A 43-minute conversation about why trying to be liked is the thing that makes work forgettable, and what to change in the room when the work stops moving.
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1 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
sincere
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
The work that lasts comes from people who stopped guessing what an audience wanted and made the thing they actually liked, treating the making itself as the point rather than the reception.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A writer, musician, or filmmaker who keeps revising work toward an imagined audience and can no longer tell what they themselves think of it.
Someone sitting on a project they have talked themselves out of because the market already looks crowded.
A creator who gets same-day feedback on everything they publish and feels that loop shortening their thinking.
Anyone who treats being stuck as a focus problem and keeps sitting at the desk longer instead of changing anything physical.
A person building a body of work alongside a job, unsure whether to quit and go all in.
SKIP IF…
You want tactics for reaching a specific sales or follower number, because the argument here runs directly against optimizing for a metric.
You need a step-by-step production system, since the advice is a set of nudges rather than a workflow.
You already work without an audience in mind, in which case most of the first fifteen minutes will land as confirmation rather than information.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Trying to be liked is what makes work forgettable, because nobody can actually know what another person wants, and the attempt replaces your taste with a guess. The argument here is that success is the moment you decide you like a piece enough to show it, since everything after that is out of your hands. Creativity gets defined as ordinary: taking a different route home is a creative decision. The named blocks are caring what people think, comparing work that can't be compared, and sitting still while waiting for an answer. The fixes are physical rather than mental. Change the context, change the room, add one observer, go for a walk, and write your dreams down before you move.
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The opening question: why people make themselves malleable to be accepted.
00:25 – 04:30
02 · The mask is not a strategy
The case that being yourself is the only workable path to acceptance, since you can't know what anyone else wants. Differences and imperfections are what make work worth encountering.
04:30 – 05:22
03 · The traffic jam that proves you're creative
Creativity redefined as ordinary decision-making. Rerouting around traffic or adding something to a dish is a creative choice.
05:22 – 06:26
04 · The biggest block to creativity
Caring what other people will think, and the belief that your own liking a thing carries no value.
06:26 – 07:38
05 · Making the work as an offering
Reframing the goal from greatness to devotion, which removes budget and audience segments from the creative decision.
07:38 – 09:24
06 · What Slayer fans came for
An aggressive, controversial band's audience described as arriving full of love rather than hate, as evidence that even confrontational work is an offering.
09:24 – 13:50
07 · The book eight publishers didn't want
Eight years of refusing a deal because every publisher was imagining a different book, then writing it first and selling the finished thing.
13:50 – 16:44
08 · Telling Johnny Cash to sing it to God
The 'change the context' technique in practice. A singer who couldn't feel a love lyric could sing it as a devotional song.
16:44 – 18:01
09 · Recording the first take in the dark
Changing the environment instead of the material. Killing the lights, and moving a band into a mansion instead of a studio they had bad history with.
18:01 – 19:36
10 · Why an audience of one changes everything
Being observed changes how people work, even for non-performing work like writing or cooking. A backyard stand-up set and a rehearsal in front of strangers as examples.
19:36 – 23:47
11 · What happened when the Beatles were interviewed together
Individually thoughtful, together performative. Leads into the value of a peer circle that shares unfinished work, and how to filter criticism.
23:47 – 27:06
12 · Why Drake vs. Beyoncé makes no sense
Awards logic rejected as apples and oranges. The only honest competition is with your own previous work, and saturation only matters if you plan to repeat.
27:06 – 28:23
13 · Procrastination vs. distraction
The distinction that makes the rest of the episode usable. Hold a question, then go occupy part of your brain elsewhere.
28:23 – 32:17
14 · The walking meetings that beat every lunch
Why moving conversations improve, including not facing each other, and the parallel in how couples argue across a table.
32:17 – 34:49
15 · The MIT study on who's actually innovative
A study brought by the host: employees with loosely connected contacts out-innovate those inside closed circles.
34:49 – 39:37
16 · Ten years of bad performances
Obsession as the real mechanism, drawn from a comedy documentary in progress. Then the case for keeping a job so money pressure doesn't deform the work.
39:37 – 40:55
17 · Don't move the moment you wake up
The dream-capture method. Stay still, write the one fragment you have, and the rest reassembles.
40:55 – 43:05
18 · Reading the journal twenty years later
Dreams that seemed unrelated turned out to be about one thing, visible only with distance. Closes on doing things because they interest you, not for an outcome.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
The best way to be accepted is to be yourself, because you don't actually know what anyone else thinks and are editing toward a guess.
If you like the thing you made enough to show it, that is the success, because whether other people like it was never in your control.
A love song can be sung to God instead of a woman, and the singer who couldn't feel the lyric suddenly can.
Turning the studio lights off turns take seven into the first take in the dark, which is a different performance entirely.
Most artists who are strongest in who they are can read a terrible review and laugh at it.
Criticism tells you as much about the person giving it as it does about the thing you made.
Comparing two albums is comparing two diary entries, because personal work has no shared scale to be ranked on.
The only honest competition is with your own previous work, asking whether you went further than you went before.
Once three of your things are similar, it stops being interesting, and complacency after success is the usual cause.
You are only one of two million podcasts if you are planning to repeat what already exists, otherwise you are one of one.
Procrastination is not useful, but distraction is, if you hold a question and then go do something physical instead of solving it at a desk.
Walking meetings beat lunch meetings because you are not looking at each other, which makes it easier to go into your own thoughts.
Employees who know lots of people who don't know each other turn out to be the innovative ones, because closed circles become echo chambers.
Comedians spend ten years giving bad performances, and the breakthrough they are chasing is with themselves, not with an audience.
Your purpose is not your job, and the job that supports you is what buys you the freedom to pursue the purpose.
Putting all your money pressure on your art changes you as an artist, and not for the better.
