hello listen before i start i just want

to pay

a little bit of homage and also a

tribute to the guests that i had joined

me last week on this podcast

the feedback that i got from that

conversation for those that had the

resilience to listen for the full two

hours and if you haven't

i genuine genuinely implore you too

because

the value of that conversation and the

diversity of the topics we touched on i

genuinely believe are life-changing

i've reflected continuously throughout

this week on that conversation we

touched on everything from depression to

anxiety to burnout

and it's really developed to me you know

what one of the things they say is that

the teacher is the person in a classroom

that gets the most value from a

conversation and in that context

i as the interviewer who got to sit

there and listen and prod and think

through my own sort of selfish curiosity

i think i got the most value out of that

i certainly learned a ton

about myself the world and some of the

problems that i've had throughout my

life so if you haven't

and you do get the time i implore you to

go back and check out that episode

and in fact that episode has it's

inspired

this episode in many ways one of the

things that

you guys have said to me in my dms on

your stories

in the reviews everywhere my emails you

said to me one of the things you enjoy

most about this podcast

is when i'm a little bit more raw and

when i

i'm a little bit less scripted per se

not that i'm ever really that scripted

but when i'm a little bit more off the

cuff when i talk about my own anecdotes

my own life and my own stories and so

this

episode this chapter is going to be

exactly that

it's predominantly centered on my

anecdotes my diary is full of things

that have happened to me this week

personal stories from my friends and the

lessons that they've taught me the

lessons they've taught me about myself

about my life and about how to build a

better future

so without further ado i'm stephen

bartlett and this is the divers ceo

i hope nobody's listening but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

so for the first point in my diary this

week i've literally just written means

to an end syndrome let me explain what i

mean

every single year i set myself the same

goal in february

and the goal is simple it's to get in

good physical shape and every year

thankfully

i achieved that goal until september

and by october my motivation to work out

to eat well and to be healthy

seems to transform from this like

tangible object that i can hold on to

to sand slipping through my hands by

january the following year

all hell has broken loose in my diet i'm

basically fat compared to how i usually

am

my my energy is lower my sleep isn't as

good i just don't

feel my best anymore then february comes

around again and march comes around

and i set myself the same goal to get in

shape and the cycle repeats itself

this has happened to me i'd say every

year for at least the last five years

in a row and i've not been able to

understand from a psychological

perspective

why this is happening and with all

things in life until you become

conscious of what's causing you to

behave the way that you are

you're merely just a puppet and the

puppet master

remains this unknown force this

experience you had at some point uh

you know a facet of your psychology one

that usually doesn't have your best

interests at heart one that usually

can't be trusted

a puppet master that certainly isn't

working for you

he's working for your insecurities or

for your for your ego

or for trauma that you've experienced

the same cycle unfortunately started to

repeat itself this year

i mean i started the year fat january

time i was pretty fat compared to how i

usually am

walking can feel the little rolls on my

belly shaking as i walk and i'm wearing

slightly baggier clothes

by august i was in the best shape of my

entire

life right because of an obsessive focus

on the gym i was going

seven days a week i was calorie counting

one day i did 5 000 calories

and by september my motivation started

as it always does to just fall away

i noticed that i wasn't charging my

apple watch anymore i noticed that i'd

started to miss

the gym i started to eat junk food again

this lasted for about two weeks this

year

but this time i started to be a bit more

conscious about it i told myself what i

was doing

and i started examining my own

psychology and saying literally saying

to myself

steve you're doing it that cycle is

repeating itself you're eating [ __ ]

