All right, what's happening? People, welcome back to the show, it is the 900 episode of Modern wisdom. Big number. Didn't think that I would do 902 anything. I don't know whether I ever have done 900 of anything, but today, I'm going to go through some lessons. I've learned over the last hundred episodes from life, and from reading, and from the show, and from other stuff. So you can get to learn that. You're also going to get to indulge in this beautiful facial hair for a while. I don't know how long this mustache will last, so
it's a limited time offer for you to be able to enjoy it. So bask in the reflective Glory of my upper lip, and let's get into it. So, the first one, I was trying to put a name to this idea for a while, and I came up with unteachable lessons. It's a special category of lesson one that you can't discover without experiencing it firsthand. So there is a certain subset of advice but for some reason, we all refuse to learn through instruction.
No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it's going to be for us to find out for ourselves. We prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings that we get from our elders and songs and literature and historical, catastrophes, and public scandals. And instead we think some version of yeah, that might be true for them but not for me, we decide to learn the hard lesson.
Ins the hard way over and over again and unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things to. It's never insight about how to put a level shelves or charmingly, introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our Lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about things, like money, won't make you happy or fame won't fix yourself.
Worth or you don't love that pretty girl. She's just hot and difficult to get or nothing is as important as you think it is. When you're thinking about it, you will regret working too much. Worrying isn't improving your performance. All of your fears are a waste of time. You should see your parents more, you'll be fine after the breakup and you'll be grateful that you did it.
It's perfectly. Okay? To cut toxic people out of your life and even listening to that list back. I find myself sort of rolling my eyes at how fucking tried it is because they are all basic bitch, obvious insights that everybody has heard before, but if they're so basic. Why does everybody so reliably fall? Prey to them consistently throughout our lives and if they're so obvious.
Obvious. Why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy? I lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to Proclaim those facts with the sort of renewed, grandiose ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious Revelation.
It's
strange that stuff, everybody kind of accept as being true. We all are surprised about when it happens to us and the other thing
Is it is a very contentious list of points to send the internet. So if I have an interview with the billionaire who says that, all of his money didn't make him happy or a movie star, who says that her Fame felt like a prison. The internet, quite reliably will tear them apart to being ungrateful and out of touch. Don't, you know that there's people that are struggling. Oh my God. How tone-deaf could you be? So, not only do we refuse to learn
learn the lessons. We even refused to hear the message from the people warning us about them. And even more than that, for every single one of those lessons, if I think a little bit deeper, I can probably recall the time including right, now where I convinced myself that I was the exception to the rule that my particular mental makeup, or life situation or historical, wounds, or dreams for the future.
Render me immune to these lessons being applicable? No, no, my unique in a landscape. Would be fixed by skirting around some of the most well-known wisdom of the ages. It's like, no, no, no, I can thread. This needle properly. Watch Me dance through this Minefield and avoid all of the trip wires that everyone else has kicked.
And then you kick one.
And you then share a sort of, knowing luck with someone else who also learned one of these unteachable lessons. And it's the kind of luck that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in the exact same way. And a little voice in the back of your mind will say,
I told you, so.
and these unteachable lessons I guess play into a broader idea of
There's certain areas of life that you just can't expedite. I wonder whether it's because it's so alluring, you know, Fame sexiness adoration money. The distraction of doing something that isn't seeing a parents and forgetting how sort of time moves. And one day, they're going to be gone.
A lot of those lists that list of questions and point all play on things that we really really want stuff. That feels urgent. They get in the way of things that are maybe more important and you will reliably kick the tripwires of many of those throughout your life. And I get the sense that this is a unique category of lesson that just comes along for the ride as a
To getting older that trying to expedite it trying to get there a bit quicker, maybe you can do it. But there's very few people, I know who have been able to say, I don't want the pretty girl who's difficult to get. I don't want money Fame. I don't get distracted from seeing my parents. I don't work too much without burning myself up first. There's very few people who get to that realization without having been burned so painfully and maybe that's it as well. That the
Allure of the success of these things are the distraction away from stuff. That's important is so strong that it takes a ridiculously painful event to actually drive the nail into the coffin of whatever this lesson is. But yeah, unteachable lessons, I think it's sort of. When you see it, you can't unsee it and I'm watching them pop up everywhere. I do think as well, the sort of audience that listens to Modern wisdom is cool. Because the nuance and
Bility to sit with this person who's rich is saying, that being rich didn't fix their problems. That makes me who wants to be richer feel upset, which like everybody, right? Everybody wants to be richer than they are. And there's only a few people who have said, I've reached like fuck you money escape velocity post-money life, but I don't see that so much on the channel anymore, which is good and makes me feel proud of you. So, hooray. Well done another lesson. This was
One of my favorites I've been trying to put a name to for ages as well. I'd been trying to work out what sort of friends I wanted to spend the most time around and whether they were charismatic or sort of engaging or what it was about them, that made them magnetic to me. And I came up with this idea called reverse Charisma. So Jennie Jerome, who is Winston Churchill's mother? Who was Winston Churchill's, mother dined with both Prime.
Benjamin Disraeli and his rival. William Gladstone on consecutive nights back-to-back and she got asked about her impressions of the two different men. She said when I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought that he was the cleverest man in England, but when I sat next to Disraeli I left feeling like I was the cleverest woman and I think most people assume that they want to be charismatic, they want that energy to be compelling enough.
