Simon Sinek: "I FEEL LONELY!" How To Deal With Loneliness! | E230

when my friends are struggling I don't say take your time when my friends are struggling I say go on when my friends are crying I say go on I live my life by that code he's best cynic leadership and communication expert author Ted speaker his unconventional views have made him one of the most sought after speakers on the planet there's no one quite like it Simon how are you doing I'm actually feeling quite lonely I'm struggling to communicate or present myself in a way that people will get who I am feel like nobody can help

you and the first thing that a lot of us should do is reach out to a friend and say I'm struggling you should never cry alone we live in a world where most people are ill equipped on how to be there for a friend who's struggling the first mistake people make is they try and fix don't need them to fix me I just need him to sit in the mud with me so I don't feel alone when I'm sitting in the mud the fact that such a loud conversation about mental health is a spotlight on

the fact that we do not know how to build deep meaningful relationships but the way I manage it which is different than most is I you know I wish I had these skills 10 years ago is the design of the modern world making it more difficult for us to find love and to keep it the problem with it is is it's Grass Is Always Greener because it's so easy to just go swiping something's out of balance and as I I'm going to say this over and over and over again which is successful relationships [Music] Simon

congratulations you are the D AA record holder you've been invited back more than any other guest and it's not for it's for a very very good reason which is that your episodes are always the most adored that we have on this on this podcast they are um the two episodes conversations we've had are both in the top 10 of all time on the show and I always feel after our conversations end that they could have gone on longer so here we are thanks for having me back I enjoy coming my first question for you today

is and I you know this question is often asked quite flippantly but I want to I'd really like the real answer which is how are you doing um you know I think when somebody says fine they're lying and so my instinct is to say I'm fine um I am going through uh I'm going through some ups and downs um I'm in a period of uh flux which doesn't which is fine that that genuinely is good um I like a little bit of Chaos in my life it's where creativity comes from and if I look back

at my career you know I would take a job I'd have a fast moving career it' get to a a great point it would plateau and then I'd quit and I'm sort of at that point you know um I love a steep learning curve I love a difficult situation and I like trying something new and building something and um so there's I'm I'm shifting away from inperson public speaking which I think surprises a lot of people um but recognize that I never considered myself a public speaker in the first place it's just something I did

to advance my cause it was never my chosen career so not doing it as much as I enjoy it and and I know uh is is not that difficult so what next is a little bit of an unknown I have some ideas and I'm testing some things out but I don't actually know where I'm going to go why are you shifting away from public speaking give me the context as why this is a sort of a pivotal moment um there are multiple reasons um you know I I consider myself a preacher and when I set

out on my journey many years ago I was espousing a vision of what business could look like and what the world could look like our careers could look like that was different than the world that we lived in you know talking about purpose at work with some hippie dippy stuff you know and now it's a completely normal conversation and I'm really proud to have been a part of that movement and so when I would stand on the stage I was preaching to people who had never heard of my my work who had never heard of

these Concepts at least not explain the way I explain them and and I was converting audiences you know that was and the good news is the movement is is is has its own momentum and um I don't know how many I'm converting vastly fewer people now when I walk into the room now they're looking for tools now they're looking for you know which is great um and so I want to now pivot myself so that I can start having significant impact again so that I can start affecting greater change not not just maintenance not just

reinforcing not just affirming change impact is what I'm looking at so that's a huge part um Co in some respects was a gift it created a Marketplace for online and so you know I can do things that I could never do before which is I can be in Chicago in the morning and kalal lmour in the evening that that was impossible before um I have the energy to give to more people um so I'm doing that which is great um and at the end of the day um I I'm I want to learn I want

to be in a situation where I'm actually not familiar where I'm not very comfortable you know I'm good on the stage now I've I've hone my craft and I want to be uncomfortable again right the personal side is different uh you know I know that mental health is the is a is a an big and important topic right now and I had a conversation with somebody recently and I've realized I actually don't like the term mental health you know um it sounds like a fixed destination it sounds like you know if you if you don't

have health like if you're not perfect there's something wrong with you so any kind of Divergence or sadness means you're imperfect right and that's not true and I think it's an unfair standard to call it mental health and I think because at the end of the day like think about your body when you go to the gym right um we call that Fitness and some days you have good days at the gym and days you have bad at the gym bad days at the gym some days your body feels amazing you can lift huge weight

and someday for whatever reason you got enough sleep you you're eating well you're hydrated you just your body's just not working that day and we're all familiar with that and it doesn't really bother us you're like H bad day today and you move on and you allow that to happen but we don't treat our our mental Fitness the same way you know being a human you are 100% mentally fit if you have sadness and have if you have joy and if you have doubt and uncertainty and insecurity that that's what it is to be human

like your body sometimes has pain there's nothing wrong with your body and so I I I like to call it mental Fitness rather than mental health right I'm always working on my mental Fitness MH and I allow for periods of Darkness so right now when you said how are you the space that I'm sitting in is I'm actually feeling quite lonely and uh and I learned about how to manage mental Fitness during covid more than I ever had prior because we had to deal with so much [ __ ] right and so prior I would

have been embarrassed by saying I'm feeling lonely I would have um hit at it suppressed it don't like negative feelings um H whereas now I'm just sitting in it not worried about it um I'm allowing it to go through me like I'm allowing myself to have a bad day at the gym and weirdly even though it's not necessarily fun um weirdly appreciative of it um because it's makes me human it just reminds me of a story um earlier on in my career I was invited to speak at an event which is the association of Meeting

Planners American Meeting Planners Association whatever it is literally everybody who hires speakers from every big company and Association has their own Association and they come and have their own event so to get hired to get invited to speak at this event is like if you nail it your career is set for the rest of your life and if you blow it your career is over right because like literally everybody who hires all the speakers for all the big events is in this room and I got invited huge honor right and I'm this is back in

the start with Y days and I'm good at start with Y like I've done this thing probably thousands of times I know my stuff so I get up there I'm doing start with Y and I lose my train of thought it's okay I'm a professional I know how to deal with losing your train of thought you go quiet you relax you get your thoughts back and you pick up where you left off it's happened before no problem so I do what I I know how to do I go quiet and nothing comes in and now

the Panic Starts Now the heart starts pounding now my life is flashing before my eyes now I'm recognizing oh my God i' my career is over you know and I look at my my my pad and I look at the audience I cannot I cannot remember what I was saying I don't know what to say next I don't have a joke I've got nothing I've just got Panic so I turn to the audience and I say do you ever have that feeling that sinking feeling when you lose your train of thought where your heart starts

pounding and your hands get clammy and your life flashes before your eyes I said I'm having that right now and I'll tell you I am so grateful for that feeling right now cuz it makes me feel alive and the audience exploded with Applause I said right now if somebody could please just tell me what I was saying so I could pick up where I left off and somebody screamed something out and went thank you and I picked up and I finished the point was I could have I could have suppressed the panic but I was

open about way I was feeling and what I learned was everybody was there to support me because I I acknowledge that I'm human and it's relatable and so that's how I feel right now I'm more open about being in a darker space and in in the shadows right now because because it makes me feel it makes me feel quite frankly normal it makes me feel human and it's part of mental Fitness you know and and if I didn't have off days or off weeks then how would I know what to work on you know how

would I know what good good looks like how would I know how to appreciate the Happy Days if I didn't have some days that were down so I'm I'm I'm weirdly grateful for what I'm going through right now I very long answer to you very absolutely perfect obviously we always do long answers here as you know but I I um the context is so incredibly important and the subject matter is even more important I know this because I've done a few talks over the last couple of years or whatever and when I talk about the

subject matter of loneliness what will happen afterwards is I will have a young man who will come up to me you know when people are asking questions at afterwards taking pictures or whatever and he'll get very very close because he's scared of anybody hearing him on his right right and his left I remember I have this visual in my head of it happening recently and he'll whisper to me a a message of thanks for talking about my own loneliness in my life yeah but also asking for some kind of path through the jungle of loneliness

some kind of solution and then when I look at the the statistics around loneliness in the UK and in the US it's absolutely incredible I've often cited that Teresa may was the first Prime Minister in our country to a point of loneliness as are for the country um I think the the statistic which I've often quoted is that the medium American used to say they had three people they could turn to in a time of Crisis and now the answer is zero and we and we're heading in that direction at a very sort of um

Global often Western World level so I think the subject matter of loneliness is incredibly important one my first question on that on that topic then is what is the symptom of loneliness how does one know if they are lonely and because it's so easy to confuse it with another feeling yeah what's what's your sort of symptoms so when I when I say I feel lonely and I think when people say they feel lonely I think what it is is that you know we're social animals who want to feel um included but also feel like um

people see hear and understand us and I think my symptoms of of loneliness are feeling misunderstood or like people don't get me or or worse I'm strugg Ling to communicate or present myself in a way that people will get who I am you've heard me say this you know there's an entire section in the Bookshop called self-help and there's no section on the Bookshop called help others and what we're desperately needing more than anything is is is a help others industry like we do not teach people how to help each other we we do podcasts

and write books about how you you know how you can find love and how you can build your business and how you can become a millionaire and you know how you can find the job that you love it's all about me me me me me and there's not enough about how can you help somebody else find love how can you else how can you help somebody else you know find commercial success or how we don't do that we don't teach it and those are the skills that are desperately needed for each of us to find

mental Fitness because we can't do it alone you know when you find Darkness you you whatever however you want to Define your Darkness you know you feel alone you feel like nobody can help you you feel like you have no agency you feel like you're a lack of control and the first thing that a lot of us should do is reach out to a friend and say I'm struggling or I need help or I'm lonely or I'm depressed or I'm sad whatever your whatever the feeling is and that person do your friends do your colleagues

do your teachers have the skills to know how to hold space so the first mistake people make is they try and fix don't try and fix it's not it's not a fixing thing you know um it's like I had a bad day at the gym nothing to fix you know nothing to fix um but then do you know how to listen do you know how to hold space um and and and I think one of the reasons more of us are struggling with mental Fitness is because we ourselves lack the skills to help our friends

who are struggling with mental Fitness and the more that we as a society are equipped to help each other the more that there are other people there to help us so you know if if and I have a rule with my friends um my rule is there's no crying alone my my close friends all know this and we all obey it like I'll get a call from somebody who's a somebody who's a significant person in the world that people know who they are and they'll call me and say I do you have a minute and

