Mo Gawdat: This Is Causing 70% Of Heart Attacks In Young People! A WARNING for Workaholics!

There are only three ways that stress will ruin you, but most of the ways that stress kills us is because of but

this

is completely under your control. Mo go D is back and

this

time he is on a mission to help millions of

people

manage their stress no matter what their circumstances stress is very good for you until it kills you and what most

people

don't understand is that it is an addiction stress is a badge of honor now it means I am wanted, I am needed and the reality is that 80% of the things you do at work are just to try your hand at life but we tell ourselves we are too busy , that's a lie, but the truth is that we are getting to the point where this turns into exhaustion, anxiety, panic

attacks

that we are all suffering from.

Now I think the most interesting part of stress is understanding that what breaks us is the prolonged application of obsessions and annoyances. Annoyances are stressors that are triggered every day and there are so many of them that in the first 10 minutes of your day you get 10 15. Stressors and then obsessions create a lot of stress as a result of the LI you told yourself, this is Pretty seriously, what do we do about it? So you stress in four modalities, mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually, and each of them is a different language. So your mental stress speaks to you in a language that is different from your emotional stress, but if you learn that language then you will be able to easily deal with that stress when it happens and they are simple techniques so we need to cover as many of them as we can.

First of all, congratulations to diio gang, we have made some progress. 63% of you who listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%, so if you ever liked any of the videos, I posted if you like this channel. Can you do me a quick favor and hit that subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you think and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. How are you? I'm here again. I love it. It's always a pleasure to be with you.

Steve. I'm doing. I'm somewhere between the best time of my life and the most interesting turning point of my life. That? you mean, I think I think, by the way, thanks to you, by the way, and many others, I think my message is reaching a lot of people, I think that's really, really, really feels. It is a great honor to be able to progress my mission and what I stand for, but I have to say that I think the world is changing in so many ways that doing what we have always done may not give the same results, so I feel like I have to revisit it. very deeply, how can I continue to help, how can I continue to explain what I think will probably be the most necessary thing in the times to come, but also, I think most people don't do it.

Realize how different the world will be in the next 5 years. Are you talking about AI again? Let it not just be AI Steve, we know it's not just AI, it's not just AI, what is it? I remember the last time we saw each other to finish. I was telling you that we're hitting the perfect storm, uh, economics, geopolitics, uh, climate, AI, uh, synthetic biology, um, yeah, and I think the highlight is what I call the end of the truth if you think about what is about to happen in our world. and uh, yeah, I will openly say that this is going to be the most stressful time of any generation that we've ever known, and I, uh, it's so disruptive in so many ways, it's so disruptive that it doesn't have to be stressful.

It can be sailed so beautifully, but it will be so unusual, so unknown to many of us. I think what will be the cause of stress. The main reason is the pace and unfamiliarity of change, not devastation. of the impact if you think about it, like I said, I think we can all get through this. I mean, a big part of my focus this year is to help explain how people can see everything that's happening and really navigate. go through it in a way that doesn't stop progress if you want, but so much change in such a short time, I think the reality is that humans get very stressed when we have a lot of unknown changes, you know, happening. in front of us and I think this is where we find ourselves today, in a world where I think it is led by the economy, the level of debt in Western societies, that cannot be solved with the normal execution of the fiscal policies that the governments. to dilute our economies in ways that are affecting, I mean, basically everyone feels, but I have to admit that I think you know that the current economic and geopolitical view of the world is leading many governments in the world to, um, yeah, a to create um to create conflicts that are going to expand beyond the current Horizon I I don't know if that's how we want to start the conversation, but I think you know how it is wars are not the result of conflict conflict is the necessary trigger for starting a war, uh, or the illusion of a conflict is the necessary trigger to start a war that helps fiscal policy and establishes GE's political stance on situations and I think our world is becoming, interestingly enough, a world where the truth is transformed in ways that you and I are incapable of understanding so that we can accept leaders doing things that we should not allow them to do and as a result of that, most of us are I will be in a dilemma economically politically, sometimes in terms of safety and sometimes, um, purpose... in very, very unusual times, when you think about the times we live in more broadly, what's the most important kind of context in your mind? so that the viewer understands if he is trying to understand how you see the world right now because you have written a book on the topic of stress and I know that you are someone who knows so many different books. in your mind and in your soul, what you are always working on, sometimes for years and years, sometimes those books never come out, so spend your energy and time writing a book about stress for me, as someone who knows well.

It's kind of a hint of a perspective that you have, yeah, about the nature of the world, what is that? n the nature of the world, what is the backdrop that you are looking at, is the main topic in my mind, uh, first of all, I wrote This is because my co-author Ellis Alis came to see me at one point and said : "You know, you can't keep writing about happiness and well-being without addressing stress." Alice herself had a very stressful time, you know. his life when he was 20 years old and he learned through it that it's not the events in your life that stress you, but the way you handle them that makes it right and that's why we started working on this around 2021, but I suddenly recognized that this is probably the topic of the moment, so stress is part of a grand strategy to try to get a million people out of stress every year, simply because I believe that the increasing stress in the world is due to events out of most people's control uh and two is because stress will cause more stress so what's happening in our world today you walk down the streets and it feels good you know you can you can easily see that people They are struggling economically, for example. and then they are behaving in ways that stress others out, let us know that it is a little less safe in the city of London, it is a little more difficult to make ends meet and so on, so the truth of the matter is that the Events are leading those who are not able to deal with stress to a situation where they will be more stressed, okay?

And if you ask me what the state of the world is, I think the state of the world. world is that let me try to explain this, think of hunter gatherers, just uh, when the hunter gatherers, um, when the best hunter in the tribe went out hunting, he could probably feed the tribe for a couple more days, just when the best the farmer, you know, ran his farm the best, you could probably feed the tribe for one more month, just when the best manufacturer made something that you could probably feed or serve the world for one more month, the scale continues to grow, but at the same time. the best hunter's profit was probably two wives plus the best farmer's profit was probably millions of dollars the best industrialist's profit was probably billions of dollars the prize the reward that is obtained as a result of automation, so think Consider it As the conduit through which you put your efforts to get something on the other side has been magnified for a long time, with what is about to happen from an economic and technological point of view, the profits will become enormous, so the owner of a platform, like open AI for example, will be almost entirely proprietary for a while until the product we call intelligence is discontinued, they will almost have a plug in the wall where you know you plug it in and you get 100 IQ plus points More correctly, the amount of power that this generates for the company, for the country, for the economy, for the culture.

It becomes prohibitive for any other company and any other culture, so everyone competes, right. Most people don't talk about it because if you want, you are not aware of the magnitude of the conflict, so we are about to head into a world where nations that are struggling economically have found an opportunity to get out of where they are, at the expense of the rest of society. that's going to cause a lot of stress it's going to cause stress in job replacement it's going to cause stress economically it's going to cause stress about the uncertainty of the geopolitical landscape uh it's going to cause stress around you know, it's me Even I'm not able to keep up to which technology is changing, so that becomes all that change, all that uncertainty, I think it's going to cause a situation where a lot of us are dealing with things that might make us anxious I was looking at some of Ray's work Kell, he's obviously one of the world's leading futurists and there was a talk called um, I think his name was Michael Simmons who studied his work and produced some predictions based on his predictions and said if you're 10 now, when you turn 60 You will experience a change of one year at the current rate, in exactly 10 days if you are 40 now you will experience a change of one year when you reach 60.

The change in 3 months at the current rate and the 21st century will experience. I think he said 10,000 years of change, which is a thousand times more or whatever than the previous century, and I remember thinking how can you navigate that without you. knowing how to lose lose your mind to be honest, if the world is changing at such a speed and you feel like that, you would surely feel powerless to some extent, yeah, I mean, one of the first principles of stress release is the idea of limit, is the idea. of being able to choose what to let in and what not to let in because there's that constant trying to keep up with what's happening uh that uh is beyond human capacity and and actually uh you know, I, like I said, I can't even . stay up to date with what's going on.

I don't know if you've seen the latest issues of Chad jpt or Sora or whatever, now you can have full conversations, full conversations with an engine that looks very human, you know, changes its tones, that answers. in a very clever way that is so political and so well presented you know when you ask the hard questions he will say things like oh no you know this is subject to human ingenuity and when humans do this they really like that a machine is so good. in giving me the answer that politicians give me and it's quite interesting when you really think that this is the last time we talk about it, you know, AI was what a year ago, yeah, yeah, there's a moment where you Well-being is not In fact, all the time your well-being is not the result of the events that happen in your life.