There are no special people making the things you love, only people doing their best and sometimes finding a way to make something beautiful.
A dream is a chemical state, so moving your head the moment you wake erases it before you can write it down.
Start writing the one fragment you remember from a dream and the rest reassembles itself on the page.
Dream journals read twenty years later turn out to be about one thing, which was invisible while you were too close to it.
Takeaway
Stop guessing what they want and change the room instead
WHAT TO LEARN
Every block named here comes from aiming at an imagined audience, and every fix is physical: a new meaning, a new room, an observer, a walk, a pen beside the bed.
02The mask is not a strategy
Editing your work toward what you imagine others want is guesswork, because you have no access to what anyone else actually thinks.
Work that carries your specific perspective is more useful to other people than work that averages everyone's, since the differences are the information.
Imperfection is the part that reads as human, which is why confessional work connects with people who have never had the experience described.
03The traffic jam that proves you're creative
Creativity is any decision not made the same way as yesterday, including rerouting around traffic or adding something to a dish.
If you believe you are not a creative person, the belief is a category you inherited rather than an observation about what you do daily.
04The biggest block to creativity
The largest block is worrying what people will think, and the second is believing your own approval of your work carries no value.
Treat the moment you like a thing enough to show it as the success, because reception was never under your control.
05Making the work as an offering
Making work as an offering removes budget and audience segmentation from the creative decision, which is why devotional framing changes output.
06What Slayer fans came for
Even confrontational work functions as an offering, since audiences for aggressive art usually arrive out of love rather than hate.
07The book eight publishers didn't want
When everyone imagines a different version of your project, finish it first and present the finished thing rather than negotiating the idea.
Eight years of refusing deals is a legitimate cost of keeping a vision intact, and the finished work got accepted on sight.
Playing by every known metric still does not let you control what an audience wants, so the metric-first path buys you nothing.
08Telling Johnny Cash to sing it to God
When a performer cannot feel the material, give the same material a new private meaning rather than rewriting it.
A lyric aimed at a different listener produces a different delivery, and the audience still hears the original surface meaning.
09Recording the first take in the dark
Change a physical condition of the session when repetition stops improving things: kill the lights, record in the morning, hand over the microphone.
If a setting carries bad history, a genuinely new environment makes the next attempt the first of its kind rather than the fifth of the old kind.
10Why an audience of one changes everything
Adding a single observer who is not part of the project sharpens most people's focus, including in private work like writing or cooking.
Rehearse in front of strangers who have no stake in you before the work goes public, because the practice audience does the calibrating.
11What happened when the Beatles were interviewed together
People become performative in groups, so collect your real thinking in one-on-one settings rather than in rooms.
A peer circle that shares unfinished work only functions when everyone is secure in their own voice, which is what makes idea theft irrelevant.
Criticism describes the person giving it as much as the thing made, which is why strong makers can read a bad review and laugh.
12Why Drake vs. Beyoncé makes no sense
Ranking personal work against other personal work is category error, because there is no shared scale for two diary entries.
Compete only against your own last attempt, asking whether this went further than the previous one.
Success breeds repetition, and by the third similar thing the audience stops finding it interesting.
Market saturation only applies to people planning to repeat what exists, which is why the count of competitors is the wrong number to look at.
13Procrastination vs. distraction
Procrastination produces nothing, but distraction works when you hold an unsolved question and then go occupy part of your brain physically.
Sitting at a laptop staring at the problem is the condition least likely to produce the answer the problem needs.
14The walking meetings that beat every lunch
Moving conversations outperform seated ones, partly because you stop facing each other and can drop into your own thoughts.
Putting an object between two people, like a table, creates opposition, while walking side by side points both people forward.
15The MIT study on who's actually innovative
A circle of contacts who all know each other becomes an echo chamber, and the same ten people keep returning the same advice.
Deliberately collect people from unrelated worlds, since loosely connected networks are where original ideas come from.
16Ten years of bad performances
Obsession is the actual mechanism behind mastery: pulling one thread forever because you cannot help it, not scheduling discipline.
Expect roughly ten years of bad public attempts, and understand the breakthrough you are chasing is with your own blocks, not with an audience.
Your purpose does not have to be your job, and treating the job as what funds the purpose is a legitimate structure rather than a compromise.
Money pressure placed directly on your art changes the art for the worse, so stability is a creative input and not a betrayal of the dream.
The people who made the work you love are not a separate class of human, which removes the worthiness question from whether you start.
17Don't move the moment you wake up
A dream is a chemical state that movement clears, so stay completely still and write before you shift your head.
Write down the one fragment you remember and the rest of the dream reassembles as you write.
18Reading the journal twenty years later
Patterns in your own subconscious material are invisible up close and obvious with years of distance, which is the argument for keeping the record.
Do things because they interest you rather than because of what they will return, since the return was never the reason that worked.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Breaking the sameness
Deliberately disturbing a repeated process so the next attempt isn't a slightly worse copy of the last one. Used when a performance has peaked and further repetition is making it flatter rather than better.
Change the context
Giving a piece of work a new private meaning without changing a word of it, so the performer can connect to it. A lyric aimed at a different listener produces a different delivery.
Change the environment
Altering a physical condition of the room or session rather than the material. Killing the lights, recording in the morning instead of at night, or handing the singer the microphone instead of a stand.
Invite an audience
Putting one or more observers in the room during work that is normally done alone. Most people focus harder when watched, and the effect holds for non-performing work like writing or cooking.
Devotional act
Treating the making of something as an offering rather than a product. The practical consequence is that budget, audience segments, and reception stop being inputs to the creative decision.
Submerge
Following one interest far past the point of general curiosity, to the depth where you want to learn everything about it. Contrasted with the shallow, constantly interrupted attention that most modern work encourages.