Stories to be electric. You want to walk into a room and everybody be impressed magnetized to them. But when I started to think about the friends, I love and want to spend the most time with, they didn't necessarily have Charisma, they had reverse Charisma and I guess the question is why do certain people make us feel boring? But others don't. Why is it that we feel full of stories and
Operation around some people, but around others. We've got nothing to say and we try to assess other people based on how interesting they are. Because of that we miss a much more important issue which is how interesting they make us feel like how engaged is this person, how much of us can they tolerate? And how much of our reality can they handle without us having to edit ourselves? How encouraging? And
And are they in, how much do they make us? Want to dig deeper and talk more and how comfortably can we sit in silence without needing to fill it? But basically how much of us did they get?
And if it's not a lot then we're never to be going to be cautious and a person feels interesting precisely to the extent that they have become familiar and at ease with the things that are extreme and sad and dark and agonizing and shameful and joyous and exciting. And if they are at home with their own strangeness, then they help us to feel at home with ours where
Have gone. We can follow what they have felt safe exploring in themselves. We will be able to safely unpack around them.
And this was the sort of realization that architecting. Your charisma is a nebulous and Scrappy tasks that autistic pickup artists gave themselves existential crises failing at but building reverse Charisma is something that anyone can do by being curious and patient and encouraging.
Some people feel interesting. Some people make us feel interesting and there's a place for both, but on average, our favorite people at the latter, not the former, and it's way easier to be someone who makes people feel interesting than it is to be interesting.
Like
When you, that was the whole point with the pickup artist movement that they had these flowcharts and five-step plans for if she's going to, I'm going to open and then I'm going to twist a lemon and a neg neg, The Kino escalation and dude he all of this to try and come across as somebody who's interesting. There was this study done where they asked a study participant to take a flight in a plane and somebody sat next to them and that was one of
Plants. The plant was told that they needed to keep the person talking to the entirety of the flight but not disclose any information about themselves. When they come off the plane, they asked the person who had been sat next to the plant. How was the flight? So it's brilliant actually. Really lovely? So don't, and what were the other passengers, I could. You sing a little survey to have it. Amazed at these gray conversations guy was so interesting. Okay, can you tell us their name?
Oh,
no. OK. We can you tell us whether we're from or what? They did or anything? They realize, no, but some people feel interesting. Some people make us feel interesting and
Maybe it's just a byproduct of the fact that so few people want to have a collaborative conversation and that a lot of the time it's this game of tennis where you're waiting for the other person to hit the ball so that you get your chance to hit the ball so that they get their chance to hit the ball as opposed to you trying to tee them up for the best shot that you can. We even tried to do this in a Gorge Max 30th in Miami. So we and the pickleball court in the house we were staying where everybody was at
And football and George used to do football freestyle. I'm aware it doesn't look like you used to do that, but I promise you is World Class of doing it. And I thought, well this would be really cool. So we can do sort of a game of foot tennis type thing and everyone was getting, we were all getting super competitive but it wasn't a very nutty wasn't really beautiful game. So I was like, yeah why don't we change the rules for a little bit? Why don't we just try and make the most beautiful game we can? So the whole point of the game was to keep the, put the ball into positions that yourself or the other team or the guy that was on your side.
Could do something cool with. So as opposed to trying to win you were trying to make it interesting and immediately judges responses. Yeah. Yeah. And then we can count how many we do. And we can see if we can get more and I'm like, no, you're fucking doing the dopamine thing again, that compulsion to sort of achieve, or to win, or to sort of Drive things. Forward is really really good, but it's not necessarily needed when you're sat around the dinner table with some friends. So
Just realizing that first off realizing it's not necessarily. Always your job to be the interesting one. It's other people's jobs to make you feel interesting by opening up questions to you, the cause you to think more deeply. Another one is that point round why to certain people do we have lots to say into others? We don't have anything at all. Is that your fault? Because you're the same person between these two different people. The difference is the people
So that suggests that the something going on within them that is causing you to feel more or less comfortable, with opening up about yourself. And on top of that, it means that the people who make you feel really comfortable or exciting and interesting, even though they don't actually need to be interesting. So anyway, I think reverse Charisma much easier way to be interesting and we could all do with cultivating a bit more of it. Jack butcher, another lesson from him, he came on the show for years.
Go something like that. He says, if more money wouldn't change how you spend your time, you're already rich and a similar Insight from James, clear to stop trading things, that matter for ones that don't. So, if you already live a comfortable life, then choosing to make more money. But liverwurst daily life is a bad trade and yet we talk ourselves into it all the time we take promotions that pay more, but swallow our free time, we already have a successful
Business. But we break ourselves trying to make it even more successful. There's too much focus on wealth and not enough, focus on lifestyle and those two lessons if moment he wouldn't change how you spend your time, you're already rich brings richness or being wealthy way closer to you. Now there's some people that have got a high materialism set point, maybe the way that their families showed love when they were young was through gifts Maybe.
