that I'm gonna live [chuckles] to hit that.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:33:42

        Well, the interesting thing about survivorship bias is that survivorship bias assumes that you die before you win.

    19. JFJett Franzen1:33:48

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:33:49

        And if you just don't stop, eventually you've rolled the dice enough times to have something that hits.

    21. JFJett Franzen1:33:55

        Yes.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:33:56

        Uh, on the ego humility thing, it's interesting. Ego's quite antisocial and humility's quite pro-social in a way-

    23. JFJett Franzen1:34:03

        Yeah

    24. CWChris Williamson1:34:03

        ... in the way that it's interpretate- i- i- interpreted. That, um, ego causes people around you a lot of the time to have their own shortcomings and self-criticism thrown into harsh contrast. Uh, it also is quite confronting because people think, "Wow, he's gonna go do that thing. That leaves me behind. I don't want him to do that thing. If I can claw him back or if I can behind his back sort of vent about, 'Fucking who does Jett think he is?'"

    25. JFJett Franzen1:34:32

        Yeah.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:34:32

        "Talking about himself like that, too. That's not even gonna work."

    27. JFJett Franzen1:34:35

        Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:34:35

        "Like, that's fucking lame," or whatever, in the hopes that that might just slow it down. Whereas humility, even performative humility, is seen as, "Oh, he's got his feet on the ground. It's, it's nice that he's not, not got too big for his boots."

    29. JFJett Franzen1:34:49

        Yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:34:49

        This is very much a, a, a British concern that someone who thinks too highly of themselves is really not liked. Like, it's very, very-
12. 1:36:57 – 1:51:31

    Don’t Let the Fear of Having Self-Belief Hold You Back

    1. CWChris Williamson1:36:57

       Have you looked at ascending in the incel community? Do you know what that word means?

    2. JFJett Franzen1:37:02

       Ascending, like-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:37:02

       Ascending

    4. JFJett Franzen1:37:03

       ... like just getting better in life?

    5. CWChris Williamson1:37:04

       Y- y- uh, ki- getting laid typically or getting attention from women on the sort of lower end. So if you're inside of some of the incel communities, I think most of them, uh, ascending would be getting attention from women. Maybe even as little as the barista in Starbucks, her eyes sort of lingered on me a little bit longer, then I think may- maybe she was flirting with me. And ascending is You're seen as persona non grata if you do that inside of the incel community. And the reason I think that's the case is that if somebody that I saw as my equal who was afflicted with the same, uh, issue that I believe that I have is able to bring themselves out of this issue, that now makes it pot- the, the potential for hope for me becomes, uh, uh, it's brought into reality. And that means that now maybe the fact that I feel like I'm afflicted with this thing is not a life sentence, but it's actually inside of my control, and I have agency over this, and the fact that I haven't gotten out of this problem. So they're seen, they're literally seen as fake cels. As somebody who ascends is s- ... Well, you weren't truly an incel. You weren't like us. So there's an immediate othering of somebody who doesn't comport with the same issue that everybody else has. It couldn't be that everybody has the potential to do this. It has to be that that person wasn't a part of our group in the first place. And, uh, yeah, I, I, when you think about the, how much people are held back by the fear of others judging them for having self-belief, I think that far more people fail due to a lack of support than a lack of competence. And if you just had a couple more people in your life that believed in you, you'd probably be able to get 10 times further.

    6. JFJett Franzen1:38:56

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:38:57

       There's a line from George Mack, my housemate, that says, "There is a guy out there with half your talent and five times your self-belief making 10 times the money."

    8. JFJett Franzen1:39:04

       Yep.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:39:05

       And it's just, yeah. Yeah.