You know, like I said, the motto of stress is that it's not the events in your life that stress you out, but the way you deal with them that does the right thing and there's a point where we were chatting before we started filming, You know, you and I make decisions, you and I make decisions that stress us out well and, believe it or not, we make those decisions not because we're not smart enough to recognize the impact we make with those decisions because we're so caught up in that cycle and that cycle keeps accelerating and you get caught up in it and you and I are the kind of people that you know think. a little too much of ourselves like I can go on I can go I can go faster I can go faster right I can last longer H the truth is that no I think I think we are entering a time of human evolution if you ask For me, it's about time that you make your well-being your top priority because it seems to me that we are all forgetting about all the big picture things, you know, economic and geopolitical, etc., but Ask me how many people you know H friends acquaintances coworkers whatever They are not stressed.

There are studies that will tell you that between 70 and 80% of visits to clinics or doctors are due to stress-related illnesses. pretty serious and you know, sometimes you look back on the days of covid and say this is the mostbiggest pandemic of our time, it's not stress, it's the biggest pandemic of our time by a very, very large margin, almost everyone you know is stressed. In an interesting way right now stress in itself is not a bad thing, you know, if you have a presentation or a podcast with an important person tomorrow and you are preparing for it, stress is good for you, but the truth is that we're getting to the point where the good is turning into exhaustion it's turning into anxiety it's turning into panic

attacks

it's turning into you know, it's really getting high you know we're all suffering so we have to change we have than to find a way that we can actually deal with our world as it is because we're not going to be able to change that world so that we're not as stressed about it as the world is doing uh you know, it dictates to us that we should be like that of stressed out in the book, he describes stress as the new addiction, mhm, why are we addicted to stress?

It's a status symbol, it's a status symbol, so there are two ways we invite stress with pride. our life in a way is I'm busy it's a badge of honor right now it's like I'm busy it means I'm wanted, I'm needed okay, it means look at me you know I have enough to do right and something Unfortunately, if you're not in that space, you start to tell yourself that maybe I should be in that space, the opposite of Sanity if you ask me right, the rest is because we can't sit with our brains, we just can't.

Say, look, I'm just going to sit and reflect on the week because if you know, if you start to sit with yourself, the demons come in like, oh, you're not, so, you're not good enough, oh, you know, They don't you liked when you said this or well, all the negative thoughts arise and interestingly, that psychological discomfort if you want, one of the easiest ways Beyond social media, one of the easiest ways to get rid of it is to keep your Your brain is busy with something else so you keep adding things correctly and in a very interesting way I think you and I experience that you make decisions, you design your life and then the stress follows two and a half months later, okay I know with certainty.

This is my fourth book, and although Alice is really doing an incredible amount of work necessary for the book, I burned all the books, publishing a book is just exhausting work simply because people don't buy books because of the content they contain, they buy them. because of the marketing you do on them and you know it's my biggest job if I want to get a million people out of stress. Simply have people reserve the book in advance. because if they pre-order the book, the book appears on the best-seller list and then a million people, not a million, but you know, 100,000 people see it every day and think about the stress.

The challenge is that you know it's going to happen. and yet you had a couple of talks and four podcast recordings and a trip to do this and right in the middle of all of this, which was actually my year this year and you know my mom fell and you know I lost my brother. and my sister and you know it was a very difficult year, but I didn't know this was going to be the case in November when I was planning well for my February and March, so we go through those cycles and suddenly life shows up and says okay, let me show you what's okay and yet, you know, on the next book or the next tour or the next work appointment, we just overload ourselves to the point that it's beyond human, that's all.

If you ask me, it has all the symptoms of addiction, okay, you know, it's a substance, um, you know, almost, that we're using because it justifies us that you know this is the way we should live, so what would be my workaholic brain I say my workaholic brain would refute you and say well, if I don't load my calendar and if I don't work 100 hours a week, then I'm going to lose my own potential, I'm not going to live the life that I could have lived. , I could, you know, if I keep working like this, I'll be able to get a big plane, a mansion and a sports car, I'll be free and I'll have the best vacations and the best food, so I'm not really doing anything at all, you know, really.

In fact, the week you don't work is the week you are most productive, you know it, in fact, you know it. I mean, think about it, huh? I could load my calendar with a million podcast interviews and that would never give me time to write a book. The reason we, we, you, can make a difference, can make a difference in anything. your your your relationship with your loved ones your career your uh you know uh uh a contribution to whatever it is because you allow yourself those spaces in which creativity occurs in which ingenuity occurs in which real connection occurs in which you know and you know that in fact you know with certainty that you are heading to Australia that you are not going to produce anything on that trip other than consuming what you have produced before correct M yes, that is true yes and so on and so on the question is where is the balance is the balance is the balance on me loading my calendar for my potential or it's the balance on freeing up my calendar for my potential so this year here, for example, I've struggled with two things, I mean my The team is an amazing team that He's very motivated, he's very hard-working, and everyone has a separate responsibility, so everyone would take advantage of my availability to get things done, and then what do they do?

A message will appear and say: I have this. awesome guest, you know this Steven Bartlet gu is a great guy, you should have him on your podcast, you'll be in London that day, why don't you invite him and then someone else will be like, oh but wait, you know this newspaper? wants to talk to you and then a third party will say oh, but there's a client who wants you to talk and so on, and what ends up happening is that you and I don't blame you or each of us when we're presented with opportunities, you say , come on man, try a little bit, right, two things happen, you push yourself to the point where you end up burned out, okay, by the way, I say that with love, but especially when you get older like your body just can do it.

Don't put up with it anymore, at the same time what ends up happening is that you are depriving yourself of true productivity. True productivity is that 1 hour in the morning when you are not stressed and your calendar is not loaded. or you sit down and write the perfect email to someone that changes something or you make the perfect call to someone that does something for you or you write a concept that fits into your next book and so on and so on and that applies to everyone Hey, it's that time in the morning when I make my coffee and sit with Hannah, my wife, and we connect so deeply.

It is that hour and the question is how valuable is that hour compared to consumption. hours, all the hours that you are used to not realizing your potential, but reacting to the potential that you have already achieved and throughout the work, I mean, when I ran my business at Google H, I refused to be in meetings I openly thought why and by the way I encouraged my people uh the idea of ​​showing up at a meeting is just to say hello by the way I'm here I clicked in the morning uh I stamped my entry card or whatever I don't know what it's called in English but I attended and I'm alive look at me I'm sending you an email just so you know I exist right I think in my entire career 12 years at Google I sent four emails I started four emails okay I responded to emails that basically said Mo what do you think of that?

If an email didn't say mo, what did you think of that? I wouldn't answer why they don't ask my opinion. Why should I do it? Why didn't you send more initiation emails because you initiate one email and you get a bunch of emails right and what's the point? Why don't you tell yourself? Hey, by the way, I don't have I need to prove that I exist, the proof that I exist is that I give my numbers correctly and that's why when I started an email, people read it, so how did you do things? Then I called people on the phone or walks or hallway conversations or you know, a quick um like, by the way, what's up with this?

We had weekly reviews and let you know a lot of connections, human connections, by the way, most of the time, nothing requires you to interrupt the flow most of the time to interrupt. The flow of the weekend, nothing can be discussed in the weekly review on Monday, right? And I think the reality is that we are creating you, we are saying that it is an addiction, you are creating all those circumstances to make it seem like. it's all so you know it's so crucial and so urgent and so important because we can squeeze in that 5% more efficiency, yes, I'm giving up the 5% more and the 95% of the efficiency that you can achieve with 20% of the work I'm trying to find out if you have to admit that you will be less innovative and productive if you give up your addiction to stress because this is obviously the B Li that I think I have with myself, if I'm honest, I think I think I tell myself the story that working very, very hard, working all the hours and really dedicating myself to it is because I'm going to get closer to my potential and one day I won't have to work as hard as my life will be. free and these are the kind of narratives that you know, I tell myself and as I say them, I know it's embarrassing, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but this is identical to the story of, you know, there's this very, very interesting fable of the billionaire who goes to the beach somewhere and finds a fisherman and the fisherman goes fishing and gets two fish, you know, he sells one in the market and then he feeds his family with the other and then the billionaire says that No. no, no, no, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're doing this wrong, you should, you know, go get four fish or as many as you can, uh, and you know, and basically sell them at the market and he says why and He says so you can buy a bigger boat and what do I do with a bigger boat you buy even more you get even more fish well and you know what I do with it you sell it all and you get a fleet and you know what you do with the fleet you get even more fish and He says why and he says that then you can retire happy and sit, you know, live in a place near the ocean and go out on your boat every morning and the guy says but I'm going to go out on my boat every morning like why?

