Unlocking Your Potential: The Power of Ego

Are you doing this work to facilitate growth or to become famous?

Which is more important Getting or letting go? Egodrive, one of my favorite accounts on Twitter. So appreciated to have you here again.

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.

So tell me about Fuckit. We Ball Okay.

Well, initially I've seen that in a meme. Right, that's not something I came up with, it's a catchphrase. It's pretty old, but I resonated with it a lot and I think a lot of people resonate with the same thing. There is this graph of a pleasant event, and then low energy, high energy, and when I was looking at it it's kind of similar of the cycle. We're so back, it's so over, and then there is goblin mode, and then there is the low energy and unpleasant. I think it's mom would be sad and pleasant and low energy is goblin mode and yeah, it's something like that. But the point of it was high energy and unpleasant was Fuckit we Ball in that graph. But I think I believe in dualities. Right, I believe in dualities and Fuckit we Ball is the perfect balance. I think I talked about this in a previous space, but let's dive deeper into it. Whatever thing is, if you can keep your high energy and that graph is extremely relevant If you can keep your high energy levels even in unpleasant moments, then that's the best mindset to have, right? So your ability to look at things and dismiss them and keep focused on your path. Keep focused on whatever is important to you. I think that's one of the most beautiful things too, that one of the most beautiful states to be in. So that represents. You know, before I had this ego is not the enemy on my bio, right? And this phrase is so important to me because it's actually actionable. It sounds like a joke, but it's actually actionable. It's something that you can act upon. It's a way of reacting to things and responding to things. If you see something that is unpleasant, it's just like Fuckit we Ball, and it's a way to put yourself back on track, because we get distracted and we get discouraged right. And I think most of my clients and most of my audience, most people who start reading me, they're in a stage of their life where they want to do something with their life but they don't know where to start right. So I know how my audience thinks, I know what they resonate with and what they're looking for, but that's also what I genuinely believe in. So your ability to look at something and dismiss it because it doesn't serve your purpose, that's the essence of the phrase of Fuckit we Ball. And I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of pneumatics, but the amine is the smallest unit of an idea and it's the easiest way to spread it. So when you have a little bit of humor in it, when you present it as a joke, then you can spread what my dear friend, frizzle Dazzle calls mind viruses, but non-viruses as something that is negative, but rather mind versus that spread positivity. I remember in a podcast with SoulBrother it was about two or three years ago we talked in depth about how memes were dangerous and I had actually deactivated Instagram for the specific reason. We tend to gravitate towards whatever is negative. So when you see a meme that says me while my life is falling apart, you think it's funny and you see 100k people like that post and you think, well, it's relatable. My life is falling apart and everyone of those life is falling apart. But that's like a defeatist mindset where you're accepting that life is hard and that you're not going to do anything about it. And my role and my mission on the internet is to spread positive ideas. I'm not here to spread something that would make people feel less of themselves, and I guess that's my whole narrative and everything I fight for.

I love that concept of fuck do we ball on. The reason why I started the episode with it is because I ran a half marathon a few months back, without training, and that concept in my head was in those moments of suck and in those moments of misery. It was just like fuck it, we ball. And it was that mantra and that mindset is what allowed me to keep going when it was getting hard. It was just like we just got to do this thing, so might as well do it at a high level. And I think, if I look at someone like David Goggins who is doing all these incredible things and crazy feats, if you were to extract his mindset into a meme it would be fuck it, we ball.

Exactly, and the beauty of it is that not only it gets you out of the rut, but it also gets you started. If you spend so much time contemplating that you're not where you want to be in life, you're going to stay stuck there, and the worst thing in life is staying stuck. There is an image that I love. I heard it from a French song the universe is constantly expanding, like us, and we're constantly growing. The universe is constantly growing. Every particle is growing, apart from each other, and if your stagnation is decay, this is also something that I resonate a lot with. So your ability to just look at something and say, well, fuck it and move on with it. But the beauty of it, as I was saying, is that it not only gets you out of the rut, it not only gets you going, but it keeps you going. So when you have this type of mentality, there is genuinely nothing that can stop you, because it's a reminder that you have something bigger to achieve, that you're in a bigger mission, and trivialities and whatever is to, whatever is standing in your way, is, I mean, not important In the grand scheme of things. If you are really after a mission of yours, then everything else is just noise and we tend to get distracted, we tend to get discouraged, as I was saying in the beginning, and this is a good way to remind yourself that, well, there is a bigger path that I'm following and nothing is going to stop me.

I want to return to one of your tweets that you wrote a few days ago actually which is you have to be slightly stubborn and even a bit insane. You have to refuse things for face value and put thoughts into them before absorbing them as absolute truth. The basis of critical thinking is refusing to be spoon-fed beliefs. Question what you're told and draw your own conclusions, not just for the sake of disagreeing, but for the sake of having strong beliefs, things that cannot be shaken by the slightest of events, internal beliefs that drive you, drive your every action and decisions. You can't afford to be naive.