you're lacking motivation

fortunately i've just written a whole

chapter on the topic of motivation for

my upcoming book

so i because of the research that i had

to do to write that chapter i

understand the psychological principles

and the forces at play that make someone

motivated or unmotivated and armed with

that

and my own sort of critical

self-analysis which i attained from

being more conscious

about what i was doing the fact that i

was eating junk food and i'd i could

feel my motivation waning

i finally understood why this is

happening to me

maybe maybe this is happening to me

isn't the best way to describe it why

i'm doing this to myself or not

doing things to myself that i should be

doing and

touchwood i finally overcome it it's

november

and i'm still working out for the first

time literally in my life i'm still

eating well and i'm still focused on my

health goals

and this is the first year ever that i

can remember in the last

five really in the last decade where

i've been just as committed to working

out

now and to being healthy in my entire

life

than i was during the summer so let me

tell you how i did this and let me tell

you what i understood

about my own motivation because i know

it's going to speak to you in your own

way

let me rewind every year around february

march i say the same thing to myself and

i set myself the same goal

let's just stop there right and take a

look at what i just said because there's

a real

clue in that first sentence why does

this goal pop up in march

the answer quite an obvious one because

summer is on the horizon

and you've got to ask yourself again

you've got to criticize yourself there

and say well why does

summer matter well because you know

summertime is a time where

we wear less clothes we're a little bit

more vulnerable our bodies are on show

more

and then you can ask yourself okay so

why is that relevant well it speaks to

the nature of my motivation

my motivation wasn't to work out it

wasn't to be healthy because i want

long-term health benefits or to or to

feel great about myself

as embarrassing as this is to admit my

motivation was so clearly

clearly to look good for

summer let's just break that down a

second

look good for summer looking good

as a goal is measured by just one thing

the public's opinion of me

ladies opinion of me that's what we call

an extrinsic external goal

success of that goal will be achieved

when the public think i look

good the next part of that sentence

right was for

summer the next part of my goal was for

summer which is a measurable

time frame so once summer is over

the job is done so the motivation behind

that goal was both extrinsic

and held within a time frame so when i

dropped that social media pic of me

topless in

mykonos or wherever i went this summer

mykonos and costa rica looking good

during summer and when i got the

compliments the likes the followers the

praise

and when summer passed unsurprisingly

so did my motivation job done my goal

my reason my why was attached to summer

and also public opinion

and both had been fulfilled so as i

pulled into october and i tried to find

the motivation to go to the gym it was

gone

going to the gym suddenly felt so

pointless to me and i had no idea why it

just did

even when i managed to get to the gym my

workout was quite honestly pathetic it

was short it was like

25 30 minutes of me predominantly

texting and i didn't know why

i just thought i wasn't feeling great

like you know like a boat that had

suddenly been

unanchored i was now just drifting

unconsciously without intention or real

motivation

or without conscious realization into

the winter months into bad habits into

fat steve

and the minute i realized this this year

i was able to completely

reset and sort of re-anchor my

motivation into things that were

intrinsically internally motivating and

without time frames

i set myself the goal of going to the

gym just because it makes me feel great

and because of the energy it gives me

and the positive impact it has on my

sleep

and because you know i love showing

myself how self-disciplined i am

i get a real weird feeling of joy by

going to the gym on a day when i feel

like

[ __ ] because for me that's kind of

overcoming my mind

right it's like beating um the the

negative

or the the weaker parts of my mind that

are trying to dissuade me from doing

something that's in line with my

long-term values

and honestly also people don't like to

say this but

the positive impact it has on my sex

life

i didn't really know how to say this

without sounding like a [ __ ] dick but

i have never been there in bed

and and just generally how good it makes

me feel

all year round all of these things have

no

finish line they're not extrinsically or

externally judged by the public

they're the opposite of the extrinsic

short-term goals i set myself in march

they're intrinsic

they are never ending they view life not

just as a bunch of recurring seasons but

as

one season one season from now until the

day that i die

the season of life and that that is the

season that it's incredibly valuable

and important to be healthy and

to look good for as james clear says you

know we tend to believe that we'll be

more successful or happy or prosperous

if we put more intensity into our lives

you know like the intensity that i

showed in march every year in the

lead-up to summer you know like crash

diets and sprinting towards our goals at

the expense of everything else

staying up for weeks and weeks and weeks

on end to revise for that exam

but the truth is we don't need intensity

if we have a little bit more consistency

had i just stayed in good shape in

september october november december and

january

if i just gone to the gym maybe twice or

three times a week throughout that

period and

avoided a bit of you know the junk food

which i binged on

um periodically through that period i

wouldn't even need the intensity for the

rest of the year i wouldn't need to

starve myself obsessive in my diet and

go to the gym

seven days a week sometimes twice a day

in fact

intensity for me is often a sign that we

lacked

consistency in the past and i think

and i've said this a couple of times in

this podcast before but until you know

right and this is not easy i'm gonna

make this sound like it's an easy thing

to do

but it requires the same sort of

critical self-analysis and

that i've demonstrated that what you

would have seen from what i just said is

i interrogated my rationale so i said

you know why does it why do i always get

motivated in february in march and then

i said

well because you know someone's around

the corner and then why does summer

matter well because other

you know extrinsic reasons and if you go

down that rabbit hole with humility

and with the attention of not defending

your ego but finding the truth

then you might understand what's

motivating you but until you know what's

motivating you

you won't know where you're going or why

you're going there or

who's steering the ship what force in

your life is steering that ship

and i'd predict that 99.9

of your motivations are misguided or

somewhat unconscious

you don't really know why you're doing

what you're doing i think most of the

time

you have no idea what the driving force

behind your behavior is the same applies

for me

but until you do until you have the

self-awareness and that humility you

need

to interrogate your thinking and the

lack of ego

to identify why you're doing what you're

doing whether it's superficial driven by

insecurities from your childhood

because you're seeking validation like i

was or other you will never actually be

in control of your life

something else is and if your goals are

extrinsic

someone else's okay so the next point in