What are you telling me this story? we've been given a dream we've been given a dream okay and that dream is more is better faster is better we've been given a dream that says I need I need a billion dollars to feel comfortable no I really mean you're not you're not a guy elegant don't drive a Lamborghini right so like that The truth is that we can really have a much bigger impact and an impact on what, by the way, because if the impact is "I'm going to change the world," it's a better and more important impact of the What I'm gonna have. hug my daughter because think about it uh relatively I'm going to spend time with my girlfriend or my wife I'm going to know relatively is that you are successful in what you set as a priority and there is a balance somewhere is there a balance? that says I'm going to limit my life to make an impact, but 95% is right, give up 5% and save 80% of the effort.

Mo, most people when people go to work, I'm going to say this is going to bother a lot of people, but 80% of the things you do at work are just to show that your life is okay. 20% of what you do at work actually hits the numbers. Well, that's the truth of all the work generated and in your own day. you know, can you really do it with the goal of achieving 100% of my goal, 110% of my goal, but I'm going to do it with minimal effort in a way that's fair to my employer? I'm not cheating. Anyone I'm delivering to is the problem that we don't have a goal because I don't have a goal, so for me it's because I can.

I have to maximize everything I can do for financial gain or, you know. gains in followers or numbers on the podcast, etc. Amazing Just add an H goal and say and maximize my well-being in the process, suddenly the equation becomes incredibly different, it allows you to do this for longer, it allows you to do it more effectively. One of the fundamental models of stress is something we call the Three Ls: learning limit and correct lesson and limit, believe it or not, is the absolute core of many of the things we call discomfort, so let me try to explain this as much as possible. high level. the sources of stress in your life, uh, we call them a lot of stress for NN, right, and you know, trauma, obsessions, annoyances and noise, trauma happens from outside of you, it's a major change in your life and you It hits very hard and breaks you for a short time, but believe it or not, 91% of people will face at least one, but often several traumatic events that induce PTSD in their lives, which is like loss. of a loved one or losing your job so unexpectedly. to the point where you have to suffer or whatever, it's okay to be in a war zone, etc.

Believe it or not, 93% of them will recover within 3 months. Trauma is not what breaks us, the interesting thing that breaks us is the long application. of obsessions, annoyances and traumas and noise obsessions are macro issues that you tell yourself don't exist in the real world at all,okay, like I have a belly, a small belly so that no one loves me. You can, you can obsess over this. for the rest of your life and make it your life story and basically create a lot of stress as a result of that script that you told yourself, okay, you know, the annoyances are the small, the small forms of that, you know things that It's triggered every day when you walk past the mirror on your way out the door and say, Well, man, you're still fat or whatever, believe it or not, most of our stress comes from what we call discomforts, the discomforts are stressors that don't break you, they're not traumas, okay, but there's a lot of them that you include in your life a lot of them when Alice wrote uh uh, you know the limit of the chapter, she wrote a beautiful script about the first 5 or 10 minutes of your day and began to count the stressors that are triggered in your life in those minutes from the very loud alarm to the moment you open your social networks and see something annoying or open WhatsApp and receive a message that you don't like it, and so on.

Okay, and this is five minutes, 10 minutes before you even had your coffee, you get 10 15 stressors. The trick is how beneficial they have been to your life and, if we are aware, if we can look at those stressors and say, wait. I'm going to take an inventory of all the things that stressed me out last week, well, a genuinely honest inventory, and I'm going to say to myself, "oh, by the way, I don't need this, I don't need this, I don't need this." I don't need this I don't need this right my commute to work if I leave 10 minutes early would it be easier if I leave 10 minutes late?

Would it be easier if I brought music or the CEO Diary podcast with me? easier, true, and if you really look carefully and deliberately at all the nuances of your life. How many of them can you limit? I promise you can limit countless hassles. You can delete that friend who bothers you, okay? by simply sending him a text message. saying I don't want to be your friend anymore or just ending conversations or when they tell you to send you something or talk to you about something you say oh very interesting right, instead of getting involved in those things, can you limit the you know, the amount of food junk that you get, that you let into your life, can you limit the amount of restrictions and control that you put on yourself in your life and millions of little things, a lot of them feel like obligations, really do they?

Yes, do you want to live out of obligation? You know what I mean? Friendships feel like obligations, we've committed to doing something, going to an event, participating in a charity, whatever it is, you know, and now they feel like obligations, so we do. Like we have to carry it out even if it's

causing

us stress or just comfort, she's amazing coming from you because you're one of the most astute business people. I know I'm not even talking about myself, although I'm really talking about myself because Some of the things I was thinking about feel like obligations and I wish I could just and and and how do you do that in business Steve?

I know you very well, you would say you would stay, you would say you are sincere no, no explanation, you wouldn't even apologize, those are the things I've already dealt with because you know old Steve overestimated the future Steve's Capac St, old man Mo and Future Old Steve sew Future Steve because you know Old Steve is you. Be super ambitious and he doesn't understand that there are only 24 hours in a day and you know, look, I mean, I'm not immune to this. Actually, it's my biggest problem, my biggest challenge is this beginning of this year. I sat down and realized I had 18 full-time jobs, sounds familiar, yeah right, and I cut them down to nine, right, and I went to everyone I love and celebrated and said, look, I cut them down by 50% and they looked at me and said You're still nine, you must have had to upset some people.

I just said, that's it, we're not going to do this project, you're going to hurt some people's feelings, honestly, by the way, I think we're talking about your life. and my life, but this applies to everyone listening, right, you have this person who calls you constantly and says, hey, let's go out for coffee, and coffee is very annoying, right, and you say, yeah, but I've known them for 20 years and they're really lovely. I swear I had one of my wonderful closest friends who was really struggling with his ego so most conversations revolved around him trying to prove he's good enough and I had a lovely conversation with them.

I said at the end of one of those coffee meetings I said I don't think we should meet again He said What do you mean you're traveling? I told him no, no, every time I sit next to you you make me miserable and he said why. and I said because you're constantly trying to do ab and C, can you change that? Please, of course, simple H, if he managed to change it, I would have stayed, he didn't manage to change it, we met again and I said, look, I love you. a lot and I think we should be friends but not to the point where we meet every Sunday, it doesn't make any sense for me to volunteer part of my son on Sunday to suffer well and in fact it is very possible to do it with love saying, look, I realize you're in this stage, it's not my responsibility to get you out of it, by the way, that's not what friends are.

My responsibility as a friend is to be there when you ask me something specific that relates to what you're going through. I'm capable of delivering, but just sitting there for 4 hours listening to something I can't change doesn't make any sense and some of our listeners will get stuck on that. relationship right that's really abusive or you don't really know effective or and and what they're doing is an obligation you know we've been together for years is you know is he's he or she's not that bad and that's the truth H You know? Can? Can you make decisions that simply say: I will put my well-being, my mental well-being, first?

What is the short-term cost of putting ourselves first? Because that is often what prevents us from doing so. clear short term cost I understand the potential long term gain, but the short term thing is what keeps us in prison, so Hannah, my wonderful wife, is a therapist, so therapy is not an issue. You know, psychology is not a topic. I did a lot of research. uh, so she's teaching me quite a bit and one of the things that opened my eyes the most is that she said we love consistency, we hate change, even if change is good for us, it's okay, so if we do it, now You know, it follows a script that says "I." I'm ugly or I'm not good enough or whatever changing that script that script is painful but changing that script is more painful because your coping mechanism says I'm familiar with this pain I know how to deal with this pain I don't want the uncertainty so you know the way we started this podcast and you asked me what is the most stressful thing about the modern world, is that lack of familiarity with the future, where we can't know what it will be like and that's why we resist. we resist change we say look I'm in this place I know how to do it very well my back hurts it keeps me on long flights it's doing this it's doing that but I'm really very familiar with it okay I always make a great joke about this when I left Google X, so, uh, I was um, you know, obviously, soul for happy was booming.

You know, my billion happiness mission was 10 million happiness when we started the first printing of the book and 10 million. It took me eight weeks like you have to say to yourself sorry for my English Google as you know, I have to do it, I have to focus on this, but when I left Google and Google was very kind to me and I was very lucky and I made a reasonable effort. amount of money I don't have most of it now, but at that time I started saying to myself, but what about the future? I'm my daughter, okay, but what about my ex and his needs?

What about this? What's up with that? the financial resources to do this typical engineer I started that spreadsheet, okay, I put in all the possible expenses, I put in all the possible, you know, um, source of income, etc., and it seemed fine, so my brain went offers to tell me, oh, but wait. Mo, what if there is a nuclear war because you know that the Iranians of the Islamic Republic do not agree with the Americans and that nuclear dust reaches Dubai, so your real estate portfolio in Dubai disappears and what will happen then? ? And yes, if you want.