I'm be like yeah what's what's up they're like I just I think I need to cry I'm like go what have you what's on your mind and they'll tell me what's on their mind and they will cry and that's my rule my rule with my friends is no crying alone because if you're at the point of absolute frustration exhaustion whatever it is that you you can't hold it in I'd rather you call me one of us and you do it with somebody you should never cry alone and and so I'm really good when I'm in

a place like this of calling somebody and telling them because I don't want to go through this alone and some of my friends do have the do have the skills where they can say how do you feel oh this is how I feel that must be really frustrating yeah it's really hard tell me more about that well I'm sort of going through this and that and they know how to hold space that's all I need I need to somebody to sit in the mud with me don't need to fix me or clean me off or

give me a towel I just need to sit in the mud with me so I don't feel alone when I'm sitting in the mud and it's I think it's our responsibility to be able to have that skills that skill set to do it for our friends and the people we love or our colleagues um we don't teach listening we don't teach difficult conversations the fact that there's so much conversation about mental health right now is not is of course in part because we've just come through this crazy ass thing called covid and locked downs and

exaggerated politics and you know uh and divisions in our countries and etc etc social media sure you can pile that on if you want but I think really what it is the fact that such a loud conversation about mental health is a spotlight on the fact that we are we do not know how to build deep meaningful relationships I think it is an indictment on our current state of affairs that not only do we not have the skills to be there for our friends but we're we the way we're reacting to it is by trying

to seek resources to help me rather than teach me how to help my friends I think we're going about it half F I was really surprised when you gave the answer regarding that when I said the symptoms that that have indicated to you that you are feeling lonely um I think even in my head I was expecting it to sound more like an absence of other humans around you and that's the whole distinction between being alone and being lonely your answer was about how you you feel like you're not understood by who is this friends

or is this the world or is it um the I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't been married that not not that I care about marriage but I haven't even had like a 10year relationship and I'm realizing some of it is self-inflicted you know I chose a career path that made me pretty undatable you know I was on the road so much it was difficult to have a relationship but some of it is also managing the effects or the the symptoms of ADHD which wasn't a thing when I was a kid so I couldn't be diagnosed

which I'm glad for quite frankly because I had to learn to manage certain things myself which became strengths as adult as Str as an adult so not not not bitter about that I wasn't diagnosed until I was 32 so pretty much in life you know like and one of the things that I've and I've learned how to manage it really well professionally like I know how to manage my ADHD in a professional context really well I'm only now learning some of the symptoms how it affects personal relationships and how I show up in relationships that

I didn't even realize so my whole life I'd be in relationships and and women would tell me you're so hard to read and I was like I'm an open book what do you mean I'm so hard to read I'll tell you anything you want to know you know like and and what I've learned is people with ADHD not all of them but some of them do something called stonewalling which is an accident it's not something conscious where you're telling me something about your day whatever it is or about our relationship and I have I'm I

have nothing to add and so what my face you see nothing and I I acknowledge like this is fantastic and wonderful this is great but I have nothing substantive to add so I just add nothing and so the accidental effect is did I say something wrong did I offend him does he not agree and so I know that about myself now so I can say to somebody if you're not getting the reaction that you need if you need any reaction just ask me for a reaction how does that make you feel is that okay like

oh my God that's fantastic right and I I'll give it to you um or I'm really blunt and forward with questions for example I have a friend she's an entrepreneur she's a solopreneur she offers services to people and I think she's priced too low and I I was having this conversation with her and she I said what what do you charge she told me the price and I said why do you charge that that's how I asked the question why do you charge that and she was telling me about this just a few about a

week ago it was really funny and in in my mind I that's perfectly legitimate question in her mind it was such an aggressive affront like what do you mean why do I charge that I'm like you're worth more why do you charge that you know I said well how should I have asked that question and I guess normal people would have said oh my God you're worth so much more than that why do you charge that you know but I don't I'm just like this so I recognize that in a professional context it's one thing

people can deal with questions like that delivered like that in a meeting but in a relationship not so much and so like sitting in this space I'm like going through all of these mistakes or things that I've done over the course of years and I'm a little annoyed by myself you know now I know you don't want to live life in a rearview mirror but I mean I can still take account and I'm annoyed you know I wish I had these skills 10 years ago you know so I'm just sitting in a period in my

life where I just you know I would have liked to have had some of the experiences that I haven't had yet and you know my my friends who are in Fixit mode they're like but think of it as an opportunity now have these skills and you thank you I know that but allow me to mourn the past that's my loneliness I'm just mourning I'm a period of mning I I can I can mourn loss can't I like if I if I lose a friend or a loved one you know allow me to just like mourn

and then I'll move forwards like I'm okay I I I will move forwards but allow me to mourn loss and and that's all I'm doing is just allow me to mourn the loss and I'll be fine just hold space for me come and sit in the mud with me ask me how I'm feeling ask me how I'm doing just let me vent just sit in the mud with me and you know again I think to your point I think we just live in a world where most people are ill equipped on how to be there

for a friend who's struggling can you give I learned this term the other day which I love I learned it from Lex Freedman can you give the Steelman argument for your friends that are telling you to trying to offer advice what in your morning process and trying to get you to be more future orientated as the steel man argument I mean is can you give the argument for why they're doing that and why it's a good thing emotions are good it means you're human like I said I believe in mental Fitness not mental health you

know that it's a that like your body you have to work out you have to eat well you have to sleep all the time it's not something you do and then you're done you know we've used that in analogy before you and I which is which is what the infinite game is which is it's like it's like I want to be healthy okay well it's you're going to have to do it for the rest of your life it's not an event and our mental health our mental Fitness is exactly the same which is it's it's

constant and it's ups and downs and it's only um um a challenge or or you need to start involving professionals if you get stuck you know like if you get stuck in sadness and you cannot get out of it that's a different that's a different conversation if you get stuck in depression and you cannot get out of it if you get stuck in loneliness and you cannot get out of it and by the way the thing that I love about human beings is we can have multiple conflicting feelings simultaneously I am lonely and optimistic simultaneously

my optimism you know I'm I I'm I'm a I'm I pride myself on my optimism my optimism has not diminished in the least optimism doesn't mean I can't sit in a dark tunnel optimism means that I believe there's a light at the end of the tunnel even if that light is far away I'm I have an undying belief that the future is right this this too will pass right it doesn't mean I enjoy it it doesn't mean I want to be here and I can be excited and I can hang out with my friends and

I can have an amazing time with my friends and then go home and still feel lonely like you can have simultaneous and conflicting feelings that's allowed in fact it's it's it's normal but I I I cannot stress I think that the way that I manage this differently than most I don't usually talk about it on podcasts but whatever um uh but the way I manage it which is different than most is I I I I don't wait for the phone to ring I call a friend and say do you have a minute can I can

I talk and if a friend is ill equipped if they start fixing I'll interrupt the conversation say listen I love you this is not what I need right now I love you I love you I'm going to get off the phone right now okay because when they go into fix it mode it actually makes me feel worse sometimes the friends that are some of the best equipped people um are folks in the military you know um they know how to manage [ __ ] better than almost anybody I know uh I've cried with more people

in uniform than I've ever cried with people in suits um and the way that we talk to each other like I have a friend who's a general I've known him for a million years so it's fun been fun to watch his career he's now a general and when we say goodbye to each other we say I love you and when we get on the phone with each other if it's been a long Gap he'll say to me hey man he first of all he calls me brother Brother Hey brother right which means something hey brother

I really miss you and he says things that a lot of guys don't say to each other you know um he talks to me like sometimes I talk to my female friends MH there's it's full of emotion it's full of honesty and there's no much esmo whatsoever and yet he's a warrior he's a combat veteran you know um and he'll say hey man I miss you it's been a while I go yeah I miss you too and then we'll get off the phone he'll say hey I love you I I love you too I talk

to you soon and um though he will I would I mean he and there there a small group like him um you know I would call him in my most in my darkest times and I know he would call me um um I have another friend and he's going through some [ __ ] and I'm honored that when I called him up and said hey hav't talked know what you've been going through you know I just realized I haven't talked to him in a while and I hey what you been going through and he just

let it all out I could hear the frustration I could hear the pain and I didn't try and fix it I just encouraged him to keep talking what else go on tell me more what else oh my God that must that's really go on yeah what else and just sat in the mud with him and it was an it was an honor I'll tell you it was an honor that he felt comfortable enough to do that because I guarantee it he like so many are really good at hiding it Faking It suppressing it he's a

pro in fact I'm sure he is where he is partially because he's a pro and you know if you have the skill set to hold space for someone you will have an amazing sense of gratitude that your friends trusted you and loved you enough that they would go there in front of you and I think that's a standard that we should strive for like I said we're also preoccupied with ourselves you know um there's no greater honor there's no great honor than being able to serve a friend in need when I see you know a

friend sees you sat in the mud a friend sees me sat in the mud their ill-informed love reaction is to try and get me out the mud right course well intentioned I don't knock it I know it's well intentioned how do I get out the mud the reason I asked that questions CU I know there's someone listening to this right now who is sat in the mud in many respects of my life I'm sat in the mud MH um the the thing we're all looking for is we want empathy in the fact that we're sad

in the mud of course but we're desperate for a way out of the mud right that's understandable where do where does the plan come from where does how do we get out of the mud so I if it were a prescription you and I wouldn't have to work anymore uh um uh on the subject matter of loneliness because it's easier to focus on right so I I I I think in large part like any Cooperative effort like any relationship and a friendship is a relationship right um uh having colleagues is a relationship um in some

part it's it's it's it's um co-created right you know you want to show up in any kind of relationship professional or personal and make it a co-creation and you know I think when somebody first calls you I I don't think they're looking for Solutions they're looking for companionship and and catharsis they're just looking not to feel like overwhelmed and at some point um you can either ask can I offer some pointers you're not ready for that yet no I'm not ready for that yet versus yeah yeah go ahead or the person will ask themselves you

know what do you think is what do you think how do I like what do I do you know or I'll know what to do but I don't want to do it like I know what to do I just need to do this and the person can just say I'll do it with you and just offer again companionship most of us believe it or not have more knowledge about how to get out of it than we think M because we've dispensed the advice in the past probably you know I think most of us have a

sense like it's again I think part of part of it is is allowing ourselves to feel the feels you know I think if I suppress the feelings they would last longer but allowing myself to feel the feels I know as part of the solution you know it's like if you try and suppress feelings it makes it just it's not good yeah you know what I mean they're signals right they're signals they're just sign that's all they are and and maybe they're telling you other things like maybe it's maybe all of my loneliness is telling me

is like Simon you idiot just get some sleep maybe that's all it's telling me maybe I'm feeling lonely is because I'm just freaking exhausted turns out I've been sleeping better and turns out I feel better you know maybe I've been eating crap you know maybe I'm full of freaking sugar and fat the social expectations play role I am this age and I should be this by now oh um I think I think the I think we we have to say yes right and like the midd lifee crisis is a known thing and you sort of

expect you know you hit middle life and you're like all right you're going to start evaluating everything you know you're recing hairline you're sagging buddy you know you're you and new comedians joke about it we joke about it but I I think the new thing is the quarter life crisis you know the number of friends that I have that are in their mid-20s or or like barely pushing 30 and they are suffering all the things that somebody in their midlife would suffer and their evaluation is different it's not like oh my God I'm closer to

the day I'm going to die than the day I was born it's not that it's more like oh my God I'm at this age and I haven't achieved all the things I said I was going to achieve or I'm just getting started or I'm and and they and I and I think now the quarter life crisis is like a real thing yeah and unfortunately older Generations scoff at it you know but I think it's based that is very much societal expectation like I'm supposed to be here like the number of young people I know who