One of one
The position you occupy when your work comes from your own experience rather than a copy of an existing format. Market saturation only matters to someone planning to repeat what already exists.
Open network
A circle of contacts who mostly don't know each other. Research cited in the conversation found these people produce more original ideas than people inside tight, mutually connected groups.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
00:29bookThe Creative Act: A Way of Being
07:14channelSlayer
13:54productJohnny Cash cover of 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'
16:33productRed Hot Chili Peppers mansion sessions
20:38bookBob Iger's memoir
25:46channelHuberman Lab
32:24linkMIT study on open versus closed professional networks
34:42productDocumentary project with comedians
Quotables
Lines you could clip.
00:29
“The best way to be accepted is to be yourself. It's not to change yourself to what someone else thinks. First of all, you don't really know what someone else thinks.”
states the whole thesis in three sentences with no setup→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
05:18
“One big block is concerns about what other people think. I made this thing that I love, but I think other people would like it more if I made it different for them. We don't know what they would like. It's all in our head.”
names the block and dismantles it in the same breath→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
05:46
“As an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. The success comes when you say, I like this enough for other people to see it.”
redefines success in one line, highly quotable→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
06:15
“If you're making an offering to God, you're not thinking about, oh, what's the budget? Or I hope this segment of the audience is going to like it.”
concrete contrast between devotion and market thinking→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
13:54
“He said, I don't know if I could sing this song. I don't really feel these words. And I said, well, how about if it's a devotional song to God? He's like, I could sing that song.”
a famous name, a complete story, and a usable technique in twenty seconds→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
16:33
“It's not take seven. It's the first take in the dark.”
one sentence, memorable, carries the whole technique→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
19:43
“When the Beatles were interviewed individually, they were all these thoughtful, interesting, soulful people. But when they were interviewed even two together, they became sarcastic and never said much about anything real.”
“Drake's album is clearly a better Drake album than Beyoncé's album is. The idea that one's better than the other makes no sense. Who has a better diary entry?”
the diary line is the punch, and the names do the reach→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
24:18
“The only people who we can honestly compete with is ourselves. Is this the best I can make today? Have I gone further than I've gone before?”
clean, repeatable, works as a caption on its own→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
25:46
“You'll only feel that way if you're planning to repeat what's already been done. Because if you're not planning to repeat it, then you're one of one.”
direct answer to the most common objection in every creator comment section→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
27:01
“Distraction and procrastination are related and different. Procrastination is not a good one. Distraction can be helpful.”
contrarian framing of a word everyone treats as negative→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
29:24
“There's also something about when you're walking, you're not looking at each other. So it's easier to go into your own thoughts when you're not looking at someone.”
small mechanism that explains a common experience→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
35:08
“This could be for a period of ten years of just having bad performances, having people not like what you do. But that obsession with breaking through, I don't mean breaking through to the audience. I mean breaking through with themselves.”
reframes a familiar grind narrative in its last sentence→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
35:37
“Your purpose in life isn't related to your job. Maybe your job is the thing that supports you. And then the rest of your waking hours are devoted to your purpose.”
permission-granting line that argues against a popular belief→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
38:19
“We think they're the people on Mount Olympus, these magic people who are geniuses, and then there's the rest of us. And that's not the case. There are no special people, really. We're all special.”
“When you wake up, you don't move at all. Because the way the dream works, it's a chemical reaction in your brain.”
an immediately testable instruction people will save→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
42:18
“Don't do things just because you think you're going to get something for it. That's not why we do things. Do what's interesting to you. Follow what's interesting. Don't worry about the outcome.”
the closing line of the episode, naturally final→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 04:30denseAuthenticity and the mask
04:30 – 05:22steadyCreativity as an everyday act
05:22 – 09:24denseBlocks: audience-pleasing and self-doubt
09:24 – 13:50denseHolding a vision against the market
13:50 – 19:36denseStudio techniques for breaking sameness
19:36 – 23:47steadyPeers, groups, and filtering criticism
23:47 – 27:06denseComparison, metrics, and saturation
27:06 – 32:17denseDistraction as a thinking tool
32:17 – 34:49steadyOpen networks and originality
34:49 – 39:37denseObsession, purpose, and paying rent
39:37 – 43:05steadyDream journaling practice
The Script
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What, in your opinion, has made us so addicted to wanting to become someone that people like and often go against who we truly are? You just said you like to sense that authenticity and feel how you feel. A lot of people are scared of that.
A lot of people would rather mold and become malleable and evolve and become who people want them to be. Why do you think that is? People like to be accepted.
People want to be accepted. I'm suggesting in the book that the best way to be accepted is to be yourself. It's not to change yourself to what someone else thinks.
First of all, you don't really know what someone else thinks. And if you're not genuine to yourself, there's like nothing is there. It's just a projection or a mask.
It's not true. And there's something about authenticity. Like I get to work with artists, some of whom have very different ways of seeing the world than me.
And I support their vision a million percent, even though whatever they're talking about, maybe I may be diametrically opposed to what they're talking about, but I support them a million percent and anything I can do to support them getting their message across the clearest they can, I support that. The only way we can learn anything is through the reality of seeing what's around us and learning There are these different points of view around us.
If we're all thinking the same thing, it's boring. Why would we make anything if everyone thinks the same thing? What makes us interesting are the differences.
And even the imperfections, the imperfections are what makes us humans, what makes us what we are. It's like there's so much talk today about chat GPT and AI. It's like it's a different thing than a human sharing their own, experience warts and all that's what we love we love you know you may hear a song about um someone who's has terrible heartbreak and you may not be experiencing terrible heartbreak but hearing them honestly talk about a human experience even one that we're not having can make us cry can make us resonate with them can give us a better understanding of the world Absolutely.
And we're not all everything, you know, we're all only us. Each of us is ourselves. Yeah.
