When Will You Allow Yourself to Enjoy Life? – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.stop trading things that matter for ones that don't This is from James Clear If you already live a comfortable life then choosing to make more money but live a worse daily life is a bad trade And yet we talk ourselves into it all the time We take promotions that pay more but swallow our free time We already have a successful business but break ourselves trying to make it even more successful Too much focus on wealth not enough focus on lifestyle And this is kind of goes back to the hidden and observable metrics thing that me and George Mack talk about whereby the more observable and quantifiable uh and socially rewarded a particular metric is the more uh acclaim that it gives you the more status that it affords the more that you're going to lean into that and you know quality of lifestyle you know like real what is the day-to-day existence of you like how happy are you how much spare time do you have to do the things that you care about that is very hard to flex and it's very hard to measure as well But your bank account is pretty easy to measure or the value of your house or the number of bedrooms that it's got or the growth of your company or your job title All of these things super easy games and too much focus on wealth not enough focus on lifestyle is a just a nice reframe You know it reminds us what are you trying to accumulate this wealth for presumably to afford yourself the kind of lifestyle that you enjoy If you've already achieved a kind of lifestyle where you are happy and you then worsen that in an attempt to make more money the bar stool is upside down You're sacrificing the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get it Uh and then Oliver Burkeman again says just because you're at the top does not mean that you're enjoying life The upper ranks of corporate life are dominated by insecure overachievers People who are driven by a deep sense of inadequacy and are not having any fun even though they've supposedly won this very competitive race So again the people that you admire the people at the top of the totem pole do you really want that life are they having fun or are they dominated by insecure overachievers these inadequate the productivity debt riddled people Is that really who you want uh and then I kind of tied this to I I molested a quote from um Nasim Talb where he says there's two types of people in the world Those who don't know how to make money and those who don't know when to stop And I changed this to the Matthew principle of self-improvement which is there are two types of people in the world Those who don't know how to improve their lives and those who don't know when to stop And people who can improve their lives will always struggle to be around people who can't personal growth and self-improvement is liberating and it's fulfilling and it's exciting but it is also a trap I think that convinces you that you're an unfinished article who doesn't need to start enjoying life yet And you can defer happiness until you've reached a certain level of development You say to yourself "I'll really start living when I finally mastered this new meditation technique or got to singledigit body fat or hit six figures a year income or bought that new house or read a 100red bucks or grown my channel to a million subscribers or whatever And personal growers like you have probably learned that a sacrifice reward dynamic is useful and it is useful in the micro but it's malignant in the macro We teach ourselves that we need to do the tough things first so that we can enjoy the fun things later And if that's go to the gym before watch some YouTube I think that's fine But if it's complete and arbitrary amount of life improving before actually feel like we can let ourselves enjoy life it's not fine And the perennially difficult balance of the personal growth is between being and becoming It's between feeling enough and wanting to be better Between a desire for more and a satisfaction for what you already have You want to leave it all out on the field of play But you realize if you're constantly driven by desiring more it's difficult to take time to enjoy the process of playing the game And it's tough I think to be honest this is the personal growth problem It's the most common question that was asked at the live shows that I did last year and the Q&As's How do I know if I'm working hard enough i I I feel like I'm sacrificing the thing I want which is happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it which is success I I I'm in this sort of lonely chapter thing and I'm grinding away and I have faith that this is going to be good for me in the long term but I also don't want to look back in 20 years and realize that I basically just sacrificed my youth and my verility and and and all of the time that I had And it's anxietyinducing people don't like it and it's tough It is very very tough to basically let go of that desire for more for maximizing Um but one solution that I quite like that I got from Sam Harris last year was to basically try and string together some moments of peace and gratitude wherever you can So just 30 seconds five times a day really putting your mind where your feet are So taking a deep breath in and allowing your mind to focus on the peripherals of your vision and think about something that makes you happy Think about how how the things that you have now are only once things that you dreamed of having Think about how insane it would be if you from 5 years ago could see this newly improved texture of your mind or quality of your life and clarity of your thoughts and realize that all of the striving and pushing and grinding is indeed satisfying But if you can't have fun now you're never going to have fun You have to have start having fun now You must begin enjoying life right now because it is only ever going to be right now You cannot continue to push this thing down the road And the reason that I like that idea from Sam it I think originally called it a realistic path to enlightenment which are these moments of peace like mops Um and the best way that I found to do that I'm so bad at this by the way which is why it's you know is why I think about it a lot Um I have post-it notes around the house So there's some next to the back door There's some on the window in front of where my sort of computer sits And uh it just asks me little questions like "Are you as present as you could be right now uh what went well today?" And each time that I see one of those post-it notes I try to take between sort of 15 and 30 seconds to have okay mind is resting where feet are And what I mean by that is I'm not distracted I'm not ruminating about yesterday I'm not thinking about tomorrow I'm not concerned about what's going to come I'm not fttting about what's happened I just think okay like can I do just 15 seconds or 30 seconds and when I look back on the day those moments often appear in the top five uh things that's happened like really just taking a moment So that's weird That's like gratitude at the end of the day for being grateful during the day which is very nice because that's a sort of self-reinforcing cycle the more gratitude you do the more easy it is to find and the more grateful you are for your gratitude So uh yeah maybe the post-it note or maybe you want to use reminders on your phone to sort of um trigger you every few hours or something throughout the day but that seems to work for me And this balance the the other thing as well to say is that this is a very hard thing to strike a balance of So if you are someone that is trying to improve yourself uh that has big dreams and big goals and all the rest of it accepting this is the cost of doing business This isn't some personal curse that's been bestowed on you that you I'm having to suffer with this thing God how feeble and and and malignant and broken am I how how uniquely cursed is my particular setup no this is how everybody feels This is every single person that wants to do a lot that wants to know that they should enjoy life but also wants to leave it all out there on the field of play This is just part of the course Hopefully that makes it seem a little bit easier to deal with I'll I'll I'll tell you if I find out a proper solution This episode is brought to you by Element Summer hits different when you're actually hydrated That tired foggy muscle crampy feeling most people chalk up to heat or exhaustion it might be electrolytes And plain water alone won't fix it Which is why Element is such a game changer It's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mixed with sodium potassium and magnesium in the exact ratio your body needs No sugar no food dyes no artificial junk And this summer they've dropped something new Lemonade salt It's like a lemon popsicle grew up got its life together and started supporting your adrenal system and your hydration And best of all there's a no questions asked refund policy So you can buy it try it for as long as you want and if you don't like it they'll give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box That's how confident they are that you'll love it Plus they offer free shipping in the US Right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom Would you look at that clip is already over but if you want more don't be sad The full episode is available right here [Music]