Seth Godin: Learn to See, Leave Them Changed.

Just think about all the different ways than I could potentially introduce my guest today set garden and said I have known each other for a solid chunk of yours, and I could tell you about how he's this brilliant thinker, the market, are an entrepreneur founder, an educator. I could tell you all you come judgments means that he has out in the world. They could tell you what he's built. I could tell you about the gazillion near times best selling books that he has on the market and in fact he does heavy a really fascinating new book out called this is marketing. I could tell you about how he he helped to create an industry of books, as I d or viruses, but when I we think about south the thing I have come to know about him and admire him more than anything else is he's what my great grandmother would have called a match.

He is just a kind, genuine, thoughtful human being who wants to see others experience their lives better. So when I return to sit down and have a conversation with half its We must always a yes and the like time he and I actually captured one of these conversations on a microphone was actually until they much bigger than like funds very early days of good life project when we were filming and that was about six years ago, as I sit here and record death and reset, today for a really powerful. very wide, ranging anything important conversation that touched on ideas of the day, reflected on some places out. We ve come from an all at the end he poses a really important question for all of us to consider,

as we look at how we want to live our lives our day to day basis how we want to contribute to the world and what we would love that world to look like really happy to share this conversation with my friends: have golden engine The fields- and this is good life project librarian- is supported by the economists who the world seems to be moving faster than ever: climate economics politics, a eyeing culture where ever you look, events are unfolding at a rapid pace and it's hard to stay on top of it, which is why I love that now, for the first time, you can get a one month, free trial, the economist, so you won't miss a thing I have literally been reading the economist I want to say for decades. I love that it covers more than just economics and finances you'll find coverage on topics from politics to science, to technology, even arts and the environment. The economist offers this global perspective with

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We don't do it all I now I now see we live basically in the same city receive each other in passing and every once in a every couple of years, really hey, but I'm thinking of you, because your name comes up all the time. As does yours. Can we just talking about chocolate before everything else. I could have attracted the whole time exact, learn this about you. It's been a chunk of yours now and you are you're not just to consumer chocolate. You're inefficient, not oh you're. At one an aspiring chocolate maker, but I never actually don't I don't. You ever told me what started that whole thing. Well, I don't have any popular vices, so I never drank once in my life, we're done drugs, I don't have cigars or wine or any of those things you can be an aficionado of, any magazine says blank aficionados, I don't do that thing and I am. The kind of person is a little affected. I like to know view about origin in terroir and stuff

all of a sudden. I realize that dark chocolate isn't hershey's, it's a whole other thing and the deeper I dug about the fact that some of the lowest paid people in the world grow chocolate beans and that the trees that the beans come from all the good trees were about to become extinct because hershey said, nestle's only wanted the bad trees that there's forced arrow and carrillo and trinity, mario and the bad tree, is high, yielding and bug resistant, but doesn't taste good and so the farmers. What are they going to do?

we're going to switch to the one that makes them more money, and so, just in time, the people at scharf and burger in it rogen at eskenazi, showed up and said we'll pay triple or ten times for the da. So it was like it was a social thing and it was a cultural thing and I can also taste it most people, I don't think, can taste the colors in chocolate that I've come to taste, but the downside is, I have to eat it every day cause I'm addicted now he knows, but if you're going to have a vice, and that's a good addiction to have yeah I mean it's interesting. I I never really knew the sort of the geopolitics of chocolate, but it's I met. I love chocolate and I'm nowhere near the level of depth of wisdom about the beans and the process of making my serve cursory knowledge of just what's actually fueled the economy underneath it for a long time. I was like wow. There is there's actually

I mean this bad stuff happening here yeah, and you know that the fact is it usually when the privilege western world shows up and makes things worse in this case, if chocolate disappeared, those people would be even worse shit right. So when John f Kennedy and he's the reason I didn't start, a chocolate company is cause. He is not really making amazing chocolate, but he does it such an extraordinarily ethical way. He not only pays more than he has two. He puts the kids of the growers to private school. He support

it's their community and he goes there in person every year, and so you know to watch one human being, who used to be a and a to address a trailer or show up, and do that. So what I've also found is I liked the people who make chocolate and I like sean- I liked the guys who make rogue ai the guys who make ritual. Ah, he was friends with John Shaw from burger before he died, and so I just keep bumping into these people's have nice connecting them to other people. We need more of those sort of micro communities of artisans who are able to produce products. I found that in the book industry for sure people like you and then in the chocolate, so you got unless there's there are these pockets, where you can make a difference and be proud of what you make. Yet. None of that, as I feel like there's this there's this return to makers and their near all the supplies, itself that she built at guitar earlier this year, because

there's something in me. That was like a primal urge. I was really missing, just working with my hands and Something tat announced are calling you lex, because your aloof here I love tat. I was a super. I wonder if part of these, certainly the idea of getting back to being a maker is we just the culture and the community. It's like we're missing, they're gathering around and creating something, even if we're not creating the same thing together, who are parallel playing just a conversation that goes on in the community around it. Yeah and you know the the nature of industrial capitalism as it moves toward few players who have high leverage.

and one of the things that the internet did with a shop, kickstarter, etc is open it up for a while, so that small players with low leverage could make enough they couldn't maximize, but they could make enough and what it did was it turned all of us into marketers, even if you don't make a thing you're busy on social media, social media above other and thinking hard about how much wanna be involved in that and what it gives you in terms of fuel or sustenance his really important, and I don't think very many people do that and I think a key part of your work has been narrating, that kind of internal conversation what's it for. Why am I going through this cycle? Why am I beating myself up about this? Is this leading me to more of what I want there that I think that's a really missed part of the conversation