I believe in self-interest, right. I believe that what drives people is what is in their best interests. And if you let people tell you what is in your best interests, you're soon going to find out that it was in fact in their best interests and you've got lured. And way too many people that get manipulated too easily, be it by the media or be it by their friends or by society, and if you don't take a moment and step back and actually be a sort of rebel like stand in the way of whatever you're told, you have to question everything. Now the point of this, as I was saying in the tweet, is it's not about just disagreeing, because a lot of people hear this and tell themselves well, I have to polarize, I have to go against everything. That's not the point of it. The point of it is to objectively look at something. Well, objectively might not be the right word here. It's to subjectively look at things and decide if they serve you or not, and decide if they are in your best interests. Now, the reason I talk about beliefs there that I cannot be shaken is that beliefs are what drive actions right. So your beliefs are behind every thought that you have. So if you believe the earth is flat, then everything you do is based on the fact that the earth is flat. Now let's take it from another point. If you believe that you're the man, right, if you believe that you're the one and you got this, then every thought you have is based upon that and every action you take comes to consolidate that belief. If you are fed the beliefs of other people right, those beliefs are based on things that serve them. If you are fed the beliefs of other people, you're actually putting yourself last, and everything has to be contextual. I believe that perception is reality, right? Nothing else exists. If I don't see it, if I don't know about it, if I've never heard about it, then in my world it doesn't exist. But once it becomes part of my world, I have to make sense of it, and I guess that's where the concept of ego plays in. It's that conscious thought that makes sense of yourself and the world around you. So how does that serve my mission? How does that help me get on my path? And that's the reason I keep telling everyone well, question every 10-year-old, because everyone has an agenda, right, and if you go into believing something, it better fucking serve you on the long term.

And if you even think about your parents, like they want the best for you, but they want you to be safe and they want you to choose the safe decision. So a lot of the beliefs that they're instilling in you, whether that is financial beliefs or what you're capable of, it's all in trying to keep you safe. So in creating your own beliefs, like you're able to pierce through those things. And one thing that you mentioned in our first conversation there struck me as so insightful and something that's stuck with me and I've repeated over and over again is you don't need a meditative, you just need one hour of me time a day.

Yes, yes, you know again, at the risk of repeating myself, we get distracted, we get distracted and everyone is saying, everyone keeps telling that you need to be in the now, that you need to be mindful. Now, I'm not, I'm not spitting on unmindfulness or any of those concepts, but you also need to take a step back. You also need to take a step back and look at the bigger scheme, like who do you come from, where are you going, and and those things you can't apologies about the sound, I don't know where and those things you can't, you can't really Put them in perspective. If you don't have me time, so if you're stuck in your daily routine, but if you're stuck in in the now, you don't take time to choose your direction, you're just doing things because they are a reflex and the meat, the concept of me time. It's not necessarily meditation. It can be right, it can be, but it's not necessarily that. It's just a time that you allocate for yourself for the sake of enjoying it and for the sake of Feeling good.

Right, it can be anything, as long as you don't abuse it and it doesn't turn into a vice the way I've internalized that is sitting down for an hour a day With a notepad in front of me and nothing else and just seeing what comes tomorrow and seeing Some of the ideas that maybe are floating in my head, that I'm not even aware are floating in my head, and the clarity of thought that that crystallizes is like we have all these Ideas in our head that are half baked and they're they're not true ideas, they're just these little Half truths and really crystallizing those. I mean People see you and you're writing and they're like they. They're blown away by the depths of thought and the Awareness and the insights that you have. Would you say that the magic behind it is in the reflection.

Well, here's, here's what's funny about it. My me time is when I'm posting who. I don't censor myself, I don't edit. When I have a thought, I phrase it and I write it down and I hit publish. I don't think about it twice. Now in some periods I have a million thoughts going in my mind and I'm posting all of them. I guess if you follow in me, you notice that sometimes I'm posting a lot and for a few days I'm not posting at all. That me time is exactly that. I'm forming my ideas and and externalizing them. So my whole writing. I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't think I'm a good writer, right, I don't think I'm a good writer. What I do is just put my thoughts into words and Publish them to the world and force them down the throat of everyone who's following me. But the point of that is that I don't edit, I don't try to. I have my own set of beliefs, I have my own agenda, I have my own narratives and all of that. You know, and I'm a person. I don't claim to be perfect, but the me time, as I was saying, is, this is this time where I'm not holding the thoughts back, as you were saying so, even if it's a half through or even if it's just a subconscious belief, I tried to put it out in front of me a lot of time. I'm gonna write something and then I'll just delete it a few minutes later because well I'll. I thought about something that I don't necessarily resonate with, but I'll still publish it and I'll still look at it, and that, for me, is extremely important. I stopped journaling a while ago because I I'm not telling people to treat social media as a personal journal. Right, if you read my tweets, they are never about me, but they're more about conclusions that I'm observing in the world. They are extremely self-conscious. I do reflect on myself a lot and and that's where my inspiration comes from. But yeah, bottom line is, as I was saying before, your me time can be anything, as long as it's something that Brings you closer to yourself, and I think me being online and posting my thoughts online. It does heighten my sense of self-awareness, because I'm reflecting on my own thoughts and I'm reading whatever I post later and what I noticed is that most, a lot of people relate with that. So all I'm doing really is finding the words that people have in mind but can formulate.

