WEBVTT
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If you are going to do anything special with your life,
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what's required is that you listen to you above and
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beyond all those other voices. And many of those voices
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are there ostensibly to help you, to guide you, but
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there are a lot who are trying to get you
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to be just like everyone else because that's the reality
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of modern Western capitalism. And the contrast here is if
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you want to be the best version of yourself, if
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you want to live an extraordinary life and change yourself
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and have impact on others, you actually have to cut
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against that grain.
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This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight
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Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to
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right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com slash learningleader. That's insightglobal.com
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slash learningleader to learn more. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.
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I am your host, Brian Hawk. Thank you so much
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for being here. Text Hawk. to 66866 to become part
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of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of
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other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive
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a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to
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help you start your week off right. You'll also receive
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details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will
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help you become a more effective leader. Text HAWK to 66866.
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now on to tonight's featured leader i love chase jarvis
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he's a photographer director artist and entrepreneur he was the
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ceo of an online education platform called creative live from
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2014 to 2022 he's earned countless awards for his photography
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and creative work including a Pulitzer Prize for a New
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York Times story he contributed to called Snowfall. He's also
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the author of multiple books, including Creative Calling and most recently,
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never play it safe. During our conversation, we discuss why
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people play it safe and how we can overcome that fear,
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then how we can better understand our intuition, listen to it,
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and most importantly, take action from it. Then Chase discusses
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the importance of playing infinite games with transformational, not transactional, people.
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And then we closed talking about the approaches we both
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take to giving world-class keynote speeches. Ladies and gentlemen, so good.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Chase Jarvis. So I want
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to open with a joke, okay? And I'm going to
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have you actually finish the joke because it's your joke.
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You may know what this is.
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You were in.
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Second grade.
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Yes.
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When you first told this joke, second grade.
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Okay.
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I'm going to say it and then you could, you
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could finish it. Oh, you got the punchline.
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All right. All right. All right. What?
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And I want maybe pause for a dramatic effect to
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what has 52 teeth and holds. I can't even say it, dude.
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What has 52 teeth and holds back a monster?
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The answer is my zipper. And it's, It is so true.
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I told this joke. This was the bomb drop, the
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punchline for my second grade stand-up comedy routine. And I
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confess this in my new book, which is called Never
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Play It Safe. Maybe we'll talk about that a little
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bit today. But I confess that I didn't actually get
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the joke. What I did get was that every time
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I said it, I would watch all the adults in
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the room lose it. And to me, that was enough.
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Well, it was a laugh out loud. I was on
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the elliptical the other day. I'm rereading your book. And
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the person next to me is looking at me funny
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because I am laughing out loud, reading this joke for
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like the ninth time. Cause I'm just like, this dude
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is awesome. He said in second grade, he didn't know
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what it meant, but it, but it was great.
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I knew it brought the house down. The context there is, uh,
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Rolling into second grade, I was pretty stoked. I had
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just did my first film in the summer between first
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and second grade, washed cars to raise enough money, bought
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the film, rented a camera, hired somebody. By hired, I
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mean I literally paid them $ 1, and it was my
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co-star's older brother to film the thing. And we had
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a profitable film that summer, and I rolled into second
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grade feeling pretty good. I had a magic routine, stand-up
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comedy act. And I was selling a comic strip that
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I was writing on the weekends. And my second grade teacher,
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Miss Kelly, shut it down. She said, what's wrong with you?
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There's no room for this creativity stuff. And you can't
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have a business here in second grade. It's against the rules.
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But you are really good at sports. So you should
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be a jock and you should quit all this other stuff.
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And to her credit, I did. I went on to
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have a longstanding career as an athlete, went to college
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on a soccer scholarship. But it It is a story
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that reminds us how the opinions of others when we're
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little fragile minds that can shape our lives a lot,
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sometimes for good and sometimes not for good.
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Yeah, I was just going to ask what impact, maybe
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two-part question, what impact did that have on you for
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how you then chose to live your life growing up?
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And how does it impact you now that you're in
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a powerful position and you can have that type of
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influence on others?
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Well, I think just generally as humans, because we're social animals,
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we want to be accepted socially. And that has benefits
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and drawbacks. And for me, a little second grade me,
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when you hear the story that, oh my gosh, my
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second grade teacher squashed this sort of beautiful, cool, creative
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side of me or of any kid, like how heartbreaking
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is that? And The reality is as a second grader,
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because you just want to fit in, you're like, okay,
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I'll just, whatever Ms. Kelly thought was best for me,
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must be best for me. So I built a lot
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of stuff and I basically focused on sports and I
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issued all that sort of creative stuff, the entrepreneurial stuff.
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And the irony is I remember on my high school
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graduation day, I received an award. They give out 10
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awards or whatever to the graduating class. And the award
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that I got was was the typical senior award, which
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is pretty horrific for me. And at the time, I
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remember like, hmm, this is not good because I'm not
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sure that typical is what I want to be. And
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what that meant was that I was the captain of
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the football team. I dated the cheerleader. I got good grades,
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went to college on a soccer scholarship. And it just
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was sort of like the giant cliche. And I think
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the takeaway from that and to extend the question as
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you did is how does that affect me today? I
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realized that the world will have you believe all sorts
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of things and there's all sorts of inbound messages. And
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what's confusing for all of us is that many of
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those messages come from people that we respect and love
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and admire. And yet, if you are going to do
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anything special with your life, your, what's required is that
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you listen to you above and beyond all those other voices.
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And many of those voices, again, are there ostensibly to
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help you, to guide you, but there are a lot
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who are trying to get you to be just like
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everyone else, because that's what society, that's sort of the
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lowest common denominator. And that's where we steer people. And
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there's no evil overlord. That's not, you know, culture's fault.
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There's no one you know, force trying to shape you,
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but that's the reality of modern Western capitalism. And yet, again,
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the contrast here is if you want to be the
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best version of yourself, if you want to live an
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extraordinary life and change yourself and have impact on others,
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you actually have to cut against that grain. And so
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how that played out for me, it was at some
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point I realized that I had been ignoring that creative
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entrepreneurial side and I then bailed on a career in
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professional soccer. I dropped out of medical school and became
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a photographer, which, as you can imagine, was horrifying for
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my parents. And yet it was the beginning of the
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next chapter of my life, and I never looked back.
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And so, you know, by extension, that is a lot
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of the work that I do in the world today,
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as I am an artist and an entrepreneur, and I
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like to... My spare time, I'm not personally building. I
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like to help people understand through writing books. And I
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have a podcast, a long running podcast, not dissimilar to yours,
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that is about helping people understand what it takes to
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live their dreams in career and hobby and in life.
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And my newest book is called Never Play It Safe,
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which is about exactly that.
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I read a story about your grandfather when you were,
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I guess, going to med school and he died. and
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left his photography equipment to you. What impact did that
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have on you?
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Oh, it was transformative. And it was at that time
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where I was starting to ask these questions like, wait
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a minute, you know, this, I've always been drawn to
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things that were very different than, you know, if you
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were Well, first of all, I'm the only person in
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my family to graduate from college. And I did feel
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some pressure. And when my grandfather died and gave me
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his cameras, I knew that I had been curious about
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photography my whole life. I had, as an athlete, I
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mentioned I was always on the other side of the camera.
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And I had this weird instinctive connection with photography that
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my that they were just capturing these beautiful stories and
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moments in a single image. And when my grandfather died
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and I was given his camera, I had some, there
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was some calling in me that said, you should figure
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this out. So I dropped everything. And then with a
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little bit of money that I had saved up and
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with his camera, I just walked the earth for six
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months with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kate, taught myself
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how to become a photographer and that transformed my life.
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Not necessarily because I, you know, steered clear of everything,
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you know, of business. I ended up making a living
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and a life doing this. So you have to, you know,
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as a, you have to be an entrepreneur, you have
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to be as an artist, it helps to be decent
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in the business. But I just expanded my world of
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possibility and what it is that I wanted to do
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with my life rather than what the world was telling me,
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which I needed to be a doctor or a lawyer
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or a professional athlete or something that, you know, everybody loves.
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And the reality is that If we're busy pursuing the
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things that everybody else wants for us, how are we
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going to find ourselves?
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How much of your skill as a photographer, as a
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creative person, as an entrepreneur do you think you were
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born with versus how much have you worked to develop
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the skills and earn the ability to make a living
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doing it?
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Mm-hmm. My belief, and it's a very strong belief, it's
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backed up by science, my own experience and the experience
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of lots of other stories and anecdotes, is that we
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are all wildly creative. And right now there's someone in
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the audience who's listening or watching and saying, well, I
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don't know, you know, I never really, that's fine. But
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just know that that's your natural state is creativity. That's
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one of the things that separates human beings from all
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the other species on the planet. and it's something that
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is trained out of you rather than bred into you.
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And it's easy to see. All you have to do
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is go to a first-grade classroom and come up to
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the front room and say, who wants to come up
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to the front room and draw me a picture? And
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every hand goes up in first grade, and you ask
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the same question in eighth grade or a dozen years later,
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and that number gets cut in half every couple years.
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And that's evidence that that this is our natural state
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and it's trained out of us through shame and cultural pressure.
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And as I mentioned, Western capitalism and those toxic myths
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about starving artists. But the reality is that creativity is
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absolutely foundational to every human being. And whether we choose
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to lean into that and develop it, that's up to us.
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And of course, this is, go back to that, what
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I was sharing about how the world will program us
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if we don't do the things that we want to
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do that it is so easy to train something like
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that out of a child by telling them that it
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won't serve them. And we've got all this stuff about STEM,
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which is about sciences and whatnot. And 10 years ago,
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even five years ago, if you surveyed what the world
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thought you should be, everyone said, oh, you should be
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an engineer, you should be a computer programmer. And now
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if you look at everyone who, the people who are
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the wealthiest people in the world that have the most
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influence are specifically in driving the technology leadership of our
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country or the world, for example, they're all saying, oh,
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my kids, oh, no, no. Computer programming, that's for the computers.
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The computers teach the computers how to write code. And
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the things that are going to help human beings stand
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out is art and the ability to do things that
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machines can't do as well. And so here we are
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full circle. My belief is that we are all creative
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and that whether you are in business or you identify
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as a creative, leaning into your creativity is perhaps one
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of the greatest capacities, the greatest things that you can
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do to create the living and the life that you want, right?
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These things aren't found, although they call us founders when
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you create a company, but I don't know about you.
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I didn't find anything. I built that shit from the
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ground up. So, you know, this idea of expanding the
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definition of what is creativity has always been interesting to me.
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And now, you know, having seen technology play out and
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having written a few books on the subject and, and
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built a couple of companies, one called Creative Live, which
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educates tens of millions of people around the world around
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their creative capacity. I know that creativity is embedded in
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everything that we do. It's just, we have to lean
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into it. And for those that do, they get disproportionately rewarded.
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So I don't think your advice is like everybody quit
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their job and go be a photographer touring the world.
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That's not your advice. So let's say Chase, for the
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person who likes their job, loves their team. They're like
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an SVP at a Fortune 500 company, right? And they
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don't want to quit. How does that person tap into
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the creativity that's within them that maybe has been beat
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out of them over the many years since they were
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little to now tap into some of that to become
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better from a leadership perspective, to run their teams better?
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to exceed the goals that their company has set for them,
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to love on their people, to do all these things,
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to make their place a great place to do great work.
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What can that person learn from your work, from Never
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Play It Safe, from all the Chase Jarvis stuff? I'm curious,
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what can they learn from you to help them be
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better at that?
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Yeah, my last book was called Creative Calling. And it
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was specifically that, that every person has a creative calling
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within them. And the cornerstone of that book was expanding
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the definition of creativity. Because when we were children, we
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were taught that creativity equals glitter and popsicle sticks and
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glue guns and stuff like that. Creativity is combining any
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two things to make something new and useful. And so
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if you think about that, whether you're making a meal
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for your family or creating a strategy for your business
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or finding out what the best way is to motivate, lead,
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and inspire your team, Creativity is at the core of
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all of those things, right? That is the essential, again,
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the essential difference from our species and all the other
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species on the planet is that we have the capacity
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to create new things. And so, first of all, I
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would encourage you to expand your definition of creativity and
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to call yourself creative, despite the fact that whether through
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conditioning or self-belief or probably a combination of both, you
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don't think of yourself as creative because you're not painting
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portraits for a living. That's not what I mean at all.
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I mean that we all are creative and that it
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is that capacity. And again, this is a habit as
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much as it is a skill. It's a belief that
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you can create your way into any solution, you know,
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given time and time. resources and even constraints. So for
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anyone who's doubting, I would say, reminder, you are creative.
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It's fundamental to what it means to be human. And
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by leaning into that, all you're doing is you're giving
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yourself increased optionality. You're saying, I can create a solution
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if the solution doesn't exist. When you start to look
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at it like that, you start to realize, okay, I
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am creative and Then you start to dissect or deconstruct
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popular culture and you start to understand that, wait a minute,
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the most successful, happy, and fulfilled people in the world,
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they largely identify as creative or have, or acknowledge their
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creative capacities. You know, the largest company in the world
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and most valuable like comes like Apple. Just ask the question,
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do they identify as a creative company? Absolutely. That's core
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to who they are. So. I think if you think
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about creativity in a broader sense, the answers are right
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there hiding in plain sight. We all are creative and
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it's up to us to take an ownership role there
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and create the living and the life that we want
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for ourselves and the people around us, right? Your team,
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you talked a lot about that. That's the theme of
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your show. Yeah.
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And I was super inspired by Never Play It Safe.
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I'd read it before we'd even agreed to record. And
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then I reached out to you afterwards, which is not
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necessarily the normal sequence of events here with my show,
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but that's how good it was and how much of
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a fan I am of your work. And I want
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to read one of the initial lines from it and
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then have you go a little bit deeper because I
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think a lot of naysayers might say like, look, good
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for you guys. You get to be creative and have
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podcasts and do art and take pictures and make money
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and support your family. I have to go get a job.
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I got to put food on the table, so I
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got to get a job. Good for you. And so
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I got to play it safe, they might say. And
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here's what you say. Playing it safe is out of fear,
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and fear is only optimized for survival, not creativity, not happiness,
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not joy, not connection, not harmony, not fulfillment. It's only
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about optimizing for survival, and that's what fear is all about.
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all about. And to me, that really spoke to me, man,
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when it comes to those who, I get some of
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that from time to time. I haven't written a book
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about this, but you have, so you probably get a
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lot of it. I'm curious if you want to riff
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more on playing it safe and being out of fear
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and how it's optimizing for the wrong thing.
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Yeah. Look, fear is a fantastic motivator. It plays a
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role biologically for us. And that role is to stay
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alive and procreate. But the difference between staying alive and
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having a fulfilling, happy, joyful life, there is a yawning
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gulf in between. There's a thousand miles in between those
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two things. And I believe that it's our job to
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find a way to get what we want out of
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this life. That is to survive and thrive and have
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a a connected experience, whether that's with family, friends, whatever,
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build the living and life of your dreams and to
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optimize in the meantime for joy, connection, fulfillment. And so
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many of those things that frankly, I believe that everyone
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is seeking it's natural, but we've got these biological brains.
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And so our job is then to, you know, and
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my thinking with the book never played safe was I said,
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wait a minute, it's true. that all of the best
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things in my life are on the other side of
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my comfort zone or always have been. And then I
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thought to myself, well, I think of all the books
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I've read of, you know, past leaders and of the
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thousand guests that I've had on my podcast, many of
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the world's top performers in every discipline, you know, sports,
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you know, the best in the world and business, Richard
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Branson and Mark Cuban, like all those folks that I've
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had on my podcast. or that I have come to
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know well through business or, or, you know, my profession. Well,
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it just so happens that they think the same, right?
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That all the best stuff in their life was on
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the other side of big, scary decisions. And that's not
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to say that the quiet moments aren't the ones we
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appreciate with your kids, for example, but the decision, for example,
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to have kids, big, scary, hairy decision. If, if, It's
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true that all the best stuff in the human experience
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is on the other side of our comfort zone. What
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ought we do? We ought to have a blueprint for
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having the ability to get there over and over and
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over again, to get there 1% better, 1% faster, 1%
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smarter and more kind than we did the time before.
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That's what we're really seeking. And when I put that
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to the test through my own experience and the experience of,
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as I mentioned, a thousand other people that I've had
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on the podcast, it just so happens that There is
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a programmable, repeatable way to do that. And to me,
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that's what I mean about not playing it safe. It's
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not about issuing food and shelter for your family and friends.
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That's not what we're talking about. Or taking some wild
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career leap, this whole idea that bet it all on
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black and hope for the best. That's not real. No
401
00:22:53.359 --> 00:22:57.109
real entrepreneurs do that. They might make a gamble, but
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The reality is that all the best stuff is on
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the other side of our comfort zone. We can get
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there reliably. And in my book, Never Play It Safe,
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I've analyzed people who do that the most, who have
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the most sense of fulfillment, ironically, are also very successful
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in the process. And that's what I've tried to capture
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in Never Play It Safe.
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You write about this to all of us, Ryan.
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It's available to all of us. Yeah.
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A hundred percent. And I like how practical you make
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it and entertaining with the story. So there are seven
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basic levers for life. Attention, time, intuition, constraints, play, failure,
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and practice. I'd like to dig into some of those
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as we go. Let's go to time and you write
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about NYU professor James Kars, I believe is his name,
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finite and infinite games and why we should treat life
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like an infinite game. Can you go a little bit
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deeper on the difference between finite and infinite games and
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why we should treat life like an infinite game?
421
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Yeah. So that's from game theory and game theory. It's just,
422
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it sounds stuffy, but it's pretty simple in a monopoly.
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There are winners and losers, right? And, At some point,
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the game ends and you're measured and then the goal
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is to then play again. Infinite games, on the other hand,
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the goal is to keep playing. And that is way
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more what life is like because let's just say you
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do get to the end of the game of life. Well,
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as far as we know, you don't have an option
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to go back and restart that game and take forward
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everything you learned from the previous game. So the goal
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of life is is to keep playing. And problems arise
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when you treat infinite games, like the game of life,
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as a finite game, like there are winners and losers.
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It creates short-term thinking. And how this relates to time
436
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is that I'm aware from my own experience, for example,
437
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and if you deconstruct the lives of lots of other people,
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and there are people who are listening here, How many
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of us do stupid shit because we realize, or we
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believe rather, that when we're 21 years old, we have
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to have it all figured out. It makes us go
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into huge, you know, into, I was a hundred thousand
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dollars in student debt before I really, it really hit
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me what that meant. And the same is true. I
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observed so many people rushing around doing half-assed jobs on
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15 things rather than doing a complete heartfelt thoughtful job
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on one thing believing that that that's the way to
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be in the world or that if they don't have
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again don't have it all figured out that they somehow
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will will be left behind and yet that actually just
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creates a bunch of bad behavior and negative consequences I'm
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not this is not to say for everyone I'm not
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saying that life is is forever, right? I am saying
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life is long. And what if instead of rushing around
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as a 21-year-old thinking that you have to have it
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all figured out, what if you could explore? Or what
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if you realized that if you took a job, that
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you will have many jobs. In fact, you'll probably have
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many careers in your life and that this is not permanent.
