#1040 - 4M Subscriber Q&A | Modern Wisdom

Hello friends, welcome back to the show.

It is a 4 million subscriber Q&A episode.

It's a very large number and still sinking in that we've got there.

Still sinking in that we're the eighth biggest podcast in the world, according to Spotify.

Wrapped as well.

But anyway, I asked for questions from YouTube community and Twitter and Instagram and there were lots.

And I've got a flight to catch soon.

So let's get into him.

John Hughes 4228.

Well done, Chris.

Love your conversations.

So what's with the new haircut?

Is it from Turkey?

Starting off strong here.

Interesting.

If any guy grows their hair in their 30s, the natural assumption is that they got a hair transplant.

Like no guy in their 30s would choose to have a shaved head.

It's just enforced on them by their genetics and their DHT.

But I actually chose to shave mine off.

This is all natural.

Look, I did this on a Q&A a little while ago, but for the people who missed it, I will reiterate.

As a guy with curly hair, there are three haircuts available, right?

There is shaved head, buzz cut, which I had for a while.

There is this one which is long on top, short on sides, maybe long on back like unfortunately, mark zuckerberg like owned that haircut and kind of the broccoli kids turned it into a meme or afro.

There's three shave it off, cut it short on the sides or let it loose.

Your hair doesn't get longer, it gets bigger when you have curly hair.

It's not a perm.

I fucking wish it was a perm, because then if i didn't perm, it would be nice and straight.

I always wanted straight hair as a kid and i thought it would be so cool.

Unfortunately not.

I am stuck with this.

I think the shaved head will be coming back.

Certainly as it gets hotter in Austin, it will.

But look, I'm just sampling from the follicular delights table the buffet of three options that I've got as a guy with curly hair.

So put up with it for now.

It'll be here for a while and then you'll miss it and then it'll be gone and you'll miss it.

Well, maybe not, but whatever.

Ironmanary73.

Just to interject here, if this is one of the first QAs you've heard from me, much of the time is me spent struggling to pronounce the usernames of the people who submit the questions, because everybody has stupid usernames.

Just disclaimer up top.

Do you agree that alpha males feel so isolated and so misunderstood?

Um, I certainly think that is the case.

Yes.

A lot of guys who are hard charging grind set dudes will be doing it on their own.

It's rare to be that motivated to sort of have that much agency and upward mobility.

And what ends up happening typically is that you are, you're solo rangering it like there aren't that many people around you that want to work as hard as you.

Now it depends what your definition of alpha male is right.

Is it sort of the meme definition, or is it hard charging?

Go get a type person.

Uh, i think it's kind of inevitable, if you are doing it in the hard charging kind of way, that you're going to be misunderstood and isolated because you're doing something that most other people don't do, so they can't understand and they're not doing it, which means you don't have that many people who are on the journey with you too.

I think that's one of the advantages of platforms like reddit uh, even twitter to an extent, where you start to build a community of people around you who are into the shit that you're into, because it makes you feel less alone.

Um also, you know from a more emotional lens, a lot of the alpha males are working that hard and trying to prove to the world their worth, Because maybe they don't feel like they're worth all that much themselves.

And if that's the case, they're going to push people away.

Their efforts are going to keep people at arm's distance.

And the isolation is almost self-imposed in that way.

They've maybe struggled to connect with people.

They don't feel loved.

They don't feel like they belong.

So they work real hard because if the world needs them, that's kind of the same as the world loving them because the world will want them, but they'll want them to extract stuff from them, as opposed to want them just because they show up as themselves or because they're inherently worthwhile or whatever.

So they start to perform, and the performance causes them to be isolated because people don't truly see them.

And then they start to be this sort of persona that they've created themselves, and the person of who they really are gets quieter and quieter and quieter, while the persona gets louder and louder.

Um, so yeah, i think i didn't know that this was a meme, that alpha males feel so isolated and misunderstood, but i i could see why that would happen.

Adjita, how well.

Nine fuck, fucking fuck, have better usernames.

Jesus christ, What question from your tour have you found most interesting?

Okay, you redeemed your username with a good question.

That's a great question.

Someone asked, what is the best non-physical compliment that someone could pay you?

That was really fucking cool.

And my answer to that was, you made me feel less alone. which made me nearly tear up on stage uh i thought that was i thought that was really clever question and that you made me feel less alone response is uh very meaningful to me then another question i think it was at vancouver or denver somebody asked what does sort of child christopher a little boy christopher what would you say to him or what would he what would you say to him and what would he say to you i'm like i i doing inner child work on stage uh in front of a few thousand people was not on my um plan for the evening but that was really that was a really beautiful question it was a good moment i think to see just how brave i'm feeling around this vulnerability thing you know it's easy to talk about the importance of authenticity and showing your emotions and stuff but you really do get to see what you're made of when there's yeah a completely sold out uh theater looking at you waiting for you to speak to your inner child on stage and it was a really beautiful question but uh Yeah, those would be two that come to mind.

But I will say I will go toe-to-toe with any other audience on the planet.

I will put my audience up against any other audience for insightful questions.

I've been to a lot of live shows with contemporaries and they're great and the audience there is great.

But the hit rate.

Anybody that's been to the live shows this year or last year or whatever, have you ever been to a live show that's had such – like deep meaningful, resonant questions?

Maybe, but, um, I think it's rare.

I, I'm guessing you guys are because the questions that you ask, the thoughts that you have, the depth of your insights are like so non fungible.

And, uh, I'm super proud.

I'm really, really proud.

I keep feeling more proud of the audience that I've curated and the people that have gravitated to the work that I've put out.

Uh, the more that I do the live shows, it's been a surprising benefit of doing the live stuff.

All right, next one, dr doomboat, what's your favorite fiction book?

Uh, red rising.

I'm sorry to say it to fucking patrick rothfuss, but he has not released the third book in uh.

Kingfiller chronicles um and, and and.

Pierce brown keeps writing so, by the way, If you need a list of books, including fiction books, there's 200 book lists that are available chriswillexcom books and chriswillexcom more books.

And you can go and get them both now and they're free.

And if you need to do an annual review you can go to chriswellxcom slash review and all of it's free and you can copy the review over and it'll help you to organize your end of your thoughts and reflect on your lessons and set your goals for next year.

And then you've got two by 100 book lists that took me fucking ages to do.

So go get that and there's lots in there.

But if you want the shortcut, Red Rising is the first one that you should be reading right now.

TJ Dooley, how long until we see the new studio?

Much love.

Good question.

It is currently under construction.

If you were on my top listeners from Spotify, you would have seen that I took a selfie video panning around in the studio space, which was a fucking shit tip.

It was a complete construction site and it still is.

But February 1st, I should be in.

And then we'll need to dial all of the lighting in all of the setting everything everything, everything.

And that's probably going to take between a week and two weeks.

So by...

At some point in February, you should have the first episode from there.

And I'm so fucking fired up.

We're really trying to push the limits with this which, for the cinematography team that I use, is saying a lot.

So I really hope it delivers.

I can't wait to have a space to work out of.

I've worked in every bedroom of every house or Airbnb that I've been in for more than a week over the last decade.

There's not been a single bedroom that I've had that I haven't turned into a studio like this.

Even my bedroom in the UK still has my setup.

It still has my original podcast setup at the end of it.

So I'm looking forward to becoming a big boy, finally having a place I can go to work.

Robmer, are you aware that you're in your prime right now?

Oh, dude, I haven't fucking felt like I'm in my prime.

I've felt this year like, like i've been repaying some weird karmic debt, like just comedic levels of nut kicking for me um, and i don't want.

One of the things that i'm conscious of is this is the golden era.

This will be when i look back.

Do you remember before i had kids, before the wife, before the?

You know all of the, the responsibilities that gave life meaning but restricted freedom.