Tell me why you don't believe in introversion versus extroversion.

Okay, let me. Let me put it in another way. And even even Carl Jung, who came up with this concept, doesn't believe that you're either introverted or extroverted. Yes, there are cases of personality disorders. Or someone's is extremely introverted, and that's when you're anti-social and and that's actually Mental illness. The other side of it, when you're extremely extroverted and it's also like marginal, it's when you're codependent, you can sit with your own thoughts and you need someone to be around you because, basically, you hate yourself. Most people do not fall in either of those categories, because most people are not mentally ill as much as the grand narrative wants to portray it. This is why I'm, as much as I'm an advocate for mental health and and balance and all of those things, I'm against the concept of mental health awareness because it makes people believe that everyone is sick, which is not true. Now to get back to introversion, extroversion. I believe there is spectrum. So you have introverted tendencies or you have introverted tendencies, and even then, at a point in time, right now, you may tend more to be introverted than extroverted. But in a few weeks, in a few months, in a few years, that may change and that's, that's the concept of identity. Now, if you tell yourself I am introverted, it ties back to the beliefs we were talking about. So if you take a test Myers and Briggs or whatever and it tells you, well, actually you are introverted and this is your personality type, now you believe it, it's part of your identity. When you, when you think about yourself, when you form your ego, what you think about is I am an introverted person and so I have to behave in a specific way. This is a fixed mindset and this is dangerous because you're never gonna grow, you're never gonna get to discover your full potential. When you think that, okay, at this time, given my circumstances, I have introverted tendencies, why is that? You always have to get? It ties back to to the tweet that you read to me a little bit before is you have to question Even your own thoughts. So why do? Why am I more introverted? It's because of whatever is going around me is because of my conditions. Well, if I changed one of those things, then I can be a little bit more extroverted. Or I Don't believe in to to. To answer your question before I go on another tangent, I don't believe in introverts and extroverts. I believe you are extroverted in a point in time or introverted in a point in time. It's a tendency dependent on a lot of things and it's not a fixed identity, something that changes over time, is something that grows. But if you believe that that is what you are, then you're gonna do everything to Confirm it, like it's a confirmation bias. So everything that you do, if you think you're introverted when you find yourself in in social scenarios, you're gonna do everything to confirm that idea that you're introverted. You're not gonna go talk to that stranger because, well, I'm introverted, I'm not comfortable doing that and it's not always useful, like a lot of people miss out on. I've never here, I've never heard anyone complain about being extroverted. Is it a lack of self-awareness? Maybe, but I hear people cope with the idea of being introverted and I know that it holds back a lot of people and that's. If that belief doesn't serve you, then how about you change your perception of yourself and tell yourself Well, I can be social boy and I can be extremely out? going too, like it's. It's only about beliefs. And when you hear there is there is a, there is an account on Twitter I'm not gonna cite him who only tweets to introverts, but when you read the content that he puts out, well, he often says well, introverts are very sociable in, in small groups and all of that. Well, that means you're not only in your head right, so you're able to socialize if you feel comfortable. So there is no reason why you wouldn't be comfortable with strangers. And and you know one thing that that a lot of people try to use as a as a definition for introversion or extroversion it's either you recharge when you're on your own, and that's introversion, or you recharge around people. That's not quite true. That's not quite true because that that assumes that you already made the choice of being around someone or not. If you were comfortable around people, you, it wouldn't be draining. Reality of things is that most people who label themselves as introverts, they just lack social skills because they have the belief that they can't do it. So when they are around people, it's draining for them. Now, when someone is extroverted, they don't really think when they're around people, and it's draining for all of us to be around a lot of people. This is what this is the misconception like being in public and and interacting with people. It does require energy. Nobody recharges by being around people. There are just people that are better at it than others and the only reason behind that is that they've been doing it for longer and they have higher practice. They put in the reps so they know how to handle people. They've talked to enough people to a point where they're able to recognize patterns, because people are patterns at the end of the day. So they've been in enough situations for them to be able to handle a variety of situations. So it's just not went to small group or big group. They've just done the work and and that's it.

We have such a instilled belief in us that, like you're either the thoughtful, very self-aware introvert that's hiding in his room contemplating deep philosophy, or you're the party goer who is light-hearted, who has net, who doesn't really care and doesn't have a Deep sense of awareness for things that it like it doesn't have to be one or the other, it could be both. Like Exactly, and it goes back to. I love the comment you made about lacking social skills, because it's so funny how we like things that we're good at. So if you're good at social settings, you're going to enjoy being in those settings. If you feel like you're not good in those settings, you're not going to be good in those settings, and I I think gaining those social skills is one of the biggest keys to Unlocking these new experiences and these sides of yourself that you'd even know were possible.