I say you're entry level don't worry if you're running the place yet just even if this is a bad job if it's toxic get out but there's very few jobs that are super toxic you know if you just have a bad boss like stick with this and learn like the learning you're going to get from a bad like my first boss was a bad boss and I was there for a year and a half and it was one of the best educations I got and by the way the camaraderie that I built in my team

because we all shared the same bad boss is amazing right so I learned teamwork I learned having each other's back I learned people taking care of each other we learned how to manage and how not to do things I didn't just abandon it because my boss was bad my point is is when I say stuff like that to young people they immediately interpret that as the worst advice ever because I'm wasting time or take a gap here I can't I'm wasting in time like wasting time from what like what race are you who are you

comparing yourself to what standard like you know I won't achieve the thing by by by what like what imaginary scale are we working on here you know but there is this very clear imaginary scale by which younger people young people are pegging their life against and the only thing I can offer is my own is my own experience and I know it's the worst thing do because you know when you're in it you're in it nobody can think that far ahead but I and it's fun to think about right cuz I remember when I was

young in my career and things were just starting to move there this one guy I used to go to for advice who was very much more successful than me um really buttoned up really sort of you know operations oriented and he would constantly give me advice that either he was basically either telling me I was an idiot or made me feel like an idiot by all the things I wasn't doing or wasn't doing right or should be doing or could be doing but it never felt right to me and he would say stupid things to

me like I won't get out of bed for you know x amount of thousands of dollars I'm like I do stuff for free all the time you know and and if I didn't have my sense of purpose and cause if I didn't have my North Star my why my my vision to guide me I would have listened to him and it would have been to my detriment um uh because he was very finite minded and it was very sort of like hit this target hit this Target and thank goodness I ignored all the advice and

Flash Forward my career has completely eclipsed his it just took longer MH um and that's the point is the point is is that the reason people don't follow my my ideas the people the reason people reject my books is because they want my my advice or they want my perspective to work this year and and I and you've and you'll heard I've used this analogy all the time like I will tell you how to get into shape I will tell you have to exercise 20 minutes a day every day you have to eat healthy and

you can have you can only have sugar in days that start with s you know I I I like what Mark Heyman says which is you know treat Sugar like a recreational drug you know and if you do these things 100% you will be in shape and you will be healthy 100% nobody wants that book right but the problem is you have to do it and will somebody will say Well when will I be in shape and the answer is I don't know 100% it works I don't know when and when I discovered the why

and I first articulated the why and this is also important it wasn't just the why I also discovered um uh EMT Rogers work on the law of diffusion of Innovations which I did write about also in start with y th that combination of starting with y and following the law of diffusion I realized that 100% it was going to work by starting with why I was going to attract early adopters and early adopters would make the Tipping Point I didn't know when I just knew it would work and I just stuck with it and I

and I disconnected myself from any arbitrary time-based achievement which freaks people out especially if you're on a quarterly or annual Financial schedule but I disconnected I knew it would work and I just stuck with it turns out it worked some of it worked quicker than I expected some of it worked slower than I expected but it worked and young people myself included when I was their age I I'm not saying I had some like I was 100% the same it had to be a discovery for me and that Discovery didn't come to my early 30s

so my 20s were me being that person going you're an idiot I got I can't waste time but there's something magical about being on the path and just sticking just sticking just being disciplined and just sticking to and a funny thing is as we're talking about this I don't even I don't think of myself as a disciplined person I'm actually very undisciplined like I'm I don't have an exercise regime like like I go in and out sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I'm just not a very disciplined person and I have so much

I have so much respect for people who are super disciplined when they commit themselves to something they're they do it and they're just really good at sticking to the plan I'm used useless at sticking to the plan right and but I'm realizing now the only discipline I had was I trusted in these two theories starting with why and law of diffusion so apply that to the topic of someone who is let's say 35 years old yeah 36 years old 37 years old yeah and they are they're lonely yeah I can't tell you how many friends

I've got and how many conversations I have to the point that I I'm I was think considering writing a book and going on the process of research who are saying to me right now that they are single they are lonely um their biological clock is ticking um and they and the pressure of them trying to find someone is so intense that it's causing them to maybe become less capable of finding someone yeah so I'm trying to figure out what what those people that are listening need to to help them get out of that look there

are people who are better equipped to answer these questions than me we can but you know I can wax philosophical like so many things you know I'll use another military analogy right which is these wonderful human beings who volunteer to wear that uniform are willing many of them are willing to risk their lives to save the life of someone they don't even like but they love right or they trust and what people neglect or forget is that that deep intense trust that they have for each other does not show up when they arrive on the

battlefield they've been building it and the and the and the organizations for whom they work know how to build that trust that the trust exists by the time they get into combat and this is when I talk about command and control you know like I talk about asking people and getting feedback and all these things but the reality is is command control also is a real thing so you know if you're a marine and you show up in combat they talk about that as managing chaos that's they they refer to combat is managing chaos sounds

a lot like an entrepreneurial venture that is managing chaos right and there are times where you have to be command and control but the problem is is you can't be command and control before you've earned somebody's trust so the you when you're back at home you're building trust building trust building trust building trust building trust so that when we are in chaos and I yell an order at you I don't have time to ask you your feelings I don't want your feedback I don't need your ideas I need you to do as I'm telling you

right now and you have to trust that I'm making the best decision that I can I'm not going to put your life recklessly at risk and I even may make a mistake and people will die because of my mistakes my mistakes and that's still okay but you can't do command and control all the time it's episodic and it's earned and so when when Co struck and we first went into lockdown I went into command and control I even made an announcement to my team like Hey listen I know we have a culture where there's a

lot of feedback and if you're not if there's feelings hurt like we we have that mechanism and I want to hear all that stuff but I can't hear it for another two weeks save it up if I'm if I'm a bit of a if I'm a bit blunt in a meeting tell me in two weeks I just I don't have the bandwidth right now because what we're doing is survival and it worked fine that come out in control because I built up the trust it worked fine the problem is leaders who believe they can be

in command and control all the time right so what I'm so the reason I'm telling you this is you're asking two different questions one which is more difficult which is we need to build these skills when we're healthy and in a good state of mind so that when we're in the mud we ourselves have some equipment and some tools and our friends that we're going to call have some equipment and some tools right you're asking with no equipment and no tools and I'm sitting in mud how do I get out that is an entirely different

conversation that I probably the least equipped to answer there professionals who are much better equipped to answer that and what I'm saying is is is um uh for so that we don't find ourselves in that situation right now with big smiles on our face how's your day great I'm great things are great when are you taking that listening class when are you going to practice mindfulness and meditation and have you have you meditation yeah yeah my girlfriend yeah my girlfriend's like a yoga meditation so you're forced to do it yes exactly got it I have

to run away from it right okay so for if anyone has ever practiced meditation you sit still and you focus on one thing when they say clear your mind that's not true you don't clear your mind that's impossible but you do focus on one thing could be your breath it could be your Mantra it could be a DOT on the wall it could be a sound it doesn't matter the point is you focus on one thing and when you get distracted or you have another thought like oo did I leave the oven on what you

do is you label that a thought and you push it out of your mind and you say I'll deal with that later and you go back to focusing on the one thing and there are tremendous benefits to the self of uh of of being present and and calm and clear-headed by practicing meditation but that is not the sole purpose of meditation just so you can be present in fact I believe that you are not present until someone else says you are right so the reason you practice meditation is so that when you're sitting with a

friend and they're telling you about their good day or their bad day you are focused on one thing and one thing only what they're telling you as opposed to waiting for your turn to speak and you may have thoughts and you say that's a thought I'm going to label that and deal with that later and you remain so focused and there's a bang in the background but your eyes don't leave your friend because you're so present at the end of the conversation they will say to you thank you for listening they will say thank you

for being present they'll say thank you I feel heard congratulations you were present congratulations all that meditation was worth it now the practice of meditation though it has benefits to yourself the reason to practice meditation is as a service to others the the ADHD point that you raised and you've talked a lot about exactly that which is um being able to sit and listen and and and hear how did you because it almost sounded like you you self diagnosed that is being a playing a part in your your historic relationship challenges how how do you

how do you know because you know what I mean because if you if you make that sort of self- diagnosis and then you build a plan around that and it's the wrong self- diagnosis you know you end up in in another unfortunate place if that makes sense so if IID if IID self- diagnosed myself based on that experience with my parents um I could have been aiming at the wrong target so it's about this question is about self-awareness how does how does one develop the self-awareness is it feedback I think there's a difference between introspection

and awareness with accountability versus victimization versus victimhood right by the sound of it you didn't say my parents did this to me no right not you ful but that's victimization it's the same it's the same thing I can't have a relationship because my parents [ __ ] me yeah because they didn't give me an effective model and they didn't love me enough and they didn't hug me enough and so the reason I can't have relationships is because of my parents disempowering it's disempowering it's also victimhood right uh whereas um okay well the cards that I

was dealt um I got a lot of good cards for some things and in some places Me Maybe I I got to work a little harder on this one so the cards that I was dealt from family I hold no grudge I'm not angry at them they didn't have the tools it's okay and um I don't I don't curse them for it they didn't have the tools but um I I'm going to have to learn the tools you know other people learn it from their parents I'm going to have to learn it from other sources

and I could say the same thing about listening skills you know some parents are really good at holding space for their kids and those kids will learn how to hold space with their friends because it was modeled by their parents and some parents don't have the tools to hold space for their kids or maybe they work in really really horrible jobs and so they come home and they're short-tempered and so you know there's a chain of quation there and um and the kids uh aren't learning those skills they're going to have to learn it from