Do you remember how much you maximized that opportunity to experience your freedom?

And unfortunately, my freedom has been restricted this year.

I've been going to bed at seven o'clock and sleeping for 12 hours and not being able to adventure as much as I want, not being able to work as much as I want or take time off as much as I want.

It's been like so many, like hundreds and hundreds of hours spent Doing IVs or consultations or fucking blood tests or whatever it is to try and get to the bottom of what's going on.

And that's not been great.

But I appreciate the point, which is these are the golden years.

And I am in my prime right now.

And I will look back and think about how proud I was and how exciting it was to be in this period.

You know, moving to America and doing all of this stuff.

It's fucking awesome.

And the gratitude...

British people are kind of a bit allergic to gratitude.

It feels a bit icky and kind of cringe.

It's very keen to say that you're happy with something or that stuff's going well.

I'm not supposed to do that.

You're supposed to very much downplay how things are going.

I'm looking forward to next year allowing me to maximize that ceiling.

So yeah, roll on.

2026 t low 84.

Will you release the andrew tate episode?

Okay, i get a question about this every q a and i don't know why, but it's it's popped up again.

I don't know whether it's been resurfaced.

The story has been resurfaced at some point.

Um, for clarity, me and tate were talking from 2019, 2018 perhaps, so we've been what's happening for a very long time.

Had a few phone calls and then he came on the show.

Maybe end of 2020, start of 21.

And the whole conversation was about COVID.

Almost the entire conversation was about COVID, at least to the best of my recollection.

And it was during a period where, if you were to talk about COVID, you would just instantly lose your channel on YouTube.

There was no three strikes.

You're out.

No demonetization like your channel would just be immediately gone.

And I thought, I reflected on it afterward.

I was like, Like am I going to put because it's going to be up for 24 hours, maybe five days before YouTube just puts the kibosh on your channel?

That feels like too, it feels like a silly trade to make.

I'm glad that I spoke to him.

It's a shame that we couldn't put it out.

But I messaged him and I was like, hey man, look With where the platform's at at the moment.

I think it's going to just completely flatten us if we put this out.

It's kind of pointless.

If you kamikaze the channel in an attempt to try and put a video out on the channel and then the channel gets torpedoed so quickly that the video can't even go out, it seems self-defeating.

And he was like, yeah, totally get it, man.

He was fine with it.

And then, by the time that the COVID concern thing from youtube whatever their guideline was that i never paid attention to, by the time that that had gone by the wayside, it had been maybe one or two years later and tate's platform had grown an awful lot and i thought do i really want to screw andrew over by releasing an old podcast episode where he's being, you know, gregarious and out there i have no.

He said what he said and I'm sure that he probably still stands by it.

But if you're in the middle of a fast moving global pandemic, it's easy to make a bunch of claims and accusations and stuff that in future maybe don't necessarily come true.

And it just felt like a bit of a shit thing to do to him to release something that could be scrutinized with the information of today, but using the insights or the facts that he had yesterday or two years ago yesterday.

And I was like i just don't get what it feels now, like it would be a bit of a middle finger to him and at the time, the very platform that it would have been broadcast on would have taken down the channel that would have broadcast it and, apart from the fact that that would have killed my future with youtube, it also meant that the video wouldn't have got out in any case.

That was the whole point right, of de-platforming people.

So um no, the answer is probably no.

I mean sat in a dropbox somewhere and dean's got the video file.

I'm sure it was done over zoom.

Uh, i think he was back in the uk at some point.

Uh, it was all right.

I mean, it wasn't.

It was good.

He's a great communicator and we had a really fun conversation.

I actually really, really enjoyed it, but it wouldn't change the world.

So for now, it's that collecting dust in a dropbox.

Tiffany alexis wanted to ask this at the toronto meet and greet, but i used my question to get newtonic instead.

Thanks, by the way, you and your team are top humans.

Question is this body of work you and the modern wisdom team put out into the world is objectively art, the art of conversation in a stunning cinematic wrapper.

The conversations are structured, but never feel rigid, always open for nuance and thought exploration.

What does your personal prep process look like, systematically speaking?

In short, what's on that ipad?

Okay well, thank you for coming to the Toronto show.

That was unreal.

And the meet and greet finished at quarter past midnight.

So thank you everyone for waiting.

The iPad is usually just a bunch of different ideas and topics and jumping off points for me.

It's kind of the same as having a game plan, like a tactical game plan going into a sports match.

Within the first two minutes of the game beginning, the entire plan may go out of the window, but sometimes the structure and the format help you a little bit.

If I've got stuff that I want to remember to bring up.

I think for me I like holding stuff in memory, in short-term memory, and I like playing with the context of what I've got.

Oh, I've got that thing, and I've got that thing, and I've got that.

But after a while, it just becomes burdensome.

So I would rather have stuff out of my brain just roughly put out on Apple notes.

It's only ever Apple notes.

I don't really ever have anything else.

I've not got chat GPT up.

I've not got, I'm not browsing the internet.

It's just my notes.

So I've got 3000, exactly 3,700 Apple notes on my iCloud and almost all of those will be pocket.

Well, at least a thousand, probably 2000 of those will be either podcast notes or stuff to do with research for the podcast.

Sometimes it's quotes if I want to read something to a guest to get them to react to.

I had that episode with Bernie Sanders and I knew that I wanted to get that quote out from Gwendo Bogle at the start.

That said the biggest enemy of the left is not the right but the far left.

The biggest enemy of the right is not the left, but the far right.

The idiots of your own side make you look far sillier than the opposition ever could.

Give me your thoughts on that.

I knew that I wanted to say that to him, but I don't have to hold it in my memory because It just seems like an unnecessary burden for me to carry when I could be thinking about oh, what was it that you just said there?

And oh, isn't that cool?

So yeah, it just alleviates a little bit of that.

But what I can do because of the power of Apple Notes is if I'm ever looking for anything, I just need to type in the global search one word.

And if that one word is in a quote or an idea or a story or something, it means I can pull that up too.

So it's just, it's an external brain.

It's a really messy one sbs1992.

Hey chris, huge fan of your show and, more importantly, the positive impact you've had on young men like myself.

Thank you, keep up the good work.

I want to get into making content that hopefully helps young men, but i'm not sure where to begin.

Any advice you would have for someone like me and, more importantly what, if anything, do you feel like the men's self-improvement space is currently lacking in?

Difficult to give you advice.

The advice that I would give anybody who's trying to start content is do what you're interested in.

Be consistent.

Reduce the friction that you need to get started.

One camera setup and a little microphone in front of you is all that you need to make it as simple as possible and do it consistently.

Do it once a week at minimum.

It doesn't need to be on video.

You could just start by talking into a microphone.

It doesn't need to be on recorded.

It could even be written, right?

You An easier question to answer or a more interesting question to answer is what do I feel like the men's self-improvement space is currently lacking in.

For me personally, with where I'm at at the moment, I do not think it needs more hustle and grind, like just work harder, bro, positioning.

That's not to say that there's no place for it.

And I've very much contributed to that.

But I'm trying to balance the scales, I think, by getting guys to uh look at where their motivations come from.

What is it that they're hiding?

What are the patterns from their past that are driving them to behave in the way that they are now?

And that doesn't mean opening up some Pandora's box of trauma and difficulty or even really slowing down that much, but it does mean getting real with yourself and being truthful and honest about what it is that you want and why you want it.

And um, For me, what I think it's lacking is kind of more of Connor Beaton's positioning, more of Chris Bumstead's positioning, the direction that even Hormozy seems to be going in, which is to integrate the way that he's feeling, his understandings of his own limitations shortcomings, the fact that he needs to sort of nurture the recovery part of him as well as the output part of him.

Um, and this is certainly the pivot that I've made over the last 18 months.

And, um, you know, I had some formative experiences with this.