But the thing is nannie. It means a miss polly conversation with other people, but I only think we reflect just the internal conversations. I could even includes exactly. You know. I was on stage in mexico city about six months ago and, as you know, the worst place to speak is other than like a crowded bar is a convention center, because the acoustics are terrible and a convention center assembled. he's translation is we're still because I won't get the headphones on in every it's like an echo by this one popped it because in the third row. There was a woman on her cell phone, which wasn't on herself and checking her email. She wasn't on her cell phone listening. She was on her cell phone having a conversation and so I I made the flight I've made it to customs. I made it to traffic. I'm standing up there, and all I can do is keep looking at for me and I'm changing my the arc of my talk to talk about how we are captives of

Phones, hoping she will hear me and hang up and after about fifty, minutes. I realized tat. I had decided to let this woman changed the way I was going to serve two thousand other people. I took a deep breath and she was absent for me for the rest of the day, because she wasn't there for me. I didn't need to be there for her. There are other people who want me to be present and to choose to turn on lights for them because they were enrolled in where I wanted to go, and it's only. I have to remind myself of every day. I have insulated myself from things like twitter. Amazon reviews cause those are things that would derail the mission that I'm on and it's oh tempting cause. It's a click away, and you know if I'm having a moment where I need a weird endorphin rush, I'm so tempted to click this and wonder what they're saying about this, and I don't do it because, if I do, I will have given up an hour that I could be spending producing for other people instead nah

I mean it's so interesting because you're also come back in the early days of blogging. You were the first person than I ever remember, achey just clearly turning off comments. There are a lot of crap for them yeah, but, but I mean you also spoke to it and you're very I mean my remember you're pretty parliament is very honestly like like this. Completely destroy the bizarre exactly where I had a blog with comments. It would be a blog without posts a hit so its bell of the frame of doing that in the name of creating the space to actually go into the cave. To do the work that he showed up to do rather than spend ninety percent of your time, engaging around it and then not having the time to actually create offerings on a level that make you feel like out like. This is what I am here to do. A thing to be part of. It goes back to this sort of acceptance. Avoidance thing so, oh here from people say I can never please my boss

I that I'm doing this and this so I'm gonna just check out well what I learned from that note is, you may think, you've never pleased your boss, but you're not fired yet. So you pleased the boss enough to be able to comment so given that you're able to come in, why don't you just ignore the boss? Why don't just do the work you want to do because doing the work to please the bosses and working. So what would it mean to use this position in the leverage in this moment to say I made this and I don't need my boss to like it. I need to like it and I needed it to serve the people. I made it for no questioner, as is I love that and when you take that serve ideal and you brain into a scenario where you got a kid who just graduate school turner, fifty thousand dollars and tat, and then

there in an organization where they step into another culture than on behalf and ass for the boss, the project, the thing in their hired with very specific intention and job to do had he now he attention yeah. I love this so first I'm sorry that four years ago they didn't ask me costs, stop killing agreement that would have made it really clear accordingly quarter dollars you wanted to spend, but leaving that aside, the essence of doing work. That matters is a two part question whose it for and what did for because you can't do it for everyone, and you can't do it for everything anything we do has a whose it for an what's it force. If you take a job well, what's it for if it is the what's it for, as I need to pay off my dad then don't keep renegotiating. Why you took the job you took the job to pay off your debt. On the other hand, if the who's it for is, if I please my boss enough I'll get a promotion so I'll have

I leverage, so I can have more joy baba. We know who the who is it for is the who's it for is typically sure that your boss, though, what's it for well Then empathy that I'm writing about these days is the embassy of saying I don't know what you know. I dont want what you want. I dont believe what you believe and that's ok, cause you're, not wrong, and I'm that wrong. There is a situation here, were you believe these things and you these things. So if what building is for you, I cannot build it for you and insist: you see the world the way I do I can do is go to where you are and they based

what you, knowing what you want and what you believe here. I made this now. If you can't do that and be proud of who you are, then you need to leave, but let's be really clear about the whose foreign the watch for, because I actually have a whole bunch of twenty two year old in my life, because their peers of my kids and they use the rationale of arm in debt to take a job that must simultaneously pay off their debts and sustain them at a social level and what I am trying to say to them is: where is it written that using get both at the same time and be really clear about why you're doing this, the whose at four in the world to fork is otherwise? every single day you're going to be stressed because you're serving two antithetical calls when that frame the serve their contexts, I think is super helpful. I mean in your question, is: where is it written that you can have both say all over pop culture

also salary for everything. That's comment is really popular in the self help world is yes. Yes, yes, it's funny. I remember like a chunk of years ago back when we were filming this sat down with Joanne wilson, who, I already know who has spent many. I mean she's incredibly accomplished herself for many years, working with a lot of founders and she was you know- and I kind of I pose this question, I'm like whoa. How do you feel about the you can add this incredible, full rich life and also have this incredibly explosive business, iconic, business and she's like you, can have it all one at a time that works and some people are lucky enough to get both, but what they tend to do is get both by earning the privilege before they take the benefits and twenty.

so I would add that there is a third thing. That's in pop culture, which is not only can you get rewarded for doing what you love? You can also be authentic at all times right. Well, what we more likely see our people who who pay their dues in one of dozens of ways either by doing work. They love for no compensation over and over and over again in a general way, feeding the community One day, the committees as we currently without you here come over here, will pay you or they do work that they're, not ashamed of, but they do work. That's important enough to be valued. I the measure of the person who hire them until they have this status and the leverage to shift the work into a slightly different direction.