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And what you're doing is learning and you're running a
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series of tiny experiments. How much healthier is that than
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the image that we project of You're going to get
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a job. You're going to do that job for 40 years.
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The hope is to get a retirement and a gold watch.
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We know that's not how the world works anymore. And yet,
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that's what college is still preparing us for. And that's
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the narrative, the dominant cultural narrative. So how game theory
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relates to, again, the chapter specifically on time is I
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think we get time super botched. We believe that this
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is some infinite hamster wheel that's running in the background.
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It's time is ticking by and the time is going
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to run out. Understand that you can both, you know,
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have short-term urgency. I want to get this done today.
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I want to reach my goal tomorrow. And you can
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simultaneously realize that life is long. And what if you
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get to run a bunch of tiny experiments? We never
477
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know if we're But if we could change our relationship
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with time, if we could believe that there is enough
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00:27:20.359 --> 00:27:23.700
time for us. I'm on my fourth, not just career,
480
00:27:23.740 --> 00:27:28.720
fourth career arc. You already talked about my career as
481
00:27:28.759 --> 00:27:32.880
an athlete. And then as a photographer, I had a 10-year,
482
00:27:32.900 --> 00:27:36.559
20-year run as one of the top commercial photographers in
483
00:27:36.579 --> 00:27:38.440
the world, making tens of millions of dollars. And then
484
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.549
I started an online learning platform. And that served tens
485
00:27:41.589 --> 00:27:43.279
of millions of people as an entrepreneur. We made $ 60
486
00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:47.359
million online. made hundreds of millions and that was another arc.
487
00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:49.420
And now I've had a third or a fourth arc
488
00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:53.579
now as an author writing books, never play it safe,
489
00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:55.720
trying to help other people do this. And if you
490
00:27:55.789 --> 00:27:59.130
told me that when I was 24 years old, that,
491
00:27:59.269 --> 00:28:03.809
hey man, just take a beat here. Look inside. The
492
00:28:03.890 --> 00:28:06.519
answers aren't external. The answers are inside. What is it
493
00:28:06.539 --> 00:28:08.480
that you really want? First of all, I would have
494
00:28:08.500 --> 00:28:10.009
never gotten probably $ 150, 000 in student debt. Second of all,
495
00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:16.900
I think I'd have done a better job ignoring Ms.
496
00:28:16.940 --> 00:28:20.890
Kelly in second grade and realizing that those films that
497
00:28:20.930 --> 00:28:23.569
I wanted to make, yeah, go ahead and make them now.
498
00:28:23.609 --> 00:28:26.970
There's time. And when you realize that waiting tables isn't
499
00:28:27.109 --> 00:28:29.890
necessarily how you want to live your life, maybe it is,
500
00:28:30.450 --> 00:28:33.910
but that you have time and space to figure out
501
00:28:33.950 --> 00:28:35.690
what you really want to do. It makes us do
502
00:28:35.769 --> 00:28:38.440
stupid shit when we don't think that way. And when
503
00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:43.490
we do, we have... the capacity to see way beyond
504
00:28:43.549 --> 00:28:44.269
the end of our nose.
505
00:28:45.130 --> 00:28:50.329
I also think, Chase, that it involves... I want to
506
00:28:50.349 --> 00:28:55.210
be around people who play long-term games with other long-term people.
507
00:28:55.250 --> 00:28:57.470
What I mean by that is every once in a while,
508
00:28:57.509 --> 00:29:02.519
you'll come across a transactional person versus a transformational person.
509
00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:05.799
And if you live your life as a series of transactions,
510
00:29:05.880 --> 00:29:09.200
meaning I'm going to give with the intention to get...
511
00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.420
We all know those people. Most of us don't want
512
00:29:12.460 --> 00:29:15.220
to be around them. Some of us have spent chapters
513
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:19.880
doing that. But I see you as the ultimate long-term
514
00:29:20.140 --> 00:29:23.910
transformational type person where you want to have transformational relationships
515
00:29:23.970 --> 00:29:27.049
with others that are also playing long-term games. Life is
516
00:29:27.109 --> 00:29:30.750
not a series of transactions. You're going to give, give, give, give,
517
00:29:30.789 --> 00:29:34.700
give with no intentionality. no expectation of getting anything in response.
518
00:29:34.740 --> 00:29:37.769
But what happens, the crazy thing, what happens is when
519
00:29:37.809 --> 00:29:41.900
you live that way, especially for a long time, good stuff,
520
00:29:42.579 --> 00:29:46.440
great opportunities just seem to come your way. It's weird
521
00:29:46.500 --> 00:29:50.160
how it works, man. Being generous, being a giver, trying
522
00:29:50.180 --> 00:29:55.180
to help people and doing that consistently over time man,
523
00:29:55.359 --> 00:29:58.460
it's bizarre how the world seems to work itself out,
524
00:29:58.529 --> 00:30:01.710
how good things come your way. If you don't see
525
00:30:01.769 --> 00:30:04.309
life as a series of transactions, but try to be
526
00:30:04.329 --> 00:30:07.349
a transformational leader for yourself and for all the people
527
00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:09.549
in your life, what I mean by that is help
528
00:30:09.589 --> 00:30:12.650
them get better with no intention of receiving anything in return.
529
00:30:12.670 --> 00:30:17.289
And if you do, you seem to get everything in return.
530
00:30:17.329 --> 00:30:19.099
It's bizarre how all that works, man.
531
00:30:19.519 --> 00:30:22.849
Plus, plus, I mean, you get everything. And You know,
532
00:30:22.869 --> 00:30:26.049
that's why it's a no brainer to go on your show. Honestly,
533
00:30:26.109 --> 00:30:29.089
you've done such a good job of building a community
534
00:30:29.130 --> 00:30:33.259
around these ideas that, you know, when I think about the,
535
00:30:33.650 --> 00:30:36.799
you know, playing a long-term game and again, the game
536
00:30:36.819 --> 00:30:41.539
of life, certainly we hope is long and it's married
537
00:30:41.579 --> 00:30:44.220
and winding. And yet if you have a certain set
538
00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:47.019
of beliefs and you live in line with those in
539
00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:52.690
accordance with your beliefs, and for example, prioritizing, um, the
540
00:30:53.349 --> 00:30:58.250
depth and connection rather than transaction immediate and short term,
541
00:31:00.119 --> 00:31:05.980
they have a wonderful way of paying you back in spades, right?
542
00:31:06.099 --> 00:31:10.180
Whether this is financial, whether this is the measure of
543
00:31:10.220 --> 00:31:13.900
human connection and depth of relationships that you have, you
544
00:31:13.940 --> 00:31:16.019
just see it time and time again. And the research
545
00:31:16.099 --> 00:31:22.839
is clear that that mindset is the foundation for transformational
546
00:31:23.539 --> 00:31:29.529
life experience. And that short-term transactional, it does not. It
547
00:31:29.569 --> 00:31:32.009
doesn't build the depth of the relationship, doesn't build the
548
00:31:32.069 --> 00:31:35.410
depth of psychology that is required to really be the
549
00:31:35.430 --> 00:31:37.690
best versions of ourselves. So true.
550
00:31:37.710 --> 00:31:39.160
I want to talk about intuition.
551
00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:39.920
Yeah.
552
00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:43.140
That's the third one of the seven basic levers for life.
553
00:31:43.619 --> 00:31:45.960
And you write about your wife, Kate. It's really sweet.
554
00:31:46.339 --> 00:31:50.779
When meeting on the beach... spending time apart, going to school,
555
00:31:50.779 --> 00:31:54.059
1500 miles away from each other, going to Europe together.
556
00:31:54.559 --> 00:32:00.319
But you, you write that sparks were present, but no fire,
557
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:03.180
but she had that special quality. I couldn't quite place.
558
00:32:03.220 --> 00:32:05.700
It's like, Oh, that gut intuition. Like, what is it?
559
00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:07.779
I don't know what it is. I just, it's just there.
560
00:32:07.819 --> 00:32:11.180
It's just there. Can you go more into that intuition
561
00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:13.710
and that feeling you had in your gut for Kate
562
00:32:13.809 --> 00:32:16.769
initially and how then that blossomed as you guys got older?
563
00:32:17.390 --> 00:32:22.049
Well, I want to couch this story. Again, it's around
564
00:32:22.250 --> 00:32:24.670
this particular story I tell in the book. One of
565
00:32:24.710 --> 00:32:29.250
them in this intuition chapter is not dissimilar to a
566
00:32:29.289 --> 00:32:32.009
story that we have all, you know, some amount of
567
00:32:32.029 --> 00:32:34.410
stories that we all have regarding our own lives. We've
568
00:32:34.650 --> 00:32:37.759
all felt something, a gut feeling about a person, a place,
569
00:32:38.259 --> 00:32:42.680
a meeting, a friend. And we have likely all felt
570
00:32:42.740 --> 00:32:46.880
what it feels like to trust that feeling and simultaneously
571
00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:51.440
ignore it. ignore it in a different time. And what
572
00:32:51.579 --> 00:32:55.950
normally people report is the trusting of one's God, this
573
00:32:56.089 --> 00:33:03.750
intuition ends up being right. And in my case with
574
00:33:03.789 --> 00:33:06.250
my wife, Kate, it was exactly that. There was something
575
00:33:06.349 --> 00:33:10.670
special about her. And while we didn't pursue each other
576
00:33:11.500 --> 00:33:14.700
immediately there was always a seed that was planted that
577
00:33:14.859 --> 00:33:17.059
we would come back to one another or find our
578
00:33:17.099 --> 00:33:19.990
way back to one another at some point. And that,
579
00:33:20.049 --> 00:33:22.430
in fact, did happen. And the details, I'll save them
580
00:33:22.470 --> 00:33:25.890
for the book. But for the person who's listening or
581
00:33:25.950 --> 00:33:30.859
watching right now, whether you believe in your spidey sense
582
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:34.349
of or you lean more into science, I want you
583
00:33:34.369 --> 00:33:38.359
to know that science is quickly coming to understand that
584
00:33:38.460 --> 00:33:43.440
intuition is everything that rational thought is and more. That
585
00:33:44.619 --> 00:33:48.579
the rational thought actually fits inside the bubble of intuition.
586
00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:54.519
And what it amounts to, I guess a simplified version,
587
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:59.390
is that all of our cells have memory. And whether
588
00:34:00.299 --> 00:34:04.019
given that we are filtering billions of points of data
589
00:34:04.259 --> 00:34:08.139
every minute that we're alive, we're only really registering because
590
00:34:08.179 --> 00:34:10.760
our brain can only sort of manage so much of that.
591
00:34:10.820 --> 00:34:14.460
But the belief is that the early belief was that
592
00:34:14.480 --> 00:34:17.320
data wasn't stored. And now what we understand is that
593
00:34:17.420 --> 00:34:19.679
data is stored and stored in the body. And that's
594
00:34:19.739 --> 00:34:22.019
why when we have a gut feeling, it's called just
595
00:34:22.059 --> 00:34:24.559
that a gut feeling. It's an instinct that you feel
596
00:34:24.599 --> 00:34:28.739
down here, less up here. Science is now refuting that, that,
597
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:31.659
Rational thought is the end all be all. So certainly
598
00:34:31.699 --> 00:34:35.860
it may have helped us develop tools. And yet it's
599
00:34:36.119 --> 00:34:39.820
slow and bumbling. It's prone to mistakes. And intuition, by contrast,
600
00:34:40.420 --> 00:34:46.119
is much more holistic. It is a deeper sense of knowing. That's, again,
601
00:34:46.139 --> 00:34:49.849
why you feel it in your gut. And I believe
602
00:34:49.909 --> 00:34:52.949
it's the most important thing that we know the least about.
603
00:34:54.010 --> 00:34:55.949
I just asked the question in the book, what if
604
00:34:55.989 --> 00:34:59.869
you started paying attention to that? And it turns out
605
00:34:59.929 --> 00:35:02.920
there's a really clear pattern. The person or the people
606
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:05.880
that pay attention to their intuition about what they want
607
00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:08.480
to be, who they want to be friends with, why
608
00:35:08.519 --> 00:35:11.159
they would connect with this person instead of that. People
609
00:35:11.199 --> 00:35:15.219
who trust that, they report higher levels of satisfaction with
610
00:35:15.239 --> 00:35:19.550
their life, higher levels of connection. And ultimately, I think
611
00:35:19.590 --> 00:35:21.630
that's part of what we're trying to build here. I
612
00:35:22.469 --> 00:35:25.949
have only had, it's not to say that your instinct doesn't,
613
00:35:26.719 --> 00:35:29.500
pan out 100% of the time. That can be fair.
614
00:35:29.960 --> 00:35:32.340
That's a fair criticism, but nothing in the world does.
615
00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:36.429
Or it might not just pan out yet, and there's
616
00:35:36.469 --> 00:35:40.809
some longer-term experience that you can't foresee or forecast that
617
00:35:41.190 --> 00:35:43.389
comes to bear or comes to be true at some
618
00:35:43.429 --> 00:35:47.110
point in the future. The point is specifically that you've
619
00:35:47.130 --> 00:35:50.840
been taught, not dissimilar to creativity, you've been taught to
620
00:35:50.920 --> 00:35:54.079
ignore or suppress it. And I'm just asking the question
621
00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:56.900
here in the book and providing a lot of very,
622
00:35:57.159 --> 00:36:01.420
very compelling examples that what if instead you paid attention
623
00:36:01.460 --> 00:36:04.179
to it? What if you leaned into that? The science
624
00:36:04.230 --> 00:36:06.889
says that you're more likely to succeed and be happier
625
00:36:06.909 --> 00:36:07.550
in the process.
626
00:36:07.809 --> 00:36:10.849
Do you feel we've been taught to ignore our intuition?
627
00:36:11.570 --> 00:36:14.829
I do. We're programmed with the rational mind, math and science.
628
00:36:14.849 --> 00:36:18.139
Just look at STEM now. Like that's all math and science.
629
00:36:18.449 --> 00:36:20.530
What people don't believe is that the science that you're
630
00:36:20.550 --> 00:36:23.750
learning in school or that you're kicking around conversations at
631
00:36:23.769 --> 00:36:26.789
the dinner table actually don't reflect the latest science. With
632
00:36:26.829 --> 00:36:30.389
the latest sciences, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, that the universe
633
00:36:30.530 --> 00:36:34.789
is non-local and that the thoughts that you think actually
634
00:36:34.849 --> 00:36:38.670
do affect the experience of reality. So yeah, I do
635
00:36:38.730 --> 00:36:41.210
believe that we're taught to ignore our intuition or to
636
00:36:41.349 --> 00:36:44.480
distrust it at best. not to run at it in
637
00:36:44.500 --> 00:36:47.440
the same way that if we had verifiable data. The
638
00:36:47.480 --> 00:36:51.079
funny thing about science is that what people don't imagine, again,
639
00:36:51.219 --> 00:36:53.639
I was in a PhD program in philosophy and we
640
00:36:53.659 --> 00:36:55.739
studied the philosophy of science. So take this with a
641
00:36:55.760 --> 00:36:58.340
grain of salt if you're an armchair philosopher like I am.
642
00:36:59.050 --> 00:37:04.110
But most science ultimately is continually proving itself false. We
643
00:37:04.170 --> 00:37:06.489
used to believe that all objects fell to the earth
644
00:37:06.530 --> 00:37:09.369
at 9.8 meters per second squared. And now we know
645
00:37:09.409 --> 00:37:11.949
that's just a comfortable approximation and that falls apart if
646
00:37:11.989 --> 00:37:15.019
you're 10,000 feet above the earth's surface. And if you
647
00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:17.880
go out into space, it just completely falls apart. So
648
00:37:18.780 --> 00:37:21.260
we're still teaching that in school and that is a helpful,
649
00:37:21.340 --> 00:37:25.699
useful construct, but it doesn't actually represent reality. Now, by extension,
650
00:37:26.239 --> 00:37:29.280
what if we started paying attention to things like our
651
00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:32.460
intuition and the reality that we are, that has trained
652
00:37:32.559 --> 00:37:34.480
out of us and that it's a powerful tool that
653
00:37:34.519 --> 00:37:37.989
if we, if we just gave it some credence and
654
00:37:38.050 --> 00:37:40.590
leaned into it, Just what would be possible? It's not
655
00:37:40.630 --> 00:37:43.699
like we're going to lose ourselves. The reality is that
656
00:37:44.440 --> 00:37:48.320
by leaning into our intuition, we'll certainly have a different
657
00:37:48.400 --> 00:37:52.380
and broader experience of our human experience, which I would say,
658
00:37:53.619 --> 00:37:55.530
bring it on. It just so happens that the science
659
00:37:55.570 --> 00:37:56.170
is there as well.
660
00:37:56.690 --> 00:37:59.150
What does that look like? Now, let's get practical. Let's
661
00:37:59.190 --> 00:38:01.889
take action for a second, Chase. What does that look
662
00:38:01.929 --> 00:38:05.909
like to the... Again, let's go back to the same avatar, okay?
663
00:38:05.929 --> 00:38:06.030
Sure.
664
00:38:06.639 --> 00:38:09.409
The person who maybe doesn't think they're creative, they're running
665
00:38:09.550 --> 00:38:13.230
a big chunk of a company, responsible for a lot,
666
00:38:13.250 --> 00:38:17.809
stressful job, make good money, raising a family. What does
667
00:38:17.849 --> 00:38:20.260
it look like for that person to actually listen to
668
00:38:20.280 --> 00:38:22.960
their gut instinct, to listen to that intuition, to take
669
00:38:23.199 --> 00:38:27.539
action based upon that intuition, as opposed to saying, no,
670
00:38:27.579 --> 00:38:30.000
let me be reasonable here. Let's be rational.
671
00:38:30.980 --> 00:38:37.289
Like everything, I invoke tiny experiments. And so... If you're
672
00:38:37.329 --> 00:38:40.369
worried about trusting your intuition when there's an intruder in
673
00:38:40.409 --> 00:38:43.230
the backyard, that's not the first time to start experimenting
674
00:38:43.250 --> 00:38:48.460
with this. The experiment should happen when the stakes are low.
675
00:38:49.559 --> 00:38:51.619
And the first thing that you ought to do is
676
00:38:51.659 --> 00:38:54.440
because intuition shows up in the body, you've got a
677
00:38:54.500 --> 00:38:57.599
thought loop that's happening in your mind and you have
678
00:38:58.019 --> 00:39:01.380
something else that you feel in your gut. Start paying
679
00:39:01.480 --> 00:39:04.619
attention to those. First, even notice them. What does he
680
00:39:04.659 --> 00:39:07.429
mean when he says feeling in the gut? It's not
681
00:39:07.550 --> 00:39:11.269
really a stretch because every single person has this intuition
682
00:39:11.389 --> 00:39:15.480
built into them. And we've just trained that the rational
683
00:39:15.539 --> 00:39:20.300
mind should override those gut feelings inside of us. And
684
00:39:20.420 --> 00:39:24.829
I would encourage the person who's curious or even dubious
685
00:39:25.289 --> 00:39:27.809
to start paying attention. What are those feelings in there?