I did that retreat with Joe Hudson, which really kind of snapped me in half.

Um, a lot of reflection.

Obviously, if you have a down period, like I have this year, you end up being more reflective and you know this is going out on new year's Eve.

Hey, happy new year's Eve.

Happy new years, I guess.

Um, Well done for making it into 2026.

But during this period, you start to think, how's this year gone?

And if you realize that it's been a little bit more challenging, you start to ask, well, why?

Why am I going against the grain of life?

And you start to feel the sort of texture of what you're pushing up against a bit more keenly.

It's kind of like if you're in a lazy river, one of those big tubes, and you're sort of floating down it gently, you don't really notice much because you and life, or you and the environment, are moving at the same speed.

But if you accidentally leave something on the shore and you're still in it and you need to get back up there, you're just feeling the pressure of the water moving up against you.

And I kind of think that reflection in life is a lot like that.

We tend to reflect way more when things are going badly than when things are going well, because when things are going well we don't question stuff.

We just allow it to carry us through.

And if stuff sucks a bit or a lot, you ask a lot of questions and it's painful, but it really expedites growth.

And I think this is why, for the people who came to my live show, one of the lines in that was every big period of growth in your life has germinated from your lowest points.

And I think this is why because during your lowest points you're forced to reflect so much to try and get out of the pain, to try and work out what's going on that that becomes the next springboard that you bounce off to get to your subsequent evolution as a person.

So I think the emotional piece for me is massively missing in the men's space.

And it is not for all men.

It's not even for many men, perhaps.

But it is for me.

And I get the sense that it's for the sort of people that listen to this show.

And I'm going to keep hammering on it.

I think it's important.

And I'm usually right but early on this shit.

I was right but early on a lot of different things.

And I'm going to keep going on this one.

And at some point in future, I'll get obsessed with something else.

But for now, that's it.

So maybe consider that.

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How the fuck do you pronounce that?

How do you pronounce X-L-E-B?

Kleb?

Kleb69.

We want more fun, chill podcasts with the boys.

Yes, fucking yes, Kaleb.

I agree.

And you will be getting that next year.

Fun, chill podcasts.

There will be.

I mean, I've already opened my skirt with regards to the plan, or the trench coat, I guess, is the guy equivalent with regards to the plan for next year.

Very simple.

Build studio.

That's cool.

Bring in more group episodes.

Do more solo episodes.

So you will still get the usual Modern Wisdom stuff that you already do.

Some of that will be replaced by more in-person group episodes with multiple guests.

Not necessarily debate style.

I'm still working on what that format looks like, but I've got some really fucking cool ideas and some great lineups for guests.

And then I'm going to do some sort of an equivalent of what used to be life hacks what Rogan would do with Protect Our Parks a consistent group of me and a few of my boys, and it will be largely unstructured and probably a total mess.

But I think one of the best criticisms or the fairest criticisms which even I have about modern wisdom is that sometimes it can feel like homework.

And I love it because you open up an episode and you go, I'm going to learn so much.

This is one of the best in the world at fucking evolutionary pediatrics, right?

Paul Turk, that unbelievable episode.

And it's so good, but it can feel heavy.

Sometimes it can be a dense meal and that's fucking fantastic.

And I do not want to lighten the load of those episodes, but the same way as it wouldn't do to always eat steak, no matter how good the steak is.

It's nice to have ice cream every so often.

And I'm going to provide some ice cream.

Uh hopefully, with this, it may end up falling flat on its face, but i think i'm right about this one too.

I think i'm right about everything.

No, i think i'm right about this thing in particular.

So um, you will have more fun, chill podcasts with the boys.

They will be coming, so hold on tight.

Jaw daniel 974, would you do a live show in newcastle?

Yes, i would, and i am, and i don't know the fucking date, but i think it's in october next year.

Um, I'm coming home.

Homecoming, baby.

Newcastle show.

It's going to be so much fun to go back and run another event.

I wonder if I have to give out flyers.

I might give out wristbands before people come in.

That'd be nice.

Throw it back to the old club promo days.

But yeah, I'm doing a live show.

I'm doing a full UK and Ireland tour and maybe even a couple of shows in Germany in autumn-ish time next year.

And I'm super fired up.

It'll be great. don't know the dates yet i they they exist i just don't know um but hold on tight they're coming um sarah alison uh what inspired the modern wisdom apparel designs metal metal bands me being fuck boy metal um like what i wore as a teenager i basically wanted to make what would 17 year old me think if he was 37 year old me he would design as a t-shirt and um i kind of did that and we sold so much fucking merch we sold so many pieces it's insane and uh i really worked hard on it and the reason i care is because i worked so fucking hard like i spent so long researching like and trying on myself in my living room and jonathan ops guys taking photos front of oh do we like the feel of this cotton we're all yeah but you can't get that in australia but we need to do the thing with the print is it going to be too heavy on the gsa i don't like the length of that every single different fucking piece and every single different design i was personally involved in like me and the fucking designer going back at 11 o'clock at night then we did the shoot and we did it was a very personally involved project and i really really think that the stuff rules and it looks fucking great and i everybody that's had it and has been wearing it is loving it and all of the shipping will have been done by now so you should have had it for christmas which is sick and we'll be doing another drop probably through end of february end of march something like that there will be another drop it'll be available for 48 hours or 96 hours or something a few days and then once it's gone it's gone and then we'll do it again in a few months and it's It's sick.

I love wearing it.

I love wearing the stuff.

And yeah, it was metal bands and my own sense of style, I suppose.

So I never thought I had a sense of style, but it seems like if you just do fuckboy metal t-shirts, people wear them.

Lewis, the voice, does your red bracelet have meaning?

Okay, so.

If I can hide in my face.

There we go uh yeah, it does actually.

Um, this was the bracelet that i got after finishing joe hudson's retreat and i can't say too much about like, the process of, of getting it or whatever um, but it's really meaningful to me and uh, it is a reminder of version of me that i aspire to regularly get back to um, somebody who is brave in the face of sensitivity and doesn't see suppression as strength, see sensitivity as strength um, and is honest and open.

And it's nice and i look it fucking pisses me off sometimes when i'm trying to type shit but um, I haven't taken it off.

I've not taken it off since, since I was there and it's been three months now.

So now, you know, smart, smart rival guards on.

Have you visited Iceland?

Yes, I have.

I went with Johnny.

I went with Johnny and Yusef in 2016, 2017.

Maybe we went, we went to Reykjavik.

And I trained at Annie Thoris Staudter's gym because I was full CrossFit bro mode.

And we did the Blue Lagoon.

And we did the Golden Circle Tour.

Is that Hawaii?

Whatever the tour is where you go and see that waterfall.

And me and Johnny went out in November in Iceland in just a shirt and jeans because i'm hard as fuck me don't matter northeast of the uk fucking not to worry about.

And uh oh, there was something to worry about.

That was, that was another level of cold.

Johnny thought that he got um hypothermia because he was waiting for a taxi.

And then for a while i dated an icelandic chick who i met while i was there and uh, she was lovely and very blonde.

That was it.

It's good.

I like it.

Roll on Iceland.

4 million subscribers and over 1,000 episodes.

I love the show.

Don't get me wrong.

But do you see yourself doing this for another 1,000 episodes?

Is there that much more self-discovery left to be done?

Great question, dude.

I would like to think yes, because as i evolve as a person, my interests do as well.

Um, you're hinting at a truth about the show, which i've said a bunch of times but maybe bears repeating, which is this is a very selfish project.

It is a thinly veiled autobiography, masquerading as a podcast, that I am trying to understand the challenges that I am facing in my life right now.

And I've fortunately managed to construct a world in which, whatever I am struggling with, whatever I want to learn more about, or my pet interest, or that thing that I saw yesterday that I need explaining to me, I have access to the best people in the world to be able to get them to teach me about it and then put it out on the internet.