But the other part that is so important is a van gogh at lived one hundred years earlier or one hundred years later, he wouldn't have painted the way he painted. That's not in your genes. That's in the moment it's a choice, and so you can work on wall street or you can work at a coffee shop. and your craft can be ideal with humans in ways that I am proud of, that transform those humans, the matter that you're making coffee or that you're making money it matters that your day is probably spent interacting with humans, if you want to own that as your art, I think that there are plenty of demand for them. There completely agree, as recently as say, I've been out. Your girl for a long time have been taught us on offer many years now. Somebody recently asked me that day measure and I thought for a man like you know, in a lot of ways ass. She don't think I ever stop teaching yoga right, because not teaching them

Is this an hour, then that is the essence of yellow What I'm, what I was always curious about is is the process of growth, the process of liberation as the process of realization and, like anything, it fits with what you're saying cause that could be a thousand distinct expressions of that or a million in a book. But what's underneath that is this intense interest in in a process or an outcome in there? That's maybe where the craft and expression I mean. Let's put a pin in this, this is so urgent and it's almost never discussed so you know I grew up in northern canada and became a canoeing instructor when I was sixteen changed. My life and kids would come up to me

I did this for years, and years from this is my forty second summer of teaching and thus it you must really love canoeing like actually I don't like canoeing at all. It hurts my knees. It hurts my shoulders, I do it, so I can teach it's just the most direct way. I have to be in this spot with you teaching you and the what the boat does is a side effect. And to offer in our culture has said it: what are you a milk man? Why not you not a milk man you're, just someone who happens use the delivery of milk as a way to achieve various objectives in your life. But don't defying yourself by the key. or of the bottle you're carrying around with the shape of the paddle or the guitar. Its a means to a basic you. Emotion and is only twenty of them it. So we don't have to get super specific, oh no! I could never do did. You write western and I only right now. That's not how works its way.

Is it that we wanted when we went on this path that that's where a lot of my focus has been, and it feels like increasingly a lot of you come at that question that a lot of different ways, especially in the last like I feel like two to four years yeah I mean, I think that I've always wanted to do the teaching I'm doing, but it needed a different wrapper around it to be in the space that I was in. Have you no write a column and fast company, where you gonna give a speech to five thousand businesspeople, it's hard to show up and use the yoga wrapper I because then you're already not going to where they are, but if you can start by saying I'm here to talk about how to meet your goals and your boss's goals, how to sell more stuff or how to make more profit or how to use me how to make a difference. People will and listen and then you d say it turns out the way you do, that is not by spamming, scamming in short, cutting.

It turns out you do that in ways that you are actually proud of, and the combination of the two I think helps get us where we need to go nets, lady, using business as they context fur individual wrath right, which wasn't true in nineteen thirty, five, nineteen, thirty, five, place, which today into which it be, do it again and they will lose euro expectation and in nineteen, sixty five if you wanted to talk to the person in the office next, you you calling your secretary dictated a memo. She walked and gave the member to his secretary, and then she gave it to the guy sitting right, so the euro interaction with nearly as human as it is now, and that shift happen in our lifetime and no one saw it coming and a shift like that will never happen again.

They mean, as is, is there an argument that, with the introduction of screens and between faces some say, the pendulum in it from an attack like technology is moving pendulum back where we are. Yes, in theory were more connected, then we ve ever been, but were also more emotionally disconnected peri urban either. It's interesting

if you look at slack. There is an enormous amount of software in slack built around soft tissue and the number of substantive things that go on in fact, isn't that much bigger than it is in real life. So I think that, as we move closer to high yielding knowledge work, meaning if someone right down what you do for a living, they're gonna find someone cheaper than you didn't. Do it that if it can be done in steps your doomed, because the steps we gotta get done by computer or someone who's disrespected, so people are racing to a job, were they cannot easily replaced and in those jobs I think what were discovering is fear and the cultural cohort of people like us drives so much of what is possible or not possible that we have

pay attention to the soft stuff, because the soft stuff is ninety six percent of what told me everybody back there. I mean primary constrain and also gateway to potential possibilities, and it was I mean if you wanna, be a harvard business school case about it. Ford, gm mercedes all knew how to make it pestle. There was nothing to test the brought to the table. It was unknown, but those companies were filled with people who said, I didn't sign up to work at a hundred year old car company, so that I could risk everything to do some crazier scheme. That's why how to get done by it out. either. That's a soft tissue issue, a soft skill issue. It's not! We don't know how to get enough nickel hadrian's whenever into a batter there. Tomorrow is the world's largest car sharing marketplace would throw you can, but any car you what we

