WEBVTT

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I had to die to my father or die to myself and I realized that I would rather die to him.

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Pretty much ended up happening.

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And so my fear is relatively justified.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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customers, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way.

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I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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Well, I usually ask my guess, how did you get this job?

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So I was a management consultant right out of college.

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I did space cyber intelligence for the military, which was, sounds much cooler than it really

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was, but I had a top secret clearance.

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It sounded really good at dinner parties and just about only that.

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And one day I looked out for my balcony because I had a really nice place because I could

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afford it at the time.

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And I was like, is this it?

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And I was, in my young 20s, at that point I had done everything that I think I was supposed

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to do.

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So I did well in school.

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I was president of all the clubs, graduated in three years, got the good job.

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And I realized I was living a life for me that my father wanted me to live.

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And so that was kind of, you know, I, I, I faltered back and forth for probably a period

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of six months of really not wanting this to be my life, but not wanting to let my dad

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down.

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And so at some point, the, the thing that kind of pushed me over the edge was I can either,

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you know, die to myself or I can die to my father and, at the end of the day, you know,

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I have to survive.

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So I will, if I, if I make this decision and he no longer wants to be my dad, then I

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can accept that.

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Wow.

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Was that extreme then?

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Yes.

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Same more about that.

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Are you an only child?

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So only child raised by a single father, Middle Eastern, he was born in Iran.

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And you know, everything in my life, up until that point was really just to make him proud.

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So I, it was very much a seeking approval, seeking validation kind of drive at that point

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in my life.

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And so the idea of disappointing him or not getting his approval felt like death.

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And at that point, I was actually contemplating not living.

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You have watched some of my two stuff.

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Mortality has been the single biggest driver and the biggest decisions that I've made

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in my life and it has become a more routine process for decision making for me in general.

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Because I think it, it provides clarity and it provides context to most of the decisions

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we have, which the vast majority of them don't matter, which is helpful in and of themselves.

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And then, you know, beyond that, it helps me make the decisions that I think removes

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everyone else from the playbook because if you, if you study subjective well-being and

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how people perceive how they're doing in their own lives, it looks like a smiley face.

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So seven-year-olds think they're killing life.

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And then it drops dramatically between 20 and 30.

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And then there's still a little bit more of a dip right around 45.

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That's like when people are their true, they hate life the most.

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And then, and then it kind of slowly goes up to like 55, 60 and then it shoots right

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back up again when people see that they're going to die and that life is short and that

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they can make the decisions without worrying about the ramifications of other people and

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some of the people they're worried about are also dead.

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And so it was using that context for that biggest decision that's been duplicated many times

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in my life since then because if I have a good decision-making algorithm, I try and reuse

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it as many times as I can.

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Let's unpack it for the audience a little bit.

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So, you know, when we're seven, we don't have a care in the world.

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The artist or the whatever we want to be has not been beaten out of us yet.

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No one's told us that we are not what we think we are.

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We're still popping wheelies and climate trees and falling out and that's okay.

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And then you get to your 20s and 30s and rubber hits a road a little bit and if you've

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made money, I guess, and if that's your sign of success, then you're okay.

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But if not, you're kind of hosed.

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Then in your 40s, I'm guessing you start to have more life experience, 50s.

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Maybe you start carrying less what people think and then you fast forward all the way to

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maybe near death.

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And then you really get to a point where you don't care what anyone says and you really

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boil it down to what's important.

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And probably I'm guessing that's love, relationships, legacy, and then you just like peace out.

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I think for most people, yes, for me, specifically the legacy piece less so, but I think for most

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people, yes.

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And why is the legacy piece less important?

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More so and whenever I get into this topic, I think a lot of like some people get sensitive

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about it and so I just like to put the disclaimer like this is not me judging your beliefs

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and me stating my beliefs is in no way.

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Yeah.

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A judgment on anything else.

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But if you just look at expanding the time horizon over a much longer period of time, if

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you look at it in 10,000 years or 100,000 years or a million years, right, the easy way

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to test this is to go backwards, right, which is do you know your great, great, great, great,

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great grandfather?

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Probably not.

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And then if you look at it from a how much has somebody achieved standpoint, I happen

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to be in an interesting situation where my great, great grandfather was in a ruling class

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in Iran and he had 400 children.

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So he literally, you know, ruled and had a lot of wealth.

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He had a lot of wives to create 400 children, right?

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And I actually still can't remember his name because my dad told me one time and I can't

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remember it.

