YAPClassic: Marshall Goldsmith, What I’ve Learned From 40 Years of Coaching the World’s Most Successful Business Executives

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0:01:21 What’s up, young and profitors?
0:01:26 Today, we’re chatting with world-renowned business coach Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.
0:01:29 If you’re a regular YAP listener, you know who Marshall is because he came on the show
0:01:30 several times.
0:01:35 He was on episode number 42 and then again on episode number 171, which is what we’re
0:01:38 going to be playing today for YAP Classic.
0:01:42 Marshall is quite literally my oldest friend.
0:01:43 He’s 75 years old.
0:01:46 He is my former LinkedIn client.
0:01:48 We ran his LinkedIn for many years.
0:01:51 He’s a huge influencer on LinkedIn.
0:01:56 The funniest thing about Marshall and our friendship is that he is trying to get me
0:01:59 and my business partner, Kate, married.
0:02:01 He is obsessed with setting us up.
0:02:05 He’s always calling us, texting us, “Hey, I’ve got so and so.
0:02:06 Here’s this picture.
0:02:07 Let me know if he’s cute.
0:02:08 I’m trying to get you guys married.”
0:02:15 He has no idea why we’re not married and he’s really trying hard to play matchmaker.
0:02:20 But back to business, Marshall has over four decades of experience and he is the number
0:02:24 one leadership coach and highest paid executive coach in the world.
0:02:28 He’s also a multiple-time New York Times bestseller.
0:02:32 He wrote The Earned Life, which was his latest New York Times bestseller, which we actually
0:02:34 helped him hit that list.
0:02:39 In this episode, we discussed Marshall’s key to living what he calls the earned life, where
0:02:44 your achievements are based on a higher aspiration, you’re unbound by regret, and you’ve detached
0:02:48 yourself from the isolated achievements of careerism.
0:02:52 If you’re an overachiever who values accomplishment or if you find yourself troubled by regret
0:02:56 and are seeking a higher purpose, then this episode is for you.
0:02:59 We’ll learn about the every breath paradigm.
0:03:02 We’ll discover why regret and fulfillment are polar opposites.
0:03:07 And lastly, we’ll get into Marshall’s actionable advice on how to let go of the past and truly
0:03:09 live in the present.
0:03:18 Now here’s my episode with the living leadership legend and matchmaker, Marshall Goldsmith.
0:03:21 You were born in Valley Station, Kentucky.
0:03:26 You grew up in a low-income and low-educated area, and your mom was actually a huge influence
0:03:28 on your educational upbringing.
0:03:30 Can you tell us about your early years, Marshall?
0:03:35 Well, again, brought up in Valley Station, we had an outhouse the first four years I
0:03:36 was in school.
0:03:40 I wasn’t brought up in yuppie land, and my mother went to college two years, which is
0:03:44 very unusual for our neighborhood, and was a first-grade schoolteacher, but then got
0:03:48 married and my father had this idiot idea women shouldn’t work.
0:03:50 So we got to be poor.
0:03:55 But the good news is, all of my mother’s first-grade schoolteacher energy was devoted to one student.
0:03:57 That would be me.
0:04:01 I knew how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide before I went to school.
0:04:04 So I go to the first grade and the teacher goes, “One plus one is two,” I go, “Yeah.”
0:04:05 I look around.
0:04:06 No one knows it but me.
0:04:11 It’s like, “Oh my, I told my mother I must be the smartest person I’d ever lived.”
0:04:12 That’s so funny.
0:04:16 And I know that another pivotal point in your life was when you went hitchhiking.
0:04:20 I think you were about 19 years old or in your early 20s.
0:04:23 You spent three months on the road and there you found Buddhism.
0:04:27 Tell us about that and why you chose Buddhism as your philosophy of life.
0:04:33 Well, that was 1969, lovingly referred to as the summer of love.
0:04:36 I did spend three entire months living on the road.
0:04:40 I told my parents I was going to college for the weekend and was gone three months.
0:04:45 And it was just an amazing experience and those era of that time.
0:04:49 And I learned a lot about life because when you travel, you have time to reflect.
0:04:52 I’d wake up, I wouldn’t know where I was.
0:04:53 Your life is really random.
0:04:55 You don’t know who’s going to pick you up.
0:04:58 I mean, I could write a whole book about my adventures as a hitchhiker.
0:05:03 And so, yeah, I had all kinds of wonderful adventures, but I think it gave me a good appreciation
0:05:09 of life and Buddhism also in the impermanence of life, how everything is constantly changing.
0:05:14 And one funny story about that, I was just doing a program two or three weeks ago and
0:05:17 a woman in the class was from Rifle, Colorado.
0:05:20 So I said, I’ve been to Rifle, Colorado before.
0:05:21 I spent the night there.
0:05:22 She said, where’d you stay?
0:05:25 I said, the laundry mat.
0:05:26 She thought I was kidding.
0:05:27 I described the laundry mat.
0:05:30 She said, oh my God, he did stay in the laundry mat.
0:05:34 I spent the night there and then a couple of nice people brought me a sandwich too.
0:05:39 They were so nice when I was a kid staying in the laundry mat of Rifle, Colorado.
0:05:40 That’s so funny.
0:05:45 And I guess I’m just curious of how Buddhism is something that you discovered on that trip
0:05:48 or how did you first get inspired to learn more about it?
0:05:49 I like to read.
0:05:53 So I read a book called Siddhartha, which got me started thinking about Buddhism.
0:05:55 Now, there are many schools of Buddhism.
0:05:58 So I’m a philosophical, not a religious Buddhist.
0:06:01 So let me just share my school and just short version of it.
0:06:04 And by the way, Buddha said, only do what I teach if it works for you.
0:06:08 So there’s so many different schools of Buddhism that are almost the opposite of each other.
0:06:09 It doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
0:06:11 They just have different interpretations.
0:06:14 My interpretation is pretty simple.
0:06:15 Buddha was brought up very rich.
0:06:19 His father was a king and he was protected from life and he was able to sneak out of
0:06:20 his little bubble three times.
0:06:23 So the first time you know what he learned?
0:06:24 People get old.
0:06:26 The second time you learn, you get sick.
0:06:27 The third time you learn, you die.
0:06:28 He said, old sick and die.
0:06:29 That’s not so good.
0:06:31 And he really believed this.
0:06:34 I’ll be happy after I get more things not going to work.
0:06:38 So then he went out in the woods, starved himself and he tried to really find peace
0:06:39 by having less.
0:06:40 You know what he found out?
0:06:41 I didn’t work either.
0:06:43 And then one night he finally realized something.
0:06:45 I can never be happy with more.
0:06:47 I can never be happy with less.
0:06:50 There’s only one thing I can ever find peace with what I have.
0:06:52 There’s only one place I can ever find peace here.
0:06:55 There’s only one time I can ever find peace.
0:06:56 Now, be happy now.
0:06:59 So my school of Buddhism, what is Nirvana?
0:07:02 Nirvana is talking to some old bald guy on a podcast.
0:07:04 This is it.
0:07:05 This is heaven.
0:07:06 This is hell.
0:07:07 Here we are.
0:07:08 That’s so interesting.
0:07:12 I can’t wait to kind of dig deeper on some of those philosophies with you in a bit.
0:07:17 But before we do that, as I’ve been getting to know you better, I always notice that you
0:07:19 say a lot of the same things over and over.
0:07:25 You sign off all your emails and even your text messages to me with life is good, right?
0:07:29 And doing some more digging, I found that you have two other favorite sayings.
0:07:31 Be happy and let it go.
0:07:32 So what are these sayings?
0:07:33 Life is good.
0:07:35 Be happy now and let it go mean to you.
0:07:38 And how does Buddhism philosophies underlie all these sayings?
0:07:42 Well, to me, the great Western disease is I’ll be happy when.
0:07:47 When I get the money status BMW, the condominium, I will be happy when.
