Welcome to The Knowledge Project, the most irregular podcast in the history of the world with seemingly one episode every three or four months.
I'm your host, Shane Parrish, curator behind the Frontum Street blog, which helps people make better decisions, learn new things, and discover how to live a meaningful life.
The Knowledge Project allows me to meet and talk to world -class people.
We pull back the curtain a little to see what makes them so incredible.
On this episode, I have Ed Latimore, a professional boxer, philosopher, and physics major from the Steel City.
I travelled to Pittsburgh to record this interview, after which he gave me a private boxing lesson.
Let's just say his hands are about as big as my head.
Luckily for me, his heart was pretty big too.
This is unlike any interview I've ever done.
Listen in, and you'll see why.
You have one of the most interesting backgrounds I've ever seen from a boxer.
You have physics, you're into chess.
Walk me through how this happened.
You know, so there's always been my interest in these things, outside of boxing.
And I've always had the interest in boxing, but I didn't get a chance to for lots of reasons, and those aren't really relevant, but for lots of reasons why, there were lots of reasons why I didn't get a chance to do boxing.
And then one day, I, at 22 or something, yeah, 22, I decided I was going to do this.
And part of that was because I had just got out of a relationship that lasted for four years, and I was a total chump about a lot of things, and one of those things was that I wanted to make sure I was in a position to see her every day.
So that meant taking horrible jobs, and not advancing myself in my academics or whatever.
So at the end of four years, from 18 to 22, I had not advanced any way, shape, or form as a man.
And I was like, okay, this has got to change.
And a thing I wanted to do was, I think YouTube was just getting started, and I had been watching fight videos, and I was like, I always wanted to try boxing.
Let's go try boxing.
But at that time, MMA was also getting big, and I knew you had to learn jiu -jitsu for MMA, and it was a whole complete system of fighting, not just with your hands.
So there was a time for about a year when I first started training from 22 to 23, where I was doing everything, every single night for six days a week, I was either in the boxing gym, I was in an octagon training, I was either on the mat learning how to roll, I was doing the judo for a little while,
but I'm almost twisted my knee, and I was like, how useful is judo really, is it worth twisting my knee?
So all of these things, they came together, and one day I was like, all right, I'm just going to go with boxing and go down the line.
But it all started with me wanting to do something and put some time in, to reference that relationship that I had just got out of, an argument that will never ever leave my mind and greatly influenced me.
I used to be huge anti -higher education.
For the most part I still am, the difference is now I'm an adult in school pursuing a physics degree, but even there was a plan for that.
But I used to be huge higher anti -education.
The girl I was dating, this created some clashes because her mother was a professor of biology.
So she'd hear me go on these rants every now and then or these arguments, or she'd bring up, why don't you go back to school, and I'd give some type of flipping 21 -year -old answer.
And then one day near the end of our relationship, and you can always tell the end is near when they stop caring about you, one day she says, what have you done for four years?
Whether you're pro -education or anti -education, what have you done for four years to show there was something else to do?
Even if you had sat in a convent, monastery, you haven't done anything for the past four years, but show up at my house and eat my food.
And I was like, and I remember, I can't remember.
I mean, I'm sure the man in me is editing the tears that may have happened in my memory, but I remember going, you were exactly right.
I have not done anything.
So when I got in a position to where I really put the pedal to the metal, and that's how I've been living ever since, I mean, I took a little reprieve and that's part of life, you know, up and down.
You can't be in all the time, but even now until recently, until the past three months or so, I mean, I was in the military, boxing, going to school and still trying to be a decent person and from my relationship at home because that's important.
You have to maintain and nurture those relationships.
So that is really where that boxing thing, you know, we kind of moved on to a tangent, but moved on to something else.
But I started boxing mainly to do something for four years.
I mean, now it's turned into a decade, but we started there and I wasn't comfortable where I was at, and it was like, all right, let's go, let's become something, something more than we are.
Tell me a little bit about how you juggled between the military and school and a boxing career.
What's your daily routine look like?
You know what's funny?
Right now in my life, so where am I right now?
Last semester I took off school.
I took off so I could focus on boxing.
This semester I'm taking off boxing to focus on school.
I'm done with my service and the National Guard.
So for the first time in over five years, the only thing I do, I mean, I wake up and I still work out, but I don't want to have to work out at the level of like warming the gym two or three times a day.
And then I'm trying to put that in between school and then I have drilling on the weekend and then I got to come home and do stuff at home.
So for the first time, it's a very relaxed life.
I'll tell you what I think I did to survive because you know what's funny about pain, When you look back at pain, you can't really remember.
You can remember it hurting, right?
But you don't know how you survived it.
I heard this referenced, this idea referenced in like women who give birth.
It's like apparently it's incredibly painful, right?
But somehow they do it more than once in their life.
I'm not talking about the new mothers, I'm talking about the ones that have multiple kids who know what they're getting into.
So how's that relate?
I don't know how I survived.
I really don't. I think about this all the time.
But I know I'm thinking about it from the perspective of having less to do and still feeling stressed.
But what I think I did, I can't tell you what I feel I did because I can't get back to that feeling.
What I think I did is I gave up sleep a lot of times.
Sleep is always optional.
I'm not one of those guys that can go forever and four hours of sleep, right?
I need my eight hours on average.
With that said, on average is the thing we stress because okay, so like Monday through Thursday, I mean, we're talking three, four hours of sleep.
Saturdays, I'm not drilling, I'll sleep 10 hours, man.
I'll get in. I'll figure it out.
Because there was no way to do all that.
It just isn't. I wouldn't recommend it.
I'm never going back to a workload like that again unless I say unless I have to.
But you know what, there's something about people like me.