686
00:39:27.869 --> 00:39:29.510
Is it about a person? Is it a direction you
687
00:39:29.530 --> 00:39:31.500
should go? Is it a restaurant you should go to
688
00:39:31.539 --> 00:39:34.519
instead of the other one? Like start leaning into those
689
00:39:34.559 --> 00:39:38.480
things in areas of your life where the consequences aren't catastrophic.
690
00:39:39.070 --> 00:39:42.030
And what you'll find is like many things when you
691
00:39:42.050 --> 00:39:44.369
start small, like, oh my gosh, that was a win.
692
00:39:44.449 --> 00:39:46.869
I got a quick win. I listened to, should I go,
693
00:39:47.130 --> 00:39:48.250
you know, should I go out on a date with
694
00:39:48.289 --> 00:39:52.449
this person or that person? You had an instinct. You did.
695
00:39:52.550 --> 00:39:55.670
Because we have instincts for things like this. And I'm
696
00:39:55.710 --> 00:39:58.949
just suggesting that in small, lightweight ways, you start to
697
00:39:58.989 --> 00:40:02.030
pay attention to them. And over time, when you start
698
00:40:02.090 --> 00:40:08.079
to be able to trust this, it will really come
699
00:40:08.119 --> 00:40:14.260
in handy. And specifically around creating a living and a
700
00:40:14.300 --> 00:40:17.260
life that we love for ourselves. The world will have
701
00:40:17.300 --> 00:40:21.960
you believe that the nine to five job with this
702
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:25.929
particular company that's safe. That again, the concept of never
703
00:40:26.010 --> 00:40:30.190
playing it safe, it argues that that thing that you
704
00:40:30.349 --> 00:40:33.489
believe you're doing is safe is actually one of the
705
00:40:33.550 --> 00:40:37.769
riskiest things you can do. One, you're specifically doing it,
706
00:40:37.909 --> 00:40:40.690
not because you love it, but because someone else is
707
00:40:40.750 --> 00:40:44.739
convincing you that you should. And when you start, that's
708
00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:47.199
an example of how this stuff gets trained out of us.
709
00:40:47.800 --> 00:40:51.019
That in and of itself is a very unsafe behavior.
710
00:40:52.139 --> 00:40:57.340
To not rely on this internal humanity, this, these structures
711
00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:01.130
and the, the parts that make us who we are,
712
00:41:01.269 --> 00:41:04.369
we started ignoring those. That's a very, very slippery slope.
713
00:41:05.090 --> 00:41:07.929
So remember the book starts out, the first words of
714
00:41:07.949 --> 00:41:11.519
the book are safety is an illusion. It does not
715
00:41:11.579 --> 00:41:13.550
occur in nature, so why then do we seek it?
716
00:41:14.539 --> 00:41:18.519
And I just have to, to me, that underpins so
717
00:41:18.559 --> 00:41:20.820
much of what we're talking about here. For the person
718
00:41:20.840 --> 00:41:23.710
who doesn't trust their intuition, you think you're being safe
719
00:41:23.769 --> 00:41:27.690
by using all the data, but you have an opinion
720
00:41:27.789 --> 00:41:29.929
underneath all that stuff. And what if you started to
721
00:41:29.989 --> 00:41:32.309
listen to it? What would your life, what could your
722
00:41:32.389 --> 00:41:33.670
life be like?
723
00:41:34.909 --> 00:41:39.489
Let's talk about play. I love your story about Novak Djokovic.
724
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:43.530
One of my favorite tennis players, an amazing, amazing accomplished,
725
00:41:43.889 --> 00:41:48.269
such a gritty performer. It's inspiring to watch. What can
726
00:41:48.289 --> 00:41:49.889
we learn about play from Novak Djokovic?
727
00:41:50.630 --> 00:41:53.730
The story that chapter opens up about Djokovic opens up
728
00:41:54.250 --> 00:41:58.050
with him being so frustrated. He's had a really good career.
729
00:41:58.460 --> 00:42:00.119
And at this point he's like, you know what? I
730
00:42:00.139 --> 00:42:03.900
just don't got it anymore. Tennis isn't fun and I'm
731
00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:06.280
going to, I'm quitting. And so he tells his coaches
732
00:42:07.159 --> 00:42:10.300
and he tells his family, And, you know, everyone's of
733
00:42:10.340 --> 00:42:13.170
course trying to get him not because arguably he's at
734
00:42:13.190 --> 00:42:14.929
the peak of his career. He feels like he's already
735
00:42:14.969 --> 00:42:17.469
on the over, you know, he's over the hill and
736
00:42:18.690 --> 00:42:22.230
he says, I'm, I'm done. And he doesn't make this necessarily,
737
00:42:22.309 --> 00:42:24.050
like there's a part of it that's public, but not,
738
00:42:24.510 --> 00:42:26.489
not how serious he is. He's going to take a
739
00:42:26.510 --> 00:42:30.510
break and he goes on vacation with his family and
740
00:42:30.550 --> 00:42:33.409
his family, of course, still loves tennis. They haven't played
741
00:42:33.449 --> 00:42:35.989
as a professional for their whole life. And so they
742
00:42:36.449 --> 00:42:39.559
go hit the ball around and they, He said, no,
743
00:42:39.599 --> 00:42:42.099
I'm done with tennis. And three or four days into
744
00:42:42.139 --> 00:42:44.400
the family vacation, he's like, okay, let me hit around
745
00:42:44.420 --> 00:42:46.769
with you guys. And they're like, no, you said you
746
00:42:46.809 --> 00:42:52.750
were done. And, you know, the story evolves to understand
747
00:42:52.809 --> 00:42:57.360
that it was in seeing the joy that his kids
748
00:42:57.420 --> 00:43:00.539
were having and his wife was having with the sport.
749
00:43:01.400 --> 00:43:02.900
playing it for the sake of playing it, for what
750
00:43:02.920 --> 00:43:05.679
it feels like to hit a great topspin forehand and
751
00:43:05.719 --> 00:43:09.010
what it feels like to slide on the clay or
752
00:43:09.030 --> 00:43:12.849
to laugh and to find joy in just being able
753
00:43:12.889 --> 00:43:15.750
to move your body in that way. When he saw
754
00:43:15.809 --> 00:43:21.119
that in his family, it rekindled those aspects of why
755
00:43:21.179 --> 00:43:24.780
he started in the first place. And as you might imagine,
756
00:43:25.199 --> 00:43:27.179
it's not a stretch to see that someone who's done
757
00:43:27.199 --> 00:43:31.099
this professionally every day of their lives for 20 plus years,
758
00:43:31.159 --> 00:43:34.400
how you get to that spot. But what's also true
759
00:43:34.840 --> 00:43:39.980
is that these are largely stories that we tell ourselves,
760
00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:43.260
how we relate to tennis or how we relate to anything.
761
00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:44.889
And the most important words in the world are the
762
00:43:44.969 --> 00:43:49.409
ones we say to ourselves. And instead of quitting, Novak
763
00:43:49.690 --> 00:43:54.349
goes on a journey to find out, to remind himself
764
00:43:54.409 --> 00:43:56.809
of what he loved about the game in his past.
765
00:43:58.389 --> 00:44:02.750
And this is when he comes back and completely lights
766
00:44:02.909 --> 00:44:07.320
up and outperforms all, everything he thought was possible in his,
767
00:44:07.639 --> 00:44:09.579
so the first arc of his career and has another
768
00:44:09.639 --> 00:44:13.739
entire arc where he completely dominates. And it's because he,
769
00:44:14.280 --> 00:44:17.039
he made the game joyful for himself. And he actually
770
00:44:17.099 --> 00:44:19.780
looked like, what things do I love about this game?
771
00:44:19.840 --> 00:44:22.719
How do I love it? What did I love about practicing?
772
00:44:22.889 --> 00:44:26.219
And communicated that with his coaches, his psychologist. And it
773
00:44:26.280 --> 00:44:29.699
transformed him as an athlete and it led to the
774
00:44:29.760 --> 00:44:32.159
career that we're, that's why we say, oh my gosh,
775
00:44:32.179 --> 00:44:34.179
she's one of the best ever play the game, blah, blah, blah.
776
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:40.030
So play, it turns out is the most important work
777
00:44:40.130 --> 00:44:42.090
that we do. And you can think about it in
778
00:44:42.150 --> 00:44:44.670
our culture, right? This puritanical, like, oh, you don't have
779
00:44:44.690 --> 00:44:48.309
to work first and then play. And it sounds joyful
780
00:44:48.429 --> 00:44:51.389
or sorry, it sounds rewarding, but the things that are
781
00:44:51.449 --> 00:44:55.360
joyful it turns out that not only do we tend
782
00:44:55.389 --> 00:44:58.300
to be better at them, but we can do them
783
00:44:58.380 --> 00:45:02.059
for longer, and longer is more practice, more practice usually
784
00:45:02.099 --> 00:45:05.380
gets us better at skills and craft. And if the
785
00:45:05.519 --> 00:45:08.320
story that we tell ourselves about what we're doing, whether
786
00:45:08.360 --> 00:45:09.780
we call it work or play, it turns out it
787
00:45:09.820 --> 00:45:14.320
matters a lot. What if we could make even the
788
00:45:14.389 --> 00:45:18.730
most benign, banal things joyful? It turns out we can,
789
00:45:18.750 --> 00:45:23.519
and when we do... we usually get transformative results.
790
00:45:25.219 --> 00:45:26.900
I haven't seen you speak as a keynote, but I
791
00:45:26.920 --> 00:45:30.280
would love to. I have a sense that you bring
792
00:45:30.300 --> 00:45:31.480
a lot of what?
793
00:45:31.659 --> 00:45:34.360
I love it so much.
794
00:45:35.139 --> 00:45:37.960
Well, so here's the thing that I feel like I've felt,
795
00:45:38.019 --> 00:45:39.719
and I want to riff on this with you because
796
00:45:40.099 --> 00:45:42.860
of how prolific you are at it. There was a
797
00:45:42.920 --> 00:45:45.469
period where after you get booked a lot and you
798
00:45:45.489 --> 00:45:49.090
start become potentially robotic and And you just go on
799
00:45:49.110 --> 00:45:51.309
to the next stage and you do your thing. And
800
00:45:51.349 --> 00:45:54.429
you can forget how cool it is. You can forget
801
00:45:54.570 --> 00:45:57.380
what an amazing opportunity. I'll speak for myself. I'm not
802
00:45:57.420 --> 00:45:57.960
speaking for you.
803
00:45:57.980 --> 00:45:59.780
Yeah, I love it. Give me your example.
804
00:46:00.460 --> 00:46:04.920
And so some of the joy can go away. And
805
00:46:05.159 --> 00:46:07.280
I feel like one of the biggest changes that's probably
806
00:46:07.300 --> 00:46:09.530
happened for me over the past, I don't know, year
807
00:46:09.699 --> 00:46:12.250
and a half or so is to be like, dude,
808
00:46:12.869 --> 00:46:17.760
this is so cool. Let's have fun. put on a show.
809
00:46:17.780 --> 00:46:22.230
This is an opportunity to do something that's amazing. That
810
00:46:22.250 --> 00:46:24.409
doesn't mean we're not going to be prepared. Doesn't mean
811
00:46:24.449 --> 00:46:26.389
we're not going to just like, all right, what the hell?
812
00:46:26.409 --> 00:46:28.949
Let's just kind of like, let it go. No, we're
813
00:46:28.969 --> 00:46:30.750
going to be prepared. We're going to make sure we
814
00:46:30.789 --> 00:46:33.269
know our stuff. But once you get up there, dude,
815
00:46:34.219 --> 00:46:37.539
Let's let it rip and have fun. Maybe make the
816
00:46:37.579 --> 00:46:39.699
joke that doesn't land every once in a while. Just
817
00:46:39.900 --> 00:46:43.260
go for it. And I've noticed a big difference from
818
00:46:43.300 --> 00:46:45.429
that point where I felt like there was a little
819
00:46:45.469 --> 00:46:49.230
bit of a robot going through the motions because maybe
820
00:46:49.269 --> 00:46:52.210
there was a lot of them too. Like, dude, you
821
00:46:52.250 --> 00:46:56.130
know your stuff. Let it rip and have fun. And
822
00:46:56.170 --> 00:46:58.489
if you say the wrong thing or the part of
823
00:46:58.510 --> 00:47:03.400
the Q & A goes sideways, it's all good. It's
824
00:47:03.460 --> 00:47:05.820
all good. And I feel like that has made things
825
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:10.610
so much better and just more enjoyable and probably much
826
00:47:10.659 --> 00:47:13.190
better for the audience as well, as opposed to being
827
00:47:13.230 --> 00:47:16.269
this robot who wanted to make sure every single word
828
00:47:16.309 --> 00:47:17.369
and syllable was right.
829
00:47:18.090 --> 00:47:20.429
Sure. And man, you're nailing it. A couple of things
830
00:47:20.469 --> 00:47:23.239
that are intertwined as you're saying this. There's this idea
831
00:47:23.300 --> 00:47:26.300
that a bird doesn't land on a branch hoping that
832
00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:28.679
the branch won't break. A bird lands on that branch
833
00:47:28.820 --> 00:47:32.300
knowing that If it does break, it can fly away.
834
00:47:32.389 --> 00:47:35.949
So there's this trust in itself. And that's sort of
835
00:47:35.989 --> 00:47:38.829
what I'm advocating in this playful world. The belief is
836
00:47:38.869 --> 00:47:42.289
sometimes that we have to be serious in order to
837
00:47:42.329 --> 00:47:47.170
be taken seriously. But what gets taken seriously is results.
838
00:47:48.150 --> 00:47:52.730
And it just so happens that unequivocally, results are better
839
00:47:52.889 --> 00:47:56.179
when you're in a very positive state of mind. I
840
00:47:56.239 --> 00:47:59.840
mentioned my athletic background, and I had a very... you know,
841
00:47:59.969 --> 00:48:02.869
powerful experience with sports psychologist. I was training in the
842
00:48:03.230 --> 00:48:07.309
Olympic development center and we had access to sports psychologists.
843
00:48:07.349 --> 00:48:09.250
This was a long time ago when this was a
844
00:48:09.289 --> 00:48:11.530
little bit more novel than it is now. Now it's
845
00:48:11.869 --> 00:48:15.650
obvious and it's, it's required. Every professional athlete has some
846
00:48:15.710 --> 00:48:18.070
sort of a mental training capacity or in a coach,
847
00:48:18.090 --> 00:48:22.449
for example, but the, in short, I had the experience
848
00:48:22.489 --> 00:48:28.260
of them hypnotizing me and visualizing joyful, you know, positive
849
00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:30.489
things and negative things. And they start with the negative,
850
00:48:30.659 --> 00:48:33.150
you know, visualize, you know, someone does something to someone
851
00:48:33.190 --> 00:48:35.750
that someone harms someone that you love and you get
852
00:48:35.769 --> 00:48:37.230
a chance to compete against them. What's it going to
853
00:48:37.269 --> 00:48:39.510
be like? And you, you have a series of visualizations
854
00:48:40.030 --> 00:48:43.570
and then you visualize in contrast to that, the most joyful,
855
00:48:44.110 --> 00:48:46.949
beautiful thing you can possibly imagine the people that you
856
00:48:46.989 --> 00:48:50.159
love the most succeeding and fulfilling and you're connecting with
857
00:48:50.199 --> 00:48:54.280
them and they can measure sort of the power in
858
00:48:55.780 --> 00:48:59.679
one's body when they're having these two different experiences. And
859
00:49:00.460 --> 00:49:09.349
the positive situation way outperforms the negative anger, fear, motivation. So,
860
00:49:09.989 --> 00:49:12.230
you know, that was from a really long time ago,
861
00:49:12.389 --> 00:49:14.989
I experienced being put into that state, and it was
862
00:49:15.389 --> 00:49:19.289
transformative for me. And now, of course, the science, again,
863
00:49:19.369 --> 00:49:21.260
is catching up to all this stuff. And it's clear
864
00:49:21.280 --> 00:49:25.800
that when we can be joyful, playful, light, still focused,
865
00:49:26.539 --> 00:49:29.199
but that's when we are at our best, when we
866
00:49:29.239 --> 00:49:31.619
have the expectation that we're going to succeed. This is
867
00:49:31.659 --> 00:49:36.539
what confidence feels and smells like. And the belief is that, oh,
868
00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:40.900
when I get results, then I will be happy. It's
869
00:49:40.980 --> 00:49:44.030
actually the other way around. It's being joyful, focused, light,
870
00:49:44.179 --> 00:49:50.750
and open. That's when results happen the most easily, unequivocally, right?
871
00:49:50.769 --> 00:49:54.409
It's not even close. So the question then becomes, what
872
00:49:54.449 --> 00:49:58.090
can we do to put ourselves in this playful, joyful state? And,
873
00:49:58.570 --> 00:50:01.280
you know, in the book, I detail some of that.
874
00:50:01.300 --> 00:50:04.360
And there's a lot of these just very basic exercises.
875
00:50:04.420 --> 00:50:07.380
I phrase all this stuff as tiny experiments. Nothing is
876
00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:09.579
a is a test that you can't walk back through
877
00:50:09.599 --> 00:50:12.019
the door if you don't like what you experienced. But
878
00:50:12.059 --> 00:50:15.539
it turns out that that play is powerful. There's another
879
00:50:15.659 --> 00:50:18.719
great little anecdote. There's a guy that I met by
880
00:50:18.739 --> 00:50:21.519
the name of Charlie hone. And I met Charlie, Tim Ferris,
881
00:50:21.860 --> 00:50:23.800
a good friend of mine. Tim was hosting an event.
882
00:50:24.219 --> 00:50:26.440
Charlie used to work for Tim. Charlie was putting this
883
00:50:26.500 --> 00:50:29.159
event on and without going too far into the weeds,
884
00:50:29.179 --> 00:50:31.119
this is a very, this is a, I'm not talking
885
00:50:31.179 --> 00:50:34.510
at a, at a school. This is a public, public knowledge, but,
886
00:50:35.239 --> 00:50:39.000
Charlie got really burned out after playing this particular event
887
00:50:39.019 --> 00:50:41.820
for Tim. And after years of working for him, he
888
00:50:41.889 --> 00:50:44.630
quit because of his own mental health. And it was
889
00:50:44.670 --> 00:50:47.110
very unhealthy. He was taking fighter pilot drugs that would
890
00:50:47.130 --> 00:50:49.230
make you stay awake for multi-day missions and shit like
891
00:50:49.250 --> 00:50:54.550
that in order to make the event successful. But what
892
00:50:54.590 --> 00:50:57.530
I think is really interesting is Charlie was essentially suffering
893
00:50:57.590 --> 00:51:03.389
from crippling anxiety. And at the advice of, I think,
894
00:51:03.429 --> 00:51:07.239
a therapist, Look into your childhood and say, what were
895
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:10.610
some things that you loved as a kid? Loved, absolutely loved.