my diary i've just written here

journey back to human let me explain

i find it so ironic but somewhat

unsurprising if i'm honest that most of

the new age techniques that were aimed

to sort of improve our mental health and

overall well-being are largely based on

old age principles of how our life used

to be tens of thousands of years ago

and in the process of writing my book i

i went back

over the last i'd say three decades to

see how humans and neanderthals lived

their lives

to understand why this is it's almost

like

as we developed as humans and as we

started to rely on agriculture and

farming and

we stopped living in our tribe it's like

we took a wrong turn

and we filled our lives with over

stimulation and with like alcohol

and caffeine and poor nutrition and

loneliness and convenience right and i

think

based on the alarming growth in mental

health conditions like depression

anxiety addiction and

even other conditions like loneliness

and i'd say purposefulness right

i think it's time to turn back and the

question

i guess i often i'm forced to ponder is

what is what is a human being what are

we

what are we meant to be if we take away

all of this social pressure

take away instagram and all of the noise

and all of the pressure to conform

what are we who are we and how are we

meant

to live and infrequently

i'll find myself trawling through google

as i did as i you know when i went over

to costa rica

and i spent the time in the jungle i

found myself trawling through google in

history

trying to understand humans and it's

unsurprising

that the natural lifestyle of humans

back then consists of everything that

therapists and nutritionists and mindset

coaches and psychologists

preach about when you're feeling like

[ __ ] today

let's start with probably the most

obvious it should be the most obvious

and it's definitely a one of the things

that's causing depression in a lot of

people

it's this lack of human connection back

then

10 000 years ago we lived in our tribes

surrounded by family and friends and

johanna hari who came on this podcast

and is actually coming back on this year

that's a little

exclusive for you wrote a life-shifting

book called lost connections on this

exact point and if there's ever a book

i've read in my life and i'm not here to

plug your hannah harry just for you know

because he comes on the podcast and

stuff like that

the reason he comes on this podcast is

because his book i'd say in the last

three years

has had the biggest single impact on how

i see the world right

the fundamental conclusion of that book

is we need each other

that is non-negotiable i i've read a

bunch of studies and i've seen a bunch

of ted talks on youtube

where they've done a study over a

century and they followed like a hundred

or a thousand people

and the people that don't establish

meaningful relationships in their lives

die earlier they get more sick and they

have a worse quality of life

i didn't used to think this stuff right

right i didn't think this was important

before

i mistakenly thought that if i got rich

really really rich everything else would

fall into place so when i at 18 years

old

my whole life was centered on this north

star which was getting filthy rich

at the expense of everything and i

sacrificed everything for that

and i i gotta be honest because this

that's what this podcast is for i felt

that loneliness

i didn't actually like weekends because

they were so empty for me

i didn't have anything to do i'd i'm

sure some of you can relate to this you

know

especially you hustle porn stars out

there that are running your businesses

weekends were just this big [ __ ] void

in my life

there was nothing to do so i just went

to the office my entire life at that

point when i was 18 19 20

was focused on money work business

and after developing this habit of like

forced

self-induced loneliness for about five

six or seven years

it had really really stuck i was a

self-diagnosed

recluse one that spent all of his time

in the office

on my laptop making more money even

though i already had more money than i

you know could ever possibly need

and at some point thankfully i realized

the

never-ending pointless insanity of my

situation

what was the point in having all of this

money and if i didn't have any

meaningful relationships to enjoy it

with

life is uh it's a multiplayer game it's

not a solo experience

and i i got to see how miserable

some of my quote unquote successful

friends were

by just being behind the scenes in their

life one of the i guess the positive

things that happened to me when i became

successful quote unquote was i made a

lot of successful friends and those

friends

in many cases were way ahead of me and

and what they did for me

is they showed me what my future would

look like if i carried on how i was

i got to see behind the scenes behind

their lamborghinis behind their mansions

and i realized that life had lied to me

you know of course progress and success

and striving towards

goals matter like of course right it's

it's made me fulfilled to some degree

but

not at the expense of all the other

things not the expensive meaningful and

frequent human connection

the other thing that i observe when i

when i sort of reflect on on

how our ancestors used to live is just

the sheer simplicity of their lives you

know they lived together in

in caves and these simple huts they were

hunters and gatherers they used

basic tools which they had made to track

and hunt birds and wild animals they

cooked

their prey around a campfire they fished

they collected berries and fruits and

nuts

their goals were so significantly more

intrinsic

and survival focused than ours are today

they were focused on taking care of

themselves

and one another a very simple life it's

a very simple purpose

without all of this [ __ ] [ __ ] that we

have today without instagram without

politics trump fearful news cycles

without

two hour work commutes right to get

between four white walls to lock

ourselves in a cubicle without stress

without

traffic without obsessive worrying and

notifications and emails and

inbox zero pressures and social

pressures and expectations of how your

life is meant to be going

without all of that [ __ ] a simpler life

which results in a simpler mind

which is so frequently the thing that

you know

psychologists and therapists prescribe

to all of us when we have illnesses

today to simplify our lives

but simplifying our lives seems to go

against

society's mandate that expects you to be

so much

that expects career success from you

that expects financial success

material possessions that expects

psychological perfection that expects

physical fitness and health

social status to push yourself out of

your comfort zone to climb the ladder

to have perfect relationships at the

same time to demonstrate the perfect

behavior all while living living in a

healthy perfect

clear mentally stable mind this level of

like obsessive perfection

and you know accomplishment seeking and

validation hunting

isn't conducive with simplicity not in

the world we live in today

absolutely not it's either one or the

other in many respects

so instead of living you know a simple

life we kind of burn ourselves to the

ground

and then we escape off on holiday which

is usually based on simplicity which is

you know laying down

out in nature and relaxing and doing

very little

it's like you know there was a quote

from a guest that i had on this podcast

a couple of years ago

i think it was when i had a chat with

the ceo

of leon the restaurant chain and he said

you should never cut down the rainforest

and then donate to the bees and this is

exactly what this strikes me as

you're cutting down your own rainforest

in order to donate to your own bees

