Alright, welcome back.
Earlier this year I heard this idea that was new to me, maybe other people have heard
this, but I heard it and it really took me back.
I thought it was so smart.
It's the idea of the reverse obituary, which basically says, right down what you want
your obituary to say and then figured out how to live up to it.
It's a sort of life philosophy.
And everyone's will be different of course.
But I suspect that most people, including myself, if they were to do this exercise and ask,
what do you want your obituary to say?
You would want it to say something along the lines of, you are respected, you are admired,
you are helpful, you are a good parent.
And a good spouse, you are a caring friend, you are an asset to your community, you made
a contribution to your industry, you were wise, you were funny, you were smart.
Now stop and realize what is not in that obituary that you just wrote for yourself.
Virtually nobody in this exercise would think about their obituary mentioning how many
horsepower their car has or how many square feet their home is or how many advanced degrees
they had, how much they spent on jewelry and clothes, you would not even think of
including those things in there.
And now look, I like nice things.
I like nice homes and nice cars.
I even have some fancy things.
But I'm always struck by the contrast here of what people want versus what they actually
aspire to in life.
David Brooks, what's made a very similar statement when he talked about the difference
between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.
Resumé virtues are what you achieved in the material world.
How many promotions you got, things like that.
Eulogy virtues are things again like how loved were you, do people actually like you,
were you nice, were you funny, were you helpful.
And I think it's really important to make a distinction between those two things.
And a lot of this has to do with what we aspire to buy and do with our money.
Just after my son was born, he's now almost eight.
I wrote him a few things that I thought he would find helpful as an adult.
Just a little list of things, most of them were about money.
One of those things that I wrote was quote, you might think you want an expensive car
and a fancy watch and a big house.
But I'm telling you, you don't, what you actually want is respect and admiration from other
people.
And you think that having expensive stuff will bring it.
But it almost never does.
Especially from the people who you want to respect and admire you.
Eight years later, I still believe this to be true.
And I might even double down on it.
First this is really important.
Just distinguish what I would define as nice stuff from fancy stuff.
I think I've mentioned this before in the podcast, but I'm going to repeat it because I think
it's really important.
I think it's really good.
Somebody once told me that a high end Toyota is a better car than an entry level BMW.
Because the nice Toyota is filled with things that make driving more pleasant while the entry
level BMW is mostly just status and bragging rights.
So I think using your money to buy nice stuff is great.
Fancy stuff where you're just trying to show off is a totally different animal.
And look, this is not universal, but there are cases when people's desire to show off
their fancy stuff is because it's their only way to gain some sense of respect and admiration.
Again, you don't want fancy stuff.
You want respect and admiration and you think that your fancy stuff is going to get it.
This is a little bit judgmental, but I think this is kind of what's happening here.
There are so many people who don't have any wisdom or intelligence or humor or empathy
or the capacity for love to gain people's respect and attention.
So they then rely on the only remaining and least effective lever, which is, hey, look
at my car.
Beep, beep, boom, boom.
That's all they have to show off.
If they had some level of wisdom and humor or love to gain respect from other people
from, they would use that.
But when you have nothing left to give, you resort to the only thing you can do, which
is to show off your material stuff.
There's a Dutch political philosopher named Jan Van Ried, who once said, the appetite for
applause is among the lowest of human character traits.
Cash, this is a very judgmental podcast on this episode.
I'm usually not quite like this, but I think that is so true.
And I think the reason it is so low of the character traits is because when you have an appetite
for applause and you just want to show off your car, your house, your clothes, your jewelry,
it's because you don't have any of the other things that most people actually want to gain
respect and admiration.
There's an author named Eric Weiner.
He wrote this book called The Geography of Bliss.
And there's this passage that I highlighted.
I thought was great.
It says quote.
So much of human misery can be explained by this crazy way that we are wired.
We assume that our intense feelings of wanting something like a new car or winning the lottery
means that once we have obtained these things, they will make us happy.
But that is a connection that neurologically speaking does not exist.
