MICHAEL EASTER ｜ Conquer Your Scarcity Brain
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
208.29868
Summary
In this episode of The Order of Man Podcast, host Brian Michler is joined by Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis and his latest book, Scarcity Brain. They discuss why we constantly crave more, the dangers inherent in social media, and how to strike the balance between contentment and ambition.
Transcript
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So many of us as men are operating from a position of scarcity. We've wired our brains over decades
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to constantly crave newer, better, more. Ironically, more doesn't always enhance and enrich our lives.
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In fact, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the quest for better actually makes us less
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happy and less fulfilled. My guest today is Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis
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and his latest book, Scarcity Brain. Today, Michael and I cover why we constantly crave more,
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the dangers inherent in social media along this path, parameters to consider looking for abundance
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in our lives, how to strike the balance between contentment and ambition, and how to finally
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conquer our scarcity brains. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears
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and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is
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who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Brian Michler. I'm your
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host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and global movement at this point. We were looking
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through some data and some information over the past week or two and realized that there's so many of
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you who have been listening, who have joined the Iron Council, who have bought products, who have come
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to our events, who have engaged in some way for literally eight years now. Eight years, almost a
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decade. We're coming up on a decade of doing this work, reclaiming, restoring masculinity, trying to
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put good information out in the world, trying to serve us as men and help us lead those that we're
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called to lead. So I want to first and foremost, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for joining us.
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And also thank you for sharing. I've never done any sort of advertising or poured any money into,
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you know, spending type of any money to get new listeners or anything like that. And not that I'm
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opposed to that. I just, I can't believe the growth that we've experienced, the grassroots movements,
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that is Order of Man, just based on you guys sharing. And that's a big honor to me. And I just want
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to let you know, I appreciate you. If you are new guys, we're interviewing incredible men. I've got
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Michael Easter on the podcast today, New York Times bestselling author, but we've also had other guys
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like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Cameron Haynes, Andy Frisilla, Tim Tebow, Tim Kennedy, Terry Cruz,
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Matthew McConaughey, Ben Shapiro. I mean, we've got, we've got some, we've got some big names at this
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point who have joined us. And that's a testament to the work that we're doing here and a testament to you
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implementing the information that you're learning. So thank you for tuning in. I don't really have
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any announcements today. I want to get right into it with my guest. He is a friend and a repeat guest.
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His name is Michael Easter. He's the author of the bestselling book, The Comfort Crisis,
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and his latest New York Times bestselling book, Scarcity Brain. His work has appeared in over 60
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countries. It's been translated into 40 languages. It's been endorsed by directors of the CIA and US
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special forces, professional sports teams, leaders in medicine, and so much more. He's also appeared
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on a small little podcast called the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and in outlets like men's health,
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women's health, Forbes, ESPN, and he's going to have to add order to men to that list as well.
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On top of all that, Michael is currently working on a podcast series for Amazon. He's a professor in the
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journalism department at UNLV and has become a leading voice on how humans can integrate modern science
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and evolutionary wisdom for improved health, meaning, and performance. Gentlemen, please welcome
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Michael Easter. Michael, what's up, brother? Great to have you back on the podcast. Looking
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forward to the conversation today. Yeah, likewise, man. It's good to be back. I appreciate you having
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me. So I just want to address the, probably one of the number one questions that I receive,
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and we're going to work our way backwards into your book and message, but I think this is very poignant
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based on what you're talking about. One of the questions I get all the time is how do you balance
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contentment and ambition? That's something that I hear from the guys all the time about,
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hey, I want to be happy and satisfied with where I am, which is a lot about what you talk about,
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but also I do have goals. I do have dreams. I do have ambitions. I do have other things that I want
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to accomplish. And where do you find that balance? Yeah, that's a great question. I think if anyone had
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the perfect answer, we'd all have found it and that person would be very, very rich.
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Yeah. What I'll say about that is this. On one hand, I think that humans can be very content with
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a lot less than we think, especially in the context of modern life, right? It's like people
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have been happy throughout time and space. And for the vast majority of time, people didn't own a lot
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of things. Their conditions weren't 72 degrees all the time. They had lives that had a lot of
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physical effort in. They had all these things that were seemingly hard, but they managed to find
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happiness, perhaps not even despite it, but maybe because of that, right? So I do think that there's
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a message in there that we do thrive when we have some amount of challenge in our life,
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not an overwhelming amount, but some. And then the other thing that I will say is that
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humans are a really fascinating creature in that we are just relentless explorers and pursuers,
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right? We are the only species that has literally taken over the globe. We've gone down into the
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deepest parts of the ocean. We've gone to the highest mountains. We've gone into outer freaking space.
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So we are this creature that just goes and goes, what's over there? Because there might be greener
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grass over there. But what if there's greener grass over there? There's greener grass over there.
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Now, that's obviously got us to where we are now. But I think in the context of everyday life,
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it takes a little bit of perspective to realize when you're just moving to different lawns and
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they're all pretty much the same and it's making you miserable in the effort. And so I think a lot
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of it comes down to realizing that the things that we often want to pursue, whether it's like
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possessions, whether it's partners, whether it's a certain number in our bank account, it's like these
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sort of worldly things. I think that you see that we only need a certain amount of them to be happy.
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And once we go over that, we don't get much more happiness. And in fact, like continuing to trying
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to pursue them can probably be counterproductive. And once you have sort of your bare minimum,
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you probably have to shift your goals to something bigger, whether that's helping people,
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whether that's doing the next right thing, whether that's devoting yourself to, I don't know,
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spirituality, something greater than yourself. I think that that's a message that sort of
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holds up in most religions and throughout time. But how do you know when your ambition is making
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you miserable or is it just part of being human, the human experience, right? We're going to suffer
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whether we're talking about cavemen who didn't have fire or food for three or four days, that's
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suffering. Or whether it's us who maybe just went through a breakup or a job loss or financial
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hardship. How do you know when it's actually your ambition that's making it miserable or just the
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human experience? Yeah, that's a great question. That's a really good question. What are some
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ways I can tell you that I do feel like when you start to see symptoms, underlying symptoms, something
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like addiction, depression, anxiety, all those sorts of things, like if you're pursuing and yet you're
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ultimately fulfilled, that to me seems like it's, you're probably doing the right thing. But I tend to
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think that a lot of the behaviors that we fall into that are negative in the long-term, those are
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usually a symptom of something gone awry and that could be just too much ambition, right?
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Yeah, I think we kind of inherently know too, right? I mean, I like what you said about addiction,
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you know, self-destructive behavior versus, hey, I'm having a bad day.
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Like we're all going to have bad days, but if you start slipping into self-destructive behavior
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habitually and it becomes a trend, then I think there's some things that we need to look at as
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the underlying issue. Yeah. I mean, I, I find, I think that most self-destructive behaviors,
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when they start, they give us a benefit or else we wouldn't do them.
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Right. So it's like you, let's take this, a stupid example of like, you're on your phone
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too much. It's like most people, when you look at the data, 90 some odd percent of phone pickups
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aren't because of an external cue. They're because the person got bored or they experienced stress
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or something. Right. So we find these behaviors that will relieve whatever our problem is in the
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short term. But when we continue doing them over and over and over, they lead to
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long-term problems, but you're still going to get that short-term benefit, right? If I'm stressed
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out or I'm bored and I look at my phone and fall into Instagram, it did relieve that problem in the
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short term. But then the long-term problem is I've just wasted half an hour. I've just spent my time
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doing something that I don't ultimately want to be doing with my life. That could be used a lot
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more productively. Same with addiction, right? You, you get home from work, you're stressed,
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you're pissed off, whatever you have a drink. And it's like, wow, that, that fixed the problem
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pretty soon, pretty quickly. So you have another, oh, that was good too. And eventually repeating
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that cycle over time, you start to accumulate long-term problems. But the problem is, is that
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the behavior still fixes your problem in the short term. So you often have to do something hard,
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which is not do the behavior. You have to sit with whatever the underlying issue is and figure
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out, well, why am I doing this in the first place? And then you can start to, even though that's hard,
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you can start to get rid of those long-term problems. That makes sense.