ruining yourself so that you can raise

the funds you need to fix yourself it's

like

it feels like insanity and i'm super

guilty of this i have to admit

so one of the things that i've tried to

introduce into my life is a little bit

more simplicity

scenarios and context that simplify my

life and

every day now i go for a walk there and

back to the gym and i listen to my music

something i didn't do before i just got

an uber

and the other thing that's really helped

simplify my life is just playing with my

dog

pets like kids are amazing for

simplifying your world because they live

in such a simple world like my dog can

spend an hour absolutely amused and

obsessed by like a lucas aid bottle

or like pretending he's hunting it's

like such a remarkable thing when you

contrast it to the complexity of the

world we live in

if you're looking to simplify your world

briefly

try it if you don't have a dog get a dog

but try it

try going into their world my niece and

my dog are

fascinatingly simple and they're

unassuming

and they're unpretentious and i want to

live more in that world sometimes

and i think this is why some people are

also so incredibly obsessed with nature

all this simplicity seems to calm the

mind you know it sort of re-centers your

soul

and the next thing you see if you look

back at our ancestors and how they lived

their lives is exactly that they spent

literally all of their time

in nature that's where they lived they

lived in nature

during that i'm going to get this word

wrong right but during the mesolithic

period i got it right 12 000 years ago

they lived

nomadically in camps near rivers and

near other sort of large bodies of water

and today like a bunch of dumbass over

developed monkeys

we live in these concrete jungles alone

between four white walls

the time i spent last month for pretty

much the whole month living in the costa

rican jungle

was the most wonderful tranquil

experience of my life it was the most

human experience of my entire life

making time in nature has to be a

central part of my routine now

it's a really [ __ ] good decision

especially

for someone like me that lives in a big

busy traffic

ridden noisy chaotic city and lastly

the key thing i see when i look back at

our ancestors was

exercise and nutrition we me you us our

generation

are the most inactive sedentary group of

humans of all time according to the data

our lifestyles are gradually becoming

more and more still more sat down at our

desks

glaring into these illuminated glass

screens and office blocks

we don't need to hunt and gather anymore

right like our ancestors did which was a

huge source of their physical activity

and exercise because we've got delivery

and ubereats some guy will bring me

any food that i want to my door in 25

minutes and i'll be honest with you it's

not always good food

it's usually you know full of sugar and

artificial substances and

things like caffeine which move our mood

one way or the other

and also back then we would literally

carve and scavenge for the tools that we

needed to make our food today

amazon prime that [ __ ] will be here

tomorrow i've included this sort of

terrifying graph in my book that shows

the gradual decline of human activity

i've placed it against the graph of

obesity and sugar consumption

and it makes for a pretty alarming read

right we're not living like humans

anymore we live like

lazy gluttonous gorillas he would

increasingly rather go under the knife

on a surgeon's table to change our

appearance

than make a simple lifestyle change not

very human at all is it

so no wonder we don't feel so human

these days

if this is how you're living certainly

how i was living then you should expect

to not feel great because you're not

living in accordance with your own

natural way of being it's crazy it's

crazy that the new age cures for our

new age problems all seek to take us

back 10 000 years meditation and digital

detoxes are there to

still our mind healthy nutrition to cut

out modern junk foods

therapy friendships and human connection

to read us of the loneliness and to

connect us back to our tribe

these feelings of loneliness and anxiety

and depression

are often according to the science and

my own personal experience nothing more

than a calling

from our body to get back to our tribes

to be a little bit more human

not to find ourselves but to rediscover

who we were

who we are as humans and if you're

struggling in any way

here's some advice give it a go try and

live a little bit more human

for me as a sort of mentally busy

career-obsessed

recluse it fundamentally changed my life

i know that for sure and i genuinely

believe that it might be the thing that

could have the greatest impact on yours

okay so for the next point in my diary

i've literally just written humans have

no idea what they want which kind of

ties a little bit into my first point

but it's very very different i want to

tell you a story one of my

very very good friends i won't name him

because that doesn't matter and i keep

referencing friends on this podcast i'm

slowly losing friends so my

my circle is getting a little bit

smaller i'm just joking one of my good

friends came to my house

last week for a little bit of a catch up

and he sat on my

my sofa over there and he asked me um a

couple of questions about myself and i

turned to him and i said listen

how have you been and somewhat

instinctively as we all do

he replied yeah good and you know

when you're my mate i have to be honest

i [ __ ] hate that response

give that response to someone in like

business or when you're in a networking

event or something like that

nobody has been yeah good nobody

life fortunately and to be honest

unfortunately isn't that simple

definitely

not in the middle of a global pandemic

where our lives are locked down and

stripped back and have been completely

shifted

nobody's yeah good so i instinctively

replied to him which is a habit i've got

into recently especially with my close

friends

no how have you really been and almost

instantly

literally almost instantly he went yeah

yeah i'm pretty

burnt out to be honest with you and

that's kind of surprising because

you know i'm really lucky and i stopped

him there and the reason i stopped him

there

is because i've just spent the last

month studying the topic of burnout for

my book

and i wanted to check i wanted to check

if he like

pretty much everyone else i've ever

spoke to fit into the pattern and the

category

that almost everybody fits into when

they experience burnout

i said to him when you say you're

feeling burnt out but you're surprised

because you're lucky

what do you mean by lucky and he said

well you know because you know i've got

all the things ticked off i've got the

money

i've got the car i've got the house and

then i stopped him again and i said

that's why you're burnt out

because your own self-confessed

definition of career or life

luck and success is extrinsically purely

extrinsically motivated

and as i said in last week's podcast on

almost every occasion where someone is

doing something that they're

motivated to do by largely extrinsic or

external reasons whether it's money or

status or fame or

likes or followers or to obtain like

material objects

where the intrinsic internal rewards

like joy and personal fulfillment

a sense of purpose or a sense of

belonging are limited

you will inevitably lose your motivation

you'll struggle to get out of bed

and you'll self-diagnose yourself as

everybody seems to do

as being burnt out and let's just take a

look at the world we're living in right

now because it adds a really important

layer of context to all of that

this pandemic has robbed all of us our

lives and our work

of things that made work and our lives

intrinsically enjoyable