And you guys get to watch and listen and learn as well.

And I get to call it a job.

That being said, I can't wait to be a dad.

I'm very much looking forward to dad life.

When that happens, guess what?

There's going to be a lot of child content.

There's going to be a lot of child rearing and attachment and baby health and all of that stuff.

And then there'll be education system stuff.

And then there'll be training as an aging guy stuff.

So Because I'm a moving target, I think my curiosity and the self-discovery is a moving target too.

That being said, a lot of the low-hanging fruit was picked up in the first 400 episodes, when no one fucking listened, which is so annoying to me.

The amount of loads that I blew prematurely because I knew exactly where I wanted the show to go, but there was no one to listen.

I think it took...

It took 400 episodes to get to 100,000 subs.

440% of the show, 100,000 subs.

This is 4 million.

I don't even know what that is as a percentage.

What's 100,000 out of 4 million?

It's like such a tiny amount proportionally.

So 2.5%.

97.5%. of the audience didn't get to see those.

And it's so annoying.

Um, but I might just run it back.

Fuck it.

I might just bring Peter C Brown on again to learn make it stick, now that I've got a hopefully a better bedside manner for podcasting.

Um, but on top of that as well, I'm changing some of the formats.

I'm coming up with new ideas, right?

This round table group hang style episode, the one with the proper guests and the one with my boys, i think.

I think that will really enliven a whole new type of satisfaction and interest and curiosity for me.

Um, or maybe you're right, maybe that, maybe i've already hit the wall, maybe i'm in the you know, podcasting equivalent of menopause um, but i don't get the sense that i am, and the more that i spend time reading, the more stuff i get interested in and my curiosity is so fucking nuclear oh um, I did this long before anybody listened and I'll continue to do it, no matter what happens with regards to an audience.

So for me, it's always been a very personal project that I love.

And I don't intend on slowing down anytime soon.

Karuchi912.

How small of an effort is considered too small to be worth doing, even if you're doing it every day in an attempt to move the needle?

Just 1.

Great question.

And literally nothing.

I mean there's been days dude, in my 20s, where I was sad and low and burned out and depressed from work, where I didn't get out of my bedroom bathroom front door to get Uber Eats.

And this wasn't.

Oh, i'm having a slow, lazy day.

This is i don't want to open the curtains, i don't want to speak to people.

I'm making excuses at work so that people don't know that i'm not doing the thing, because i'm supposed to be the leader of this company.

And if they know that i'm not doing the thing, then how embarrassing is that going to be?

I'm supposed to be the guy that drives everything forward.

I'm so ashamed about this thing, but i can't be bothered to get up and i'm so.

I just don't want to see people.

I don't know why i feel sad the first day that i broke out of that burnout or you know, acute micro depression thing.

Um, each time that I would come back around and take a big breath was getting out of bed was a big deal and opening the curtains was a big deal and going for a walk was a big deal.

And putting my shoes on was a big deal.

Going to the gym, driving to work, those things were big deals.

And um, I think it The habituation thing like hedonic adaptation.

But this is personal growth adaptation.

If you're used to moving at a really high clip or if you see other people, that are, you compare yourself to what you can do previously or what other people appear to be doing now and it makes your efforts feel microscopic in comparison and that is not great for motivation.

In short, there is no such thing as too small.

Yes, you can have high standards, but If you're pointing in the right direction and you're doing the right things, even a single step does move you closer to your goal.

And yes, some days maybe you'll run an ultra marathon and other days you'll crawl half a pace.

But each day is moving you toward that thing.

And at the very least, it's not sending you backward.

And it's probably more akin to being on a treadmill than it is running a race, actually.

Because if you don't do anything, that's not stasis.

That is moving backward.

Your body is fighting entropy.

Your mind is fighting entropy.

You are fighting against life.

And there's no such thing.

So read the lesson or the essay that I wrote about the shame of simple pleasures and the shame of small fears.

Both of those kind of relate to this thing.

And I think keep moving.

Just keep moving.

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What do you do when you feel sad or disappointed?

Well, I felt a lot of that this year, which isn't super sexy to talk about, and i know as well.

I appreciate you guys for sticking with me as i've been in my sad boy energy this year.

Um fuck, it's been like i've got bored of me.

I've got bored of me whining and i've tried to show up as a professional on the show and let the realizations about what i'm interested in and i've been reflecting on and i'm struggling with come out in the show without it just being this total mope fest, although it may have been at some point.

So I appreciate you guys the patience that you've had, because I want to be higher energy than I have been.

I want to feel in a better mood than I have been.

I want to be more positive some than I have been.

And that's been hard.

It's been hard for me.

And I felt this expectation or this obligation or something to perform keep, keep you guys keep, keep the energy up or something.

And yeah, it's important to be authentic.

But also, if i'm just eating shit for months and months on end, it's not, it's not very alluring to have this person that is supposed to just turn up and do a job, largely like constantly whining about stuff.

So anyway, i've tried to strike a balance and my point is thank you for uh sticking with me, appreciate it.

Uh, what do i do when i feel sad or disappointed?

Um, my go-to if i don't step into my own programming is uh isolate, um isolate, ruminate lime bed.

Watch netflix.

Uh, scroll on my phone um, like negative self-talk, like it's very inward focused, it's very uh, you are the problem.

How shameful that this is something that you're going through.

You should be better than this.

Time is slipping away.

Your life is passing you by.

You're going to regret this in future.

There's a lot of that in a monologue.

When I do interject and step into my own programming, it's much more okay.

I'm going to lean on a friend.

And this is really a skill that only this year i've i've fully, fully been able to develop.

Fucking 36 years old, it was the first time that i really realized i needed to do this.

Um, the weight of sort of sadness and disappointment was so high that i i couldn't lift it myself, and that was the first time that i'd ever encountered that.

And um, i relied on my friends more this year than i ever have, and the amount of support that I got when I actually allowed people to show up for me is crazy.

Um, if you look like you've got it all together and I think a lot of guys and maybe girls that listen to this show to appear to other people in their friend group like the most competent person in the room.

And the problem with that is, if you think that your friends always got it together, who the fuck are you to step in and help them?

Like, what are you going to, what are you going to add?

Like they help you right.

Um, so you need to ask for help.

So uh, i've got better asking for help, got better at leaning on friends.

I've got better at um finding coaches and uh, guides and therapists and stuff like that.

If i need um more heavy duty, insights um breathwork and reading are the isolated good versions of some of the stuff that I do.

I feel really good if I read.

I feel really, really great if I walk for a while.

Ringing friends as well.

Those are some things.

That's how I do it right and how I do it wrong.

Jimmy McGill5572, can you give an update on your health journey and do you believe you have long COVID?

I'm almost certain that I had long COVID.

A lot of the markers that came back said yes, and I caught COVID recently. two years ago just before i went on tour with james smith and that was the beginning of pushing me over the edge i'd already been in that house that was filled with mold for about six months maybe a bit more at that time no a year and six months fuck wow yeah i'd been i'd been i'd been in that house for quite a while and um the long covid thing almost certainly where i'm at now with health journey um i'm fighting with some nervous system stuff which is so fucking annoying dude because i've like handed the baton off from uh inflammation come infection stuff beat that and then just at the fucking finish line that's pivoted into some quasi dysautonomia nervous system disruption stuff so i'm working on that uh i've got a great couple of guys helping me with it which is really wonderful um and i'll beat it it's just going to take time um yeah it's so fucking funny being having health problems that are really normal you know, none of these things, EBV isn't that weird.

Mold isn't that weird.

Limes isn't that weird.

Heavy metals BPAs, gut dysbiosis, like none of this stuff.

Is that odd?

But all of it together, as a young person who is in good health is it's such a strange experience.