0:07:52 One of the most powerful parts of the book is I talk about the fallacy of confusing achievement
0:07:57 and happiness, achievement and well-being, achievement and peace.
0:08:02 Everyone I work with is a ridiculously high achiever, I mean, ridiculously high achiever.
0:08:05 And one of the guys in my group was Safi Bacal.
0:08:07 And Safi said, you know, I’ve learned something.
0:08:08 He’s a scientist.
0:08:12 Now, Safi has a PhD in physics from Stanford.
0:08:14 He’s worth tens of millions of dollars.
0:08:15 He started at companies.
0:08:16 He wrote a book called Loon Shots.
0:08:19 He’s consulted the president’s, you know, blah, blah, blah.
0:08:21 Safi said, I finally realized something.
0:08:24 I used to think that happiness was dependent upon achievement.
0:08:28 And he said, no, happiness and achievement are independent variables.
0:08:30 You can achieve all kinds of stuff and be happy.
0:08:32 You achieve nothing and be happy.
0:08:35 You can achieve all kinds of stuff and be miserable and you achieve nothing and be miserable.
0:08:38 He said, happiness and achievement are independent variables.
0:08:42 Well, the great Western disease is I’ll be happy when.
0:08:44 You might have seen the great art form of the West before.
0:08:45 I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
0:08:46 It sounds like this.
0:08:47 There’s a person.
0:08:48 A person is sad.
0:08:49 They spend money.
0:08:52 They buy a product and they become happy.
0:08:53 This is called a commercial.
0:08:57 So, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those, but we are bombarded with this message
0:09:00 thousands of times over and over.
0:09:04 And the message is happiness is out there somewhere else.
0:09:06 Well, you know, be happy now.
0:09:07 That’s it now.
0:09:11 A life is good is be grateful for everything you have and, you know, let it go is quit carrying
0:09:15 around all that garbage that we all tend to carry around, you know, learn to forgive yourself,
0:09:19 forgive other people and let go of the past and be willing to start over.
0:09:25 And how do you use those sort of philosophies like life is good, be happy now, let it go
0:09:28 in your coaching with your coaching clients?
0:09:31 Well, actually, my coaching has changed in a way.
0:09:35 The last time you interviewed me, my whole focus was helping successful leaders achieve
0:09:37 positive long-term change in their behavior.
0:09:40 I still do that and help people become more effective leaders.
0:09:43 Only now I also try to help them have better lives.
0:09:45 Well, I have two people I coach are billionaires.
0:09:47 I mean, one guy I’m coaching is worth $4 billion.
0:09:51 What am I supposed to do to get you up to $4.1 billion?
0:09:53 What does it matter anyway?
0:09:54 Yeah.
0:09:57 Most of the people I coach have, they’ve achieved so much.
0:10:00 They don’t need me to help them achieve more.
0:10:04 And one of the things I help them do is make peace with life, be happy and just try to
0:10:05 have a good life.
0:10:07 And so I’ve kind of changed.
0:10:11 I didn’t used to do that, but now I do because a lot of people I coach are family people.
0:10:13 They’re running family businesses.
0:10:14 They’ve got a lot of money.
0:10:16 They’ve got a lot of status and success.
0:10:18 So I say, “Look, I’m not going to make you successful.
0:10:20 You’re already ridiculously successful.
0:10:21 I’m not going to make you rich.
0:10:22 You’re already ridiculously rich.
0:10:24 I just want you to have a little better life.”
0:10:26 I love that.
0:10:30 So speaking of a better life, you wrote this book called The Earned Life, Lose Regret,
0:10:36 Choose to Filment, and you’ve written and edited over 30 books, and you wrote this book
0:10:37 during COVID.
0:10:41 And based on my research, I know that you believe that any good book solves a universal
0:10:42 challenge.
0:10:45 So I’d love to understand what inspired you to put out one more book, and what universal
0:10:48 challenge are you trying to solve with The Earned Life?
0:10:52 Well, this one is basically choosing fulfillment and losing regret.
0:10:54 That’s the challenge I’m thinking about.
0:10:59 And this is a much more, it’s much more a book about life than just changing leadership
0:11:00 behavior.
0:11:01 Yeah.
0:11:02 And I personally loved this book.
0:11:05 I read like a book a week, Marshall.
0:11:09 And I was just like, “There’s so much meat and potatoes in this book.
0:11:11 Some books are very fluffy, yours was not.
0:11:15 This was really meaningful and had a lot of unique insight that I haven’t heard before.
0:11:18 So I highly recommend everybody go check out The Earned Life.
0:11:19 I loved it.
0:11:21 But you wrote it during COVID, right?
0:11:25 And I’m wondering, like, did something trigger you personally to write this book?
0:11:26 Yes.
0:11:29 During COVID, a lot of this book is what I learned during COVID.
0:11:34 Now, during COVID, I had no idea what the world would end up being like, and my friend
0:11:40 Mark Thompson and I, we spent, oh, I think four or 500 hours.
0:11:46 Every weekend, we spend six hours with these phenomenally successful people, and every weekend,
0:11:50 they would talk about their lives, what went well, what could have done better, their challenges.
0:11:55 I mean, week after week, hour after hour, we did this, and, you know, I learned so much
0:11:56 about life.
0:11:58 And I can mention the names of the people.
0:11:59 They’re incredible.
0:12:04 Palgasol, the famous basketball star, was in our group, and Curtis Martin, the NFL Hall
0:12:05 of Fame.
0:12:10 And then we had Telly Leung, Broadway star, and we had the Olympic Committee, head of
0:12:14 the Rockefeller Foundation, president of the World Bank, you know, on and on.
0:12:18 Just a phenomenal, very diverse group of people from all around the world.
0:12:23 We have people from India, from Indonesia, from Paris, all different places.
0:12:26 And they all talked about their lives, and they just loved it.
0:12:27 And, you know, why?
0:12:30 Well, one, there’s no saying it’s lonely at the top.
0:12:31 Used to be lonely at the top.
0:12:34 It is lonely or at the top today.
0:12:35 It’s lonely.
0:12:36 They have no one to talk to.
0:12:38 You know about social media.
0:12:40 They can get killed in an instant in social media.
0:12:42 They have to be very careful.
0:12:45 And they just liked the idea of their accountable, talking about their lives.
0:12:47 Yet, nobody’s being judged.
0:12:48 Nobody’s putting you down.
0:12:50 Nobody’s evaluating you.
0:12:53 One person said, you know, it’s nice one hour a week.
0:12:55 I just get to act like a human.
0:12:58 This is basically what I learned from all of that.
0:13:01 99% of humans, you know what they’re trying to be?
0:13:02 They’re trying to be them.
0:13:05 They’re trying to be like those people I was with.
0:13:08 I mean, these people, if you look at their bios, they look like gods.
0:13:10 But you know what you learn?
0:13:13 They got kids with drug problems, parents with Alzheimer’s.
0:13:14 They get sick.
0:13:16 They’re just humans like everybody else.
0:13:21 So let’s talk about this topic of regrets and choosing to live the earned life.
0:13:23 How would you define an earned life?
0:13:28 Well, an earned life occurs when you really have alignment between three things.
0:13:31 One is your aspiration, your higher sense of purpose.
0:13:33 The second is you’re achieving something meaningful.
0:13:36 And the third is your day-to-day actions.
0:13:41 When the actions are aligned with those things, that’s how you define the earned life.
0:13:45 And it’s interesting because most humans in the history of the world were lost in the
0:13:46 action phase.
0:13:48 They just show up.
0:13:50 They go from day to day.
0:13:53 They’re not bad people, but they just do whatever’s in front of them and they kind of
0:13:54 just live.
0:13:58 Some people are really lost in aspiration, higher purpose.
0:14:01 They don’t achieve much, but they kind of live in their heads.
0:14:06 The people that I work with pretty much, if they’re not careful, are lost in achievement.
0:14:11 They achieve so much that they’re almost achievement junkies.