you know that feeling of striving

towards a shared goal the social value

of being part of a team in an office

that sense of belonging it gives you

the sense of forward motion and progress

and purpose and accomplishment

and to be honest in our personal lives

socializing and days out and family and

friends and travel

and this robber the pandemic covert 19

has left most of us

with just the work wake up zoom

to-do list sleep wake up to-do list

sleep

it's left us with just the extrinsic

stuff and to be completely honest

the only thing that makes doing a lot of

the extrinsic stuff like work worthwhile

is the promise of all the intrinsic

stuff socializing community

purpose that it promises you that it

gives us

but right now it's not giving us that

we're largely alone

not enjoying ourselves much we don't

know what the mission is

we don't know when we're going to be out

of this situation so our work feels

heavily extrinsic therefore pointless

we're doing it to pay the bills we don't

have our colleagues around us anymore

that sense of purpose and mission is

gone therefore we lack motivation

therefore we feel burnt out the more

i've tried to understand the complexity

of humans the more i've realized how

simple

predictable and alike we all are and our

motivations

don't tend to be that dissimilar with

such fragile emotional

unconscious beings that think we're

strong resilient unique

and in control we're not we're all going

through this [ __ ] together

making the same mistakes predictably

because

we all have a very very similar innate

psychological wiring

and the same psychological factors are

running the show

our working lives have been completely

knocked out of balance

and the work is just that now it's work

social chain my company the company i

founded and recently resigned from

you know it was renowned for its culture

for its sense of community for the sense

of purpose and that intrinsic pleasure

it gives the people that work there for

the joy of you know the dogs

in the office we had about 10 of them to

be honest we had a happiness team

that would make sure every day when

you're in the office you're feeling good

therapists that were there for you in

the office every single day

we had this sense of mission and purpose

that we were building this business and

forward motion

and uh it was going great because the

business was growing it still is but it

was growing and that gives you purpose

as well but when a pandemic

and a lockdown strikes all of that stuff

is taken away

all that intrinsic stuff the enjoyment

is taken away

and something that was fundamentally

designed from the ground up to give you

as much joy as a job could possibly give

you becomes

a bunch of people alone in their boxer

shorts on their own little islands

doing their to-do list every day

chatting once in a while on zoom or over

whatsapp or in

shared company groups work becomes work

nothing more that combined with the lack

of structure that everyone has in their

day now results in

long ass working hours and that has a

huge impact on your sleep and

and all of these things and all the

other problems

sends you straight into a place of

purposelessness low motivation

and when all that happens we we say it's

burnout

and i think everybody's experiencing a

bit of burnout right now

you know every year at christmas uh come

it's

widely known according to the data

companies experience the highest amount

of staff turnover because

you know as those sort of new year's

resolutions and all the introspection

occurs people decide they want to go

work somewhere else they want a new

challenge

they want something else for their lives

and we always see the same thing as

social chain

and this year we saw that behavior

happen a few months into the pandemic

quite a few people quit more than we've

ever had in the middle of the year ever

before

and part of me knows that this is

because social change pretty much every

company

lost some of its intrinsic value that

community and purpose and fun

and when it loses it and when all you

have is the extrinsic like paying the

bills a lot of people go looking for pay

rises and if you've worked at social

channel i'm telling you you can get a

pay rise it's got a good brand

people want people that have worked at

social chain and when people to

start to sort of enjoy their work less

they arrive often at the conclusion that

social change is

maybe part of the issue maybe social

change is the reason i'm not enjoying my

work as much

so they go in search of that purpose

somewhere else and people have been

leaving other companies and

in their droves to be honest and wanting

to come to social chain and people have

left social chain wanting to go

elsewhere and this is something that's

happened not in social chain alone

across every business across the whole

country so if you're feeling like [ __ ]

in your job if you're feeling a bit

burnt out if you're lacking motivation

you're feeling i know stagnant

this is probably a large part of the

reason

but going back to the conversation with

my friend which is where this this

started before i went off topic

there's another important layer to

address here my friend

like me had a relatively psychologically

rough start to life with

family issues and issues with his peers

it robbed something from his self-worth

in the same way it did for me

it made him insecure in the same way it

did for me and listen bro i know you're

listening to this because this guy

he's one of my very good friends he

never misses an episode he always gives

me great feedback i know you're

listening to this

right it takes one to no one

everything i'm saying about you could be

said about me too i too as everyone

knows

grew up with insecurities that made me

try and ball out on social media they

made me buy all the champagne and every

night club i went to made me pull up in

sports cars right

in his case it's made him particularly

intent on showing the world that he is

worthy and that he is successful the

clue of course

is in the fact that when i asked him to

define what luck or success meant to him

he said a bunch of material things

something some insecurity taught him as

it taught me

that his success would be judged by the

outside world's opinion of him

and as i said in a previous episode of

this podcast the thing that invalidates

you as a kid whether it's sort of lack

of self-worth or a lack of affection or

a lack of a sense of belonging

will be the thing you seek validation

from when you're an adult and

you know failure when both he and i were

young was not being worthy

not feeling as worthy as our peers me

for my own reasons and

him for a bunch of different reasons and

because

that was our definition of failure that

was the thing that failed us that's what

you know that was the

the worst part of our lives then our

definition of success now

is the opposite think about it if

failure then was not feeling externally

valid or valuable or worthy

success now is feeling externally valid

worthy and valuable

so we we both got big cars nice houses

lots of champagne and we proceeded to

tell and show the world

all of it i guess subconsciously in the

hope that it would

validate us and we designed our lives to

focus on achieving extrinsic externally

motivated goals like money success

status

and the science is clear on this and my

own personal experience it couldn't be

it could be clearer on this particular

topic according to the science you will

experience

less joy more despair increase your

chances of depression anxiety

and sign yourself up for a hamster wheel

existence where nothing

is ever enough of anti-climax and of

lack of purpose and if you design your

life where your north star is all of

this

sort of extrinsic meaningless [ __ ]