One thing when I was reading your book, it reminded me of something else I read a while ago. And what I read said that the Japanese say we have three faces, one face that we show the entire world. The second face is the face that we only show our family and friends.
And the third face, they say we show no one at all. maybe not even ourselves sometimes, we don't even, but what you're saying is almost like when we tap into that essence and become that self, that's where all this beauty and imagination and creativity stems from. Yeah, it's the most, it seems to be the most interesting and the most particular, you know, in a sea of information, the more yours is personal, the more it's not like hers or his or theirs.
It's yours. And for all of us, we get more of a sense of reality. Even if our views are different than everyone else's, it still helps us understand this is this place that we're in where there are these different views.
It's interesting. When I speak to someone who has a different view on anything, I always want to learn more. How did you get there?
What can I learn from you? I never assume that I know anything. When we're talking about creativity, you address this fear head on in the beginning because it is a fear.
Everyone has somewhat of a fear just as we say things like, oh, I can't sing. We say things like, oh, well, I'm not creative or I'm not artistic or I've never really been a creative, I'm more academic or whatever it may be. We have these, again, constructs, right and wrong, academic, creative, mostly polar opposites.
you're actually saying, no, no, no, this is something everyone can access and has access to. And do access. And do access.
Yeah, we just don't all acknowledge it. But deciding to take a different route home because there's a traffic jam in front of you and figuring out the way to go, that's a creative decision. Cooking food and it tasting a certain way and you think, oh, maybe it'll taste better if I add this to it, that's a creative decision.
We all do them every day we make creative choices. Anytime we do something that's not exactly the same as the way we did it yesterday, the reason it's different is because we made a creative choice. Yeah, absolutely.
As simple as that. As simple as that. Just a detour in a car.
Anything. There was a sprinkle of this or that. What have been the biggest blocks to creativity or to accessing that?
What are the biggest blocks? Is it, I know, and I'll touch on a few that I'm intrigued by and curious about, but what would you say? are the biggest blocks that people have to being truly creative and imaginative?
One big block is concerns about what other people think. That's a big one. I made this thing that I love, but I think other people would like it more if I made it different for them.
We don't know what they would like. It's all in our head. It comes back to this thing of what I think isn't good enough.
You know, if I like it, that doesn't mean anything. That's what people think. It's like, just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value.
Like, as an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. That's the success comes when you say, I like this enough for other people to see it. Not other people like it so it's successful.
That doesn't mean anything because that's, other people liking it is out of your control. All that's in your control is making the thing to the best of your ability. I talk about it, usually the way I talk about it is greatness.
And that's the way I thought of it my whole life was my interest is in making something great, greatness, lasting greatness, timeless. And I came to realize recently, it's all an offering to God. And if you're making an offering to God, you're not thinking about, oh, what's the budget?
Or I hope this segment of the audience is going to like it. We don't think like that. It's a higher vibration.
We're making the best we can make to the best of our ability out of love and devotion. That's what it is. And there is no, I'm changing it for someone else because it can't be better than this devotional act that we're doing.
There is no higher, no higher form. Yeah. And that's what you see so much in nature around us.
I've always found like the sun is just selflessly serving and giving. bush of flowers or you see a tree that's growing fruits. And again, it's providing shade and fruit and it's just serving.
And it's interesting how when you call it a devotional act, the idea that it's a service, it's an offering, as you said. Absolutely. In that language.
And even an offensive song is that to someone, to someone, it's like, I worked with a band Slayer and Slayer were a very controversial, aggressive band. And the people who came to see them didn't come to see them filled with hate. They came to see them filled with love.
And for many of the people in the audience, maybe the only experience of love they had was connecting over Slayer. You know, there were people in the audience who seemed like, other than this thing to devote themselves passionately to, seemed like often hopeless people. And for them to have something that they love was beautiful to witness.
And that, that sounds like one, I think you're spot on that, that fear of what will people think? What will people say? Art versus audience almost.
And I feel that that has become such a big challenge in today's world because there's so much data available, social media available, and you get instant feedback, right? So I think in the past. a band would lock themselves in a shed or whatever it may be, and then work on stuff.
And maybe their friends would listen or they would listen. But it would take months before the audience heard it. Today, you could literally record something in three seconds, put it up and get instant feedback.
And so the feedback loop has got shorter. The time to create something has got shorter. It's easier to publish and it's easier to get criticism or feedback.
And so do you say that that's, creativity being stifled and and is hampering creativity absolutely and the beauty of it is because so much of what's being made is being made that way that if we choose to make something not like that it really stands out this book for example it goes against all of the rules of publishing from the beginning i started the book eight years ago and i met with publishers eight years ago told them this is my vision for this book And all of them said, that's not the book anybody wants from you.
That's not the book. And I said, well, it's, that's the book I want to write. Yeah.
And like, well, but surely you'll tell personal stories and you'll talk about Johnny Cash and you'll talk about, it's like, no, that's not what this is. Yeah. It's a different book.
Yeah. And then I decided not to make a publishing deal then because even the ones who said they would go along with what my vision was, I could see that they really were fantasizing a different book than this book. I waited till the book was written and then said, do you want to publish this book?
Not the book you think is the book that you want me to write, but this is the book that I wrote, that I wanted to write and wrote. Do you want to publish this book? And then when they read it, they're like, oh yes, we'll publish this.
But you're right. You can't control what the audience wants, even if you played every perfect metric in game. No.
But we think we can. We think there's a part of us. And that's what I was going to ask you, that almost one end is saying, I am too worried about what people think.
But the opposite almost is the ego of, I can either control everything perfectly so that this becomes the number one chart -topping song, or I'm right and I know everything. Do you see that as a block to creativity? And how do you purify that?
I think the goal is to get to this. This is how I see it. I don't know what other people are going to think.