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It does. And I just think the problem, the problem, the challenge is we're so impatient and to have to sit
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with our own shortcomings or inadequacies or boredom. It's like, why do that? I can just turn
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the TV on. I can just have a drink. I can just have a smoke. I can do whatever your thing is,
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right? You can just do that. If it's, if it's like, Hey, I need to get laid, just jump on an app.
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Like everything that we, we want to give us short-term gratification is literally at our
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fingertips. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that that, so this book I wrote scarcity brand,
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that is very much a big part of the message is that, you know, in the past, we didn't have all
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these different ways to quickly escape to, you know, we couldn't just buy stuff all the time.
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We couldn't spend time on, in these online worlds. We didn't, we didn't have like alcohol everywhere
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or whatever it is. And now we just have so many different ways to escape that we often find
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something that sort of does it for us. And that can ultimately be destructive. So in the past,
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you'd often, I mean, take boredom, right? Boredom is this evolutionary discomfort that basically
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tells us whatever you're doing with your time, your time invested is one thin. So if you think
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about people hunting and gathering, let's say we're hunting and we need food and we're going to,
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or else we're going to starve. If there's no animals coming through, boredom kicks on and
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basically just tells us go do something else. Now in the past, we would have gone and done something
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productive. We would have gone and picked potatoes. We would have picked berries. We would have done
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something to survive. Right. But now it's like, we don't actually need to be doing these
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acts that we need to do to survive. And when we feel boredom, we've got this easy, effortless escape
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from it. And it's all over, right? It's in the form of your cell phone. It's in the form of your TV.
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It's in the form of your computer. It's like all these different ways to escape. And so I think what
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really happens is that a lot of these sort of evolutionary tendencies we have in the human brain to
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acquire, to be stimulated, to gather more influence, to, you know, eat, whatever it might be.
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They sort of almost get co-opted in a world where there's food everywhere. There's Amazon Prime. You
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can have something to your house in six hours and you don't even have to leave the couch where if you
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want to get laid, you don't even have to go down to the damn bar and put in the effort of like
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spinning a good game, spinning a good game. You can just like go on Tinder and like swipe,
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swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. Oh, here's someone they're just like totally down
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to, but we were not, we're not even going to talk. Right. So it's just, we've got like this
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abundance of all these things that we're built to crave now. And we don't necessarily have a
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governor on how we manage them, let's say. So I actually, I want to talk about the governor
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before I do. I I'm always a little skeptical of the, of the argument of, you know, well, we used
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to, right. Uh, thousands of years ago, our ancestors used to do intermittent fasting is
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what I hear a lot. It's like, well, yeah, because you know, like they didn't have food
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all the time. Like we do. And now we have to force ourselves or, you know, our ancestor
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didn't have gyms. It's like, well, yeah, they didn't have perfectly balanced symmetrical
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barbells to lift, but they were, you know, moving logs and picking up rocks and throwing
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things at objects and animals so they could eat. Is that the argument? Because I'm not really
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sure. I'm willing to trade places with the Neanderthals. So it's, it's just an interesting
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argument to me. Well, to me, what it is, is it's that it's fundamentally an evolutionary
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mismatch, right? Um, our ancestors didn't necessarily choose to do the things they did.
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And so the blessing of our time is that we do have an abundance of all these things. We don't
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have to go move for our food. Um, we don't have to fast if we want to, but we still have,
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we're still compelled to behave in a way similar that our ancestors would have, would have,
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which is, for example, if you found food in the past, it made sense to overeat it like
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for all the time, eat it all and do nothing. And by the way, exercise, we invented that 150
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years ago when we realized like, Oh, these new jobs we have that are more or less kind
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of sedentary. Like, it seems like we're getting health problems because of that. So what are
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we going to do? Like, I don't know. Let's just like build a building where people can go
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move around and like pick stuff up and put it down and like run on a belt. Right. Let's
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exercise. That never made sense for all of time. And so I do think that, um, while we
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can't be a slave to the, to the past, because to your point, like, yeah, our ancestors didn't
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choose the fast, like they would have eaten if they had food, they would have eaten it all
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the time. Right. Um, but I do think that it can inform and can help explain a lot of times
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when we find ourself in trouble in the present more or less.
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So how do you then turn on you, you use the term governor. So how do you turn on that governor
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and realize, you know, I'm, I'm overeating or, uh, or, or I've grown complacent or, uh,
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I'm on social media too much. And I think these are all things that most men would acknowledge
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readily. And yet they have a hard time and myself included tempering some of that behavior.
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How do you turn on that governor so that you can be comfortable with what you have and
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Yeah. Um, I'll answer that this way. So as part of this scarcity brain book, um, I got,
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um, I live in Vegas and you live pretty close to Vegas. If you've ever come down here, it's
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like there's slot machines everywhere and people play them around the clock. It's like grocery
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stores, gas station, restaurants, bars, whatever. And that is a behavior that it really doesn't make
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much sense, right? Cause everyone knows the house is always going to win. And so I start
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to get really interested in why do people get obsessed with slot machines? Like, you know,
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you're going to lose eventually. So long story short is that, um, I end up going to this lab
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that is effectively a living, breathing, working casino, but it's used for, uh, research on gambling,
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on human behavior, on all these sorts of different things. And when I'm there, I ended up talking to
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a guy who designed slot machines more or less. And he explains to me how slot machines work and they
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work off this three-part, uh, habit loop that I call the scarcity loop. And it's got opportunity,
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unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. So with number one opportunity, you have an opportunity
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to get something of value that can enhance your life. And form a slot machine, it's obviously money.
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Number two, unpredictable rewards. You know, that if you, if you keep doing the behavior,
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you'll get the thing of value eventually, but you don't know when, and you don't know how valuable
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it's going to be. So with the slot machine, any given game, you could lose your money.
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You could win a couple bucks. You could win like $2 million and it changes your life. Right.
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And so that's exciting. And then number three, quick repeatability. You can repeat the behavior
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over and over and over quickly. So with slot machines, people play 16 games a minute on average.
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Now, the reason that this is important and why we're talking about slot machines is because it's
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not really about slot machines, right? It's the, uh, that three-part system has been placed in all
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sorts of different technologies and institutions, uh, today. So basically it's what makes social media
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work. It's what makes dating apps easy to hook people on. It's being put in the gig economy system.
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It's being put in, um, a lot of financial apps like Robin hood that increase quick repeatability
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that explains the rise of sports gambling. So it gets legalized and then we put it into cell
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phones easily. And we allow people to make multiple bets and sometimes bets down to the
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second in a game, right. And on and on and on. And so that's a kind of long way of explaining
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that. I think a lot of these behaviors that we get hooked on and do repeatedly that eventually
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hurt us. They tend to often fall into that scarcity loop, which is, you know, you've got
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this like random rewards game that you fall into and there's nothing better at grabbing
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human attention and holding it than that. And this is even seen in all different animals.
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Like I talked to the psychologist and he, you can turn a pigeon basically into a degenerate gambler
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in about two minutes by giving them a game that has this system and works in rats. It works in monkeys.