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the companies where they really affecting culture mean how much there's a lot of lip service given to these skills. But there also called soft skills and But can I like the eyes his late this now that we have to do because somebody told us we have to do it. It's gotta be a brochure, but ok like it doesn't really matter that much. You know what I mean. Do you still see their do feel edwin that the shops and play is your yelling. Do you feel like there is? There is any evolution in that there is any realization that this stuff actually matters on the level of quote hard skills. Well, so, in defense of the people who are running this, if you emphasize soft skills a lot in a hurry, a whole bunch of WU starts showing there and a whole bunch of people hiding

if that guys, but just as we can see that as soon as we measure something online people become obsessed with that measurement, I don't care if you're good at tweeting. I see you have six hundred thousand followers. Therefore you must be good at it. The piano has given ceos, this marvelous place to hide, and It is the simplest measurement in the world. I don't get, you run your shop, just keep making your budget numbers, and so no, I don't think we're one tenth of the way toward a coherent method for improving soft skills among talented people. I think that there are some pockets in some organizations were really special things happen and you can see it in the outside world, but

too often, if the company's doing well financially, then they say oh yeah sure, and if they're not the first thing that goes out. The window is the thing that they should be most reliant on, which is where we going to find brave, generous people who care enough to do uncomfortable things, and you know almost everything we buy. We could buy from someone which means that if you want a shot and not being the low price commodity creator, you're gonna have to have a team of people who care about something more than which today going into which it be cause. That's our thing extra for the importance of finding those people, but also on top of that, the importance of elevating training education to images

The whole idea behind Tom Peters last book right, it's like at the hardest possible moment when you've got no money at all, spend it on training. The most incredible like invest in your people show them you care, help them learn and- and I think some of the kiss them internally, I think, reflect some of what he talked about the companies that that really actually survived in the last downturn, two thousand it to the nine when everybody was cutting their budgets to their people were the few that actually said no we're doubling down there yeah I mean Tom, I've stolen eighty percent of myself and tom, and he continues to be right I think that it is important to outline a dozen also an obligation on the part of the employee, and that obligation is this. Almost all company training, his terrible and the reason it's terrible is its based on command and control is based on the compulsory nature of education. So you show up, there is attendants, taken,

here's a lecture, maybe there's a compliance death it then we will want to be held in vienna for four years. We ve had three thousand people go through it. Hr department do not like it. They do not work with us because it does not match their paradigm. It's a complete bargain compared to what their currently spending, but they can't control with the way that they were, I want to, because this is a key part they're worried that if they treat employees like adults, employees will take advantage of them, and that is often true, because if you come up believing that the only thing that's worse

listening to and a lecturer's stuff. That's going to be on the test and there isn't going to be a test. Then why pay attention, and so as companies, try to shift away from command and control and away from this dictating to people what to do next to create these cadres of brave, passionate people a lot of people, but even people who listen to you all the time want that at work, but aren't willing to experienced the fear that goes with it are willing experienced the fear that goes with it, the place you work will either let you do it or someone will hire you away, because that is in such short supply that the leaders who do get it are killing each other try to find a few people who are willing to go on that journey with them

lot of the that also dries part of the fear of providing that container, because you're like well, I'm going to invest all of this and then maybe the person's gonna walk out the door rather than saying maiden yeah, I Tom Peter, says, and which would be better- that are now investing we're having a mistake. Yet, as I couldn't when you create that frame. Regarding ok, let's find out, I listen to the idea of that that last we're gonna drive down from vermont that halfway down, like, I think, a little bit like recorded this himself, just that he gets relate challenge himself to say bullshit many many times here. Perhaps some of it is seven. Our windows really is through funding I've known him for a long time, and I used to have a really good top heaters irritation and I can't do it

I can't bring it up. I just you know he will say that's job one period and it's the period part that's so great, and so when he sent me the book, I was so thrilled and I blurb it, and I think my blair was something like this- is vintage tom, peters, peters, yeah, that's awesome, he's great yeah agreed. You brought up something interesting, So can I jumped back to charge eskenazi, which is that when he does too here's a guy staunchly successful lawyer bodies also earning yo, a really big living defending

some of their worst. You know some interesting parallels with him and Scott Harrison from charity water, so he kind of has his awakening starts this chocolate company, but he didn't like for him. It was about chocolate. It was about. This was a mechanism for him to go and become the best person on earth and be of service and was interesting is when you're just sharing that part of what he does as he goes to these villages each places and helps teach and educate and help didn't like the kids go and get their education. I jumped back to a conversation I had with bob taylor years ago from tele guitars who's at a point in his life and his career right now, where Jen it's a sizable company and a lot of his days are

and going to small villages in the amazon, are different places and trying to find beautiful wood for company. But in a way where they're, literally that there, how can we actually create sustainable enterprise? And how can we respect the environment? How can we create jobs in education and health for the people in these villages? I wonder sir you're talking about two guys who who are essentially doing this towards the later part of their careers and where they think there's like a natural shift towards legacy towards impact. I've often wondered if there is a way to in some way trigger that yearning earlier in a person's life, but I think in my experience that yearning is present and we don't need to trigger. We just need to not extinguish it, and there is.

A ton of pressure and that this generation coming up is doing a better job than most at resisting the pressure and saying you know, maybe I'll be a nomad for awhile, maybe out of work and a social enterprise. Maybe I will just figure out how to do this work. That is, for the smallest viable group of people is not happening enough, but it's clearly happening, but the pressure is all you have student debt, blah blah blah so michelle, while she used to work for me now runs a school in nepal and she's, thirty right and so she's, not shawn asked as he she didn't make a giant pile of money. She went for two weeks to recover her breath in a monastery which is not uncommon for people of a certain agent and and part of the culture, and she said this is resonating with me. She saw things in p

oh, that needed to be drawn out? She felt like she could help, and now it's been two years and the magic of the internet means that she doesn't need. There is a lot of money, but she can from a faraway she's gotten kids from the path from little villages in nepal into harvard with full scholarship. And so the world keeps getting smaller. If we let it and when I watch someone like Michel in her little corner of the world, doing something with all that what differences make when there's all this horrible illness a lot of different, because if we multiplied by a hundred thousand people suddenly it matters a lot. It feels like. I said that this is a bit of a server I reckon action of the need for meaning and purpose at an earlier age in that generation yup and the quote millennials, which I hate, lumping all into one thing, but still, I feel like, like I'm gen x, are kind of like just forgot about everything,