We are disappointed, but we don't learn from our disappointment because our software
is flawed.
It's not faulty data, but faulty programming that is holding us back and that is much harder
to rectify.
So what he's saying is I think what I've described as people wanting respect and admiration
and showing off their stuff because they think that's when it's going to get it for them
is just hardwired into people.
So maybe that's not, maybe I'm not trying to be judgmental.
I'm just kind of showing what I've seen in the world, what kind of the hardware of which
we are wired on.
But when you see people who fight back against this and people who gain their respect and
admiration from other ways that can't be bought, once you see it happen, I think you
realize how powerful this is.
When we're football player Chad Johnson once explained why some people think he is cheap,
he's frugal.
Anyway, he basically said, look, there is no need to show off your material wealth.
When your name is so big that people already admire you for your talents alone, he said,
quote, if you can get to a point in your career where your name becomes bigger than anything
you can purchase, that's your value.
There is nothing I can buy that is bigger than my name alone.
My guess is that if you're favored comedian or actor or athlete turned out to be broke,
you wouldn't care.
It wouldn't impact how much you admire them because you admire them for talents that
money cannot buy and did not buy.
I think it's just true in business as well.
Even when Amazon was huge and successful, Jeff Bezos used to drive a Honda Accord.
There are some video interviews with him in the car they're hilarious.
Today he has a $500 million yacht.
But then you ask, look, is he more respected and admired today?
Now that he has the yacht instead of the Honda?
Now the answer is no, not in the slightest.
People loved him when he drove the Honda because he was still immensely talented back then.
He could be riding a huffy bike today and people would consider him the greatest
entrepreneur of our era because he is.
They don't respect him for his car, for his cheap car or his incredible yacht.
They respect him for what he's done.
Steve Jobs very famously didn't have any furniture in his house.
Empty room after empty room.
It didn't matter.
Nobody cared.
He's a genius.
He's a freaking job.
That's all anybody cared about.
And those are extreme examples, but I think the same is probably true for the people who
you admire the most.
I love and admire my parents so much.
And let me tell you, it is not because of their clothing choices.
It's not because of their cars or their homes.
I love them because they're always there for me.
They believe in me.
They love me.
They'll help me.
They won't judge me.
They're nice to me.
But of course all of those things.
But then when people want to seek those feelings for themselves, what do they do?
What do they aspire to?
I want a big house.
I want a nice car.
It isn't there so much that we should learn from that.
Should it gain respect and admiration through what you do instead of what you own, be
the goal?
I recently reread the book The Snowball, which is the most in-depth biography of Warren
Buffett.
And he talks very philosophically about wealth and happiness.
Of course, he has a lot of experience in this because he's 90-something years old and
he's worth 100 billion dollars.
And there's a passage that I highlighted where he says, quote,
When you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people
you want to have love you actually do love you.
He says, I know people who have a lot of money.
And they get testimonial dinners and they get a hospital wings named after them.
But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.
If you get to be my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your
bank account is.
Your life is a disaster.
Buffett goes on to say quote, That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.
The trouble with love is that you can't buy it.
You can buy testimonial dinners.
You can buy pamphlets that say how wonderful you are, but the only way to get love is to
be lovable.
It's very irritating if you have a lot of money.
You'd like to think that you could write a check.
I'll buy a million dollars worth of love, but it does not work that way.
That's pretty powerful, right?
And I think that applies not just for the cent a billionaires like Buffett and his friends,
but for all of us.
I think just the acknowledgement that what you want and what I want is respect and admiration.
And we know that because that's what we want our obituary to say.
Just acknowledging that, I think puts a lot of goals into clear review.
Once you see people being respected and admired for reasons that have nothing to do with
their material possessions, you start to wonder why you have such a strong desire for
those possessions.
I tend to view material desire as like a loose proxy for the inverse of what else you have
to offer the world.
The higher my desire for fancy stuff, the less real value I have to offer.
And I think if you keep that in mind, a lot of higher priorities come into view.
That's it for this week.
We'll see you next time.