    10. JFJett Franzen1:39:09

        Well, I think, and the way that I look at it in, in the, the support side of things is honestly, fuck support. Like, it'd be ni- it's nice to have it, but I'm gonna go to where I wanna go regardless. And all, all those nights, those consecutive nights where I would stay up till 4:00 AM just grinding-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:39:27

        Mm-hmm

    12. JFJett Franzen1:39:28

        ... whether or not my friend who lives on... You know, my family moved out of my hometown, and I don't live, I haven't been to my hometown in years, and I don't talk to those people that much anymore. So if they support me or not, I could give a fuck, and then I have no friends where I moved. And so it's like, okay, I'm just gonna do this on my own, because like you were say- like we were talking about before, it's like optimal game theory. Okay, you got dealt shit cards. I'm not saying I got dealt shit cards, but you're not in the optimal position now, so what, are you gonna fuss about it or are you gonna, like, just do something? And it's interesting you talk about the idea that, oh, if you see someone else doing it, then it's like, oh, you know, I have agency, I can do it. People really don't wanna support you if you do well because, especially if they grew up near you, because s- you, you, you become a mirror to them, right? If I come from the same place as other people and then more or less got the same opportunities, we go to the same school. But now they go on Instagram, they see that Jett is getting some views, he's getting recognition, get put in the public eye, whatever. That's gonna tell them, "Well, I'm really no different than Jett. We came from the same place. He's there, I'm not." So now they get, you know, pissed about it and they're projecting and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I hate this guy." 'Cause you were talking about the incels, and I have, I had a YouTube channel. I started it at the beginning of this year, and it gained traction pretty fast. I got, like, 200,000 subscribers in the first two and a half, three months, and I became very popular amongst that sort of underground people that felt like the system was against them community.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:41:02

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JFJett Franzen1:41:03

        And a lot of that community is incels. And of course, I never went on these, on my YouTube videos and said, "Oh, I'm an incel." I never claimed that or anything like that. But what happened was long s- and, and in my videos I would talk about, I mean, yeah, like, naturally if I have a lot of followers on Instagram, yeah, girls are gonna slide into my DMs. I wasn't being cocky about it.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:41:24

        Mm.

    16. JFJett Franzen1:41:24

        But I, there's really no good way to address it because they'll be mad if you don't address it, because then they're like, "He's lying."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:41:30

        Yeah.

    18. JFJett Franzen1:41:30

        And if you do address it, then you're seen as cocky, so you gotta, you gotta-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:41:33

        You know, if you addressed it and had said that there were no girls in your DMs, that would've been fine.

    20. JFJett Franzen1:41:38

        Well-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:41:39

        It would've been fake, it would've been a lie, but it would've been fine. That would've been like, oh, actually, yeah, okay.

    22. JFJett Franzen1:41:44

        But-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:41:44

        I'm, I'm not thrown into harsh contrast

    24. JFJett Franzen1:41:45

        ... are, are you familiar with the term LARPing?

    25. CWChris Williamson1:41:47

        Yeah.

    26. JFJett Franzen1:41:47

        So e- everyone's like, "Oh, Jett's, Jett's like the biggest LARPer ever," because what ended up happening was... And I never, this is what I hate, I never lied about it. I was always truthful about my life. I become friends with this big influencer, very wealthy. I end up going to, um, his birthday party. It's on the East Coast. I go there, and so- I, th- there were some girls there. I don't know if they were Instagram models or whatever. They wanted to take a picture of me. It i- it w- it was not that deep at all. G- it goes on social media, and then I posted a video where I was like, oh, it was, like, kind of like a motivational video. If you work hard at a specific thing, you have to be smart about what you work hard on, because if you work hard in corporate, yeah, maybe life is not... You're, you're, you're not gonna be rich because you're selling your time for money. You can never get rich off doing that. You need, there needs to be the potential for, you know, an increase and an appreciation over time. But I went and I posted that video and, you know, my entire community turned their back against me. They, they, they had a, they were throwing a shit show. They were mad about it. And they were like, "Oh, this Jett guy, he's faking it. He's LARPing. He's too good-looking to have been socially excluded growing up." It's like, there's not a picture of... Like, I'll, I'll p- I'll give you my life savings right now if you can find a picture of me going to any school dance, prom. I didn't go to graduation. I didn't go to anything. I truly was isolated, but these people could not comprehend the fact that now that I started to level up in life, it's like you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, and they just came after me. And they were like, "This guy, he's 6'5"." Like, I never even lied about my height online. I just, when you go online and you just are like, "You're 6'5", that's like, oh, that's cocky, or they would say I'm lying.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:43:25

        [laughs]

    28. JFJett Franzen1:43:26

        So I was like, so I just, like, wouldn't mention it. I, I was on a very popular looksmaxxer stream, and they were, like, asking me how tall I was, and I was like, "I'm 6'5"," and everyone thought I was bullshitting. Everyone on the internet was like, "This dude's not 6'5"," and then a picture came out with me working out with some fitness influencers, and they're like, "Dude, this guy's 6'5"." Like, there's no way that he has life hard. It's like, what are you...? Like, so you can't win with these people.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:43:46

        Yeah.