somewhere else that's why I say we have to teach it at work we have to teach these skills at work because we or in universities because we cannot take for granted that people are learning these skills at home or with their friends what if I just smell though like and I totally [ __ ] missed the Target and I just stink like I just like I have really bad body odor but I thought you know what what it is is I'm I'm just too picky so I'm trying to figure out how we become more self-aware

as to what the real issue is now you it sounded like you'd spoken to some of your exes or something or I I have great relationships with many of my exes and there's one ex I have in particular where we broke up we got back together we broke up properly and uh she hated me for a while uh I probably blamed her for the breakup I'm sure we blamed each other then at some point we sort of like calmed down and we went out for dinner and we sat at the bar I even remember the

restaurant we sat at the bar and we literally dissected the relationship and we didn't do it with accusation what we did was we didn't say we didn't sit down and say you did this you did this you did this which is how we were for the previous you know whatever six months in our minds we sat down and said oh my God I'm so sorry I did this I did this and I did this and sometimes the other person affirmed yeah you did that you know but we showed up with accountability rather than accusation and

at the end of dinner we we hugged each other with immense gratitude because it is so rare that you get to sit down with an ex and take not only take accountability for the things that you screwed up but learn about other things you screwed up and learn about how you were received even if you thought you doing things right right and you you know in everything else if you have a failed business venture you sit down and you you have a hot wash you sit down and you sort of like go back and see

what went wrong so you don't make the same mistakes you do that in almost every respect of Our Lives professionally but very rarely do you ever get the opportunity personally because usually the two people don't want to talk to each other anymore right but we sat down and by the way there was no expectation that a friendship was going to come out of this we just sort of like I don't know why we showed up but we both did and we would both admit that it was one of the greatest things we could never have

done um because we got to find out how we were in the relationship which usually you never find out where you are so go back to your point I think feedback is the thing you know um you know the only common factor in all our failed relationships is us you know you could you you don't you know it's their fault only lasts for a a period at some point there's some accountability to be had and if you don't know what it is there's something to be said for picking up the phone and calling an ex

and I don't mean the one that just ended up like a week ago but like give it a give it some time like calling an old X and say I I know you're probably surprised to he for me and by the way you know it's it's been a long time I know and the reason I'm calling is because I'm really taking myself on and first of all I uh I probably owe you a bunch of apologies for how I showed up in the relationship but I really want to learn how I showed up are you

willing to have a conversation and just tell just give me some some point of view that I I don't have do you know if I did that with my ex right yeah um I I don't believe there's anything that they would say that would surprise me however I do think they'd say things that I've never acknowledged does that make sense um at my coure I think I'd go yeah now you said it do you know what I mean so that's a real so then it it gives you a spa look you can't screw up that

relationship it's screwed up yeah so in that space you can be like yeah I did that and you're not risking anything even the most introspective people in the world don't have total objectivity on themselves and can't see all the angles um you don't have to agree with things that's the thing you know which is just because somebody says something doesn't mean that it's true the way the way we when we do 360 degre uh feedback sessions in our company for example the the council we offer is you you know you have to listen to what

the person is saying the only thing you're allowed to say in response thank you because they're giving you a gift by giving you this feedback that they would rather not give you because it's easier for them not to give it to you so just say thank you don't argue don't give excuses don't explain just say thank you and you don't have to agree with it you can ignore it however we say if you have an emotional response to it like anger it's probably true did you have an emotional response to some of it sure of

course and if you dis if you disagree you just you say you listen to it and you go no that's not true right um but if you have an emotional response to something where you start getting agitated or angry or wanting to defend yourself that nerve that they touched maybe there's a there there I wonder if you have a thought an opinion on this one of the conversations that's adjacent to I probably do you probably do which is great um one of the kind of adjacent conversations that I've often had with my friends when we're

talking about love and dating I think when we go for dinner we often have this as well is is it becoming harder because of the design and the nature of the modern world for us to find love and to keep it because you know Once Upon a Time argument what might assert that we lived in villages there was 20 people there I told a story the other day to my team that I worked in this call center in Manchester 20 of us in this call center many many years ago and first couple of days in

didn't wasn't interested in anybody I got six months in fell in love with a girl next to me and I I I almost equate that to like the village we have a very small context so it was easier to find love is the design of the modern world making it more difficult do you think for us to find love so I think well simple answer is it's definitely added a layer of complication because now love is treated like shopping you know we shop for partners like we shop for shed on Amazon you know it's like

you scroll through you find one that looks good and you click like good reviews and you yeah good reviews look it's definitely convenient and it's definitely made life a lot easier and you never have have to deal with rejection CU you don't know if they swiped left on you you just assume that they never saw your picture right like it doesn't actually say rejected you know um uh uh I think the problem with it is is it's Grass Is Always Greener because it's so easy you know to just go swiping uh and you know sometimes

you treat it like Instagram you know I'll I've done this where I've sat in my bed late at night because instead of looking at social media I'm looking at a dating app and I'm swiping right like I'm clicking like on a post and then it says you're connected I'm like ah damn it CU I don't actually want to like go through the effort of like connecting I was just I was just liking the post you know um Scott Galloway talks about this uh I can't remember what the numbers I can't remember what the numbers are

but the point the point is is there's a massive disparity of men that just don't ever connect um and there's nothing more dangerous in a modern society than a lonely man right and if you look at terrorism and if you look at Mass homicide and things like that it's very often a lonely man you know and you add in Sex and um uh and um and incels and you know you know the Middle East for example you know it's 25% during the height of terrorism you know a bunch of years ago it was 25% unemployment

in the region in a shame based society where you have young men living at home and who aren employed and they've never had sex because there's no sex before marriage and how are you ever going to meet a girl when you live at home and you don't have a job and then all of a sudden that stress comes out somewhere and I think we don't talk about sex and sexuality as a part of um our other behaviors and we I for some reason because we we've we think it's bad to connect you know sex life

with how people show up in the world but you take somebody who's sexually frustrated actually frustrated men in their mid to late 20s um and all that pressure and insecurity and you know now desperation like it comes out in horrible ways and the the need to exert control comes out in horrible ways different conversation Scott Galloway I said you know has some fantastic numbers on this so I think um you know the dating apps uh aren't necessarily Fair that's one thing you know it's not like everybody's to find somebody but I do think that there's

something wrong with shopping for people um and I the thing that I lament about dating apps that's really and maybe this is just me uh because I'm hate First Dates um oh God the worst um but the reason you know you hate them pre pre pre pre-dating apps or it's not pre dating apps it's just when there's no dating app being used the way that we traditionally would meet somebody is you meet them at a party at a dinner party you meet them at the pub you you know you bump into them at a museum

you make small talk or you eye them from across the room and there's some attraction and then one of you musters up the courage to go up and start flirting and have a conversation and at some point you say can I get your number I'd love to I'd love to continue this and they'll say yes or no and the flirting and the initial trashing has already happened and so the first date is actually the first date after the initial attraction and flirting now with dating apps the flirting the initial attraction the attempt to court someone

is all happening simultaneously on the first date there's a lot there's a lot of pressure for a first meeting where you know when you meet somebody in in IRL it's like you know it's happened the initial attraction has already happened um there's no expectation that they're not going to look like their picture they're going to look like exactly what they're going to look like when you met them and it's dinner so they could be three hours allocated it could be expensive meal whatever it is um I don't I I think there's nothing quote unquote wrong

with online dating I just think we we like everything like there's nothing wrong with online shopping but there's the reason that bricks and mortars stores still exist and that Amazon is opening stores it's because people like to go shopping it's a hunter gatherer thing like there's entertainment it's more than the than the purchase it's more than the transaction it's the browsing we enjoy you know it's it's in our DNA you know and and and I think that there's nothing wrong with online but I think that that making an effort to do you know in real

life things should be should be included should be balanced you know it's like I like everything in the world I'm a great believer in Balance I don't usually rail for or against something I'm usually about talking about balances and imbalances even social media like much so much has been said about you know what I've said about social media and Millennials Etc I'm not against it I'm talking about balance and it's out of balance you know uh you know even corporate culture you know I'm not against many of the modern things I'm against the imbalance you

know capitalism is unbalanced in in its current form so when we usually feel discomfort or anger or frustration it's usually due to the imbalances um isn't that what where this conversation started you know that you know feelings of loneliness something things out of balance you know and this is why I call it Fitness rather than health because Fitness is the attempt to maintain equilibrium to find balance sometimes it tips one way and sometimes it tips the other way and it's you're constantly working to maintain balance that's what all of this stuff is business is the

same you're an entrepreneur it's feast or famine like it's never the right amount you know and you're constantly working on balance and I think that's why that's the strongest argument for playing the long game which is it's always teetering that means you have to constantly be alert and constantly be working because if it tips too far good it's going to tip the other way don't don't rest on your laurels make make sure you have got money in the bank like stock markets just don't go straight up it's not how it works right at the same

time when it goes the other way it's like don't worry this too shall pass this also won't last start working on some skills that you maybe haven't worked on start reaching out to people start apologizing you know if you've been so self- involved with yourself and now you're in a lonely Place sometimes being lonely like is calling up a friend and saying I've been an [ __ ] and I am sorry and I'm looking I'm in a really dark place right now and I'm just looking back thinking oh my god I've been so self-involved that

there's no one around me to be there for and I am so so sorry you know and again it goes right back to everything we were talking about which is it's account it's accountable for my it's accountable for me versus victim of me you know that that I'm not a victim of the world around me you know um what impact has that had on your self-esteem the the realization the awareness that you you are feeling lonely has it had any impact on your self-esteem at all does it especially some of those confronting some of those

tough truths from the past it's a good question you know again I'll go back to what I said before I'll go back to what I said before which is um you can have we can have multiple feelings at the same time even if those feelings are opposite so I can be insecure and confident at the same time right but so much of it is situational right I'm not insecure every moment of every day of course not nobody is but I'm not confident every moment of every day of course not nobody is and if you're stuck

in one of those things then there's a problem of like if you really are overly confident every moment of every day with no actual self-doubt in your mind there's something wrong there there's something there's some Divergence going on there right um we know this we know that narcissists are actually filled of self-loathing you know for all their Bluster and power they hate themselves right we know this um and again I think it's all situational I think it's all and so and I've I I I've talked about this which is which is I don't believe in

you and I have talked about this which is I don't believe in strengths and weaknesses or right or wrong I believe everything is contextual so you know people do these evaluations what are my strengths what are my weaknesses no what are your characteristics and what are your attributes and then once you know those things you have to know in what contexts those characteristics or attributes are advantages and in what contexts those attributes are disadvantages and work very hard to put yourself in context where you're going to be work to your strengths so if you have

a natural capacity for maths right you're just really you're just really good like people say out numbers and you just add them up in your head immediately you don't have to pull out your fingers right you're just good at it right put yourself in a situation where that's an advantage if if you are math like incapable don't become an accountant no matter how many people tell you it's a good thing to become an accountant right it's just not going to go well for you so you can go down the list of our personal attributes and