0:14:16 And sometimes if we’re not careful, we get so lost in achievement, we forget to ask the
0:14:19 question, “Why am I working 90 hours a week?”
0:14:22 Or number two, we forget to enjoy the process of life itself.
0:14:24 The day-to-day actions of life.
0:14:29 So with these people, really getting them to focus on, “Don’t become an Achieveaholic.”
0:14:34 Oh, and the other thing I think is very important in this is, never make your identity or your
0:14:37 values a human being based on achievement or the results of achievement.
0:14:38 For two reasons.
0:14:40 One, you don’t control the results.
0:14:43 The results are impacted by many things you don’t control.
0:14:49 And number two, even if you achieve the results, how long does that bring any kind of peace
0:14:50 or happiness?
0:14:51 Yeah.
0:14:52 A week?
0:14:53 How much?
0:14:54 Then you have what do you have to do?
0:14:55 More.
0:14:56 More.
0:14:57 More.
0:15:01 One of my favorite parts of the book is the story about the marshmallow research.
0:15:02 I love that story.
0:15:06 So in the marshmallow research, you take this kid’s and you give him a marshmallow.
0:15:10 So they say to the kid, “Well, kid, if you eat the marshmallow, you get one.
0:15:12 If you wait, oh, two.”
0:15:14 Then the kid that waits eats two.
0:15:18 Now, allegedly, they have this research show, the kid that eats one marshmallow becomes
0:15:22 a drug addict and the ones that eat two go to Harvard and get PhDs or something.
0:15:24 It seems a little overblown.
0:15:26 But the point of the research is very clear.
0:15:28 Delayed gratification is good.
0:15:31 Delayed gratification is almost every self-help book.
0:15:33 Delayed gratification is good.
0:15:34 Here’s how you can work out more.
0:15:36 Here’s how you can go on a better diet.
0:15:38 Delayed gratification is good.
0:15:40 Well, here’s the problem with the research.
0:15:45 They didn’t take the kid that ate two marshmallows and said, “You know, kid, wait a bit.
0:15:46 Three.
0:15:47 Oh, don’t eat those.
0:15:48 Wait a little bit more.
0:15:49 Four.
0:15:50 Five.
0:15:51 Ten.
0:15:52 A thousand.
0:15:53 Where do you end up?”
0:15:57 An old man sitting in a room waiting to die surrounded with uneaten marshmallows.
0:15:58 It’s so true.
0:16:00 Sometimes you have to eat the marshmallows.
0:16:04 I feel like this is why the book resonated with me so much because I feel like I’m one
0:16:07 of those overachievers who can’t stop achieving.
0:16:12 Sometimes it’s okay to slow down and think about what is my ultimate goal here and just
0:16:16 be happy with what you have and not always be thinking about what’s next.
0:16:17 What’s next?
0:16:18 Okay.
0:16:19 Breathing.
0:16:21 Are you ready for some free coaching for you?
0:16:22 It’s a coaching moment.
0:16:23 Are you ready?
0:16:24 Yes.
0:16:25 Raise your right hand.
0:16:26 Okay.
0:16:30 I used to be one of those compulsive overachievers.
0:16:33 I used to be one of those compulsive overachievers.
0:16:36 I do not have an incurable genetic defect.
0:16:38 I do not have an incurable genetic defect.
0:16:40 I can change if I want to.
0:16:42 I can change if I want to.
0:16:43 Now, see what you said before?
0:16:46 You said, “I am this.”
0:16:50 As long as you say, “I am,” guess what, you’re programming yourself.
0:16:51 That’s who you’re going to be.
0:16:53 Nothing wrong with that if you don’t want to change.
0:16:55 If you don’t want to change, don’t talk that way.
0:16:56 Here’s the problem.
0:17:00 If you say, “I am anything,” then you try to do something else.
0:17:03 Even if you succeed, you’ll feel like a phony.
0:17:04 Why?
0:17:10 If this is me and I’m doing this, this must not be me and the real me is a compulsive
0:17:11 overachiever.
0:17:13 Anything other than that is not the real me.
0:17:15 That would be a phony.
0:17:16 Be careful.
0:17:18 Don’t program yourself if you want to change.
0:17:22 That’s really good advice.
0:17:26 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:21:35 Let’s talk about regrets.
0:21:40 In the book, you say that regret is a feeling that you wouldn’t wish on any human being.
0:21:44 Why do you believe that regret is one of the most empty and desolate feelings that a human
0:21:45 can have?
0:21:49 Well, the point about regret is going back to letting go.
0:21:53 It can be something we carry around for years or even decades.
0:21:57 And a big part of the book is just learning to let go of that.
0:22:02 And one thing I love is the idea of every time I take a breath, it’s a new me.
0:22:05 Ah, new me, new me, new me.
0:22:08 Everything that was done before is done by an infinite set of people.
0:22:10 Those names, those people are called the previous me’s.
0:22:15 And learning to say they did what they did and learning to forgive the previous versions
0:22:17 of you for being humans.
0:22:21 And then the future versions of you, well, they’re going to be who they are.
0:22:26 So a couple of exercises, I love what is writing a letter to the past versions of yourself,
0:22:30 just thanking them for thanking him or her for something good they did.
0:22:33 And there’s writing a letter to the future version of yourself saying, here’s an investment
0:22:35 I’m making in you, and here’s what I expect back.
0:22:41 So the concept is a really useful concept, you know, think of yourself, breathe, ah,
0:22:43 think of all those previous versions of you.
0:22:44 Yeah.
0:22:48 They worked hard, they gave the you that’s talking to me a lot of stuff.
0:22:49 Nice people.
0:22:50 Did they make some mistakes?
0:22:52 How are those previous years?
0:22:53 Ah, a few mistakes.
0:22:54 Let it go.
0:22:55 Let it go.
0:22:57 Any group of women did that many nice things.
0:22:59 What would you say to those nice women?
0:23:00 Thank you.
0:23:01 Yeah.
0:23:02 Just say thank you.
0:23:03 Yeah.
0:23:04 Forgive yourself.
0:23:05 Yeah.
0:23:08 I think I’d like to really dig deep on this because I think this is really, really important
0:23:09 what you’re saying.
0:23:12 So Buddha once said, with every breath is a new me.
0:23:18 And he meant that literally in a core pillar of Buddhism is something called impermanence.
0:23:22 And that’s the notion that the emotions, thoughts and material possessions we hold do not last.
0:23:23 They’re fleeting, right?
0:23:28 So can you help us understand the concept of impermanence and this every breath paradigm?
0:23:30 I really want you to go deep on this, Marshall.
0:23:36 Well, this is very hard for Western people to understand because it’s so different.
0:23:42 The Western paradox is I will get there and it’s going to be okay.
0:23:47 That there is this place I’m going to go and therefore everything is going to be different
0:23:49 after I do X.
0:23:50 And that will be permanent.
0:23:52 Now, there’s a book that exemplifies this.
0:23:54 You’ve probably read several of these.
0:23:55 They had the same ending.
0:23:58 It’s called, “And they lived happily ever after.”
0:24:01 Now, that type of book is a fairytale.
0:24:02 That’s not life.
0:24:05 Life is not a place you get to and then stop.
0:24:08 Life is a place that keeps changing all the time.
0:24:13 The you I’m talking to now is not going to be the you that was there before we started
0:24:14 talking.
0:24:17 We’re always changing and we’re all impermanent.
0:24:19 Life itself doesn’t last.
0:24:23 So as you go through life, looking at it as a series of infinite change and always starting
0:24:26 over, every time I take a breath, it’s a new me.
0:24:30 Well, what that means is let’s take a concept like happiness.
0:24:32 That doesn’t come from the past or the future.
0:24:36 It comes from now, taking a breath and saying, “I’m a new me.”
0:24:41 And really looking at our life and creating meaning, creating happiness and always starting
0:24:42 over.
0:24:45 Bob Dylan had a good quote, “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”
0:24:50 Well, it’s kind of the essence of the book is we’re constantly being reborn.