If you continue to hold on to your safety mechanisms, you're going to end up in a place where there's always something that could go wrong and the answer was, if that happens, I think I'll be much, much more. worried about other things besides how much income am I making at the right time and the truth is for each of us we are afraid of change so we stick to the familiar okay and the familiar could be killing us and it's quite interesting that we know it could be killing us, whatever scale you're on in the world, right?

You know, you're studying something, no, you're not enjoying it, but it looks familiar. I followed that path, it's been 3 years now. true and I'm not saying jump in and say that's it and start again that consistency matters but tell yourself I have one more year to finish I will finish this year with minimal effort to achieve the result and I will start looking at other parts of my life reinvesting my hours correctly. I know you're stuck in that relationship, but dating is horrible. I don't want to leave that person around, yes, but you know that if it doesn't work out, sooner or later you will break up.

I'm leaving the right person and I think my story and yours are great examples of what happens when you leave that person. I don't mean yours, but mine, like when you are available so that when the right person appears, you will be there, if you know that your true obligation to yourself is to put yourself in those situations of uncertainty, you chose calculated risks instead of letting that the world pushes you, you know, like Alice constantly talks about the world, it will always push you to heal or change direction, okay, very interesting, the way we write both of them is very, very interesting because Alice is, already You know, so soft, feminine and spiritual in her writing.

I'm a fucking engineer like everything to me is an equation and a bullet point and so on. So I always say the world will push you to change direction or learn Brainiac. She says the world will push you to change direction or heal. They are more or less the same, but learning is like a kind of Brainiac process. of it and the healing is then, why not? Why not put yourself in the place where the world wants you to be so you can change direction? Why not make that decision yourself? Many of us deal with the version of loss, right? and this is me, you know, Daniel Kman, he passed away, I think three or four days ago, and he did, yeah, he's a really incredible writer, an incredible thinker, he was an incredible, truly incredible individual, who has inspired so many. people, including me, in many ways. um, but I remember that article that he produced, I think in the 1980s about the loss of the AV version.

I know the paintings, yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that, yeah, and in that work where he discovers this term version loss, he talks about how, um, humans. They need the gain to be two or three times what they lose, the possible loss, yes, yes, so the pain we experience in losing 10 pounds to the ground or 1 to the ground is not equal to the pleasure we experience in finding 10 pounds. You'd have to find 20 or 30 to equal the pain of losing 10 and that says, I think part of why people stay in the situation they're in, because to me, to look for a better relationship, it's better to look like two. or three times. better than the one I'm going to lose or the job that, you know, has to seem two or three times better than the one I'm sacrificing and that almost keeps us immobilized.

I actually did some research a couple of times. years ago as to why we have a lost AV version, what is the evolutionary basis and the best answer I could find was that we come from a trading environment with other violations and stuff, and often there was a risk that the person would not would trade back or you know, so we take it into account in trade, yes, we take into account the probability that we don't, it won't be a fair trade, life is not a fair trade, we chase things and we don't get them, and I think that's part of what holds us back in situations that don't serve us and in the stress that you describe, it's amazing, though if you look back on your life and really take an objective view of your life story.

Most of the time when you lost something you opened a space that allowed something else to come in, this is the truth of life, if you know that if you lose a job, that is the only time you can find another one. work, it's a shame that hindsight doesn't have the wisdom of foresight because your brain is a survival mechanism, your brain constantly ignores all that, everything you've learned and says there could be a nuclear war, and it's quite interesting when Really think about it because I always say that if your worst fear has ever happened, don'tDevil's Advocate, again.

I'm thinking about the listener that every entrepreneur is. they admire every person they admire lies they are lies and you are contributing to it my friend no, but I'm trying I'm really trying how many of those people do we know all of them how many of them are happy oh my god that's a different question , I mean how many of them are okay, so this is what I was going to say when you hear about people that you admire and that first year or two of starting out what they continued to do and maybe even give them satisfaction. now you know all those people will say there was no work life balance in the beginning we had to work really hard and that's the way things are I was working in a call center I was building my business on the side I had to work until midnight or else I would respect that I couldn't have left the call center respect that that's me that's what Tell people I don't work at the call center anymore.

I won't do it, but for that first year or two, if you want to do it for a year or two, okay, okay, okay, but the LIE is that it will never end. I told you openly for everyone. of us, not just you, there is no limit, there is no preview, there is no pre-plan for when it comes to this, that's enough, 20 trips are enough, yeah, okay, you know what happens when you limit yourself to 20 trips, your Val increases, yes, you achieve the same amount of income, do you know what happens when you limit yourself to two offers?

You serve the customer better. You know what happens when you limit yourself to five friends. They become true friends. You go out and get to know them instead of texting them. I'm saying cancel the third podcast a week. Who are you going to pitch? Are you going to do a third podcast a week? it is needed in the region, yes, okay, it is really needed in the region of 350 million people and I am actually one of the few who can run an Arabic podcast that is as successful as in slow motion, but the cost from that podcast is my health.

So there will be a time in my life when one of my projects will be delivered and the Arabic podcast will appear, but I sat down with the person I was working with on this and said, look, it's not going to be like that. right, if I do it now, 52 more episodes a year beyond my capabilities, think about one amazing CEO diary a week, that cuts your sponsorship income in half? I wouldn't even know, um, I wouldn't even know this, this is, this is. The truth is that people may not believe it to be true, but sponsorship income is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

I think when we started for the first three years we said, "I told the team and the team knows because everyone can see." bank accounts and stuff I told them that if we make money from this we put it back into the program now, obviously we make more money than we can put into the program, so it's like I see the message on our lazy channel. that we've made so much money from the podcast or whatever, but obviously the impact of that is, I mean, what does it mean that we can hire more people, we can have a studio in Los Angeles and in the United States at the same time, yeah , we can buy? a big boat or buy a fleet I'm never going to buy a boat because I'm too busy I'm talking about I'm talking about the fisherman oh of course yes yes yes exactly yes yes okay not so so so the the the the the real the real question is did you allow yourself measure a different objective not the number of listeners but the impact on each listener okay neither nor not the number of guests H but the quality of the guests okay not the number of topics but the topics what you believe in and what that looks like long term so you're saying you would get to the same place long term you won't become Steve Jobs when I say get to the same place my rebuttal in my brain was like because we built a platform, people like you, when you have something good to talk about, like your books, you came and we had that amazing conversation, episode 101, my favorite conversation of all time, which was a byproduct of our fight.

It's hard to build a platform where you felt or whoever the decision was, so you're saying that because, by the way, you're doing two episodes a week, when I did one 101, it was one episode a week. but, uh, but because you're doing two episodes a week, you're allowing more people to have an outlet to talk. There are 62,000 books written last year. You must up your game if you want to publish all the books. No, i do not do it. I don't want to serve all the books, I just want the best ones, so the question really is again what is the limit, how many good books can you distribute a year?

I mean, when you look at slow motion, I do the The opposite of what you do, a very interesting part of what I do is slow, is that I rarely get a celebrity. Well, it's a podcast by the people for the people, if you want, kind of like me, a lot of people will listen to me and say I can do it. I can relate to this, this is part of my story and the game here is 7.8 million potential guests, one billion, sorry, right, it's impossible, impossible, okay, the question really is what do I want to represent?

I mean, there are so many ways I can. grow in slow motion H is what I represent why I want to make it grow I mean look at my Instagram and your Instagram this is a very interesting conversation my Instagram I think is 150,000 people or something yours is what 15 million million is millions, something like that, no, I don't know, but it's a very large number, right, what difference does it make? Well, you told me you wanted to make a million people happy, yeah, a billion people happy or whatever, it's mine, it's mine. ambition, but do I have to do that or the people who listen to this M?

Are the people listening to this going to tell other people about this so they will come and listen to this? But you know, if this podcast had six listeners, you probably would have chosen. For your book tour I would have chosen a thousand of them I don't have time but but no but the question is really very simple the question is are you already there yes, I understand that that is why I ask, which is the self? I'm telling myself CU. I realize that there is some kind of something I am telling myself on a deep level about why I need to work hard and it is now clearer to me than ever that the cost is significant and the reward is.

It's not clear, it's decreasing, yeah, well, I don't even know what the reward is. The most rewarding thing that I do, what you have identified is this, yes, it is the most impactful thing that I do, it is what people appreciate the most and it opens so many minds. It's a This is a wonderful part of people's lives so I asked myself why don't I do this because there are 40 other companies that I'm involved in as an investor or you know six or seven that I founded and you know before you were. I sat there today, an hour before you got there, there was a founder of another business that I'm involved in and co-founder of and we were talking about funding and this plan and this plan and this plan and I do it.