I have attributes um where for example I think out loud is that a strength or a weakness context dependent context dependent right put me on a stage ask me a question let me wax f a hole give me a podcast on the microphone give me one question and 4 hours later you know I'm still talking you know Advantage right sit me down on a team when I'm having a team meeting and somebody says something and I'm thinking out loud I'm now dominating the meeting maybe I need to learn how to scale that back a little

bit in the Diary of a CEO we have hundreds of questions that have been left by our guests and we've put them on these cards and on these cards you have the question that's been left in the dire of a CEO the name of the person who wrote the question and if you turn it over there's a QR code if you scan that code you can see which guest answered the question and watched the video of them answering it every time I've done this podcast and every time we've asked the kind of questions we ask

here I feel a tremendous sense of affinity to the guest and our aim with these cards is that you can create that sense of connection through vulnerability at home with the people you love the most and I have some good news for you as of today you can add your name to the waiting list to be the first in line to get your own set of conversation cards at the conversation cards.com that is the conversation cards.com over the last couple of how long maybe four months I've been changing my diet shall I say many of

you who have really been paying attention this to this podcast will know why I've sat here with some incredible Health experts and one of the things that's really come through for me which has caused a big change in my life is the need for us to have these Super Foods these green Foods these vegetables and then a company I love so much and a company I'm an investor in and a company that sponsored this podcast and that I'm on the board of recently announced a new product which absolutely spoke to exactly where I was in

my life and that is Hu and they announced Daily Greens Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods nutrients and plant-based ingredients which helps me meet that dietary requirement with the convenience that hu always offers unfortunately it's only currently available in the US but I hope I pray that it'll be with you guys in the UK too so if you're in the US check it out it's an incredible product I've been having it here in La for the last couple of weeks and it's a game changer what are those layers that You' you've peeled

off recently I I can think of layers that I've peeled off in the last you know couple of months with with people close to me that I was always scared to peel off before but I've had to in order like what um so with my girlfriend I you know I reflect and I get I don't think I ever told her truly that I'd ever had like a bad day or that I was like feeling bad about anything I think I'd always just had this wall up I thought because part of me stupidly thought that if

I tell her when I'm having a bad day or I'm feeling anxious or whatever then she'll start talking about it and it'll make me more anxious and then I'll have to calm her down so I just give it to myself and then in the last you know in the last three to six months when I felt anxious yep I've told I slowly ran the experiment of what happens if I just tell her about a little bit of it yeah that experiment went well so I told her about a little bit more and to the point

now where I've told her completely how I'm feeling even on my best and worst days um and I would never have done that before because it made me feel weak yep it made me feel like I was like not the tough masculine boyfriend that she would be attracted to obviously and I have to say this surprisingly it's caused deeper connection of course and deeper understanding which is exactly what I needed I needed understanding I needed and I also created a space where we could say listen when I'm feeling like this this is how I'd love

you to to respond which often is just like just just listen just just sit in the mud with me yeah yeah exactly don't don't don't necessarily say anything don't try you know your point about fixing it my girlfriend she's so through all of her love and and I'm the same with her and I'm just the same with everybody I would always try and fix yeah it it men are worse than women it come when it comes to fixing uh I I've been on the receiving end of that I dated somebody who if I asked her

how are you great was the only answer she ever gave me that's what I've ever said to people and uh and it actually made it very difficult for me to get close to her because I knew that she was having bad days I could tell when she was frustrated and she and so when somebody puts on that brave face and always wants to be great for their partner it's the most selfish thing you can do because you're denying them that awesome Joy of being able to be there for you remember as social animals we want

to take of the people we love and how dare you how dare you deny them the The Unbelievable honor of getting to sit in the mud with you you know it is it is a joy that human beings get to experience and one of the things if you can by the way the biology proves it that one of the things that releases oxytocin which is that feeling of love and connection and trust is shared struggle shared struggle releases oxytocin which is why when families go through tragedy they get closer which is why when societies go

through hurricanes there's intense you know politics get put aside and we support each other right and it's the same in a relationship which is if you allow someone to sit and struggle with you it actually deepens the relationship biologically um so but what we're talking about is risk what we're talking about is being vulnerable making you know and it requires more courage as you've learned it actually requires more strength to say I'm anxious today than it does to lie and say everything's great that's the irony superficially it's stronger but in reality it's cowardice and by

the way that doesn't make it easy the words are easy and I've definitely been there and you've been there um but I I think that if we like someone um and it only and I always say leadership is about going first that's why we call you leader right doesn't mean you have the answers it doesn't mean you're right it just means you st stepped first into the unknown that we uh took the risk to go first and so in a relationship one of you can take the lead one of you can go first to set

the example of what it looks like and feels like to say I'm having a bad day today and I don't need you to fix it I know what I'm going through I want you to I want to tell you all of this stuff because I want you to be there with me and I want to be there with you cuz I don't want to feel this way alone and that key Second Step which I I learned literally in the car this weekend with my partner was you then need to work with them to educate them

on and vice versa on how you would like to be held correct in that moment which is actually a really difficult thing because um for example I give you an example with me and my partner when I'm going through those moments I go really quiet yep I shut down I'm glued to my phone and so if she says something to me I my brain almost viewed it as like like why is she bothering me in my hard moment so I might say something like babe I'm just dealing with something and then it it always seemed

to me like she' ask me more questions of hey babe look at this come look at this look at this and I she's trying I'm thinking I just told her that I'm dealing with something she's making it worse she's trying to give me more stuff to deal with yeah so I had this conversation with her I go I said to her let's let's just create a safe space here this is how I feel I feel like when I'm going through something and I'm dealing with something and I shut down and look at my phone the

amount of irrelevant questions you ask me then increase considerably and then she gave me her perspective on that situation then we kind of um formed a deal about in those moments the first thing I'm doing wrong is I'm going babe I'm dealing with something and I'm saying with with a certain tone right and a lack of love and empathy that's immediately making her feel abandoned and rejected of course so I'm going babe I'm dealing with something so she said to me if you say it in this way if you say babe I love you but

can I just have five minutes because something's something's up and I just need to work through this her reaction would have been totally different of course and it and having that second of like let's find a solution together and understand each other was so difficult but going back to my question well it goes back to what we said before which is business Partnerships personal relationships friendships are acts of co-creation yeah and so I have definitely been guilty of checklis people professionally and personally oh they have this they have this they don't have this I guess

I could do without that one you know and and the problem with a checklist is people can feel it you know um and I keep complaining this I said I have a bad picker it's because I would show up with my checklist early in my in my in my 20s and you know if they were strong which is the kind of person I want to date they would be like this idiot has his checklist I can't meet everything on his checklist he's not for me right and so what I ended up was attracting was people

who would mold and bend to fit my checklist and then I'm like but then I don't even know who you are bad picker my fault right take full accountability but the point is is like I go to pain saying I might have preferences I have a couple of deal breakers you know I think everybody should know their deal breakers but the amazing thing is is we I actually have fewer deal breakers than I thought I did what are your deal breakers not talking about you set that up no that's my that's for me fair enough

that's for me this is not a dating app I can tell you my deal breakers great I'd love to hear them so uh uh I mean look there's some obvious ones right some of my deal breakers you know I somebody I I want some who who Who's who's who's taking thems on they're in they're in constant growth and constant Improvement right somebody who thinks they've got it all figured out this is not going to work out you know um obviously you know Integrity somebody who lives a life of service is really matters to me like

when somebody like all they're driven by is Money Cash Fame Fortune success you know like anybody who posts a picture of themselves on a private jet on a dating app is an immediate no you know it's like right like of course those are some Basics cuz those are my my values I'm I'm service oriented and I and I I don't I and I need to so what I need to date somebody who's passionate about something it doesn't matter if it's been commercially successful or not that's not what I care about but you have to have

a love for something a passion something that like excites you and gets you out of bed even if you don't get to do it all the time I don't care if you're a painter I don't care if you're trying to change the world it can be big it can be just have a love for something should I give you my three that I look for please so I I was through my early 20s I love that you wrote them down and you know them because there's only three of them they used to be 300 so

it' be like this color hair this color height this color this this I want it to be this shape and this size and then I was like how do I consolidate this down so I came down to three things are important first one is quite surprising to some people but sexual attraction of course because I've had physical attraction without the sexual attraction um but I've never had it almost the the other way around good distinction so I've had phys attraction where I've dated someone who's absolutely beautiful and then there wasn't sexual chemistry there so I

prioritized sexual attraction which I think is important the next one is intellectually stimulating intellectually which is what you've described where they have a passion I might not even believe it's true or like it or care but the the fact that it stimulates me and they can we can have a conversation teach me yes exactly me and my girlfriend she she believes in all these things I don't believe in but she'll sit there and tell me that you know something with crystals and this glass of water I don't believe it she has doesn't have an expectation

that I'll believe it but I'm peering into a new world of breath work and spirituality and right I do believe in breath work anyway um and the third one is that we make each other better people really I'm going to be honest it was a bit more selfish it was actually that she makes me a better person but I'm willing to give that back obviously and I want to give that back and what I mean by that is in my mission in the work that I love to do they support me so those three things

I think if I can find someone that has all three so I think you've you've summed up my three as well I went way more specific which is why I rejected the question but if I take it up a few thousand feet okay sexual attraction 100% And I think you're it's a great distinction between physical attraction and sexual attraction so I I I agree with those three those are my three too the way I've used to describe I still describe relationships I think great relationships are based on what I call three plus one which is

you have to have uh and it's the same list that's the funny thing you have to have uh intellectual compatibility which is you teach and learn you have to have emotional compatibility where you're showing up to grow together right you can find vulnerability and hold space for each other you have to have sexual compatibility which I consider part of creativity so creative and sexual C which is not physical attraction it's sexual attraction and create and like I said creativity and you can have a good relationship with one and a half or two of those but

you kind of have a great relationship with that three yes because they they're not all on high at the same time they sort of they go up and down and they they they wax and Wayne and so you need the others to hold each other hold the others up when one is down that's a good point yeah that's why you need all three because like I said you can have a ton of fun with one or two of them yeah but great requires all three and the plus one is circumstances ah like timing locationing location

like I've met people who are threes and they're married and they're kids and they're happily married and we look each other and go at a different time it might have worked but definitely not now and we just smile and we go on or I've met somebody who lives on the other side of the world and I'm not moving they're not moving and shrug and you go uh if circumstances were different and you know it's like and you just it's not a it's not a sad thing it's just a it's a smile you know it's like