you're designing out

all of the things that actually

internally matter like meaningful

relationships the two are kind of

mutually exclusive

the things that you enjoy for you for

your own reasons for your own internal

sake

meaningful hobbies and passions and

subsequently the chance of being

fulfilled

happy and free from all the mental

health issues that will inevitably show

up if you live

in such an externally driven way you

know at 18 years old

as a lot of you will know i wrote in my

diary that my goal

was to buy a range rover um

i wrote there in my diary that a range

rover would be my first car

that was my goal and that was a goal

that was born out of

insecure naivety i guess

definitely a lot of insecurity and it

was a goal written because i wanted to

impress people

and i wanted girls to sleep with me

right

a goal born out of the fact that i

wanted to be validated and fulfilled

and i thought somewhere in me that a

range rover would make me feel secure in

myself

i got the range rover it was my first

car mission accomplished

it impressed people but

when you think about it it didn't make

me feel secure in myself

all it did was highlighted

but i wasn't it was the consequence of

insecurity

so paradoxically the day i achieved my

goal wasn't the day that i bought the

range rover

it was the day three years later when i

sold it

when i no longer felt that i needed it

that was the point where i was securing

myself

and that was the goal i was trying to

achieve

and you know going back to my friend for

a second you know he's

just to give you a context of how he's

working he runs his own business but he

works alone

very similar to how a freelance would

work doesn't have like a team of people

around him just kind of working alone at

home at the moment

and you know the world has done just a

phenomenal job of glamorizing the idea

of being your own boss and being a

freelancer

but nobody seems to talk enough about

how miserable this often is and

let's just factor all of the things that

i've touched on on in this podcast

up till this point about you know

extrinsic goals and the things that make

life meaningful you know the joy of

working in a team of people with a

shared mission

on work that you intrinsically enjoy

doing with as much

intrinsic motivation as possible all of

this stuff is often the absolute

antithesis of freelance work

where you often work alone without a

team on someone else's project for

someone else's purpose

just for the extrinsic reason of money

or paying the bills right

on top of that you have all of the other

[ __ ] being on japan no work life

balance no work life separation no clock

off time

i'm gonna call this freelancer

depression we're gonna try and make this

a thing freelance and depression

it's something that people who

evangelize about being your own boss and

going alone

and all of the freelance lifestyle never

seemed to mention that much

and to be fair this pandemic has made us

all freelancers to some degree it's

robbed us all of that intrinsic

rewarding stuff

i i guess i just want to i just want to

tell you one more thing

now that i've left social chain and i'm

technically unemployed

i was i sat on the sofa it was actually

yesterday with my it's actually

yesterday night before i recorded this

podcast with my assistant

and she turned to me and she asked me a

question she said do you miss all the

travelling

and the chaos of your old life and i

said to her like what do you mean

what do you mean and she said well you

know you used to be up at 3am every day

running all over the world pitching and

speaking on stage

and for a second i paused and reflected

and the thought of doing any of that

stuff now [ __ ] repulsed me

i couldn't think of anything worse but

i mean this is a big but i absolutely

used to love it i absolutely used to

love it made me so fulfilled but now

you couldn't pay me to do that and the

reason for this the reason for this sort

of monumental shift

in my mind is because when i was at

social chain i was working with people i

loved attached to a shared meaningful

purpose

and a mission and we were building

something amazing together when you

remove that and ask me if i want to run

around the world catching

five flights a week and living in hotels

50 weeks a year it seems

totally bizarre and repulsive and

pointless it seems like

such a sacrifice for nothing i would

hate to do that

and it brings me back to the moment in

my life where you know

i think i've talked about this on the

podcast before where i was technically

freelance for the first time it was

after i was 21 years old

i just exited my first startup wall park

and i hadn't started social chain yet

i was being paid i've got to be honest

with you about 70 grand a month by

companies all over the world

to help them as a consultant run their

businesses to advise their marketing

and i was in this i was in um i turned

to my mate dom

in our penthouse apartment in manchester

on the 20 we own three floors up there

i'm not bragging i'm just providing a

bit of context which i think is

important

and i told him exact quote if i go

downstairs right now and i send this one

email

i'll make 20k straight away

and i just can't find the [ __ ]