What madness is this? I know it's not just me, but there are many people who have engaged in this voluntary insanity of over-stressing their lives, stress addiction as described in the book and a lot. A lot of us, like I said before, know it's crazy when we step back and think about it on a piece of paper, but there's something so tempting about addiction, it's the only script you know, yeah, so I keep telling myself when there was. a time, if you really dig deep, probably in 2009, I gave a public talk somewhere and it was filmed H and they asked me what is the purpose of your life and I said the purpose of my life is to help startups develop technology that be as complex as Google abroad. the Western world so specific, you are a very, very interesting thinker, the truth is that I am not that person, right?

Why did you say that? Because at the time I was in a system where I was very good at helping startups, but it wasn't the purpose of my life, okay? and as a result, I trained 50 startups a week when I used to go to California. I used to say to count the number of startups that needed my time. I used to say I'm going to be at the Blue Bottle Cafe on University Avenue. between 11:00 and 18:00. or 5:00 p.m. on sundays come catch me and i will try to help you and i would meet 15 20 of them H every week.

Why is it not the purpose of my life at all? Now I focus my life on things that are very different, happiness, well-being. you know, and it wasn't me who chose this path by the way, uh, that purpose was chosen by Ali when he left the world and the moment he was where he was ready, well, that's what it is and what it means. That means I had to leave Google that you invest and I say that I don't invest and that's it because investment is not giving someone some money. The investment is a call every four hours.

Hey, we have this opportunity. Whoever wants that is fine and the real question is and I say this with great concern. Many people may have already turned off the podcast. Okay, that's a big lie. The whole endless cycle of growth and progress is a big lie. It's the reason we allow AI into our lives without thinking about the dangers of AI because it's a big line more is better faster is better more progress is better is is is is is is there is a point up to which we have done very well we have increased life expectancy because of the technology of I think it was 37 10 and some years ago now uh 70 H or 80 H, I don't know, we have increased human life expectancy, but when my wonderful friend Peter uh dandz wants to increase life infinitely or Ray Corwell says you know technology can make us live. forever I really want to live forever right? why do I want to live forever?

Is there a fear of death that I have to deal with? Is there a story from my childhood that I need to research? It's fine and real. The question is that everything is positive until you have too much. Stress itself is positive unless you let it stay forever. AI is really going to change the world and it's interesting how this kind of combines with the issue of stress. I saw what the founder of Cl said recently about his company that AI is now doing the equivalent of 800 customer service jobs in cler and there was a report that came out in the UK that said around 8 million jobs in The UK were vulnerable to AI and now we are.

We are now entering an era in which things are apparently going to be much easier and ease has always been the temptation to make ourselves easier for who, for those who are hiring AI or those who lost their jobs. Well, I was thinking about that. We talk about productivity when we say easier we say oh, you know, companies are going to be more productive, people are going to be more productive, what does productive mean?, more, more, create more for less, so that the consumer gets it cheap. or the founder making more money I guess the promise, as I hear it, is that we will both be able to reduce the cost of things, you know, so I mean, I love how the simple lie of the true value of money is ignored in everyone . this, you, you see the whole, the whole idea of ​​less or more, I mean, how much is a pound sterling?

Do you know one and a little? uh uh dollars or it's free when your bank prints it on their machines uh through a fractional reserve to give it to someone so that someone pays it back with interest, what is money? And the real question is: could our economies, when money is actually taken away from our economies, could our economies behave based on the fact that we mine? something turns into something give it to someone and all if if we changed the entire economic chain of the currency that goes from dollars to uh something else, that would make any difference at all, the reality of the matter is that if you created a company that made products and I sold them at the end of the year, paid all the employees' salaries and gave you a reasonable profit, why does it have to grow 2% every year, 5% or 20%, yes? it has to grow because the debt based economy requires that we create more GDP next year than last year so that we pay the debt if you add it all up if you are borrowing a thousand and he is borrowing a thousand and the economy this year uh needs to pay 1200 next year GDP next year should be 1200 instead of 1000 so we are all following a cycle and we are in that big lie that says we need more productivity, we need more productivity, no we don't.

It's not okay before those money cycles if we're really talking about changing the world before those money cycles took over us. All you needed to do as a shoemaker is make two shoes so you could trade them for 14 eggs and the one guy you know had the hands to create 28 eggs so you could get one shoe and a couple of vegetables and that was it, there was no inflation. , there was no, you see, the whole trick is that we get involved in the details and and I don't undermine technology in any way it has changed our lives it's the reason you and I can talk to people now to a certain extentof growth and progress is useful beyond that certain point of growth and pro and progress goes against too much of anything is bad if you could press a button now and stop the AI.

I would do it 100%, really 100%. We talked about this last time, but obviously a lot has happened since we last talked in the last nine months. a true global AI race Microsoft Facebook Have you used GPT chat recently? Yes, have you used the audio one? The voice engine they launched yesterday. Well, I used it through a software called 11 Labs. In fact, I invested in a company called Wonder laabs um Wondercraft. Sorry, Wondercraft AI that synthesizes speech, etc., but did you see yesterday that Open AI released their speech engine? Yeah, which one you asked me a question about AI?

I asked you a question about AI. Yes, will AI end up replacing podcasters? Great question, well it's difficult. I say this with confidence, but AI is becoming quite advanced, although it is possible that AI could handle some aspects of podcasting, such as generating content or even hosting shows, it is unlikely to completely replace human podcasters.Enjoy the touch personal and the unique perspectives that humans bring, but you sound very human to me. I mean, I couldn't say it if you weren't human. If someone didn't tell me you're an AI. I mean, is there a way to ensure that AI is presented as a machine instead of being presented as something as human as you?

I appreciate the compliment. Creating AI voices that sound less human is definitely possible, developers can adjust parameters like pitch, cadence and intonation to make the AI ​​sound more like a machine if that's the goal, it's all about finding the right balance between clarity and naturalness. Let me ask you a question, if AI continues at the current rate of improvement, is it true that at some point in the future? will be indistinguishable from a human is a possibility, but it is also a topic of debate among experts, while AI has made significant progress in imitating human behavior.

Achieving complete indistinguishability from humans would require solving complex challenges related to emotions, creativity, and consciousness, which are still areas of active endeavor. research and debate I feel like you are lying to me, it is correct because mathematically if someone if something if you assume any improvement of a technology eventually continues well continues well I understand that your point of predicting the future of AI involves many uncertainties and variables, so it is It is essential to approach it with a critical mindset while mathematical models can help us understand Trends and possibilities cannot explain all the factors that influence technological progress and human behavior.

It is so interesting that they have been programmed to be so diplomatic and It is creepy diplomatic, yes, like a politician, but the question really is: have you seen the movie? No, yeah, so B, basically, if I didn't tell you I was a human, if I told you I was a call center agent, yeah, would you? will be able to tell the difference, the other problem that most people don't realize is that if I told you that GPT chat was text based just 6-9 months ago and now it is capable of processing language without errors, she understand that I am saying that the machine understands every part of the words I say, it's okay, I can change languages, so sometimes I speak half Arabic, half English.

Okay, in Arabic, I say, uh, don't talk to me in loud Arabic, talk to me in Egyptian. and she literally talks like an 18 year old girl. Did you see what happened? Dresses? Two days ago they launched the voice engine. Yes and and now she sounds exactly like you. I have an avatar. I speak in abundance 360. They had an avatar. of me who looked like me and sounded like me 100% actually made sense so the voice engine for anyone who doesn't know is open AI released three or four days ago they said they released a new piece of technology that can take 15 seconds. of your voice and basically clone it perfectly so you can say anything with just 15 seconds as a reference and it's so interesting that I read the whole article and in the article they say listen, now we have this technology, but I'm not sure if we're going to publish it, We are basically giving you a

warning

.

They have four

warning

bullets in this article. They say we issued this press release to give your bank time to change its security. um system so that the voice is no longer absent, some can go into your bank account, they literally say as if we are warning you that this is coming and at the end of the article it says that we may or may not publish this, but this is essentially a warning. Yes, for the world to change, where is the ceiling? When we take a stand and say we don't really need to we won't do it and you know we won't do it.