we're heads down and hope to be able to do it in a reasonable way, like yeah the next night and served as a weirdo in that generation. That sort of say well, maybe there's something else, but I do feel like that. Like a generation or two like behind came up and there is an expectation, almost entitlement to existential compensation really early in life, that I think, is, can be a double edged sword for sure for sure I mean you know. Capitalism has decided and it's the dominant method, even in places like russia or countries where you wouldn't expect that you know the number one country in the world for e commerce, is kenya and the origin is really fascinating salt or give them one minute version. If you lived They will be a you wanted to get a hundred dollars to your mother, who lived in a far village. What you would do his put. Can you in an envelope rapid up a few times, go to the bus station as a whose heading out toward my village and some strange retire?

you'd hand him the envelope and he would carry it on the bus. For the two days and then hand it to your mother when he found her, this is a pretty inefficient way to transfer funds. Well, around the same time, the local cell phone companies fire I started setting up kiosks all around the country, so you could pay as you go on your phone and because no one was going to sign up for a monthly subscription that doesn't make any sense. While you pay it a pay as you go, and then they realized they could make. It that's the guy and they will be, could pay for his mother, sulphur and so from nairobi. You could go to the key task: they here's my cell phone number top up her cup, but once I figured that out, they realised that now Did you transfer credits from one point or another, but if you got any of our key asks, we'll take money off your phone and handed back to you and shillings, so suddenly,

every single person who has a phone, has the ability to give and get money. And now no one's going to redeem the money could currency does need to be in money, currencies on the phone, while the The result is that economy that was not based on commerce. Commerce is now in every single persons hat, and one of the things that means is you can be a dreamer and you can be nectar and you can live the life of an artist or a poet by anywhere in the world, who are also expected to creating a value turn enough money to pay for your food. And the way we do that keeps shifting really dramatically because at one end we've got people who are used to making three dollars a day. Who can now go online and make six dollars a day doing something digital boy also radiologists are used to making tourists thirty five thousand a year who can't

Wake up make a any more cause. A computer can read an x ray better than they can so. The whole thing is just an it's, not a mess, but it's all been shuffled a which opens a whole nother exploration, know if we know put the crystal ball and then table between us or like, given that given the state of ai given what's happening twenty years from now, he like what is the essential quality of a job or still exist. Were you know we had this conversation you and I and nineteen fourteen. I think it was maybe nineteen thirteen when They started recognising the steam chauvelin when the steam shovel goes along. What I was with a dude digs ditches it's over for them and was a lot of hand, wringing about the fact that mechanism was gonna, destroy the economy. Because all manual labor go away and We saw really clearly was being a machine operator as hire you.

Than higher paying their being a ditch, digger and it being a foreman of machine operators is even better than an abandoned that well in our lifetime. The shift has been following. Instructions is not nearly as good as writing. Instructions and writing instructions is not as good as inventing them so I think it is really unlikely in the next fifty years that ai is going to do. emotional labour of a linchpin of a human who cares somebody who can work without a manual who will happen eventually, it's hard for me to see it happening in a generation so that's where we need to run. We need to run into the direction where you don't care that no one told you what to do your happy that no one told you what to do, because it gives you a chance to do even more than is expected. No one teaches us in school and as a result, we have generations of people coming out, saying

the placement office, where the instructions- and I wanted to tell you do there- can be bitterly disappointed. I guess I mean, since a lot of your work over the last ten years has been to train the present account. Again, but also contrary path. Yeah exactly- and I found it thanks to my parents and somewhat breaks? But I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want a beyond this better. At least. Try it it's really. You know zig ziglar or my late teacher used to tell the story of how you train fleas and it turns out, if you put fleas into a jar, they'll jump out for as you put fleas into a giant puddle loot lid on it, loosely they'll, hit the top and hit the top and hit the top and then they'll get tired of hitting the top and you can take the top off and they won't jump out

and that's what we did is we took the top off the jar and a whole bunch of people are dropping out. I know why they're not jumping out, but someone needs to encourage the jump here was marty seligman, call that learn and it turned out. The measure was the opposite phrase. Sadly, it may be learned something like air carriers in the ones that little bit thinking this morning that last time we actually have the kind of form we sat down. We had cameras around us and just as protests, We have a camera that is already one of the places it will be so much traffic through these last year. You and I have my forehead six pa- is bringing us juices, somebody's fanning us behind the chairs. That was six years ago and big picture. It's been a hell of a six years for the planet, for the country for us individually over that window of time, and maybe, if you want to short it up,

and when you think about where do the issues? The the touch points, the the crux smooth that have really drawn your focus, your attention, your your curiosity and what jumps out here there are. There are two things that are happening at the same time that are really a surprising juxtaposition. What steve pinker is pointed out which really frustrates a lot of people in ways that surprise me, because it frustrated me when I first heard it is that the world is safer, health here than it has ever been and keeps getting safer and healthier than it has ever been, and we don't want to believe that and the reason we too want to believe it is that what the media does for living is remind us all day, every day that the world is getting less safe