896
00:51:10.670 --> 00:51:15.610
You brought back really great, rich memories. And what would
897
00:51:15.650 --> 00:51:18.230
it be like if you reintroduced that into your life now?
898
00:51:19.070 --> 00:51:22.320
And so Charlie did this. Charlie loved, I think the
899
00:51:22.340 --> 00:51:25.219
story goes, he used to love hitting baseballs with his dad.
900
00:51:26.460 --> 00:51:29.280
And so he went and bought like a bucket full,
901
00:51:29.320 --> 00:51:33.000
a five-gallon bucket full of used baseballs. and a bat
902
00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:35.920
and he and a buddy who also turned out love
903
00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:38.360
to hit balls as a break. Each day they meet
904
00:51:38.380 --> 00:51:40.460
at the park down the street from their house. One
905
00:51:40.500 --> 00:51:42.940
guy would pitch the other guy and rope like 50
906
00:51:42.940 --> 00:51:45.039
baseballs all over the park. Then they'd walk and go
907
00:51:45.079 --> 00:51:47.340
pick that up and then they'd switch roles. And, and
908
00:51:47.420 --> 00:51:49.679
it was like a 45 minute exercise that they started
909
00:51:49.699 --> 00:51:55.159
doing a couple of times a week and measurably demonstrably
910
00:51:55.539 --> 00:52:01.320
his anxiety was dramatically reduced. And when anxiety is dramatically reduced,
911
00:52:01.340 --> 00:52:05.599
what happens to performance dramatically increases on all aspects of life.
912
00:52:05.679 --> 00:52:07.599
So one of the things that I encourage about play
913
00:52:07.719 --> 00:52:10.280
is you might not have to go all the way
914
00:52:10.340 --> 00:52:13.340
back to being a kid, although that success leaves clues.
915
00:52:13.980 --> 00:52:16.500
And I find that, man, I started doing the same
916
00:52:16.559 --> 00:52:19.760
thing with so many areas of my life. And man,
917
00:52:19.909 --> 00:52:23.610
it was transformational. The ability to look at what you're
918
00:52:23.650 --> 00:52:28.309
doing as joyful and playful, as opposed to, a grind
919
00:52:28.329 --> 00:52:30.250
that we have to do. We realize that it's a
920
00:52:30.389 --> 00:52:32.989
choice that we are making. It's an attitude. And if
921
00:52:33.030 --> 00:52:36.210
we show up with the right attitude, the best outcomes
922
00:52:36.269 --> 00:52:36.869
are possible.
923
00:52:38.329 --> 00:52:41.590
When it comes to motivation, I'd be curious what you
924
00:52:41.610 --> 00:52:48.079
think about this. There are some that are deeply motivated
925
00:52:48.139 --> 00:52:52.039
by people who doubt them. Haters, some may call them.
926
00:52:52.340 --> 00:52:56.260
There are others who are deeply motivated and inspired by
927
00:52:56.360 --> 00:53:00.099
people who love them. by people who support them. And
928
00:53:00.139 --> 00:53:02.920
maybe we all go through different chapters of our lives
929
00:53:02.980 --> 00:53:07.739
where we're motivated by different things. What are you and
930
00:53:07.820 --> 00:53:10.769
what do you think is most useful long-term?
931
00:53:11.449 --> 00:53:16.849
Yeah, that's a lovely question, Ryan. I do not dispute
932
00:53:17.130 --> 00:53:21.110
that motivation can come from all different corners of our
933
00:53:21.239 --> 00:53:25.989
human experience. And it does, right? Even just the two
934
00:53:26.030 --> 00:53:28.190
sort of black and white example that you just gave there.
935
00:53:28.210 --> 00:53:33.679
I'm not really talking about motivation. I'm talking about the
936
00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:39.960
choice that we make to understand that all we have
937
00:53:40.260 --> 00:53:45.920
is now. Future is, you know, the past is gone.
938
00:53:45.940 --> 00:53:49.530
The future is an illusion that never arrives. All we
939
00:53:49.570 --> 00:53:52.570
have is this concept of now. And for every moment
940
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:56.989
that we choose and everything is a choice not to
941
00:53:57.219 --> 00:54:01.840
be who we want to be in that moment, we suffer.
942
00:54:03.659 --> 00:54:07.280
And that suffering is chosen. That's not to say that
943
00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:09.900
bad things can't happen to great people because we know
944
00:54:09.940 --> 00:54:12.360
that to be true. My mom just passed away a
945
00:54:12.380 --> 00:54:15.800
couple of weeks ago and it was just absolutely heartbreaking.
946
00:54:16.199 --> 00:54:22.099
And deciding how you show up in that moment is everything.
947
00:54:23.099 --> 00:54:26.840
There's room for sadness. There's room for grief. And yet
948
00:54:27.070 --> 00:54:29.869
deciding how we want to show up, that's the whole
949
00:54:29.929 --> 00:54:33.409
tenet of the basic tenet of stoicism, right? It's not
950
00:54:33.469 --> 00:54:36.309
that things won't happen. It's the attitude that we bring
951
00:54:36.369 --> 00:54:40.590
to what does that matters. And so whether we're talking about,
952
00:54:41.010 --> 00:54:43.030
you know, good things happening or bad things happening or
953
00:54:43.050 --> 00:54:44.929
what type of person am I, I am a person
954
00:54:44.969 --> 00:54:48.179
who wants to choose my response to the stimulus that
955
00:54:48.280 --> 00:54:51.900
comes in. And this is what is often true about athletes.
956
00:54:51.920 --> 00:54:53.619
That's not to say that they don't get motivated by
957
00:54:54.019 --> 00:54:57.139
someone who talked trash or that they're out there playing
958
00:54:57.199 --> 00:54:59.400
for their mother who just passed away a couple of
959
00:54:59.420 --> 00:55:02.750
weeks ago. Those can be motivating. But when you're trying
960
00:55:02.789 --> 00:55:05.150
to decide how you're going to show up day in
961
00:55:05.190 --> 00:55:10.030
and day out, do you have a positive, joyful, playful
962
00:55:10.090 --> 00:55:14.800
framework for that or a negative one? And the results
963
00:55:14.860 --> 00:55:19.340
are crystal clear that people who have a, well, first
964
00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:20.989
of all, think about who you want to be around
965
00:55:21.570 --> 00:55:23.530
right now. Anyone, do you want to be around someone
966
00:55:23.570 --> 00:55:27.289
who's mean and nasty or positive and supportive and brings
967
00:55:27.329 --> 00:55:30.590
out the best in you? It's really obvious. Now we
968
00:55:30.610 --> 00:55:33.789
all like the panacea and the Pollyanna, those are at
969
00:55:33.829 --> 00:55:36.070
the opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm just talking about
970
00:55:36.090 --> 00:55:39.630
people who genuinely show up authentically. We all want to
971
00:55:39.650 --> 00:55:43.550
be around those people more than their opposite. And so
972
00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:46.679
You know, it just so happens that this is another,
973
00:55:46.699 --> 00:55:49.679
this is like where your intuition is right. That is
974
00:55:49.739 --> 00:55:51.340
a better way to show up in the world. The
975
00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:53.840
science says you're going to be happier. You're going to get,
976
00:55:54.119 --> 00:55:57.610
you know, more out of the experiences that you want
977
00:55:57.719 --> 00:56:01.170
to create for yourself in this life. And man, if
978
00:56:01.210 --> 00:56:05.059
you're looking for results there, it's not even close. So
979
00:56:05.260 --> 00:56:08.599
it's sort of like the stack, the reasons for being
980
00:56:08.679 --> 00:56:13.579
a positive, kind, thoughtful person so dramatically outweigh the negative,
981
00:56:13.860 --> 00:56:18.840
you know, bullshitting, counterproductive hater. Like that's just not a
982
00:56:18.880 --> 00:56:22.099
way to show up in the world. So I put this, again,
983
00:56:22.280 --> 00:56:25.300
the book Never Play It Safe, which I really believe
984
00:56:25.320 --> 00:56:27.719
that it's a blueprint for how to access the best
985
00:56:27.739 --> 00:56:33.559
stuff in life. This approaching with a thoughtful, kind, playful mind.
986
00:56:34.909 --> 00:56:39.070
point of view is available to everybody and it's helpful.
987
00:56:39.489 --> 00:56:42.130
The same is true with time, realizing that life is
988
00:56:42.190 --> 00:56:46.340
long and not feeling simultaneously urgent on the short term,
989
00:56:46.429 --> 00:56:48.980
but that you have time and you get to explore.
990
00:56:49.940 --> 00:56:51.699
It's when you don't feel like you have the time
991
00:56:51.840 --> 00:56:54.119
to run the experiments that you have to choose the
992
00:56:54.260 --> 00:56:57.119
shittiest thing, which is right in front of you. But
993
00:56:57.280 --> 00:56:59.780
a life is created, the life of the people that
994
00:56:59.820 --> 00:57:02.400
you respect and admire and appreciate, whether that's your neighbor
995
00:57:02.440 --> 00:57:05.710
or somebody someone you really admire on the internet, that
996
00:57:05.769 --> 00:57:09.889
life was created. It was designed with intention. And that
997
00:57:09.949 --> 00:57:13.550
is available to you if you choose it. That's, again,
998
00:57:13.889 --> 00:57:17.079
the foundation that I'm coming from in Never Play It Safe,
999
00:57:17.139 --> 00:57:21.139
is that these things are naturally, these tools, time, our attention,
1000
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:24.400
the ability to sort of play, that those are all
1001
00:57:24.539 --> 00:57:28.789
naturally residing within us. And because of various social, cultural mechanisms,
1002
00:57:28.829 --> 00:57:32.920
they've been turned off. I'm urging us to turn them on.
1003
00:57:32.940 --> 00:57:35.500
They're all available before us. And it turns out that
1004
00:57:35.539 --> 00:57:37.679
when you do, magic happens.
1005
00:57:42.639 --> 00:57:46.239
It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you
1006
00:57:46.280 --> 00:57:48.860
for being a member of the end of the podcast club.
1007
00:57:48.929 --> 00:57:52.550
If you are, send me a note. Ryan at learningleader.com.
1008
00:57:52.570 --> 00:57:55.230
Let me know what you learned from this great conversation
1009
00:57:55.650 --> 00:58:00.179
with Chase Jarvis. A few takeaways from my notes. We
1010
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:05.619
are all wildly creative. However, it's trained out of us
1011
00:58:06.019 --> 00:58:11.719
as we grow older. Creativity is foundational to all human beings.
1012
00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:15.789
It's on us to tap into our creativity and get
1013
00:58:15.829 --> 00:58:19.309
it out of us to help solve problems, to create optionality,
1014
00:58:19.469 --> 00:58:24.489
and to be more innovative. Regardless of your job, becoming
1015
00:58:24.570 --> 00:58:28.150
more creative will make you better at it. And then
1016
00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:34.920
Play infinite games with transformational people, not transactional people. Life
1017
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:38.949
can be a series of transactions, or you can play
1018
00:58:38.969 --> 00:58:42.630
the long game with transformational people. It seems like when
1019
00:58:42.670 --> 00:58:46.050
we give to others, genuinely try to help them, and
1020
00:58:46.090 --> 00:58:51.789
have a service orientation, good things happen for all. There
1021
00:58:51.829 --> 00:58:55.800
are transactional people, as I said, and transformational leaders. Let's strive.
1022
00:58:56.280 --> 00:59:01.829
And then, I love this quote. character, people. And then,
1023
00:59:01.849 --> 00:59:04.630
I love this quote, a bird sitting on a tree
1024
00:59:05.159 --> 00:59:08.960
is never afraid of the branch breaking because its trust
1025
00:59:09.320 --> 00:59:13.280
is not on the branch but on its own wings.
1026
00:59:13.780 --> 00:59:18.449
Believe in yourself and your ability to bounce back if
1027
00:59:18.510 --> 00:59:22.289
the thing doesn't go your way. Set up a series
1028
00:59:22.590 --> 00:59:26.449
of experiments. Not all of them will work. but you'll
1029
00:59:26.469 --> 00:59:29.110
be better for having tried and then tried again and
1030
00:59:29.150 --> 00:59:33.880
then tried again. We learn from both our success and
1031
00:59:34.300 --> 00:59:38.139
our failures. It's all about how we choose to respond.
1032
00:59:38.760 --> 00:59:40.119
Once again, I would say thank you so much for
1033
00:59:40.159 --> 00:59:42.619
continuing to spread the word and telling a friend or two, hey,
1034
00:59:42.679 --> 00:59:45.500
you should listen. to this episode of The Learning Leader
1035
00:59:45.519 --> 00:59:48.099
Show with Chase Jarvis. I think he'll help you become
1036
00:59:48.139 --> 00:59:50.079
a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that,
1037
00:59:50.360 --> 00:59:53.400
and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and
1038
00:59:53.420 --> 00:59:56.300
you subscribe to the show, so important, and you're rated
1039
00:59:56.320 --> 00:59:59.599
hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review, it
1040
00:59:59.619 --> 01:00:01.820
only takes you a few seconds. By doing all of that,
1041
01:00:02.480 --> 01:00:05.539
you give me the opportunity to do what I love
1042
01:00:05.579 --> 01:00:08.239
on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever
1043
01:00:08.500 --> 01:00:11.139
be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon.
1044
01:00:11.320 --> 01:00:11.559
Can't wait.
1
00:00:01.129 --> 00:00:05.509
If you are going to do anything special with your life,
2
00:00:06.419 --> 00:00:10.119
what's required is that you listen to you above and
3
00:00:10.140 --> 00:00:12.919
beyond all those other voices. And many of those voices
4
00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:16.160
are there ostensibly to help you, to guide you, but
5
00:00:16.219 --> 00:00:18.059
there are a lot who are trying to get you
6
00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:21.050
to be just like everyone else because that's the reality
7
00:00:21.289 --> 00:00:25.230
of modern Western capitalism. And the contrast here is if
8
00:00:25.269 --> 00:00:27.670
you want to be the best version of yourself, if
9
00:00:27.710 --> 00:00:31.390
you want to live an extraordinary life and change yourself
10
00:00:31.480 --> 00:00:35.170
and have impact on others, you actually have to cut
11
00:00:35.229 --> 00:00:36.109
against that grain.
12
00:00:37.950 --> 00:00:41.909
This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight
13
00:00:41.929 --> 00:00:45.960
Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to
14
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empowering people through the dignity of work. If you need
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to hire full-time employees, contract employees, or a partner that
16
00:00:54.380 --> 00:00:59.479
you can trust for outsourced professional services, Insight Global's team
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of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and
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grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the
19
00:01:08.769 --> 00:01:17.030
right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com slash learningleader. That's insightglobal.com
20
00:01:17.370 --> 00:01:25.780
slash learningleader to learn more. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.
21
00:01:26.109 --> 00:01:29.269
I am your host, Brian Hawk. Thank you so much
22
00:01:29.310 --> 00:01:33.420
for being here. Text Hawk. to 66866 to become part
23
00:01:33.799 --> 00:01:37.819
of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of
24
00:01:37.859 --> 00:01:40.840
other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive
25
00:01:40.900 --> 00:01:44.340
a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to
26
00:01:44.379 --> 00:01:46.909
help you start your week off right. You'll also receive
27
00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:50.030
details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will
28
00:01:50.049 --> 00:01:55.010
help you become a more effective leader. Text HAWK to 66866.
29
00:01:55.010 --> 00:02:00.209
now on to tonight's featured leader i love chase jarvis
30
00:02:00.250 --> 00:02:03.540
he's a photographer director artist and entrepreneur he was the
31
00:02:03.620 --> 00:02:08.460
ceo of an online education platform called creative live from
32
00:02:08.460 --> 00:02:14.110
2014 to 2022 he's earned countless awards for his photography
33
00:02:14.330 --> 00:02:18.500
and creative work including a Pulitzer Prize for a New
34
00:02:18.530 --> 00:02:23.289
York Times story he contributed to called Snowfall. He's also
35
00:02:23.330 --> 00:02:27.879
the author of multiple books, including Creative Calling and most recently,
36
00:02:28.379 --> 00:02:33.280
never play it safe. During our conversation, we discuss why
37
00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:38.129
people play it safe and how we can overcome that fear,
38
00:02:38.469 --> 00:02:42.689
then how we can better understand our intuition, listen to it,
39
00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:46.949
and most importantly, take action from it. Then Chase discusses
40
00:02:47.430 --> 00:02:54.159
the importance of playing infinite games with transformational, not transactional, people.
41
00:02:54.379 --> 00:02:57.939
And then we closed talking about the approaches we both
42
00:02:58.030 --> 00:03:04.289
take to giving world-class keynote speeches. Ladies and gentlemen, so good.
43
00:03:04.349 --> 00:03:11.370
Please enjoy my conversation with Chase Jarvis. So I want
44
00:03:11.389 --> 00:03:15.879
to open with a joke, okay? And I'm going to
45
00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:19.199
have you actually finish the joke because it's your joke.
46
00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:21.900
You may know what this is.
47
00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:22.780
You were in.
48
00:03:24.719 --> 00:03:25.500
Second grade.
49
00:03:26.050 --> 00:03:26.310
Yes.
50
00:03:26.349 --> 00:03:28.289
When you first told this joke, second grade.
51
00:03:28.370 --> 00:03:28.629
Okay.
52
00:03:28.969 --> 00:03:30.490
I'm going to say it and then you could, you
53
00:03:30.509 --> 00:03:32.090
could finish it. Oh, you got the punchline.
54
00:03:32.110 --> 00:03:33.930
All right. All right. All right. What?
55
00:03:34.650 --> 00:03:36.949
And I want maybe pause for a dramatic effect to
56
00:03:37.129 --> 00:03:44.090
what has 52 teeth and holds. I can't even say it, dude.
57
00:03:44.110 --> 00:03:49.310
What has 52 teeth and holds back a monster?
58
00:03:51.050 --> 00:03:56.280
The answer is my zipper. And it's, It is so true.
59
00:03:56.639 --> 00:04:02.090
I told this joke. This was the bomb drop, the
60
00:04:02.150 --> 00:04:07.930
punchline for my second grade stand-up comedy routine. And I
61
00:04:07.990 --> 00:04:09.930
confess this in my new book, which is called Never
62
00:04:09.949 --> 00:04:11.610
Play It Safe. Maybe we'll talk about that a little
63
00:04:11.629 --> 00:04:14.560
bit today. But I confess that I didn't actually get
64
00:04:14.659 --> 00:04:18.439
the joke. What I did get was that every time
65
00:04:18.519 --> 00:04:21.139
I said it, I would watch all the adults in
66
00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:25.560
the room lose it. And to me, that was enough.