I say that, but the first thing is hard because my first instinct is to look at a thing and go, I can do that.
That makes sense for me.
Then I have to kick in the secondary support system of my emotions and my life and go, you know what?
That's just not going to be a good look.
Now I have somebody in my ear I trust because when you grow up the way I grew up, you don't take counsel well, and a lot of times that has cost me.
But now I'm at a point where I have a small but dedicated circle of people close to me who say a thing and I listen.
My girlfriend is one of those people.
She will check me if she feels like I am going to grab more than I can handle because she doesn't really ...
Okay. I want to say she doesn't care if I'm present at home but I know that's BS.
I think she's more concerned that I will burn myself up because then I turn into an asshole, man.
Here's when I knew it was getting bad when I was doing all that.
When I was juggling all that.
I was just doing dishes.
We got a nice little arrangement.
She does all the cooking.
I do all the cleaning and unless I'm injured I cut my finger real bad.
A month ago she was like, I got to do dishes now.
But other than that, but one day man I was doing dishes and she said something to me and I snapped at her.
I don't snap. I don't yell.
That's not my thing.
I'm a very calm person.
You can know me your entire life and count on one hand the times you'll hear me raise my voice out of the person.
But I did that and I was like, okay, this is getting out of hand.
Because all I wanted to do was do my stuff, do things, go to sleep.
I didn't even want to deal with her cordially.
So let alone where she's like, I'm going to need some help with something.
But do I think what I do all over again will only...
No. But it was necessary because once again, what have you done for four years and that's always stuck with me and it's driven everything.
I'm like, you're right.
You got to put time in to get farther and get better and sometimes you just got to hear with that tough love aspect.
Before that point, I knew the idea intellectually.
Now I know it viscerally.
Now I will never forget you got to put time in and how you put that time in and where you put it in doesn't matter.
But the longer you wait, the more work it will take.
In my mind, you're the philosophical boxer.
You've written a book called Not Caring What Other People Think Is A Superpower.
Tell me a little bit about that book and the experience of writing it.
So the book came about.
It took me a little longer to write it than I thought it would.
I thought it wouldn't have been done in like six months.
It ended up being a year because life or the things we were just talking about all that coming together and then I'm trying to write the book.
I didn't even think about that.
I'm blogging. So that's...
But one day, the twitter user, who I'm great, great friends with, I'm sure we'll meet in person one day, but we talked a lot.
He goes, yo, you know, your twitter feed is really great, man.
You ever think about putting it together and selling a book of tweets?
I was like, you know what?
I had never thought of that.
That's a great idea.
And I was like, but there's no way I'm going to feel good about just putting out a bunch of tweets.
So I went through, I called my whole list.
I downloaded the XHML file and I sat there and I was like, okay, I'm going to take out the best ones and then I'm going to put together the ones in certain categories, which ultimately became the chapters of the book.
And then I'm going to write an essay explaining each one and then more appropriate, I'm going to give an actionable step or an actionable piece of advice for a person to be able to implement this idea in their life.
So it all started with that suggestion and I'm pretty sure I got that suggestion.
Yeah, about about 20 months ago, maybe a little less.
And it's just been a constant thing in the making.
And then when it was coming together, I was like, yeah, I really like this.
One of the big parts of the book that stuck with me is kind of your philosophy on self -discipline.
Can you walk us through that a little bit?
Self -discipline is highly important, right?
You can't if you wait till you feel like doing something, you'll never do it.
And furthermore, if you give in to your feelings about a thing, you will give up on many things because anything worth having requires hard work and hard work by definition is not pleasant.
I don't care what anyone says to you.
Being in shape is great.
Running is not great.
I used to tell my friend all the time, you're never going to like running and stop looking for it to become enjoyable.
Just go do the damn running and look at the results.
With that said, my whole approach to self -discipline is to eliminate the emotional aspect of it.
Or you can feel a thing.
No one's saying get rid of your emotions.
Not only is that not possible, if it were possible, your life just becomes a series of like indistinguishable moments, you need emotion.
But you want to control it.
Most people don't have emotional control.
When you have emotional control, then you can look at a thing and go, man, for example, I'm an early riser, right?
People are like, how you get up so early, man?
Girls are like, why are you always up so early?
I'm like, because I need to get up early.
Like how I feel about it never enters.
It's just a thing that needs to be done.
I always say if a thing is important to your success, it doesn't matter how you feel about it, it just needs to be done.
And that's how I view self -discipline.
You can't consider your feelings.
Because your feelings will always, your feelings are like they're always going to find the easiest way for you to do a thing.
They don't want you to work hard.
Hard work sucks. But if you want the good things and the cool things in life, if you even want to be, you have an average life, you've got to go do hard things that you don't want to do.
And eventually you just stop thinking about it.
And then you learn to see the world as a matter of what must be done versus what must not be done.
You mentioned self -confidence.
It strikes me as it would be very difficult to get in a ring without self -confidence.
How do you develop that or how do you think about that?
Getting in a ring. I never think about my confidence.
Is that through process too?
Right. Okay. So you just reminded me of a really interesting thing that happened in LA when I lived out there.
I got evaluated by a sports psychologist.
We all got evaluated by sports psychologists out there.
And he said, as you get closer to the event, you get more confident and then you're more confident, more relaxed as the event occurs.
That second part, I think is typical of most athletes.
Once you get in there, they say, once you get hit the first time, then you know you're good.
That part before, how I get more and more relaxed or how my confidence rises and grows.
I don't think that my confidence is growing so much as I'm accepting the inevitable.
I've already signed on a dotted line.
The fight's already going to go down and in my mind, the outcome is actually already predetermined.
No one knows what it is, but it's already set in stone.
So there's nothing for me to worry about.
That is the first thing, that detachment.