Yes, that's why the world is going to become more and more stressful and my promise, at least my hope is to tell the world that you can stop being stressed, okay, I can't tell you that the world is going to get easier, I really can't. I can, but I really believe that for every The biggest task of one of us in the next two years is to find a way for you to handle all of those events calmly, easily and peacefully as best you can because it really is for me, Steve, I lived this, these are, this is my typical life, that tech space is my typical life for 25 years, right, no, the world is changing, the world is changing economically, the world is changing relationship-wise, I mean, if you don't mind, think about dating, okay, how do you think? friendships, would you know that we went from having to knock on my friends' doors when I was

young

to go play to being able to call them on the phone, being able to text them, being able to text, you know, connecting with them on social media Now, just like the loneliness epidemic we have in the world today, imagine how many members of the next generation will have one of those as a friend and you can talk about anything.

I was chatting with this machine yesterday morning. about the difference between relativity theory and force theory in definitions of gravity, right? Or you know it is and it was convincing that there was a product in product H, which is a technology website for anyone who doesn't know where your ex-partner's story leads your ex-girlfriend your ex-boyfriend it takes all of that processes it all and it allows you to continue the relationship after they dumped you I talk to and there was a lot of conversation online about whether this is ethical or not, because these

young

people, these girls and boys are downloading the entire chat history that they had with their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend and they continue the Rel relationship with AI, so AI is talking as if that person does it, do we need this or is it? or is the answer to stopping everyone who has a brain would answer that we don't need it, but I think everyone who has a brain would probably also say that human incentives prove that we will not stop the reason for all the challenges that H is not serve us this CH, those challenges we face are when someone tells you I'm building technology to improve human life, no, they're building technology to make more money, okay, and they need more money, that's not one. from the illusions that they think they will live forever or something that they believe their legacy will live forever because you know that they work so hard in this life that they will never be able to spend it anyway.

I think I think the money is you. I know that constant need for money is insecurity or ego, yes, of course, and we, as a society, are fighting against the insecurity and ego of money. You know, America in general wants to be the most powerful nation in the world, that's ego, okay, that's power, that's insecurity. If I'm not the most powerful nation in the world, they attack me, but isn't that human too? Because I have sat here with experts on the topic of status. One of my guests wrote a book on the subject. store and basically argues that all human beings who seek status, you and me, and that's difficult because we didn't want to get kicked out of the tribe, so we know that even if I don't wear Louis Vuitton anymore, I'm still playing a status game in some area of ​​my life.

I'm trying to have the best cameras, of course, you know that, but the question is: what position do you want in the tribe? Do you want to be the richest boy in the tribe? you want to be the nicest guy in the tribe you want to be the most compassionate you want to be the wisest okay, I told you before I want to die a billionaire a billion happy it's a capitalist movement the only currency the only difference is the currency it's not dollars, a billionaire , billion, happy people, okay, now you talked about how technology could reduce the cost of everything to zero, literally zero, because if we discover a technology that uses additional intelligence like I, how I describe it, huh? artificial intelligence commodified intelligence, so you get a plug in the wall, you plug it in and you get 400 more IQ points, if we use that to calculate energy correctly and we just generate free energy because energy is abundant in the universe, right ?

Does it mean we can give that to everyone so that the products are mostly free? Or do we give it to the person who built it so he can become a billionaire while everyone else struggles and the main difference in mentality? is that question and I say that with respect it is a question of a world of abundance versus a world of scarcity in which most of us competed in our past in a world of scarcity where for Microsoft to win Lotus 123 had to close well, that It's not like that. I needed you, you know there's enough for everyone, we can all win, but that shift from scarcity to abundance is a shift that you're struggling with, okay, it's a shift from a question of what do we really need in our lives? .

We need 400,000 followers or we need five friends because the cost of creating five friends is less than that of having 100,000 followers. I want to talk to you about our sponsor LinkedIn for all the entrepreneurs and business owners who listen to this podcast who will probably want to. to hear this, so stay tuned for a second whenever you're scaling and building a business, your business needs are completely unique and I've been there. I know the struggles you are facing and what allows you to land the next client of your dreams. and one tool that is absolutely essential is LinkedIn ads.

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So why did we choose Shopify for several reasons, but I think one of the biggest ones that is under appreciated is the conversion of their checkout system. 36% better compared to other platforms and this is what I'm going to do to eliminate the cost if you go to shopify.com Bartlet, you can try Shopify for $1 a month. I've seen Shopify completely change people's lifestyles. lives and for many of you I think it could change yours. Do you think it is possible to build a billion dollar business? I'm thinking about some of my friends now and at the same time living in the balanced way that you describe, no, so I have a lot of friends who are billionaires or who build billion dollar companies, do you think it's possible that any of them Will they stay balanced in a healthy way while doing that?

I think it's the wrong goal to start with, what would happen if they didn't start with? that Target and it happened because they were good at, I don't know, sewing something and then a lot of people started buying that thing that they sewed, yeah, yeah, it's still the wrong goal to start with so building a billion doll business is impossible for you. Spending the goal of you saying I want to build a business that costs a billion dollars. You know, if you take the very core of morality, it basically means that I'm going to use resources and people to create wealth for myself. a very interesting way, that is not something very moral, right, if the objective is: I am going to build a business of a billion users, an initiative of a billion happy people, that's fine and in the process I am going to invite others to join that. conversation and when I invite them to come, the goal is to make a billion people happier or the goal is to let them know that a billionmillions of people get food in Africa or whatever and in the process I will be rich and wealthy, it's very different.

Okay, so it's about what you're going for, yeah, it's where you're going and because when we're going somewhere, regardless of your Steven Bartlet or if you're an accountant, you know you work in tax accounting, it's okay if your mind says "I". I'm going to maximize every minute of my day by doing more accounting filings, more taxes, you know, reporting, etc., your life may never end, you may get on that hamster wheel and yes, you'll triple your income at the end of the day. year to what end and for Humanity in general the capitalist system assumed a world of scarcity where I am increasing my wealth either out of insecurity because I am afraid of losing it or I am increasing it because of my ego to be able to buy a better yacht or a better car that my other rich friend, okay, forget that is no longer the truth, the truth is that with more intelligence we can reap the fruits of building things almost for free, but we will not break the capitalist system. okay, as a result of that, you could literally solve hunger, you could literally end cancer, you could literally do anything you want to reverse climate change if you made that the goal, but the capitalist system will tell you no, the goal it's giving to create to make Elon Musk's $200 billion wealth trivial compared to the next billionaire wrong target is the wrong target what are we paying for it?

Well, as individuals, we are paying for our well-being, as you know, the rich billionaires, they are all miserable, them, you. I know they make a lot of money. To say everything is a very hard word to say, but many of them, the many that I know, are miserable, okay, most of them are very stressed, they don't know how to stop properly and for the planet. , for the planet we are consuming it, they don't. I don't know how to stop is exactly the way I describe it. I remember meeting a particular billionaire in the north of England and sitting in his office and the first time I met a billionaire and I asked him as if he had spoken to his family first.

They were like Dad wasn't happy, Dad was really unhappy and then I met him and I just stared at him and thought this is a human being who's lost control, like he knows he's not happy but he can't get off the table. Monopoly, yes. He can't and there are so many people listening to this. You know, the other day I made a post on my Instagram about my own situation and it was the most messages I've ever received and the most people reaching out to me. either saying that they were related or to some degree concerned and I was just expressing that I would basically like to burn the candle at both ends of my life.

He had taken on too much. I had pushed myself to the floor and ended up staying awake for a long time. two days in a row to write this to give the speech, etc, etc, and there was a photo of me with my head in my hands and I posted it because I just took off on this plane and I saw the photo, I thought. What a great photo Will took. I explained the story of the photo and my DMs were flooded with people saying, "That's me. I've taken on too much in my life. I've accumulated too many obligations and responsibilities." I've taken this promotion, I have these team members now and like there's something inside of me that's working, this is just too much and I and because of the external narrative, the external expectation that I have in place, I can't get out of this thing that I have this merry-go-round that is absolutely incorrect use of language, you can avoid it if you make it your goal, so if I said to you Steve, I love you so much, you really are like my brother, right if I told you?

I love you very much you are my brother your goal for next year is to be stress free by the end of December this year or next year this year you think you are going to achieve it that I could achieve 100% 100% 100% 100% listen learn and and and and and you limit yourself you're just You're just going to say okay limit I'm just going to write down a million things that I'm doing every day I'm going to delegate half a million of them, I'm going to cancel 200,000 and eventually I'll move the remaining ones up to 2,000 a week easily.

It's interesting because when you say that, I'm thinking about everyone listening to this. I'm thinking about throwing. That question for them, if you told them to put themselves in a position by the end of the year where they weren't stressed, there are a significant number of them, not all of them, but there are a significant number of them who think you know what. I think I could really do that 100%, that was my goal and those who won't think that way will be because they believe that their life circumstances and events are stressing them out, which is true, but it's not just the events of your life what stresses you is the way you treat them what makes the equation is the event the challenge divided by your resources your abilities your uh your square area like physics da da da more square area to carry the load and and you You'll be able to do it, so if it's not the events, if you invest in your skills, you'll be less stressed.