67
00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:29.800
Well, it was a laugh out loud. I was on
68
00:04:29.819 --> 00:04:33.269
the elliptical the other day. I'm rereading your book. And
69
00:04:33.310 --> 00:04:36.290
the person next to me is looking at me funny
70
00:04:36.389 --> 00:04:39.990
because I am laughing out loud, reading this joke for
71
00:04:40.029 --> 00:04:42.269
like the ninth time. Cause I'm just like, this dude
72
00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:44.949
is awesome. He said in second grade, he didn't know
73
00:04:44.970 --> 00:04:46.550
what it meant, but it, but it was great.
74
00:04:47.209 --> 00:04:49.149
I knew it brought the house down. The context there is, uh,
75
00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:54.019
Rolling into second grade, I was pretty stoked. I had
76
00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:57.100
just did my first film in the summer between first
77
00:04:57.139 --> 00:05:00.699
and second grade, washed cars to raise enough money, bought
78
00:05:00.779 --> 00:05:04.680
the film, rented a camera, hired somebody. By hired, I
79
00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:08.050
mean I literally paid them $ 1, and it was my
80
00:05:08.199 --> 00:05:12.410
co-star's older brother to film the thing. And we had
81
00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:15.350
a profitable film that summer, and I rolled into second
82
00:05:15.389 --> 00:05:18.250
grade feeling pretty good. I had a magic routine, stand-up
83
00:05:18.310 --> 00:05:21.670
comedy act. And I was selling a comic strip that
84
00:05:21.689 --> 00:05:24.939
I was writing on the weekends. And my second grade teacher,
85
00:05:24.980 --> 00:05:28.519
Miss Kelly, shut it down. She said, what's wrong with you?
86
00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:31.220
There's no room for this creativity stuff. And you can't
87
00:05:31.259 --> 00:05:35.079
have a business here in second grade. It's against the rules.
88
00:05:35.199 --> 00:05:37.610
But you are really good at sports. So you should
89
00:05:37.639 --> 00:05:39.290
be a jock and you should quit all this other stuff.
90
00:05:39.350 --> 00:05:42.310
And to her credit, I did. I went on to
91
00:05:42.430 --> 00:05:45.110
have a longstanding career as an athlete, went to college
92
00:05:45.149 --> 00:05:49.949
on a soccer scholarship. But it It is a story
93
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.620
that reminds us how the opinions of others when we're
94
00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:57.100
little fragile minds that can shape our lives a lot,
95
00:05:57.120 --> 00:05:59.279
sometimes for good and sometimes not for good.
96
00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:04.500
Yeah, I was just going to ask what impact, maybe
97
00:06:04.519 --> 00:06:08.399
two-part question, what impact did that have on you for
98
00:06:08.500 --> 00:06:10.899
how you then chose to live your life growing up?
99
00:06:11.310 --> 00:06:14.089
And how does it impact you now that you're in
100
00:06:14.129 --> 00:06:16.389
a powerful position and you can have that type of
101
00:06:16.470 --> 00:06:17.329
influence on others?
102
00:06:18.149 --> 00:06:22.050
Well, I think just generally as humans, because we're social animals,
103
00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:25.750
we want to be accepted socially. And that has benefits
104
00:06:25.790 --> 00:06:29.240
and drawbacks. And for me, a little second grade me,
105
00:06:29.310 --> 00:06:31.360
when you hear the story that, oh my gosh, my
106
00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:34.680
second grade teacher squashed this sort of beautiful, cool, creative
107
00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:38.920
side of me or of any kid, like how heartbreaking
108
00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.899
is that? And The reality is as a second grader,
109
00:06:42.060 --> 00:06:44.120
because you just want to fit in, you're like, okay,
110
00:06:44.180 --> 00:06:47.439
I'll just, whatever Ms. Kelly thought was best for me,
111
00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:50.079
must be best for me. So I built a lot
112
00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:55.259
of stuff and I basically focused on sports and I
113
00:06:55.360 --> 00:06:58.540
issued all that sort of creative stuff, the entrepreneurial stuff.
114
00:06:59.199 --> 00:07:02.319
And the irony is I remember on my high school
115
00:07:02.360 --> 00:07:06.060
graduation day, I received an award. They give out 10
116
00:07:06.060 --> 00:07:09.370
awards or whatever to the graduating class. And the award
117
00:07:09.379 --> 00:07:14.629
that I got was was the typical senior award, which
118
00:07:16.430 --> 00:07:19.990
is pretty horrific for me. And at the time, I
119
00:07:20.050 --> 00:07:23.509
remember like, hmm, this is not good because I'm not
120
00:07:23.550 --> 00:07:26.829
sure that typical is what I want to be. And
121
00:07:26.910 --> 00:07:28.930
what that meant was that I was the captain of
122
00:07:28.949 --> 00:07:32.290
the football team. I dated the cheerleader. I got good grades,
123
00:07:32.310 --> 00:07:35.819
went to college on a soccer scholarship. And it just
124
00:07:35.899 --> 00:07:41.009
was sort of like the giant cliche. And I think
125
00:07:41.230 --> 00:07:45.389
the takeaway from that and to extend the question as
126
00:07:45.430 --> 00:07:48.209
you did is how does that affect me today? I
127
00:07:48.310 --> 00:07:51.879
realized that the world will have you believe all sorts
128
00:07:51.939 --> 00:07:55.339
of things and there's all sorts of inbound messages. And
129
00:07:55.379 --> 00:07:57.660
what's confusing for all of us is that many of
130
00:07:57.699 --> 00:08:00.079
those messages come from people that we respect and love
131
00:08:00.120 --> 00:08:04.399
and admire. And yet, if you are going to do
132
00:08:04.660 --> 00:08:11.209
anything special with your life, your, what's required is that
133
00:08:11.250 --> 00:08:14.839
you listen to you above and beyond all those other voices.
134
00:08:15.259 --> 00:08:18.579
And many of those voices, again, are there ostensibly to
135
00:08:18.639 --> 00:08:20.740
help you, to guide you, but there are a lot
136
00:08:20.839 --> 00:08:22.560
who are trying to get you to be just like
137
00:08:22.620 --> 00:08:25.220
everyone else, because that's what society, that's sort of the
138
00:08:25.279 --> 00:08:28.439
lowest common denominator. And that's where we steer people. And
139
00:08:28.459 --> 00:08:31.620
there's no evil overlord. That's not, you know, culture's fault.
140
00:08:31.639 --> 00:08:35.120
There's no one you know, force trying to shape you,
141
00:08:35.269 --> 00:08:40.659
but that's the reality of modern Western capitalism. And yet, again,
142
00:08:40.679 --> 00:08:43.399
the contrast here is if you want to be the
143
00:08:43.419 --> 00:08:46.039
best version of yourself, if you want to live an
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extraordinary life and change yourself and have impact on others,
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you actually have to cut against that grain. And so
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how that played out for me, it was at some
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point I realized that I had been ignoring that creative
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entrepreneurial side and I then bailed on a career in
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professional soccer. I dropped out of medical school and became
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a photographer, which, as you can imagine, was horrifying for
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my parents. And yet it was the beginning of the
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next chapter of my life, and I never looked back.
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And so, you know, by extension, that is a lot
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of the work that I do in the world today,
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as I am an artist and an entrepreneur, and I
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like to... My spare time, I'm not personally building. I
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like to help people understand through writing books. And I
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have a podcast, a long running podcast, not dissimilar to yours,
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that is about helping people understand what it takes to
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live their dreams in career and hobby and in life.
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And my newest book is called Never Play It Safe,
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which is about exactly that.
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I read a story about your grandfather when you were,
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I guess, going to med school and he died. and
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left his photography equipment to you. What impact did that
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have on you?
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Oh, it was transformative. And it was at that time
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where I was starting to ask these questions like, wait
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a minute, you know, this, I've always been drawn to
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things that were very different than, you know, if you
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were Well, first of all, I'm the only person in
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my family to graduate from college. And I did feel
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some pressure. And when my grandfather died and gave me
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his cameras, I knew that I had been curious about
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photography my whole life. I had, as an athlete, I
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mentioned I was always on the other side of the camera.
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And I had this weird instinctive connection with photography that
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my that they were just capturing these beautiful stories and
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moments in a single image. And when my grandfather died
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and I was given his camera, I had some, there
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was some calling in me that said, you should figure
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this out. So I dropped everything. And then with a
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little bit of money that I had saved up and
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with his camera, I just walked the earth for six
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months with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kate, taught myself
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how to become a photographer and that transformed my life.
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Not necessarily because I, you know, steered clear of everything,
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you know, of business. I ended up making a living
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and a life doing this. So you have to, you know,
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as a, you have to be an entrepreneur, you have
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to be as an artist, it helps to be decent
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in the business. But I just expanded my world of
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possibility and what it is that I wanted to do
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with my life rather than what the world was telling me,
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which I needed to be a doctor or a lawyer
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or a professional athlete or something that, you know, everybody loves.
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And the reality is that If we're busy pursuing the
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things that everybody else wants for us, how are we
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going to find ourselves?
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How much of your skill as a photographer, as a
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creative person, as an entrepreneur do you think you were
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born with versus how much have you worked to develop
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the skills and earn the ability to make a living
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doing it?
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Mm-hmm. My belief, and it's a very strong belief, it's
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backed up by science, my own experience and the experience
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of lots of other stories and anecdotes, is that we
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are all wildly creative. And right now there's someone in
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the audience who's listening or watching and saying, well, I
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don't know, you know, I never really, that's fine. But
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just know that that's your natural state is creativity. That's
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one of the things that separates human beings from all
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the other species on the planet. and it's something that
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is trained out of you rather than bred into you.
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And it's easy to see. All you have to do
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is go to a first-grade classroom and come up to
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the front room and say, who wants to come up
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to the front room and draw me a picture? And
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every hand goes up in first grade, and you ask
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the same question in eighth grade or a dozen years later,
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and that number gets cut in half every couple years.
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And that's evidence that that this is our natural state
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and it's trained out of us through shame and cultural pressure.
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And as I mentioned, Western capitalism and those toxic myths
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about starving artists. But the reality is that creativity is
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absolutely foundational to every human being. And whether we choose
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to lean into that and develop it, that's up to us.
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And of course, this is, go back to that, what
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I was sharing about how the world will program us
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if we don't do the things that we want to
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do that it is so easy to train something like
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that out of a child by telling them that it
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won't serve them. And we've got all this stuff about STEM,
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which is about sciences and whatnot. And 10 years ago,
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even five years ago, if you surveyed what the world
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thought you should be, everyone said, oh, you should be
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an engineer, you should be a computer programmer. And now
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if you look at everyone who, the people who are
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the wealthiest people in the world that have the most
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influence are specifically in driving the technology leadership of our
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country or the world, for example, they're all saying, oh,
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my kids, oh, no, no. Computer programming, that's for the computers.
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The computers teach the computers how to write code. And
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the things that are going to help human beings stand
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out is art and the ability to do things that
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machines can't do as well. And so here we are
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full circle. My belief is that we are all creative
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and that whether you are in business or you identify
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as a creative, leaning into your creativity is perhaps one
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of the greatest capacities, the greatest things that you can
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do to create the living and the life that you want, right?
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These things aren't found, although they call us founders when
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you create a company, but I don't know about you.
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I didn't find anything. I built that shit from the
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ground up. So, you know, this idea of expanding the
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definition of what is creativity has always been interesting to me.
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And now, you know, having seen technology play out and
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having written a few books on the subject and, and
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built a couple of companies, one called Creative Live, which
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educates tens of millions of people around the world around
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their creative capacity. I know that creativity is embedded in
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everything that we do. It's just, we have to lean
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into it. And for those that do, they get disproportionately rewarded.
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So I don't think your advice is like everybody quit
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their job and go be a photographer touring the world.
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That's not your advice. So let's say Chase, for the
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person who likes their job, loves their team. They're like
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an SVP at a Fortune 500 company, right? And they
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don't want to quit. How does that person tap into
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the creativity that's within them that maybe has been beat
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out of them over the many years since they were
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little to now tap into some of that to become
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better from a leadership perspective, to run their teams better?
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to exceed the goals that their company has set for them,
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to love on their people, to do all these things,
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to make their place a great place to do great work.
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What can that person learn from your work, from Never
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Play It Safe, from all the Chase Jarvis stuff? I'm curious,
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what can they learn from you to help them be
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better at that?
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Yeah, my last book was called Creative Calling. And it
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was specifically that, that every person has a creative calling
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within them. And the cornerstone of that book was expanding
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the definition of creativity. Because when we were children, we
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were taught that creativity equals glitter and popsicle sticks and
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glue guns and stuff like that. Creativity is combining any
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two things to make something new and useful. And so
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if you think about that, whether you're making a meal
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for your family or creating a strategy for your business
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or finding out what the best way is to motivate, lead,
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and inspire your team, Creativity is at the core of
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all of those things, right? That is the essential, again,
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the essential difference from our species and all the other
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species on the planet is that we have the capacity
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to create new things. And so, first of all, I
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would encourage you to expand your definition of creativity and
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to call yourself creative, despite the fact that whether through
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conditioning or self-belief or probably a combination of both, you
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don't think of yourself as creative because you're not painting
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portraits for a living. That's not what I mean at all.
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I mean that we all are creative and that it
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is that capacity. And again, this is a habit as
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much as it is a skill. It's a belief that
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you can create your way into any solution, you know,
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given time and time. resources and even constraints. So for
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anyone who's doubting, I would say, reminder, you are creative.
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It's fundamental to what it means to be human. And
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by leaning into that, all you're doing is you're giving
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yourself increased optionality. You're saying, I can create a solution
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if the solution doesn't exist. When you start to look
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at it like that, you start to realize, okay, I
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am creative and Then you start to dissect or deconstruct
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popular culture and you start to understand that, wait a minute,
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the most successful, happy, and fulfilled people in the world,
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they largely identify as creative or have, or acknowledge their
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creative capacities. You know, the largest company in the world
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and most valuable like comes like Apple. Just ask the question,
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do they identify as a creative company? Absolutely. That's core
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to who they are. So. I think if you think
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about creativity in a broader sense, the answers are right
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there hiding in plain sight. We all are creative and
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it's up to us to take an ownership role there
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and create the living and the life that we want
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for ourselves and the people around us, right? Your team,
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you talked a lot about that. That's the theme of
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your show. Yeah.
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And I was super inspired by Never Play It Safe.
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I'd read it before we'd even agreed to record. And
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then I reached out to you afterwards, which is not
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necessarily the normal sequence of events here with my show,
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but that's how good it was and how much of
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a fan I am of your work. And I want
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to read one of the initial lines from it and
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then have you go a little bit deeper because I
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think a lot of naysayers might say like, look, good
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for you guys. You get to be creative and have
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podcasts and do art and take pictures and make money
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and support your family. I have to go get a job.
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I got to put food on the table, so I
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got to get a job. Good for you. And so
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I got to play it safe, they might say. And
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here's what you say. Playing it safe is out of fear,
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and fear is only optimized for survival, not creativity, not happiness,
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not joy, not connection, not harmony, not fulfillment. It's only
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about optimizing for survival, and that's what fear is all about.
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all about. And to me, that really spoke to me, man,
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when it comes to those who, I get some of
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that from time to time. I haven't written a book
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about this, but you have, so you probably get a
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lot of it. I'm curious if you want to riff
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more on playing it safe and being out of fear
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and how it's optimizing for the wrong thing.
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Yeah. Look, fear is a fantastic motivator. It plays a
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role biologically for us. And that role is to stay
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alive and procreate. But the difference between staying alive and
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having a fulfilling, happy, joyful life, there is a yawning
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gulf in between. There's a thousand miles in between those
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two things. And I believe that it's our job to
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find a way to get what we want out of
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this life. That is to survive and thrive and have
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a a connected experience, whether that's with family, friends, whatever,
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build the living and life of your dreams and to
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optimize in the meantime for joy, connection, fulfillment. And so
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many of those things that frankly, I believe that everyone
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is seeking it's natural, but we've got these biological brains.
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And so our job is then to, you know, and
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my thinking with the book never played safe was I said,
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wait a minute, it's true. that all of the best
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things in my life are on the other side of
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my comfort zone or always have been. And then I
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thought to myself, well, I think of all the books
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I've read of, you know, past leaders and of the
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thousand guests that I've had on my podcast, many of
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the world's top performers in every discipline, you know, sports,
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you know, the best in the world and business, Richard
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Branson and Mark Cuban, like all those folks that I've
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had on my podcast. or that I have come to
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know well through business or, or, you know, my profession. Well,
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it just so happens that they think the same, right?
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That all the best stuff in their life was on
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the other side of big, scary decisions. And that's not
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to say that the quiet moments aren't the ones we
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appreciate with your kids, for example, but the decision, for example,
384
00:21:58.349 --> 00:22:02.890
to have kids, big, scary, hairy decision. If, if, It's
385
00:22:02.970 --> 00:22:05.759
true that all the best stuff in the human experience
386
00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:09.160
is on the other side of our comfort zone. What
387
00:22:09.599 --> 00:22:12.500
ought we do? We ought to have a blueprint for
388
00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:15.289
having the ability to get there over and over and
389
00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:19.309
over again, to get there 1% better, 1% faster, 1%
390
00:22:19.309 --> 00:22:21.349
smarter and more kind than we did the time before.
391
00:22:21.470 --> 00:22:24.990
That's what we're really seeking. And when I put that
392
00:22:25.049 --> 00:22:27.349
to the test through my own experience and the experience of,
393
00:22:27.470 --> 00:22:29.210
as I mentioned, a thousand other people that I've had
394
00:22:29.230 --> 00:22:32.650
on the podcast, it just so happens that There is
395
00:22:33.589 --> 00:22:37.930
a programmable, repeatable way to do that. And to me,
396
00:22:38.309 --> 00:22:40.589
that's what I mean about not playing it safe. It's
397
00:22:40.630 --> 00:22:45.640
not about issuing food and shelter for your family and friends.
398
00:22:45.660 --> 00:22:48.319
That's not what we're talking about. Or taking some wild
399
00:22:48.420 --> 00:22:51.380
career leap, this whole idea that bet it all on
400
00:22:51.420 --> 00:22:53.259
black and hope for the best. That's not real. No
401
00:22:53.359 --> 00:22:57.109
real entrepreneurs do that. They might make a gamble, but
402
00:22:57.630 --> 00:23:00.150
The reality is that all the best stuff is on
403
00:23:00.170 --> 00:23:01.750
the other side of our comfort zone. We can get
404
00:23:01.809 --> 00:23:05.069
there reliably. And in my book, Never Play It Safe,
405
00:23:05.190 --> 00:23:08.589
I've analyzed people who do that the most, who have
406
00:23:08.609 --> 00:23:13.200
the most sense of fulfillment, ironically, are also very successful
407
00:23:13.240 --> 00:23:16.960
in the process. And that's what I've tried to capture
408
00:23:17.099 --> 00:23:18.019
in Never Play It Safe.
