[Applause]
these people that you're comparing
yourself to you don't really know
very well what that means is that you
see they're shiny outside but you don't
see the reality of their life
always people out there who are doing
far better than you on pretty much
anything you want to imagine
and if all you're doing is seeing
yourself in their reflected light let's
say then it's going to be pretty damn
dismal but it's not a good comparison
because
well first of all there's danger in just
comparing yourself to others period
because they're not you and god only
knows
what struggles they had to undertake to
get to where they were
or what burdens they're currently
carrying that you're not aware of
but you can certainly contrast yourself
with yourself
that's a lot better it is the only way
well it's also the only way of really
of really measuring anything
approximating proper improvement
you can actually tell when you're a
little better than you were yesterday
and and you can actually do that that's
another thing that's so interesting
about it is that you can actually make
yourself a little better in some way
pretty much well i don't know if it's at
every moment but you can certainly do it
every day
be careful who you share good news with
because you want to share good news with
people who are going to be genuinely
happy for you and
be careful who you share bad news with
because
that's equally tricky you want someone
who will listen to
you when you're having trouble and allow
you your
grief beauty calls people to their
higher being i would say and to make
friends with beauty is to
introduce yourself very carefully to one
of the mysteries of life that make it
worth living
there's never been a better time for the
majority of people
to be alive and the future
although we're vulnerable and terrible
things can always happen to us
it's hard to make a case that the future
doesn't look comparatively positive
we're becoming extremely technologically
sophisticated
and the world is changing at an
incredibly rapid rate and
the only way we're going to be able to
manage that in a positive way is if
each of us or as many of us as possible
are capable of making
wise and careful and truthful decisions
and if we do that then
maybe things can continue to improve you
don't get
people to stand up on their own two feet
and to adopt responsibility
if everything is given to them and that
that's that's a real conundrum
[Music]
you know maybe you're in california see
someone speeding down the road in a
in a convertible portion you think oh
man what a lucky bastard and
the truth of the matter is that he's
thinking about wrapping his
expensive sports car around the next
cement pillar that he comes
close to you know you can't tell and
people have hard lives
and and even people who are
comparatively fortunate have hard lives
and
the ideal that you're observing that
makes you
jealous and resentful is in large part
an illusion that's created by your own
mind
you have to be careful of what you're
jealous of because you don't really know
what it is
and then the other thing that's kind of
useful is to
well to understand you're quite
different from other people and
you shouldn't be comparing yourself to
them because they're not like you
they don't have your family they don't
have your temperament they don't have
your troubles
they don't have your abilities the only
person that has
those is you one of the rules i think
it's rule four
is compare yourself to who you were
yesterday and not to who someone else is
today
and see that's a game you can win the
possibility that you can
make yourself slightly better on a
continual basis is
i think that's something that's
accessible to everyone i i think that's
equivalent to leading a virtuous life
and
there is something to be said for virtue
and truth you know and
and that is one thing another thing that
i've noticed about people who've been
phenomenally successful
is that they really do everything they
can to live a truthful life
and you can get a bloody long ways by
being honest
you got to know that there are
differences intelligence it's really
important if you
go into a job and you're not smart
enough for that job
you're going to have one bloody
miserable time and you're going to make
life wretched for the people around you
because you won't be able to handle the
position but what you really want to do
as far as i can tell if you want to
maximize your chances for both success
and and let's say well-being is you want
to find a strata of occupation
in which you would have an intelligence
that would put you in the upper quartile
that's perfect then you're a big fish in
a small pond
and you don't want to be this you don't
want to be the stupidest guy in the room
it's a bloody rough place to be so and
you probably don't want to be the
smartest guy in the room either because
what that probably means is you should
be in a different room
if you want to be the best at what
you're doing bar none
then having an iq of above 145 is a
necessity and maybe you're pushing 160
in some situations
and maybe that's making you one person
in 10 000 or even one person in a
hundred thousand
and then also to really be good at it
you probably have to be
reasonably stress tolerant and also
somewhat conscientious why is it that
smart people
are at the top of dominance hierarchies
and the answer to that in part is
because they get there first
right i mean everything's a race roughly
speaking
and the faster you are the more likely
you are to be at the forefront of the
pack and
intelligence in large part is speed
that's not all of it is
so if you're moving towards something
difficult rapidly the faster people are
going to get there first
you're going to have to put some effort
into your life and you need to be
motivated to do that
and so what are the potential sources of
motivation well you could think about
them
in the big five manner you know if
you're extroverted you want friends if
you're agreeable you want an intimate
relationship
if you're disagreeable you want to win
competitions if you're open you want to
engage in creative activity if you're
high in neuroticism you want security
okay so those are all sources of
potential motivation that you could draw
on that you could tailor to your own
you know your own personality but then
there are dimensions that you want to
consider your life across and so we ask
people about
well you know if you could have your
life the way you wanted it in three to
five years if you were taking care of
yourself
properly you know what would you want
from your friendships what would you
want from your intimate relationship
how would you like to structure your
family what do you want for your career
well how are you going to use your time
outside of your job
and how are you going to regulate your
mental physical mental and physical
health
and maybe also your drug and alcohol use
because that's that's a good place to
auger down
and that tangles in your your incentive
reward system you know we talked about
the dopaminergic incentive reward system
and that's the thing that keeps you
moving forward
and the way it works is that it works
better if
it produces positive emotion when it can
see you moving towards a valued goal
okay well what's the implication of that
better have a valued goal
because otherwise you can't get any
positive motivation
most creative people fail at
producing their creative product and
monetizing it
right so your default position if you're
a creative person is you're going to
fail
and so and that's because it's hard to
come up with something new and it's
j and it's hard to present it to the
market at the right time
and it's hard to market it like those
things are really really difficult
and so what successful entrepreneurs do
is they just keep doing it
over and over and over and over and over
and over and over and eventually
if they're fortunate one of their ideas
happens to hit
the right place at the right time even
if your idea is good that doesn't mean
it will be successful
there's so many things that have to be
taken into account so
this is partly why persistence and
that's part of conscientiousness is so
useful
it's like persistence is helpful because
it enables you to run many many
experiments and
and you need to know that the baseline
is failure you know it's important
because otherwise
you'll blame that on yourself you know
and
some of that's useful because there's
probably some things that you could
improve about yourself but
it's very difficult to go from zero to
one
[Music]
you