Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.
I think that the struggle is a bit of an honor. And I think if you want to know what the key to happiness is, it's struggle. If you want to know what the key to wealth is, it's struggle. If you want to know what the key to making a lot of money is, it's struggle. And the more that you can realize that iron actually does sharpen iron, and the more sort of difficult things you can champion and do, the more likely you are to have a successful life. I...
I think it's a life hack. It's a secret that these days we don't want to hear. Now everybody wants, you know, I want to do the least and make the most. I want to hire the least amount of people and have the biggest company. I'm a solo entrepreneur that will never employ anybody that makes millions on the internet. You can do it too without any work and four hours a week.
Like that's the thing that we've said we want. And then I think about it for a second. I stand back and I'm like, is that really what we want? Like what happened to building empires? What happened to leaving legacies? What are you going to do in the other 52 hours of your week? And so I don't think you have to struggle forever. But I think periods of struggle make the periods of relaxation really poignant. And one without the other is like a day without a night. Nobody wants to live in complete silence.
pleasure and happiness always because it diminishes. And so I do think you need it. I mean, what do you think? Because you went through worse sleep deprivation in medical school than I did. Yeah, this is the thing that I'm not sure about. Like, I've been looking a lot into this in the process of writing my book, where, you know, there's that quote from Muhammad Ali, which is, you know, I thought about quitting, but I said,
you know, don't quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. And this whole thing of like, I suffered for 10 years and then it was worth it at the end of it because I held up a trophy kind of vibe. And that has never really sit right with me because if, you know, when I was talking to Alex Ramosi, he said something which I think about quite a lot, which is that
you know, when I was 20, I would have given everything to be a millionaire. And when I was a millionaire, I would have given everything to be 20 again. And so usually I feel like these periods of struggle when we're young in particular, like if we look at the regrets of the dying on the deathbed, basically everyone says, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And I think for people who are very driven,
there is kind of a default tendency to over invest in work and under invest in relationships and health. And I know a few people for whom that has screwed them up because they've gotten to their, let's say mid thirties, forties, whatever they've chased the corporate ladder or success in entrepreneurship or whatever the might think that thing might be their whole life. And then they look around and they're like, Oh crap. All my friends are married with kids. And I, and I've just been chasing, chasing the green dollars. And I, I wonder if,
Like the way I've always tried to approach it is, you know, when I was going through med school, building YouTube channel, working as a doctor, it was always around how can I make this process enjoyable and energizing for myself so that it doesn't feel as if I am struggling or grinding and stuff. And maybe that's that kind of millennial, like wanting to have their cake and eat it too kind of situation. But when you said struggle is happiness, that's where I was like, oh, I'm not sure. I would venture that balance is happiness.
And there are periods of struggle, certainly, because growth comes from struggle, almost certainly. But then there's the other side of it, which is,
Happiness comes from having friends to hang out with and taking care of your health and all those things as well. So yeah, what do you think? Well, I think you're right. I think it's important not to assume that struggle can only be in work. So I think you're right about that. We talk about something called a third degree human, basically like a third degree black belt. And so we have a triad at contrarian thinking that's civilize the mind, make savage the body, build the bank account. Yeah.
So the idea is the civilize the mind, make savage the body as an ancient Chinese proverb translated. But basically that...
Yeah, you want to... How do you civilize the mind? You read incredible things, right? You have interesting conversations. You question things. You struggle with that voice inside of your head that's always telling you negative perceptions, right? And you try to not tame the beast, but understand it. And that's like one type of struggle, right? And then you have make savage the body, which is a different type of struggle. It's like the struggle to...
eat well, you know, the, the, like, I don't know, like, do you find joy? I find a lot of joy in an incredibly hard workout, like a yoga session where you're just dripping sweat, but the music's incredibly difficult. And I, so maybe there are different types of humans too, but I find that when I kind of take it to the edge, that there's this, there's beauty in it. There's like beauty in
How far can you push your body? You know, how far can you push your mind? How much can you create? And then maybe that is where happiness kind of strides. The bigger issue I think I see today is that so many people, so many people seem like they don't have a purpose anymore. And like we're a nation of people who their deathbed, they say that because they chose a job.
Because of outside memetic reasons that they stuck with for 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, or they looked for fast cash and fast rewards and never found it, as opposed to
I don't know about you, but I get so lost in the moments where I'm doing the thing I should be doing. You know, when I'm writing really deeply, when I'm thinking really deeply, when I'm having an engaging conversation. But I'm struggling. Even right now, I'm like, I'm struggling to think of how do I say this exactly? But there's like, I'm finding it very interesting. You know what would not be interesting? Us talking about the weather, which would be super easy. Us watching a mindless TV show.
That is so uninteresting to me. So maybe we need a better definition of struggle. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. Because, yeah, as you were describing that, the whole, you know, sharpening the mind, the body thing, I think...
One example I often think of is, you know, during lockdown, I got a PS5. I started to play Horizon Zero Dawn and I switched to very hard difficulty. It wasn't quite ultra hard, which is just a bit torturous, but very hard was like a good sweet spot where my housemate would see me just like trying to clear the same bandit camp for about three hours because it was on very hard difficulty and you had to get the right like headshots and make sure that they don't notice you and all this kind of stuff.
And at the end of it, it would be like, oh, yes, I'm glad I spent the last three hours on very hard difficulty. I could have breezed through in five seconds on story mode difficulty. But like, what would be the point of that? Exactly. There is joy to be found in the challenge itself. But at the same time, if that's, I think, where I think about this idea of balance.
You know, that's three hours from like, I don't know, 8 to 11 p.m. while it's locked down. But, you know, if that was four hours, five hours, six hours, seven hours and the rest of my life is suffering, now I might be struggling on very hard difficulty on Horizon Zero Dawn or even ultra hard, but I'm unlikely to be particularly happy because the rest of life is not quite in balance. Totally. And so I kind of think of it as these moments of challenge, right?
You know, in the book, we've got a chapter around play. Like if you can find a way to approach your work in the spirit of play, which is often with a sense of wonder and curiosity, but a decent sprinkle of challenge as well. That's what makes it fun. And that's kind of been my approach for, well, since medical school. How do I take that?
take this challenge and find a way to make it fun? Or if I'm doing something really boring, how do I apply a challenge to it to make it more fun than it currently is? Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think we forget sometimes that most humans, if you go to Ask, it's one of my favorite games. I do it a lot to Uber drivers. Like I'll say something like, you know, what was your day like today? Like, what did you, I just want to see a different perspective. So here in London, I think that's interesting. Like how many hours you've been driving? What's going on? And then I like to ask them, when was the last time that you did something so hard you could barely stand it?
And the reason I like to ask that is because every time I ask myself that, I realize, oh, shoot, it's been a little bit longer than I anticipate. You know, when was the last time you stayed up all night working on something because you couldn't help but do it, right? And when you ask yourself that question, then it makes you push yourself slightly to find those things. And in moments where I haven't done that in six months, let's say I'll realize, oh, I have been grinding. I've not been struggling. I've just been
sort of on a low level grind, which I think is soul killing. And oftentimes they'll tell me something really interesting. Like I just had a baby, you know, three months ago and I never thought I could survive in that moment what was happening. And that was really cool. There's actually this great book called The Men, The Mission and Me. It's about a Green Beret, so a special forces in the US. And he has a line in there that basically says, there is nothing more motivating than a mission you're unsure you can solve. Right.
And I think that's why we're put here as humans. Hey friends, thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this clip, then click here for the full unedited episode. And if you like that, then do please consider subscribing to the channel. It means a lot. Thank you so much and have a great day. Bye-bye.