Maybe they've got this sort of keeping up with the Joneses mentality, maybe they're in a very high net-worth neighborhood or something. And if that's you then you know, if you can't deprogram it, you're going to have to win a lot of money. Because in order for you to feel worthy, you're going to have to have material possessions, that sort of match that level. But if you're the sort of person who like, me doesn't have particularly expensive tastes and really if
My net worth doubled. All I would do is Maybe by slightly nicer coffee machine, I don't know. Like it does. I don't, there's nothing that's sort of in my mind where I think, oh my God, and I really love that thing. And that's been the case for probably a decade now, and it's not as if I've been Rich for a decade, but basically, if you don't have a lot of materialism in you, I think that's a competitive advantage. And I think that you can look at people who need lots of,
Ensive material possessions, as kind of, having a weird sort of curse that they need, there are very, very hungry animal, and they need to keep on feeding this beast in a way that you don't or basically their burn rate. For happiness materially is way higher than yours, and you can get away with it being 10% or 20% or whatever of this person because they need to have the new car. That's never more than two years old and they need to have the design shoes and it got to have the bag in the good.
I have to this and I think that realizing if making more money, wouldn't change much about how you live your life. You are already rich or if you can even see little glimmers of that, it's a good starting point. So anyway, I love, I love those too. And trading things that matter for ones that don't living a comfortable life losing.
Time or sanity for additional, even something that's super are between even more silly idea that James doesn't use a promotion, give getting a better job title, which has no material use, unless you're then going to cash that in for a better position at some point at some other company in future. I think if you offer people a 5% pay rise or a promotion in terms of their job title on average, more people choose the promotion, because
His status is one of these things that were just driven for, but you literally can't cash it in. Unless it's some point in the future, you managed to find a way to do it. So, yes, be careful about the focus on wealth, and not the focus on lifestyle. All right. Next one, deliberate deoptimization. How much should you try to optimize your life? Was a question that I ask myself. Sort of how much should you be thinking about ways to improve? How much should you care about things? And for many people, perhaps, even
Most people the answer to all of those questions is more. The world, largely belongs to the intense optimizers and not the laissez-faire guy, chilling in a hammock who hit snooze three times this morning. So telling people to optimize harder is a reliable way to improve the lives of most people, because most people need to be tightened up rather than loosened off. And being more obsessive will tend to deliver better results.
V in worldly success. Most advice is charitably given to people who need to think more carefully be more deliberate and work harder. The problem is, when this message lands with the wrong audience, The Perennial Perma optimizers, then it creates a world where over thinkers are convinced to think even more. And these people need loosening off, not tightening up and given the fact that you listen to this podcast or read my newsletter. I'm going to guess that you fall into this.
This category, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be obsessive and pay attention to detail. The problem arises, when you can no longer delineate between the very small number of things that matter enough to obsess over and everything else.
Assume that you have a small bucket of Pursuits which were important, you've probably learned that a very deliberate effortful optimized approach is a successful strategy. This Obsession and addiction begins to bleed into all other areas of your life and turning off. The tap of optimization is hard soon enough. The entire map is flooded with the same desire to always push for perfect. Your brain tells you
look at how effective your perfectionism has been in your professional life. Why don't we try and apply that to you? Your sleep routine and your training plan. Your love life in the house cleanliness and your toenails and it doesn't go well, one solution, I learned
about,
Actually, from the CTO of RP strength guy called Andrews a who works with. Mike is ratelle, is deliberate deoptimization. So you purposefully let areas which could be dialed in further Fall by the wayside in order to give your brain capacity to focus on the ones that really matter focusing on your pounds and not everyone else is pennies. Sure. You could have five credit cards with special cash back.
NASA's and capture all of the points for your air miles, but given that you're already close to capacity on the things to give a shit about list, is it wise to add yet another thing onto that sure your intra workout nutrition. Could probably be dialed in more with predigested grass-fed, whey and dextrose. But what if this takes your energy away from the key area of just hitting the gym five times a week?
In the same way you could spend all day watching the stock market instead of just investing in an index fund. But how much damage will this new candle graph? Addiction do to your relationship Oliver, Berkman inspired me with this thought recently, which is how much should you care about things question? How much should you care about things answer? I'm not sure, exactly. But I know that it's not the absolute maximum amount all the time for everything.
Basically not everything is a life-or-death situation and even if you know, this cognitively, you still behave, implicitly like it is so deliberately letting go of certain areas is a good way to give over. Thinkers like you and me more space to regain a little bit of Sanity. Basically the stress of trying to be perfect. We'll kill you more quickly than your imperfections and choosing
The very small bucket of things that are unbelievably important to you and that you want to have your obsession focus on. And when that habit that thought pattern that framing starts to appear in other areas of your life you just sort of notice it you got oh yeah that's that thing that I really love at work.
And really don't want in my relationship or in my sleep routine or in the way that I keep my house or whatever. So I'm just going to like thank you for that. And I appreciate you. I see you there but I don't really need to worry so much and it's difficult because you're going to be hypertrophy in this muscle in one very particular domain or a few particular domains and you're going to be trying atrophy the same muscle in other domains. And its really, really tough. This is a
Problem to be managed not a paradox to be solved. Perhaps that there is no point at which this is going to be stopped and just learning it like being on one of those Balance Board things, whether it's a sphere in the middle of it at no point. You actually at stasis, you're always just making little adjustments and I think maybe it's kind of like that this episode is brought to you by the RP hypertrophy app. This app has made a massive impact on my gains and enjoyment in going to the gym over the last year. It's designed by dr. Mike is retail and comes with over 45 premades.
