S4E30 - WealthNWisdom: Why Do We Fail?

Tyler Kreiling had me on his show to talk all things failure. 

Tyler writes for his publication, WealthNWisdom, on Substack:  https://substack.com/@wealthnwisdom

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, today we are going to be talking about failure pretty in depth. I think it's a worthwhile topic. And it's something that, like you said, the guru and influencer culture doesn't cover a whole ton. You know, a little bit of story time, which we'll get into a second, just goes to prove that point. But before we get to that, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Wealth and Wisdom Show. I am your host, Tyler Cryling. And today with me I have Steve Cotherin, host of the Points of Failure podcast. I love this line, so I'm going to use it as your short little blurb from me. Most execution problems aren't strategy problems, they're operational discipline problems, unclear ownership, incomplete inputs, poor visibility. That's where programs stall, launches slip, and teams start pointing fingers instead of fixing problems. Steven, why don't you introduce yourself for everyone watching this?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah. As you said, I'm Steve Cothran. I host the Points of Failure podcast. I do a little writing on the side here on Substack. And I also work in the CPG environment, um, doing a lot of packaging, and um I've done a lot actually. I've spent time in in uh hospitality, restaurant management, bars. I've just I've done a lot, but the the crux of my time has been spent in CPG corporate world. So yeah, that um that comes from a lifetime of experience learning that when we don't understand going in what our why is um and what the purpose of doing something is, we miss the patterns that get built, and those patterns become things like you know, the the good old boy system, and that's how we've always done it, and that sort of thing. And when things fall apart, people we don't know who actually owns what piece, and so the finger pointing and the blaming begins. So that's that's kind of where that came from.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

You know, I and this is actually surprisingly relevant right now. Like, I you've probably I don't know if the people watching the show realize actually how relevant that comment is, because you know, in the age of AI, it's almost like we've created a shortcut away from that why, um, which is so bizarre because like when I started writing Wealth and Wisdom two and a half years ago, um AI was still kind of getting going. You didn't have people saying, like, oh, AI will do everything for you, right? I still had to come up with the why. You know, when I wrote my paper on um the economic situation of South Korea, my professor was like, that was one of the things he criticized me for, is my first draft was terrible because it didn't have that why. It he was like, You've collected all this data, but what does it mean? Um so I like that. You you talked about how you have this experience and you've seen like where the why starts to break down. Um walk me through what that looks like because obviously I have my own opinions of you know, specifically as we're rushing headlong into an AI age of what that needs to look like and why things are breaking, but you have more experience than me in this space. I'm curious when a why disappears or when it was never there to begin with, what are the like symptoms of that? How do you know that that's what happened?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Um, well, you know, from my time in restaurant management, um, a great place that I kind of put a lot of this this theory together for myself. Um, when you have a that moment when the the kitchen's running two rails and they're getting, you know, just ribbons coming out of the printer and the bar is getting bogged down and the restaurant's on a weight, and everybody's just scrambling to get caught up, people begin to lose focus as to why we're doing what we're doing. Um, and they begin to tell stories. And I actually had a rule when I was a manager when one of my servers would come to me and say, Oh, Steve, Steve, listen, this thing, this I would say, stop. Don't give me the story, give me the what, give me the why, and that will solve it. Because we don't have time to tell the big story uh because the story is what we get lost in. And I think that's where the failures begin to come up because the failure itself isn't usually the problem. The problem is what we tell ourselves around that failure and what we're not willing to look at. And it's just a symptom. And so that outcome, that result, isn't the real problem. It just exposes what the problem actually is. And so that's that story becomes a safe space. And we we live in that story, and that helps us sort of not really look at what's actually going on.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

I I like that a lot. So if I'm understanding it correctly, um it's almost like what's the best way to describe it? We do this to defend ourselves. Where when we're going into this, it's like, well, we don't really want to fail. So we're gonna have a narrative for what happened so that there's something to blame outside of ourselves, rather than taking the honesty and responsibility of going, okay, where did we go wrong? Um I'm gonna I'm gonna play devil's advocate here though. Um because I imagine this is how some of these conversations went. Maybe I'm wrong, but what if they came back to you and said, but it was X thing, it wasn't me. You know, what if it actually was this person? You know, it's not my fault because so and so didn't show up for uh the past. They they weren't actually on uh they they weren't actually on the line today. I'm just throwing words out I've heard from Hell's Kitchen. I've never worked in a kitchen before, so um, or you know, oh well, I was supposed to run the bar, but we didn't have this show up, so it's not my fault. I see a lot of it's not my fault recently, and so I'm curious, like, what if it actually wasn't their fault?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Oh well, um and often that's the case. Uh there's it it's true that many things are not our fault. Um, and I but again, that's where that story comes in. Because while it may not be my fault that uh Bobby or whoever didn't show up today to help me out on the line, it's still my responsibility to figure out what I'm gonna do about that. So I can sit around and I can piss and moan about it and be like, oh, manager, manager, it's not my fault that the kitchen's slowing down. But all I'm doing is creating a story. I'm still doing that, still creating this narrative that protects me from the responsibility that I have to step into this position and solve the problem. So again, you know, uh, I didn't, I I think Mark Manton said it, and maybe someone else has said it before, but we're not at fault for the things that happen to us, because things happen, you know, we can't we can't be at fault for everything, but we are responsible. And I think that I take that to mean that I'm responsible for what I do next. So all of my experiences, I'm responsible for what I tell myself about them, what they, what I make them mean to me, and what I do about them afterward. So fault, fault is kind of a useless concept as far as I'm concerned. I don't see what the point is and say, oh, you did that, it's your fault, it's their fault. I mean, everybody's got a fault in something, right? So I think that's kind of useless and not productive. I think what comes down to how do we move forward, there's a problem, there's a solution, and we can't get to the solution if we're all standing in a circle pointing at each other. So we got to move toward the solution.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