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It works in all different animals. And it probably tracks back to finding food in the past. So if you
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think about our ancestors gathering food, you go to one place, no food, the next place, no food,
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the next place, no food. You need that food once you're going to survive. So you keep repeating
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the behavior and repeating the behavior and then jackpot, you finally find it. And that saves your
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life. And that's so exciting. Right. So it's almost like we're inherently attracted to this,
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this system. And I think that a lot of times today, since it's been co-opted in a lot of different ways,
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we're still attracted to it, but it's in these places that we don't necessarily want to be
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right. It's still like the random rewards are still going to hook our brain, whether it's in
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actual gambling, whether it's in slot machines, whether it's in the fact that our grocery
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stores have a billion different choices of chips and like, Oh, I'm going to try this one.
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This one could be great. Um, whatever it might be. So I don't know if that answered your question,
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but I do think it provides a sort of underlying framework of how, um, we do have these ancient
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brains and we do have these habit systems that used to keep us alive in the past and how now when
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they're applied to these sort of modern environments, they don't always make sense.
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Yeah. I, you know, it's interesting as you were saying this, I was even thinking I've got a really
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big hunt. One of my favorite hunts of the year. I even see this in hunting. So I'll go out with a
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group of buddies and we'll go sit in different tree stands that are on the property. We hunt and
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you know, you have the opportunity, which is to kill an animal. That's why we're all there.
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Uh, you have the unpredictable reward because at any given point you could either see a deer or not
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see a deer or see a big buck or not see a big buck or your buddy's like, Hey, I saw a massive buck
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over here, but you didn't see anything. So there's that unpredictability. Um, and then the quick
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repeatability, cause you can go out every day and sit for hours and hours and you'll see something
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and that'll keep you coming back and back and back golf's the same way. You know, you keep coming
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back and you hit one good enough shot every once in a while to keep you coming back to this damn
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game. Uh, and then what I see guys do in the hunting world is, uh, you know, maybe they'll sit
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over here on the West end of the property, but on the East end of the property, uh, on the cameras
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is this big buck. And so even though the buck's been coming over on the West end every single day,
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the next sit, you're going to go over there because the camera picked it up over there.
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And then he happens to be where you were. And you just end up chasing this buck all over this
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property. You're all over the place, never finding him with the hopes that you'll get something in
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return for it. Dude, that that's exactly it. And hunting is a great hunting is like the ultimate
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example, right there. So the, a lot of these, um, this loop, it appears naturally in nature in a lot
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of forms. So people who get really into birding, it's like, you want to see some sort of bird,
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you know, you're going to see a bird at some point, but you don't know if it's going to be like
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the crow that you see every day, or it could be some super rare bird. Like, Oh my God,
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I can't believe we saw one of those. Right. Um, and you're just kind of looking and looking,
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looking it's, um, it's obviously in fishing, right. Toss a line. You don't know, um, if you're
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going to get a bite. And when the fish is on the line, you're like, well, this is tugging pretty hard.
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Like, is it a giant or is it just kind of small and strong? Right. You don't know. And there's
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something inherently attractive about that to humans. And so I think one message that I talked about
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in the book is like, we know that this scarcity loop behavior will really grab our attention
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and hold it. And so the question is, how are you going to use it? Because I would argue that when
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you are falling into a behavior like hunting and being hooked by that, like you're outside,
00:21:20.940
you probably had to hike in to get there. Um, you're doing it with buddies. Like you're getting
00:21:26.140
all these things that are really good for you in the process of this behavior that is kind of
00:21:30.620
addicting. Right. Uh, whereas something like slot machine gambling, it's like you're sitting
00:21:36.500
in a smoky casino. You're probably ripping a Marlboro red. You're probably not hanging out
00:21:42.020
with anyone and it's all inside and you're not moving around. And so, and by the way, you're losing
00:21:46.540
a lot of money in the process. Although one could argue hunting might be more expensive once you add
00:21:50.760
up all the shit you have to buy, but I think it's fine if you're aware of it. Like if you actually
00:21:58.040
know how much you're spending and you're, you think to yourselves consciously, yeah,
00:22:02.460
I'm spending a lot of money. Cause that's different than I'm going to go do this for,
00:22:06.360
you know, 12 hours. Uh, and, and you're not even aware of the amount of money that's burning
00:22:11.480
through your pocket. That's a different story. Right. Right. And so, yeah, one thing I actually,
00:22:16.380
I actually say in the book is that like, I don't care if you want to spend 12 hours on TikTok.
00:22:20.540
I just want you to make the conscious choice to spend 12 hours on TikTok because unfortunately we tend
00:22:26.240
to naturally just sort of zone out when we're in this system. Um, it's sort of like the ultimate
00:22:30.740
fun escape. And I do think you see a lot of people, I mean, I see it in Vegas. It's like
00:22:35.680
someone will look up and be like, wow, I've been on slot machine for three hours. And how much have
00:22:39.220
I spent? But also I would argue that probably everyone listening to this podcast has been on
00:22:44.900
some sort of app on their phone and then like, Oh my God, I was on Instagram for 45 minutes just now.
00:22:51.140
Or I, I've been scrolling through the New York times or the, whatever it is, Fox news for
00:22:56.220
40 minutes down this rabbit hole of a story. And I don't even realize it. So I think really,
00:23:01.160
I'm just trying to get people to be aware of this thing, why they do it and where it lives.
00:23:06.480
Are there general parameters that you would suggest people set up in their life? So for example,
00:23:11.520
you know, you said awareness is key, but let's take social media. Is it just a matter of saying,
00:23:15.620
Hey, I'm going to spend from 9am to 9 30 on social media. And then when 9 30 hits, I'm done.
00:23:20.700
I'm done for the day or I'm done for the morning or, you know, whatever your own parameter is,
00:23:25.400
is that the tactic or is there something else? Yeah, I think, I think that's one of the tactics,
00:23:30.280
really the way that you can reduce a behavior is to take away or change any one of the three parts
00:23:37.200
that it has. So you can take away or change the opportunity. You can take away or change the
00:23:40.860
unpredictable rewards. You can take away or change the quick repeatability. So your example is kind of
00:23:45.660
taking away the quick repeatability, right? Because you're, you've only got a certain time limit.
00:23:49.340
Another example that takes away quick repeatability would be there are certain apps where you have
00:23:55.780
to, when you go to open the app that you find yourself going into too much, it makes you pause
00:24:00.360
for like five seconds. And oftentimes that is enough for people to go, Oh wait, I didn't even
00:24:05.380
really want to be in this app. I just like reflexively checked it. And so you tend to see time go down.
00:24:10.560
It's an app that, that, that builds that function into it. Is that what you're saying?
00:24:14.820
Yeah, exactly. Which when I first heard of this, I was like, so you're telling me that I have to
00:24:19.140
download an app so I can use another app less. And I rolled my eyes. Um, but finally, like the,
00:24:24.360
the, the founder of this, uh, company, the one I was using, I think is called clear space.
00:24:29.200
He was like, dude, just try it. I'm like, okay, I'll try it. And it really is based on behavioral
00:24:33.660
psychology. I mean, it's just, uh, you download this app and then you pick the apps that you want
00:24:38.160
to have to wait to get into. So then when you go to clip, whatever the app is that you're spending
00:24:43.260
too much time in, it could be email, could be Twitter, could be anything. You're going to go,
00:24:47.780
okay. Like it's, it says, do you want to use this app right now? And you go, yes. And you go, okay.
00:24:52.180
You know, three seconds, three seconds goes by. And then it goes, how much time do you want to spend
00:24:56.360
in the app? You got to pick, okay. I want to spend 10 minutes or I want to spend five minutes.
00:24:59.880
I wouldn't do that. I'm not, I'm not doing that app.