I've met I you know and and by the way I've dated one and a halfs and twos and they're amazing people but they're those three things it's so true the reason I know that it's so funny that my 3+ one is yeah is your three yeah it's exactly the same list well I I've I've dated the only reason I have those three is because I've dated someone who had two right and I've had two so I've you had all the permutations of two but there's always been one missing and so I I remember thinking in

the woman that I thought I was going to marry that was missing this one thing um if she just had that one thing then I I genuinely believed I would have been happy and I'm thinking about this particular person for many years ago she's married she's got a kid now and everything I think I'm I am I lost out there but I'm very very more happy myself but she just missed one of those things and then I can think of my previous Rel like oh if they just had that one thing so now I found

someone who I genuinely yeah whether she's listening or not has all three and I go that's me let's go to the till you know I mean like the thing the thing that I'm appreciating there's two things I'm appreciating one she has all three but you have to have all three for her I hope so right cuz like she has to find you sexually attractive she has to find you intellectually stimulating and she has to make she has to find that you're emotionally available for her which means when you're having a bad day you have to

say I'm having a bad day not be great all the time other you're only a two to her if you're actively being strong all the time then you're only a two to her and you'll only ever be a two to her so there you go so it's all fine and good for you and I to have our our three plus one but we have to have the three for them too and that's the work that fluctuation point is so important Yeah because sometimes we just we have two in our relationship two of the three but

the other two are very important to hold us through that storm and and and it's unpredictable as to when they go up and down and sometimes you're not sexually compatible and you're just snuggling and that's all you want to do and you don't want to do anything more than that but that's okay because the vulnerability is so deep and intellectual is so high that it's okay like it the relationship is really very very good you're both very happy should should we make this dating app or should we let someone else steal the idea because there's

going to be someone out there that's you know the three plus one I think we should I think we should make it okay um and we should call it three plus one I love that so I guess I do know my list and that's that's the three and if I look back at my my failed relationships and again personal accountability included you know I think that in some cases I definitely did not present myself in one of those things um or like I said the act of co-creation is really I'm this is to me is

like like the biggest Insight that I've learned about myself in my own dating life which is which is and I love what you said which is I'm not into her crystals and all of that stuff and she knows it you're not pretending that you are right and you're okay with the fact that you know she wants to guide her life and she's okay with the fact that you don't and I think that's really important which is the number of people I meet who say well I'm into crystals and he's into crystals this is going to

work and I'm thinking maybe but or worse they go he's not into crystals I could never date him right and it's not a question whether they're into it or not it's a question whether they are open to learning from you and they're not rolling the rise when you start speaking you know uh or vice versa um you know there's I forgotten his name there's a famous relationship therapist who can tell in the first five minutes if a couple that's come to see him are going to survive or not and the test is when one of

them starts talking the other one rolls their eyes it's over professor John cman is is that I I did a you did a thing with him I did a thing on him like so good right yeah contempt it's contempt and and and what it is it's not just contempt it's it's intolerance right like you idiot or how can you be so stupid undressed resent or oh God you know yeah and I think when somebody starts talking about their crystals and you start rolling your eyes it's it's over if somebody talks about their crystals and you

can say it's not my thing but tell me I gen I genuinely want to learn and I'm open to some of it I want to learn things I know nothing about I like my my my last girlfriend is so good at the things she's pass about she's so good at it and she'll send me pictures when she's working on something of something she's working on and I just like I'm so blown away about how good she is at the things she does I get joy out of seeing her be so good at her thing you

know it's I love it um uh do you miss her we're still very close friends have you experienced heartbreak yeah yeah yeah I have you mean like yeah yeah romantic heartbreak yeah sure I think I mean like I think I've heard all the things was I think I posted something the other day about just how it's the most incredible incredible feeling not as in awful yeah but it's an incredible because it's so deep and so prevailing that I actually think it teaches you a lot about the nature of what it is to be a human

I think this is a perfect we've got a beautiful Circle here which is to experience heartbreak though awful um again it goes back to balance right in all sadness there is lesson and joy in all happiness there is um um there's a cost right always there's a cost for everything good in our lives and there's less than an opportunity in everything bad or negative right so you know all of the things that I've done that have brought me tremendous happiness tremendous Joy I I I know some of those costs and it's only bad if the

cost wasn't worth it but in in most cases the cost was worth it and I did it with eyes wide open right um and when there has been pain or loneliness I'm learning about myself I'm learning about my friends um I'm learning about how I want and need somebody to show up for me which means that in those good times I can equip them and I can be better equipped myself I can say Hey listen if this ever happens I know I know what I know how you can hold space for me you just have

to say these three things I need you to do this and you'll be amazed how how responsive I can be in that situation to your point about learning how to communicate with your girlfriend you know about when you're feeling anxious and you need five minutes to yourself right and as I I'm going to say this over and over and over again which is successful relationships are acts of co-creation and to have a successful Act of co-creation you both have to be really equipped to listen and and and to volunteer information to help the other person

in other words when we talk about what we need we're giving somebody tools and when we learn to listen we're gaining tools and the goal is to help them fill up their toolbox and to work very hard to fill up your own so filling up your own is about listening and filling up theirs is about being an effective communicator and now when you both have tools you can go build something together because if only one of you has tools the thing you're going to build is going to be weak um and a Business Partnership a

cre cretive partnership uh personal partnership they acts of co-creation and that that insight has come from failed relationships and thank goodness some very strong smart wonderful women who've told me do you know what your problem is and I listened and I asked you 20 minutes ago what wall you'd BR you'd pulled down I said what you know the layers of the onion you've peeled back I shared mine yeah I said with my girlfriend I've started to tell her when I'm what I'm really feeling I've never done that before for what are those walls that you've

recently pulled down so that people can come inside I've become much better at understanding how some of my symptoms of ADHD show up in relationships which I just was unaware of and so instead of taking total accountability which I do I take accountability for showing up I'm now able to explain them so somebody can look for them and point them out when they're happening happening so I can take accountability CU it's about some of it's about awareness right and so I literally can say very early in a relationship you may experience this with me dot

dot dot if it happens I know that I do it please just point it out and I will know I have the tools I'm just sometimes unaware that it's happening right and so I'm asking for co-creation I'm saying look I'm in this I'll take I take all the accountability for my own behavior sometimes I just need you to tell me when I'm doing it and so I'm I'm asking for help right um and like I said leadership is about very often just going first if either person in the relationship goes first it gives a safe

space for the other person to say well let me tell you about me um uh and I think being open to feedback allows you to give feedback too um but for me the huge Insight that I wish I had known before which is even though I may have said it I didn't know how to do it the act of co-creation you know I whenever you hear relationship like really successful relationships you always hear both the partners say it's a lot of work yeah and like I never really understood that like if it's such a like

I look at my great friendships I mean I wouldn't say there's a lot of work you know they flow and but I guess the defin with defin the difference with a friendship is like I don't have to see them every moment of every day and and I think the work is that act of co-creation I thought the work was sacrifice when I heard great relationships going oh it's a lot of work I thought well they're not sleeping at night and he can't watch the football every time he wants to watch it I didn't think it

was active work work I thought it was the stuff that you didn't get to do that's funny yeah it's it's it's not sacrifice it's service yeah and and and again you know it's really funny you know my experience with the military versus private sector it's if I do anything pro bono in private sector and this is since the dawn of time right if I do anything as a favor to a company almost always they will continue to take and take and take and take until I put my hands up and go okay we're done this

is enough right the military it's the total opposite I'll do something as a as a favor to somebody and I will never hear from them ever again and the reason they don't call me is for fear that they will look like they're taking advantage and I have to sit down with these people these wonderful human beings and I found a way I said do you realize I got a I found a way to get them to call me which is I'm like do you realize when you don't call me you deny me the opportunity to

serve my country and that gets them every time but the reason I bring it up is it's the same in a relationship which is when you don't call me and ask me for help when you don't call me and say I need to cry when you don't call me and say I'm in the mud you deny me the opportunity The Joy the honor of sitting in the mud with you not Joy honor you deny me the honor because it's not always fun you deny me the honor of sitting in the mud with you and I

remember telling one of my close friends I said we were we were riding bike somewhere and I just out of the blue I don't know why it hit me I I turned to him and I said you know you're one of those friends that if I was really in the [ __ ] I would call you and his reaction is he didn't say thank you he said I'd be mad if you didn't and I've done that to friends I've done that to friends a friend of mine who who is struggling I said when we got

off the phone I said Hey listen I know you're in a bad place so don't be an [ __ ] and deny me the Joy or deny me the opportunity to to sit in the space with you moving forwards okay like if you if you need to call me in the middle of the night you call me don't deny me the opportunity to to be there with you if you've previously handled the moment when they did call you by being trying to be a fixer or anything they're just not going to do it regardless of

what you say so do you know what I'm saying correct and the reason why I know this is because I said this to one of my friends recently who had opened up to me um he was in he was in he was back in London and I remember going to say to him oh man please tell me next time this happens you know you always seem to tell me when it's it's and then I reflected and went do you know why you're a fixer I'm a fixer so he doesn't want to [ __ ] call

exactly cuz cuz he doesn't like the way that I I hold space for him I'm trying to correct everything correct so even if I'd gone you [ __ ] better call me next time he would have in his head go what you can say now is I realize in the past I was ill equipped I didn't have the tools on how to hold space for you yeah and I realize in the past when you've called me I've tried to fix everything which is hardly an incentive for you to call me again and I want you

to know I've been working really really really hard on that skill set so give me another chance if you're ever in the [ __ ] I'm I I I am better equipped I won't be perfect it's a work in progress but um I want you to know that I want to be there for you and I think you'll be surprised I'm a lot better than I was and if I'm not you can tell me okay because I would want somebody to tell me if I if they're in the [ __ ] and I start going

to fixing mode they go Simon you're trying to fix me I go sorry sorry and I can back off immediately because I know what's happening because you can correct this is the great thing about human beings is where like it's kind of like the difference between public speaking and writing a book right public speaking is really forgiving I can have screwed up grammar I can misspeak and people are tracking I can Bounce from subject to subject and people are fine if I do that in a book it's unreadable right and so it's the same having