I'm still trying to work out sort of what it means.

Um, but it's taught me an awful lot.

It's made me much more uh, empathetic toward people who are struggling in that way.

It's fucking certainly humbled me, jesus christ.

I mean like listen, i'm sure someone could do a sentiment analysis on chat gpt of the bravado and the ego that i would have had 12 months 24, 36 months ago uh, compared with now.

And alain de botton had that line on the podcast i did with him where he says the best men are the ones who've been broken by life.

And uh, this is a year that i've been broken by life, So maybe that turns me into the best man that I can be.

We'll see.

Zach Hall, what is the most frequent reoccurring thought you have, Chris?

And why do you think this occurs?

You're not doing this right. you should be better.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be better in, but it's something like that.

If you were stronger, more resilient, harder working, more diligent smarter fitter, this challenge that you're facing would not be of concern to you.

The fact that it is of concern to you is an identification of your insufficiency and your inferiority.

If only you pushed harder, it would be fine.

Why do I think this occurs?

Because I learned that if I perform successfully, problems in life seem to go away. and what that means is as soon as you stop performing you have a fear the problems are going to come back even well after you've reached escape velocity and you're just floating out in space way away from all of the problems that sort of birthed this fuel source this motivation yeah yeah i think i think it's that um that being said i'm getting better i'm getting a lot better at this uh when you go through a low period these patterns like they come back up and it's what i said before that when when life is going great nobody nobody really questions what they're doing you're able to hide fleeting thoughts and insufficiencies under ego and bravado and momentum fucking hell if things slow down you really have to contend with the shit that you've been hiding from And there was shit that I'd been hiding from.

And it's not big shit.

It's nothing massive.

But it's sort of like fundamental ways that I see myself or talk to myself.

And they weren't good enough.

They're not good enough.

Look at me whipping myself for like, I'm being ungrateful about my ungratefulness.

It's been a really, really interesting year.

It's been a very, very reflective, high growth year.

And I'd had a good run.

I'd had a really fucking good run.

I think this happens in about seven-year cycles.

It seems to me to happen in about seven-year cycles.

The last one was probably close to 28, I guess, so maybe eight, nine-year cycles.

I was due a little bit of a pullback.

I'd been on a bull run.

Stock had been going nicely.

I was due a little bit of a pullback, and I've had a pullback.

I've learned what I need to learn, and I'm ready to kick 2026 in the dick.

Look and find truth.

Congrats on 4 million.

Thank you.

You sit in a rare position, an extreme outlier in both visibility and wealth.

Two levers that less than 001 of people alive won't have at your scale, neither individually, let alone at your intersection, both which contribute to identity.

As your success continues to compound, what is your experience with identity, attachment, and ego?

Great question.

I think being British is a fucking huge performance enhancer for this, because we are so allergic to ego and that getting too big for your boots thing that it really helps to keep your feet on the ground.

If you didn't ever anticipate becoming much or anything ever, then it just feels all like bonus.

I guess that could metastasize into some other, like horrible, egotistical version of it, where you are ungrateful for the things that have happened.

But for me it's much more like whoa, what the fuck like?

I won the lottery.

I literally won the lot.

This is so great, like how fantastic um.

Identity is a slightly more different one uh, slightly more difficult one, because the world begins to treat you in a way that you don't see yourself.

If you don't believe you're on hype or at the very least, if you've got the british fucking high gravity feet on the ground, tall poppy thing you, you are being treated by the world in a way that doesn't comport with how you see yourself.

It's like it's like um identity dysmorphia or something.

What you see in the mirror is not necessarily what the world sees, and even the world might not see what they're supposed to see right, they might see you as this high-flying resource to be extracted from and you just want to live a quiet life.

Or the reverse.

They might see you as this meek individual and actually you want to be super gregarious and outgoing.

At least at the moment, I think I've got a good balance.

I don't feel, of all of the psychological wells that I'm diving into, my ego is not one of them.

And I'm really, really fucking glad about that.

The identity thing.

The thing I'm so fortunate about is that I have an audience of people who are like the people I want to hang out with, and they don't expect me to be anything except for myself.

At the live show, no one comes up.

I mean people come up and go fuck.

You know your forearms were a bit bigger in real life than I thought.

Whatever.

But no one expects me to be anything else.

And I think the more that I do this solo stuff and that's one of the reasons I want to do more solo episodes next year the more of me I can actually let out there.

And hopefully that makes you feel less alone.

And it certainly makes me feel less alone when I get to talk about it.

And it makes me feel braver.

So I'm going to keep going.

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Congrats on four million, thank you.

What advice can you give me about feeling lost in life as an 18 year old who is just entering college?

My brother, you are 18.

I'm not trying to be patronizing in the way that every 37 year old was to me when i was 18 as well, but you're supposed to be lost in life like you're not supposed to know your direction.

You've just been in full-time education.

You're at this huge pivot and this is going to happen to you at every different pivot that you encounter.

It's going to happen to you when you leave college.

It is going to fucking flatten you, i will promise you now.

It is going to completely flatten you because you have been in full-time education up until that point and now you're freewheeling in the world and the same things happen.

Maybe you're moving away from home.

You're not going to be in your parents house anymore.

Oh my god, what does this mean for my identity?

What does this mean?

I need to find new friends.

I need to find I'm going to leave my girlfriend at home.

I got to find a new one that I'm there.

I got to cook for myself.

I got to fucking wash my pants.

How do I wash pants?

How's an iron work?

All of these things are big questions, but the feeling lost is where the growth comes from.

That is what you're looking for because you find cool stuff when you're lost.

So don't worry about it.

I know that you're worrying about it, but it's okay.

So what would I leave you with?

Going to leave you with?

What if it was okay to feel lost?

What if feeling lost?

What if feeling lost is what you want?

What if that's a good thing?

Yes, you don't have direction.

You're about to go to college.

That seems like a pretty fucking good direction to me.

Just allow that to happen, because you will look back in two decades time, when you're just past my age and you will go fuck.

I wish I'd not worried so much about being lost and I just enjoyed it, because I can't go back and enjoy it anymore.

So make sure that you're present.

Make sure that you're there for this experience.

It's not going to last forever.

The same thing is true for every part of life.

Josh White, 47, for the Q&A.

Hey, Chris, congratulations on the success of your podcast.

Thank you.

I've been listening in for a while now.

I discovered that I have the MetMet gene about a year ago.

And it helped me to understand a lot about myself.

I've heard you talk about having a MetMetComT gene mutation and was wondering if you regard it, and everything that comes along with it, as more of an advantage or a hindrance in your life.

Keep doing you, man.

You're great.

What a fucking cool question.

Yes, Josh White.

So the MetMetComT variant is we clear catecholamines, adrenaline and dopamine more slowly than most people.

This means that uncertainty ambivalence ambiguity, High-stress situations take more time to come down from.

It also means that obsession, rumination, working hard are available to you in a way.

I would make a poor soldier but a pretty good coder, for instance.

Predictable reliable structured obsessive good chaotic uh, um highly uh uncertain, um big pulses of energy, not good for me.

Um, isn't advantage or hindrance, it's both.

It's both.

This year i've been so uncertain and and swimming in this fucking challenge emotionally for me uh, It has shown me that my preferences for peace and stability and predictability are not just preferences.

They are like water or air to me.

They're the hydration, the fuel that I run on.

And without it, I can push through and that's fine, but it fucking ruins you eventually.

Metcom T is like pretty...

You're either going to be really fucking great or it's going to be hard.

I see it as more an advantage.

Would I love it if some emotional perturbment didn't play on my mind for the next couple of hours?

Yeah, sure.

But if I meditate enough and I do enough breath work and I counterbalance that, it doesn't really matter.

What else does it mean?

Well, it means that I'm super reflective.