And throughout my life I've been both, and right now abstract is studying the topic Because most people think I just talk out of my ass, but I actually do my research. For the first period of my life, like my teenage years and my childhood, I was extremely shy. I know it may be surprising, but I was extremely shy where I couldn't talk to people. And for most of those years, up until I was like 15 or 16, I really thought I was introverted and I had this internal belief that I was introverted. And then I went into high school, university. Things changed. I was very outgoing, but I'm not going to say that I went from introverted to extroverted, because that's not true. I am still able to sit with my own thoughts and I still enjoy being alone to tie back to the me time. So when I'm writing, I don't like being disturbed and that's normal and in fact, as you said, it's not just that. You can be both. You should be both. You should be good with yourself and you should be good around people. None of it should drain you if you're good at both. Both of them are a way to recharge and learn, because you can learn from exploring yourself just so you can learn from being around a lot of people, because you're observing, you're seeing how people behave. That's extremely useful. But if you're too recluse and too closed off and distant, you become socially awkward, because you don't have, as I said, those patterns and you don't learn how people behave, so you don't know how to behave. You don't have this idea of how someone is successful socially or how someone is awkward socially. So there's always this balance and kind of paradox of being yourself but at the same time, being adaptable to the environment around you. Being adaptable is actually a sign of intelligence, but being good with yourself, that's what allows you to be adaptable. So you know where you're going and you know what your qualities are and what your shortcomings are and you work on those things based on those things, and that's how you behave.

What have you learned about social skills. What are some key takeaways for people who want to gain those abilities?

Number one is no amount of reading about social skills will have the same effect as actually putting yourself out there. I make it. As I was saying, I'm extremely shy and I made it for a long period of my time a challenge to talk to one stranger every day, and this is something that I advise to everyone. And talking to a stranger is not going up to them. And well, I'm this and that and you don't have to talk. This is the beauty of it. Just have to ask questions and back and forth, and it's so enjoyable. Another thing about social skills is that it makes your life easier. Wherever I go, I try to know as many locals as possible and get to know them. I remember last year I was in Turkey and within 24 hours of landing, I was invited to a football game and I was invited to another guy's house, and it just came naturally. Because I'm talking to people, I'm getting to know the local. Those experiences are so fucking enriching and I think a lot of people are limiting themselves by avoiding them just because they think they're not good at it. You don't have to be good at social skills or anything when people think of social skills and this may be a third point. When people think of social skills, what they think about is being good at public speaking, being a good communicator.

I'm none of those things.

And I still think that I can befriend anyone as long as they don't have poor intentions towards me. We can be friends. And it's not about being well-spoken, it's not about controlling your body language, but it's more about being able to understand the person in front of you and exchange. This is what life is about getting value from someone, adding value to their life. It's just so easy. It just makes your life so easy. How's it called? There is a restaurant next to my house and every time I go there I know other neighbors that go there. They don't know the waiter or his name or the guy that's cooking or anything. I know every single one of them in that restaurant, and it's not just because it's in my house. It's the case in other restaurants too, and often they tell me not to pay and I'm not saying this to be a grifter and getting free things, but it's just because you're someone that smiles to people, that exchanges with them and that just gives them a good interaction. Their day you actually make their day. They want to pay you back one way or another. There is the concept of reciprocity bias, where people just want to give you things because they like you. Why would you miss out on that. You can refuse, but they will always be there if you need it. We live in society. If you believe that people are evil, go and live on your own in the woods. That can be enjoyable too. But unless you make a few millions and you can sustain yourself there, it's not doable for most people. So you better learn to deal with people.

It just comes down to caring right. It's so funny to your point If you literally just I think you've tweeted about this many times in the past but taking that voice in your head in conversations, that's always telling you you're doing something wrong. If you're able to focus on the other person and caring about the other person, you don't have to be this master communicator or this guy who's super charismatic and funny If you're just not annoying and genuinely care about the other people. Most people don't have these crazy, crazy high expectations for the interactions that they have. It's literally just they like you if you care about them and if you're genuinely a good person.

Yeah, the point is just to have positive interactions. You don't have to impress anyone. Exactly this is what most people get wrong. You don't have to impress anyone, you just have to genuinely be a good person, and that does not necessarily go against your nature. How hard is it to be a good person and to smile to people? Just smile at them, call them by their name, Ask them how they're doing. That's five seconds of your day. Why? I mean even in and I noticed a lot of people who identify as introverts. They end up being depressed because they don't have those good interactions. You're not only doing it for them, you're also doing it for yourself. I mean, it's a human need to feel that you belong somewhere. So when you get in I don't know a coffee shop, a restaurant, whatever public place, and everyone knows your name and everyone says hi to you, you feel that you belong there. You don't feel weird. But if you just go with your head down and don't talk to anyone, you feel like a stranger. And why would you do that to yourself?

I don't quite understand it, I agree, and it's funny how little it takes to, because, although we talk about caring and just being Taking that focus off of yourself and onto the other person, in terms of that charisma, being a good communicator, even being funny, like other skills, since they're never taught, it doesn't take much practice and reading about it and then plus the implementation, to actually start to see the results of that in reality. Because the bar is so low, because no one ever studies these things.