00:25:02.100
But if you find yourself stuck, like just spending way too much time on an app, I guarantee you that'll
00:25:07.580
reduce your time because it just takes away. No, that's what I'm saying. I would not do whatever
00:25:11.020
app it's blocking me from. I'm like, I'm out because we want everything immediately. If I can't
00:25:15.920
get on Instagram, when I pull it up, I'll pull up a website and it'll take, you know, seven tenths of
00:25:20.620
a second. I'm like, damn it. What's taking so long? And I catch myself. Exactly. I get, I get so
00:25:27.140
frustrated. It's like, uh, Oh, what's the comedian? Um, Lewis CK or CK Lewis. I don't
00:25:33.260
know what his name is, but he, he, he has this, like this, uh, comedy routine. I think he did it
00:25:38.660
on one of the late night shows and he's like, give it a second. It's going to space, you know,
00:25:42.520
cause somebody was so upset. It wasn't downloading whatever they wanted to immediately. We live in
00:25:47.860
crazy times. That is how it is. Um, yeah. But then another one would be, you could take away
00:25:53.380
the unpredictable rewards. And this is a fun one on, uh, phones. If you turn your phone into
00:25:59.380
grayscale mode where everything on the screen is displayed in, um, white, black, gray, that makes
00:26:05.800
the phone less stimulating because colors stimulate us. They tell us to do things. So you think you see
00:26:10.580
a red sign on the road tells you to stop, right? Um, they stimulate behavior. And so when you take a
00:26:16.560
phone into the grayscale mode, you tend to see screen time go down significantly because the phone has
00:26:21.000
just become far less rewarding, like far less rewarding. It's almost like, Oh my God, this
00:26:25.780
thing is so boring now. Yeah. I imagine the same is true for music. You know, you look at Instagram
00:26:30.980
reels and, and stories and, you know, you can dub the music over the top of it and it makes a clip
00:26:35.700
that was otherwise boring, pretty interesting. And these things tend to go viral. So you take the
00:26:40.120
music out, you're like, that's not nearly as exciting as I thought it was. Yeah, totally. And why,
00:26:45.380
I mean, so, you know, you really see this, um, almost arms race to figure out who can get the
00:26:51.600
most attention grabbing thing. And that's just been climbing and climbing and climbing, especially
00:26:57.520
since the 1800s when we started using the ad model in media. So the first guy who really used the
00:27:03.940
ad model, uh, to make money off a newspaper, he basically realized his name is Benjamin day.
00:27:09.220
He basically realized, okay, if I'm going to make money on advertising, I need the biggest audience.
00:27:15.240
I can get. Right. And then I'm going to take those eyes and I'm going to sell them to an
00:27:20.300
advertiser, but I can charge more, the more people I have. So how do I get as many people
00:27:25.560
to read this newspaper? There's, Oh, I should make it as not boring as possible. I should start
00:27:31.260
covering crazy stuff that will naturally grab human attention. So we start all this stuff,
00:27:36.100
murder, like scandals, all this crazy stuff in New York, uh, which was different than other
00:27:42.560
newspapers were covering at the time. And in about a year, he had the biggest paper in the
00:27:46.060
world. And then it's just been an arms race ever. It was called, uh, the sun, the sun. Okay.
00:27:52.360
Interesting. I was thinking maybe it turned into like national inquire or something like that.
00:27:56.540
Well, they are very good at it. Yeah, that would be, that's the model right there.
00:28:00.340
But now we have it in a world where we have, where you can track every swipe, every pause,
00:28:06.280
everything on an algorithm. Right. And then it kind of just gets floated up into you. So I think
00:28:11.700
we're starting to see like just this, uh, sharpening of the needle there.
00:28:16.980
Well, it's interesting. I have this consultant, this business consultant. He's like, Hey,
00:28:19.780
I need your demographic data. I'm like, all right. Like, what do you need? So he told me and I'm
00:28:23.120
like, okay. And he's like, this way you can come up with better product services offerings,
00:28:26.700
which all makes sense to me. And I can see the value in that. He's like, and then you'll get a
00:28:30.100
very clear picture on who your target customer is, who your ideal audience member is. And then you can
00:28:34.820
speak to them directly. And I'm a, I'm a small fish, right? But when you think about these huge,
00:28:40.080
huge corporations and conglomerates, the amount of money they're pouring in to know their customer,
00:28:45.900
it's the same thing. When you pull up your phone and you've been talking about going on a trip to
00:28:50.040
Hawaii and all of a sudden you're getting bombarded with different ads from these incredible resorts
00:28:55.140
in Hawaii. It's like, how did this know? I don't know. I don't understand. I mean,
00:28:58.840
part of that is my, my, your phone might actually be listening to you, but the other part is it's just
00:29:02.980
behavior. You know, what, what you're doing, what you're looking at, what you're,
00:29:06.080
what you're engaged in and the computer is tracking it. Totally. And I mean, it's one of
00:29:11.460
those where, you know, the example I like to give is when I go on Instagram, I, it just knows what I
00:29:18.420
watch. It knows who I follow. And I get fed so many things, uh, like, especially around the band,
00:29:25.640
the Grateful Dead, who's like my favorite. And if there's like a, if someone puts up like a bootleg
00:29:29.820
tape, like I'm in for watching the whole like five minute, you know, clip or whatever. Then the next
00:29:34.760
one is like, Hey, you need this Grateful Dead sweatshirt from this like show from, you know,
00:29:38.220
1980, whatever. I'm like, Oh man, that's pretty sick. Right. But like no one else in the world
00:29:42.320
is getting the same ad algorithms as I am, you know, for you, it might be like, you're watching
00:29:47.440
a minute long hunting video. And the next thing is like, yo, check out this sick. So yeah, it's one
00:29:54.820
of those where it's like, this product was tailor-made in a lab exactly for my strange personality. And I do
00:30:00.320
like it at the same time. I'm totally creeped out by this whole thing. You know, I mean,
00:30:04.860
it's pretty convenient. I, uh, I bought these, these pants and I'm like, these are good. I like
00:30:10.800
these. I like the fit of these. And all of a sudden I'm getting ads for the same pants that I bought.
00:30:14.160
I don't even know how they got it. And I actually just got them in the mail about 15 minutes before
00:30:18.220
I jumped on this call because I bought the same pants in two new colors, you know, and they just
00:30:22.840
extracted $300 from me, uh, because I bought, you know, two that I actually really liked. I don't even
00:30:28.640
know how they did it, but it happened. Yeah, it happened. And so, you know, one,
00:30:33.600
one portion of the book that I look at, um, cause I'm really kind of looking at, okay,
00:30:38.280
what are the things that humans have sort of evolved to crave and need and it's food, stuff,
00:30:45.680
information, um, status, uh, et cetera. Maybe something like that. Sure. And, um,
00:30:52.620
in the stuff section, I mean, it was just so fascinating because you look at how much people
00:30:57.800
owned even 150 years ago. And, you know, the average person might've owned three outfits
00:31:02.960
and now the average person owns more than a hundred different outfits. Uh, the average
00:31:07.860
home has more than 10,000 items in it. And this is not, yeah, this is not just that, you
00:31:13.220
know, this, this researcher who was looking at all this data, he talked about how a lot
00:31:18.640
of people, you know, shop compulsively cause it's so much easier now. And this is not just
00:31:23.540
a problem for people who have money, like stuff has become so cheap that this has become an issue.
00:31:29.660
This overbuying has become an issue for all economic classes, like for the first time ever,
00:31:35.060
basically. Are you a, uh, are you a proponent then of this minimalistic mindset or movement
00:31:41.620
that we see that I think tends to be, you know, growing in popularity? Uh, so I, I take the framework
00:31:47.820
of, uh, that I find useful is what I call gear, not stuff. So when you look at why people buy
00:31:54.280
things, uh, there's a lot of different reasons. It could be that, um, the thing is a piece of gear
00:32:00.220
that helps you accomplish some larger purpose. It could be that you're getting status from the
00:32:05.180
purchase, right? You know, a Rolex isn't telling you what time it is. It's telling you what time it
00:32:11.140
is, but that's not why you buy Rolex. That's secondary to what the real, the real purchase
00:32:15.660
meant to you. Sure. Exactly. Uh, third people will buy things to belong. So this is like,
00:32:21.120
you're buying some sort of item to kind of be in a specific group that you want to be a part of.
