3 Minute Monday

Hi friend,

This week is intense.

8 episodes in 7 days across 3 states.

Some long-time requested guests plus a monster returning guest in Vegas.

I’m also at Gymshark Lift LA this Saturday and Sunday.

Hold on tight!

I’ve been thinking about how hard we try to control our lives this week.

“Fear and ego—in other words, ignorance—are keeping your hand on the tiller. Release the tiller for whatever reason, and the steering takes care of itself.” — Jed McKenna

Just let that sink in for a moment.

What would life actually be like if you didn’t grip the tiller so hard?

(The tiller is the handle that attaches to a rudder on a boat – it’s the thing that steers)

I heard Aubrey Marcus say something similar in a video when he announced the release of his NYT Best Selling Book.

“I spent so much of my life terrified of what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here right now.

God, how much time did I waste afraid I wasn’t going to be right here right now?

If I could change, the only thing I’d change about my whole life would be fearing less that I wouldn’t get right here – the place I was going anyway.

I wouldn’t change all the mistakes and mishaps, I needed those.

But all the constantly worry that I wasn’t going to make it, that took me out of enjoying the moment.

It took me out of enjoying these experiences, smiling or eating my lunch or doing whatever I was doing.

Know your mission, have faith you’re going to get there.

Wherever you go, it’s going to be alright.

Just find ways to get out of your head.”

Beautiful.

Humour me for a second…

Just imagine that the outcomes in your life are predetermined.

Imagine that where you’re going to end up – the achievement of your goals, the attainment of your pursuits are predestined and you’re going there anyway, no matter how much you fear or worry.

You still need to work, you still need to do the things, but you don’t need to fear about completing the work or worry about whether you’ll do the things.

The things you need to do will get done, and the ones you don’t, won’t.

How differently would you experience life?

You’d be able to just BE.

In the world but not of the world.

Doing the things but not afraid of the things.

“You observe events and you allow the flow of things to do the steering and you go where you go.” — Jed McKenna

I really think there’s something to this.

“Release the tiller” is a mantra we all should be reminded of when we find ourselves gripping too hard to fears or expectations.

Why fear about whether you’ll get to the place you were going to all along?

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MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast which has had 230 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Christine Emba – talking to the feminist author of one of the best masculinity articles I’ve ever read about the problems of men and boys. Why are women dominating this conversation? Is there such a thing as non-toxic masculinity? Really good.

Thursday.
Cory Clark – evolutionary psychology, mating dynamics, the function of gossip and what happens when you study self-censorship amongst every psychology professor in America and get reported for it. Fascinating.

Saturday.
John Lovell – founder of the Warrior Poet Society on how to balance thinking and feeling, gratitude and growth, science and spirituality.

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THINGS I’VE LEARNED

1.
​Women care a lot more about height than men do.

“The American Perspectives Survey collected data from a representative sample of more than 5,000 U.S. adults aged 18+.

56% of women say they would be less likely to date a man who is “much shorter” than they are, while only 32% of men say they would be less likely to date a woman who is much taller.

In other words, men are generally okay with dating a woman who is much taller than themselves but women really don’t want to date a man who is much shorter than them.” — Rob Henderson

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2.
​Stop complaining about results you didn’t get from work you didn’t put in.

“The only way to become more successful than most people is to be willing to do something most people aren’t willing to do.” — Mark Manson

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3.
​A list of problems with the idea that humans want to be happy.

“We know that if we savour every moment—every smile, every meal, every ray of sunshine—we will be happy. Yet we savour maybe 1% of our moments.

We know that if we appreciate what we have, from the roof over our heads to the clothes on our backs, we will be happy. Yet we appreciate maybe 1% of what we have.

Good news makes us happier than bad news. Yet we consume way more bad news than good news, even though we can’t do anything about the bad news, and even though there is plenty of good news available.

Anger feels bad. Yet when we’re angry with our loved ones, we think about all the times they made us angry, which just makes us angrier. Why don’t we think about all the times they made us happy?

We can delude ourselves into believing pretty much anything: the earth is flat, the world is run by a cabal of satanic pedophiles, etc. Yet we never delude ourselves into believing that everything is perfect and wonderful as it is.

If we were actually pursuing happiness, we’d be very good at it by now, given our many years of practice. Yet studies show that we suck at it. We’re incredibly bad at predicting how happy things will make us or how long our happiness will last.

There are vast bodies of scientific research that could help us stop sucking at happiness, like Positive Psychology, the science of happiness. Yet most people aren’t very interested in this research. It’s kind of boring.

We work too much, and some of us literally work ourselves to death, even though we’re well-aware that this makes us unhappy.

Having a child makes us less happy and more stressed, and we know this, yet we do it anyways, often multiple times.

We maintain relationships with assholes, even though it’s clear we’d be happier without those assholes in our lives.

We constantly beat ourselves up, but we almost never give ourselves compliments.

We complain about Twitter, on Twitter.” — David Pinsof

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LIFE HACK

Try assuming things will go right.

Humans have a Negativity Bias.

Just like you need to adjust sniper scope to account for crosswind, adjust your fears and expectations to account for the Negativity Bias.

Just imagine that everything goes right this week, the coin always comes up heads.

As a life-long tails-predictor, I’m much preferring this pattern of thought.
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Big love,
Chris x

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PS
Come see me at Gymshark Lift LA this weekend. Meet & Greet on Saturday at 10am Zone 1, then I’m hosting a live talk between Phil Heath and Ryan Terry on Sunday. Get your free tickets here.