Absolutely true. A lot of people want to systemize it because a lot of people tie Most people tie social skills to game and dating. They want to have it as a framework. That's not how humans work, like if you're faking it, people can feel it and that's not good. That's not good, because Even if most of them are not going to like you this is a fact and even if they do, they won't like you for who you are, but for who you portray yourself to be. How good can that be? Because you can't portray yourself to be someone you're not indefinitely. So you will get exposed, they will lose respect for you and everything that you've built will be for nothing. So it's not about being superficial. It's about genuinely improving the world by being of positive influence out of a completely selfish interest. A view yourself belonging somewhere, a view yourself having positive interactions, a view yourself having people you can count on. You'd be surprised how many people are going to go out of their way just because, whenever you see them, you smile at them. Yes, you want to say something, baby.

No, no, nothing. I was just going to say that, like you said, it doesn't take much and people really respond to a little bit of care and a smile. And the issue that you presented with trying the game and the dating and all the pickup artistries might work for that 20 minute interaction. But if you can't, if you aren't that person, you just get exposed exactly like you said and like you have to become that person. And it's fascinating that you mentioned being selfish, because it's really one of those things that's like you save the world by saving yourself, like when you are acting out of self-interest, because being caring is going to result in more positive interactions. More positive interactions is going to result in a more positive life. It's like this concept I think Matthew McConaughey called it an egotistical utilitarian and I just love that idea of the way that you make for the best future is by being selfish in many ways.

Well, they say you can't pour from an empty cup. I'd say selfishness is the highest form of altruism. I've said this many, many times and I strongly believe in it. If I don't pursue my self-interest, if I don't pursue my autonomy, my independence, my self-sufficiency, then I'm always going to depend on the world. So I'm going to be taken from everyone around me. But if I switch it to I'm working on my interest to be at my peak performance peak form, top form, the best of my ability then I have more than I need and I can switch from being a taker to being a giver of the world, because I have enough and I think there is enough for everyone in the world. And if you're in that frame of thinking, maybe it's a very masculine way of seeing the world, but that's again, that's my perception. I am a man, that's how I was raised, and I guess the more you look out for yourself, the more you improve yourself in all areas of life, the more you can help people around you. So if I'm broke, let's say financially, if I'm genuinely broken and unable to provide for myself, how am I going to make my family happy? How am I going to help my community If I take time off and I go and pursue financial freedom and I spend time working my ass off, refusing to hang out with friends, refusing to make some projects with them because for me they're not profitable. Then later down the line I can help them and turn back and give them opportunities because I've learned things that have helped me, and then I can share them around me.

And, in a lot of ways, the more wealthy have, the more kids you could do.

Well, just look at Elon Musk. Just look at Elon Musk, I mean, when he talks about freedom of speech. Or even recently I think it was yesterday we just told advertisers to go fuck themselves because he believes in freedom of speech and he defends that. If he wasn't a billionaire or if he wasn't the richest man on earth, do you think he could have said that? No, he couldn't Protect freedom of speech, which is one of his values and ultimately serves everyone around him and everyone who follows him. If he wasn't that wealthy and if he wasn't in that powerful position, he couldn't have done that. And and you know that Elon Musk has been accused of being an egomaniac many times and, just like he said yesterday, he's done more for the environment with Tesla than anyone else in humanity. I mean, it's crazy, but the way I like to put it is that when someone accuses you of being egotestical, what they really mean is that you don't think enough about me. That's quite ironic, right? That's quite ironic. I don't think enough about you. Well, how about? You? Don't think enough about me Because you don't want me to look out for myself. So what? You want me to look out for you? How about me? So it is the same frame, but I don't expect of you what I don't expect of myself. So I expect of you to put yourself first and I expect of myself to put myself first, so we can both be hold, self sufficient, autonomous, independent, and we can meet and then create synergetic effects. If you are missing something and you want to take it away from me, we're never going to amount to three. So you are less than one and I am one, right, and we meet down the line. So we're one and a half. But if you look out for yourself and I look out for myself, we're both hold, we're both one. Then we can meet together and create three. So that's the concept of synergy. So one plus one equals three. But if I'm not whole on my own, then I will need you to compensate for it. So and this is, I guess, what's wrong with the words that always expect more from the others than we expect from ourselves- when do you expect more from others than we expect from ourselves? That's the flawed logic of altruism right. It's just wrong. Why would you expect someone to look out for you like you? Stop looking out for the others, look out for yourself, and then maybe you can help the others. But as long as you are missing a piece, you can give to anyone. As I said just a few minutes before, you can't put from an empty cup. If we all have our cups filled, then we have enough, but if we're all trying to take from each other, then nobody has enough.

There's a beautiful video of a comedian talking about his experience while taking ecstasy the drug and saying that in that, in those moments, he felt so full. He felt so full that all he wanted to do was pour his cup out to other people, and I think it's just the perfect analogy of what you're just saying. Is that, like when you are filled, all you want to do is have other people also feel that way?

