The Real Reason Your Life Is Still The Same - Angelo Somers

What does trying for 20 mean to you?

Um, as with most things people tend to do, it has a positive and negative side, um, I'm sure you're aware of that, um, the idea is just that, you know, when everybody else is trying for 10, you're gonna be the guy that tries for 20. And so the positive side of that is you can end up getting a lot done, you can end up building a podcast with a billion plays, um, but the negative side of it is, uh, you're constantly anchoring your actions and your behaviors to what you see other people around you doing. Um, so, in some sense it kind of reduces your freedom but, um, can increase your actual output, or at least like what you're managing to achieve.

Mm-hmm.

So it's kind of like this comparative, competitive, sort of testosterone maxing thing where you're just like, "Whatever the other guy does, I'm gonna do more."

Mm-hmm.

Um, I think it was in the Hormozi episode or something when it came to meditation, it was something like, "However much everyone else is meditating for inner peace, I'm gonna meditate more." And it's like, you, if you're a hammer everything is a nail, and so if that's the type of guy you are, you're probably gonna achieve a lot of cool stuff, um, but yeah, you might not be the happiest while you're doing it, but you never know, maybe you will be as well.

Because the position is always lack, it's always, you always feel behind the eight ball and you're trying to catch up.

Mm-hmm.

Not only do you need to be better than everybody else, but you have set your sights so much higher than them, double-

Yeah.

...that you're always going to be setting a, uh, chasing an unrealistic opportunity.

100%. And also you're living in a reactive state, right, like you're, you're not actually affirming something that's like an internally generated idea of what you should be doing with your time, you're just reacting to the environment, oftentimes out of like a sense of lack or a fear. I mean, we have these like adaptive personalities that we create where we'll, like something bad will happen and then, um, I don't know, maybe like you're kind of outcast in school, that was my example-

Mm.

...and then you kind of create this adaptation which is like, okay, to avoid that sort of pain you're gonna do everything you can to not be in that position again-

Mm.

...which often means just doing better than the next guy. Um, but the problem, you, you can end up just getting really good at shit you don't actually care about, um, or making a lot of progress along a dimension that you wouldn't have otherwise pursued.

What line- Give me an example.

Um... Well, I was just in LA, and I feel like this is a hub of that, um, there's a lot of people sort of playing the status game. It seems to be like the, the center of the status game in, in many ways. Um, and oftentimes it's to overcome a sense of lack. Um... But you know, Nietzsche always spoke about like creating your own values, um, and there's kind of a lot of debate about the extent to which you're actually capable of doing that. Um, people like Peterson are kind of saying, like, "You can't do it," Jung says, "You can't do it," um, but I think it's because there's, it's not because we're actually confused about what we mean when we say values or like the capacity, um, or where they come from, it's because we're generally quite confused about this term you. Like I, like what actually is that? What's the scope of it?