It means that my depth of thought is something that I really value.

And I love asking the why question and I love finding out the why answer.

So I've learned to love it.

I mean, I only found out that I had it like 12 months ago.

And tons of people have got this.

This is part of the behavioral genetics of your psychological makeup.

So what is happening from a genetic perspective to influence your neurobiology?

That then manifests psychologically.

And this is slow.

Dopamine adrenaline, catecholamine clearance, more catecholamines dumped into the bloodstream.

Something happens, spikes, takes a longer time to come down.

Avoid stress.

Don't marry somebody that is going to cause a ton of drama in your life.

Don't stick around friends who are unpredictable and always in a fucking catastrophe nightmare.

Listen to Anjuna Deep, Deep House.

Meditate, breath work, go for walks in nature.

You will have to pay a price for this.

It is a hindrance in some regard.

It is a hindrance, but it is a fucking unreal fuel as well.

So if you can create the conditions for this to flourish, it's wonderful.

Sometimes life is going to come in and smash you in the face and you don't get to choose that.

Okay.

But all of the prep and the nervous system, regulation and the building of that window of tolerance.

Is you getting ready for those times, because they're coming?

And in the interim, you will have a greater depth of thought.

You will be able to work harder.

You will be able to focus way more than everybody else.

And if you use it right, if you treat it like a way, i would think you are not fragile, you're just finely tuned, would be a wonderful way to think about it.

It's like a, like a formula one car, um like it's not.

It's not a toyota camry, it's not as reliable.

It's not as reliable as a rav4.

It's not going to get you as far, but fuck me, if you can tune it just right, it's.

It's powerful.

So hope that helps.

Emmett higgins, if you could go back, Would you have still gone to university?

Yes, I would have done.

I fucking love my time at university.

I get it.

It's uncool.

Everybody thinks you can just learn it on the internet.

Permissionless apprenticeship, dude.

It's expensive and rah, rah, rah.

For me.

I was so under socialized as a kid that I needed Navy SEAL hell week for learning how to be an adult.

I didn't know until I was 18 that you were supposed to knock on other people's doors before you went into their room, because it was me and mom and dad and like they would go to bed after me and wake up before me.

So when, what like?

Whose door did i need to knock on?

Um, i think it's good.

I learned an awful lot.

I started two businesses while i was there.

I ran one of those with my business partner for the next fucking 17 years, 15 years, something like that and uh, it was great.

So yeah, i'm very pro dm acid racing.

Fellow only child and borough boy.

Wow, this is starting horrendously.

It's great seeing your success and positive impact in so many people.

Thank you.

Even more so when I speak to a few guys who know you and they say you are still sound.

That means good, like solid in non-northern language.

My question is related to Middlesbrough.

As I too, moved away for opportunities, like you, based on your improved knowledge and experience, Considering you now have the resources and influence beyond when you left.

What are the three improvements you would make to improve the area and opportunities for the people?

Okay.

Three improvements I would make to improve the area and opportunities for the people.

I would love a cultural intervention.

I really do not like.

My biggest problem is not structural, it's cultural.

Didn't like the way that there was a big skepticism of anybody trying anything new, especially in the Northeast of the UK.

Um, I would love to have more role models and conversations from people to youngsters there who say Hey, if you've got a big dream, you can actually maybe go and fucking make it happen.

That'd probably improve the fucking train line.

Um, if you could get to newcastle more quickly, you would be able to experience more of that city, or maybe leeds or manchester as well.

That would probably be good.

So, something to do with transport.

But like, what the fuck do i know about transport?

Um, i would, i mean anything that i think of, that you build pickleball courts or you know like after school park places or all the rest of it.

I immediately think about the young teenage yobs that are going to go and break it or spray paint stuff on it, like this is this is not an exaggeration, by the way anything nice that's in and around the teeside area just gets broken within days or fucking melted down and sold at some scrapyard.

So i think the intervention i don't think you need three.

I think you just need to intervene in the culture.

Like you can be more, you can do things, you can make shit happen.

I've been trying to think about how i, how i could go back, but like, who am i?

Some bloke that did a podcast?

I am?

I really i'm not fucking richard branson, i can't go and inspire a ton of people, but i don't know.

I would love, i would love to come up with an intervention but um yeah, that's.

And if the third one, the fucking weather.

Change the weather someone someone, intervene with that before we continue.

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Kaiser Soze 9857.

What's your favorite thing about yourself?

Talk your shit, Chris.

You've been killing it.

Well, that's nice.

It's an opportunity to not fucking speak badly about myself, which I've done for most of this so far.

It's my favorite thing about myself. the way that my mind works, I really fucking love it.

I really love playing with thoughts inside of my own head.

And I did that a lot as a kid.

You know an only child playing in his room listening to audio tapes, storybooks.

Um, I just got really used to that and actually really enjoy my own company.

I really, really fucking enjoy my own company.

And that's great because now I have this wonderful platform where other people get to hear a slightly censored filtered, polished version of the stuff that I get to say to myself as I walk around the house, and that's cool.

I guess the other thing is, especially this year, it's a new type of bravery.

I don't think that I think we have a poor definition of bravery, and my preparedness to do and face deep emotional work uh, is one of the things that I'm most proud of.

That's recent.

Um, and that feels much more self-authored like the thinking thing is cool.

And I'm sure that lots of you love playing with ideas inside of your own mind, but in many ways you don't get to choose that.

It's just like the thing that you love.

Um, it's not hard.

It's like eating an ice cream or something.

It's really enjoyable uh, something that is hard and i'm really really fucking proud of.

One of my favorite things is that i've been prepared to show up this year and, like face emotional challenges and i've not hidden from them, i've not run from them, uh.

Sometimes i put them off and delayed, but i've, i've dedicated myself in a way this year and i've shown up open-heartedly, uh in a manner that i never have before, and i'm really really fucking proud of that.

Moyle Frights 931.

Why do you think your reach is so wide?

I'm French living in a small town in Normandy.

Bonjour.

I don't know.

Me and Dean always had this thing for ages, where we said the channel is criminally undersubscribed and we're cranking away at 10000 subs after two years and 100000 subs after four years.

And I couldn't, I'm like, fuck, am I missing something here?

Because I really think these conversations are important, but I still think that they're important.

I still think that trying to work out how to live a good life, not taking it too seriously, striving for a lot, but this new angle I've had over the last sort of 24 months or so of realizing that life's happening right now and taking it steady.

I think that's I think it is a delicate balance that's not very sexy.

It's not superbly sexy as an offering modern wisdom.

I don't think, if you actually listen to what it is fully truly about.

Because it's not sufficiently reductive to be hustle grind set mode.

It's not flimsy and whimsical enough to just be sort of philosophy bro abstract idea mode.

It's not super optimizer enough to be Huberman Atiyah Brian Johnson, but it's also not laissez-faire enough to be fucking Finn versus history.

And I sit somewhere in the middle of all of this stuff.

But I think, at least for me, that complexity of I want to strive for a lot, but I don't want to miss my life.

I want to optimize, but not become a perfectionist and over-optimize.

I think this is a lot of people.

I think it's more people than has been priced in by the market.

And I'm speaking to them.

And hopefully they're growing with me.

Tell us about your push-ups on stage.

Some dude fucking said, have I trained today?

And I hadn't.

And he said, do you want to do 50 push-ups with me?

So he did 50 push-ups.

And I realized that that would turn into a David Goggins moment.

And it did, and it was cool and i'm glad that i did it.

Idmar janiela, do you get jealous?

Yeah yeah, all the time.

I someone criticized my use of the word jealousy.

Uh, i think it's envy, not jealousy.

Jealousy is not wanting someone else to have something in case they take it from you, and envy is wanting what someone else has.

I can't, i don't quite know.