motivation to do it

and i don't know why it's 20k that's

what i said to him

verbatim exactly and the reason

was because at that point even at the

point where i was making 5k a month

consistently

something as extrinsic as a little bit

more money was not motivation enough

it would have no intrinsic material

impact on my life so the cost of walking

down

some stairs and writing an email felt

greater than the reward

but when i you know when i think about

the moment i went from being a

freelancer to when social change started

i was working with people i loved on a

shared meaningful mission

to build something [ __ ] a flight of

stairs i was flying to the ukraine at

2am on the off chance that someone might

work with us

and i did that like a dog for

seven or eight years i didn't have a

motivation problem

when i was a freelancer it wasn't a

motivation problem right as

people often sort of self-diagnose it

wasn't a lack of motivation that stopped

me walking down the stairs in my

penthouse and sending that one email

that would make 20 grand

i had a purpose problem and the same

applies to the conversation i had with

my pa you know

when i think about sprinting around the

world pitching speaking living in hotels

and sacrificing my life now

it feels so [ __ ] pointless because

i've left social chain

so i'm i guess i'm detached from the

purpose and the mission that i had then

and i i finally understand for the first

time in my life

why people who looked at my life back

then and often said to me you know

how did you do it you know why did you

sacrifice everything

are you crazy when do you sleep all of

these questions um

are you okay i used to get asked all the

time um how did you find the motivation

all the time to

to run the business and all of these

things why you know sleeping in the

office in the weekends why did you work

so hard

it all makes sense now because when i

look back

without the attachment to that mission

that i had then to me it

it looks bizarre i'm asking old stephen

why the [ __ ] did you do all of that

because right now i can't feel that

purpose so all i can feel is the

sacrifice

but i guess that's that's how you behave

i guess that's how you behave when you

have a deep sense of purpose in the work

you're doing so i guess my conclusion is

this

the answer to loving your work and being

as being the best at it which i think

that i eventually became within my

company

is working with people you love striving

towards a shared worthwhile goal

for your own intrinsically rewarding

reasons and if you can do that

i think you'll also do a pretty good job

of avoiding burnout

you'll do you'll do the work of your

life for sure like i did at social chain

and you'll remain fulfilled the whole

time

that little insight helped me so i

really hope it helps you

and so the next point in my diary is one

that i haven't fully developed yet my

thinking on so i'm kind of hoping

i can do this out loud with you together

what i've written is one of the hardest

things in life is to avoid a good

opportunity

so that you have time to devote to great

opportunities and

since i've left social chain and i'm now

technically unemployed but i have a

great reputation i have a great track

record

um i gotta be honest my inbox every day

is full of just

amazing opportunities but the amount of

time that i have every day has remained

the same

i have the same 24 hours and i'm being

bombarded with

offers and jobs and opportunities to do

this and that and the other

and i know that if i choose to accept

any of those opportunities

i'm doing it at the expense of something

else which i've talked a lot about in

this podcast

and so one of the real challenges and

one of the real sort of

talents that i'm trying to foster in

myself is being so clearly attached to

my long-term values and goals and where

i want to go and who i want to be

that i'm able to look at a really good

opportunity

whether it's financial or you know other

or status or whatever it might be or for

my personal brand or whatever it might

be

and say no now and and

to do that you have to have real faith

in yourself but you also have a

have to have a real attachment to who

you want to become and your long-term

goals

and it's something that i'm genuinely

struggling with because never in my life

as i said have i had more

people in my inbox asking me to become

directors and ceos of their companies

and offering me shares to come and help

them

and so i just wanted to share a few

things which i which i have written in

my diary about how i make the decision

and whether to take an opportunity or to

not it's fairly fairly simple the first

one as i said

is by being super clear on the person

that i want to become in the future

and the first check i can do is is doing

this opportunity going to move me closer

or further away by

costing me time to becoming that person

and the next one which i consciously ask

myself all the time now

is if i become that person that i want

to become in the future by remaining

loyal to that sort of long-term image of

who i want to become and my values

will this opportunity come back around

and for about 90 of the opportunities

about 95 percent

it will definitely come back around in

even greater abundance and value

if i become the person i want to become

and the last thing i do is i attribute a

financial value to an hour of my time

and i've read a lot about this naval's

talked about this at length as well and

philosophers and

you know people that i respect in the

business world have told me about this

as well

what you want to do is think of a really

big number for me it's about ten

thousand pounds

i say to myself that one hour of my time

is worth ten thousand pounds

and my rationale for that is based on

what i was able to create with my time

historically so you think about social

change in the business and what it

became and how much it's worth

when i go through and think about how

much each year

added to that value i can quite

comfortably say you know

a year of my time is worth say 10

million or 20 million quid and when you

think from that framework and when you

really attribute huge amounts of value

to your time you're able to cut things

out quickly that don't meet that value

it's something that i genuinely

recommend everyone does

i'm not saying attribute 10k an hour to

your time but even if it's a thousand

dollars start there say my time

one hour of my time is worth a thousand

dollars and if you think through that

lens

i swear to god the opportunities that

will come to you the ones that you'll

accept will be of

significantly more value and ultimately

that means you'll spend

more of your time more of your hours on

things of higher

value and then that's what your life

will become high value

give it a try the next point in my diary

i understand is quite a controversial

one

um i've just written marriage monogamy

and me listen

and i've spent a lot of time in this

podcast talking about relationships and

my views on marriage and the

relationship struggles that i've had and

before i say what i'm going to say i

want to appreciate the fact that this is

a completely nuanced subjective topic

but here's my thinking i'm 28 years old

and i don't know

i don't believe that marriage is the

right answer

a couple of reasons let's just start

with some fundamental principles pretty

much every

every way that i think is based on first

principles i don't think for a star

that the law and that religion have a

great track record on pretty much

anything historically and i think that

marriage is a construct that's been

passed down from one generation to

another

throughout our society without real

interrogation

because we've all done that and i can

literally predict

um the dms that i'm gonna get which

which tell me that

i'm naive and that i don't understand

which like listen

probably true right but that's the whole

point of like me

scrolling in my diary i like this to be

a two-way thing where you can just

message me and say steve you're an idiot

and you do

you guys do you i get the messages you

don't understand the world fine that's

probably true

i know it's true i don't understand

everything and that's part of the reason

i'm doing this but getting back to the

point

um for me the concept of marriage

when you look at the fundamentals of

signing and assigning this commitment

and going to a church and the

legal and religious ramifications of

some marriages

it just feels really insecure it's like

if i love someone

why do i need a contract why do i need

to go to church why do i need to get the

law involved if i

love someone what has any of that got to

do with

courts and contracts if i love someone

and if i'm secure enough