Because you leave in abundance. Right, your needs are limited. Your needs are limited, you don't need. You don't need more than you need. To put it simply, so, when you have more than that, your first instinct is to give to people in need. I mean, look at, look at the Tates. What are they doing now? They're doing charity, mainly Right Because they've and them to have been accused of being egomaniacs and egocentric, but they've pursued their self interest to a level where they have more than they need and they can afford to make the world a better place. The world will be in better place if everyone genuinely tries their best. People don't try their best. People expect people to make up for their own shortcomings, and that's a bit delusional.

The world to be a better place if everyone just tried their best. That's a fascinating and important note. So tell me about silence, substance, sile.

Sile. Well, it's a concept that I came across. I like movies Right and in movie critics and cinema critics, one parameter that the analyzed movies with is style versus substance. Is the movie in its storyline deep, which is substance, and is the way it's presented good enough or appealing enough, and that is style? And I was watching a few analysis of a few movies that I liked and I extrapolated that. Well, it's actually applicable to everything. There are a lot of people who appear brilliant and they have a lot of style, but they're kind of superficial and on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are extremely smart, but they don't know how to present themselves. So they have a lot of substance but not enough style. As I was telling you in the backstage, I believe in dualities and I also believe in the middle ground, and you reach middle by optimizing both, both extremes. If you have substance substance what you should we should pursue is style. If you have style, what you should pursue is substance, but at the same time, not at the detriment of the other. So the middle ground is not by having less of what you already have to pursue the other side, but rather by maximizing both of them. So if you are smart with the best ideas in the world and you can't express yourself, so if you have substance and you don't have style, nobody will listen to you. If you have style, which is that you're an extremely good orator and you talk so well, but there is no substance behind what you speak, what you talk about, you will again get exposed, or that's worst case scenario, or best case scenario. You will negatively impact other people because there is no message behind what you're saying.

So how do we develop more style, more substance? So is it for substances, is just reading more constantly, being constantly learning, and then for style, is it doing what we were talking about before, with just putting yourself out there more, really trying to study that?

or absolutely.

Yeah absolutely.

You can tie it back to introversion, next version. Yeah, you can take back to learning and implementing. If you, if all you do is learn, then you're good in theory. That's substance. If all you do is act like you're good or you do is try to implement, then you have nothing to implement, right? So there is, you have to do both and that's the concept. You don't have to choose one over the other, but you have to maximize both. You have to be learning and at the same time implement. So when, when you're taking time for yourself and you're kind of isolating yourself from society, you are in a learning process. But when you put yourself out there, you are an implement implementation process. So Substance and style go hand in hand and the problem that I see is that people choose one over the other, most likely because of a fixed identity that they have in a fixed belief that they have of themselves. You know it's like the concept of the jacked nerd. You know it's the same thing. Like you don't have to pick one over the other. There are things that kind of contradict themselves and they shouldn't like. The beauty of life is in paradoxes. You know, you can be someone that goes to gym five times a week and reads philosophy books. That is doable. You don't have to pick one over the other, and that's where I guess apex of human beings is. It's in pursuing things that are seemingly contradictory, but in fact they are complimentary. You need both extremes to reach the perfect balance.

And I think we're so drawn to those. People like those are the people who really cultivate us in the deep ways. These people who have both that style and the substance. They're incredibly charismatic, but there's also so much depth behind the stuff that they're saying and I think that that's why a guy like Andrew Tate just popped off. It's because they have those two extremes and they're playing it at such a high level.

Andrew Tate is extremely smart. I can give you two more examples. There is Danco and Brut de force. They're exactly the same. There are people that are not only in their best physical shape, but they're also extremely smart. Like that. We have this preconceived idea that if someone is physically strong, they have neglected their intellect. Well, that's someone who pursued style over substance, right. And we also have the concept of the scientist is also a fat guy who spent his whole whole life having his nose in his books. That's also wrong. Like, as I was saying, like like you pursue your potential and you reach it by pursuing those extremes. Like you should be at the library as much as you should be at the gym. And this is just. You know this. That's just one example, and the best like to tie back to where I got this concept from. The best movies are movies like inception, where that's something at the same time visually appealing, but there is also depth in the story, and those are the movies that win Oscars.

What do you think of Napoleon?

Oh, he saw my tweet. He saw my tweet, I think it was. It was horrendous. I feel like it's being infected with the walk virus. It doesn't. It destroyed. It destroyed a historical figure that. Was extremely influence, influence and extremely inspiring. I mean, the whole movie is about Napoleon being this unstable man at the mercy of her, of his wife, and Napoleon was actually a genius strategist with we barely see any battles, we barely see his genius and conquering and all we see is something that is wrong, like he gets to Egypt and he bumps the pyramids didn't happen. Right on the first battle, which is how the movie starts, he gets his horse blown out and then he's like painting and fainting and he's bad at fighting. That's not who Napoleon was like. The guy was a conqueror, not a cock.