That's the first thing.
And I think that's the most powerful thing for me about fighting, is that I don't care if I get hurt.
I know I'm going to experience pain.
So what has left for me to worry about?
I just got over being.
Now the worst thing, the compositional happiness, I've dealt with that.
I've been embarrassed on national television.
You go and do all these things and you realize the world does not stop.
No one cares. It really doesn't matter.
And then you get the confidence to really act.
As long as you think people care what you do, as long as you think that somehow your little existence is going to make a big ripple in a long grand scheme of things, you're going to be terrified to act.
But once you understand, once you realize that it's freedom, it's free, and once you see that no one cares, no one thinks about it except maybe to people at the moment, like no one cares anymore.
I don't care anymore, right?
I can like say, hey, I got stopped.
I got knocked down on TV and it doesn't bother me because it's an event that's gone and I've learned from it and I've taken the best parts of it to make myself better.
Most people get too attached, too fixated on a single event so they cannot be confident.
So when I enter the ring, I'm not thinking about a bunch of other things going on, my mind by default.
I don't know how other fighters achieved this, but I know they achieved something similar.
They might not use my wording, but I think the process and the benefit is the same.
By default, I don't worry about anything else going on but the guy in front of me.
But I'm not even really worried about him because the worst thing he can do, he can't kill me.
And even if he could, then life will be over.
What is there to worry about?
You go have fun and you perform and you get it done.
Once you realize that the worst thing you can lose, that's the worst thing to have.
But Randy Couture said this to me, once again, you live in LA, man.
You meet all these people.
He came to the gym one day and he was giving us a little speech about something and he said something once again that will always stick.
Much like the four year thing, this will always stick.
He said if the worst thing that happens to you in your life is you lose a fight, then your life is going pretty great.
And that was when I was an amateur and it's stuck with me ever since.
This is just a hobby.
It's fun. People worry about getting punched in the face.
People worry about getting hurt.
But then you realize just pain, pain.
Pain is the same as pleasure.
It's just a feeling.
It's going to go away.
But as long as you think, as long as you avoid that, you can't have fun.
You can't get the benefits of life.
It's a good time. I wish every man would go at least have box at amateur event.
He ain't got to go pro but it's very easy to become an amateur boxer.
In the book you talk about the concept of good pain versus bad pain and you said good pain comes from pushing towards a goal, bad pain comes from avoiding challenges and you're going to suffer either way.
You might as well be better.
You walked me through some of the thinking that led you to that.
Right. So I'm pretty sure when I wrote that the first experience because I always think like this, I think that everything can be like combined and explained and you can take one out then and use it to explain other ideas.
So I'm pretty sure I was actually thinking about like romantic endeavors when I wrote that and I was like, okay, it's going to be hard if you're with somebody.
But it's going to be equally hard if you like are to always run away.
And I was like, oh man, that's like the same in fitness.
Like either you're going to suffer because you're unattractive and you have horrible health or you're going to suffer while you're working out that painful running.
So what's the difference?
Is it all suffering?
The difference is one kind of suffering is moving towards something you want, a good body, a good partner.
The other kind of suffering or pain is going away from things, going away from putting the work in, going away from being vulnerable and opening yourself up and taking risk.
So no matter what, there's going to be an uncountable process.
And I think that's just part of the rate of change there's life.
Always thinking things in terms of calculus for some weird reason, the rate of change of life.
If you're going up, you're going to have effort to have an issue.
And if you want down, you're going to have an issue.
It's just what issue do you decide to have?
Do you want the issue of, man, I got to put these late nights in and do this work.
I got to go work out at a gym.
I got to argue with this person to make sure that we have a good understanding and reach a compromise about a situation.
Or do I want to have the pain of being an incel on a fat bastard that just sits around in a basement all day and does nothing and no one really likes.
Get the picky poison.
When you're in the ring, do you have any emotions going through your head?
Like, is it a feeling or is it just, you're kind of robotic at that point, I have learned something really interesting about myself.
I don't, I am completely detached.
That may be all more harmful than helpful.
I'm like the other end of the spectrum in that regard on the other one.
The one in that I think you have the caricature that most people think of, which is like this emotionally reckless boxer that's full of anger and just wants to bring pain.
Like, uh, like Mike Tyson's in that interview, they ask him like, why are you so angry in a fight?
Mike and Mike goes, it's a fight.
What's the matter? That's like one extreme.
I'm pretty sure I'm on the other extreme and that's not good either.
Ideally, you want some type of emotion.
You don't want to be.
You want to care enough to not care if that makes sense.
You need to care about the outcome enough that you want a good outcome.
But you also are more concerned with a process.
Like I take the work very seriously.
Um, clearly I couldn't have gone and done the things amateur or professional.
I did not take the work seriously.
The same time, uh, in the ring.
I'm very, very detached.
I mean, it's from an outcome.
Yeah. And you know, and you know, maybe it's not a weakness.
I think, I think a lot of times we, we sometimes question how we think about a thing because everyone else around you thinks about a thing in a different way and you realize you're a minority.
That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's certainly easy to feel that way.
So I've wrestled with that a lot.
Should I be more attached to the outcome?
Should I be less attached to the outcome?
Am I just right? But I don't feel, I mean, I'm not angry at the guy.
I'm just a little bit of a drag and laughing joke with him beforehand.
Hang out with him afterwards.
It's just a fight. It's just a fight.
It's not the end of the world.
We're not like ripping each other's families apart.
I don't even, I mean, I'm sure I can figure it out, but I don't even know how to trash talk, man.
I just go, Oh, that's nice.
Not can save you when we actually start fighting.
So, uh, yeah, it's to me, you know, you enjoy the time of the ring.