0:24:51 We’re constantly being reborn.
0:24:53 We’re different people.
0:24:56 And the idea is looking at that as an opportunity to start over.
0:25:00 We get lots of restarts here.
0:25:01 Restart, restart.
0:25:08 We get a lot of chances to start over and it’s, to me, a very healthy way to look at life.
0:25:09 Yeah.
0:25:13 It’s a very unique approach of looking at life because oftentimes, even when it comes
0:25:20 to our relationships or our own self-development, we think like, “Oh, my significant other
0:25:24 did this and so I’m going to hold this resentment against them for a long time.”
0:25:30 When in reality, what your significant other did 10 years ago has nothing to do with who
0:25:31 they are today.
0:25:32 And same thing with yourself.
0:25:36 If you bombed a test 10 years ago, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to do it again.
0:25:40 And so you get to start over with other people and even with yourself.
0:25:41 I love it.
0:25:45 I’m writing the book about that, which I love and it’s a story of a friend of mine.
0:25:48 And basically, his wife starts in on it.
0:25:49 They had a really great weekend.
0:25:53 Then his wife starts in on, “Well, you could have been a better father.”
0:25:55 And the guy said, “Basically, you’re right.
0:25:57 That was 10 years ago and you’re right.
0:26:00 I did a lot wrong 10 years ago.
0:26:03 I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago.”
0:26:06 And you’re criticizing that 10-year-ago person.
0:26:07 He’s not here right now.
0:26:10 And it’s very good because she instantly said, “You’re right.
0:26:11 You’re not the same person.”
0:26:15 I said, “What am I gaining by bashing somebody who’s not here?”
0:26:16 Yeah.
0:26:19 I feel like it’s a super mature way to think of things when it comes to your relationships
0:26:20 and when it comes to yourself.
0:26:24 So I think this is one of the most important and kind of impactful things that I read in
0:26:27 your book was this concept of the every breath paradigm.
0:26:33 So a lot of us can’t seem to let go of past rejections, past failures, but then some people
0:26:38 also have the problem of not being able to let go of their past successes and they obsess
0:26:39 over that.
0:26:40 Can you talk to us about that?
0:26:41 Oh, I certainly can.
0:26:45 I’ve done nine programs at my house with retiring CEOs.
0:26:48 This is a huge issue.
0:26:53 It is so hard to let go of that past success and realize that’s no longer you.
0:26:55 One of my good coaching clients was Mike Duke.
0:26:56 Mike was the CEO of Walmart.
0:26:57 He had a great story.
0:27:00 He said, “When I was a CEO of Walmart, I told this joke.”
0:27:04 And obviously Walmart, very sensitive, it was a clean joke, did not offend anyone.
0:27:05 People loved the joke.
0:27:06 Always laughing.
0:27:07 I love my little joke.
0:27:11 Then he said, “I’ve retired and I was in this group of people and I told the joke.”
0:27:13 And he said, “No one left.”
0:27:15 Then he said, “Well, I thought they must be grumpy.
0:27:17 Another group tells a joke.
0:27:18 No one left.”
0:27:21 He said, “Finally, my wife came to me and said, ‘Mike, you idiot, you actually thought
0:27:22 that joke was funny.'”
0:27:23 Oh, gosh.
0:27:26 “When he was a CEO of Walmart, that joke was real funny.
0:27:27 Ho, ho, ho.
0:27:29 How about when he’s not the CEO?
0:27:31 Not funny anymore.”
0:27:32 It is hard to let go.
0:27:37 One of the people that endorsed my book is Palga Saw, past 41 years old, and he’s just
0:27:38 retiring as a basketball star.
0:27:39 It’s hard.
0:27:45 The former CEO, it’s tough, the Olympic champ, Michael Phelps, has had story after winning
0:27:48 that final medal, thought about killing himself.
0:27:49 Why?
0:27:53 If your measure of value is, “I have to achieve more than last year, you’re never going to
0:27:57 get there and you do get older and you may not do what you did last year.”
0:27:58 It’s hard.
0:28:00 Telly, the Broadway star, he’s 40 now.
0:28:02 He’s not going to play Latin anymore.
0:28:04 That rolls over.
0:28:10 It’s a constant reinvention of life, but not comparing yourself to what you used to be
0:28:16 and not being the ex-athlete who’s sitting there getting drunk, talking about Superbowl.
0:28:18 That was 40 years ago.
0:28:19 That’s not you.
0:28:22 That was some other person who did that 40 years ago.
0:28:23 Move on.
0:28:24 Live your own life now.
0:28:27 By the way, in the book, we have a great case study, Curtis Martin.
0:28:28 I don’t know if you’ve met Curtis yet.
0:28:29 I love Curtis.
0:28:30 Not yet.
0:28:35 Curtis, National Football League Hall of Fame, just a wonderful person, brought up in a
0:28:36 terrible environment.
0:28:40 Saw a lot of murder and death when he was growing up as a kid and so happy.
0:28:41 He’s one of these people.
0:28:42 He’s helping others.
0:28:43 He’s happy.
0:28:44 He’s very successful.
0:28:45 He’s making money.
0:28:50 One of the reasons is he didn’t get stuck in the past as opposed to a lot of, unfortunately,
0:28:57 NFL stars, bankrupt, divorced, sad, white, they’re living in that other era.
0:28:59 They’re living in the past.
0:29:02 A lot of them, Curtis taught me this, they lose their money.
0:29:04 They give it away.
0:29:07 They literally give their money away because they’re trying to buy love.
0:29:08 It doesn’t work.
0:29:10 There’s a good song about that.
0:29:15 Money, you got a lot of friends hanging around your door.
0:29:19 When it’s gone and spending ends, they don’t come around no more.
0:29:21 That doesn’t work.
0:29:22 Yeah.
0:29:23 It’s very difficult to do this.
0:29:29 It’s easy to talk about it at a high level, but when it comes to putting it into practice,
0:29:34 how can we make this more like muscle memory and make this more like, in any situation,
0:29:37 we can just realize, okay, it’s time to be fresh.
0:29:38 I’m a new person.
0:29:39 I’m not my past.
0:29:41 How can we make this muscle memory?
0:29:44 Well, there’s two suggestions I’m going to give you.
0:29:47 One involving some questions and one involving one question.
0:29:51 The first thing I do is called the daily question process.
0:29:54 Every day, I write down a series of questions that represent what’s most important in my
0:29:55 life.
0:29:57 Many of them begin with the phrase, “Did you do your best too?”
0:30:00 For example, did I do my best to be happy every day?
0:30:03 Did I do my best to find meaning every day?
0:30:06 Did I do my best to build positive relationships?
0:30:11 Did you do your best too every day and then there’s a little scale, yes, no, or a number,
0:30:14 and then at the end of the week, you get a little report card.
0:30:19 Well, I’ve been doing this for about 25 years and I have to have someone call me every day
0:30:23 for almost 25 years, almost every day, someone calls me on the phone to make sure I do this.
0:30:24 Why?
0:30:25 My name is Marshall Goldsmith.
0:30:28 Like I rank number one leadership thinker and coach in the whole world, I have someone
0:30:31 call me on the phone every day to make sure I do this stuff.
0:30:32 Why?
0:30:34 I’m too cowardly to do this stuff by myself.
0:30:36 I’m too indisciplined to do this stuff by myself.
0:30:38 I need help and it’s okay.
0:30:42 One thing I’m proud of in this book, I mean, you saw the people endorse the book, just
0:30:46 amazing people and four of the people who endorse the book were ranked the best leader
0:30:48 in America for at least one year.
0:30:53 So, it’s a pretty impressive group and one thing I’m so proud of is they all stand up
0:30:55 and admit they need help.
0:30:56 Yeah.
0:30:58 30 years ago, none of these people would have said they had a coach.
0:31:00 None of them would have said they needed help.
0:31:02 They would have been ashamed to have had a coach.
0:31:04 They would have been ashamed to need help.