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It up to $50 off the RP, hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below are heading to our peace, strength.com modern wisdom, using the code. Modern wisdom, a check out. That's our pea strength.com, such modern wisdom, and modern wisdom. A check out this next lesson. I think maybe the best thing I've written in probably about a year. So I listened to a podcast from Joe Hudson and he just blew me away with this Insight around productivity and it really
Concretize something that I've been thinking about for ages which I love and hopefully will be useful to you as well. I realized there's a very painful transition that everybody eventually needs to make in their career and their productivity journey to go from. Operator guy to idea guy at the beginning of your career, the only advantage that you have is your work rate because you've got no experience to draw on and any natural talent you have is capped by the
Fact you've got no experience to unlock it. So you just work hard to get ahead. You answer all of the emails. You take all of the would love to connect calls. You send the invoice, has write the copy High, the contractors everything. It's all you but eventually that stage of your journey expires, you need to let it go. Maybe you have saff to delegate to. Now, maybe you've been given a promotion and need to be thinking a more strategic high level.
Previously, a job is to work hard but not so much anymore. And Joe Hudson, says your job isn't to work hard. Your job is to have great ideas, but here's the problem.
You've spent an entire career acclimatizing yourself to getting stuff, done. You built a monster inside of you, which sucks in difficult, tedious, tasks, and spits out. Completed efforts, you've created a link between being busy doing things you don't want to do and success. The issue is it's really hard to work out what you truly want and determine whether or not you're moving toward it. But it's really fucking easy to
A number of emails that you sent or how many hours you spent on calls today, being busy is more satisfying than being effective.
And it's very hard to work out if your productivity efforts are actually useful. Or if they're just a dopamine fix that allows you to check the done box and feel like you completed something. So ask yourself is your job to press enter on emails or to actually move the mission forward and you can't confuse the first one for the second one. Another challenge is this level of busyness.
Helps to make you feel important. A full calendar is a hedge against existential loneliness. You think to yourself? There's no way that I can be an unwanted piece of shit. Look at how many calls I have today. Look at all the people who need my time and attention. I have to be important. I have to be valuable, please, please, please assuage my deep feelings of insufficiency. You are hooked on the dopamine of I got stuff done today, because even if this wasn't a
Great use of your day. At least you don't feel useless and you didn't have any time to consider that. You might not be fully actualizing a potential in any case, because you're drowning in fucking emails. Another challenge is that conspicuous busyness is much more societally, rewarded than quiet Effectiveness. We want other people to see how hard were working. Even if the best thing for your missions outcome.
was for you to go and lie on the beach today and think
who's going to congratulate you for taking on that challenge. But let's just think for a second, the best thing that you could do for your professional outcomes, your personal outcomes, your net worth your mental health, your physical everything. All of that would be going offline, lying on a beach, and getting a bit of a tan. Maybe, maybe you grab an ice cream. There's a dog there. For a little while you play with the dog. It's somebody else's dog. Be play with the dog and then you come back and have an early night. And from every objective,
Of metric that makes your life in the lives of the people around, you better.
Who's giving you an award to that dude? Well done today, really, really well done. Well, if we assume that the reason that we do the work, the reason that we do any work is to move us toward a goal that ultimately we want. Why would we assume that sending useless emails that don't move the project forward, should be more applauded thing going to the beach which does it's because we still have this Industrial Age Puritan work set mindset around what working hard.
Looks like again, it's this conspicuous productivity or obvious busyness. Near burnout is worn like a badge of honor to show your fealty to the mission. Obvious, productivity is more praised than private efficacy. And here's the thing.
Almost
everyone's life goal is.
Where they get to a point where they can say, I just don't want to have to do anything. I don't want to do anymore.
But what happens when you get there because so much of your self-worth is derived from overcoming hard things and pushing yourself through difficult tasks that you don't want to do. So imagine that you do reach your goal of not having to do things, you don't want to do anymore.
Why are you going to find your satisfaction from now? This is why it's so difficult to let go of grunt work and to let go of being permanently busy. Even when you're precise goal, was to get here to the point where you don't need to do grunt work and you don't need to be put permanently busy.
I guess finally, as well, there's a question of. Why is it so hard to take pleasure in our successes and a big part of that is largely because you're constantly peering over the shoulder of the present moment to see what's coming next. You're always just sort of looking past, what is in front of you or what's happening right now. So even during the act of attaining, a goal, you're already looking past it a little bit, getting ready to move the goalposts.
It's that you just this second, kick the ball into further, away down the field, we are all chasing a sense of completion, but we never actually allow ourselves to savor any tastes of completion. That we get along the way. We assume that one day we're going to arrive. And that day, never comes because we never give ourselves a break.
And then we realized that the path we were speedrunning through was actually the one to our grave. And how many people I mean? What's that the five? Most common regrets to deathbed regrets. One of them, I wish that I hadn't worked so
much.
I mean, if you're going to Outsource it to people that are on their deathbed, they've got no reason to lie. I wish that I kept in, touch, with my friends. I wish I had allowed myself to be happy. I wish I'd lived my own life and not the one that others expected of me. I wish I'd kept it. I mean, look,
this inside round.