There will never be a time in your life when you are not stressed at all, but you can definitely reduce it significantly. There is a third group that tells the truth and because of their circumstances, you know, they couldn't really de-stress by the end of the year. They are working in a factory. Three jobs. They couldn't change the harshness of the events in his life. life, but they could change how they deal with it and how they would do it. Let's take a simple example. A simple example is if you are stuck in a factory job.

Your life today is hard if you add an obsession because my life will always be hard you are more stressed because of the obsession, not because of the hardness of life, okay, if you tell yourself that I am working day and night to feed to my children, okay, but then add yourself and say. the world is going to get a lot harder and my kids were starving, you created that stress, okay, we didn't talk about one of my favorite parts of the book, it's what I call anticipation of stress, okay, so we said, We said, you collapse under trauma, you collapse from exhaustion and you collapse in anticipation of threats and challenges that worry, anxiety and panic are exactly fear and all its derivatives, and it's very interesting when you really think about it, the fear is a moment in the The future is less certain now than now.

Well, by the way, you can't do anything about that moment. In the future you can plan it. You can prepare for it, but until you reach it, you cannot react. It's okay, when you're scared. try to limit the challenge or limit the threat in what you think in your head, okay, you know, if there's something that's going to be difficult, I'm going to lose my job in a year, you're going to try to save now interesting okay, these are Fear is not the complicated one. The complicated ones are the derived ones. work in a year and that's why you keep spending your cycles trying to save as if you were going to lose it, but that's not the right reaction, the right reaction is. to check if there is a reason to be afraid or if it is not correct, so if you are worried your reaction should not be the reaction of someone you know who is afraid, your reaction should be I need to decide if I am afraid or Should I stop this ?

What if I don't know? So you spend your cycles trying to know and what if I can never know because I'm thinking about some of my own things that make me anxious and worried. Anxiety is different. Well, anxiety is very different. The anxiety is actually your inability to deal with the threat, so you basically tell yourself I have to report to my manager on Thursday about this deal, okay, and I have no ability to prepare the report. You are not skilled enough, over and over again, if you approach it as fear. I'm afraid to meet with my manager, you will try not to meet with your manager.

If you address that reality of anxiety, the problem is my ability. You will try to increase your capacity. You will try to get someone to help you. Maybe he has the ability. If you are struggling with a little finances in between, you will talk to your friend or you. knowing at work who is who who is able to help you with the spreadsheet the right thing for you to manage your skills Panic is different Panic is a matter of time so fear is a matter of challenge worry is a matter of uncertainty anxiety is a question of your ability and panic is a question of do I have enough time, where does this fit, so sometimes I have worries because I will receive some news or I will have an inclination that something bad is going to happen.

I don't necessarily know when it will happen. date of the bad thing that could happen, but I receive a warning that something bad is going to happen. I don't know if it's definitely going to happen or when, but then I live in that kind of cycle of obsession that, oh my God, it could happen. it happened today, it happened, I look at my phone, I go, did it happen, but let me give you a good example, after something that might worry someone, but they don't know the date, but no, and I'm not sure if. It's going to happen that they have a sick relative, this is not just to be completely transparent.

I usually say assume they are going to die and live your life loving them, give them all the love you can if you have someone. that you're worried about you leaving, my mom fell well and she um yeah, she's better now H, but it took so long that I could have spent that time in my head saying, but I'm going to lose her or I could fly to Cairo, sit down next to him and tell him "I love you very much." Turn worry into certainty, whether it is the best certainty or the worst certainty. C certainty, she's fine, but then she reacts to the certainty and she's recovering and I hope she runs marathons, I hope. true, but for that moment in time instead of worrying about the certainty that puts my brain into worry cycles, okay, I just assumed what would happen if I never see her fly again, go see her, stop your meetings, stop this, go and pour love into her.

The only certainty you have with someone who is sick is that she is still here today. The only certainty you have about your daughter getting into trouble is when she is a teenager. H means your daughter is not in trouble. time with her now, this is what life is about, we go through those stressed cycles and that's why I tell you, look, she has so much right to sit here and talk about the problems of billionaires and the problem of technology problems and all the progress and stuff when we forget that a lot of us have two jobs and struggle with a relationship and you know, we're not stuck with long commutes and stuff, that's fine and I wish life was easier for them.

Really in my

heart

I do, but if it's not because the external harshness of life is not under our control, the way we handle it is within our control, okay, the way we handle it is, you know, even If it's the smallest things like me. I'm working in the factory and it's such a horrible job. Can I spend my break at the factory with my best friend? Can? Know? Try to take some of the challenge out of the commute. Can I find a gratitude practice? That says at least my kids are still going to school because, by the way, if you do those things, it won't take away the hardness of life, but it will alleviate it, and as you relieve it, don't be stressed, you're going to be less stressed. less stressed is better than more stress one of the things that helps relieve it is what you've described which is love oh 100% and it's interesting because the first time we spoke you were single and I was pretty sure you were like this digital nomad who was going to be single forever.

I was too and then I didn't know that you would meet someone and get married in 4 days, eight days, yeah, from the day you met them to the day you married them was 48 days now, if I said yes you would have waited 49 days or maybe 6 months, I proposed on day three the engineering, not the soft feminine side, yes, the feminine energy, which was not the feminine side at all. but engineering logic you and I are playing devil's advocate here because you know I have to make the argument but and I'm so happy for you, you know I couldn't be, I could be happier for you, but I'm just saying when I saw that I thought my rebuttal would be if you had waited 49 days.

Wouldn't it have been better if you had waited 6 months out of the year? 2 years, in fact, one of the most important things I have What we struggle with in relationships is that the Western approach to relationships assumes that the longer you wait, the more you will know and that basically assumes that it is the other person's responsibility for you to be happy in your relationship. So if I need to make sure that they're amazing to make this relationship work, that's called "Okay," and by the way, there's a big difference between getting into a relationship and saying, "I'm going to make this work." a relationship and I say: I'm going to see if that works now Hannah.

I call it the jackpot, right? It may not be the biggest prize of all, but for me because I have worked a lot on myself and because she has worked a lot on herself. I introduced her I introduced her on my podcast we were making a miniseries about love andbecause of who I am, if I work on who I am H and suddenly someone will appear something that matches the new me and I guess one of the ways we can work on who we are is by releasing ourselves from stress. Yeah, I love how we get to talking about a certain book and then we talk about everything else.

What are we talking about? Today we talked about Ai Ai and wealth and yes, we talked a little bit about stress, everything is interconnected, although everything is interconnected to chat with you, that's how it is and I read a study that also appears in your book. A couple of years ago that showed that I think I have it written down here somewhere. Yes, I read a study that showed it was a study of 850 people from Detroit and it found that those who experienced major stressful events increased their risk of death by 30%, however the risk was negated for people who reported high rates of helping others even under stress because their support networks are stronger with a true and honest connection when we talk about spiritually stressed people at the end of the book, which is very difficult to explain to people because not everyone is spiritual, right , spirituality in our description, here you know well your connection with your non-physical form and it is, you know, it is quite interesting because your non-physical form is not an individual. correct and, consequently, your connection with the rest of the being is so fundamental to feeling safe as a tribe, before or not.

Humanity was not successful because we were the most intelligent being on the planet, we were successful because we were able to work together, the only one, the only one. The true survival instinct in humanity is can I fit into the tribe you understand? So that human connection is the ultimate way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system to tell you that everything is okay and that's when the stress goes down. Welcome to the machine that triggers unhappiness. T NN, which is the framework we're talking about, is in your head. Heal your hips, don't lie and S Renity and then in the third part we have stress, it's a wonderful book, it's a timely book, it's a book written by two exceptional people, you and Alice Law, who is an international stress management trainer. podcaster and co-author of the law of attraction brand Alex Alice He works privately with clients internationally, as well as large corporations and brands such as RBS and Ned um.

I met her briefly beforehand, they are both exceptional and as you say, it's a yin and yang approach to AR it really is. I think it's my favorite part of the book. We are very different in our approach with the same Mission, so it's really beautiful, but I think it's the only way this book could have been written. because I think people typically sit on one side of that in terms of how their brain thinks. I am a bit of an engineer, a bit of a mathematician, a logician and even my partner, she is the opposite, she has a feminine spiritual energy, she is softer. empathetic and it is the nuances and togetherness that creates the truth.