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And I've never seen any of the quote legacy that I'm sure he felt like he was leaving.

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And so if that was that level of success and legacy and only four or five generations

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later, I don't even remember the man's name nor do I have any peace of that legacy.

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It seems a little bit relevant when the revolution happened in Iran, we talk about legacy,

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events, buildings, houses, bank accounts, everyone just says those are ours now.

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That's it.

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There's your legacy.

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Go on.

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That's why I'm like, and if you were like, I want to build a legacy, I'm like, you

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asked me not even the super power in 500 years.

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Your kids, your kids might be in Bangladesh, who knows, India might be the the hot spot 500.

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No one knows, right?

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And I think it'll long enough time rise and we're all screwed.

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And I think in some ways people find that incredibly disheartening, but an equal opposite

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is you can't find it both disheartening and also not freeing because all of the decisions

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that we're making that are not for ourselves are subject to chains that we feel pressure

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firm, whether that be society, societal up a quotes there, because that's a big word.

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Or family, friends, expectations that we perceive other people to have of us, if you can,

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if you can just relinquish all of those chains, I think it's incredibly freeing and I choose

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to live that way.

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That device is good because it helps us live in the moment because even if you believe

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in something after, that's still in the future.

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And there's a question mark because no one actually knows with knowledge what happens

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or if something happens.

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So you might as well live in the present, make the best of it.

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Yeah, an interesting one that I thought through around that was a lot of us, not a lot

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of us, all of us have 100% experience not being alive, right?

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Or we were born and we were not alive.

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And so we know what that was like, there was nothing that we can recollect.

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And so I would imagine that that's the closest experience that we can have to not be alive

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yet again.

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Which to me is not that frightening.

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Yeah.

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And it is freeing you right because it's both humbling to know that you don't matter

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in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, you matter infinitely if you just

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focus on the present and the mark that you're going to leave here and now.

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I contemplated, I had to die to my father or die to myself and I realized that I would

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rather die to him, which pretty much ended up happening.

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And so my fears were relatively justified.

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He was not in support of the things that I wanted to do.

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I ended up quitting that job, sold everything I had, packed my car, went to California because

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that's why I thought the Linifitness opportunity was because I was the only thing I really

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enjoyed.

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Ments were done under a guy for a few months, trying to at least learn the ropes, started

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my first facility, slept on the floor for the first nine months, which was a very terrible

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experience for me.

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And time stamp the age for me now.

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I was 23.

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Graduated early.

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You got that dream job and then you bailed two years.

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And that was really at the time.

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And all of this kind of, it was at the splitting point where I had done two years and that

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kind of career path traditionally is like two to four years of management consulting.

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And then you go back to an Ivy League for your GMAT and then from there you go into,

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you know, you can go do investment banking, you can do private equity, you can do some

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of the bigger white collar jobs, but it was, I didn't want more of what I had.

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And so I thought that I would have a better shot taking $200,000 in two years, which is

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what the, you know, economic equivalent of what the degree was.

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And starting something on my own, I figured I would learn more in the first two years and

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with that money and maybe even have a business by the end of that period of time that made

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an equivalent amount of money compared to what I would have had as a job offer.

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Amazon and back to the show.

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What signals did you get?

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I mean, you're saying like, I wasn't feeling it, but like, where was your motivation?

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Because I see you as this hustler, this go get is all about gobbling up new opportunities.

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It transcends beyond that now, but like at first it sounds like you were just all about

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the go get.

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But how did you know?

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I mean, at first I was driven by fear.

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Okay.

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It was all fear, fear of failure, feel of disappointment, fear of other people's judgment.

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What did your dad end up saying?

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Did he say, good luck with you?

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No, he thought he was stupid, but he thought I was wasting my life and wasted a degree

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that he'd spend money on and wasted a good job of opportunity that he had set up for

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me.

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All these things.

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Right.

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In his defense.

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Did he immigrate here?

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So in his defense.

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100%.

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Right.

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And I just want to tell the audience.

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They're not like, it's like, you know, if you have justified in saying that, yeah.

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If you escape from a country where there's trauma and impending danger, then your son

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squanders an opportunity, you might get a little anxious about that.

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100%.

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I mean, my dad came here with $1,000, you know, and a medical degree.

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Yeah.

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And then built everything.

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Didn't even speak English.

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Right.

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I think what he did was harder than what I've done.

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Like, I got to, I got to stand on his shoulders.

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Okay.

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You know, in what way?