It's very enjoyable.
How do you stay motivated to get better?
Um, like after you win, how do you?
Go to the gym in a couple of days and reset.
Okay, let's pretend I didn't have a mastery mindset.
What I do have, I have always had, and I think this is a good sign of a, or a son of a good coach.
Man, you couldn't tell whether you won or lost when you start watching film, because things start getting picked apart, what you did wrong, what you can get better.
And if you want to get better, if you're there to improve, you take them and you start getting to work and you realize, I always say, you're always one mistake away from losing the last fight, which means you catch it and you, okay, man, it's a good thing that I had just learned that from my last fight
and didn't catch up to me, uh, this fight.
Likewise, uh, the, the fight I lost.
If I had somehow got that lesson forehand and a fight, but I didn't lose, then I'd be like, okay, I learned it and then come keep moving forward.
But, uh, but to stay motivated, even if you didn't have all that, the one thing you gotta realize is that you're never gonna be perfect and you're not aiming for perfection.
Once again, I think of things in terms of calculus, you are approaching perfection.
The limit, uh, is it approaches perfection.
You keep pushing hard work.
If you keep doing work, you're going to get closer and closer and closer, but that's gotta be your goal.
You're always going to be improving.
I always tell people, uh, they talk about when they want to box.
And like, if you want to do this, you, I'll tell you the reasons why you shouldn't.
You shouldn't do it for money because there ain't no money in boxing.
You shouldn't do it for, to, to prove the haters wrong because they still want to hate.
Now that's just gonna wait for you to mess up and you definitely shouldn't do it for any female attention.
Uh, you should do this because something deep inside you, it just says, man, you got to get in the ring, man.
You got, you got to, you gotta get better.
And no one can take that away from you.
You could never make it down.
Everybody could hate you.
You could get injured.
No one can take away from, take away from you to feeling of mastery.
The feeling of getting a thing and be like, oh, I can do that.
I couldn't do that a month ago.
And that's like my favorite part about being in a gym.
It's like, I can do a thing now that I couldn't do like, like, like skipping rope is a perfect example.
Oh, terrible. Well skipper now I can cross my arms and jump and do all this stuff.
But, uh, I had put in times go every single day.
I used to have a horrible jab because I couldn't figure out the mechanics.
But in my mind, I was like, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a good jab.
I'm gonna get a good jab because my coaches is important and now I understand enough to know it's important.
So now I know how to throw a jab ball.
And these are the things you just, you got to always want to be better.
Why do you think athletes have coaches and most other people don't have coaches or not even don't have them, but are dismissive of them?
Like nobody's in my car coaching me how to drive better.
Right. Uh, it depends on the task really.
So why do athletes have coaches?
Why do the, the, is a lot of business owners hire a coach.
Uh, why do life coaches, the good ones, right, exist?
Some tasks you need constant feedback about.
You need constant feedback because the human being's natural tendency is entropy, to always seek the easiest way, the, the configuration of events that will result in the least output of energy.
A coach is there to make sure that doesn't happen.
Furthermore, coaches are there to correct you when the little things are occurring, little deviations are occurring that will eventually take you one way.
And by the time you get there, you don't realize they were occurring.
We don't, let's use your, the example, like why don't you have a coaching car?
Well, if you make a deviation, you're going to know real quick if you're going straight or not, and you can adjust that on your own.
The self -correcting mechanism is there.
The self -correcting mechanism is not there for, for an athlete or for a business owner or a person trying to improve their life.
It's just, it's just not.
I mean, even if they know, and they're the best, even Tom Brady still has a coach, right?
He's the all -time winningest Super Bowl quarterback in history.
All these records, and this is great play, but he has a coach because when you have all so many parts, you know, we just look at it, God throwing a football and playing the game, but we forget we're looking at over 20 years of parts that have learned to work together.
The slightest little bit of, of the slightest part of that system, getting out of whack and out of alignment, will bring the whole system down.
And a coach's job is to add messing up, fix that, that's messing up, fix that, and to keep everything tight.
I like that a lot. In the book, you also had some profound thoughts that I want to hear your explanation on, on whether it's easier to ask for forgiveness or beg for permission.
Oh, man, both of those, okay, so my personality, man, I don't really, I'm really bad at moderation.
I'm just bad at it.
This is what I don't drink, right?
It's easier for me to, to not drink than it is to figure out which ones, what's enough and what's not enough, right?
So, with that, taking, going from that base of lacking moderation, forgiveness and permission, in my opinion, are two cons of moderating activities.
You ask for forgiveness when you've done a thing and you need to buffer or mitigate the effect of your actions.
Likewise, you ask for permission when you're pretty sure you're going to incur the wrath of someone, but by definition, if you want him to do it, at the release, you'll be someone who's satisfied.
So, so it's this way of existing to please the most people you can and I don't really care for that thought either.
It doesn't really lead to a happy life.
It doesn't lead to a happy life.
So what you have to do is you have to get very comfortable acting and doing with what you think is best for you.
That's what I think is the secret to a happy life.
I'm not talking about being selfish and I'm not talking about being a criminal or anything.
When people hear that because it's a nuanced thought, they automatically jump to the negative or positive of the extremes.
We're thinking I can respect, sure, but you're missing a point.
The point is you need to get comfortable.
You need to be able to do what you feel is best for you.
If you do that enough times, you will see certain things that you look at as like maybe soft or altruistic.
No, those are great activities for any other reason.
You'd be a nice and con everyone you meet because it's the best thing for you is always say there's no disadvantage to being likable, right?
You end up in a position to have more influence and to be have more people like you if you're likable.
I'm just using an example because people talk about, oh, what about doing things that make people like you?
I'm like, yeah, but you're doing it for your end.