I think I love the way we read, we also write it together, so we would meet at the beginning of each chapter, regardless of who wrote it, and we would agree in a way. the MH structure and then you know we would edit each other's chapters afterwards and my chapters are really concise and short, bulleted equations, some logic, that's it, and when I read Alice's work I wonder where she's going with this. It is a very different writing. style, but you know from our first readers, the women who read it just completely registered with it and the thing is that even me as I read like 70% of the page and I feel something in my

heart

, not in my head.

It's actually very, very interesting, so it's been a very joyful partnership, I think, for me and I think it complemented the part of me that wouldn't have been written about in the book. If I wrote it alone, a practical guide to living without stress and you can ask for it. right now because it's coming out very very soon and in just a couple of days so I'll put the link to the book below without stress and I highly recommend that everyone go and read it because it's a fantastic book and it's a timely book so yeah You are someone who is interested in living without stress, something that is before me after this conversation.

Please get this book because there will not be a better book written on this topic. You are very kind thank you. Anything related to stress that you think was really important, we don't cover the concept of stress. I think it's very important to understand that it's not about de-stressing. A lot of the approach to combating stress is through Western Medicine saying, "Okay, you know, your stress." We're going to help you get a little distressed, right, if you know, or even practicing like, you know, try meditating to calm down or try to relax and walk in nature. the goal the goal is how can you set yourself up so that stress doesn't happen again?

It's a long road, a little bit longer, so there's no place in stress where we'll tell you okay if you're feeling stressed about a b and c at work. Eat a vegetable and do this and that and you will feel less stressed, we constantly tell you that if you do this and that, when work stresses you out, it won't stress you out anymore when you know if you think the same way. this way or going to the mental gym as we call it, when the thoughts attack you, you won't get stressed in the same way, right, and I think that's the change that I keep saying in this conversation is that we're trying to tell you the time.

I know that the times we live in will become increasingly stressful. We might as well prepare, so this isn't about you, uh, um, you know, resting, it's about you going to the gym, right, it's about you actually getting in shape. are you able to carry the load mentioned your mom and your brother, yes, it happened at a very, uh, my brother and my sister, actually, uh, so, my sister-in-law, my brother's wife, but 42 years together I love her like a real sister. I never had a sister and we weren't together when my brother was diagnosed with cancer, um, yeah, in the summer and actually one of the biggest changes in my life, believe it or not, because I was recording the BBC Maestro, training at that time very intensive, you meet a great team, we set aside four days to do it or five, I don't remember, but basically you know it's important and I'm committed and then the first day I get the news.

I was diagnosed with cancer and it's really serious. I'm having surgery 2 days later and yes, I had to stop and fly to meet him because I actually didn't know if I was going to meet him. Again and the surgery went well, we started doing immunotherapy because he had multiple cancers that were not easy to treat anyway, he recovered very positively and then at the beginning of the year he had some kind of digestive problem. A tumor in his um somewhere in his digestive system uh that was actually totally benign had nothing to do with the cancers but then the stress his lovely wife my sister just collapsed under the stress and basically had that heart attack in the Intensive Care Unit In the hospital and we lost the sweetest human being on the planet.

I think that was the biggest shock. Steve. I will tell you openly. I mean, a couple or three weeks later, my brother left too, which is really interesting because you can imagine it. in some way they didn't want to live without each other, true, but the thing is that Sahar, my sister-in-law, and she left. Honestly, I've never been so surprised to come back to reality as when I was talking about Ali. dying and several times Sahar dying so suddenly H like what are we doing with our lives honestly what are we doing with our lives what do you know I should have gone to Egypt to see them five more times every year instead of giving five more talks 100% 100% it's very It's clear when you look at High Insight that what we dedicate our lives to is not the right goal, that means I want to stop being a billion happy and spend time with my family.

No, I can be much more effective. with 1 billion happiness, right, I can have this conversation with you and it reaches millions of people, right, it's a way of deciding that something more matters than maximizing your impact without a roof, maximizing your profit without a roof, I think the truth is en Unfortunately, as Alice writes, you know that life gives you that hardness to teach you to change direction or heal and I always say that if you pre-respond to life, life wouldn't have to be hard if you change direction or heal and learn before you know life finds a reason to nudge you, there would be no harshness, I'm sorry for your loss, they were wonderful, honestly and sincerely the kindest, most beautiful pure people you'll ever meet.

I mean, we. We will all leave one day, but when those people leave your life, you suddenly realize that you have not lived your priorities well. You've given me a lot to think about. A little too much to think about. stressed, we have a closing tradition, as you know, the question our previous guest left you without knowing who you were is to think about the first person you were in love with, when you last saw them and what you would say to them. If you saw them now, I mean, I'm the worst at answering that question because my first love was my very long-term marriage, you know, who was a wonderful person, Nel, in every possible way and that even after we we separate, uh.

We stay very close incredibly wise woman incredibly wonderful woman so we are very close we are in contact uh the whole time we are there there will rarely be a week when we don't talk is there something you haven't told her? what you should probably do if she was listening to this now is there anything if you found out tomorrow that she's no longer here are there words you wish you'd said? I think she knows. I mean, I will. I will always say that I am who I am thanks to Nibel. I mean, you know, it's hard to think that most people don't understand that not being able to stay in a romantic relationship isn't actually an indication of the purity of the connection. that you had a relationship as romantic as me, as I write in Finders Keepers, it is made up of much more than love, so you know, I call it the perfect PP r f CS for you to seek partnership, passion, romance, friendship. companionship, tenderness or you know, touch and support, right?, and and, all of those things are prerequisites for continuing a romantic relationship if one or two of them don't work out, the intimate romantic side of the relationship doesn't work out, but that doesn't work.

It means everyone else has to break up and I think what most people miss is if I can't kiss them anymore. For some reason then everything I've done with her is wrong. We spent 27 years together well and she shaped my life with her advice, her wisdom and her mistakes, I understand even the parts we don't like. about our partner are the parts that shape us as a person that we are right and it is almost criminal. I say it openly, it is almost criminal that we lead our ego and our anger and I have that. I have a couple of friends who are so wonderful.

I loved them so much Colombian when I went to Colombia the first time they invited me they were helping me spread um s for happy at that time and they are wonderful in every way and they broke up and I still tell them H with two. children between you and all that love what really matters is how you're going to move forward from here can you really talk every week can you parent together can you be right and I think this is what most people forget when the anger takes over them? when the ego takes over, Nebel shaped my life, she, I, I always tell her that I am the person I am because of how we started our life together in the years we spent together, that's okay, and if I'm ungrateful for that, so I really am the wrong person I am a bad person and I ask everyone to think about that.

I ask everyone that in some way, even if it was a painful breakup or a painful ending, I asked you to try to say hello, by the way, I am grateful for the The time I had you in my life, you had one last phone call from 30 seconds with her, why would you ask that difficult question after losing so many people this year? I think what I would probably say is, I wish. life didn't give us that test so losing Ali I think was bigger than both of us uh this is hard when you when you I think neither of us despite how well we did in terms of being calm, grateful and peaceful, that's how it was It's just still the hardest thing ever and Niel is so beautiful, fragile, um, I don't know if fragile is the right word, delicate, maybe delicate is the right word, uh, beautiful soul.

I think Gap was so harsh and it's not ours. It is not our choice how life treats us. I wish this had never happened. I wish she had never been subjected to that payment and I, like I said, would. I would do what Ali did to us before he left. I would just do it. I would say all the things she taught me. I would just say how grateful I am to still have her in my life and, yes, I hope I never have that call. I hope I never have that call. I don't know how many more I will have.

I can take to be honest oh thank you, thank you for everything every time we talk. I press you with these questions and I think it's important for me to say it because you have a remarkable level of wisdom that helps me confront the things I believe. sometimes I avoid it, it's funny that whereI've been thinking about what we talked about actually uh for a while I wanted to tell you that you kind of brought it up today in front of I don't know how many million people really really think about your off-season Brilliance. I think there is a different season for you now, we don't know what it is, but I think your Brilliance when you were 20 was applied in a different season to your current brins, what do you think it is?

I truly believe that your ability to reach people can become a much more rewarding outcome than simply success and what you think it looks like you think it looks like that does is that you don't have to change anything you have to change the intention of what you are, why you are doing those things and what will happen if I do them. I think you're probably going to be one of the most listened to people on the planet. I think you will bring a lot of wisdom. many people are not always yours, by the way, yes, they are rarely mine, yes, and I think that life will reward you very generously for that, okay, you have given me a lot to think about before I descend further into my existential life. crisis I'm going to let you go um but again everyone please buy the book I love you man thank you so much St honestly I really enjoyed this probably my favorite conversation between us is yeah it's always wonderful thank you so much for having me