Um yeah, all the time, all the time i i have envied very much this year people who have had the energy that I haven't, who have got to live exciting lives in a manner that I feel I deserve to and have worked to, but it's been taken from me.

I, for a good while, envy people who had the freedom to travel, because I was tied down by a very intense job running my own company and I still am, but now I just get to travel too.

So yeah, I do get jealous, but I try and direct it in the right ways.

And when I'm on my meditation and stuff's going well, it doesn't really come up that much.

I'm pretty happy.

I'm pretty happy with where things are at.

I have work to do on the sensation of happiness, but I'm pretty happy with where things are at.

Kerhales, what is your biggest accomplishment in 2025?

Not giving up, not stopping, not giving in, not compromising what I knew to be true and the direction I wanted to move in, simply because it was going to be painful in order to get there.

Um, It's not been easy.

It's not been easy.

That's fine.

They're not all supposed to be easy.

But I kept going.

I kept going with my health.

I kept going with the emotional work.

I kept going with personal life.

I kept going with professional life.

And I held it all together.

And sometimes it slipped through my fingers.

But I managed to grab a hold of it again.

Veronica Danner.

How do you find the balance between having high standards for yourself and being rigid or unforgiving with other people?

I push myself hard and expect a lot of myself.

While I know everyone isn't like that, I struggle with being patient and understanding of people who are undriven and complain about how their life isn't what they want it to be, especially when they try to give me a hard time for trying hard, because you don't have to do that, you know.

How do you honor your own drive while still respecting other people's not so driven attitude, especially when they give me a hard time?

A hard time for trying because you don't have to do that, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, what's happening here?

There's a couple of things going on.

So this sounds a little bit like externalized perfectionism.

So I think there's three different types of perfectionism.

Go back and listen to the perfectionism episode, which I did about six weeks ago.

It's really great.

There's also an article in Variety, which might help with this.

Externalized perfectionism is, as far as I can see, like fear, if I need those people to do it in order for me to feel supported.

Another part is um, this sense of being on the outside, of being judged for something that you know is virtuous, because you are doing high standards, pushing hard, completing a lot, and other people are slowing you down.

They're literally like chipping away at your own motivation.

You don't have to do that, you know.

Um, i think a great boundary to set around this, the.

There are sort of two elements.

The second one is an easier boundary to set.

Uh, you saying you don't have to do that, you know, it's so easy to give some snappy reply which is like well, you wouldn't be able to do it anyway, so fucking someone has to.

It's so easy to just give this like very bitter, uh back bitey passive, aggressive sort of reply.

And I'm sure that you don't want to do that.

With that one.

I would just call it out and say hey, I really need more support from you than I'm getting.

When I am working hard, even if I'm complaining about doing this.

What I really need from you is for you to believe in me and enthuse me and tell me that I've got this and that I can keep going.

That's what I need from you, even if you're not doing it.

And if the way that I'm showing up and the way that I'm working is triggering something in you and you don't feel comfortable with me behaving this way, I would rather that you didn't say anything or didn't comment about it.

I'm sorry.

I'm trying to achieve big things and I don't want to make you feel not enough for not trying to go after them yourself.

But motivation is a tenuous thing.

And I really want you to be there for me.

And I would love to bring you along for the ride too.

But if you can't do that, I understand.

But I can't have you.

You are not allowed to remind me that I can have lower standards for myself.

I think that would be a cool boundary to set and should be sufficiently enthusing to other people if they really care about you.

Um, if you say as well, i would love to do this with you, i would love for you to come along with me like this, offering this opening up.

I think, especially in relationships, if you're in a relationship with someone and you want to do a ton of personal development and they're worried because every time you do personal development, you change.

And what if you change and you leave them, if you say to them, if you just open up the door to say i really think that this would be great for us to do together.

I want us to do this as a team.

I want you to be a part of this And I would love for us.

So why don't we start getting up and going to the gym early?

Why don't we start run club?

Why don't we, we should go to a run club together or whatever the fuck is that you're trying to do.

Why don't we learn together?

Why don't we read a book together before we go to, before we watch Netflix?

You can do this with friends as well and try and bring them in.

That would be a way to raise them up.

If that's not an option and you're just.

I am frustrated with the fact that other people are lazy and not that motivated.

It's a tough one and I get it. but you just need to get over it because they're not going to change.

People do not change when you tell them to.

They will almost never change when you tell them to.

You can give them the advice.

You can sort of show them the way, but it's very rare that they're going to change if you start pointing the finger at them.

They'll just dig their heels in more.

So set your boundaries around yourself.

Realize that your way is not the way for everyone.

Um, try and make light of it would be another one as well.

Just laugh, it's like.

Here i am again, like all my friends are out at dinner and uh i i, i guess i'm gonna spend the evening reading this fucking book.

Cool, all right, here we go again.

That's fine, that's fine, it'll be worth it.

Han hey hey, nifa oba Hey Chris, the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding, and the answers you're looking for are in the silence you're avoiding are ideas I feel got hammered into my head because of you this year.

For context, I'm in my early 20s.

At this point in my life, how can I know the difference between avoiding something because something needs to be done about it and avoiding something because it has caused enough pain to know it needs to be avoided for your own sake?

To clarify.

Thank you.

How do i know when i'm avoiding something because i need to face it to grow, versus avoiding something because it's genuinely harmful or draining me?

Ps.

Congratulations on every milestone you hit.

I hope you celebrate the big wins as well as you do the smaller ones.

Awesome question okay, super easy.

Well no sorry, super easy.

Analogy really fucking difficult to deal with.

Spoiler alert um, how do i know if i'm uh, not doing this next repetition in the gym because i'm being a pussy?

How do I know if I'm not doing it because this next repetition is going to injure me?

Unfortunately, this is a question.

First off, this is a question I get asked a lot.

The fear that I might be a bitch is present in the mind of every overachiever.

And it is not an easy decision to make.

The way that I do it has been through experience.

Uh, you're in your early 20s.

Um, what it seems like you're trying to do here is work out intuitively uh, something that you have a limited amount of intuition around.

In my early 20s, my intuition did not exist.

I was really struggling because i didn't.

I hadn't accumulated sufficient life experience to be able to tap what.

What fucking intuition am i tapping into?

I don't have any intuition, so what i would do if i was you is just set rules.

Set rules for yourself.

You're going to stick to this thing, this new habit, this training protocol.

You're going to give this relationship a chance for this amount of time, and then you're going to step back.

So think system two versus system one in Daniel Kahneman speak, right?

Deliberate versus automatic.

And you're going to have to be very deliberate, the earlier that you are in life, because you can't use as much intuition as me, or as much intuition as someone who's 57 or 87, because you haven't accumulated the repetitions yet.

So think about system two, be procedural, set yourself structure, rules, learn, go on ChatGPT, go on YouTube, listen to my podcast, listen to some old Peterson, whatever it is that you're looking at, go okay i can kind of outsource my thinking a little bit here but once you have you need to construct rules you need to construct a little framework a blueprint that you're going to follow and over time after you've done that you will know what too much and too little feels like but you're trying to find an intuitive balance answer to something that you do not have enough experience trying to balance on it yet um now you may have fucking tons of experience and i might be pandering and talking down to you might be the most experienced early 20 year old in the world um but even if you were this lesson still holds true within your life you will have better experience in more time so do the learning create a structure follow a blueprint for yourself that's you know done from a place of love and um i think that you should be able to work out like i wouldn't be doing does this feel good or not i would just say just fucking commit to it um draining is fine genuinely harmful is different if it's draining you you're a fucking 23 it doesn't matter like you will be fine you can be drained for the next decade and still have so much in the tank uh genuinely harmful slightly different and that is if it's if it's plaguing you for nights and nights on end and you're staying awake and you're angry about it that might be a little bit too much andrew beer beer beer chad 9555 fuck congrats chris i have a question about this freud quote you mentioned during a show in toronto great to see another person from toronto one day in retrospect the struggle will strike you as most beautiful are we doomed to never enjoy the journey to only look fondly at the struggle when it is a distant memory to never recognize and appreciate the good days until they're forever out of reach in the void of the past If not, what tips do you have to help us stay anchored in the present and find beauty in the struggle here and now?