0:31:06 One thing I’m very proud of is, hey, these are big people.
0:31:09 And, you know, let’s see, president of the World Bank, CEO of the year in the United
0:31:15 States, CEO of Pfizer, winner of the presidential Medal of Freedom, offer business review, best
0:31:20 CEO in the world, head of St. Jude’s Children’s, you know, on and on and on.
0:31:25 These are big people, wonderful people, and I’m so proud that they have the courage to
0:31:28 stand up and say, look, hey, I might be a big deal.
0:31:29 Guess what?
0:31:30 I’m a human.
0:31:31 Yeah.
0:31:32 I need help.
0:31:33 I’m not above everything.
0:31:34 I need help.
0:31:35 We all do.
0:31:36 Yeah.
0:31:38 And you mentioned there was a second exercise.
0:31:39 Yeah.
0:31:44 The second exercise is that when you write that letter to the future, and an interesting
0:31:49 thing about that exercise is, and I’m going to give you a not so happy story.
0:31:55 One of the guys at my group said, retiring as CEO, and he said, “I worked 80 hours a
0:32:00 week for the last 40 years with one goal, so my children would never have to do this.”
0:32:05 Then he said, “That’s the worst thing I could have ever done for myself, for my wife, or
0:32:06 for my children.
0:32:11 These kids are trust-fund babies, spoiled, ungrateful, doesn’t have a close relationship
0:32:12 with them.
0:32:16 What he did is he gave his children a gift.
0:32:19 When you give somebody a gift, there’s no strings attached.
0:32:20 Guess what?
0:32:21 They do what they want.
0:32:22 Well, basically, they’re bums.
0:32:23 They’re rich bums.
0:32:25 They’re just trust-fund bums.
0:32:29 What he should have made as an investment, what he should have said is, “Look, I’m willing
0:32:31 to work very hard to help you.
0:32:32 Here’s what I expect back.
0:32:34 I expect you to try to have a meaningful life.
0:32:38 I expect you to use this as an opportunity to do something special.
0:32:40 I expect you to learn.
0:32:41 I expect you to be grateful.
0:32:46 Not expect you to be a bum who just sits there and smokes pot and watches TV all day.”
0:32:47 Let’s talk about that a little bit more.
0:32:52 Why is it so much more powerful to earn something rather than be handed it?
0:32:57 Well, when we earn something, we feel a sense of worthwhile.
0:33:01 I got this because I did something and I feel I deserve it.
0:33:05 When somebody’s giving us something, what does that mean about you?
0:33:06 Nothing.
0:33:09 It means someone else earned something.
0:33:11 It doesn’t mean you earned anything.
0:33:14 You just stood there and your hand happened to be out and you got a break.
0:33:18 Someone else did something of value that was given to you as opposed to you did something
0:33:21 of value that was given to yourself.
0:33:25 Again, the reality is, it’s pretty hard to be proud of the fact that someone gave you
0:33:26 a handout.
0:33:30 This reminds me of something that you said in your book, was actually the definition
0:33:31 of an earned life.
0:33:35 You said, “We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort that we make
0:33:42 in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.”
0:33:47 This really stuck out to me because like we were saying before, I’m a goal-oriented person.
0:33:52 For me, that seems counterintuitive that you don’t need to worry about the outcome and
0:33:57 you need to let go of the outcome or the earned reward.
0:34:02 I’m just curious in your opinion, why is it that we don’t need to worry about the outcome
0:34:03 with all of this?
0:34:05 Well, let me give you an example.
0:34:08 The parable of the golfer and the beer can.
0:34:09 The golfer and the beer can.
0:34:13 Now, here’s the golfer and there’s a chance to win the club championship.
0:34:18 There’s a big chance and he never had a chance before last hole and he’s getting their tip
0:34:24 and people in front of him force him a drinking beer, noisy, very distracting, but he thinks
0:34:25 he’s hard.
0:34:28 Hits the shot.
0:34:29 Looks perfect.
0:34:31 All of a sudden, something happens.
0:34:33 It bounces into a terrible position.
0:34:34 He’s walking toward the ball.
0:34:35 What happens?
0:34:36 He sees a beer can.
0:34:39 Idiots in front of him have left a beer can on the fairway.
0:34:41 Now, his ball is in the bad straights.
0:34:42 He’s angry.
0:34:44 I don’t know those idiots.
0:34:46 What does the golfer need to do?
0:34:47 Stop.
0:34:48 Breathe.
0:34:50 Forget about the drive.
0:34:51 Forget about the people.
0:34:52 Forget about the beer can.
0:34:54 Forget about winning the championship.
0:34:56 You come up with a strategy.
0:35:00 You walk to that ball and you hit the shot in front of you.
0:35:03 See, in life, all you can ever do is hit the shot in front of you.
0:35:07 You hit the shot in front of you, and when you’re thinking about the results, you’re
0:35:12 living in the past, you’re dreaming of the future, you’re not focusing on hitting the
0:35:13 shot.
0:35:18 Well, the key is hit the shot, and the thing about achievement is the greatest college basketball
0:35:19 coach in history was John Wooden.
0:35:24 I was at UCLA when he was there, and he said, “Look, do your best.
0:35:25 That’s it.
0:35:26 Be proud.
0:35:27 You do your best and lose.
0:35:28 Fine.
0:35:29 You do your best and win.
0:35:30 Fine.
0:35:31 It doesn’t matter.”
0:35:32 Yeah.
0:35:33 That’s all you could do.
0:35:37 I was in my hundred coach group, and Harry, somebody said, “How do you sleep at night?
0:35:39 You’ve had to fire people, lay people off.
0:35:41 You’ve had to do very hard things to people.”
0:35:42 He said, “I only asked two questions.
0:35:46 One, did I do what I thought was right, and did I do my best?”
0:35:49 What the answer is, I did what I thought was right, and I did my best.
0:35:51 He said, “I can sleep.
0:35:52 That’s all any of us can ever do.
0:35:53 You just do what you think is right.
0:35:55 You do your best and make peace.”
0:35:56 Well, to me, that’s it.
0:36:02 You don’t get lost in the past, and you don’t get lost in the future, and you never place
0:36:04 your values of human being based on results.
0:36:08 The most famous poem in history is called “The Bahávad Gita,” and this is the essence
0:36:09 of the Bahávad Gita.
0:36:13 You have a person with two choices in the poem, “The Bahávad Gita.”
0:36:14 One choice is very bad.
0:36:18 The other choice is worse, and he’s going on and on about how bad his choices are, and
0:36:22 the message is pretty simple from Krishna, and the message is, “Do what you think is
0:36:23 right.
0:36:26 Do your best and make peace.”
0:36:29 Sometimes in life, we do have two choices, bad and worse.
0:36:30 It’s okay.
0:36:32 Pick the one that’s least bad and make the best of it.
0:36:33 Yeah.
0:36:34 I love that.
0:36:35 I think that’s super powerful.
0:36:40 So, I’d love to talk about regret and fulfillment in terms of the fact that it’s a spectrum,
0:36:41 right?
0:36:43 So, I also thought this was pretty enlightening in your book.
0:36:49 You say that regret and fulfillment are like opposite sides of the spectrum, polar opposites,
0:36:50 right?
0:36:55 And everybody kind of slands on one part of the spectrum, no matter how successful they
0:36:56 are.
0:36:58 So, you could be super successful and still have a lot of regret because you may have
0:37:01 a focus on your career, not your family or something like that.
0:37:06 So, I’d love for you to kind of walk us through how regret and fulfillment are total opposites,
0:37:11 and maybe some examples of people that you’ve met where they surprised you in terms of the
0:37:12 regret that they felt.
0:37:13 Yeah.
0:37:18 Very surprised because the people I deal with are all on paper, amazingly successful, yet
0:37:21 some of them like the one I mentioned.
0:37:28 If you look at it, CEO, huge company, multi-multi-multi-millionaire, highly educated, smart, what do you think
0:37:29 about fulfillment?