You're not doing it for them and everyone wins.
It's like the idea they talk about economics, the black hand of economics or something like that, where if you just let the market be free, it will adjust and sort itself out.
If you just let people pursue their interests, eventually they'll do what's best for the group.
I really believe that, and that's where that forgiveness or permission idea came from.
Either one is an attempt to kind of reconcile clashing feelings and perspectives.
I'm like, nah, you don't need to worry about all that.
Just do what's going to work best for you.
If people got a problem with it, they'll disappear.
And if they don't, they will gravitate towards you and you're influencing the life, the happy life you'll have will just become happier and better and you'll be able to better serve the people to do stick around.
Speaking of people that disappear, one of the other aphorisms in the book that kind of caught my attention was, as you raise your value, more people want more of you, but you want less of them.
That's like, we'll just use like a hot girl, for example, start there.
The hotter she is, the more guys want to date her.
But because she's so attractive, most guys by definition will not meet her standards.
Because everything's like a pyramid in that respect.
At the bottom of the pyramid or most of it is everyone.
And then you move up and all the people at the bottom below you are like, oh, I want to reach up and I want to be higher up.
And they're like, why would I want to go lower?
And once you're at the top of the pyramid or very close to the top, there's so many people who will be like, I want to reach up and you're like, well, why would I let you pull me down?
And that's the struggle that happens all the time.
As the individual you become, you start to radiate a certain type of energy.
And hopefully it's positive.
And as you radiate that positive energy, as you become a better person, as you become a more influential person, as you improve your life, people go, that's a great person.
I want to spend more time on that person.
But then a funny thing happens.
They think that, but they're not at your level.
And so they're like, okay, what's the trade -off?
You don't have a lot of time in the world.
You have a little bit of time.
So you got to decide, am I going to go spend time?
Am I going to give my energy?
I'm going to continue to do myself and do better and pull those people up.
Hopefully, hopefully it inspires them to improve.
But that big discord, that great discord that occurs, more people wanting your time as you become more valuable.
You experience that when people will not improve, but they just want to spend time around you.
Because they see you as like, you know, something worth spending time around.
Do you see that changing the standards of the people you hang around?
Like your friends and your like, how does that influence?
Okay, so I've been really fortunate.
I've been the victim of positive peer pressure.
I've always had great friends and they have always...
I feel like now I'm starting to catch up to the people they are, to put it in perspective.
How did you come to the conclusion that you wanted to stop drinking?
I looked at everything in my life that I wanted to accomplish, where I was going, the potential I had.
I wasn't satisfied with what was in my life.
And I did a quick 80 -20 analysis and I was like, huh.
In fact, I used to say, I used to say, if I used to say 95 % of my problems, my personal problems are exacerbated, are caused by the influence of alcohol.
Which is like an embarrassing thing to say now.
Like, man, I was content with most of my life being a shit show because of drinking.
What do you mean it wasn't that bad, right?
It just wasn't what I wanted it to be.
Once I realized what I wanted it to be.
And I looked at all the things and I said, alcohol is a commonality there.
Alcohol is a commonality there.
Alcohol is in all of this.
What is the benefit?
Do I need to keep drinking?
No. Okay, see ya. And that's how I know I'm not an addict.
All the guys that I've talked to who have been able to just quit like that are not addicted in this sense, right?
A lot of the guys are the ones that just stop smoking cold turkey, for example.
But it's like, I don't wanna smoke anymore.
Peace. I smoked for five years and then those are the true, I can quit when I want to, type people.
And I don't smoke, I've never smoked without a imagine.
My brain chemistry is probably so much similar.
But yeah, I just looked at everything and I said, you know, this is not gonna work for me.
Now, one day I might drink again once I've accomplished some things I want.
But right now, I have no desire whatsoever.
What happened when you stopped?
What did you notice that you didn't expect?
You ever watch Angel?
The old show Angel that bought the vampire with a soul.
And he was a vampire so he did a lot of ill shit as a vampire.
And all of a sudden he's got a soul and now he feels guilty about it.
And so he spends a lot of time brooding and feeling bad and trying to do good to make up for all the evil we put into the world.
That is something that no one warns anyone about.
Like all the people I talked to who stopped drinking, no one ever mentioned that.
I don't think I'm unique in that regard because I've mentioned it and Pete and God's right between me all the time and talk about that same experience.
I say that you, it's like taking sunglasses off and seeing the light.
Your eyes hurt because they're getting used to the light.
And the sunglasses analogy would like your emotions.
Not all my emotions are muted.
I feel things completely.
I'm not celebrating with alcohol.
I'm not drinking alcohol when I'm down.
I got to experience and enjoy life the right way.
And likewise, I can look back at all the stupid things that I did and all the stupid ways I may have behaved.
And I feel genuinely terrible about it.
And no one ever warns you that that's what happens.
How did it change the people you hang around?
Well, I'm fortunate because I have the good friends, right?
So it didn't really change that at all.
It has absolutely, I know myself well enough to know that if I was still drinking, I probably wouldn't have gotten to where I'm at in my relationship now.
Not because I would have been like, me and Jarrod, I just would have been an asshole.
I would have been out at night maybe chasing girls or something.
Who knows? But in terms of the people that I hang around, I'm probably not meeting people that I would have met.
I'm not getting invited to things where I would feel bored.
I got a theory about people, at least my kind of drinker, I got a theory.
I go like, I'm going to be bored here, so I'm going to drink.
I'm going to get excited for myself, have some fun.
A lot of stuff bores me, so I don't go to a lot of stuff now.
But I do love spending time one -on -one with my friends.
Like the way we're talking right now, that's how I do all of my socializing.
I haven't been to a group event.