a conversation with someone like it's a very forgiving process like when you're trying to fix something and then you're doing and that's not what they need and they go stop trying to fix it you're like sorry sorry you can actually get them energy in the right place back really quickly something you can't do over text yeah just had to put that public service announcement in there um um you know they're very easily correctable it's the nice thing like you can start I mean we both had the experience where you're having a really bad it's going

sideways fast and it is going towards bad and one of you or both of you is really making it worse and pouring you know uh fuel on that fire and then all it takes is one of you to back off and say listen I'm this let's can we just take it back and you and you'll end the phone call hugging and you know hugging each other other happens all the time it does we sit here in a couple of years time Simon and we we have a conversation and some of the challenges you're facing in

your personal life some of the ones you've talked about personal and professional transition moment in your professional life um they are there in a better place things are idilic dare I say because I think that's a bit of an impossibility in the human condition but things are idilic what does your life look like um you know for me scale matters and I I am looking so the the one of the things that I I I I measure success by momentum not by achievement I think I've shared this with you before how I've always viewed my

career as an iceberg which is when I first started when I had a vision of the world you know I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do that is a vision that no one else can see it exists in my imagination it's like an iceberg under the ocean I know it's there I can see it but no one else can see it because there's nothing sticking above the ocean and so I

talk about my vision and people be like you're an idiot you're an idealist you're crazy that's impossible and I do some work whatever it is and a little bit of Iceberg pops up I've done something that is a a tangible demonstration of what I'm talking about you know gave a talk you know gave some examples found a company and somebody goes oh oh I see yes I can see what you're talking about now and they start working with me and now those are the early adopters and I keep doing work and I keep doing work

and the more and more of the iceberg starts to stick up above the ocean and no matter how much no matter what point of my career I've been in no matter how much success I've had however you want to Define it when somebody says to me oh my God it's amazing what you've achieved my answer is always the same tip of the iceberg because though there may be more Iceberg sticking above the ocean now than there used to be all I can see is what remains to be done beneath the ocean and that is vast

and so I'm never really satisfied with what I've achieved I'm trying to find ways to get more of the iceberg out of the ocean right and so the question is is what I've been doing up until now will have some effect to get more Iceberg up but not not as much as I need so if if you ask me said of like what does my life look like in in in the future I always think in terms of momentum and the thing that drives me is all of the founders of the women's suffrage movement in

the United States all died of natural causes before the first women ever voted in other words I have to put in place um as many systems and and and elements as I can so that when my time comes I will die confident that others will continue the work that I've been working on my whole life without me just as I have continued the work work of those who came before me why does that work matter to you I believe we all have a responsibility to leave this world in better shape than we found it the

accomplishment of that work how would it make you feel how does it make you feel on an ongoing basis I'm proud of the momentum that I'm contributing to and momentum is more important to me than any specific thing that I may or may not have accomplished you know because I think why not just go get a yacht and a and go to a beach and just like live it up I mean I would probably enjoy it for a few weeks and then I'd get bored you know I like I it's a probably some sort of

neurod Divergence I like I like difficult and uncomfortable and overwhelmingly huge problems are my favorite kind um I you know and you know undoing everything Jack Welch did and getting capitalism rebalanced I mean I can't do that alone for sure I'm not the only person who has that Vision um I'm doing my part and it is so vast with so many mov parts that is so complicated that the easier thing would be to give up and just go live on a yacht it gives you a sense of meaning no don't get me wrong there are

days that that that abandoning it and just like is very appealing you know but it gives you a sense of meaning right it gives you a sense of like life becomes worthwhile when there's something scary yeah I want to know I I want to know that I lived a life worth living and for and I and by the way for different people it that is defined differently you know for some living a life worth living means looking at a child that you've raised and saying that kid will be okay without me in other words they

will continue the work that I've done without me it's the same it's the same it's all the same mentality um and and and I I I don't care where somebody finds that meaning I want them to have it the reason I ask this is because I'm always trying to separate like The Virtue from the from reality and when I speak to young kids they all want to change the world and I'm always compelled by like why and even with this podcast what if someone asks me Steve why did you do the podcast of course I

can say you know I want to help people with this information and whatever else and I'm always like trying to make sure that I'm fully in tune with the exact why the most like innate human reason why I'm doing this like why am I doing this am I doing it because lots of people watch and that's great for my ego and my self-esteem or whatever because loads of people are clapping I'm doing it because I see these messages and people come up to me and say it's really helped them to be honest it's probably all

of these things if I'm being like truly honest with myself it's probably all of these things well they're they're they're they're metrics they're indicators right like you and I you you and I one of our metrics that's it's a hard one to track is there is tremendous um I don't know what word to use I think there is gratitude when somebody comes up to us on the street and says thank you so much I read your book listen to your podcast whatever it is and it changed my life right and this is a total stranger

who just by chance that we happen to walk past them in that moment so we can safely assume that there are other people that we haven't walked past but through CH and and not only did they see us they muster the courage to go and talk to us you know and um uh and that is that is a metric why does it feel so good um it's not about feeling good it's not about feeling good for me it's it's proof that the work that I'm doing is going places I never imagined it would go and

does that feel good uh that feels like yeah I mean it feels like the work that I should continue working that's what it it what it makes me feel it's not doesn't make me feel like it's not like I like it doesn't like do anything to my ego or anything it just reminds me you got to keep doing this like you don't have a choice you know um I I I I don't know if I shared the story with you before but I went to Afghanistan uh with the air force during the war in Afghanistan

I went for 24 hours and nothing went according to plan and we ended up thinking we were going to get stuck there and I never told my parents that I was going to Afghanistan we landed at 10:00 at night in bam air base and uh and the door had opened on the side of the plane we hadn't got off the plane yet and about 10 minutes after we landed the base came in a rocket attack and three rockets hit 100 yards off our nose I could you could hear the booms obviously the air raid sirens

are going the over the speakers it's telling everybody to go to their shelters and we're just on a plane filled with gas and weirdly I was calm because everybody else was calm and we never bother put putting on our vests or our helmets because what's that going to do and everybody we just sort of hung out and I was weirdly relaxed and for anybody who's ever been in a war zone they'll know this um you have all the feelings you're supposed to have you don't necessarily have them at the right times my Panic came later

um we finally were given the all clear we went to our quarters the next day I had the most amazing after about three hours of sleep that's all we got had the most amazing experience I got to experience an airdrop mission where we flew a c17 at 2,000 ft I watched the back of the door open and whoosh flew out the back fuel ammunition and water supply to Ford operating base you know about an hour and a half 2 hours from BM and then we flew back most amazing experience right now the goal was to

leave the country I was just there to experience an aird drop meet some people I had no particular responsibility other than to witness um and uh now the goal was to leave the country great there's nothing regularly scheduled and so we found another plane that was going back to bogram we asked the pilot can we join your flight he said yes we waited for many hours because that there's a lot of waiting and we finally got on the plane we're literally 5 minutes from leaving we're all strapped into the back of this KC 46 again

and it's a outbound era medical so we're taking out wounded uh wounded servicemen and women and um and five minutes before we leave the pilot comes up to us and says I need to bump you off this flight because I need some extra room for stretchers and we went sounds good if there's ever a good reason to get bumped off a flight this is it so we took our stuff off and we thought okay let's go find another flight and that's when we learned that there are no other flights leaving until Tuesday and it's only

Saturday and um and now all of a sudden every every fiber of my body sank all of a sudden I realize I'm stuck in this country and there's no guarantee I'm going to get on a flight on Tuesday I don't have any way to contact my parents I'm just going to be completely out of touch after the date that they think I'm coming home and even if I did call them what am I going to say I'm not going to be home I'm in Afghanistan like in the middle of a war you know every I

remember I had I was I had a a tremendous self-awareness of the of how I felt and who I was becoming and there was a public affairs officer who said I can get you to uh Kyan but you don't have the right visa and I literally put my finger in his face I don't do that I've never held my finger in someone's face in my life and I put my finger in his face and said you get me on that plane like I don't talk to people that way way and I could see myself becoming

this person that I am not and didn't want to be we went back to our quarters we're all exhausted and so I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes just cuz I was tired but there's no way I was sleeping my mind was racing one of the officers said well I'm going to see if I can find us another flight so he left and the other officer said well I'm going to go to the gym then and he left and he thought I was sleeping so as he left he turned the lights out

and I was left by myself in the dark my mind going crazy and now I'm panicked that feeling that I should have had when the Rockets hit I'm now having it right now I'm convinced I'm going to die I'm convinced there's going to be another rocket attack I'm convinced it's going to land on me I'm convinced my parents are going to find out I was here when the military knocks on the door and tells them and no logic can dissuade me I know the one of the reasons I feel this way is cuz I have

no sense of purpose right I didn't come here for any reason I just came here to to witness and so I look I'm in the purpose business I'm like all right Simon you need purpose you need purpose come up with a sense of purpose all right you're here to learn and come back and tell their story okay there you go and it made me feel good for like five minutes and then it disappeared and the panic and the paranoia came back in and I went through this cycle multiple times trying to invent a purpose for

myself and then I finally realized I couldn't come up with anything and I gave up and I lie in that bed resigned to the fact that I was stuck there without a sense of purpose and I decided that if I was going to get stuck here I I might as well make myself useful that I would volunteer that I would speak to the Troops that they wanted me to I would carry boxes I would sweep floors I didn't care how menial the work I just wanted to serve those who were serving others and in that

moment I found unbelievable calm even excitement to be there to serve serve those who serve others as if it were a movie the timing was extraordinary having just come to this remarkable Insight the door flies open it's major throck Morton he says there's a flight that's been redirected it's going to Ramstein we can get on the plane if we leave now they're not going to wait for us we have to go we have to go now we have to go now where's Matt I'm like he's at the gym we run to the gym we get

Matt off the treadmill there's no time for him to shower he puts his uniform back on we grab all of our stuff and we run to the flight line to get on this plane we get to the flight line we can see the c17 we're supposed to get on it's right over there we can see it but the security stops us and won't let us onto the flight line there's a fallen soldier ceremony happening somewhere on the base and out of respect everything stops and so we sat on the curb and waited and while we

were sitting there I told the guys what I had gone through lying in that bed mind you I have no idea how long I was in that bed for I could have been in there for 10 minutes I could have been there for an hour I don't want anybody to tell me either had I lost all concept of time I sat there and told them what I had gone through and I had come to this remarkable Insight that true purpose in life is to serve those who serve others and I wept and I wept while