unless he saw one end, you got this dramatic disconnect between the ratchet that technology and civil society are creating in the right direction. But on the other hand, you have the fact that we have clearly set the table for the world to melt and this summer was one of the ten hot summers of all time and nine of those hot summers of all time had been in the last ten years. There is no doubt in any body who examines is honestly mind that the world is melting and worry. or if you care about your grandchildren or your great grandchildren or even your children. This is malpractice of the highest order. What we're doing by being distracted by things that are minor compared

this opportunity, but then the is going on is the media is eating itself and there's something in mythology called an aura wars, which is a snake buddy. Itself by the tail and the media is in this constant race for our attention and every single time they set aside a cultural taboo were boundary that media outlets gets more attention, and so there's a race to the bottom, and my instinct is everything

listen cycles. How do you know how much longer the cycle of animosity and anger and pushing against things that we probably shouldn't push against will continue, but I am optimistic that it will be replaced by kindness and it will be a kindness that comes from people who are exhausted by the battle that human beings care very much about one of two things in any given moment affiliation or dominance and we're in a dominance moment right now, where what we see is it's all pro wrestling. I who's up who's down in my guy beating your guy, but the affiliation instinct is also great who's on my team. Where do I stand who's to my left is to my right. Are we together

and not one of those things has ever lasted forever. We go through diamonds, phases has in pop culture and then affiliation want, and vice versa. So for me an invoice voice like yours matter, a lot because they remind us a kindness is not left the building remind us that every A single thing that has ever mattered has been based on culture. Culture beats strategy, culture beats despots, culture beats technology, and culture comes from. The grassroots culture is what we do. Culture is not done to us. We can participate in other people's culture, but if you're not proud of it, don't ask so the cycles gotta go the other way being an optimist and crossing my fingers. So what I see in the last six years, is

A media narrative that is chilling, and I am ashamed of one that has shifted our world in ways that I'm not happy with, but I also see when I see human beings actual human beings, most of them are airing. On the side of, I see you there hurrying on the side of how can I help hearing on the side of kindness had so? My hope is

it's a culture that the media realigns with the culture and we end up seeing what's actually around us here at the I feel like the and I'm noticing that same attorneys or pushback has its is a wrong word that same sense of it. It's exactly what to do, but I do know I can choose to be kind in a moment and fear. If that's all, I can do right now. Let me try that just and not even for someone else just so maybe I can breathe and maybe the compound effect of that across larger and large numbers of people starts to have an effect. Hey it's jonathan from good life project. If you are in the

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so why did you do it? Because in that moment maybe it felt juicy, but you paid for you paid for by ring up a quarter of an hour of your life that I might ask you something else yet which really ties in with this, which is I've always known you as being somebody where you have very strong police about society, about politics about humanity. Yet in your public. Sharing of your writing. You've you've never been somebody who dives into the mill politics take sides and offer something specific on feeling the issue of the day and at the same time you know when we were leading up to the election in november. Twenty sixteen, you wrote a few posts that weren't you're late pick sides pixels pic size, but it was sort of it was speaking to these

sense of responsibility to act to to vote today, something that was unusual. I fell to me like that was unusual for you. I care enough about my vision of the world that if I thought that I could change the way we did things ice blogging about it specifically, I would do it But I feel like a chiming in on the issue of the day is a trap because it protects us from having to take responsibility for or know a larger point of view right that a that of cant or descartes had spent most of their time I mean in the interests of the court. We never would have benefited from

of their work, because we don't care about which duke was hurting, which you know baron in those days, and so I think we do have an obligation within our circles and across circles to influence the conversation and the standards that we carry around is the culture is up to us But I don't think wolf blitzer and the situation room is anything but not very good, entertainment. I don't want to be part of that cycle, and so I think you can read at least half my blog, as political, but none of them are saying today. I think this person is wrong in this way,

It is right his as soon as I do that it's so easy to ignore what I said, because I'm out on the right team, whatever team you want to be on- and so I don't want to play that sort of short term tribal thing. Instead, I want to say thank you to people from wherever you're coming from for giving me two minutes of your time. Think about this. If you think about this,

and still want to support that, while that's your choice, cause you're grown up cause. I don't believe what you believe. I don't know what you know. I don't want what you want, but here here is a thought that feels to me coherent and hard to argue with. I notice things do notice this, and I know that that kind of input has influenced my life coming up critically as a teenager and shortly thereafter way more than when someone says that person is right. That person is wrong yeah. I don't think that person is if that person's wrong. Does that mean we develop defenses to that prettier with him lived, because that's the way, we're always taught and yet at the same time, I do feel that you are you are. You are calling people to think and act you're, calling people to step into a place of responsibility in their lives and not a sense of either entitlement or complacency yeah. I view that, as my responsibility

the cause I got, this great gift, you, a million people a day, sale, listen to you and I don't take that away, You know how many adds I'm not doing this for sponsors doing this, because I can't believe I get to do it because it feeds my need to explore the edges and if people are involved in this journey with me, I feel like I have. I really higher calling to inspire them and to make them uncomfortable at times. They are not here to tell you you're right, I'm not always right, I'm usually hypocrite, I am here to tell you I noticed this. What will you do when you notice to yeah that's a serious point

this assistance question a walk around with all day just gonna touches on is evil your latest book. This is marketing, hindering the subtitle love. It really grabbed me. You can't be seen until you learn to see and who first tell me what what what he or she may well marketers, who do it with a capital m. Her nurse assist often had always narcissistic short term. He go maniacal selfish spammers who say I have money. My job is to get more market share and some more stuff here, and that worked beautifully for eighty years. For eighty years, media was screaming. Bargain, if you spend money on media, you got back way more than that which meant you could buy more media and ten or fifteen years ago, that stopped pizza isn't, is the internet on a mass media internet, the micro medium with a billion channels first medium ever invented? Not.