What is your productivity for? What are you working this hard for? What is it that you're trying to achieve? Are you here to crank widgets and to keep your slack at zero and to send emails? Are you here to move your life, meaningfully toward the thing that you want? The problem is slack and calls and emails are much easier and more obvious for you to judge. Then did I get myself?
Toward a life that I want. That's really amorphous and tough, but I buried myself in work or I only slept for hours last night, we use the proxy.
Thing that in the beginning of our journey when we were doing grunt work was supposed to be predictive of where we were going to end up, we use that mindset for the rest of time. And look if you're starting out on a career Journey or you're at the bottom of a ladder of something new, this might sting a bit because you're hearing about a transition that you as of yet don't have to make and I'm going to get to make for quite a while, but you need to keep it in the back of your mind because
if you don't like the grunt work in the beginning, the only thing worse than that is doing it. When you no longer need to do it. When you've managed to get somewhere closer up the top of the ladder and refusing to let go of it is going to cap your progress and your happiness and it's going to trap you in thought patterns that you really don't want. And it's a difficult transition. The existential loneliness that you have to deal with where I took. But I was, everybody needs me. Everybody wanted me. I was so busy, all of the time. Take dude.
You need to ask yourself, sort of deeper questions now and you need to genuinely consider whether a 30 minute walk is the best thing that you can do for your business, or your relationship or your family or whatever it might be. And that's just, I don't know. Why is that less sexy
than
You know, sitting down and grinding out, whatever needs to be the house cleaning the the emails, the, you know, hardcore workout, whatever it might be, it's like you need to learn to chill out a little bit more, and that'll actually in some weird roundabout way move. You closer to your goals to this interesting. All right, next one. So this is from Justin lamellar, who does a ton of really interesting, sex, research game
Men, see bisexual men is secretly gay and lesbians see bisexual women is secretly straight across two studies involving a total of 288 gay and lesbian. Participants researchers examined attitudes towards stereotypes of bisexuals. And some of the findings were that both gay men and lesbians hold more negative views of bisexual, persons of the same sex, then they did of the other sex. It's kind of interesting. I wonder whether that is some sort of a sense that this person could
Be competing in a market that the individual wouldn't be threatened by, but they've chosen to step into their market and maybe they'll take their partner away. I might be an idea. Compared to lesbians gay, men were more likely to see bisexual, men, as having an unstable sexual orientation and likewise compared to gay men. Lesbians were more likely to see bisexual women as having an unstable sexual orientation gain. Maybe this is just a little bit of fear, they're keeping their eye on
on them. I don't know what direction you're going in a gay men. Tended to see bisexual men, as being secretly gay, whereas lesbians tended to see bisexual. Women is secretly
straight.
Basically, in other words, both groups perceive bisexuals regardless of their sex as being more attracted to men than to women. I mean, that's fucking fascinating gay men. Tended to see bisexual men, as being secretly gay, lesbians tended to see bisexual. Women secretly straight.
I don't know, man, there is. There is the, I mean I saw this in club promo, we used to refer to it. There was a few girls that swung, both ways. And if they're in a relationship with a girl, we would mention that they were on a liquid diet and then when they got back with the boyfriend, we'd say, oh she's back on solids. Now she's back in a solid diet after she was on a liquid diet for a while but she's back on solids. So there is something in that. I don't know what it is. Maybe I think on average woman's sexuality is are a little bit more.
More fluid. So there's just this sense that sort of women all experiment a little bit, I'd but there's still straight whereas the guy that's experimenting, it's because of some, you know, internalised fear of homophobia or not being accepted by Society at large. So his way to get around it is by, you know, dabbling, just putting a toe in or maybe more. Yeah. Another Insight was that lesbians greater negativity toward bisexual women.
Damon was statistically, explained by lesbians greater tendency to view bisexual women, as being primarily attracted to men by contrast, game ends, perception of bisexual. Men secretly gay didn't account for why they held more negative attitudes towards by men and lesbians to don't really know what's going on there. I guess.
Maybe some, some differences, in intrasexual competition somehow. Yeah. Basically it really shows that there is a bisexual Prejudice that exists in the gay community and there's some interesting gender dynamics that are at play. So for all that Pride,
Focuses on the L and the g. Really the be, you know, like the be is the one which is the most persecuted even internally inside of the LGBT. Be is what I mean, I'd what's the T fucking doing in there, right? The tea has nothing in common with the Elder G and the B other than they get to enjoy Pride together. But yeah, poor beasts.
Another Insight kind of associated with this, there's something called the birth order effect, which is kind of getting replication crisis a bit at the moment kind of interesting, but order effect suggested that, for every older brother that a woman for every male that a woman gives birth to it increases the chance of subsequent males being gay. So men with more older brothers, were more likely to be gay. Basically, when birthed from the same mother, interestingly some evidence showed that mr.
Carriages also counted toward this and it was, there was some suggestions about sort of immune system, some kind of immune system mediation going on here to how the womb interacted with the fetus and seeing it as like, alien alien just a non-native part of the body. And then,
Do obviously, you think well that why would that be the case for men, but not for women, and this guy Jakob fought and some colleagues looked at the Fraternal birth order effect and they had a Croatian as Slovakian data, and they found that the Fraternal birth order effect exists for lesbians to women with more older brothers, were also more likely to be lesbian, so, I don't know what it is. I guess.