I can't know what other people are going to think. But this is how I see it. And I want to show you how I see it.
That's my purpose here on the planet, is to show you how I see it. And then I want to see how you see it. And where do they line up and where are they different?
And that's how we make sense of the world. It's not one story. We all have a story.
We all have something to say. And we can all learn from each other. And it's fascinating.
It's like there are the same set of chords used in all the songs, yet new songs keep coming. You know, there's someone who would say, all the songs have been written. It keeps happening.
How do new jokes come up? It's like they're all the same, but then they're all different. how we interpret it and are each, and it comes from each of our life experiences, which are different.
We each have our own family origin story. We each have our own places that we grew up, the things that we saw. We could go and do the same thing together.
and then get back and discuss what we saw and see two completely different things. And it's not like one of us is right and one of us is wrong. We're just noticing different things.
There's so many data points to take in, and we each take in the ones that speak to us. So true. Yeah, you're reminding me of...
the famous words of Mark Twain of history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And the idea of like, yeah, like the same song doesn't come back, but there's a rhyme, there's the chord, but it's still different. And there's some beautiful, I want to point out to everyone, because one thing I really aim to do here on the podcast, but also in life is to try and give people really practical, tiny steps that they could take.
And you do that artfully in this book. And there was this section here. which identifies why I brought it up now, because exactly what you said, breaking the sameness, right?
And we think there's the sameness or completeness. And you give these beautiful examples of things people can do in order to do that. And I just want to touch on a couple of them.
Please. And would love to hear some examples from you where it worked. So I really like this one, change the context.
So you say, there are times when a singer doesn't connect with a song like an actor whose line reading falls flat. it can be helpful to create a new meaning or an additional backstory to a song's lyrics. A love song might sound different if sung to a long -lost soulmate, a partner of 30 years that you don't get along with, a person you saw on the street but never spoke to, or your mother.
I was intrigued. Have you ever asked an artist to sing to someone real in their life, potentially, to get an emotion out? Yes.
The first example that comes to mind is We were doing a cover of the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face with Johnny Cash. And he read the lyrics and he said, I don't know if I could sing this song.
I don't really feel these words. And I said, well, how about if it's a devotional song to God? He's like, I could sing that song.
And when he changed it to being not singing it to a woman, but singing it to God. He was able to tap into the energy of the song and he felt the vibration. He felt the trueness to him in singing it.
Wow, yeah. But everyone still thought the song was about a woman. It is.
And the song is about a woman. The song is. Right, right, right.
But there's a long history of songs that are love songs that could be to a woman or could be devotional. Yeah. It's interesting when songs walk this line or when we think we know what a song is about.
Yeah. And we think it's about a romantic relationship when it's really about their child, you know, these devotional songs. So, and I'm sharing this with all of you listening and watching because I know you're, I know what you're sitting there thinking, Jay, I procrastinate, I overthink, I don't know how to focus, which we'll get into all of that.
But I want to share these with you because I want you to try them out in your own area and the world, the work you do. So change the environment. If we're looking for a performance of a different nature, it can help to change an element of the environment.
Turning off the lights and playing in the dark can create a shift in consciousness and break the chain of sameness from performance to performance. Other shifts we've experimented with include having a singer hold the microphone instead of standing in front of it and recording early in the morning instead of at night. To access a greater degree of variation, one vocalist chose to hang upside down while singing.
Could you tell us some examples of those? Because I find that, again, these are just, they're so simple, but we don't do it. We will sit at the same desk every day, banging our head against the wall with the same tabs open on Google going, why can't I be creative?
And it's often these. physical tangible changes around us yeah and so it happened in the studio it's not uncommon if we've played a song three or four or five or six times and it just feels like it's not getting better or we've reached a certain peak and it's really not all it could be but then it starts not being as good usually when that happens as soon as you reach whatever peak you're at and it starts coming down we usually stop playing the song um but one thing we've done in the past also would be, again, changing the context, turning the lights off in the studio.
It changes everything. It's not take seven. It's the first take in the dark.
And it changes. It changes. The first album I recorded with the Red Hot Chili Peppers was their, I think it was their fifth album.
And the albums that they had done before, they had all done in traditional recording studios. And they told me that none of those were good experiences. So we thought about what could we do for this experience to make it the first different one instead of the fifth if the first four were bad.
Could have been the first good one in the same environment, or we could change the environment and it would be the first of any kind. So we chose to rent this big house not far from here and record in this mansion. And that was very different than showing up to a recording studio with people working in an office and other musicians in other places.
We had our whole own world that we created. And some of the members of the band didn't leave during the entire, I don't know, six weeks or two months. They never left the premises.
They just stayed there, slept there, ate there, worked there, and never left until it was done. Wow. Yeah, I love that one.
Invite an audience. This one makes sense, but I think people need to do more. When an artist thrives on being in front of a crowd, we may bring in several people to watch a session.
Being observed changes how an artist acts. Even if the audience consists only on one person who isn't part of the project, that can be enough. While some artists may overdo a performance for an audience and others may hold back, most tend to be more focused with someone else present.
Even if your art is non -performative, such as writing or cooking, it will still likely change with an observer present. The goal is to find the specific parameters in each case that bring out your best. I love the idea.
I had a few friends a few years ago, one of their buddies wanted to become a stand -up comic, but he had no experience in stand -up comedy. So they threw him a stand -up show in their backyard. And there were like 15 of us present in the audience.
He got announced onto stage in front of an audience that wasn't going to heckle or be the meanest to him. And he got to practice. And it was just such a beautiful way, A, to do that for your friends, but to experience that.
And I'm on tour at the moment. This is my break period. But for my test, we were practicing, rehearsing in a small theater in Thousand Oaks.