to make marketers happy and that's a really big deal like we have magazines cause they needed a place to put magazine ads or the other way around so into that world. We have bring an enormous amount of humility and you ability is to say they don't have to listen to me if they don't want to no matter how much money I have the humility to say. I cannot make anything for everyone, because everyone has the freedom to choose and everyone is not going to want anything. I could make so. if those two things are true, I have two short with the expectation that what I mean is probably not, for you have to shop with, leave that no matter how hard I try. I probably cannot reach you. So both those things are true. I start by saying what do other people need and want and believe what are they hope

for dreaming of, because if I am not aligned with those things have been visible for the people who I am aligned with, they will be eager to hear from me. I will be seen as I saw So if seeing others is the starting point and and the truth is yes, the content of the book as marketing body, we both agree marketing. just about the human condition ferrari on its psychology, its head see and serve somebody else in a way that leaves us both. Fundamentally sir, it's really it's it's a much bigger thing. When I think about how artists and train, like you, don't learn to paint first, you want to see first remark here. First exact, in which is fundamentally it's underlying what you're saying here and which makes me wonder. Why is the only form of formal education were that training exists? Why is it only about if I want to be earth. I want to draw. Why is that not just of the most fundamental

they are starting to learn in you know in elementary school visa fees because of industrialism industrialism, his the is the water that the fish never sees its everywhere. We underestimate how profound the world shifted in a hundred years, so profound that skyscrapers got a cheap glass windows, elevators cars, roads, vaccines, everything in our life is brand new and if you go spend some time in the woods without all that stuff marie, I you realize you human beings,

didn't live like we live now, so industrialism is this magic trick and industrialism is based on compliance and conformance and production and mass? So we had to teach everyone all of that bizarre or otherwise, you'd run out of factory workers and we'd run out of customers so that baked in to our culture, it's soviet level, thinking worldwide baked into our culture, and only now are people starting to blink their eyes and realize and ass. She was allowed. You could leave your entire life without working in a factory. You deliver your entire life without doing what you are told and that's new this century, and so the question is with that: wearable power and freedom

and do with it, and it helps if you could begin by doing what musicians and artists which has learned to see their self importance. You are you, I think I first saw you write about this in a blog post years back, but it's in your recent book also. This word hush within ass sounder, as I said here, which is, it seems, a good sort of it. Is it the same thing as empathy or is it different is very different than okay? So take me there. Ok, so I didn't make it up. It's in a blog, that's becoming a book. I can't remember the name of the person who wrote it because it's not credited it to a human. It's credited to the blog. You have is in your head. Everyone knows I'm rolling narrative that never ends. Your toys is not the same as my noise minute you realize that other we'll have a noise in their head. Everything changed. Because now, instead of looking around and seeing just people, you can hear

The noise in everyone's head and the noise in their at is different than the noise in your at that moment of realizing that there, seven billion noises. Now of which a line with yours, he given moment there. So much humility right, there's so much think about how that noise has brought. You down days or that noise bring down the person. My next you right now now is went empathy kicks in because we say to us, you didn't reject what I did, because I didn't do it well, You rejected what I did cause. You have a noisy had just as bad as the noise I have in my head. What are we gonna do about that and leaves us so much more room to be able to then say

you don't know what I know you don't want what I want. You don't believe what I believe. How will we work together and that one of the problems of the new top down dynamic and politics is it doesn't leave room for that? So it's really thee. It's. The awareness of. I am not the only one with my own spend cycle and everybody else around me has radically different cycle than mine. It's that awareness, which is like the precursor to the possibility of empathy really yeah, and then it leads to everyone else is right based on who they are and what they know based on they believe in what they want area. Who is not mentally ill. Does what right, based on all of those things now you say they need to know what I know they need why would I want? Because, if they did, they want to do what I wanted to find. So let me join our teacher your teacher us to earn a which says: are you willing

to know what I know so that you can see what I see so that we can get to a right that we can work with, because for me to just start by saying I am right and you are wrong- doesn't acknowledge saunter doesnt, bringing empathy it all. He makes us angry there and then becomes a transmission fast at arise, wouldn't really no power. ability of understanding. That's right. It occurs may also sort of like in this conversation. I don't think we've ever talked about this. Actually, I'm kind of fascinated by SAM Harris's view on free will yeah. Well, what's your take on this and for those who, maybe we can, sir, please instruct a lawyer and I'm going to butcher this, but fundamentally that the argument is. Do we actually have free will a true hundred percent pure well or not and his his argument now, I've heard a bunch of other similar arguments is that We can have some, but it's always

strained by a combination of genetics, because rosy physiological container highlight which produced the signal for free will or or lack thereof, so there's a genetic element there. I know that there is environmental like over if we're alive. For forty years, sir neural connections have formed an unbroken which create sir, constraints, certain there's a biological structure that houses for well in our ability to exert. It is only in like the ability link we hit those boundaries. We can't just will not come we are unbound is. That is that your understanding or- and so let me give you two ways to begin thinking about it, or at least, whereas here so James t Kirk is going to beam down to the planet's surface and scotty's got the transporter, but something trips in the duluth him.