It does paint him out to be in that way and paints him to be an individual who's at the mercy of his wife, who struggled because he picked the wrong partner, and it's actually a good message. But I don't know. It's fascinating when you, when you know how brilliant he was in so many ways and I think Robert Green I watched a video of him the other day explaining the genius behind Napoleon's battle tactics and he's like there is nobody who has ever done anything in terms of battle at the level of Napoleon. And we barely saw that.

Another thing in the movie is that he's barely asked to take the throne, which is not true. And at some point in the movie he says, like the Drunken Phoenix says, as Napoleon, he says I have no ambition. That wasn't true. That wasn't true. And here's the thing I don't take away I wasn't there. I don't know enough about his private life. Maybe what was portrayed is actually true, but if you're going to portray that, you also have to give him credit for everything that he's achieved. It feels like when you watch the movie, it feels like it was just lucky, right. It feels like he was just there at the right time, at the right moment, at the right place, which is absolutely not true. Like he put himself at the right place at the right time and he's done so much for friends because the country was crumbling after the revolution. It needed a leader and they were just executing everyone and the whole country was crumbling, so they did need a leader to put the country back together. Was he a dictator? Probably Maybe. I'm not even going to say yes, but when you have chaos taking over, you need a little bit of order, even if it's extreme.

There is a story about Napoleon it's not talked about in the movie, but it's a concept that struck me a few years back and I've thought about it quite a bit which is Napoleon used to pick his generals based on who was the luckiest, and the word luck was used kind of as not a joke, but it was because they had an intuition or sense of being at the right place at the right time. That came across as luck and people used to be like, oh, that guy, he picked him because of good luck. But it was really just like this intuitive nature and I think that's being lost in a lot of ways.

There's also another aspect that I'm going to answer your point in just a bit, because I don't believe in luck per se. But I'm going to get back to the genius of Napoleon, one of the parameters with which he was choosing his advisors and generals At the time. They were the revolutionists and they were the monarchists, the ones who wanted the republic and anarchy and all of that kind of leftists and right-wing right, and on the other side you had the ones that wanted the king back, and he had both sides on his side. He was right in the middle and he was none of those things. He wasn't a king, he wasn't a president, he was an emperor. So he was above those things and he managed to pull that off by pleasing both sides and kind of acting as a middleman. But to get back to the concept of luck, I believe that you make your own luck. I believe you make your own luck by, as you said, positioning yourself at the right place at the right time. The more shots you take, the luckier you get. It's a very simple concept. If you're not like I'm going to give a very stupid example If you're never playing any gambling games, how do you expect to win the jackpot. If you've never had the loto ticket, how do you expect to win the jackpot? Those people, they have some level of credit. Even if they win a gambling. They have some level of credit. For most of them it's because they're addicted, but they position themselves in a position to win Even if they lost for years. But they still took their shots. This is not an invitation to gambling, by the way.

I mean, dude, it reminds me of Iman Gadzi and his story and I think he started creating content and he did that like 16, and he did that consistently for years and years and years and was trying different businesses doing his thing. And then he started talking about Facebook ads and it just so happened that Facebook ads started to be this incredibly profitable new-ish thing that no one was really doing well. No one was creating a lot of content on how to do it right and how to do it well, and he was positioned in a way that allowed him to be authority on that and create a course on that. And then he made all this money from creating this course because he was the guy with the expertise on something that was new, important and making an impact. And, yes, in a way he got lucky because he picked the right niche at the right time, but he just was consistent for years and years and years and increased that surface area of luck to the point where he was able to strike gold.

Exactly. Well, to go back to the example of the gambler, as long as the gambler is losing, we call him an addict, and as soon as he wins, well, he got lucky. But he was kind of taking his shots. If Ivan Gadzid bet on something that didn't work, nobody would know about him, nobody would call him lucky. But he was trying things at the age of 16. I guess he even dropped out of high school. So that's a risk most people are not willing to take. The more risks you take, the luckier you get. This is a concept that I learned in finance class. That was the only finance class that I took, by the way, but the only thing that stuck is the higher the risk, the higher the potential returns. People call it lucky, I just call it taking more shots.

And there's so many things now that are like asymmetrical risks or asymmetrical opportunities would probably be a better way to take it. Where the risk isn't even close to the potential reward, like creating content, for example, writing on Twitter, like creating a podcast, all these things the risk is quite minimal but the reward can be absolutely huge, and the internet just opens up all these possibilities for this asymmetrical opportunity.

We're at the very early days of this industry, even though it's been up for about less than 20 years. But what is 20 years in the history of humanity? Those are maybe down 100 years down the line. It's going to be just a phase. But if it doesn't, if it's here to last, then you're positioning yourself ideally and the risk is there. A lot of content creators don't make it because their competition is growing and growing and growing. But if you don't persist, if you don't have this resilience and the absolute belief that you have something to add to the conversation, absolute belief that you're going to make it and this is what drives you to do more than the others and you don't get better. Because competition is everywhere, even though people don't like the word competition, but at the root of it, competition isn't just competence. Like you, look at the people who compete with you and you have to be more competent than them for you to make it in any endeavor. So, even in these seemingly low risk endeavors, the risk is still there and for a lot of people, the returns I mean with the people that I started at the same time with 75% of them have quit and, ironically, even if 75% of them have quit. There are more content creators in the space because it's still ongoing. You have to be willing to put your heart and soul into what you do, even if there is a risk to it. The risk is mitigated if you're willing to go the extra mile, do more than what people are willing to do, and have this, as I said, belief that you're going to make it work and if something stands in your way, fuck it.