0:37:30 The guy’s off the charts.
0:37:31 Not really.
0:37:32 Not really.
0:37:35 In his own mind, not really too happy with life, and basically he said, “I blew it.
0:37:36 I blew it here.”
0:37:41 And the problem with that regret and fulfillment thing is, other people don’t fill out the
0:37:44 scorecard you do, and you may fool somebody else.
0:37:47 But at the end of the day, you gotta live with yourself.
0:37:50 And you’ve gotta look at that and say, “Well, what do I feel?
0:37:51 Am I proud of this?
0:37:52 Am I ashamed of this?
0:37:53 Do I have regret?
0:37:55 Am I sitting there saying I wish I would have?”
0:38:00 And the book begins with a story of a guy, an interesting story, a guy filled with regret
0:38:04 because he wanted to go out with some woman, and he basically checkened out.
0:38:07 He got afraid, and then he carried it around.
0:38:11 This sense of existential regret, if I would have, things could have turned out better
0:38:12 for me.
0:38:13 Maybe.
0:38:14 Maybe not.
0:38:16 He still carried it around.
0:38:23 It’s very hard to forgive ourselves and forgive others and just let go and say, “Alright,
0:38:24 that was then.
0:38:25 This is now.
0:38:26 That was then.
0:38:27 This is now.”
0:38:33 And I mean, I coach people that haven’t forgiven mom and dad for being who they were.
0:38:34 Yeah.
0:38:37 I mean, 30, 40 years are carrying around this anger.
0:38:40 And the problem with all that is, you’re not hurting the other person as much as you’re
0:38:41 hurting yourself.
0:38:46 And I feel like the other kind of lesson in all of this and just an insight that I had
0:38:50 from your book or what you’re trying to solve is, there’s no one size fits all when it comes
0:38:51 to regret, right?
0:38:56 It’s small regrets that don’t really matter, and then there’s these big existential regrets
0:39:01 you call them, like not having children or not taking a big job.
0:39:05 And this is the purpose of your book is to make sure that you know what you want in life
0:39:09 so that you don’t make these big regrets that are super hard to let go.
0:39:10 Is that right?
0:39:16 And it’s interesting because we seldom regret the risk we take and fail.
0:39:18 We often regret the risk we fail to take.
0:39:22 So it’s a question of, I talk about risk and opportunity.
0:39:23 When do I take the risk?
0:39:25 When do I not take the risk?
0:39:29 And I point out examples of when risk taking is very important and when it’s not.
0:39:34 And I give some example in my own life of a stupid risk, and I was like 27, and we’re
0:39:39 going out and riding boogie board, I don’t know, not that much of an athlete anyway.
0:39:43 And then I get macho and I start riding a few wave, “Oh, you can do it.”
0:39:47 Then I go out there like an idiot and try to ride a nine foot wave and flips over and
0:39:48 breaks my neck in two places.
0:39:51 I’m like, “Yeah, I’m even here.”
0:39:53 And I talk about that from like this.
0:39:56 Is that part of my aspiration in life to be a surfer?
0:39:57 No.
0:39:58 Am I any good at it?
0:39:59 No.
0:40:00 Am I ever going to achieve anything?
0:40:01 No.
0:40:02 Why am I doing that?
0:40:05 Well, I got lost in this macho ridiculous show off thing.
0:40:09 That’s an example of just not really thinking.
0:40:14 On the other hand, when you take a chance on something, maybe you don’t succeed, but you
0:40:15 tried.
0:40:18 Well, then you can look back on life and say, “Hey, I gave it a shot.
0:40:20 Look, my home now is here in Nashville.
0:40:22 I mean, God bless a lot of these kids.
0:40:26 They’re all waiting on tables, but hey, they’re giving it a shot.
0:40:30 They’re going to try to be the music star and reality is most of them aren’t.”
0:40:31 Yeah.
0:40:32 Yeah.
0:40:33 Still, I respect them.
0:40:34 They’re trying.
0:40:35 They’re giving it a shot.
0:40:36 And at the end of the day, they’ll probably be okay.
0:40:38 Just do something else.
0:40:39 Yeah, bam.
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0:45:38 I want to close this out with some three demands that you talk about when it comes to living
0:45:39 and earned life.
0:45:42 I thought this was a great way to kind of just summarize some of the key points in your
0:45:43 book.
0:45:47 And I’ll tee you up for each demand and maybe ask some follow-up questions.
0:45:48 True.
0:45:54 The first demand was live your own life, not someone else’s version of it.
0:45:56 Can you tell us your two cents on that one?
0:45:57 Yeah.
0:46:01 And I mentioned, I can’t mention his name, he’s my friend Mark Tercik, who is a managing
0:46:02 partner of Goldman Sachs.
0:46:03 They did the IPO.
0:46:04 He makes a ton of money.
0:46:07 And he’s thinking about being the CEO of the Nature Conservancy and we’re walking around
0:46:08 the place.
0:46:09 He says, “Well, I don’t know.
0:46:10 What will they think of me?”
0:46:12 I’m sitting there going, “What do you care?
0:46:13 It’s not their life.
0:46:14 It’s your life.”
0:46:18 Well, part of this, that first thing is live your own life.
0:46:22 I mean, it’s pretty hard to live a fulfilling life if you’re not living your own life.
0:46:27 And you’ve got to say, “What does real life mean to me, not somebody else?”
0:46:32 And get over that, “I have to impress so-and-so because so-and-so doesn’t care anyway, really.”
0:46:36 And just not trying to waste your life on that and being willing to take or not take
0:46:38 a risk to live your own life.
0:46:42 Which sounds pretty simple, but an amazing number of people don’t.
0:46:45 And they end up dying thinking, “You know, I wish I would have.
0:46:48 I wish I’d have gone for this, gone for that, gone for something.”
0:46:51 Well, it’s not somebody else’s life.
0:46:52 It’s your life.
0:46:53 Yeah, it’s a part of it.
0:46:57 And it’s not as simple as it sounds because we’re so focused on it and not in a negative
0:46:58 way as human beings.
0:47:02 We’ve been brought, if you have to impress people, you have to gain approval.
0:47:04 That’s just part of our history.
0:47:05 It’s hard not to do that all the time.
0:47:06 Yeah.
0:47:11 I think a lot of people have this problem where they let other things and people stop
0:47:13 them from going for their dreams.
0:47:17 And so in your book, you actually list off a couple of reasons why people don’t live
0:47:18 their own life.
0:47:22 Two of them that really stuck out to me was inertia and obligations.
0:47:25 Can you tell us your perspective on inertia and obligations?
0:47:29 Well, inertia is the greatest predictor of anything we’re going to do.
0:47:32 The biggest predictor of wanting to do five minutes from now is what are you doing now?
0:47:35 And so we all tend to be where we’ve been, go where we’ve gone.
0:47:40 And in my other book, I talk about this too, it’s hard for successful people to change.
0:47:44 Any human or animal will replicate behavior that’s followed by positive reinforcement.
0:47:48 Now, the more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get, and we fall
0:47:51 into a trap, I do this, I am successful, therefore this makes me successful.
0:47:55 I’ll just keep doing this over and over and over again, as opposed to saying, maybe I
0:47:58 can do something different, or maybe this doesn’t always work all the time.
0:48:00 So that’s kind of inertia.
0:48:04 And then obligation is what we talked about though, the feeling that somehow I’m supposed
0:48:05 to do this.
0:48:10 In Mark’s case, he’s a managing partner of Goldman Sachs, it’s not like they’re all
0:48:13 going to sit there and go through, oh my God, he left us, I’m going to die.
0:48:16 No, they’ll do fine without you.
0:48:18 Well, Jim Kim, greatest story.
0:48:20 Jim Kim was president of Dartmouth College.
0:48:24 And Jim Kim’s a great guy, he was partners in health, literally saved tens of millions
0:48:25 of lives.
0:48:28 He’s president of Dartmouth College, he’s a great guy, but not necessarily the best
0:48:29 job for him.