I'm going to a birthday party this weekend, but it's like all the person that I know really well and is a really good friend and inviting me and understands how I think and view the world.
So I know I'll be fine there.
For most part, yeah.
I don't spend any time on group activities because it's boring, man.
You're a huge believer that hard work and discipline are a precursor to success or deserve success.
Can you tell me about how you would instill that in other people, like kids, or when you're coaching kids, how do you foster that?
Kids have to get used to the idea that there's no such thing as being naturally gifted.
So the first thing you do, I mean, we're going to work from the assumption that children are a blank slate, whether you believe that or not is irrelevant.
But for the sake of this argument, there's enough truth in it that we can use that as a basis for what I'm going to say.
You have to begin speaking to children immediately in terms of effort as opposed to any ability.
There's no such thing as a good child.
There is a such thing as a child that was able to wait 10 minutes and be quiet.
There's no such thing as a kid that's good at math.
There is a kid that was able to struggle through a problem.
You don't want to get children used to the idea of instant gratification.
There's an odd that they have to wait for things.
They have to work and earn everything.
Even if it's a small thing, I don't know when I say work and earn, I mean, they have to get used to the idea of effort equals a thing.
Like if a kid wants to go have candy, I'm not saying don't give them candy, right?
I mean, I am saying that at the core, but for this argument, I'm not saying don't give them candy.
Say, okay, you want candy, I'm going to need you to do X, Y, or Z.
I mean, obviously like good moral things that will help them become better, but they must learn the concept of exchange.
I think the quicker you can get a child to understand the idea of exchange.
I mean, I'm speaking hypothetically.
I mean, I'm sure there's a parent or a few hearing aids going, that's impossible.
Maybe it is. But based on some experiences in my past, I've got more experience raising children than people probably think or know.
With that said, I think the sooner you get a kid to understand that nothing in the world is free, right?
And then they don't have to have an economics understanding.
They just gotta understand, I gotta do a thing for a thing to happen.
If I don't do something, some bad things don't happen.
And that's what good parents do.
You just gotta keep it up with academics and behavior and things like that.
And I think that you start there, as they get older, I think the sooner you can get them into some type of skill base, or effort based thing that will make them see the value of practice and work, I think that's good too.
Whether it's, there's this thing, kinder music going on now, or you can get a kid to go run, even going running with you, just having fun with that, just getting them comfortable with the idea.
Life is not always enjoyable.
It's not necessarily bad, it's just not always a pleasant show of relaxing and having a good time.
You want to get them to see that.
It's not supposed to all be enjoyable, right?
So often it seems like parents are focused on preventing disappointment, only giving happiness, not instilling those.
And that is not life.
I mean, that's the equivalent of raising a teenager in college and expecting them to understand the real world.
Right? See how that's turning out so far for a lot of young kids.
People cannot expect the world to always be nice.
That's just foolish.
It's way better. What's that saying?
I love some of these cliches, man.
I got a few of them.
It's not about waiting for the rain to stop us, learning how to dance during a storm, man.
And that's the truth.
You don't, because it's ab and flow, it can't always be good.
And you wouldn't want it to be good.
It's like music, man.
Music is not enjoyable because of the notes you hit.
It's the space between the notes.
You need things to not be there.
You need things to not be good to appreciate when they are there, when they are good.
People try to avoid that not part all the time.
Only to realize that it's just not fun, right?
You had some pretty profound thoughts on relationships in your book as well.
Can you kind of walk me through your high level view of your philosophy on this?
My high level view of relationships is that it's better to build a life and bring a person into it than it is to try and build a life around a person.
If I could sum up everything and give you the meta framework to work with, that is the framework you want to start with.
You want to go, all right, how am I going to become a better person?
That's going to force you to become a better person.
That's going to force you to grow.
That's going to force you to improve.
That's going to force you to become more attractive.
That's going to force you to focus on any goal.
And then when you meet the right person, then the right person is better able to fit in because it's not going to be compromised.
I think compromise is one of the worst things you make in a relationship.
You have to make it on some things.
Explain that to me, like the compromise.
So you should compromise on certain behaviors, right?
You should improve.
You should learn how, because you're never going to be 100 percent compatible with a person and that's not the goal.
The goal is like, okay, you're 75 percent compatible.
How do we make that 25 percent work?
That's where you start compromising.
But when I hear stories about guys moving all the way across the country for a girl, they've only been with me for six months.
And like probably better for you to just meet one there and you'll be happy to consider the stress of a new one.
Or when I hear like, what are some of the worst ones I've heard?
There's so many stories.
A girl, this is an extreme version, right?
A girl that decides she's going to forsake her entire family to marry a guy.
I'm like, okay, I see what you I see the idea.
And I agree with it in theory, in application, you have just ended the entire association with the people that invested.
Tommy, now, granted, you didn't ask to be here, whatever, but there's a lineage and a history that comes with that.
I mean, that the problem in your future offspring of having her family and for what?
So you could do a thing far better to build around the life that you are actively making.
Some of that is circumstance, your family, some of that is career that you're making.
But I think prematurely getting into a relationship means the relationship on work.
The foundation is just not as strong and people forget the foundation starts with you.
It's not with the people, it starts with you.
And then when your foundation is strong, you select better.
You have better standards.
You know, I remember there's an inverse relationship between the amount of crazy I dealt with and where I was at in my life in terms of the women.
And now that I'm out of a stable position, I have such a wonderful person.
I said there sometimes and I go, man, I done fucked up.
I don't know when it's going to correct itself, but it will.
And I fiddle. I mean, yeah.
So some guys listening to you, or everyone might call it a beta.
I did, but no, I feel genuinely blessed, right?
And I sit there and I go, man, this ain't going to last.
It's a weird thought, but that's the thought you should have, I guess.