to believe that they love me too that

they won't they won't leave me

and sometimes i think it's a bit like

trapping a cat in a corner because

when you're in a marriage and when

you're in a situation which feels kind

of imprisoned or

like you can't leave um i think

issues might become somewhat magnified

right

you know the worry and the anxiety of

not being able to leave because of that

rain or that contract or because of

the way you set up your life i actually

think it might make issues bigger than

they are

and it's something that i've really

pondered you know i have a track record

in my life of really like

interrogating stuff i interrogated

school to the point that i stopped going

in university to the point that i went

to one lecture and decided that it was

a completely broken concept and i'm

starting to do the same with marriage

and people will hear different things

when i say this right largely based on

their own

opinions in life and their own

experiences and this comes from my own

experience probably largely

largely from the experience of watching

a very dysfunctional toxic marriage that

my parents had

and i'm not saying marriages can't be

brilliant some of my friends have the

best marriages some of their parents

have the most amazing marriages too

i'm just saying as a one-size-fits-all

concept

i think it needs a little bit of

questioning um

i i'm all down for the commitment i

think i'm still developing my ideas

there on monogamy but the commitment

part isn't the thing i have issue with

it's the like marriage part the law the

contract and all that nonsense

i want to talk about monogamy too

because

oh this is going to be controversial but

um i'm also

not completely convinced that we're

meant to be monogamous

i'm not completely convinced that we're

meant to have one partner

like i'm down for it because i

understand the way that the world is

wired at the moment

um but this might be the most

controversial thing i've ever saw in

this podcast

but i think if we all i think of a huge

amount of us

are honest with ourselves and this is

based on the behavior we exhibit

we would probably sleep with someone

else that was smoking heart

we don't because we value the

relationship and we don't

we know that the relationship is worth

more than

a one-night stand with someone else and

we're mature enough to

understand the consequences of our

actions but i think

if you were to anonymously poll people

and say listen would you sleep with

someone else that was hot if it had no

material impact on your marriage

i think if we're being honest with

ourselves a lot of us would but i think

99.9

of us wouldn't want our partner sleeping

with someone else and this all of this

speaks to the fact

that i'm not sure as humans

as men as women we are innately

meant to be monogamous i think that

society has played a huge role in that

i also think that over the the coming

decades i think you'll see real shifts

in this

probably not with me because i'm not

going to get to the point where i i'm

down with someone i love sleeping with

someone else if i'm

completely honest but i think it's

broken

i think marriage is broken i think like

university it's broken you know if

if i told you there was tvs for sale at

a shop on a corner but 50

of the tvs failed you wouldn't go and

buy a tv and it's the same for marriage

50 of marriages fail and if you think

about the concept of marriage

it's till death do us part but 50 of the

time it's not till death

does this part it's till that girl

slides in your dms and you meet her and

you bang her and then you you know your

marriage falls depart or

that guy slides in your dms and you go

for a coffee with him and your boyfriend

finds out and

your husband finds out he dumps you the

concept seems broken and i

but i don't know the answer i don't know

what the alternative is i know that it's

going to have to be commitment-centric

but i feel that maybe when it comes to

my life

i'm not going to seek marriage i might

try and create some kind of new age

urane

arrangement with my partner where we're

committed to each other where we have

the party the celebration which i think

is [ __ ] awesome by the way

but we don't sign all the contracts and

we remain as two separate

you know independent humans that have

come together in the middle through love

without religion or without the law

it's just an idea some of you will

disagree let me know what you think in

the comments section below or let me

know what you think in my inbox or my

my twitter because this is a super

controversial topic and it's one that

we're going to be talking about

i think next week with a very um awesome

person who is also developing

his opinion on this i don't want to give

the the

don't let the cat out the bag on this

one but trust me next week is going to

be one hell of a conversation

the last point in my diary this week is

kind of linked to a lot of the stuff

that i've said

throughout this conversation this chat

today about

extrinsically living your life through

society's image of how you should be

living

i've just written that fitting in is a

curse and the more you can be

you the more happy you will be the more

you fit into society

the less free you actually are i think

about my time in school

and you know and we've all had that

experience in school where we want to

wear the clothes everyone's wearing we

got our hair cut the same way

we listen to the music that is cool to

listen to and how like

trapped that way of living is in fact

what i've come to learn as i've gotten

older and as i've gone through life and

i've become my own person and i've taken

some of these shackles off

is the closer i've gotten to being steve

who steve

actually is the weirdo that i naturally

am and that you naturally are the

expressing myself in a way that is true

to myself in the words that i want to

without worrying about who's going to

cancel me or judge me

or my friends or friends might say you

know fake friends whatever

the more happy i've become the more

successful i've become it's made

this podcast interesting right because i

am myself there's this isn't acting this

is what i think and how i feel every

week and i don't think about the impact

of it

the closer i've got into not fitting in

to being who i

am the more happy i've become and i

think it's just something to really

reflect on because

there's so much of our lives that are

sort of imprisoned by this idea of

conformity and fitting in and being one

of the girls or being one of the lads or

you know wearing those clothes or those

shoes or being you know

being socially accepted and almost on

every occasion i can't think of one

reason

or one instance where that is an

intrinsic

intrinsically motivated thing to do and

so the science says as we've talked

about in this podcast that will lead you

to the despair the lack of joy the

depression anxiety and

and in many cases to mid-life crises

when you realize that you've been living

your life on someone else's terms for

someone else's reasons

i'm on a mission whether it's through

this podcast which is my diary my

thoughts

or whether it's through everything else

that i produce do or the work that i

pursue

whether it's how i dress whether it's

through the diary of a ceo live show

that i'm doing

to really [ __ ] be me to think for

myself and thinking for yourself isn't

easy

we think it is and this goes back to the

point of us thinking we're in control

and getting to the bottom of what your

motivations really are

i'm really really trying my my very very

best at all times to just be

steve and if there's anything that's had

a bigger

impact on my success my happiness it's

exactly that

isn't it weird when we think about our

goals for the future

we often say that we want to be x we

want to be like

x person we want to be like x thing when

really

we shouldn't aspire to be more like our

idols we should

be aspiring to be even more ourselves

the unfiltered uncaring

unassuming intrinsically motivated

version of ourselves

maybe that's the secret maybe this whole

podcast is has led to that conclusion

maybe this whole series is about that

maybe that's what life is about maybe

that's the meaning of life

maybe the meaning of life is exactly

that you start

in the womb you pop out life tells you

you are something it tells you to

conform in the classroom on the

playground

and maybe we're not just on the journey

to being more human

but we're on the journey to being

ourselves maybe that's what it's all

about

being more human

and being more like yourself

thank you so much for listening to this

episode of the diary of a ceo

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thank you so much for listening i'll see

you again next monday

[Music]

you