00:32:25.440
And then fourth, I think that people do a lot of buying just because they're bored. And it's like,
00:32:29.280
you got your phone and an ad comes up, which I'm guilty of that. Look at, I got, I got freaking
00:32:34.300
five grateful dead t-shirts in my closet right now. Um, but I try and take the framework of gear,
00:32:39.920
not stuff where every time I'm going to purchase something, I'm like, what, what is the higher
00:32:44.780
purpose of this? What I'm, what is this allowing me to accomplish? And so I think that that framework
00:32:50.200
has just taken out a lot of the purchases I perhaps would have made in the past that wouldn't
00:32:57.300
have really, that were just to make a purchase or to like buy into some idea about, you know,
00:33:02.220
status or belonging or something like that. So I've, I've found that useful.
00:33:07.120
Do you find that alternative, maybe more noble or righteous? I don't even know if that's the right
00:33:13.100
framing. Um, more valuable, maybe more valuable, uh, goals and desires are a good deterrent.
00:33:19.440
So for example, that might be, uh, uh, maybe you want to buy a house and you need to come up with
00:33:25.240
a $40,000 down payment. It is, does that tend to be sufficient enough to say, Hey, I'm not going to
00:33:31.860
go out and buy the grateful dead shirt that I wanted to buy today, or, um, I'm not going to eat out
00:33:36.660
this much this week because I'd like to say that extra a hundred or $200 that I normally spend.
00:33:41.740
Like, is that, is that a tactic that people use? Cause I tend to look at it and think,
00:33:46.320
yeah, I might want to come up with that 40 or $50,000 deposit on the house. But you know,
00:33:51.080
me, me, me going to McDonald's and spending $8. Yeah, that's good. That's okay. I can do that.
00:33:55.200
Like, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, I think some people can be very
00:33:59.780
stringent, but I think for most people, um, stuff is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
00:34:06.140
Um, here's a fun example. People used to burn down buildings in the 1800s just for the nails
00:34:12.620
because nails were so hard to find and so time consuming to make and so expensive. You literally
00:34:17.900
had people like, well, I need some nails. I'm going to go set my neighbor's house on fire
00:34:20.820
so I can get these nails. Now we can make like 400 nails in a single minute off of machines. Right.
00:34:26.300
And they're so cheap. Like go to home Depot and you buy a box of nails for like a buck,
00:34:29.960
two bucks, something, uh, four bucks with inflation, but okay. So I do think that things
00:34:38.320
have become so cheap in a lot of ways, which is good because more people can get what they need,
00:34:44.940
but they've also become so cheap that we all have so much stuff that we don't necessarily need. And
00:34:50.540
that, um, I think that that can just become a hobby in and of itself. It's just buying shit.
00:34:55.820
Yeah. I've noticed for myself personally, and I don't know if this is a mentality or if this is
00:35:02.240
just human nature that when things get cluttered in my life, it's probably not human nature. It's
00:35:07.740
probably more of a personality because I know people who love clutter to the extreme. You see
00:35:12.120
all sorts of hoarder shows on TV and they just hoard everything. Uh, but I, but I tend to look at
00:35:17.620
when, when I have too much stuff in my life, whether that's activities or physical possessions
00:35:24.260
that are just like consuming me, I can't, I can't focus on anything else. Like I would not be able
00:35:29.500
to have this conversation with you as effectively if I had a thousand different things going on in
00:35:33.240
this room that didn't belong there. Yeah, I do. And there is actually research that suggests that
00:35:38.860
people who have a ton of clutter in their office, um, it impacts their thinking. It impacts their,
00:35:44.620
uh, productivity for me. I've definitely found that I do better work if I have fewer things
00:35:51.780
to do. So it may not be as much of a stuff thing for me, but it definitely is a, when the to-do list
00:35:57.280
gets too packed, even if I stack all the crap I have to do later in the day and devote, you know,
00:36:02.960
four hours every morning to writing or whatever it is, that'll still impact my writing. Cause I have
00:36:07.360
all these things that I know are coming up and on my brain. And I find that when I'm able to chop out
00:36:12.140
some of the, the extras, I just have more time to have to think clear, to sort of deal with
00:36:17.760
some of the ideas I have to grapple with as a writer. And, um, I do think it leads to better work.
00:36:23.520
And I do think the trajectory over the last whatever amount of years is that we have a lot
00:36:29.700
of opportunity to pack our schedule. I mean, I think that life was, uh, you know, they, it's a
00:36:34.640
cliche to be like times were simpler back then, but I do think you had less inputs coming into your
00:36:40.120
way in the form of people trying to communicate with you, the things that you could possibly do for
00:36:43.620
a job. Um, the tasks you could be doing all that sort of different things. I think it was a little
00:36:48.160
more straightforward. Guys, let me, uh, pause the conversation as I do every single week.
00:36:54.300
I want to ask you a question. What does it mean to be battle ready? We've all heard that term.
00:36:59.420
Uh, and, and I think we generally know what it means, but I want to share with you what I think
00:37:03.060
it means. And that means that you are prepared and qualified to deal with whatever life has to throw
00:37:08.000
at you, whether it's a divorce and separation or a job loss, a medical diagnosis, maybe a lawsuit,
00:37:14.620
financial troubles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, so much stuff happens throughout life and
00:37:19.020
we want you to be ready for those things when they happen, but we're not just talking about playing
00:37:22.760
defense here. Being battle ready is also about going on the offense and accomplishing the goals
00:37:28.460
that you set out for yourself in scientifically proven ways to achieve maximum results. And that's why
00:37:34.960
we created the battle ready program is to help you achieve all that you set out to accomplish
00:37:40.000
in the most efficient and effective ways possible. So when you sign up for our battle ready program,
00:37:45.540
you're going to receive 17 emails over 30 days that will help you identify your goals,
00:37:51.560
break them down into actionable daily steps that will produce results and maintain consistency towards
00:37:57.720
your deepest dreams and ambitions. So I want you to stop sitting around. I know you do too.
00:38:03.640
Stop sitting around and, and, and thinking about and pondering and pontificating about what you want
00:38:08.980
to accomplish and actually start doing something for yourself, for your loved ones. And those who
00:38:14.080
are relying on you to be the man that you are meant to be sign up for our free course. It is free
00:38:18.940
guys, our free course at order of man.com slash battle ready. That's order of man.com slash battle ready.
00:38:24.820
Go ahead and get signed right up after this conversation for now. I'll get back to it with Michael.