409
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:20.759
You write about this to all of us, Ryan.
410
00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:23.579
It's available to all of us. Yeah.
411
00:23:24.059 --> 00:23:26.809
A hundred percent. And I like how practical you make
412
00:23:26.829 --> 00:23:28.990
it and entertaining with the story. So there are seven
413
00:23:29.069 --> 00:23:34.440
basic levers for life. Attention, time, intuition, constraints, play, failure,
414
00:23:34.500 --> 00:23:36.880
and practice. I'd like to dig into some of those
415
00:23:37.220 --> 00:23:40.829
as we go. Let's go to time and you write
416
00:23:40.849 --> 00:23:43.690
about NYU professor James Kars, I believe is his name,
417
00:23:44.089 --> 00:23:47.769
finite and infinite games and why we should treat life
418
00:23:47.869 --> 00:23:50.049
like an infinite game. Can you go a little bit
419
00:23:50.109 --> 00:23:52.829
deeper on the difference between finite and infinite games and
420
00:23:52.849 --> 00:23:55.039
why we should treat life like an infinite game?
421
00:23:55.380 --> 00:23:58.859
Yeah. So that's from game theory and game theory. It's just,
422
00:23:58.980 --> 00:24:03.140
it sounds stuffy, but it's pretty simple in a monopoly.
423
00:24:03.160 --> 00:24:07.569
There are winners and losers, right? And, At some point,
424
00:24:07.589 --> 00:24:11.359
the game ends and you're measured and then the goal
425
00:24:11.410 --> 00:24:14.779
is to then play again. Infinite games, on the other hand,
426
00:24:14.859 --> 00:24:19.299
the goal is to keep playing. And that is way
427
00:24:19.319 --> 00:24:22.279
more what life is like because let's just say you
428
00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:25.019
do get to the end of the game of life. Well,
429
00:24:25.779 --> 00:24:27.440
as far as we know, you don't have an option
430
00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:31.299
to go back and restart that game and take forward
431
00:24:31.339 --> 00:24:33.619
everything you learned from the previous game. So the goal
432
00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:37.210
of life is is to keep playing. And problems arise
433
00:24:37.250 --> 00:24:40.190
when you treat infinite games, like the game of life,
434
00:24:40.950 --> 00:24:43.529
as a finite game, like there are winners and losers.
435
00:24:44.130 --> 00:24:49.690
It creates short-term thinking. And how this relates to time
436
00:24:49.930 --> 00:24:54.059
is that I'm aware from my own experience, for example,
437
00:24:54.279 --> 00:24:56.700
and if you deconstruct the lives of lots of other people,
438
00:24:56.720 --> 00:24:59.160
and there are people who are listening here, How many
439
00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:02.240
of us do stupid shit because we realize, or we
440
00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:05.200
believe rather, that when we're 21 years old, we have
441
00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:07.619
to have it all figured out. It makes us go
442
00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:10.779
into huge, you know, into, I was a hundred thousand
443
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:14.440
dollars in student debt before I really, it really hit
444
00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:18.329
me what that meant. And the same is true. I
445
00:25:18.950 --> 00:25:24.109
observed so many people rushing around doing half-assed jobs on
446
00:25:24.109 --> 00:25:28.130
15 things rather than doing a complete heartfelt thoughtful job
447
00:25:28.210 --> 00:25:32.210
on one thing believing that that that's the way to
448
00:25:32.250 --> 00:25:34.170
be in the world or that if they don't have
449
00:25:34.230 --> 00:25:36.349
again don't have it all figured out that they somehow
450
00:25:36.450 --> 00:25:41.579
will will be left behind and yet that actually just
451
00:25:41.650 --> 00:25:46.119
creates a bunch of bad behavior and negative consequences I'm
452
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:49.099
not this is not to say for everyone I'm not
453
00:25:49.140 --> 00:25:53.809
saying that life is is forever, right? I am saying
454
00:25:53.849 --> 00:25:57.619
life is long. And what if instead of rushing around
455
00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:00.440
as a 21-year-old thinking that you have to have it
456
00:26:00.460 --> 00:26:02.859
all figured out, what if you could explore? Or what
457
00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:05.819
if you realized that if you took a job, that
458
00:26:05.839 --> 00:26:07.839
you will have many jobs. In fact, you'll probably have
459
00:26:07.900 --> 00:26:11.970
many careers in your life and that this is not permanent.
460
00:26:12.069 --> 00:26:14.089
And what you're doing is learning and you're running a
461
00:26:14.170 --> 00:26:18.390
series of tiny experiments. How much healthier is that than
462
00:26:18.410 --> 00:26:21.680
the image that we project of You're going to get
463
00:26:21.720 --> 00:26:23.519
a job. You're going to do that job for 40 years.
464
00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:25.960
The hope is to get a retirement and a gold watch.
465
00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:28.960
We know that's not how the world works anymore. And yet,
466
00:26:30.059 --> 00:26:32.160
that's what college is still preparing us for. And that's
467
00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:37.740
the narrative, the dominant cultural narrative. So how game theory
468
00:26:37.779 --> 00:26:40.619
relates to, again, the chapter specifically on time is I
469
00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:45.279
think we get time super botched. We believe that this
470
00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:50.099
is some infinite hamster wheel that's running in the background.
471
00:26:50.160 --> 00:26:53.599
It's time is ticking by and the time is going
472
00:26:53.619 --> 00:26:58.000
to run out. Understand that you can both, you know,
473
00:26:58.039 --> 00:27:00.920
have short-term urgency. I want to get this done today.
474
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:04.990
I want to reach my goal tomorrow. And you can
475
00:27:05.049 --> 00:27:09.730
simultaneously realize that life is long. And what if you
476
00:27:10.069 --> 00:27:12.630
get to run a bunch of tiny experiments? We never
477
00:27:12.670 --> 00:27:17.769
know if we're But if we could change our relationship
478
00:27:17.789 --> 00:27:20.319
with time, if we could believe that there is enough
479
00:27:20.359 --> 00:27:23.700
time for us. I'm on my fourth, not just career,
480
00:27:23.740 --> 00:27:28.720
fourth career arc. You already talked about my career as
481
00:27:28.759 --> 00:27:32.880
an athlete. And then as a photographer, I had a 10-year,
482
00:27:32.900 --> 00:27:36.559
20-year run as one of the top commercial photographers in
483
00:27:36.579 --> 00:27:38.440
the world, making tens of millions of dollars. And then
484
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.549
I started an online learning platform. And that served tens
485
00:27:41.589 --> 00:27:43.279
of millions of people as an entrepreneur. We made $ 60
486
00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:47.359
million online. made hundreds of millions and that was another arc.
487
00:27:47.400 --> 00:27:49.420
And now I've had a third or a fourth arc
488
00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:53.579
now as an author writing books, never play it safe,
489
00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:55.720
trying to help other people do this. And if you
490
00:27:55.789 --> 00:27:59.130
told me that when I was 24 years old, that,
491
00:27:59.269 --> 00:28:03.809
hey man, just take a beat here. Look inside. The
492
00:28:03.890 --> 00:28:06.519
answers aren't external. The answers are inside. What is it
493
00:28:06.539 --> 00:28:08.480
that you really want? First of all, I would have
494
00:28:08.500 --> 00:28:10.009
never gotten probably $ 150, 000 in student debt. Second of all,
495
00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:16.900
I think I'd have done a better job ignoring Ms.
496
00:28:16.940 --> 00:28:20.890
Kelly in second grade and realizing that those films that
497
00:28:20.930 --> 00:28:23.569
I wanted to make, yeah, go ahead and make them now.
498
00:28:23.609 --> 00:28:26.970
There's time. And when you realize that waiting tables isn't
499
00:28:27.109 --> 00:28:29.890
necessarily how you want to live your life, maybe it is,
500
00:28:30.450 --> 00:28:33.910
but that you have time and space to figure out
501
00:28:33.950 --> 00:28:35.690
what you really want to do. It makes us do
502
00:28:35.769 --> 00:28:38.440
stupid shit when we don't think that way. And when
503
00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:43.490
we do, we have... the capacity to see way beyond
504
00:28:43.549 --> 00:28:44.269
the end of our nose.
505
00:28:45.130 --> 00:28:50.329
I also think, Chase, that it involves... I want to
506
00:28:50.349 --> 00:28:55.210
be around people who play long-term games with other long-term people.
507
00:28:55.250 --> 00:28:57.470
What I mean by that is every once in a while,
508
00:28:57.509 --> 00:29:02.519
you'll come across a transactional person versus a transformational person.
509
00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:05.799
And if you live your life as a series of transactions,
510
00:29:05.880 --> 00:29:09.200
meaning I'm going to give with the intention to get...
511
00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.420
We all know those people. Most of us don't want
512
00:29:12.460 --> 00:29:15.220
to be around them. Some of us have spent chapters
513
00:29:15.279 --> 00:29:19.880
doing that. But I see you as the ultimate long-term
514
00:29:20.140 --> 00:29:23.910
transformational type person where you want to have transformational relationships
515
00:29:23.970 --> 00:29:27.049
with others that are also playing long-term games. Life is
516
00:29:27.109 --> 00:29:30.750
not a series of transactions. You're going to give, give, give, give,
517
00:29:30.789 --> 00:29:34.700
give with no intentionality. no expectation of getting anything in response.
518
00:29:34.740 --> 00:29:37.769
But what happens, the crazy thing, what happens is when
519
00:29:37.809 --> 00:29:41.900
you live that way, especially for a long time, good stuff,
520
00:29:42.579 --> 00:29:46.440
great opportunities just seem to come your way. It's weird
521
00:29:46.500 --> 00:29:50.160
how it works, man. Being generous, being a giver, trying
522
00:29:50.180 --> 00:29:55.180
to help people and doing that consistently over time man,
523
00:29:55.359 --> 00:29:58.460
it's bizarre how the world seems to work itself out,
524
00:29:58.529 --> 00:30:01.710
how good things come your way. If you don't see
525
00:30:01.769 --> 00:30:04.309
life as a series of transactions, but try to be
526
00:30:04.329 --> 00:30:07.349
a transformational leader for yourself and for all the people
527
00:30:07.390 --> 00:30:09.549
in your life, what I mean by that is help
528
00:30:09.589 --> 00:30:12.650
them get better with no intention of receiving anything in return.
529
00:30:12.670 --> 00:30:17.289
And if you do, you seem to get everything in return.
530
00:30:17.329 --> 00:30:19.099
It's bizarre how all that works, man.
531
00:30:19.519 --> 00:30:22.849
Plus, plus, I mean, you get everything. And You know,
532
00:30:22.869 --> 00:30:26.049
that's why it's a no brainer to go on your show. Honestly,
533
00:30:26.109 --> 00:30:29.089
you've done such a good job of building a community
534
00:30:29.130 --> 00:30:33.259
around these ideas that, you know, when I think about the,
535
00:30:33.650 --> 00:30:36.799
you know, playing a long-term game and again, the game
536
00:30:36.819 --> 00:30:41.539
of life, certainly we hope is long and it's married
537
00:30:41.579 --> 00:30:44.220
and winding. And yet if you have a certain set
538
00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:47.019
of beliefs and you live in line with those in
539
00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:52.690
accordance with your beliefs, and for example, prioritizing, um, the
540
00:30:53.349 --> 00:30:58.250
depth and connection rather than transaction immediate and short term,
541
00:31:00.119 --> 00:31:05.980
they have a wonderful way of paying you back in spades, right?
542
00:31:06.099 --> 00:31:10.180
Whether this is financial, whether this is the measure of
543
00:31:10.220 --> 00:31:13.900
human connection and depth of relationships that you have, you
544
00:31:13.940 --> 00:31:16.019
just see it time and time again. And the research
545
00:31:16.099 --> 00:31:22.839
is clear that that mindset is the foundation for transformational
546
00:31:23.539 --> 00:31:29.529
life experience. And that short-term transactional, it does not. It
547
00:31:29.569 --> 00:31:32.009
doesn't build the depth of the relationship, doesn't build the
548
00:31:32.069 --> 00:31:35.410
depth of psychology that is required to really be the
549
00:31:35.430 --> 00:31:37.690
best versions of ourselves. So true.
550
00:31:37.710 --> 00:31:39.160
I want to talk about intuition.
551
00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:39.920
Yeah.
552
00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:43.140
That's the third one of the seven basic levers for life.
553
00:31:43.619 --> 00:31:45.960
And you write about your wife, Kate. It's really sweet.
554
00:31:46.339 --> 00:31:50.779
When meeting on the beach... spending time apart, going to school,
555
00:31:50.779 --> 00:31:54.059
1500 miles away from each other, going to Europe together.
556
00:31:54.559 --> 00:32:00.319
But you, you write that sparks were present, but no fire,
557
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:03.180
but she had that special quality. I couldn't quite place.
558
00:32:03.220 --> 00:32:05.700
It's like, Oh, that gut intuition. Like, what is it?
559
00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:07.779
I don't know what it is. I just, it's just there.
560
00:32:07.819 --> 00:32:11.180
It's just there. Can you go more into that intuition
561
00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:13.710
and that feeling you had in your gut for Kate
562
00:32:13.809 --> 00:32:16.769
initially and how then that blossomed as you guys got older?
563
00:32:17.390 --> 00:32:22.049
Well, I want to couch this story. Again, it's around
564
00:32:22.250 --> 00:32:24.670
this particular story I tell in the book. One of
565
00:32:24.710 --> 00:32:29.250
them in this intuition chapter is not dissimilar to a
566
00:32:29.289 --> 00:32:32.009
story that we have all, you know, some amount of
567
00:32:32.029 --> 00:32:34.410
stories that we all have regarding our own lives. We've
568
00:32:34.650 --> 00:32:37.759
all felt something, a gut feeling about a person, a place,
569
00:32:38.259 --> 00:32:42.680
a meeting, a friend. And we have likely all felt
570
00:32:42.740 --> 00:32:46.880
what it feels like to trust that feeling and simultaneously
571
00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:51.440
ignore it. ignore it in a different time. And what
572
00:32:51.579 --> 00:32:55.950
normally people report is the trusting of one's God, this
573
00:32:56.089 --> 00:33:03.750
intuition ends up being right. And in my case with
574
00:33:03.789 --> 00:33:06.250
my wife, Kate, it was exactly that. There was something
575
00:33:06.349 --> 00:33:10.670
special about her. And while we didn't pursue each other
576
00:33:11.500 --> 00:33:14.700
immediately there was always a seed that was planted that
577
00:33:14.859 --> 00:33:17.059
we would come back to one another or find our
578
00:33:17.099 --> 00:33:19.990
way back to one another at some point. And that,
579
00:33:20.049 --> 00:33:22.430
in fact, did happen. And the details, I'll save them
580
00:33:22.470 --> 00:33:25.890
for the book. But for the person who's listening or
581
00:33:25.950 --> 00:33:30.859
watching right now, whether you believe in your spidey sense
582
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:34.349
of or you lean more into science, I want you
583
00:33:34.369 --> 00:33:38.359
to know that science is quickly coming to understand that
584
00:33:38.460 --> 00:33:43.440
intuition is everything that rational thought is and more. That
585
00:33:44.619 --> 00:33:48.579
the rational thought actually fits inside the bubble of intuition.
586
00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:54.519
And what it amounts to, I guess a simplified version,
587
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:59.390
is that all of our cells have memory. And whether
588
00:34:00.299 --> 00:34:04.019
given that we are filtering billions of points of data
589
00:34:04.259 --> 00:34:08.139
every minute that we're alive, we're only really registering because
590
00:34:08.179 --> 00:34:10.760
our brain can only sort of manage so much of that.
591
00:34:10.820 --> 00:34:14.460
But the belief is that the early belief was that
592
00:34:14.480 --> 00:34:17.320
data wasn't stored. And now what we understand is that
593
00:34:17.420 --> 00:34:19.679
data is stored and stored in the body. And that's
594
00:34:19.739 --> 00:34:22.019
why when we have a gut feeling, it's called just
595
00:34:22.059 --> 00:34:24.559
that a gut feeling. It's an instinct that you feel
596
00:34:24.599 --> 00:34:28.739
down here, less up here. Science is now refuting that, that,
597
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:31.659
Rational thought is the end all be all. So certainly
598
00:34:31.699 --> 00:34:35.860
it may have helped us develop tools. And yet it's
599
00:34:36.119 --> 00:34:39.820
slow and bumbling. It's prone to mistakes. And intuition, by contrast,
600
00:34:40.420 --> 00:34:46.119
is much more holistic. It is a deeper sense of knowing. That's, again,
601
00:34:46.139 --> 00:34:49.849
why you feel it in your gut. And I believe
602
00:34:49.909 --> 00:34:52.949
it's the most important thing that we know the least about.
603
00:34:54.010 --> 00:34:55.949
I just asked the question in the book, what if
604
00:34:55.989 --> 00:34:59.869
you started paying attention to that? And it turns out
605
00:34:59.929 --> 00:35:02.920
there's a really clear pattern. The person or the people
606
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:05.880
that pay attention to their intuition about what they want
607
00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:08.480
to be, who they want to be friends with, why
608
00:35:08.519 --> 00:35:11.159
they would connect with this person instead of that. People
609
00:35:11.199 --> 00:35:15.219
who trust that, they report higher levels of satisfaction with
610
00:35:15.239 --> 00:35:19.550
their life, higher levels of connection. And ultimately, I think
611
00:35:19.590 --> 00:35:21.630
that's part of what we're trying to build here. I
612
00:35:22.469 --> 00:35:25.949
have only had, it's not to say that your instinct doesn't,
613
00:35:26.719 --> 00:35:29.500
pan out 100% of the time. That can be fair.
614
00:35:29.960 --> 00:35:32.340
That's a fair criticism, but nothing in the world does.
615
00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:36.429
Or it might not just pan out yet, and there's
616
00:35:36.469 --> 00:35:40.809
some longer-term experience that you can't foresee or forecast that
617
00:35:41.190 --> 00:35:43.389
comes to bear or comes to be true at some
618
00:35:43.429 --> 00:35:47.110
point in the future. The point is specifically that you've
619
00:35:47.130 --> 00:35:50.840
been taught, not dissimilar to creativity, you've been taught to
620
00:35:50.920 --> 00:35:54.079
ignore or suppress it. And I'm just asking the question
621
00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:56.900
here in the book and providing a lot of very,
622
00:35:57.159 --> 00:36:01.420
very compelling examples that what if instead you paid attention
623
00:36:01.460 --> 00:36:04.179
to it? What if you leaned into that? The science
624
00:36:04.230 --> 00:36:06.889
says that you're more likely to succeed and be happier
625
00:36:06.909 --> 00:36:07.550
in the process.