And so what the theater said to us is they could throw it out to their local audience members who would have no clue who I was or what I was doing. And they'd come along. Little did I know that we'd have like 50 to a hundred people that weekend watching the show just as a rehearsal.
And it was so useful to me before I went out and it was huge, like huge. So I loved that one. I was listening to a story on the way here.
I was listening to a podcast in the car and it told a story about the Beatles that when The Beatles were interviewed individually. They were all these thoughtful, interesting, soulful people.
But when they were interviewed even two together, they became sarcastic and never said much about anything real and was much more of a performative, cool, like to look cool in front of the other one. Wow. That just being with each other changed the way that they appeared in the world.
Wow. Yeah, that group aspect is so interesting. You've just sparked another thought for me that I think would be really interesting for people to hear.
You going back to this, it's interesting, again, them being on their own allowed them to be more of their authentic, deeper self to some degree, I guess. I think it was in Bob Iger's book where he talked about how he was saying that George Lucas, Spielberg, Tarantino, and a bunch of others used to almost have a movie mastermind where they'd played their movies to each other before they went out.
And he was saying that that's how confident they felt about their own work because they were showing their competitors. their movies, but they weren't scared of anyone stealing an idea or taking a concept because they were so confident in who they were and all their friends were so confident in their styles. And we know that a Tarantino movie versus a Spielberg movie has no similarities.
And in some ways that community, we talk about that in the book too, having a community of, it doesn't have to be people who do the same kind of art as you, but people who just taste you you respect you like what they do they like what you do and being able to share your work back and forth is a really great feeling yeah how have you that's that's a really nice segue how is that how has that affected how you've learned to filter criticism and feedback because again going back to the world we live in today because of that instant feedback loop You can have 100 comments that are negative on social media.
Your song didn't make it. It's not as big as the next album. You have the top 10 chart.
You didn't make it. I think the way everything's measured and broadcasted now can make criticism and feedback in one sense seem louder. Before you went into a room and someone told you you weren't getting a new deal and no one knew.
Today, you didn't get a new deal and the whole world knows and your fans know. the opposing fans, you know, it's messy. It's like, how have you worked on that for yourself and the work you've done?
And even the artists that you work with, who I'm guessing may be more sensitive to it, may not have that natural confidence or groundedness in what it is. How do you, and even people who are listening today, how do we think about feedback and criticism? Most of the artists I work with don't read any criticism or reviews of their work, good or bad, most.
Some do. And I would say the ones who are the strongest in who they are can even read a terrible review and laugh at it. And that makes sense because when someone gives you criticism, it's telling you as much about who they are as what you've made.
It's like we make things and then we make it with one through our filter, our perspective. And then... You receive it through your filter, with your perspective.
So even if we both like it, we probably don't like it the same way for the same reasons. We all have our own relationship to it. Everyone has their own relationship to it.
So any of these metrics of which is better, like the idea of the Oscars or the Grammys, where we're saying which album is better than another, it doesn't make any sense to me because it's always apples and oranges. If you have a Drake... and Beyonce and you're deciding which album's better well Drake's album is clearly a better Drake album than Beyonce's album is and Beyonce's album I'm sure is a much better Beyonce album out than Drake's album is but the idea that one's better than the other it makes no sense who has a better diary entry it's like it's it's if we are actually making these personal things you you can't compare them or compete in any way with anyone else.
The only people who we can honestly compete with is ourselves. It's like, is this the best I can make today? Have I gone further than I've gone before?
That's all we can do. That's the only competition that makes sense is continuing. to evolve and push ourselves artistically and not get complacent, especially in success.
It's easy to get complacent once something works. It's like, I'll just keep doing more of that. It ends up maybe one more time you can get away with it.
But once three are similar, it stops being interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
That's so true. And that comes back to that sameness point that We always, and I'm just addressing things that I know all of you are thinking and feeling right now, like, or I'm assuming you are, the idea of, oh, Jay, there's already, you know, when I started making podcasts, I think there were like 700 ,000 podcasts in the world.
And today there's like 2 million plus, maybe even more now. And that's in three years, it's tripled. Since I started four years ago, it's tripled.
And so when I started, everyone's like, Jay, there's 700 podcasts. Too late. You don't need another podcast.
Too late, too late. Exactly, too late. And then now everyone's like, oh my God, there's 2 million podcasts, like it's too late.
And we do that. We start again using a metric to say, and you'll only feel that way if you're planning to repeat what's already been done. Because if you're not planning to repeat it, then you're one of one.
You're not one of 2 million or one of 700 ,000. It's one of one because you're only bringing your own essence out, right? Like just because every other podcast, you could be like, there's so many interview podcasts.
There are so many interview podcasts. That's true. And they're all different.
And they're all different. Exactly. Like, you know, and we got introduced through your long -term friend and my new mutual friend, Andrew Huberman, who's also been a guest on this podcast.
He has a phenomenal podcast. I love his podcast, but so different to who I am, so different to what we do. And then there's a million other friends that we have that have shows.
So the most common thing I hear when it comes to creativity or it comes to tapping into your essence is distraction, overthinking, and procrastination. Like those words come up from my community. Again and again and again.
And that's the kind of community listening I do like to do where I'm like, well, what are people struggling with? Because we're trying to help. What are people's challenges?
I have to know from them what they think it is. And then I'll also share in the way I do. Have you or anyone you've ever worked with ever dealt with big bouts of procrastination?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And how do you define it?
Because I almost think. Well, I would say there's two. Distraction and procrastination are related and different.
Procrastination is not a good one. Distraction can be. Distraction can be helpful.
You can use distraction if you hold a question to be solved and don't sit and think and try to solve it, but go do something else and go take a walk or go for a swim. you'll find that it changes. It changes.
And the distraction of when you go for a walk and seeing, oh, look at that tree over there. Look at those birds. Or, whoa, that car came kind of close to me.