    30. JFJett Franzen1:43:46

        But anyways They really were mad about me basically leveling up, and they're like, "Yeah, he always had friends." It's like, so this guy was an influencer. Why would you think that I would be friends with him before I ever started doing content? Or like, I don't know. But y- like you were saying about that whole, like, incel community, it's ki- kind of the same thing happened for me. But I've never been a part of the incel community. I've always been a part of the, okay, like, male loneliness epidemic. That, that was more my target audience.
13. 1:51:31 – 1:58:00

    Does True Authenticity Really Exist?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:51:31

       Well, the difference is between simulating what somebody else does and learning inspiration that can help you improve, right? The, the best that you can hope for if you're trying to be somebody else is to be the second-best in the world.

    2. JFJett Franzen1:51:44

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:51:45

       Right? At being them.

    4. JFJett Franzen1:51:46

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:51:47

       And you are the zeroth in the world at being yourself.

    6. JFJett Franzen1:51:50

       Naval Ravikant, he said, "You escape competition through authenticity."

    7. CWChris Williamson1:51:54

       Through authenticity, yeah.

    8. JFJett Franzen1:51:54

       And what's-- Oh, what's that? There's-- Peter Thiel has a quote where he s- ah, what is it? I made a video about this. I'm trying to think about it. He, he said, um, "Competition is for losers."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:52:06

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JFJett Franzen1:52:07

        And so, in other words, you're a loser if you're not being authentic, if you, if you correlate that with what Naval Ravikant said because-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:52:15

        Yeah

    12. JFJett Franzen1:52:15

        ... you know, you're, it, like, you beat competition by being authentic, so you beat being a loser by being authentic.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:52:21

        Yep.

    14. JFJett Franzen1:52:22

        And so I, I was like, wow, that's just, it's such a basic, simple thing, but people don't really internalize it. They don't understand it.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:52:27

        Authenticity is an interesting one because what everybody likes the idea of is seeing a person who is just being themselves. There's no filter. They're not playing a game. They're not trying to perform. They're not trying to finesse me into believing that they're something that they're not or pretend that they're not something that they are. But there's kind of a, there's, like, a, a, a window of tolerance that people are prepared to live inside of, and as soon as you get outside of it, what you realize is that the internet is desperate for authenticity, but it's allergic to sincerity.

    16. JFJett Franzen1:53:01

        Yeah. Mm, that's interesting.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:53:03

        Like, if you are genuinely sincere, genuinely earnest about something, like, you go through a hard time and you talk about it in, w- with some, a beautiful montage over the top, and it, it's sort of all fluffy and bubbly at the end, it's the why's question, right? Like, how deep do you go with the why? Whereas if you see a dude do an Instagram video and he breaks down crying in it, you go, "Oh, no, that's too much sincerity. I didn't, I wasn't that-- I have an aversion to that." And this kind of just goes to show how limited the internet's preparedness for empathy is and also how, uh, narrow most people's tolerance for an emotional window is. It's like you're allergic to somebody genuinely showing their emotions, especially when they're out of control. If it doesn't seem like they are in control of the way that they're operating anymore, that seems like a lack of congruence, a lack of competence. Uh, yeah, yeah. Internet is desperate for authenticity and allergic to sincerity.

    18. JFJett Franzen1:54:03

        You know, it's interesting. Robert Greene says that authenticity is bullshit and it doesn't exist, and I was thinking about that. And to-- I think when people say authenticity or that person is authentic, it's like, let's say there's a spectrum, and they're closer to their genuine self than the average person, and then you're like, "Oh, that person's authentic." But they're not truly, if you take it in the absolute sense of the word, they're not truly authentic because I think that would probably be social suicide, right?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:54:37

        Mm.