00:38:29.060
Have you found any, uh, any, any advice for activities that don't, don't produce immediate
00:38:37.580
results? So for example, when you write the scarcity brain, do you mind if I ask how long
00:38:41.480
that took you roughly to write from start to finish minus the edits and all the, all the stuff,
00:38:46.680
you know, just, just to write it itself. I would say probably two years to write it. And then there
00:38:50.940
was, you know, the year of edits and probably all the publishing nonsense that goes along with
00:38:56.260
getting a book out there. So, so with, with a three year project, essentially is what you're
00:39:01.240
saying. It's like, man, how do you find the motivation to get up and write a thousand words
00:39:07.060
today when you know, that's just a drop in the bucket for what needs to happen. And also you've
00:39:13.720
got plenty of time to make it happen. Right. You have to, you have to actually like the process and
00:39:19.620
enjoy it. Um, I find that some of my happiest times, uh, are when it's, you know, five in the
00:39:25.840
morning and I'm working on a book grappling with a specific idea and trying to figure out how do I
00:39:31.820
make this, how do I write this in a way that's entertaining and digestible? I'll also say some
00:39:36.460
of my most insane moments are at 5.00 AM when I'm writing and trying to make an idea digestible,
00:39:41.640
but it's kind of, well, it's hard, right? I mean, sometimes you're dealing with information that
00:39:49.340
doesn't make sense and trying to be like, how do I explain this in a way that doesn't just put a
00:39:53.920
person to sleep and feel like a textbook. Um, maybe things haven't quite lined up. You're like,
00:40:00.380
you're circling the drain of, I know I can make this idea make sense, but I'm not quite sure how
00:40:08.000
the threads need to be tied yet. Right. This is like tying a ship to a dock. And if I don't use this
00:40:12.840
damn knot, the thing is going to drift off and go away. And like, what is the dot? I got to learn what
00:40:17.620
this knot is in the first place. Then I got to learn how to tie it. Like that's really hard. Um,
00:40:21.580
but ultimately that's, that's very rewarding. And I think you can apply that, um, across the board
00:40:28.100
that if you don't, you have to enjoy what you are working on. That doesn't mean it's always going
00:40:35.940
to be easy, but you have to find the outcome very rewarding, right? There's things that you and I
00:40:41.780
could go do. Like we could go move rocks from point A to point B and it would be challenging,
00:40:48.420
but like, what is the greater purpose? Would that ultimately like give us this large,
00:40:52.460
deeper reward? And the answer is probably not. Right. And so I think you do have to find whatever
00:40:56.240
that thing is for you. It could be building a business. Like for you, I'm sure you've got,
00:40:59.880
um, you know, working on a podcast and building this thing into what it is. I'm sure that you've had
00:41:05.600
a lot of setbacks, but you've also had a lot of times where you're like, Oh my God, this is,
00:41:09.280
this is great. Like I'm, I'm having the time of my life doing this and it's work.
00:41:13.940
Yeah, it is work. And every once in a while I get a piece of feedback or an email from somebody who
00:41:18.380
changed your life around. I'm like, all right, cool. You know, this, this is good. I don't,
00:41:22.580
I've written a couple of books myself, not nearly to the same success that you've had.
00:41:26.660
I hate the process. Like I find it miserable. Um, there, there's nothing about it that is redeeming
00:41:31.860
for me other than being done with the book and knowing that somebody is going to take it
00:41:35.660
and read it. And hopefully their life is going to be a little bit better,
00:41:39.280
because of it. And that that's enough for me to, you know, get me to write a thousand or 1500 words
00:41:44.620
today. So you're, I mean, you're gratification. It sounds like is on a longer, um, delay scale
00:41:52.320
to mine. So I might, it might be 5.00 AM and I wade through some luck for an hour and then the
00:41:58.760
sentence comes together and I'm just like, that's it. And that's my gratification. But for you,
00:42:03.660
you wade through the muck for a year, two years, and then you get that email and then you, that's
00:42:09.420
your, that's it. Right. But there is still some sort of gratification there.
00:42:13.180
I think there's also gratification in the process. Not so much about, well, let me think about this
00:42:17.220
for a second. So with writing the gratification, the process is I did what I said I was going to do.
00:42:22.600
You know, if I, cause I, when I was writing my books, I, I, I wrote, my goal is to write
00:42:27.780
1000 words per day. And regardless, I don't care how I feel. I don't care about the weather. I don't
00:42:33.360
care about what else I have going on. I don't care about any of that. You write a thousand words per
00:42:36.860
day because that's what you committed to doing. And some of those words really good. And some of
00:42:40.680
them were not so good. And some of them got edited and some of them got changed, but my goal was a
00:42:44.020
thousand. And the, the, I did find joy in the sense of accomplishment that came from writing
00:42:51.180
that 1000th word of, of the morning or the afternoon of the day. Yeah. No, that, yeah,
00:42:57.260
that makes sense. I mean, for me, it's I don't have a word limit per day. I mean, some days I'll
00:43:03.240
just get on a heater and it might be a couple thousand. Some days it might be 200 words because
00:43:08.160
I'm trying to figure out, you know, how do I explain it? I might be dealing, I might have to read a
00:43:12.260
certain study, make sure I understand it and then put it into English and that could take four or
00:43:17.340
five hours, you know? Yeah. But yeah, ultimately I do, I do find it rewarding. So, well, you've,
00:43:24.440
you've hit the New York times. I haven't. So maybe I ought to be taking advice from you,
00:43:28.140
not thinking about my, my own way of doing it. Well, when I start a podcast, I'll probably
00:43:34.320
be like you with writing and be like, this is hard and I'll have to hit you up for advice.
00:43:39.820
Yeah. We'll trade industry secrets. Um, one of the chapters you talk about in the book is
00:43:44.260
that the concept of influence. I'm really interested in that because, um, I, I do want
00:43:49.100
to be influential, uh, specifically and mainly influential in lives of my children. Like if I
00:43:54.780
had to select a group of people, I want to be most influential with it's them. Uh, but also I do want
00:44:00.520
to be influential with my guests, guys like you, I want to be influential with the guys who get
00:44:05.640
involved with our movement and buy our products and services and offerings and come to our events.
00:44:09.780
So I'm really curious your take on influence and is it a worthy ambition? When does it become too
00:44:14.840
much? That sort of thing. Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, the reason that people want to be influential
00:44:21.800
is, um, it's always kind of given us a boost in life. You know, in the past, if you were a person who
00:44:28.580
was more influential in your tribe, that probably got you out of crappy menial labor. It probably got you
00:44:34.040
the bigger cut of meat. It probably got you, you know, a couple more partners to procreate with
00:44:40.260
that sort of thing. So I think that we did evolve to sort of crave, uh, influence and status.
00:44:46.500
And you still see that today. So when you look at, uh, research on health outcomes, a big predictor
00:44:53.060
of health outcomes is, um, a person's status. And this holds even in countries where they have
00:44:58.860
universal medicine. So people who are wealthier, who are generally living the higher status part of,
00:45:03.340
uh, neighborhood or whatever, even though they're seeing the same doctors, they have better outcomes
00:45:07.340
than the people who are lower status. So it definitely affects us because we're social
00:45:11.080
creatures. And so for me though, I think that, um, one thing that's interesting about today is,
00:45:16.300
you know, in the past, it might've been that you could only influence say a hundred,
00:45:19.920
a hundred people, 150 people, whatever your, um, group was. And now it's sort of in this realm where
00:45:26.360
you could influence millions of people in a single, in a single tweet. Right. And it's all quantified.
00:45:30.980
It's all gamified. You know, exactly what your influence is. If you're buying into say,
00:45:35.200
you know, I'm, I'm measuring this with the number of followers I have, or the number of
00:45:39.440
people who liked my tweet or whatever it might be. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing,
00:45:45.140
but I do think that we need to be a little bit careful about how we use it. So I think it,
00:45:51.740
I think that craving status can be good to a point, but eventually it backfires because it's kind
00:45:56.580
of a moving target, right? Once you get the, once you get that much status, you want a little more,
00:46:00.960
you want a little more, and that can lead us into things that are not always good. So there's a
00:46:05.760
researcher I talked to, whose name is Jessica Tracy, who she researches pride. And she talks
00:46:11.420
about how there's really two types of pride. There's what she calls authentic pride, which is
00:46:15.840
when we do something that is a good and we feel this sort of great feelings of pride. Right. And it
00:46:22.460
doesn't matter if someone saw us do that or not. Like it's this useful contribution we made, right?