It depends if you want a gay son or a gay daughter, what you better hope for is a couple of boys first and then you're off to the races. You know, you've got like, lesbian younger sisters and Gabe, younger brothers, running around all over the place. Maybe that's the way it works. But then I think he got replication crisis like the whole thing. So now, I don't know. And maybe I've just fed you. I'm not Freddy false information. I've just fed you information that might need updating. So come back to that.
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Times about a retreat. I went to in California, but then I saw a Kurt, Vonnegut, quote, that sort of perfectly, summarized it zipped it down, and it's easy to remember. So, Kurt says, we are what we pretend to be. So we must be careful about what we pretend to be. We are what we pretend to be. So we must be careful about what we pretend to be. So, I'd gone to this retreat in California, and I met a business owner, who had a big YouTube channel that used to watch a lot a long time ago and
Ask him why he'd stopped making videos. And he said, I started feeling like I had to live up to, and private the things, which I was saying in public, and I think about this quite a lot. I've come to sort of realize there's two sides to fake it until you make it. And one is positing an ideal, or a better version of yourself, which are motivated to live up to due to the need for social consistency, but that stake in the ground acts as much like it's Heather.
Other as it does, a Finish Line. If you commit yourself to some worldview or life philosophy, what happens if you stop agreeing with it? Sure you might want everyone, you might want to change but everybody around you is grown accustomed to the previous version of you. And whether it's a lifestyle changes, like your dietary approach or your training methodology or worldview changes like a religious belief, or political affiliation personality changes like commitments to growth or going sober or
You can friend groups, social consistency bias is a double-edged sword while ago. Some of the leading influences of the X paleo diet movement, then the carnival movement started to add fruit into their food and the aptly called meat and fruit diet caused uproar, not because of evidence that the diet is based on. But because it's new proponents had ardently stated a different belief in the past and to change.
Cause the people around them to feel uncomfortable. This is the danger. The social incentives aligned for you to not change in public. Even if you grow out of your beliefs and private stupid people see someone changing their mind as an indication of unsophisticated because they don't understand that updating your worldview when you grow is a sign of intelligence not fickleness and that, an unwavering commitment to a narrow world view is not cleverness, but a substitute for it.
Which unfortunately means that after changing your mind in public, it often results in you being attacked by a large number of mostly stupid people. And the more public you are about it, the harder it is to reverse perfect example of this Alex O'Connor goes. Vegan is convinced about the ethics of the philosophical. Underpinnings of veganism. Does not want to contribute to animal suffering, but as a byproduct of that his health suffers and he is
is struggling to keep his health to where it needs to be whilst eating a balanced plant-based diet. It's not something he says that he doesn't think you can do, but something that given his level of conscientiousness and preparedness, it was something he was struggling to do. So, his demeanor was incompatible with the challenges that his new diet informed by his new philosophy had given to him. So you went back to eating meat.
He had to announce in public something which he had changed in private and he got fucking castigated on the internet for it for ages. I mean he's now out the other side. I don't think anyone really brings it up anymore but that was uncomfortable to watch. Especially when you think this guys doing it for his health and he said it, he told you he made this change and
And he told you about it, he didn't lie, he didn't continue to get those sweet vegan dollars if they ever existed.
He never did that. He told you as soon as he changed and people slider prom with her. So be careful of the things that you say in private not being able to be compatible with the expectations people have of you in public. Yeah. That stake in the ground versus Finish Line and I positing an ideal or am I attaching my self-worth to an expectation that I'm then going to have to rip off me. I'm going to have to sort of Peel this fucking skin off me that everybody else expect.
You've got personal growth hard enough as it is without all of the expect. It's why, you know, to be honest what are we 45 minutes and I can talk about this. Now it's the reason why I don't talk about like deeply talk about my relationships on the show, you know, even though I talk about relationships and dating and a lot of the Dynamics to evidently something I'm interested in. I'm obviously, you know, on the path toward trying to build a family and do all the rest of the stuff but I think it's fucking
So hard to have a relationship. Having a relationship with even a couple of thousand people observing it. You remember what it was like when you used to get the Chris Williamson is in a relationship notifications on Facebook or whatever you would see it from your friends and people be able to like and comment on insert and then it would tag the other person. But then he would also show Chris Williams in his single talk. Like you've only got what I think thousand friends or something on Facebook. That was a huge dealer. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm speaking.
It depends how young you are. You might not have ever seen that on Facebook. That was fucking revolutionary. By the way, bring back Facebook dating shit but that was hard just doing. That was hard. So how hard is it when you're posting photos of you both and you know that's the reason why I've kept that area of my private life private. Because again you've got this like expectation, a stake in the ground, additional scrutiny, you know, do you stay in relationships for longer than you should because you're scared.
About what people are going to think, do you leave relationships more quickly than you should because you're scared about what people are going to think that. You just you never existing for yourself. You're always existing for this version of of what people who don't,
Necessarily have your best interests at heart. Think about how you should behave and yeah. Digital hijab is Mary Harrington calls it. I've got my I got my digital hijab on next one. It's a Mark Manson Insight which I fucking a door. So he says neediness occurs. When you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself. Anytime that, you alter your words or behavior to fit someone else's needs rather.