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I mean, I speak English.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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Like, just the basics.

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Like, I speak English.

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I went to a good school.

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Just all the support infrastructure known and unknown that was around me.

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Yeah.

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I think it's healthy to recognize your privilege.

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Yeah.

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But at the same time, you know, it came with lots of baggage too.

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And so you had signals which were mainly fear-based.

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Yeah.

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And I mean, the biggest thing that made the decision for me, I would say I had the logical

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decision and then I had the emotional decision.

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The emotional decision was, I don't want to do this.

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This is not the life I want to lead.

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I am not happy doing this every day.

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I would prefer to not be alive if this is what my life will be continuously.

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If I would prefer to not be alive, then that kind of opens up my decision calculus.

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And what was it I'm trying to put my finger on?

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What was it that made you happy?

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Was it just the freedom to do what you want?

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I didn't know it made me happy.

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I knew it was not making me happy.

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Okay.

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So I think that's another important lesson too if I can just extract them.

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You know, I'm sure a lot of people watching, they feel the same kind of family pressure.

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They want to be what other people expect them to be if, you know, if that's who you are.

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That's totally normal.

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But we should always remember the context in which that advice is given, could be given

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through the lens of a certain lifestyle, a certain time frame.

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But like I think that's a thing.

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Whether you're young or middle age, you're trying to figure out what you want to be when

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you grow up.

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You're trying to have it all figured out.

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Because we don't, it seems like we don't like uncertainty.

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But I think your message if I'm hearing you is sometimes you have to try it on for

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size to see if it fits or not.

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And you get it on, you're like, well, I thought that dream job was going to be like perfect.

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But it turns out, you know, it's tight in the crutch, you know, it's like, I need some

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different.

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And I think giving yourself permission to do that and it was aside to what you were saying

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about my dad, like, education saved his life.

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Like he was only able to leave the country because he was educated.

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And so there's very deep roots, they're not going to appreciate that.

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But for this context or for my life, it just wasn't appropriate.

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Right.

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I come to terms later, the only time has ever apologized to me in my life and said, but

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to be fair, in my time, I would have been right.

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Oh, absolutely.

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And he would have been.

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It's just not the same time.

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Yeah.

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Absolutely.

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It wasn't that it was inappropriate.

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It was just out of context and didn't necessarily translate to this new life.

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I love the saying, you know, in our 20s, we're concerned about what everyone thinks about

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us.

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In our 40s, we don't care what anyone thinks about us.

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In our 60s, we realized that no one was thinking about us to be with.

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Right.

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And I just, I just feel like that's, I mean, who else have you thought about today?

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Besides yourself?

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Probably not.

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I mean, you have your kids, which is an extension of yourself, but you know, I mean,

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like, yeah, not a lot.

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And so most people are like that.

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And, you know, a lot of it, like we have a lot more leeway than I think we give ourselves

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credit for.

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And I think the more that I have now, you know, I'll say accomplished with quotes in

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material success, the more I am excited about the things that I can do.

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And that was why the opening of the book was like, there are no rules.

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And it just took me a very long time to realize that.

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And I continue to unlearn rules that I thought existed, you know, as I continue to, you know,

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go on this journey.

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I love that idea of unlearning.

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I think we all just try to go back to being like we were when we were children.

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Just because when you're a child, you're purely present, you're just present in the moment.

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And I don't like the word happy very much.

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I prefer using joy because you can be, you can mourn joyfully, right?

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Because it's internal rather than happiness, which I feel is more like happenstance.

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It's more from external.

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And so, you know, one of the things that bring me joy, one of the things that I find,

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you know, to find joy in.

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And I think for anyone who's listening, it's a

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much harder question to answer, what are the things that bring me joy than answering

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the question?

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What are the things I hate?

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And it's easier to correct those first.

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You're like, well, I hate my job and I hate my relationship.

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And I hate the city.

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Okay, those are all very changeable.

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And a lot of times you get there by, by inversion.

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Well, if I wanted to destroy my life, I wanted to have the worst life possible.

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What would I do?

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And then taking all those things that you would do to really destroy your life and make

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your life miserable and then reverse them.

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It's a much easier way to solve the positive psychology equation, in my opinion.

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Yeah.

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I love that.

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And I remember this Picasso quote, which is, I think he said, everyone is born an artist.

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Right.

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And then eventually we, you know, get convinced that we're not.

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Yeah.

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And we have to really just strip away and get, you know, get back to basics.