And likewise I'm sure, or I hope anyhow, that she has a similar thought.
And if you're approaching the ideal, if you're approaching something that does not exist, but you want to exist, you should be approaching a relationship as if you're introducing, like you're hiring for a company.
You wouldn't build the company around somebody that you, that you're not with yet.
No, you build the company first, you find the employees, the fit or the employee, whatever your style is.
But that is my high level view.
Everything else I say, I think, I mean, unless I'm total con, everything else I say can be traced to making that idea happen.
You also mentioned something about, uh, I forget the exact wording, but it was like, you can learn more about watching a couple argue for five minutes, then be happy for five years.
What did you mean by that?
Oh my goodness, man, this is beautiful.
And you can, you can tell a lot because everybody is great friends when everything is getting along every, every relationship is perfect when it's perfect.
When it's not going well, then you get to learn about.
Okay, like we were saying about how music is not just the notes playing, but it's the notes not playing.
Life is not just about the enjoyable parts.
It's about the not enjoyable parts to everybody gets into relationships with that same mentality.
That's got to be fixed.
They want it to be good all the time, but that ain't going to happen.
So when it goes bad, then you get to learn, okay, how do we, how is this person's conflict resolution?
How do they work together?
How do they see problems?
I can't tell you how many people I watched that see disagreements is an attack on the other person and as a way to bring down.
That's how they view victory in an argument, bring the other person down on us.
Instead, if you want to make a relationship work, right?
And this is how I would do it.
You usually need to look at it as a, here's a problem, but we got to solve.
How are we going to solve this?
And us not solving it is part of the disagreement right now.
In fact, we, I could even say it is the soul disagreement.
This problem that we have, and we have two different ways, two different approaches, perspectives on how to solve it.
The key, this is where that compromise now becomes important.
It's not important in the 80%.
It's that 20 % of you disagree.
And that's where the compromise is important.
How are you guys going to work together to get the thing done?
So you can learn a lot.
You can't learn a thing about a couple when they're having a good time.
You learn everything when they're having a bad time.
Who yells, who raises their voice, who shuts off, who broaches the subject objectively, who starts attacking character as opposed to the problem, who brings up old stuff, all this.
It comes with who stays on target.
You look at this, you can get a whole map and the more experience you have looking at this, the more you can look at a couple and go, I know exactly how long you have left.
Yeah. What's your experience with couples that are happy and how they argue?
Is it all about kind of that compromise or trying to find a solution instead of mudslinging or?
I have a buddy coming up to get married.
He's been in with his girlfriend for like two years and my best friend out in LA, I was the best man at his wedding, getting married when we were 23.
And they were together for like four years beforehand.
So over 10 years. How do they argue?
I haven't really seen it in my, my friend getting married coming up and Joe might argue, but the couple in Cali, I've seen them argue a few times.
They, they never, I want to say never, but very rarely.
No, in fact, I mean, I've never seen it and I'm thinking about it.
They don't insult one another.
That always stood out to me and I always took that as a powerful lesson.
They never insult one another.
Now they are highly critical of how one might handle the problem that occurs.
But in terms of character assassinations, those do not happen.
They're focused on solving the problem, not on destroying each other.
You know, they don't view each other as adversaries and that's what happens.
And I think that's the commonality.
All the happy couples I watched, they'd never ever view each other as adversaries.
Ever. They're always some, always in my house, I use the word team a lot.
I'm like, we're a team, we're working together.
As long as we're together, as far as I'm concerned, we're a team and you either on my team or you're not on my team.
She's bought into that and that's good.
So I think that's a really powerful framework.
That's the framework I certainly observe in all the successful couples that I have had a chance to see up close and personal.
We're not talking about people who got married in like the sixties, where it was a different game.
2008 maybe teamwork, teamwork, work together, pick each other up when one goes down.
You know, whether there's all this argument out there today about whether that's even possible to find or not.
It definitely is possible.
It's going to build the life you want and you've got to want that.
Some guys don't want it.
Some guys don't want to put the work in the butt of life.
But when you do those two things, then you attract a person that will be a great teammate for you.
What's your philosophy of happiness and what that means and how to achieve it?
Happiness is not an average rate.
It's a rate of change.
If a person is sitting still, no matter where they're at, whether they have a bunch of money, a person has a bunch of money or no money.
They just sit still and do nothing in their life.
They're going to be unhappy.
We tend to think of people being rich as happy.
But no, there's nothing that pushes them, nothing that makes them grow and change.
You're going to be miserable and poor, you're going to be miserable being rich.
You're going to be miserable in a relationship.
You're going to be miserable single.
What are you doing to push yourself?
All happiness is, in my opinion, is a person pushing towards something, not the avoidance part.
That struggle is this weird type of intertwined duality.
You're pushing towards something, pain is part of it, happiness is like the other part.
They all kind of work together.
If you rest on your laurels too long, you'll become unhappy.
But you always have to push towards something.
If a person wants to have a happy life, they must always have a challenge to push towards.
This is why I think the people I observe who are great parents are not even great parents or good parents.
There's a general, I don't want to call it lightness because that's not correct.
Levity, maybe? I don't know.
They feel that every day has a purpose, because the purpose is raising this little person.
And because there's purpose, there are goals, maybe not explicitly stated, but certainly outcomes that one is trying to achieve, processes they're trying to enjoy.
And I think that's why having kids does such a thing for a person.
They say having kids makes you grow, makes you mature, whatever.
I think what it really does, it makes you focus on what's going to make you happy.
And you got to make it happen in that process, and you quickly realize that happiness is not material.
It's easy to have a temporary boost of happiness with a material thing, but all it is, is a change in position.
There's that rate of change.
