Episode 989 Scott Adams： I Tell You How to Find Meaning For Your Life
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
154.4421
Summary
What would you do if Donald Trump had shut down the country two weeks earlier? And what would the media be screaming about if Bernie Sanders had won the 2020 Democratic nomination? Today's episode is a mashup of some of my favorite moments from the past week.
Transcript
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For some of you, it's going to be the best day of your life.
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Well, today you're going to learn the meaning of life for yourself.
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People may have different meanings, but while we're waiting for people to stream in here
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so they can get the full goodness, first, some updates.
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Have you seen that the news has turned pure loser think?
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One of the chapters in my book, Loser Think, is mocking people who say
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that something good should have happened sooner.
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Because everything good should have happened sooner.
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And that's going to be the story of the coronavirus.
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So it looks like the Democrats are going to settle on this specific chapter of loser think.
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It's funny that I have an actual chapter, a chapter in a book called Loser Think,
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They probably don't know it's a chapter in a book called Loser Think.
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But, yeah, so they're going to say, if it had been done sooner, it would have been better.
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If it had been done sooner, it would have been better, no matter what it is.
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It would have been better if it had been done sooner.
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I mentioned earlier today that what the world needs is an app that lets you do really quick
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three-second videos that you splice together automatically to make a lesson.
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Whether you're telling somebody how to change a spark plug or anything, just little chunks.
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It turns out that there is one called Ario, A-R-I-O, and I guess it's an app for training.
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It looks like a big corporate kind of enterprise kind of an app.
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I don't know if it works for individuals, but at least for companies that are looking
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You know, somebody in the field can just, apparently, just take it out and say, blah, blah, blah,
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blah, put in some text and words and video, and suddenly you've got an instant tutorial.
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Did you hear that Don Jr. mentioned on Twitter that he's going to be joining the Locals platform
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It's not every day that Don Jr. joins a social media platform.
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And, of course, a big part of the reason is that it's not subject to anybody's algorithm.
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I'm going to give you one great thought, followed by another great thought, and then I'm going
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to close it with another thought that's great, and then I'm going to give you the meaning of
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One that will make your head explode, one that will just make you feel good, and another
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I told him it might be his best tweet, because this will just blow your mind.
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I love it when somebody takes something you've been looking at forever and then just turns
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it around, and you go, oh, I didn't know that was on the other side of that thing I've been
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He says, if real Donald Trump had shut down the country two weeks earlier, and remember,
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It should have been earlier if it had only been two weeks earlier, blah, blah, blah.
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So as Joel says, if Trump had shut down the country two weeks earlier, South Carolina and
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Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic nominee for president, and the media would
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be screaming about how Trump had interfered in the 2020 election.
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Isn't that like the smartest thing you've seen that you've heard today?
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I swear, sometimes if you just watch the regular broadcast news, you're just getting dumber
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But how come nobody thought to actually play back the tape?
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Why was it Joel, who was like the first person who thought of this, like, well, if you want
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If that's what you want, let's go take a look at what that looks like.
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Joel's got a new book coming out, and I'm going to talk to him about that when we schedule
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And it's just a smart little true statement, very optimistic.
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And it goes like this, technology destroys jobs and replaces them with opportunities.
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Because if you don't have a job, a job's a pretty good thing.
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But if you do have a job, what's even better is your own thing.
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So technology, it might take your job, but it also makes it possible for you to do your
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And I think a lot of people figured that out during the coronavirus.
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So Naval, that was the exact perfect message for the times.
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And the president has promised, and before we do our micro lesson on the meaning of life,
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the president has promised more good news coming in the coming weeks and fairly soon
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Do you remember when the president was saying, I think we'll have a vaccine by, I forget what
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he said, but everybody said, well, that's crazy.
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You're not going to have a vaccine by, you know, September, October.
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But, and I think Fauci was saying, it's more of a 12-month, 18-month situation.
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But I think the president's thinking, and of course, I can't read his mind, so I'm going
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I think the assumption is that he just trusted American ingenuity, and he trusted that in
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the context of an emergency, that Americans would just do what needed to be done, because
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And I was, you sort of philosophically, I'm completely with the president on that point,
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that however fast you think something can get done, we're going to beat that.
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And we'll probably beat it by a lot, because it's the top priority, and we're pretty good
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So, I'll just give you that little bit of optimism.
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Of course, you know, the deaths are going to continue, and that's the tragedy.
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But on top of that, you're going to see an increasing amount of good news coming out, and it's
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So, how many of you would like to have a little lesson on the meaning of life?
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All right, this is your micro lesson on the meaning of life.
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Now, this is going to be an individual meaning, not a meaning that applies to everyone, because
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you can take care of yourself, in terms of the meaning that you find out of life.
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So, this is your personal journey, and how to find meaning in your life.
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So, here's the basic idea, the starting point, and then we'll get to some more detail on the
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If you were to live an ideal life that was compatible with your biological self, what
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And here is my contention, that you will have the sensation of, and for all practical purposes
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you'll have, meaning in your life if you stay on this line, which is the line of selfishness.
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And the idea here is that you're born a baby, and there's nothing you can do about it.
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You didn't ask to be born, and if somebody asked you to help out, you couldn't do it if
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Now, as you get older, if you're doing things right, maybe when you're a teen, you can start
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Maybe by the time you're a parent, you don't have to actually biologically have children,
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but you're an adult, and you find yourself giving back as much as you're getting.
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Could be to your family, could be to anybody, your company, whatever.
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Eventually, once you've got everything that you need, and you've taken care of the people
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who are around you, you enter some kind of a, I'll call it a mentor mode, where you're
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sort of a senior member of the tribe, you know, you're a tribal elder, essentially, and
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And then the last thing you do, at least in our culture, the last thing you do, the moment
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your life is extinguished, is you give away everything you have.