626
00:36:07.809 --> 00:36:10.849
Do you feel we've been taught to ignore our intuition?
627
00:36:11.570 --> 00:36:14.829
I do. We're programmed with the rational mind, math and science.
628
00:36:14.849 --> 00:36:18.139
Just look at STEM now. Like that's all math and science.
629
00:36:18.449 --> 00:36:20.530
What people don't believe is that the science that you're
630
00:36:20.550 --> 00:36:23.750
learning in school or that you're kicking around conversations at
631
00:36:23.769 --> 00:36:26.789
the dinner table actually don't reflect the latest science. With
632
00:36:26.829 --> 00:36:30.389
the latest sciences, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, that the universe
633
00:36:30.530 --> 00:36:34.789
is non-local and that the thoughts that you think actually
634
00:36:34.849 --> 00:36:38.670
do affect the experience of reality. So yeah, I do
635
00:36:38.730 --> 00:36:41.210
believe that we're taught to ignore our intuition or to
636
00:36:41.349 --> 00:36:44.480
distrust it at best. not to run at it in
637
00:36:44.500 --> 00:36:47.440
the same way that if we had verifiable data. The
638
00:36:47.480 --> 00:36:51.079
funny thing about science is that what people don't imagine, again,
639
00:36:51.219 --> 00:36:53.639
I was in a PhD program in philosophy and we
640
00:36:53.659 --> 00:36:55.739
studied the philosophy of science. So take this with a
641
00:36:55.760 --> 00:36:58.340
grain of salt if you're an armchair philosopher like I am.
642
00:36:59.050 --> 00:37:04.110
But most science ultimately is continually proving itself false. We
643
00:37:04.170 --> 00:37:06.489
used to believe that all objects fell to the earth
644
00:37:06.530 --> 00:37:09.369
at 9.8 meters per second squared. And now we know
645
00:37:09.409 --> 00:37:11.949
that's just a comfortable approximation and that falls apart if
646
00:37:11.989 --> 00:37:15.019
you're 10,000 feet above the earth's surface. And if you
647
00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:17.880
go out into space, it just completely falls apart. So
648
00:37:18.780 --> 00:37:21.260
we're still teaching that in school and that is a helpful,
649
00:37:21.340 --> 00:37:25.699
useful construct, but it doesn't actually represent reality. Now, by extension,
650
00:37:26.239 --> 00:37:29.280
what if we started paying attention to things like our
651
00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:32.460
intuition and the reality that we are, that has trained
652
00:37:32.559 --> 00:37:34.480
out of us and that it's a powerful tool that
653
00:37:34.519 --> 00:37:37.989
if we, if we just gave it some credence and
654
00:37:38.050 --> 00:37:40.590
leaned into it, Just what would be possible? It's not
655
00:37:40.630 --> 00:37:43.699
like we're going to lose ourselves. The reality is that
656
00:37:44.440 --> 00:37:48.320
by leaning into our intuition, we'll certainly have a different
657
00:37:48.400 --> 00:37:52.380
and broader experience of our human experience, which I would say,
658
00:37:53.619 --> 00:37:55.530
bring it on. It just so happens that the science
659
00:37:55.570 --> 00:37:56.170
is there as well.
660
00:37:56.690 --> 00:37:59.150
What does that look like? Now, let's get practical. Let's
661
00:37:59.190 --> 00:38:01.889
take action for a second, Chase. What does that look
662
00:38:01.929 --> 00:38:05.909
like to the... Again, let's go back to the same avatar, okay?
663
00:38:05.929 --> 00:38:06.030
Sure.
664
00:38:06.639 --> 00:38:09.409
The person who maybe doesn't think they're creative, they're running
665
00:38:09.550 --> 00:38:13.230
a big chunk of a company, responsible for a lot,
666
00:38:13.250 --> 00:38:17.809
stressful job, make good money, raising a family. What does
667
00:38:17.849 --> 00:38:20.260
it look like for that person to actually listen to
668
00:38:20.280 --> 00:38:22.960
their gut instinct, to listen to that intuition, to take
669
00:38:23.199 --> 00:38:27.539
action based upon that intuition, as opposed to saying, no,
670
00:38:27.579 --> 00:38:30.000
let me be reasonable here. Let's be rational.
671
00:38:30.980 --> 00:38:37.289
Like everything, I invoke tiny experiments. And so... If you're
672
00:38:37.329 --> 00:38:40.369
worried about trusting your intuition when there's an intruder in
673
00:38:40.409 --> 00:38:43.230
the backyard, that's not the first time to start experimenting
674
00:38:43.250 --> 00:38:48.460
with this. The experiment should happen when the stakes are low.
675
00:38:49.559 --> 00:38:51.619
And the first thing that you ought to do is
676
00:38:51.659 --> 00:38:54.440
because intuition shows up in the body, you've got a
677
00:38:54.500 --> 00:38:57.599
thought loop that's happening in your mind and you have
678
00:38:58.019 --> 00:39:01.380
something else that you feel in your gut. Start paying
679
00:39:01.480 --> 00:39:04.619
attention to those. First, even notice them. What does he
680
00:39:04.659 --> 00:39:07.429
mean when he says feeling in the gut? It's not
681
00:39:07.550 --> 00:39:11.269
really a stretch because every single person has this intuition
682
00:39:11.389 --> 00:39:15.480
built into them. And we've just trained that the rational
683
00:39:15.539 --> 00:39:20.300
mind should override those gut feelings inside of us. And
684
00:39:20.420 --> 00:39:24.829
I would encourage the person who's curious or even dubious
685
00:39:25.289 --> 00:39:27.809
to start paying attention. What are those feelings in there?
686
00:39:27.869 --> 00:39:29.510
Is it about a person? Is it a direction you
687
00:39:29.530 --> 00:39:31.500
should go? Is it a restaurant you should go to
688
00:39:31.539 --> 00:39:34.519
instead of the other one? Like start leaning into those
689
00:39:34.559 --> 00:39:38.480
things in areas of your life where the consequences aren't catastrophic.
690
00:39:39.070 --> 00:39:42.030
And what you'll find is like many things when you
691
00:39:42.050 --> 00:39:44.369
start small, like, oh my gosh, that was a win.
692
00:39:44.449 --> 00:39:46.869
I got a quick win. I listened to, should I go,
693
00:39:47.130 --> 00:39:48.250
you know, should I go out on a date with
694
00:39:48.289 --> 00:39:52.449
this person or that person? You had an instinct. You did.
695
00:39:52.550 --> 00:39:55.670
Because we have instincts for things like this. And I'm
696
00:39:55.710 --> 00:39:58.949
just suggesting that in small, lightweight ways, you start to
697
00:39:58.989 --> 00:40:02.030
pay attention to them. And over time, when you start
698
00:40:02.090 --> 00:40:08.079
to be able to trust this, it will really come
699
00:40:08.119 --> 00:40:14.260
in handy. And specifically around creating a living and a
700
00:40:14.300 --> 00:40:17.260
life that we love for ourselves. The world will have
701
00:40:17.300 --> 00:40:21.960
you believe that the nine to five job with this
702
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:25.929
particular company that's safe. That again, the concept of never
703
00:40:26.010 --> 00:40:30.190
playing it safe, it argues that that thing that you
704
00:40:30.349 --> 00:40:33.489
believe you're doing is safe is actually one of the
705
00:40:33.550 --> 00:40:37.769
riskiest things you can do. One, you're specifically doing it,
706
00:40:37.909 --> 00:40:40.690
not because you love it, but because someone else is
707
00:40:40.750 --> 00:40:44.739
convincing you that you should. And when you start, that's
708
00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:47.199
an example of how this stuff gets trained out of us.
709
00:40:47.800 --> 00:40:51.019
That in and of itself is a very unsafe behavior.
710
00:40:52.139 --> 00:40:57.340
To not rely on this internal humanity, this, these structures
711
00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:01.130
and the, the parts that make us who we are,
712
00:41:01.269 --> 00:41:04.369
we started ignoring those. That's a very, very slippery slope.
713
00:41:05.090 --> 00:41:07.929
So remember the book starts out, the first words of
714
00:41:07.949 --> 00:41:11.519
the book are safety is an illusion. It does not
715
00:41:11.579 --> 00:41:13.550
occur in nature, so why then do we seek it?
716
00:41:14.539 --> 00:41:18.519
And I just have to, to me, that underpins so
717
00:41:18.559 --> 00:41:20.820
much of what we're talking about here. For the person
718
00:41:20.840 --> 00:41:23.710
who doesn't trust their intuition, you think you're being safe
719
00:41:23.769 --> 00:41:27.690
by using all the data, but you have an opinion
720
00:41:27.789 --> 00:41:29.929
underneath all that stuff. And what if you started to
721
00:41:29.989 --> 00:41:32.309
listen to it? What would your life, what could your
722
00:41:32.389 --> 00:41:33.670
life be like?
723
00:41:34.909 --> 00:41:39.489
Let's talk about play. I love your story about Novak Djokovic.
724
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:43.530
One of my favorite tennis players, an amazing, amazing accomplished,
725
00:41:43.889 --> 00:41:48.269
such a gritty performer. It's inspiring to watch. What can
726
00:41:48.289 --> 00:41:49.889
we learn about play from Novak Djokovic?
727
00:41:50.630 --> 00:41:53.730
The story that chapter opens up about Djokovic opens up
728
00:41:54.250 --> 00:41:58.050
with him being so frustrated. He's had a really good career.
729
00:41:58.460 --> 00:42:00.119
And at this point he's like, you know what? I
730
00:42:00.139 --> 00:42:03.900
just don't got it anymore. Tennis isn't fun and I'm
731
00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:06.280
going to, I'm quitting. And so he tells his coaches
732
00:42:07.159 --> 00:42:10.300
and he tells his family, And, you know, everyone's of
733
00:42:10.340 --> 00:42:13.170
course trying to get him not because arguably he's at
734
00:42:13.190 --> 00:42:14.929
the peak of his career. He feels like he's already
735
00:42:14.969 --> 00:42:17.469
on the over, you know, he's over the hill and
736
00:42:18.690 --> 00:42:22.230
he says, I'm, I'm done. And he doesn't make this necessarily,
737
00:42:22.309 --> 00:42:24.050
like there's a part of it that's public, but not,
738
00:42:24.510 --> 00:42:26.489
not how serious he is. He's going to take a
739
00:42:26.510 --> 00:42:30.510
break and he goes on vacation with his family and
740
00:42:30.550 --> 00:42:33.409
his family, of course, still loves tennis. They haven't played
741
00:42:33.449 --> 00:42:35.989
as a professional for their whole life. And so they
742
00:42:36.449 --> 00:42:39.559
go hit the ball around and they, He said, no,
743
00:42:39.599 --> 00:42:42.099
I'm done with tennis. And three or four days into
744
00:42:42.139 --> 00:42:44.400
the family vacation, he's like, okay, let me hit around
745
00:42:44.420 --> 00:42:46.769
with you guys. And they're like, no, you said you
746
00:42:46.809 --> 00:42:52.750
were done. And, you know, the story evolves to understand
747
00:42:52.809 --> 00:42:57.360
that it was in seeing the joy that his kids
748
00:42:57.420 --> 00:43:00.539
were having and his wife was having with the sport.
749
00:43:01.400 --> 00:43:02.900
playing it for the sake of playing it, for what
750
00:43:02.920 --> 00:43:05.679
it feels like to hit a great topspin forehand and
751
00:43:05.719 --> 00:43:09.010
what it feels like to slide on the clay or
752
00:43:09.030 --> 00:43:12.849
to laugh and to find joy in just being able
753
00:43:12.889 --> 00:43:15.750
to move your body in that way. When he saw
754
00:43:15.809 --> 00:43:21.119
that in his family, it rekindled those aspects of why
755
00:43:21.179 --> 00:43:24.780
he started in the first place. And as you might imagine,
756
00:43:25.199 --> 00:43:27.179
it's not a stretch to see that someone who's done
757
00:43:27.199 --> 00:43:31.099
this professionally every day of their lives for 20 plus years,
758
00:43:31.159 --> 00:43:34.400
how you get to that spot. But what's also true
759
00:43:34.840 --> 00:43:39.980
is that these are largely stories that we tell ourselves,
760
00:43:40.320 --> 00:43:43.260
how we relate to tennis or how we relate to anything.
761
00:43:43.280 --> 00:43:44.889
And the most important words in the world are the
762
00:43:44.969 --> 00:43:49.409
ones we say to ourselves. And instead of quitting, Novak
763
00:43:49.690 --> 00:43:54.349
goes on a journey to find out, to remind himself
764
00:43:54.409 --> 00:43:56.809
of what he loved about the game in his past.
765
00:43:58.389 --> 00:44:02.750
And this is when he comes back and completely lights
766
00:44:02.909 --> 00:44:07.320
up and outperforms all, everything he thought was possible in his,
767
00:44:07.639 --> 00:44:09.579
so the first arc of his career and has another
768
00:44:09.639 --> 00:44:13.739
entire arc where he completely dominates. And it's because he,
769
00:44:14.280 --> 00:44:17.039
he made the game joyful for himself. And he actually
770
00:44:17.099 --> 00:44:19.780
looked like, what things do I love about this game?
771
00:44:19.840 --> 00:44:22.719
How do I love it? What did I love about practicing?
772
00:44:22.889 --> 00:44:26.219
And communicated that with his coaches, his psychologist. And it
773
00:44:26.280 --> 00:44:29.699
transformed him as an athlete and it led to the
774
00:44:29.760 --> 00:44:32.159
career that we're, that's why we say, oh my gosh,
775
00:44:32.179 --> 00:44:34.179
she's one of the best ever play the game, blah, blah, blah.
776
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:40.030
So play, it turns out is the most important work
777
00:44:40.130 --> 00:44:42.090
that we do. And you can think about it in
778
00:44:42.150 --> 00:44:44.670
our culture, right? This puritanical, like, oh, you don't have
779
00:44:44.690 --> 00:44:48.309
to work first and then play. And it sounds joyful
780
00:44:48.429 --> 00:44:51.389
or sorry, it sounds rewarding, but the things that are
781
00:44:51.449 --> 00:44:55.360
joyful it turns out that not only do we tend
782
00:44:55.389 --> 00:44:58.300
to be better at them, but we can do them
783
00:44:58.380 --> 00:45:02.059
for longer, and longer is more practice, more practice usually
784
00:45:02.099 --> 00:45:05.380
gets us better at skills and craft. And if the
785
00:45:05.519 --> 00:45:08.320
story that we tell ourselves about what we're doing, whether
786
00:45:08.360 --> 00:45:09.780
we call it work or play, it turns out it
787
00:45:09.820 --> 00:45:14.320
matters a lot. What if we could make even the
788
00:45:14.389 --> 00:45:18.730
most benign, banal things joyful? It turns out we can,
789
00:45:18.750 --> 00:45:23.519
and when we do... we usually get transformative results.
790
00:45:25.219 --> 00:45:26.900
I haven't seen you speak as a keynote, but I
791
00:45:26.920 --> 00:45:30.280
would love to. I have a sense that you bring
792
00:45:30.300 --> 00:45:31.480
a lot of what?
793
00:45:31.659 --> 00:45:34.360
I love it so much.
794
00:45:35.139 --> 00:45:37.960
Well, so here's the thing that I feel like I've felt,
795
00:45:38.019 --> 00:45:39.719
and I want to riff on this with you because
796
00:45:40.099 --> 00:45:42.860
of how prolific you are at it. There was a
797
00:45:42.920 --> 00:45:45.469
period where after you get booked a lot and you
798
00:45:45.489 --> 00:45:49.090
start become potentially robotic and And you just go on
799
00:45:49.110 --> 00:45:51.309
to the next stage and you do your thing. And
800
00:45:51.349 --> 00:45:54.429
you can forget how cool it is. You can forget
801
00:45:54.570 --> 00:45:57.380
what an amazing opportunity. I'll speak for myself. I'm not
802
00:45:57.420 --> 00:45:57.960
speaking for you.
803
00:45:57.980 --> 00:45:59.780
Yeah, I love it. Give me your example.
804
00:46:00.460 --> 00:46:04.920
And so some of the joy can go away. And
805
00:46:05.159 --> 00:46:07.280
I feel like one of the biggest changes that's probably
806
00:46:07.300 --> 00:46:09.530
happened for me over the past, I don't know, year
807
00:46:09.699 --> 00:46:12.250
and a half or so is to be like, dude,
808
00:46:12.869 --> 00:46:17.760
this is so cool. Let's have fun. put on a show.
809
00:46:17.780 --> 00:46:22.230
This is an opportunity to do something that's amazing. That
810
00:46:22.250 --> 00:46:24.409
doesn't mean we're not going to be prepared. Doesn't mean
811
00:46:24.449 --> 00:46:26.389
we're not going to just like, all right, what the hell?
812
00:46:26.409 --> 00:46:28.949
Let's just kind of like, let it go. No, we're
813
00:46:28.969 --> 00:46:30.750
going to be prepared. We're going to make sure we
814
00:46:30.789 --> 00:46:33.269
know our stuff. But once you get up there, dude,
815
00:46:34.219 --> 00:46:37.539
Let's let it rip and have fun. Maybe make the
816
00:46:37.579 --> 00:46:39.699
joke that doesn't land every once in a while. Just
817
00:46:39.900 --> 00:46:43.260
go for it. And I've noticed a big difference from
818
00:46:43.300 --> 00:46:45.429
that point where I felt like there was a little
819
00:46:45.469 --> 00:46:49.230
bit of a robot going through the motions because maybe
820
00:46:49.269 --> 00:46:52.210
there was a lot of them too. Like, dude, you
821
00:46:52.250 --> 00:46:56.130
know your stuff. Let it rip and have fun. And
822
00:46:56.170 --> 00:46:58.489
if you say the wrong thing or the part of
823
00:46:58.510 --> 00:47:03.400
the Q & A goes sideways, it's all good. It's
824
00:47:03.460 --> 00:47:05.820
all good. And I feel like that has made things
825
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:10.610
so much better and just more enjoyable and probably much
826
00:47:10.659 --> 00:47:13.190
better for the audience as well, as opposed to being
827
00:47:13.230 --> 00:47:16.269
this robot who wanted to make sure every single word
828
00:47:16.309 --> 00:47:17.369
and syllable was right.
829
00:47:18.090 --> 00:47:20.429
Sure. And man, you're nailing it. A couple of things
830
00:47:20.469 --> 00:47:23.239
that are intertwined as you're saying this. There's this idea
831
00:47:23.300 --> 00:47:26.300
that a bird doesn't land on a branch hoping that
832
00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:28.679
the branch won't break. A bird lands on that branch
833
00:47:28.820 --> 00:47:32.300
knowing that If it does break, it can fly away.