00:46:27.260
Something earned great way to put it. Yep. And then the other is inauthentic, which is essentially
00:46:31.980
unearned. That's when we can advertise ourself when we're trying to sort of front that we're someone
00:46:36.540
we're not and better than we actually are, or have accomplished something great when we haven't.
00:46:40.940
And I think that, uh, today it's easier to, for people to sort of blast out that inauthentic
00:46:47.480
pride, that sort of unearned, because you can put whatever you want on social media. And in a lot of
00:46:52.120
ways we all advertise our life on social media, if we use it, right, we're usually not taking the
00:46:56.720
photo of ourselves where we look like absolute shit and we're out like, you know, picking up the
00:47:01.540
dog crap in the backyard. It's a, so it's a, it's a strange world. And I think we're all having to
00:47:07.220
kind of navigate. What does that really mean? I look, I'm going to say something controversial,
00:47:12.140
but I think about this when it comes to the LGBTQ, whatever agenda, it's like, if you were born
00:47:17.080
that way, which is the argument, then what are you proud about? There's nothing, that's nothing you
00:47:20.980
did. That's nothing you chose. So like why the excessive pride, you know, I don't, I don't
00:47:26.420
necessarily take pride in being a straight, a straight man because like this is how I was born.
00:47:32.540
Like this, there's nothing I earned. So it's interesting when we see it, I'm using that as
00:47:36.380
an example, but it is interesting when we boost ourselves up and prop ourselves up on something
00:47:41.500
that we didn't actually go out and do like run a marathon, uh, or lose 100 pounds or, you
00:47:48.360
know, bring happiness to a bunch of people, uh, or donate to an organization or charity, which I
00:47:53.760
think is, is significantly greater than, Hey, here's what I look like, or here's how I am. And
00:47:58.700
I'm just proud of that. Yeah, I can see your argument. I mean, I think probably when you see
00:48:06.380
that sort of, um, advertising of oneself, it's often a reaction to, uh, having felt suppressed for that
00:48:14.640
for a period of time. So, you know, from, from their perspective, they might be like, well, this
00:48:19.600
is something I can never talk about. And I never could even be proud of if I wanted to, because
00:48:23.480
society suppressed that part of me for so long. And that, so I've been constrained. Now I'm having
00:48:28.860
the equal opposite reaction of unleashing it, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. A reaction
00:48:34.580
or response to not being able to be so open about some of those things in the past or other people
00:48:40.300
who have not been able to do those things. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, and then that opens up,
00:48:45.200
uh, you know, larger, I think debates and questions about at what point does it become an overreaction?
00:48:52.100
What is the appropriate reaction to that? Do we overcorrect? And then once we overcorrect,
00:48:56.380
how do we correct back? And I do think that, um, to quote, uh, Martin Luther King, it's like this long
00:49:03.660
bend towards finding what, um, what the right answer is for these types of things, you know?
00:49:10.960
I had a really interesting interaction in a, in a convenience store, not too long ago.
00:49:16.080
Um, there was a woman working there and she had like, her hair was interesting. It looked nice.
00:49:19.640
It was interesting. I said, I really like your hair. And she said, thanks. I grew up myself.
00:49:24.680
And, uh, you know, she was just being funny. And, and I thought it's a really good answer. Like
00:49:29.580
there isn't anything special. Like it just grew, you know, like she, she was funny. She liked the way it
00:49:35.940
was, but she wasn't overly boisterous or proud about it because it's just the natural
00:49:39.800
state of things. Like it wasn't a big deal. And I'm like, you know, I really appreciate that answer.
00:49:44.660
That's awesome, dude. I love that. I'm going to remember that one. That's killer.
00:49:51.960
I mean, yeah, really cool. And I think those are the people that we appreciate most is that
00:49:56.200
they have something unique or interesting or special or something that stands out about them,
00:50:00.300
whether it's just who they are inherently or something they've worked on. Uh, but somebody who's
00:50:05.260
not overly boisterous or proud about it, uh, they're just, they're just, they're just exercising
00:50:11.160
humility and, and they're enjoyable to be around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I'm with you.
00:50:18.160
Hmm. How do you, uh, so in the book itself, you talk about fixing this craving mindset. Are there
00:50:24.540
some strategies that you would suggest that we do or implement on a, on a daily basis, or is it just
00:50:31.580
being aware of it that, that we can do in order to not be so desirous of things that we don't really
00:50:37.980
need to desire or crave after? Yeah. Um, I think awareness helps. I think, um, what I mentioned
00:50:44.540
before finding, if you can, uh, change or get rid of any of those three parts of the loop. And then I
00:50:53.340
think the third thing that I found to be really interesting when I was reporting this book is that,
00:50:58.040
um, so I mentioned how that guy can make these, uh, pigeons basically turn them into these
00:51:03.740
degenerate gambler pigeons, right? With this, they'll choose this gambling game over a game that
00:51:08.320
actually gets them more food over time. Um, but what this guy found is, so normally these pigeons,
00:51:13.920
they live in these small cages, right? And they think they're fine, whatever. Uh, but when they put
00:51:19.060
these pigeons in an environment, it was more like their kind of natural environment where they had to
00:51:23.660
work, they had to build nests. They had, they could live like a pigeon normally would. They could
00:51:27.360
interact with other pigeons. Then they put them back in the, in the game where they can choose.
00:51:32.640
Are you going to play the optimal game or are you going to play the basically pigeon slot machine
00:51:36.080
game? And what they found is that all the pigeons started playing the game that actually got them,
00:51:41.320
um, more food. That was the more rational game. So they didn't want to distract themselves with this
00:51:46.360
sort of scarcity loop gambling game. And the guy who did all this research and who I was talking to,
00:51:54.080
he then kind of made the comparison to humans. He just went right away and was like,
00:51:57.160
you know, and I think that you, you see this in humans as well. It's like when we are living a
00:52:02.760
life that isn't kind of a, a good fit for us, when we're not doing things that challenge us,
00:52:07.880
we're not having to work to survive when we're not doing these things that we almost kind of would
00:52:12.240
have done forever. Um, we start to look for stimulation in other ways. We might drink,
00:52:18.060
we might gamble, we might, um, you know, get super obsessive about work. We might like,
00:52:22.920
there's all these different things we can do to distract ourself. And so for me, my takeaway was,
00:52:27.440
um, you kind of have to find some higher purpose that, you know, is going to be rewarding and lean
00:52:34.320
into that. And oftentimes when you're doing those sort of behaviors that can be counterproductive
00:52:39.080
in the longterm, that's usually a signal that there might be something underlying. You might be
00:52:43.240
in the cage. You might be in a small cage. You need to figure out, well, where the hell is my big
00:52:48.140
How do you, how do you develop that though? Because I mean, I don't think that's new information
00:52:53.340
necessarily, you know, especially in the self-help space and world, people say, Oh, you find your
00:52:57.540
calling, discover your purpose. That isn't new information, but I still find so many men who
00:53:02.620
have a hard time uncovering it, even myself. Now I've found it, uh, and I feel fortunate and blessed.
00:53:08.780
I've worked really, really hard to explore a lot of different veins and move towards things that
00:53:16.500
I didn't really feel like may turn out, but I had some level of interest in, and they developed
00:53:21.220
into essentially what you see now. And I feel very fortunate, but a lot of guys just haven't,
00:53:25.720
haven't been able to achieve that and find that to be pretty elusive.
00:53:28.900
Yeah. I think you got to try stuff. I think you got to try different stuff. I mean, I, you know,
00:53:33.360
there's a lot of things that you can do, even if you're not going to quit your job and do something
00:53:37.000
crazy. I mean, I do think that we know that, um, doing things in nature, for example,
00:53:43.480
tends to be rewarding to humans, especially if there's a level of challenge to that. I think
00:53:48.060
it's finding ways to get out of yourself, which that could be some sort of volunteering. You do
00:53:53.700
some sort of side project that really gives you, um, rewards. And I think it ultimately is a search.