I was sitting on that curb and one of the things that a lot of people don't know about the military is crying is just fine finally the security came up and we were able to walk to the aircraft we boarded the plane we would be the only three passengers aboard this air aircraft what what I didn't know at the time is the reason this flight had been redirected is that we would be carrying the soldier for whom they just had the fallen soldier ceremony we stood there and waited and the Army brought on the flag

draped casket the soldiers put the CATE right in the middle of the aircraft they stood there and did a very slow 8C count salute they turned marched off the plane and we could watch them hugging and crying as they walked out of sight our Air Force crew got to work and they strapped the casket down in the middle of the aircraft and we got going I've never had such an honor in my life having just gone through this experience that I had on the ground learning that true purpose is the opportunity to serve those who

serve others that I get to bring home somebody who knows a lot more about purpose than I ever will we land at Ramstein and we one night at Ramstein before we come home the final flight home is another c17 back to Andrew's Air Force Base and this is a an an a medical evacuation so it's um what they call an AE Mission so wounded wound the wounded some ambulatory some not um and we get into the the flight this flight was a little more relaxed and you know lots of nurses tending to the wounded and

in in the back of the aircraft was a single gurnie a single Marine who was in what they call Seacat which is an artificial coma uh very very badly wounded and he had four doctors attending to him personally and I sort of avoided going to the back of the plane because it was uncomfortable and I finally said no I I got to go so I I walked to the back of the plane to talk to the Ducks and they walked me through his wounds um his buddy stepped on an IED and was killed and he

took the shrapnel he had shrap on the chest shrapnel uh in the eye um and he was in very bad shape and the docs were telling me that the the amount of new uh techniques that they were learning how to how to treat trauma just because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was slowly making its way into civilian hospitals so even when they're wounded they're still serving us you know and the lead doc was a was a was a reservist who works in an ER in Austin and had I not gone through what I

had just gone through 24 hours before I would never have asked him this question but I did I asked him hey Doc you're a good guy you work in an ER you save lives for a living that's your job do you have a different kind of feeling on these missions than you do back home and he looked at me and he said 90 to 95% of the people who come through an ER are either drunks or ID idiots he says there's not a single drunk or idiot on this aircraft he said the feeling that I

get when I get to work these missions during my Reserve hours is more powerful than any feeling I ever get when I'm working back home again the greatest sense of purpose and meaning we can have in our lives is to serve those who serve others part of the deal that they made with me when I went the general said I want you to go and I want you to come back and tell us your insights what you saw that we did well what you saw we just tell us your insights so about two weeks after

I got home I went back to Scott Air Force Base and was standing in a room full of all the brass all the generals Colonels all the command from Mobility forces and they just wanted me to a report on what I saw and I went through everything and I wasn't sure if I was going to tell them about bringing home this flag drip casket that was my the emotions were very raw still and I'm not sure I wanted to do it or could do it and I remember I was reporting on everything else that I

saw and the people I met and the things that I thought were amazing and I took a pause and I decided to tell the story and now the again the emotions are right on the surface and I tell the whole story in even more detail that I'm telling you now and I got to the point where I choked up and I couldn't continue I couldn't tell the story anymore now if this was the private sector and I was standing on a stage telling this exact story somebody in private sector would say to me take your

time they would say uh it's okay that's what they would say to me right it's happened take your time right that's not what happened I stood there completely choked up I couldn't I couldn't speak and was one voice from the back of the room the general and he said go on meaning go on and we're with you right and that's the difference between private sector and these wonderful people in private sector they say to you take your time as if you're alone take all the time you need by yourself and here these people who understand

what service truly means they say go forwards go on move forwards you have no choice and we will be with you and that's what I learned from them when when my friends are struggling I don't say take your time when my friends are struggling I say go on when my friends are crying I say go on the underlying message is and I am here sitting in the mud with you it is the greatest honor of my life and because of that experience that's where the book leaders last came from that experience was the impetus for

that book so when we talk about what the future looks like I just want to live a life of service I want to continue to serve those who serve others and to meet people who live a life of service I will do anything for them I think there's an Unwritten rule that when you meet someone who's devoted their life to serving those who serve others that it is our responsibility to serve them there's an Unwritten rule the reason I do so much pro bono stuff is because when I meet people who are the on the

side of good on the side of service I obey that Unwritten agreement that I will be there for you and I will serve you and expect nothing in return and if you want to bring It full circle back to relationships when one person shows up in the relationship to serve you you have the moral responsibility to serve them because to serve someone who serves others they are serving you which means we have to serve them I live my life by that code the key the key second second line in true purpose is serving those that

serve others the line that you've added and that you learned from your experience going to Afghanistan was that will be there with you along the way mhm how important is that for you in your mission that you have someone there with you and do you feel like you have someone there with you on the mission you're on you talked about the iceberg pulling it out of the ocean at the start of this conversation you reflected on feeling lonely not understood I feel lonely for personal it's my personal life right yeah do you feel like you

have people that are there with you absolutely and when somebody comes up to me on the street and says thank you you changed my life I always say the same thing to them thank you for being a part of the movement I always thank them for being a part of the movement when they say your life changed me my word back to them is continue your work right thank you for being a part of the movement is what I always say because when you say I I do not feel alone I feel I feel that

I'm a part of an army with thousands to the left and thousands to the right dare I say Millions to the left and millions to the right some who I know and most I will never know but we were all marching towards the same direction to build this world that we all believe in in our capacity whether we're doing it for our little company whether we're doing it for our family whether we're doing it for our friends or whether we're doing it at massive scale because we we have that opportunity because we have a bully

pulpit or we we lead a large organization that's the professional side yes personally do I feel I have people to my left and right to work with yes 100% absolutely my team is incredible my closest Confidant is my sister you know my sister and I are business partners and the best of friends this question started with me asking you about looking forward a couple of years and everything's idyllic you given me the the professional answer yeah the personal side of that coin is kind of what I'm trying to understand I think the answer is I

I want somebody I I love companionship and I want to be able to more than talk about and share my magical Surreal Life with someone because I I have a I have a wonderful life and I do want to share with somebody I think sharing is more fun than just telling people about something you when I want to come back and be remember that thing that we did as opposed to can I tell you about this thing that I did you know um uh like I and I want to and I want to share somebody

else's life I want to hear about their bad day I want to hear about their good day I want to be their cheer cheerleader you know I I I want the opportunity I've been a shitty servant in my relationships in the past I've been a really shitty servant and uh and I've built the skill set you know I'm a slow learner give me a break better to learn it now than learn it never um but I want the opportunity to like take all these skills that I've been talking about really effectively and really good at

do professionally and I want the opportunity to do it just for one person you've I mean you spent your life um being a fantastic servant to me from before we even met to to many more people like me and you know this you said millions to your left Millions to your right it's millions and you've been a fantastic service to millions and sometimes even in my own life I reflect and think the service that I did whether it was building the service to my employees or the service to the outside world it came at a

cost and that was often the service to one individual who was right there who I sometimes took for granted over and over again to the point that I lost them and then had to live with the regret um but I mean it just seems so obvious to me that because you have the awareness of all of that you're perfectly placed to serve I'm having a thought an Insight right now which I hadn't had before which is we've talked about about you know everything that we gain in this life comes at a cost and the only

question is was the cost worth it and so now if you say I put all of this focused on this movement and it came at such personal cost right like I took my eye off the ball I wasn't investing the time to be a better boyfriend to learn how to have relationship to learn how to manage you know some of the symptoms of the ADHD just to forget about the ADHD just to learn not to be an idiot you know uh was it worth it and the sad thing is it was like if you're asking

me in the state that I'm sitting in now would I sit in the state right now again and do it all exactly the same way I'm not sure I do it exactly the same way but I believe the movement that we're building and what you and I are both a part of it was worth it now it wouldn't have been worth it if I didn't learn this lesson now now and be given the opportunity now you know would I preferred it 5 years ago 10 years ago yes but uh but I I believe the cost

was worth it because I think the work that we're doing has nobility to it and it matters and that that weirdly makes it sort of huh that's really nice yeah the customers worth it Simon thank you do I have to pay for this uh I think everybody's probably thinking the same to be fair no I I really I really mean that I mean no I I really mean that I really mean that because it's it's so unbelievably powerful um to have a conversation like this it's it's the these are the most important conversations we have

it's not like information sharing and this trick about this business and how to help this team member the human level stuff which is the foundation of all the things we do our success our businesses whatever that we struggle with the most but people like me and you just don't talk about because that's not what we're we you know we're recruited to talk about well and people don't ask us those questions and sometimes if they do we're you know we got good at avoiding them and I think that the tragedy is is that you know people

are modeling their they're making choices based on what we're saying and we're leaving out a huge part of the human story and you know for us not to talk about this stuff does the people who are on their own journey and using our information as part of their education a diservice um so yeah I think this is a great lesson all around and this is it you know people often ask me why on the dy I spend so long talking about health mental health mental Fitness mental Fitness mental Fitness um struggles and all of those

things because I think that's the subject matter that is underserved so that's pretty much the whole space that I play in I spend very little time talking about how to scale a company and all I I focus what I on what I believe is the undeserved foundations of being a great successful quote unquote individual which is all the stuff we've talked about today yeah hey thanks so much I I uh I really love when we do this so do I and the thing is the thing is I think what people don't realize is you know

you and I know each other respect each other and like each other but we don't go out for dinner we've never actually gone out for a meal you know and I think what's so interesting is I think if we did this is what we would talk about and so you know what it's a it's better to do it with others than than than just buy ourselves at dinner we skipped the first date we went straight first dat went straight into the relationship we both hate the first date that's okay hey thank you so much I

really do appreciate it thank you Simon quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans as a sponsor and supporter of this podcast for anyone that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that allows you to have slick fast good quality online meetings without any of those glitches that you'd normally find with other meeting online providers you know the ones I'm talking about and they have a new feature called Blue Jeans basic which I wanted to tell you about blue jeans basic is essentially a free version of their

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have to say I've been on a bit of a journey with this brand because when I started my business in New territories when we first moved social chain to the to New York City the first place we went to was weor we moved four of our team members out to New York City and we built the business from there um I have to say there's something magical about Wei works I've spent the last two or three weeks in LA in a Wei work and as you walk in the front door every day it's almost like

that sense of community that sense of magic excitement camaraderie is tangible and you don't get that when you're working at home you don't get that often when you're sat in your bed on your lap top there's something about getting out and getting into a Wei workor that makes me feel a sense of Entrepreneurship and and creativity and building and the way that we work to design both both in the way that they offer subscriptions so that you can work you know on demand but also the the flexibility of the contracts means that it's just the

perfect place for businesses to scale their companies and if you haven't checked out wework and you want to you can go to we. co/ CEO and there you can get 50% off a trial day at we were close to you [Music]