if something goes wrong and instead of beaming down hall, he beams down twice into two rooms that are right next to each other. He can see into the room his locked in each room. Okay, so there's kirk one in this room and there's kirk too in this room, both healthy kirk's beamed out. The question is: would you expect those two kirks tact, the same read the same books that are on the shelves drink the same stuff, the whole time that they're on the planet's surface or would free will kick in and they would start diverging from one another, and I hope that We can agree that if you look at the physics of it, they have to do exactly the same thing that it is possible that some sort of quantum glitch would come in along the way. But basically their inputs in their outputs is exactly the same. Kirk's done exactly the same. State inputs are going to lead

Albert's that free will is something we invent a narrative that comes along so that we can tell ourselves that we did something, but we start from a state there's inputs and there's outputs as part. A part b is always have a voice in our head right. now. If you watch is a football game, what happens is play goes on in the field and then the color person says three seconds after the play. What happened so Joan aim is back to pass. I bubba what would happen if we do a small switch to the tv, so we heard the voice before the player. Did the action thou be crazy will be shown.

What to watch will be crazy with the color person says something and then three to five seconds later: the players on the field. Do it right that does that's how it works, but does how we think we work. We think we have his voice in our head. That says: oh I'm thirsty, I think I'll drink some water, but in fact the opposite happens. What actually happens- and this is I'm not making this it completely true. What actually happens is a part of our brain. It has no voice decides to do something and then the voice comes up with a story to explain why we did it. It happens after not before, and that is the myth of free will is that that voice in our head is actually making decisions, know that voice in her head is doing a color commentary on what we already decided to do and what the means is that this whole story we tell ourselves of free, will, with the little her money

it was man with controls that is clearly not true, as with proven that fluttered without for hundreds of years, but people hate that because it does he want it to be true. It makes you feel like you're insane, if that's not true right, so that's different than the discussion of should we punish people when they act poorly because they had no. I know all I'm saying is that I'm a narrator who's talking before they do things. I well what we know for sure that cats don't jump on huts. Those twice I did not dare do not writer what language do they speak? Cats have no narrator, but they know that jumping on a hot stove is a bad thing. So there's clearly a cycle of this work I'll. Do it more? This didn't work I'll. Do it less?

And then, when we start bringing in the distinction between culture and genes, it just quickly devolves into really bad discussion. about sexism, racism that I don't wanna golden do cause. I think those are widely misunderstood and not use. there? I mean it's when you talk about answer, let the metal level that are really fascinating conversation we had- and I have seen the same thing when you get into a grandmother like ok, have as explained this one very slow scenario in the real world in real life when you most likely yet come to fisticuffs, and yet that's where we live

well yeah. We live because everyone thinks their philosophy. Professor and SAM Harris knows he can get more people to listen to his podcast if he finds the the edge cases, but we don't actually live with edge cases. We actually live making thousands of small decisions every day, very few, which will end up in a spike lee movie right, and so the question is: how can we make those decisions with a habit toward kindness and with a habit toward mindfulness?

and with a habit toward living in whatever we chose to do realizing that we started a cascade of things that could make things better or make things worse. So I only we have free will in the sense that I get to have a spoken conversation with myself before I make most choices, but I do believe habits work and I do believe you can acquire them and that's when spirituality is at it's best when it leads to a practice that makes it so we don't need to even have fake free will to do good things and great. So when you think about the work that you're doing now and you think soured, I dunno I'm curious as to how much how much you feel like your energy is focused on Present vs sort of future casting, or can you make that distinction look at the world? The I've been doing this for thirty plus years now and

I hope to do it for a while longer, but I will tell you that it harder to recover from flight, and then, when I walk past the mirror, I look at it when who I don't recognize, and so I don't spend a lot of time saying when I'm seven b, what will I have been building for less of years that I could point to. I am more in a chop, carry water mode of saying This is a really cool plateau, I'm on in the sense that worked pretty hard to get to this point of attention and trust how will I use it on behalf of those who have given me their attention and trust, but I don't have a giant secret plan it still revolves around education. Still, we love I'm doing it with leverage not itching to have a hundred people working for me, but I feel like if I can give

for tools, whether it's an online seminar or book, where they can do the teaching. That's a better use of my time him. Then me indulging my ego and having to do first aid. In the moment there, the ripple they're there if you were to, if you were to think about, if you had the ability to call people to focus a lot of their generative energy around a single, a defining question over the next five years. Some come to mind. I think it's a two part answer. One part is, we should probably spend less time teaching people lesson because it almost never works and the second half of it is the theme of my book stop stealing dreams, which is what is school for, and I still don't hear people asking

it's june, and when I asked the question I get ten different answers and for us to spend as much time and money as we spend on education in all its forms and not even agree about what it's for is frustrating for me and I think, if we can figure out how to train adults, kids, parents, friends, Learn things that will prepare us for we want to go, will be glad. We did a part of the american miracle of the nineteen hundred one, we built school, knowing what it was for and that created generations of people who are compliant factory workers, part of the american dream. I think schools for solving interesting problems and learning how to read. And we don't either those things almost anywhere we do in the autumn. We able not very many other places its knowledge. Probably look up the answer on the internet.

and leading is different than managing. But if we created generations of people who had soft skills and put them to work, solving interesting problems and leading, I can't imagine how juicy their future would be. Other fuels a good place for us to come full circle also. So, as we sit here in this container of the good life friday to fail for the phrase to live a good life, what comes up I feel like I can't be as piteous I'd like to be in this moment. I think that what it means is to interact with people in a way that you would be missed if you were gone. Thank you

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