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So all of your material possessions just go away at the moment of death.
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So this is a purely unselfish moment, because you're literally dead.
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So you start 100% selfish, and you try to stay on the line to get to the point where you
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If you do that, or even if you feel you're on the line to do that, so for example, you're
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Are you doing the right thing if you're a teenager, and you're just doing well in school and paying
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Very rarely do young kids ask about the meaning of life, because they're actually biologically
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So if you find yourself compatible with your biological nature for that point of life, you
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If you're learning, and then giving as much as you're getting, and then eventually becoming
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more purely unselfish, you will feel meaning in your life.
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How can you be sure that you can take care of yourself well enough, which is really the
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If you don't take care of yourself first, you're not going to be in any kind of position to
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So you have to be selfish in the beginning until you've acquired enough safety, knowledge,
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financial assets, network, family, whatever, to be safe yourself.
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The basic belief behind this is that we evolved to take care of ourselves first, because that's
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But secondarily, as soon as we take care of ourselves, we broaden that to the family, the
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people close to you, your tribe, and then, of course, civilization.
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So, how can you be helpful, and make sure you're staying on that line?
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Well, let's say you wanted to be an author of this simulation.
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If you're new to this, I like to call our reality a simulation, because it feels like it.
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You don't have to believe it's a simulation for any of these purposes.
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So when I talk about authoring the simulation, what I'm talking about is not necessarily changing
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base reality, because we don't have any access to base reality, even if it changed, we might
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Because we did not evolve to be able to know reality.
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We evolved to live in these little worlds that we manufacture ourselves.
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So to the extent that you can manufacture your own world, you become the author of the simulation
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you're working in, you're living in and working.
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Now, the process for doing that, I'm going to give you the general outline, but then each
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of these items you'd have to work on individually.
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So this would be how to understand your world the best in a way that helps you get to that
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great line where you're becoming more useful all the time.
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So I broke it into three categories, but before you can even get serious on this, you need
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to understand the beginning point, that these are filters, not necessarily reality.
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And what I mean by that is, imagine if you would, you go to the grocery store, and I like to
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You're standing in a grocery store, and next to you is somebody with a different religion.
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And on top of that, they also believe everything that the opposite political party from you,
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They might be worried that the leader is going to do something horrible, and you're not.
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So you live in a world where there's no risk for all practical purposes.
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Once you understand that we're all walking around in these manufactured realities, it frees
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If you feel you're a victim of reality, and it's just, well, I'm just the output.
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If that's your view of life, that's exactly how your life will go.
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If you believe that it's you who manufactures this filter on reality, and then can live in it,
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you could turn yourself into, let's say, a Buddhist, if that was compatible with your thinking.
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And you could live in that world, sort of a Buddhist reality.
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You could become a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent.
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Now, does that alone help you be more successful, live better, be healthier, have better relationships?
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Here are the things which I recommend that you understand are your priorities.
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If you have not developed people skills, the odds that you will be successful enough to eventually give back, and therefore have meaning in your life, because you're learning and getting more powerful all the time.
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In order to do anything useful in life that gets to the mentor stage anyway, that really is a well-lived life, you're going to have to master people skills.
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So everything from working on your shyness, which you can work on as a technique.
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Your networking, your conversation, your public speaking, learning how to criticize people without hurting their feelings, how to manage them, etc.
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If you're not actually working on that list, meaning you're not reading a book on something on this list, you're not taking a class, you're not practicing something, then you're not quite getting ready to be an author.
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You're still in sort of taking it as a comes mode.
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I've talked too much about the talent stack, but it's so powerful that if you're not developing your skills that layer well together, in your case, it's not the same skills for everybody.
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It's just whatever is the combination that makes you powerful and unique and valuable in the market.
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If you don't have a skill stack and some people skills, you're just not going to be successful.
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I mean, it's possible that people without people skills can be successful, but it's less likely, which gets us to the last thing.
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I'll call it the odds, but it's really sort of the math of life.
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If you understand the math of life, you have basically a strategy.
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I don't like to use the word strategy, so I prefer to say, do you know the odds?
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Do you know that if you do this thing, you'll have better odds than this thing?
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I talk about how it's very typical in the business world to try 10 different things before one of them works.
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If you didn't know that, you'd give up after three.
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But if you knew it was almost sort of built into the texture of civilization, I don't know why, but it's a good rule of thumb that you probably try 10 things and one of them is likely to catch on.
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You try three things, well, your odds are less.
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So understanding that about the world is important.
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You should understand that if you sell your time, there's a cap on how much you can make.
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So maybe you should start your own business if you want an uncapped potential.
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The math of talent stacking is that just because you have, let's say, 10 talents and you add one, you don't go up just 10% in power.
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So once you understand the multiplicative geometric benefit of adding skills, you have a strategy just built into your normal thinking.
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Understand about diversification, especially if you're investing.
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Don't put all your eggs in one basket, as they say.
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And follow the energy to go where there's the most luck, most stuff happening.
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If you go wherever there's the most stuff happening, the most people, you have more chances for luck.
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That is the outline for finding meaning in your life.
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Now, of course, the details of how you fill out your various categories and stacks here will be personal,
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But the idea is that if you're following that path from completely selfish to completely unselfish,
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And that feeling will be just you being compatible with your most basic biological self,
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because you were born to take care of yourself first.
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So if you're doing that, especially when you're young, you'll feel like you're doing exactly what you ought to be.
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Kids generally feel like they're doing exactly what they should be doing.
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So just keep on that path, and you'll feel that feeling of completion and a feeling of meaning.
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That's your micro lesson, and I will see you, you know when.