Ah, Andrew, what a fucking great question, dude.

Yeah, that Freud quote, one day the struggle will strike you as most beautiful.

It's brilliant.

Unfortunately, there is a part of you that is going to experience and enjoy the past more than you did when you were going through it, at least as far as I can see.

Um.

One of the reasons is, in the moment you have lots of fears and they're distracting worries and concerns and uncertainty.

And that causes you to not enjoy stuff as much as you could.

In the future.

You are able to see all of the fears, the million fucking panoply, cornucopia of fears that you could have worried about.

None of them or one of them came to pass.

So you realize that all of your fears are didn't need to be something to worry about, and all of the enjoyment that you can see how you should have enjoyed it back then was actually where you should have placed your time and your attention.

Certainly, one of the problems that you come up against here is that you can romanticize the past and you can grieve over not being there for experiences in the way that you wish that you were, And also you can see them with a type of rose-colored glasses, which they're not accurate.

That's not actually how you felt at the time.

You didn't feel that peaceful.

You didn't feel that regulated.

The sex wasn't that good because of your fears, because of your uncertainty.

And what you're basically saying is If I hadn't been me and my experience of life in the past hadn't been that experience, could I go back and experience it differently?

Because now I don't feel the way that I did then emotionally and I see the situation and I wish that I could have enjoyed the situation then how I see, with the equanimity of my emotional experience now

But right now you're in an emotional experience which is in some way tarnishing or damaging and what you're going through.

So what can we do?

Tips to stay anchored in the present and find beauty in the struggle here and now.

Remember that your future self is going to look at you right now through your memories.

And whether it's with regret or fondness, depends on how gentle and how present you can be.

Spend less time on your phone.

Find people to share it with.

Laugh as best you can at the absurdity of the struggle.

Journal when things are good, not just when things are bad, because there will be things that you have forgotten about how good they were, not just bad things that you have forgotten about how bad they were.

And now shout at yourself for having been so selfish as to have not realized that they should have been bad.

I do think that this is kind of a curse of the thoughtful person that you are going to not necessarily see the beauty in the struggle until after it's happened.

And if you've got a really chronic version of this or an intense version of this, you won't see the beauty in the experience until after it's happened.

How many people that are performers...

I know tons of performers, musicians, artists, stuff like that, that are on stage.

And if I asked them about what happened during that show, they wouldn't be able to tell you anything.

They don't know anything about what happened in Berlin in 2024.

But there was a thousand people there in front of them.

10,000, 50,000.

How could you not remember that?

Because it just becomes this sort of whitewash thing.

Maybe they were worried about a relationship that they were in, or maybe their parent was ill, or maybe they were just tired that day, or maybe they had like a weird email from someone from their past.

God, I missed my life.

I missed my life during that moment, that month, that year, that decade.

So I was so distracted by that thing.

So one other thing what are the things that you know are detracting from your experience in the moment?

What are the persistent thoughts, the repetitive boring, overdone thoughts that are regularly causing you to be distracted, and not in the moment?

Happiness can't exist when you're uncertain and it can't exist when you want things to change much.

If you want things to be different, it's going to be real hard to be happy.

And if you don't know what the future brings, it's going to be real hard to be happy.

So work on those two things first.

That's a great question.

Click Z.

I know that my tendency to fall in love is a lot quicker than others because of my childhood and always feeling like I needed to beg for attention or love.

Father divorced seven times.

Holy fuck.

I never got to see what real love should look like.

How do I know if I'm leaning into my preset conditions that are embedded in me from a child, or if I've actually found true love, and the one for me?

Is the spark real?

Do you just know right away or is it something you build?

Am I falling too hard because it's easy and comfortable and is allowing my inner child to feel loved, or is it because it's actually meant to be?

Dude.

Oh, what a fucking cool question.

Father divorced seven times.

Well, first off man i um, i really feel for you.

You know that's.

That's not an easy environmental or genetic preset to to deal with.

Um, there is a malady, or necessarily a malady, but like a psychological disposition where people tumble through the levels of attachment more quickly.

Arthur Brooks spoke about it.

If you listen to my Arthur Brooks episode from halfway through this year, you'll be able to find out about it.

He explains it.

Here's what I would do.

Set a bunch of negotiable and non-negotiables for your partner.

Typically, this doesn't work.

People say you can't have a yes and no list for decision like this.

You need to.

Uh, you just when you know.

You know problem is and you've identified it brilliantly a lot of self-work and reflection here, which i'm really impressed by.

Your attachment system is so finely attuned and becomes turned on so quickly that your ability to discern almost immediately gets thrown out of the window.

So i would.

I would set up a bunch of rules and preferences and I would use way more scrutiny early on in the relationship.

You should treat yourself in love like a drug addict.

You will, at some point in the not too distant future, after you meet this person.

If you keep seeing them and keep and meshing yourself with them, you will become a drug addict, and they are the drug.

And you will not be able to think straight and you will not be able to use your reason.

So while you still have your faculties intact, you need to scrutinize aggressively.

So I would keep dates short.

I would actually limit contact early on.

I would have your set of rules and I would do the scrutiny thing.

I would basically do the inverse of that list of questions to make somebody fall in love with you.

I would be as deep as you like to be, but I wouldn't push it too quickly, to just give yourself just a tiny little bit more breathing room.

And then what that should do is allow you to just stave off a tiny little bit more.

Then you're going to check against your list.

What were the lessons that you learned from the last times this happened?

That went well, that went badly?

Um, but dude, i uh, when you find the right partner, when you find the right one which you will you are going to be able to fucking blow her off her feet because of how deeply you feel.

You just need to treat that depth like uh, the precious gift that it is.

Um, All right.

I'm going to love you and leave you.

Fuck.

2025.

What a mad 12 months.

Thank you all for being here.

Happy New Year.

Happy 2026.

New studio is going to be here soon.

New merch shop will be here soon.

Annual review at chriswellx.com slash review.

Reading list slash books and slash more books and new tour Australia, New Zealand and Bali in March and April, the UK and maybe some Europe and Ireland in October.

And I'm going to keep going and I'm not going to stop and I'm going to keep on, I'm going to keep on showing up and I'm going to keep on asking questions, important questions of myself and of other people, and i really really, really appreciate you all being here.

It means an awful lot.

You've changed my life with the device that fucking sits in your pocket and uh, going into the next year feeling super grateful, and i hope that you do too.

All right, i love you bye.

If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom reading list.

It is 100 books that you should read before you die.

The most interesting, life-changing and impactful books I've ever read, with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them.

And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillx.com slash books.

That's chriswillx.com slash books.

[Modern Wisdom: Reflections on Growth, Identity, and the Evolution of the Self]-[#1040 - 4M Subscriber Q&A]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Evolution of the Self: Insights from Modern Wisdom

The Paradox of High Performance and Isolation

The Power of Vulnerability and Emotional Work

Managing the "Met-Met" Genetic Predisposition

Defining Success Beyond the Hustle

The Future of Modern Wisdom

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📖 Transcript

[Modern Wisdom: Reflections on Growth, Identity, and the Evolution of the Self]-[#1040 - 4M Subscriber Q&A]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Evolution of the Self: Insights from Modern Wisdom

The Paradox of High Performance and Isolation

The Power of Vulnerability and Emotional Work

Managing the "Met-Met" Genetic Predisposition

Defining Success Beyond the Hustle

The Future of Modern Wisdom

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