Rather than your own that's needy any time you lie about your interests are your hobbies are your background. That's needy anytime that you pursue a goal to impress others rather than fulfill yourself. That's needy. Whereas most people focus on what behavior is attractive or unattractive, what determines neediness? And therefore attractiveness is the why behind your behavior? You can say, the coolest thing, or do whatever.
One else does. But if you do it for the wrong reason, it will come off as needy and desperate and turn people off. Turning people off, is definitely not optimal. I like turning people on as much as the next guy, but I think there's an even bigger price to be paid here, which is your own self worth. So imagine for a second a world in which you are unanimously adored by millions but you hate yourself.
Are you happy?
Is it worth it?
And now imagine a world where your disliked by everybody but you love yourself.
I propose that self-love you would be happier because ultimately in some Taoist roundabout way. The reason we want validation from others is to give us a good enough reason to validate our salt. And if you compromise yourself in order to gain favor with other people, you'll know.
Even if you think you're not keeping score, your subconscious is and given that you're the sort of person who listens to this show, you probably keep score a lot more accurately than is typical.
How can you expect to have faith in yourself? If you can't even keep your own word. So the problem is we sacrifice the thing that we want, which is self-worth for the thing, which is supposed to get it, which is validation, sacrifice self-worth to get validation in the hopes. That if we have sufficient validation, we will finally be able to have some self worth sacrificing. The thing that you want for the thing that's supposed to get it and yeah, this neediness Insight that, you know,
Kind of, it's not too dissimilar to that point from before from some ovens. Were you think fuck?
We have these expectations public expectations, familial expectations people don't like change. There's also another reason that people don't like change I think is because we want to be able to predict project out where somebody is going to be in future. And the more easy they are to predict as in the more reliably they fall into our model of them.
The less we need to sort of worried about what's going to happen. You know, I don't worry about Chris, he's a he's a good guy, he'll he'll be onboard with the next, whatever Trump policy or he'll be onboard with the next Kamala policy or he'll be onboard with the next whatever because he was with the last ones. But if you start to deviate a little bit, whether its political ideology, philosophy, life Direction, Korea, you know, temperament in its extreme, this is sort of bipolar, right? It's oh my God, I'm so scared of whether or not this person is going to be high or low or whatever it might be.
But in smaller ways, the same discomfort comes through us because we like, I don't know if they're still going to sort of be here in a year's time. What if they outgrow me? What if they outgrow our friendship? What if they start to disagree with something that's really sacred to me? So, in that way, people who don't necessarily go along with the crowd, are seen as a threat, in many ways. So yeah, I
think
Just something to consider. Alright so my dating stuff this is Insight from Chris Bumstead. Awesome episode with him last year and I was asking him about how to choose a good partner. How to know when you've sought found the one and Chris said, find someone who just feel safe being a burden to, you're not going to intentionally be a burden, but sometimes you suck, you know, sometimes you're a burden and even if you don't feel safe being like that around your
Turner, if you have to withhold things from them and put on that show, you're never going to feel safe around them and you're not going to want to be there for them as much when they're being a burden as well, you just become these two people dividing and conquering all of your problems rather than taking on the world together. I think I always felt like I wanted to be great at everything I did and great at what I pursued and I never expected to be as good as I was. So it would just be such an interesting relief to be able to give myself to think.
Think you are going to be great. You are going to have all these things that you want, but you're also going to realize that they're not as important as you think they are. You're going to come to the realization where your relationships and your values and everything you enjoy. And experience aren't going to come down to spectacular moments on stage. They're going to be much simpler than that. They're just going to be these moments where you're being yourself and the people who love you for that are going to be everything.
It's awesome. You know this guy who has conquered the sport has sort of defined an entire generation of bodybuilders and then bowed out, 30 is able to say completed it. But even in the process of completing it six times in a row
The big winds weren't the big ones. The big ones with a little ones and they were the shares and the opportunity for me to celebrate what I done with people who cared about me, who knew me, and it's great, and magnificent and impressive and all the rest of it.
But it wasn't my matted, you know, a successful career. In a terrible marriage can make your life miserable and averaged career. In an amazing marriage can make a life delightful. So
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On Reddit, actually five questions to ask yourself if you're unsure about your relationship. If someone told you you're a lot, like your partner would this be a compliment to you? Are you truly fulfilled or just less lonely? Are you able to unapologetically be yourself? Or do you feel the need to show up differently to please? Your partner are you in love with who your partner is right now? As a whole, are you only in love with their good side, the potential, or the
Two of them. And would you want your future or imagine child to date someone like a partner?
Those are absolute Hammer blows. I think almost everything in here. If someone told you you look like a partner would you would this be a compliment to you? Are you in love or with just the idea of, would you want your future child? Imagine child to date someone like upon and those three are sort of taking you out of the situation and imagining that. You're somebody else. You're something else. It's for a different person that's creating a little bit of psychological distance. Are you truly
Build are just less. Lonely, is, you know, a fantastic Insight around. The reason that we suck so much in relationships is that were terrified of being alone. And that means that we stay in relationships that we accept relationships that we shouldn't do. Because familiar loneliness or familiar partnership is more enjoyable than unfamiliar loneliness and that's not good. Are you able to unapologetically be yourself, or do you feel the need to show up differently to please your partner? I think that a lot of that.