    20. JFJett Franzen1:54:37

        Like, if you-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:54:38

        Yeah

    22. JFJett Franzen1:54:38

        ... really just say what you believe. Listen, I was-- When I was in high school, this was the whole thing. I wasn't very well-liked when I was in high school, and kind of the reason was because I was-- Part of it was I was resentful. I started reading a lot of books and, and, and I got smart, and it's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. I thought I was, I was a lot smarter than everyone else, when in reality I really didn't know much. But a big thing was I really thought that honesty was completely virtuous, and just being as raw and as honest with someone was, like, the best thing you could do, which now is just not true. Like, now I know that to be not true. To give you an example, this is gonna make me-- This, this sounds crazy, and I do not-- Like, anyone that's listening to this, do not do this. But we were at a, uh, one of those football games on a Friday night, and I went there, and this girl probably, I think she was under the influence, and she was like, she, she just straight up asked me, "Do you think I'm pretty?" And I'm like, "Here we go with this, like, fishing bullshit." Like, I was, I was like, I was like, "No," but I didn't say it in a w- mean way. I was just like, "No," in a very neutral way. And she's like, "What do you mean? Do you think I'm ugly?" And I was like, "Yes," which is insanely immature. But that was how I felt, and I thought that that was okay, and also, I wouldn't go out of my way to say that to someone ever, but she asked me, so I thought it was the right way. That didn't go over well. So, that didn't go over well. I got a, a bunch of pushback, and I remember I would go home and I'd be like-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:56:01

        Pushback [chuckles]

    24. JFJett Franzen1:56:01

        ... "Oh, my God, these, these peop-" [chuckles] Yeah, pushback for whatever that means in high school. And, and, uh, and yeah, I mean, no wonder these people didn't like me. I think they were totally valid for not liking me. But I would go home and I would be like, "I was in the right there. I was in the right." But it's like, okay, what do you... Like, this is such kindergarten. Like, what... This is such-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:56:25

        Mm-hmm

    26. JFJett Franzen1:56:25

        ... psychologically infantile type of activity. I don't know.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:56:29

        Yeah. It... I mean, look, have you ever read Sam Harris' essay, Lying? It's an hour-long book. He wrote it-

    28. JFJett Franzen1:56:35

        I don't think so

    29. CWChris Williamson1:56:35

        ... he wrote it with his wife. It's fucking great. It's like a, a, a 60-page treatise on why you should never lie.

    30. JFJett Franzen1:56:40

        Wait, is this the one where he says, "If your wife is pregnant and she asks you if she looks good"? Oh, yes. I ha- I read that a long time ago.
14. 1:58:00 – 1:58:59

    Where to Find Jett

    1. CWChris Williamson1:58:00

       so dude, you're fucking awesome. I think everyone should go and subscribe to your channel. Where should people go to check out everything you got going on?

    2. JFJett Franzen1:58:05

       Uh, Jett Franzen with J-E-T-T, two Ts, on social media with Instagram, TikTok, and then, yeah, if you just search up my name on, on YouTube, it should show up. I think it's got, like, a... some other bullshit in the name, but just search up Jett Franzen, and you'll probably get, uh, 50 videos of people shitting on me, so that's all. [laughs]

    3. CWChris Williamson1:58:26

       I, well, I searched you, and it seems to be your content, and your stuff rules. I think you're great, man, and, uh, keep going. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be watching. I'm gonna be supporting from the sideline. Shout out your dad as well. Shout out Justin.

    4. JFJett Franzen1:58:37

       Yeah, shout out my dad.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:58:38

       Yeah.

    6. JFJett Franzen1:58:38

       Thank you so much for having me, bro. This is honest- this is an honor, seriously.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:58:41

       You crushed it, man. You crushed it.

    8. JFJett Franzen1:58:42

       Thank you.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:58:42

       All right. Goodbye, my beauties. See you next time. Bro, yes. Fucking yes, dude. Sick. Well done.

    10. JFJett Franzen1:58:49

        Dude, I enjoyed that. [laughs] I enjoyed that.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:58:53

        Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you'll love is just here.

Episode duration: 1:59:00