00:53:59.800
I mean, that's the whole, it's the whole backbone of religion, right? So it's a search. We're searching
00:54:06.600
for some answer to these, like things that we have about being a human, which is that we,
00:54:12.560
we often aren't satisfied. And, but I do think that the search is worth going on and trying to
00:54:17.540
trying different things and saying what works for you, because if, if it is just, well, I don't know
00:54:22.540
what it is and I'm not going to do anything about it. Well, you're, you're going to be stuck either
00:54:25.640
way. And you've only got, you know, as far as I know, one shot at life, it's like, try stuff,
00:54:30.380
see, see what works, see what doesn't work. The whole point is the search.
00:54:35.780
That is interesting because I think there's so many things in life and some of them are noble and some of
00:54:40.700
them aren't that are designed to keep us from searching. I think about, for example, something
00:54:45.420
that might be noble as a marriage, uh, where you as a man might feel the desire to go out and be
00:54:51.740
ambitious or start something new or start a business. And your wife might be more interested
00:54:55.340
in the status quo. And I'm not even saying that negatively. She's very consumed with safety and
00:55:00.580
security and stability. And you going out to start a business does not represent any of those things,
00:55:07.000
right? So she may not be interested in you quote unquote searching. Um, I think there's other
00:55:13.100
powers that be, maybe it's even the government to a degree who's not interested in a man, a strong,
00:55:19.580
independent, resilient man going out and searching and finding his own way and becoming sovereign in a
00:55:25.200
lot of ways because he's unpredictable and he's harder to control. So there is a lot at work against
00:55:31.240
us both noble and, and not so noble, uh, that keep us from going out there and searching and trying to
00:55:40.120
find a path for ourselves. Yeah, I think so. And I think that as you see, a lot of this is determined,
00:55:45.820
um, by technology. So basically the more technology you insert into life, the more you have to abide by
00:55:52.380
some sort of system because you start to need rules. I mean, just think of something as simple as the
00:55:57.540
car. It's like, once we invent the car, it's like, okay, well now we have all these people
00:56:02.040
just driving around. We can't have that. So we got to have roads and then we got to have like this
00:56:05.900
law. Then we got to have that law. Then we got to, okay, well now you got to pay to park it. Now
00:56:08.880
you got to do all these different things as a result of this single technology. And I do think that
00:56:13.160
the more tech that we have in our life, the more constrained we can often be, which is just kind of
00:56:18.400
part of living in this system. But I do think it's a noble fight to try and find the things that are
00:56:25.500
going to allow you to, um, feel like you're doing the thing that you want to be doing.
00:56:30.580
Like you've got some real purpose and oomph behind your life. Yeah. Yeah. And I think when you find
00:56:37.000
that, um, things begin to unfold in a different way than they did before, you know, and, and I don't
00:56:43.220
think things necessarily become easier, but the path becomes clearer, which gives you the mindset and
00:56:49.500
the fortitude to be able to continue on in the face of challenges and adversities. You know,
00:56:53.600
I've had my own share, fair share of challenges and adversities over the past year and a half, but
00:56:57.720
I'm plowing through them because I realized the importance of being a good father. Uh, I realized
00:57:02.200
the importance of the work that we're doing here. And so I'm not free of hardship. I just can see past
00:57:06.820
it and plow through it. Yeah, totally. And you know, the hardship is going to give you perspective too,
00:57:12.720
that, um, enhances your life probably in the longterm. You know, I don't think people learn from times
00:57:19.080
when they have no problems, there's no impetus to change. There's no, you know, whatever. It's
00:57:24.800
always, you look at all the ancient myths. It's always, you know, the, the main character things
00:57:28.720
are great in their life until they're not. And then when they're not, they go on this journey of
00:57:33.140
that is ultimately, uh, an inner journey of self-discovery and learning new tools that allow
00:57:40.500
them to go back into normal life and be a better human, uh, that enhances themselves, uh, their future
00:57:47.220
and the community around them as well. Excellent. Well, Michael, I appreciate this conversation,
00:57:52.560
man. Um, I love your work. I love the book, the scarcity brain comfort crisis is your previous
00:57:57.020
book. Read that book, of course, had you on to talk about that as well. Um, why don't you let the guys
00:58:01.280
know where to connect with you? And then, uh, is there any way you could give us a sneak peek into
00:58:06.420
what might be coming down the pike? Like I'm sure, cause you talked about this being a three-year
00:58:11.260
project. If I do my math correctly, you're writing this book even before the comfort crisis came out.
00:58:16.660
So I'm curious about what might be next. Yeah. Well, I, you know, the publisher is asking me
00:58:23.740
when's the third book and I haven't, uh, I've been thinking about it, but a lot of what I spend my time
00:58:28.060
on now is I have a sub stack that it's, uh, it's called 2% and it's at twopct.com. And it covers a
00:58:34.920
lot of what I write about in my books, but, um, it comes out three times a week so that, you know,
00:58:40.700
the upside of books is that, um, you kind of have this one tome where everything is,
00:58:46.020
but I do think that it's really fun for me to write in sort of present tense and have more back
00:58:51.760
and forth with the people with common interests. So writing three times a week, uh, via sub stack
00:58:57.220
has been an awesome way to do that. And it kind of allows me to write in the present tense and get
00:59:01.980
thoughts out while I have them and while they're relevant. And so that's been a, that's been a fun
00:59:05.760
project for sure. Awesome. Awesome. We'll send guys over there. Michael, I appreciate you again
00:59:11.460
and your work. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Yeah. Thanks a lot, man. I appreciate
00:59:15.760
it. Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only and New York times bestselling
00:59:20.960
author recently dubbed New York times bestselling author, Michael Easter. Please, if you would let him
00:59:26.240
know that you heard this podcast, not only does that help him acknowledge and recognize that the work
00:59:32.380
he's doing is valuable and it's, it's making an impact, but it lets him know that you heard it
00:59:37.020
here. And when we go out and do that, it helps us secure better podcast guests because they're going
00:59:41.620
to get the, the recognition and the, in the book sales and, and the, uh, acknowledgement that these
00:59:47.440
guys are, are after. It's not just about that, but they are promoting a book. They are promoting
00:59:52.120
services and just sharing with him that you heard him on the order man podcast goes a long way for him
00:59:57.180
and it goes a long way for us. It's a great way to say thank you for what we're doing here.
01:00:00.440
Also along those same lines, just go ahead and take a screenshot right now before you move on to the
01:00:05.360
next podcast or move on to work or your, your training regimen or whatever it is you're going
01:00:09.400
to move on to. Just take a screenshot, tag Michael Easter, tag myself, post it up on Facebook,
01:00:13.860
Twitter, X, YouTube, I don't know what threads, uh, where else? TikTok, wherever you are, just post
01:00:21.440
it up, tag me, tag Michael, let people know what you're listening to. And then also, as I mentioned
01:00:26.560
earlier, check out the battle ready program at order man.com slash battle ready. Get
01:00:30.280
yourself battle ready defense and offense to improve your life in scientifically proven ways
01:00:35.360
to make this happen. Uh, last thing I just want to mention real quick is my good friends over at
01:00:39.440
Montana knife company. They're making incredible 100% made and sourced in America knives. I use all
01:00:45.200
of their knives for hunting and for cooking, which I've been getting into. My daughter, in fact,
01:00:50.280
wants to start a cooking channel with me, a cooking project. So stay tuned because her and I have
01:00:56.240
some good ideas on that. Anyways, guys, that's what I've got for you today. We'll be back tomorrow
01:01:00.360
for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action, conquer that scarcity brain and become
01:01:07.080
the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take
01:01:12.220
charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order