All of those things, that living in the world, even though it's not challenging in any real way, it's a distraction that's using some part of your brain. Some part of your brain is occupied with, do I turn left or do I turn right? Oh, look at that thing over there.
Oh, is it going to rain? These other things are happening. That's different than just sitting in a room looking at your laptop.
Just those outside cues can give you a way in to solve a problem that you wouldn't solve if you were sitting and working on it. For example, if we were now doing this podcast together on a walk, it would be a very different podcast than us sitting here staring into each other's eyes.
It's a beautiful idea. There was a period of time where I lost a whole bunch of weight. And one of the things that I did as part of that was I only did walking meetings.
Before I used to only do lunch meetings. So I switched the lunch meetings to walking meetings. And I would meet people in Santa Monica and we would walk.
And the meetings were so much better than the meetings either in a restaurant or in an office. Everything shifted just because we were moving. We're doing something.
There were external stimuli, even though the external stimuli had nothing to do with what we were doing. Yeah. It changed.
It was a change in context that really did make the conversation much more interesting. And there's also something about when you're walking, you're not looking at each other. So it's easier to go into your own thoughts when you're not looking at someone.
So it was very interesting, a great experiment, lost a lot of weight and the meetings were the best they've ever been. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of work in couple psychology that suggests that when couples argue, they're usually sitting on opposite sides of a dining table.
And when you're sitting with something in between you, first of all, I mean, here we don't have anything, but you have something in between you, it's already creating a distance. And now you're working against each other rather than what you're saying is you're walking with each other. And you're looking off into the same direction.
So you're almost creating a future. The idea that you're forward, you're future forward, you're future facing. It's funny, my wife and I, whenever we get to a new table and we're sitting to eat, We always say, we look at where the chairs are and one of us will say, cheek to cheek.
And we tend to sit next to each other instead of across. There you go. Cheek to cheek.
Yeah, cheek to cheek. I love that. And that makes so much sense with leadership meetings, creative meetings.
And I love that. I love, love, love. And this is why this book is so beautiful because it has so many really subtle points and the idea of the difference between distraction and procrastination.
Yes. and how distraction can actually be healthy. And especially, as you said, when you hold a question or you hold an idea and you're just kind of toying with it, but you might pick up a book, you might go for a walk, you might whatever, you can do all these things.
But it's almost like you're using that time wisely to come back. Absolutely. Going for a drive is a great one.
Yeah. Just paying attention to not crashing. Even though we can drive essentially on autopilot, we're not thinking about driving once we've been driving for a while.
But just driving ideas come. I know many musicians, singers, who will listen to the instrumental music in the car and then sing along when they're driving because they're more free than when they're sitting with a recorder. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. It's so interesting how we have so many, we've also built up, again, going back to our conditioned beliefs, we've built up a negative relationship with the word distraction.
We've built up a negative connotation around, if I don't solve it right now, sitting in this one place, then I'm never going to figure it out. And the idea that actually going on a walk, picking up something else, that's one of the reasons why I like having in my office, here in the studio, back in my home. Everything's quite minimalist, but I have a lot of like little artifacts and little things.
And because I enjoy the kind of like stimulation and the creative juices that start flowing, if I get a moment to just observe. And then sometimes I just want to observe nature outside where I can just sit and bask and almost bathe in nature, which I find to be so useful because there was this incredible study from MIT a few years ago where they tried to look for who were their most creative, innovative employees inside corporate organizations.
And MIT was doing the study. They found two sets of charts of types of employees, employee A and employee B. Employee A knew lots of people that knew each other.
And employee B knew lots of people that didn't know each other. And they were looking at which one's more creative, innovative, and hence more imaginative inside a company. And they found it was employee B because employee A knew people who knew people who knew them back.
Small circle, closed circle. Closed circles that created these echo chambers. And you asked the same 10 people for advice.
And employee B knew lots of random people who had no connection to each other. And the point was being made that if your circle, and that I think applies to environment as much as it applies to people, is more random. and disconnected you have more chance of having a original authentic thought idea spark as opposed to you're surrounded by the four same people and you talk about the same things absolutely and and that to me has always been how what i'm trying to do it's like i want to know what the monks think and i want to know what silicon valley thinks and i want to know what music geniuses think because that's There's something there.
Absolutely. A word you use in this book that I want to touch on, and that's why this came up for me, was submerge. And I loved it.
When I saw that word, I was just like, yes, like I love that. I have thought about that for so long, submerging yourself. We've lost that ability to submerge.
We don't submerge ourselves much because we have so much of a little. How have you, in this hyper -connected world, working with the most connected artists in the world, how have you encouraged? yourself and others to continue to submerge when everyone's asking us to swim shallow?
I think so many of the great artists do it naturally. You can't help it. It's the obsessive nature of being really into something that once you start down a thread, you just keep pulling forever.
If you're interested, many of the artists that are great at what they do are great at what they do for that very reason. They fall in love with this thing. and then they just want to know everything they could possibly learn about it and there are no distractions i'm working on a project now a documentary project with comedians and one of the things that they talk about is their commitment like when other people are doing things on the weekend going out with their friends they're going to perform every you know every night that they can possibly go out and perform until they can get good at their craft.
And this could be for a period of 10 years of just having bad performances, having people not like what you do, like banging your head against the wall. But that obsession with breaking through. And when I say breaking through, I don't mean breaking through to the audience.
I mean, breaking through with themselves to where they get past all of the blocks and to be free in this moment. in a way where they can really express their views and be heard and people can react. Your purpose in life isn't related to your job.
Maybe your job is your job and the job is the thing that supports you. And then the rest of your waking hours are devoted to your purpose, whatever that is. Yeah, and a lot of us are trying to make it the same thing.
