Snippet 7: How To Permanently Boost Your Motivation - Bobby Seagull
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Hey friends, welcome back to the deep dive snippet. In this little clip, you're about to hear a conversation that I had with Bobby Siegel, who's the author of the Life-Changing Magical Numbers, the Monkman and Siegel quiz book, and is like a national celebrity here in the UK around maths and the idea of achievement. And we're talking about tips on how you can boost your motivation permanently. Like what are the things that we can change about our environment, the people we hang out with, and our information diet to permanently raise our aspirations in a way that encourages us to be more intentional about the goals we're setting and how we're going after them. And I think it was just a place where

I think there were no limits on capability or your achievement. Because although, again, my secondary school was a very good one in the borough, and I would always... And actually, sometimes people, when they've achieved, they'll often go back and say, oh, I grew up in a really, you know, in a terrible counter state, and my secondary school was terrible, no one achieved. Actually, our school definitely said you can achieve. But again, in an environment where not many people go on to the top universities, it can still limit your ambitions. I remember one of my secondary teachers, in fact...

I sort of kept in touch with him. He was telling me, Bobby, the maximum you can get is 5A stars in the school. Maybe you can be a dentist, but don't aim more than that. And he was a teacher that believed in us in my state school. But when he went to Eton, suddenly they're like, oh, you can run your own business. You can be the prime minister. You can be the best-selling author. You can be a famous Hollywood actor. There was no limit to the sort of achievement that you could... And does that make a difference to your psychology, I guess? I think it's...

I think humans we can be our own worst enemies we can set ourselves barriers before society does because sometimes people say oh it's my friends my family society they say I can't achieve x y or z but actually I think we can be we can internalize that

And say, actually, because of those influences, actually, I shouldn't aim to go to a good university. I shouldn't think about Oxbridge. I shouldn't aim for a career, a conventional career in the city. I shouldn't try and become a doctor. So I think we internalize almost like the success of people around us. And there's like, I don't know who said this concept, but I almost think that we average the experiences and experiences

motivations of people around us. So if people that you spend your time with are very negative, very moody, have low self-esteem, we naturally average out, let's say the five closest people and we take on that sort of the same traits. We take on low self-esteem, we take on a low view of ourselves. But if you're around people that think that the sky's the limit, actually then, okay, maybe you're not going to end up reaching the sky, but you will raise your aspiration.

So yeah, I fully agree with this. And there's a lot of stuff that people like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about as well, where, you know, one thing I strongly feel is that like, even if you can't change the environment around you or the people around you,

you can, for example, change what you watch on YouTube or what podcast you listen to or what books you read or whatever. And for someone, for example, you know, just to use a very trivial example, like for most people, the idea of starting a YouTube channel or going on a university challenge or writing a book, these are pretty weird things to do. But if you're listening to podcasts, which is interviewing the top...

500 people who ever went on University Challenge, suddenly it's like, oh, actually, this is fairly doable. If you listen to podcasts where everyone being interviewed is an entrepreneur or a creator, suddenly it kind of expands your box and it kind of makes, oh, actually, that thing seems more doable.

I remember this happened for me when there's a guy called Rolf Potts who's got a podcast where he talks about long-term travel with various people, you know, people who have traveled around the world with just a backpack, people who have traveled around the world with nothing at all, men, women, all walks of life. And in my head, I always thought, oh, travel equals dangerous, equals hard, equals bad. But just hearing all these interviews made me think, oh, actually...

this is quite doable. So I'm a very strong believer in the idea that if you change the stuff that you're being fed informationally, whether it's with the people around you or the stuff that you consume, it does have the power to just change the way that you see things.