Is around the level of openness, the level of comfort that you have. How much do you need to self edit? Now, the question around the person that's your best friend is the one that you have the least filter with and that you can sit in silence with without having to fill it. So it's a person you can talk the most with in an unencumbered way and the person you can shut up the most with in an unencumbered way. And if that's not your partner, then you're struggling because
your relationship should feel like home.
It should feel like a house with a sturdy roof and strong foundations and shit gets thrown at it all the time and rain comes down and there's weather and there's heat and there's cold but inside of that house is the one safe Refuge that you have. You can lose your job. Status your financial position can fall away. Your health can break down your friends. Can leave you.
But you have this one safe place and it's in another person, it's in them. And if you can't be yourself with that person, the entire house does not exist. It's fake.
So you need to make sure that you can be yourself with your partner are else. You have no safe Refuge from the world which is fucking terrifying on The Dating Line, hormones. He dropped a fucking Slammer the other day, which I want to talk to him about the next time I speak to him. If you find a girl who believes in your dreams, more than you do, who makes you want to be a better man? Who's willing to work, alongside you to get there and is grateful for whatever you have just marry her.
That's how you make marriage in Easy. Yes.
How you make marriage and easy? Yes! Is by having a goal? Who has those find a girl who believed in your dreams, modern, you do, who makes you want to be a better man? Who's willing to work alongside you to get there? And is grateful for whatever you have. Just marry her. The rest of the stuff will sort itself out, man, I really do get that sense. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. I don't know, I guess there was one final element. I got asked a bunch of questions about the black pill and stuff and sort of in cells. The last time on a Q&A, some point recently and
It's kind of an unfalsifiable.
Philosophy in a lot of ways because there's many kernels of Truth in it. You know realizations about what women want physically in a partner in the fact that some men just, no matter how many pushups they do, they're not going to get there. It's tough. You know, it's a hard biological limit but there's a
there is a very specific cohort of man frustrating, man. Guys who have got nothing going for them. No Drive in their life, their own comfortable, in their own skin, that endlessly miserable. They keep complaining about women having to high standards. So bra, your standards for yourself are through the fucking floor. Your friends don't want to hang out with you, you don't want to hang out with you. Why do you think a woman would want to hang out with you? And how is this? Their fault that they've got to high standards?
You
suck, you suck
your friends. Don't want to hang with you, you don't want to hang with you while I lay at the feet of women. The fact that they have got to high standards, I am all for it. I will fucking die on the hill of fighting for more empathy for man bright and I have been thrown under the bus many times for doing. So, and again, be able to walk this tightrope where, I'm so sorry cooked that
the manosphere considers me to be blue pilled but I'm also such a misogynist that Guardian readers, think that I'm Andrew Tate from wish
and
I don't care anymore like I don't care about being misjudged by people who don't understand what I'm trying to achieve. And there's a group of people out there may be the large majority who are reasonable and who understand that, it's not Zero Sum when it comes to empathy who realized that you can raise up, man, without dragging down women that you can support women without forgetting about the challenges of men, that you can tell men that they need to pick themselves.
He's up by their bootstraps and actually do some work without forgetting that those men have got challenges that need structural support from society at large and we need initiatives and we need investment and that some women do have to high standards, some women do have skewed perspectives of what they're worth, but you're not going to get into a relationship with them. In any case. What's your goal was screaming at this. These harpies on the internet? These like retarded women who go on to these dating shows and like I'm going to get a guy who's got like six
Speed sex, and he's got like six figures and he's got a 6 inch thick, like what do you really, really going to go and change them? Are you going to U-turn them and turned that check in to Wi-Fi? No, you're not. You're getting frustrated because you think that they are a representation of women at large, but that woman by Design sucks. So you're not going to hang out with her. So just don't pay attention to her and move toward the chicks that are perfectly normal. That there are so many fucking awesome women out there who want to get into a relationship who just want.
A man who's got those traits that we talked about before?
Yeah, I am that special category of men who don't have anything going for them. No drive. I'm comfortable in their own skin. Endlessly miserable complaining all the time and the laid at the feet of women dude. Point the fucking finger in the mirror like I will give you as
much
Social confidence.
Training diet, hairstyle advice until the cows come home and I will continue to do it but if you're not doing any work and you're saying that it's the fault of women that you're not getting dates.
Talking, that's on you guy anyway, what a fuck, wonderful positive tone for me to finish this 900 episode on, but I love it. I mean, it's some of these lessons today. I really I really adore and I hope that you do too, and I appreciate you all. And I'm actually going to be in Mexico tomorrow, so wish me luck. I'm getting some treatments and stuff for the health shit that I'm finding with the moment mold and EBV and lime, and all of that shit. So,
If I can pray for Chris if he would pray for this mustache is well it's probably not going to be here the next time you see me, but I appreciate you all roll
an episode 1000 base.
If you wanting to read more you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the modern wisdom reading list, a list of 100 of the best books.
Most interesting impactful and entertaining that I've ever found fiction and nonfiction and real life stories. And there's a description about why I liked it and that links to go and buy it and it's completely free. You can get it right now. By going to Chris, will x.com / books, that's Chris will x.com / books.