0:48:32 You know, there’s food in the student cafeteria and raising money all the time.
0:48:35 So he gets offered a job as president of World Bank.
0:48:38 Oh, I don’t know, I’ve only been at Dartmouth College two and a half years, should I take
0:48:39 the job?
0:48:44 So then I, obligation, he ended up taking the job.
0:48:49 I called him three months after he had the job and said, Jim, I’m at Dartmouth College.
0:48:50 Guess what?
0:48:52 It’s still here.
0:48:57 And now they’re all complaining about the new president, life goes on.
0:49:03 It’s so funny, we all make these decisions as if people care that much about us.
0:49:07 And at the end of the day, people only care about themselves, you know, nobody cares.
0:49:08 Rarely, right?
0:49:13 And also if you ask him, most of them will probably say, just do whatever you feel like.
0:49:14 It’s so true.
0:49:18 Okay, so let’s, oh, another one that’s really interesting in terms of why we don’t live
0:49:21 our own life, vicarious living.
0:49:25 And I think this is super interesting given everybody’s addiction to social media.
0:49:29 How does vicarious living really prevent us from living our own life?
0:49:32 Well, I mean, vicarious living is huge.
0:49:35 I don’t have to tell you, you know more about this than I do, but the average kid that’s
0:49:41 flunking out of school is spending, I forget, 55 hours a week on some sort of media, TV,
0:49:43 movies, social media.
0:49:44 It’s an addiction.
0:49:49 And we have to be very careful because when you’re living vicariously, you’re living through
0:49:50 someone.
0:49:51 It’s not your life.
0:49:52 You’re not one of the Kardashians.
0:49:54 You’re not the movie star.
0:49:55 That’s not you.
0:49:57 And you’re reading this drama of them.
0:50:03 Well, what happens is vicariously, we start living through them or the football team or
0:50:04 whatever.
0:50:05 I brought up a great example.
0:50:09 I use video games as, you know, pretending to be in a battle.
0:50:10 It’s really not.
0:50:11 It’s a pretense.
0:50:12 Oh, my son said, no, no, you missed the point.
0:50:16 People spend thousands of hours, millions of hours watching other people play video
0:50:17 games.
0:50:18 PewDiePie.
0:50:19 How many hours?
0:50:23 Billions of people watching this guy play video games, making sarcastic comments hour
0:50:24 after hour.
0:50:26 They’re watching this nonsense.
0:50:28 He’s some Swedish guy.
0:50:30 I’m not blaming him, by the way.
0:50:31 He’s making millions of dollars.
0:50:32 He’s doing okay.
0:50:33 He’s living.
0:50:35 Not everybody else isn’t.
0:50:37 He’s living his life.
0:50:42 But why are you watching this Swedish guy making sarcastic comments, playing video games,
0:50:43 for hours?
0:50:47 Well, you’re living someone else’s life.
0:50:50 You’re not living your own life.
0:50:53 And you can never find happiness living somebody else’s life.
0:50:56 The other thing is they don’t care about you.
0:50:57 Yeah.
0:50:58 They don’t care about you.
0:51:03 They’re living their life and you’re never going to find satisfaction living someone
0:51:04 else’s life.
0:51:05 Yeah.
0:51:10 By the way, physiologically, my friend Martin Lindstrom has studied the brain.
0:51:15 When the football player scores a touchdown, the fan experiences almost the same reaction
0:51:17 as a football player in the brain.
0:51:18 It’s like they scored the touchdown.
0:51:19 They’re jumping up and down.
0:51:20 They’re screaming.
0:51:22 They didn’t score the touchdown.
0:51:25 They watched someone else score the touchdown.
0:51:26 This is so interesting.
0:51:32 I feel like part of the reason why I’ve been very successful, especially in the last five
0:51:35 years, is because I literally don’t watch TV.
0:51:38 I don’t even know how to turn on my TV in my apartment.
0:51:39 I don’t ever watch.
0:51:40 I don’t do that.
0:51:46 And even on social media, I’m focused on my content and my clients and what my friends
0:51:47 make fun of me.
0:51:48 They call it Hala TV.
0:51:51 They’re like, oh, she’s on Hala TV again because all she cares about is her stuff because I’m
0:51:54 not worried about what everybody else is doing.
0:51:59 Because like you said, I feel like that’s wasting your own life when you’re paying attention
0:52:00 to somebody else’s life.
0:52:01 Just live your own life.
0:52:02 Yeah.
0:52:07 Live your own life because, look, you live your own life, at least it’s your life.
0:52:08 It’s your life.
0:52:12 And I had a fun experience with it with a New Yorker magazine.
0:52:13 This changed my life.
0:52:16 Many years ago, the New Yorker magazine, I think it was 2012, wrote the story of my life.
0:52:22 It was called “The Better Boss,” a wonderful story written by a woman named Larissa McFarquhar.
0:52:26 And in this story, in New Yorker profiles, a big deal.
0:52:28 They spent hours on this thing.
0:52:33 They spent an average of $60,000 per profile just doing the research a lot.
0:52:34 This is a serious thing.
0:52:36 She followed me around for two months.
0:52:39 Now, half of the New Yorker stories are just rip.
0:52:41 They just rip into people.
0:52:45 And almost all of them have at least three paragraphs of “Andy’s a Jerk.”
0:52:47 But I talked to my wife and I thought about it.
0:52:49 And I thought, Peter Drucker taught me, who’s the customer?
0:52:52 And I thought, well, first I thought it’s the people that send me money.
0:52:56 But then I said, no, the customer is my unborn great-grandchildren.
0:52:58 And this brilliant woman is going to write a story about me.
0:53:01 And if I don’t act like me, they won’t know me.
0:53:04 They’re just going to know some fictitious character that won’t know me.
0:53:06 So I told my wife, I’m going to act like me.
0:53:10 And I said, we’re probably going to lose about $150,000 or $200,000.
0:53:12 So I’m sure we’re going to annoy people, but I’m just going to act like myself.
0:53:15 Because it turned out it was the best thing I could have possibly done.
0:53:17 Number one, she’s got an IQ of a zillion anyway.
0:53:18 She went to Harvard.
0:53:21 So I’m going to fool her for two months, zero.
0:53:25 If I did try to fool her, she’d probably just justifiably crucify me for acting like
0:53:26 an ass.
0:53:28 So I said, just be yourself.
0:53:29 Well, be yourself.
0:53:32 You may lose, but at least it’s you that loses.
0:53:33 I love this conversation.
0:53:35 Let’s move on to demand number two.
0:53:38 It’s commit yourself to earning every day.
0:53:39 Make it a habit.
0:53:41 Why do we need to do this?
0:53:43 Well, that goes back to also my daily questions.
0:53:47 It needs to be something you restart every day.
0:53:49 Because if we don’t, we just get lost.
0:53:52 And it is so easy to get lost on little things.
0:53:56 One of the guys in our group was Paul Gasol, the basketball star, and one of his areas
0:54:01 was he wanted to be better at being present around his wife, you know, present, not just
0:54:04 sitting there, but actually being in the room in his mind.
0:54:08 So he tells a story, he comes home and he says, you know, how’d you do?
0:54:09 He’s in our little garage.
0:54:10 Oh, I’m not so good.
0:54:12 My wife is very upset with me.
0:54:15 She said, I wasn’t really present too much and checked out.
0:54:16 He said, but I was tired.
0:54:17 Well, how tired were you?
0:54:18 Oh, so tired.
0:54:21 I was working out all day, very tired, training for the Olympics.
0:54:22 I said, you know, it’s interesting.
0:54:25 I paid a thousand bucks for a seat and my son, Brian, paid a thousand bucks and we went to
0:54:29 watch you play the Boston Celtics in the World Championship there.
0:54:30 And you know, you guys won that game.
0:54:33 It’s probably the biggest game of your life and you’re running up and down the court like
0:54:34 a banshee.