Yeah, and it's beautiful when it happens, but it doesn't always happen, and it's out of our control also. We can decide. I would say if you need to have a job to support yourself, that's great.
That's a noble thing to do.
follow your dreams. But I'm not saying they're one thing. They don't have to be one thing.
And don't let following your dreams undermine your ability to support yourself. It could actually do the opposite. If you decide I wanna be a comedian and I'm putting all my eggs in the comedian basket and I'm gonna be a comedian, the pressure of having to support yourself will change you as a comedian, not for the better.
You want the stability of being able to take care of yourself in the world, to be free to do whatever your passion is, whatever it is, fishing, you know, whatever it is. Yeah.
And that's so true that I think the scarcity ruins the art. right it's the abundance of i did my day job i'm now safe and secure i can be artistic as opposed to sometimes and actually i'm going to debate my own statement because sometimes it also feels like the pain is the pain of trying to do something is is what creates good art as well but yeah i mean i'm But it could be either way.
There's pain in it anyway. There's pain anyway, yeah. There's pain in, you know, getting up in front of people and them not laughing is painful.
Yeah, yeah, there's pain in it anyway. Yeah, there's pain in it anyway. If that means you also can't eat, I don't know if that makes it less, more or less painful.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's almost like giving ourselves permission to make art. Like, I feel like there's a moment where you go, now I'm worthy almost.
But what you're saying is you are always worthy because it's who you are. Yes. You're always worthy.
It's who you are. Yeah. Why do you think we don't feel worthy of anything?
Not just making art, but so many of us, I think, feel a sense of like, we're not worthy to do what we love. We're not worthy to share our purpose or our passion. There's a sense of, we don't want to give ourselves.
I think there's a mythology that the people who make things that we love are special people. And that we think that they're, you know, the people on Mount Olympus and they're these magic people who are geniuses. And then there's the rest of us.
And that's not the case. It's like, we're all just people. We're all doing our best.
We all are good at some things, not good at other things. We're humans. And sometimes we find a way to make something beautiful.
But that's it. Do you know what I mean? There's no, there are no special people, really.
We're all special. you talk about this idea of larger intelligence and and tapping into and even making almost journaling about dreams which i found was something that i'm definitely going to practically take on so i've never journaled about dreams i know i dream and there's times when i forget and there's times when i remember and sometimes i'll tell someone sometimes i won't and i i when i read you say that you actually wrote about dreams and journaled about dreams i was like i'm gonna start doing that now so that's something you've directly impacted me to do as a practical thing because i feel like i've had fascinating dreams in the past i've forgotten it's it's too messy and they go and they dissipate very quickly so quickly very quickly so quickly and that's when i was reading that part i was like okay i need to hold on to these so some of the tricks i i yes Talked to some degree in the book, but I just touch on it in the book.
There's so much to talk about. But when you wake up, you don't move at all. Because the way the dream works, it's a chemical reaction in your brain.
So it's also good to know if you wake up from a scary dream and you don't want to think about it, if you just shake your head around, it'll be gone. So you keep pen and paper right next to your bed. And the minute you wake up...
You grab the pen and paper, moving as little as possible, and just start writing. And even if you only remember, I remember there's a part in the dream where this happens, write the part you remember. And you'll see through the process of writing, more of the dream will appear.
Even when you wake up, you won't remember as much of it as you know. But once you start writing, you can start tapping into more, oh, and before that, this happened. And then this happened after that.
And you'll start noticing more details. And the more you practice it, the better you get at it. So I did that for a period of time.
And at the time, the dreams made no sense. They were just these abstract, you know, Salvador Dali paintings. And just went on abstract.
I have no idea. Strange, strange dreams. No idea what they are.
And then years later, I found that journal. And I read it. When they were happening, I thought every dream every night was completely different and none of them were about anything I understood.
And years later, when I look back at it, all the dreams were about the same thing and they all were, it was so clear what my subconscious was telling me. I don't remember what it was because it was probably 20, 20 some odd years ago, but I remember being shocked by, oh, this didn't make, I was too close to it to understand it.
I was too close. And with a little bit of distance, you can see what it is. Yeah, yeah.
And it's also interesting to see how your subconscious works, how your subconscious abstracts reality to show it to us in a way that's intriguing and interesting, but not obvious. It's very beautiful. The reason why I love that so much is I even had to retract immediate question that came into my mind and I retracted it because, and I'll tell everyone what it is, but I retracted it because I just love the act of observing and being present with your dream as you're showing us how to do.
And the modern day question is, well, what's the benefit of that? Like, why would you do that? And when I was asking in my head, I was like, if I just listened to you and I'm listening to you and I remember reading what I read and I'm thinking, The benefit is just the act of observing and just being there and then, like you said, being able to then look back potentially in the future, maybe not, maybe it is, to see if there are connections.
And the subconscious, you're so right, is speaking to us in almost such a compassionate, artful way without telling you on the nose. It's an important point. Don't do things just because you think you're going to get something for it.
That's not why we do things. Do what's interesting to you. Follow what's interesting.
Don't worry about the outcome.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title is the accusation, and the first question is the softer version of it: why do we keep rebuilding ourselves into someone we think will be better received? The answer that follows takes forty minutes and ends up somewhere physical, with the lights off, on a walk, writing down a dream before you move your head.
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Tony Robbins and Jay Shetty break down why people stay stuck, the six-step process behind a $400 million decision, and what separates a life that's merely successful from one that's actually fulfilled.
A 68-minute conversation on rewiring your emotional default settings, bending time into three mini days, and rooting your identity in who you are rather than what you do.
A cognitive-dissonance explainer on why real progress triggers the backslide, and the one move, naming the pattern the instant it fires, that interrupts it.
A 24-year-old fan in an Austin restaurant asks two founders how you actually follow your passion. Forty minutes later the answer is blisters, loops, and a hospice nurse's list.
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