Once the change isn't happening anymore, you're back to being unhappy.
So your whole life, if you want to be happy, you got to push towards something.
It doesn't matter what you push towards, doesn't matter what you want to be, what you're trying to become, but you got to be trying to become, you have to try to become something.
You have an interesting philosophy on that too.
You said don't tell people what you're trying to become.
Just talk about what you have become.
Yeah, man. Social media age, right?
We are infected with this.
This disease of self -promotion, but we're not self -promoting what we've done.
We're self -promoting what we plan to do.
And then we get a bunch of people to go, oh, man, good luck.
Go for it. You go, girl, whatever you see.
And your brain, and this is true.
There's a lot of research on this.
Your brain goes, holy shit, look at all this approval.
We must already did it.
Why are we going to keep doing work now?
We're going to stack off.
There's just no benefit to talking about what you've done.
Best case scenario, you do it, right?
Which is what you were trying to do.
Worst case, you don't.
And if you don't, now you've told all these people that you are going to, but there's nothing to show.
So now what do you do?
You hop on what they call the dopamine treadmill.
You get back on it.
You talk about the newest goal.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't think I've seen you on Facebook at all, but I'm sure there's some version of some Twitter.
Twitter tends to skew kind of different in terms of the activity that goes on amongst the users.
You see every someone goes, I'm trying to lose this amount of weight.
I want to do this. I'm going to start this.
And people go, oh, there's a bunch of likes, and there's a big rally behind it.
And in three months, the same shit.
They're in the same spot.
Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
Why? Because they got all the validation you bring.
Look, I'm never going to be the guy that says motivation doesn't count for a thing.
And motivation is important, but it's a finite resource and it will exhaust itself.
And when that falls off, you got to rely on maybe habits, system, and necessity, all kinds of things to get you through.
But because that system is in place, it can be hijacked.
And one of the ways we hijack is we go and we get out as false recognition.
Look, man, I've got any reasonable amount of recognition in my life for things that I have done.
I'll tell you what, it's a lot.
It feels a lot better, and it's a lot less nerve -wracking when a person can graduate for something, and then they can also go look it up independently online and go, oh, OK, right?
He really did that, yeah.
But if a person, if I chime in, like when a buddy tells me he wants to do something, I go, cool, man.
I never ask about it again because I don't want to stress them out.
I know they ain't do it, otherwise they'd be all over it.
I wouldn't hear all about it, right?
But you don't hear the result.
You talked about habits and systems there.
What's one habit you've changed recently that's made a profound impact on you?
This is silly, man.
This is real silly, but it's true.
I wash the dishes as soon as I'm done eating.
How has that impacted you?
Alright, so I don't know if you've...
When I was growing up, my mom used to do that right away.
You'd be eating your last bite, and she'd be grabbing the plate.
Yeah, so I used to make that bet up immediately when I got out of it every morning, but I didn't.
And then I switched it to the dishes.
What does this do? First of all, it establishes some regularity.
Two, I got to do the dishes anyway.
If I'm already up and moving around, man, I'm telling you, this is the best part about studying the sciences, right?
Not like this, the knowledge, but the analogies you can make.
Man, inertia is real.
The minute you sit down, you do not want to get up, and if you keep moving, you don't want to stop.
That's all inertia is, right?
And objects resistance to a change of acceleration.
If I'm already up and moving around, putting dishes in it, and I just, while I'm standing, I go, all right, man, let me do these dishes right now.
Now I don't have to think about it.
It's already taken care of, and when I sit down to go do something else, I don't have to worry about doing work.
Or rather, I don't have to worry about interrupting my work to do that.
I don't have to worry about going there, the kitchen's smelling funny.
I don't have to worry about the cats freaking out.
I don't have to worry about my girl going wild coked when them dishes are going to get done.
I don't have to worry about anything.
All I've done is a small thing, but I've relieved so much.
And maybe that is a sign of how cool life is these days that, like, that little hijack makes such a big difference.
But I think the bigger lesson is that if you can take advantage of inertia and just do things when you're already moving so you don't have to restart, restart, restart, your life will be a lot easier.
You won't have to think about motivation to do your dishes or clean your room or do your homework or whatever you got to do or go running.
It's why I get out of bed.
My secret to getting up early is just to start moving.
You don't have to have to do anything.
Just don't sit down for 15 minutes.
You'll be surprised by how I wake your arm in the 16th, you know?
This has been an amazing conversation, Ed.
Where can people find you online?
My Twitter account is great.
I'm always saying stuff on there.
That's how you find me.
So that's at Ed Lattimore, L -A -T -I -M -R -E, on ED at the beginning.
Ed Lattimore word. I'm hoping that someone on the website spelled out.
And my website is just www .edlattimore .com.
So my name, I always own your name, man.
I learned that early on in the internet game.
You own your name and people can find you easier.
So Ed Lattimore, just like it'll be tight on the podcast, on Twitter, and on my website.
And I'm also on Facebook.
I have a Facebook page but I post there occasionally.
Sign up for the mailing list, see some things, I just sent an e -mail out today about some stuff that I don't always post because I like to communicate with everyone.
And just express my thoughts and likewise get thoughts back.
So I'd love if you stop by and drop some thoughts off.
Thank you so much. This has been great.
Thank you very much.
Hey guys, this is Shane again.
Just a few more things before we wrap up.
You can find show notes at fernamstreetblog .com slash podcast.
That's F -A -R -N -A -M -S -T -R -E -E -T -B -L -O -G dot com slash podcast.
You can also find information there on how to get a transcript.
And if you'd like to receive a weekly e -mail from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to fernamstreetblog .com slash newsletter.
This is all the good stuff I found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends, books I'm reading, and so much more.
Thank you for listening.