834
00:47:32.389 --> 00:47:35.949
So there's this trust in itself. And that's sort of
835
00:47:35.989 --> 00:47:38.829
what I'm advocating in this playful world. The belief is
836
00:47:38.869 --> 00:47:42.289
sometimes that we have to be serious in order to
837
00:47:42.329 --> 00:47:47.170
be taken seriously. But what gets taken seriously is results.
838
00:47:48.150 --> 00:47:52.730
And it just so happens that unequivocally, results are better
839
00:47:52.889 --> 00:47:56.179
when you're in a very positive state of mind. I
840
00:47:56.239 --> 00:47:59.840
mentioned my athletic background, and I had a very... you know,
841
00:47:59.969 --> 00:48:02.869
powerful experience with sports psychologist. I was training in the
842
00:48:03.230 --> 00:48:07.309
Olympic development center and we had access to sports psychologists.
843
00:48:07.349 --> 00:48:09.250
This was a long time ago when this was a
844
00:48:09.289 --> 00:48:11.530
little bit more novel than it is now. Now it's
845
00:48:11.869 --> 00:48:15.650
obvious and it's, it's required. Every professional athlete has some
846
00:48:15.710 --> 00:48:18.070
sort of a mental training capacity or in a coach,
847
00:48:18.090 --> 00:48:22.449
for example, but the, in short, I had the experience
848
00:48:22.489 --> 00:48:28.260
of them hypnotizing me and visualizing joyful, you know, positive
849
00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:30.489
things and negative things. And they start with the negative,
850
00:48:30.659 --> 00:48:33.150
you know, visualize, you know, someone does something to someone
851
00:48:33.190 --> 00:48:35.750
that someone harms someone that you love and you get
852
00:48:35.769 --> 00:48:37.230
a chance to compete against them. What's it going to
853
00:48:37.269 --> 00:48:39.510
be like? And you, you have a series of visualizations
854
00:48:40.030 --> 00:48:43.570
and then you visualize in contrast to that, the most joyful,
855
00:48:44.110 --> 00:48:46.949
beautiful thing you can possibly imagine the people that you
856
00:48:46.989 --> 00:48:50.159
love the most succeeding and fulfilling and you're connecting with
857
00:48:50.199 --> 00:48:54.280
them and they can measure sort of the power in
858
00:48:55.780 --> 00:48:59.679
one's body when they're having these two different experiences. And
859
00:49:00.460 --> 00:49:09.349
the positive situation way outperforms the negative anger, fear, motivation. So,
860
00:49:09.989 --> 00:49:12.230
you know, that was from a really long time ago,
861
00:49:12.389 --> 00:49:14.989
I experienced being put into that state, and it was
862
00:49:15.389 --> 00:49:19.289
transformative for me. And now, of course, the science, again,
863
00:49:19.369 --> 00:49:21.260
is catching up to all this stuff. And it's clear
864
00:49:21.280 --> 00:49:25.800
that when we can be joyful, playful, light, still focused,
865
00:49:26.539 --> 00:49:29.199
but that's when we are at our best, when we
866
00:49:29.239 --> 00:49:31.619
have the expectation that we're going to succeed. This is
867
00:49:31.659 --> 00:49:36.539
what confidence feels and smells like. And the belief is that, oh,
868
00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:40.900
when I get results, then I will be happy. It's
869
00:49:40.980 --> 00:49:44.030
actually the other way around. It's being joyful, focused, light,
870
00:49:44.179 --> 00:49:50.750
and open. That's when results happen the most easily, unequivocally, right?
871
00:49:50.769 --> 00:49:54.409
It's not even close. So the question then becomes, what
872
00:49:54.449 --> 00:49:58.090
can we do to put ourselves in this playful, joyful state? And,
873
00:49:58.570 --> 00:50:01.280
you know, in the book, I detail some of that.
874
00:50:01.300 --> 00:50:04.360
And there's a lot of these just very basic exercises.
875
00:50:04.420 --> 00:50:07.380
I phrase all this stuff as tiny experiments. Nothing is
876
00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:09.579
a is a test that you can't walk back through
877
00:50:09.599 --> 00:50:12.019
the door if you don't like what you experienced. But
878
00:50:12.059 --> 00:50:15.539
it turns out that that play is powerful. There's another
879
00:50:15.659 --> 00:50:18.719
great little anecdote. There's a guy that I met by
880
00:50:18.739 --> 00:50:21.519
the name of Charlie hone. And I met Charlie, Tim Ferris,
881
00:50:21.860 --> 00:50:23.800
a good friend of mine. Tim was hosting an event.
882
00:50:24.219 --> 00:50:26.440
Charlie used to work for Tim. Charlie was putting this
883
00:50:26.500 --> 00:50:29.159
event on and without going too far into the weeds,
884
00:50:29.179 --> 00:50:31.119
this is a very, this is a, I'm not talking
885
00:50:31.179 --> 00:50:34.510
at a, at a school. This is a public, public knowledge, but,
886
00:50:35.239 --> 00:50:39.000
Charlie got really burned out after playing this particular event
887
00:50:39.019 --> 00:50:41.820
for Tim. And after years of working for him, he
888
00:50:41.889 --> 00:50:44.630
quit because of his own mental health. And it was
889
00:50:44.670 --> 00:50:47.110
very unhealthy. He was taking fighter pilot drugs that would
890
00:50:47.130 --> 00:50:49.230
make you stay awake for multi-day missions and shit like
891
00:50:49.250 --> 00:50:54.550
that in order to make the event successful. But what
892
00:50:54.590 --> 00:50:57.530
I think is really interesting is Charlie was essentially suffering
893
00:50:57.590 --> 00:51:03.389
from crippling anxiety. And at the advice of, I think,
894
00:51:03.429 --> 00:51:07.239
a therapist, Look into your childhood and say, what were
895
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:10.610
some things that you loved as a kid? Loved, absolutely loved.
896
00:51:10.670 --> 00:51:15.610
You brought back really great, rich memories. And what would
897
00:51:15.650 --> 00:51:18.230
it be like if you reintroduced that into your life now?
898
00:51:19.070 --> 00:51:22.320
And so Charlie did this. Charlie loved, I think the
899
00:51:22.340 --> 00:51:25.219
story goes, he used to love hitting baseballs with his dad.
900
00:51:26.460 --> 00:51:29.280
And so he went and bought like a bucket full,
901
00:51:29.320 --> 00:51:33.000
a five-gallon bucket full of used baseballs. and a bat
902
00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:35.920
and he and a buddy who also turned out love
903
00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:38.360
to hit balls as a break. Each day they meet
904
00:51:38.380 --> 00:51:40.460
at the park down the street from their house. One
905
00:51:40.500 --> 00:51:42.940
guy would pitch the other guy and rope like 50
906
00:51:42.940 --> 00:51:45.039
baseballs all over the park. Then they'd walk and go
907
00:51:45.079 --> 00:51:47.340
pick that up and then they'd switch roles. And, and
908
00:51:47.420 --> 00:51:49.679
it was like a 45 minute exercise that they started
909
00:51:49.699 --> 00:51:55.159
doing a couple of times a week and measurably demonstrably
910
00:51:55.539 --> 00:52:01.320
his anxiety was dramatically reduced. And when anxiety is dramatically reduced,
911
00:52:01.340 --> 00:52:05.599
what happens to performance dramatically increases on all aspects of life.
912
00:52:05.679 --> 00:52:07.599
So one of the things that I encourage about play
913
00:52:07.719 --> 00:52:10.280
is you might not have to go all the way
914
00:52:10.340 --> 00:52:13.340
back to being a kid, although that success leaves clues.
915
00:52:13.980 --> 00:52:16.500
And I find that, man, I started doing the same
916
00:52:16.559 --> 00:52:19.760
thing with so many areas of my life. And man,
917
00:52:19.909 --> 00:52:23.610
it was transformational. The ability to look at what you're
918
00:52:23.650 --> 00:52:28.309
doing as joyful and playful, as opposed to, a grind
919
00:52:28.329 --> 00:52:30.250
that we have to do. We realize that it's a
920
00:52:30.389 --> 00:52:32.989
choice that we are making. It's an attitude. And if
921
00:52:33.030 --> 00:52:36.210
we show up with the right attitude, the best outcomes
922
00:52:36.269 --> 00:52:36.869
are possible.
923
00:52:38.329 --> 00:52:41.590
When it comes to motivation, I'd be curious what you
924
00:52:41.610 --> 00:52:48.079
think about this. There are some that are deeply motivated
925
00:52:48.139 --> 00:52:52.039
by people who doubt them. Haters, some may call them.
926
00:52:52.340 --> 00:52:56.260
There are others who are deeply motivated and inspired by
927
00:52:56.360 --> 00:53:00.099
people who love them. by people who support them. And
928
00:53:00.139 --> 00:53:02.920
maybe we all go through different chapters of our lives
929
00:53:02.980 --> 00:53:07.739
where we're motivated by different things. What are you and
930
00:53:07.820 --> 00:53:10.769
what do you think is most useful long-term?
931
00:53:11.449 --> 00:53:16.849
Yeah, that's a lovely question, Ryan. I do not dispute
932
00:53:17.130 --> 00:53:21.110
that motivation can come from all different corners of our
933
00:53:21.239 --> 00:53:25.989
human experience. And it does, right? Even just the two
934
00:53:26.030 --> 00:53:28.190
sort of black and white example that you just gave there.
935
00:53:28.210 --> 00:53:33.679
I'm not really talking about motivation. I'm talking about the
936
00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:39.960
choice that we make to understand that all we have
937
00:53:40.260 --> 00:53:45.920
is now. Future is, you know, the past is gone.
938
00:53:45.940 --> 00:53:49.530
The future is an illusion that never arrives. All we
939
00:53:49.570 --> 00:53:52.570
have is this concept of now. And for every moment
940
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:56.989
that we choose and everything is a choice not to
941
00:53:57.219 --> 00:54:01.840
be who we want to be in that moment, we suffer.
942
00:54:03.659 --> 00:54:07.280
And that suffering is chosen. That's not to say that
943
00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:09.900
bad things can't happen to great people because we know
944
00:54:09.940 --> 00:54:12.360
that to be true. My mom just passed away a
945
00:54:12.380 --> 00:54:15.800
couple of weeks ago and it was just absolutely heartbreaking.
946
00:54:16.199 --> 00:54:22.099
And deciding how you show up in that moment is everything.
947
00:54:23.099 --> 00:54:26.840
There's room for sadness. There's room for grief. And yet
948
00:54:27.070 --> 00:54:29.869
deciding how we want to show up, that's the whole
949
00:54:29.929 --> 00:54:33.409
tenet of the basic tenet of stoicism, right? It's not
950
00:54:33.469 --> 00:54:36.309
that things won't happen. It's the attitude that we bring
951
00:54:36.369 --> 00:54:40.590
to what does that matters. And so whether we're talking about,
952
00:54:41.010 --> 00:54:43.030
you know, good things happening or bad things happening or
953
00:54:43.050 --> 00:54:44.929
what type of person am I, I am a person
954
00:54:44.969 --> 00:54:48.179
who wants to choose my response to the stimulus that
955
00:54:48.280 --> 00:54:51.900
comes in. And this is what is often true about athletes.
956
00:54:51.920 --> 00:54:53.619
That's not to say that they don't get motivated by
957
00:54:54.019 --> 00:54:57.139
someone who talked trash or that they're out there playing
958
00:54:57.199 --> 00:54:59.400
for their mother who just passed away a couple of
959
00:54:59.420 --> 00:55:02.750
weeks ago. Those can be motivating. But when you're trying
960
00:55:02.789 --> 00:55:05.150
to decide how you're going to show up day in
961
00:55:05.190 --> 00:55:10.030
and day out, do you have a positive, joyful, playful
962
00:55:10.090 --> 00:55:14.800
framework for that or a negative one? And the results
963
00:55:14.860 --> 00:55:19.340
are crystal clear that people who have a, well, first
964
00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:20.989
of all, think about who you want to be around
965
00:55:21.570 --> 00:55:23.530
right now. Anyone, do you want to be around someone
966
00:55:23.570 --> 00:55:27.289
who's mean and nasty or positive and supportive and brings
967
00:55:27.329 --> 00:55:30.590
out the best in you? It's really obvious. Now we
968
00:55:30.610 --> 00:55:33.789
all like the panacea and the Pollyanna, those are at
969
00:55:33.829 --> 00:55:36.070
the opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm just talking about
970
00:55:36.090 --> 00:55:39.630
people who genuinely show up authentically. We all want to
971
00:55:39.650 --> 00:55:43.550
be around those people more than their opposite. And so
972
00:55:44.320 --> 00:55:46.679
You know, it just so happens that this is another,
973
00:55:46.699 --> 00:55:49.679
this is like where your intuition is right. That is
974
00:55:49.739 --> 00:55:51.340
a better way to show up in the world. The
975
00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:53.840
science says you're going to be happier. You're going to get,
976
00:55:54.119 --> 00:55:57.610
you know, more out of the experiences that you want
977
00:55:57.719 --> 00:56:01.170
to create for yourself in this life. And man, if
978
00:56:01.210 --> 00:56:05.059
you're looking for results there, it's not even close. So
979
00:56:05.260 --> 00:56:08.599
it's sort of like the stack, the reasons for being
980
00:56:08.679 --> 00:56:13.579
a positive, kind, thoughtful person so dramatically outweigh the negative,
981
00:56:13.860 --> 00:56:18.840
you know, bullshitting, counterproductive hater. Like that's just not a
982
00:56:18.880 --> 00:56:22.099
way to show up in the world. So I put this, again,
983
00:56:22.280 --> 00:56:25.300
the book Never Play It Safe, which I really believe
984
00:56:25.320 --> 00:56:27.719
that it's a blueprint for how to access the best
985
00:56:27.739 --> 00:56:33.559
stuff in life. This approaching with a thoughtful, kind, playful mind.
986
00:56:34.909 --> 00:56:39.070
point of view is available to everybody and it's helpful.
987
00:56:39.489 --> 00:56:42.130
The same is true with time, realizing that life is
988
00:56:42.190 --> 00:56:46.340
long and not feeling simultaneously urgent on the short term,
989
00:56:46.429 --> 00:56:48.980
but that you have time and you get to explore.
990
00:56:49.940 --> 00:56:51.699
It's when you don't feel like you have the time
991
00:56:51.840 --> 00:56:54.119
to run the experiments that you have to choose the
992
00:56:54.260 --> 00:56:57.119
shittiest thing, which is right in front of you. But
993
00:56:57.280 --> 00:56:59.780
a life is created, the life of the people that
994
00:56:59.820 --> 00:57:02.400
you respect and admire and appreciate, whether that's your neighbor
995
00:57:02.440 --> 00:57:05.710
or somebody someone you really admire on the internet, that
996
00:57:05.769 --> 00:57:09.889
life was created. It was designed with intention. And that
997
00:57:09.949 --> 00:57:13.550
is available to you if you choose it. That's, again,
998
00:57:13.889 --> 00:57:17.079
the foundation that I'm coming from in Never Play It Safe,
999
00:57:17.139 --> 00:57:21.139
is that these things are naturally, these tools, time, our attention,
1000
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:24.400
the ability to sort of play, that those are all
1001
00:57:24.539 --> 00:57:28.789
naturally residing within us. And because of various social, cultural mechanisms,
1002
00:57:28.829 --> 00:57:32.920
they've been turned off. I'm urging us to turn them on.
1003
00:57:32.940 --> 00:57:35.500
They're all available before us. And it turns out that
1004
00:57:35.539 --> 00:57:37.679
when you do, magic happens.
1005
00:57:42.639 --> 00:57:46.239
It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you
1006
00:57:46.280 --> 00:57:48.860
for being a member of the end of the podcast club.
1007
00:57:48.929 --> 00:57:52.550
If you are, send me a note. Ryan at learningleader.com.
1008
00:57:52.570 --> 00:57:55.230
Let me know what you learned from this great conversation
1009
00:57:55.650 --> 00:58:00.179
with Chase Jarvis. A few takeaways from my notes. We
1010
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:05.619
are all wildly creative. However, it's trained out of us
1011
00:58:06.019 --> 00:58:11.719
as we grow older. Creativity is foundational to all human beings.
1012
00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:15.789
It's on us to tap into our creativity and get
1013
00:58:15.829 --> 00:58:19.309
it out of us to help solve problems, to create optionality,
1014
00:58:19.469 --> 00:58:24.489
and to be more innovative. Regardless of your job, becoming
1015
00:58:24.570 --> 00:58:28.150
more creative will make you better at it. And then
1016
00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:34.920
Play infinite games with transformational people, not transactional people. Life
1017
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:38.949
can be a series of transactions, or you can play
1018
00:58:38.969 --> 00:58:42.630
the long game with transformational people. It seems like when
1019
00:58:42.670 --> 00:58:46.050
we give to others, genuinely try to help them, and
1020
00:58:46.090 --> 00:58:51.789
have a service orientation, good things happen for all. There
1021
00:58:51.829 --> 00:58:55.800
are transactional people, as I said, and transformational leaders. Let's strive.
1022
00:58:56.280 --> 00:59:01.829
And then, I love this quote. character, people. And then,
1023
00:59:01.849 --> 00:59:04.630
I love this quote, a bird sitting on a tree
1024
00:59:05.159 --> 00:59:08.960
is never afraid of the branch breaking because its trust
1025
00:59:09.320 --> 00:59:13.280
is not on the branch but on its own wings.
1026
00:59:13.780 --> 00:59:18.449
Believe in yourself and your ability to bounce back if
1027
00:59:18.510 --> 00:59:22.289
the thing doesn't go your way. Set up a series
1028
00:59:22.590 --> 00:59:26.449
of experiments. Not all of them will work. but you'll
1029
00:59:26.469 --> 00:59:29.110
be better for having tried and then tried again and
1030
00:59:29.150 --> 00:59:33.880
then tried again. We learn from both our success and
1031
00:59:34.300 --> 00:59:38.139
our failures. It's all about how we choose to respond.
1032
00:59:38.760 --> 00:59:40.119
Once again, I would say thank you so much for
1033
00:59:40.159 --> 00:59:42.619
continuing to spread the word and telling a friend or two, hey,
1034
00:59:42.679 --> 00:59:45.500
you should listen. to this episode of The Learning Leader
1035
00:59:45.519 --> 00:59:48.099
Show with Chase Jarvis. I think he'll help you become
1036
00:59:48.139 --> 00:59:50.079
a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that,
1037
00:59:50.360 --> 00:59:53.400
and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and
1038
00:59:53.420 --> 00:59:56.300
you subscribe to the show, so important, and you're rated
1039
00:59:56.320 --> 00:59:59.599
hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review, it
1040
00:59:59.619 --> 01:00:01.820
only takes you a few seconds. By doing all of that,
1041
01:00:02.480 --> 01:00:05.539
you give me the opportunity to do what I love
1042
01:00:05.579 --> 01:00:08.239
on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever
1043
01:00:08.500 --> 01:00:11.139
be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon.
1044
01:00:11.320 --> 01:00:11.559
Can't wait.