We've all you and me have had a few conversations now at this point and you're somebody who I admire in terms of what you created and what you continue to do. Do you have any advice for me, totally selfishly, as a creator and as a podcast? You're knowing a little bit about me and the stuff that I'm doing Do you have any advice for either myself or someone like me in the pursuit of? It could be the podcast, it could be social media in general, Anything that stands out for you.

I'll link it to the concept of silent substance. You have a lot of substance. I've listened to quite a few podcasts of yours and you're doing the podcast format right. I guess what you're missing would be distribution and getting eyeballs on what you're doing more and more. So you've already nailed the part of the craft itself, but then you also have to nail the part of marketing, and this is something you know. There are a lot of starving artists that do what they do but they don't get paid for it, and you have to strike a balance. If there's something that I wrote a few months ago, it may sound a little bit harsh, but it's the reality of things If your talent doesn't pay your bills, show your talent up your ass, and you have to make sure that not only are you good at what you do, but it also pays off right and as much as no matter what you do in podcasting writing you need to get eyeballs on that thing, and the best way to do that is actually what you're already doing. I think it just takes time before it takes off, where you're building a strong network and this is my second podcast with you and I consider you as a friend of mine, like I would recommend people to listen to your podcast because it's very insightful. So focus on growing a network. You've already mastered the craft. This is you're doing it right. I'm not going to lie. You're doing it right in the sense that you first have to have the skill and then you have to market it, and for most people, they go with the marketing without having any substance behind. Once you have the substance, you should pursue the style, and the style doesn't mean the style of the podcast, but rather how it appeals to people and how many people you can reach. So, even if your product is good, if nobody sees it, at some point you may feel like you're doing it for nothing. So my advice for you specifically, or anyone doing podcasts, is as much as you enjoy the podcast, you should also think a lot about the marketing side of it.

I think that's such great advice and I appreciate the calm words. Is there anything? So we covered a fair bit today about social skills and I know that that's a concept that you talk a lot about with your community and just your work as a whole. Is there anything in that realm that we haven't touched on today that you think is pretty fundamental? Okay?

I think the reason why I talk so much about ego and the reason why I talk about social skills is that it's maybe counterintuitively, but part of the same coin. People think about ego as this arrogance or vanity. The way I see ego and the way Freud defined it is what mediates between the urges of the ID, which is who you are, and the pressure of the super ego, which is society and the demands of society. So there are two aspects of this where you need to work on your social skills and your internal beliefs, but you also need to work on how you deal with the external world. So, having a strong sense of self and then having strong social skills I believe that's the sense of any, that's the essence and core of anyone. That is, as people say, it going to make it. You need to be able to be good with yourself and you need to be able to be good with the people around you and make your place without compromising on who you are. So the fine balance that you need to strike, as I was saying in the beginning of this podcast being able to be yourself while being adaptable.

Being yourself while also being adaptable. So essentially, that would be maintaining who you are, but also understanding where things are going, the direction of things, the things that people are talking about, the things that people are interested in, and finding your way of being yourself in whatever that is. If that's Twitter, tiktok, whatever the format is, it's just finding a way to be yourself in that thing that's popular.

Absolutely. I think one way to put it is you need to make your place not fit within society. So you need to make your place without losing size of yourself. Next way to do that is leverage the trust that you have. You shouldn't lose part of yourself just to be accepted. You need to find that authentic voice of yours. You shouldn't be copying others because it worked. You need to find your authentic voice and then use tactics or strategies that have worked for other people and then you tweak them and that's how you create something unique. If you're trying to force something that doesn't work, even if it feels natural to you, it's not going to work. But if you're just copying someone else, then there is no credit to what you're doing. So there's this fine balance to strike between doing what works and doing what is natural to you.

And I think it goes back to the style and substance, because if you can have both of those things, you can always make it work. In a way, there's just such a draw to that that if you're able to cultivate both of those things within yourself, the ability and the potential is endless, no matter what it is.

Absolutely. I mean substance is you, style is how you present it to others.

I love it. It's your ego drive. I'm always so impressed by you and always love having a conversation. It's always incredibly insightful and, like I said earlier, I'm so impressed by you and what you're building. I had the chance for those that don't know to speak with your community and, dude, you blew me away with the stuff that you're building, the detail in which you're building it, and I highly recommend everyone go check that stuff out and I'll link to that in the show notes. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell people? Send people anything else on your mind?

I'd like to thank you for the kind words and for the invitation. Well, I guess the place I would like to send people is go and listen to more podcasts from Ryan. That's what I would say. I don't want to promote anything. What I want to promote is my ideas, and you've given me the opportunity to do that on your show, and I'm grateful for that.

And I'm grateful for you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, thank you.