0:54:37 Now, coach here, Phil Jackson called timeout with two minutes to go.
0:54:39 Did you say, you know, Phil, I’m tired.
0:54:40 I’m tired, Phil.
0:54:44 No, he said, no, I never, in my career, told a coach I was tired.
0:54:45 Never.
0:54:48 Do you think your wife is impressed?
0:54:55 Well, it’s often harder at home because when we’re working like you, when you work, you’re
0:54:56 on.
0:55:02 You’re very on your professional, you know, when we’re not on and we’re not in that
0:55:07 professional mode, it’s actually easier to lose it and realize, you know, those people
0:55:08 at home are important.
0:55:10 And every day you need to re-earn.
0:55:14 Jim Kim, another guy, my friend, the World Bank guy said, every day I re-earned my legacy.
0:55:16 That’s the way life is.
0:55:19 The person that did that stuff yesterday was that person from yesterday.
0:55:20 They’re not here today.
0:55:24 And the thing we don’t think about is the fact that we need to really focus on earning
0:55:28 all kinds of things, happiness, meaning, purpose.
0:55:31 And if we don’t, inertia kicks in.
0:55:35 You watch the game, you go to the TV, you know, like you said, you’re like a zombie and your
0:55:36 life’s over.
0:55:37 Yeah.
0:55:40 And it’s because the things that make us fulfilled like happiness, like you were saying, those
0:55:42 things are fleeting, right?
0:55:43 They come and they go super quickly.
0:55:48 And so to your point, we need to learn how to earn them over and over again because they
0:55:50 can be gone just as fast as we get them.
0:55:52 Which again, is the great Western disease.
0:55:58 I will be happy when, once this happens, everything is going to be okay.
0:56:06 It’s all going to be okay once I get money, status, BMW, car, date, something, no, no.
0:56:07 Once you get that, it’s nice.
0:56:08 Yeah.
0:56:09 That is the last free law.
0:56:10 Totally agree.
0:56:11 Okay.
0:56:17 So demand number three, attach your earning moments to something greater than mere personal
0:56:18 ambition.
0:56:19 Right.
0:56:22 And I think that’s why you need to answer that question of your attribution in life,
0:56:24 your aspiration in life.
0:56:25 Why am I doing this?
0:56:26 Why?
0:56:30 Because the people I know work their butts off.
0:56:34 They’re all phenomenally hardworking, achievement, or they don’t need me to teach them about
0:56:36 delayed gratification.
0:56:38 They live delayed gratification.
0:56:40 They’re highly educated, they’re successful.
0:56:41 They work their butts off.
0:56:44 Well, you’ve got to have an answer to this question.
0:56:46 Why am I doing this?
0:56:50 And if there’s not some higher purpose as to why, then why are you sitting there killing
0:56:55 yourself to achieve all this stuff unless there’s some higher reason to do it?
0:56:56 And it doesn’t have to be religious reason.
0:56:57 Just some reason.
0:56:58 There needs to be something.
0:57:04 It could be I want to have great kids that have good lives or I want to, I don’t know,
0:57:07 I want to help as many people as I can or I want to help the people I’m with have a little
0:57:08 better life.
0:57:12 There needs to be something though that’s not just a goal line because the problem with
0:57:18 the finish line is after you cross the finish line you are finished by definition.
0:57:23 And there’s part of the book is a good phrase my wife came up with after the victory lap.
0:57:24 What happens?
0:57:26 Yeah, all the people cheering, yay, yay.
0:57:28 What happens after the victory lap?
0:57:30 If that’s it, you’re finished.
0:57:32 This is super inspirational.
0:57:37 So there’s one more question I want to ask before we start to really wrap this up.
0:57:40 And it’s sort of related, we’ll figure out how it’s related and it’s the fact that you
0:57:46 wear the same outfit all the time.
0:57:48 You wear a green polo shirt and khakis.
0:57:49 I meet with you once a week.
0:57:51 I see you every week.
0:57:56 And it’s true, you wear the same thing every time no matter like if you’re on a podcast
0:58:00 interview with me to 50,000 people or if you know it’s me, us and four people, you’re wearing
0:58:02 the same thing.
0:58:07 Talk to us about this freedom in limiting your choices and how that relates to an earned
0:58:08 life.
0:58:13 Well, there’s a chapter in the book called the agency of no choice, which talks about
0:58:16 the value of not having to make choices.
0:58:19 Back to the New Yorker story, ironically this connects.
0:58:22 In the New Yorker story, the woman said I always wear a green t-shirt and khaki pants.
0:58:25 I actually didn’t, but she said I did.
0:58:29 So after that, people kind of expected it and I thought what the heck, this is my small
0:58:30 life.
0:58:31 I don’t have to think anymore.
0:58:35 But literally every day I wear the same clothes, green t-shirt, khaki pants, it makes life
0:58:36 easier.
0:58:39 One more decision, I don’t have to make, decisions are tiring.
0:58:41 And the more we can eliminate decisions, the better.
0:58:46 I mean, Barack Obama, he basically said he has a gray suit and a blue suit and a white
0:58:50 shirt and a blue shirt and his wife picks out the ties and that’s it.
0:58:52 And he just kind of stumbles around.
0:58:53 Why?
0:58:54 He doesn’t want to think about that.
0:58:55 Well, it’s nice.
0:58:57 I don’t have to think about what I wear.
0:59:03 The more we can look at choices that are not that critical to us, it makes our life simpler,
0:59:04 makes it easy to pack.
0:59:07 And you know, the nice thing is people expect me to wear a green shirt and khaki pants so
0:59:11 I can go work in the city corp with everybody else has a coat and tie and they’re all dressed
0:59:12 up.
0:59:13 I don’t have to wear a coat and tie.
0:59:14 Why?
0:59:15 People don’t expect me to.
0:59:16 Yeah.
0:59:17 You’ve just made it iconic.
0:59:19 You’re just an icon style icon.
0:59:20 Awesome.
0:59:21 This was such a great conversation.
0:59:25 So I always wrap up the interview with two of the same questions to all of my guests and
0:59:28 then we do something fun at the end of the year with them.
0:59:33 So the first question is, what is one actionable thing my young and profitors can do today
0:59:36 to become more profiting tomorrow?
0:59:39 Well, I’m going to define profiting in a different way.
0:59:43 I’m going to define profiting as profiting as achieving a meaningful and successful life
0:59:45 for you, which is not necessarily money.
0:59:50 And that is breathe and imagine you’re 95 years old and your skin ready to die before
0:59:51 you take the last breath.
0:59:55 You’re given a beautiful gift, the ability to go back in time and talk to the person
0:59:57 who’s listening to me now.
1:00:01 What advice would that old person facing death have for you that’s listening to me right
1:00:02 now?
1:00:06 Well, whatever that advice is, do that.
1:00:09 That is the definition of a profitable life.
1:00:11 This might tie into the next question, but we’ll see.
1:00:14 What is your secret to profiting in life?
1:00:19 Secret of profiting in life is kind of what we talked about, breathe and start over and
1:00:23 say profiting in life is not accumulating something.
1:00:26 Coding life is living now.
1:00:30 Living now, a life that’s meaningful for you, not coasting on what I did last week or what
1:00:31 my net worth is.
1:00:35 It’s living now, making the biggest difference you can make now.
1:00:38 And you know, let’s finish by, why do I do this?
1:00:43 Well, basically, as I’ve grown older, in some ways, my level of aspiration has gone down
1:00:44 and down and down.
1:00:46 My level of impact’s going up and up and up.
1:00:48 Well, I’m quite worried about what I’m not going to change.
1:00:50 What’s my goal on this podcast is very, very simple.
1:00:54 I hope someone listening has a little better life.
1:00:59 If one person listening to this podcast has a little better life, just want this good.
1:01:01 Thank you so much, Dr. Marshall, for coming on this show.
1:01:04 This conversation was amazing.
1:01:05 Thank you so much.
1:01:05 You’re wonderful.
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