So no, for sure. And you know, something that um really interests me about that, because I think I think it's connected. I I believe it's connected to what you're saying, and I've seen it a lot very, very recently, especially as this or that new shiny AI tool comes online to do something. Um, is that it's like we're not stopping anymore to take ownership of our actions and take that responsibility, you know, pick up the cross, as some philosophers used to say, and actually decide, you know, what am I going to do with this information? You know, I'll I'll tell you a really interesting story, and this is that story time I was talking about. Um, because my whole college career, and I was specifically, I was taught how to write financially by a man named Carrie Wazden. He was one of the analysts who found Enron. Um, and he's how he taught all of his classes. He was like, you need to learn to write and think and argue. And so that's what we're gonna do. Um, one of the things that really beat into me is you have to find the why. You have to un you have to not only come up with um a solution, we'll say, but you have to find out the why behind it and you know what's supporting that why. And that's just affected how I look at everything, you know, in this in the software startup world, um, in some of the kind of little consulting gigs I do on the side. I'm always looking at why are we doing this? And why is this happening? You know, it's always it's it's never like what or who, it's always why. It's always why. You know, what's going on? But then I see stuff like this. So the other day I saw I've seen a I've seen a wave of these since token-based pricing came up. Um, what was that, two or three weeks ago? So the rose-colored glasses are definitely coming off. But specifically it was a post where a man was saying and he was using it to pitch his AI startup. But um, the man was saying that he, as a developer, was hiring someone. Um, their resume passed the ATS with flying colors, their GitHub looked really nice. It looked like they did a whole ton of work in their GitHub. There's a lot of code in there. Then he absolutely bombed the technical interview. Absolutely bombed it. And you know, he was sitting there talking about like, oh, well, you know, it's just that now if you talk to AI, it gives you a like a perfectly polished ATS resume, and you can use it, you can use AI to like fill up a GitHub account and fake it, but you know, it's really not helping the problem. So we need this other tool that I'm building to s to fix that. It's another AI tool, right? And what really what really stuck out to me is it's a solution by addition problem, which never works. You know, for people outside of the software world or outside of the engineering world, it's also called the tyranny of numbers, right? Where the more crap you stuff into a box, the more likely it is to break it. And specifically, there's this pattern I see it over and over again, especially now, where companies and institutions will be like, we're adding this thing. And it creates a whole list of problems they didn't think about. And then instead of going back to what they built and saying, okay, how do we make this more robust? Or how do we fix these problems of what we already have? How do we adjust what we already have to fix some of these issues? They say, Oh, well, uh, now let's uh go add this thing to solve this problem. And then it creates new problems, right? And that's what I was experiencing reading this post. I was like, so the issue, and he ex I think he pointed out he he pointed it out correctly. I'm actually going to be writing about this very soon, where we live in a world now that's optimized for the wrong things. And specifically with hiring, we're optimizing people to have a perfect resume in terms of buzzwords, in terms of writing, in terms of the aesthetic of it, right? Or the aesthetic of looking like we can do a job, but then we don't actually have anyone who can come in and test competence. You know, because they go through ATS, you feed them to an HR manager, or worse, an AI recruiter that doesn't actually tell you if the person's telling you the truth or not or if they know what they're saying. Um and I was just shocked that you know, he found the right answer, but then he said, Well, why are we here? And for me, the answer is very clearly it's like, okay, so you spent all these years, probably a decade plus, refining these systems so that you didn't have to do the hard work of hiring.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Which I can j which I can understand.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

But you never stop to think, oh, you know, why are we doing this? And what's it gonna cost us when we when we make this happen in terms of not price, but uh opportunity cost? Now you don't have someone looking at the resumes to be like, this is good, this is bad. Um I I know there's just for the people who are gonna criticize me for this, I know there's needs for those because the volume of resumes has gone up.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

But I was just stunned that it's like we know the problem. Why are we building a new solution and adding more stuff on top of the stuff we have? Yeah, because in our experience that doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

No, and now now I'm hearing about um building AI to check for AI resumes. So to see if somebody's just padding their resume with all the keywords, the buzzwords, and everything else that's looking for to match a job description. Um, you know, people are uh building these systems to now look for that.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

And um, I may have lost you. Oh, there back.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

I'm so sorry. It's totally video. You were saying please.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Um yeah, so um anyway, yeah. The the uh it I'm hearing about these AI tools being made to track for those AI keywords to see if somebody's just stuffing their resume using AI to, you know, somebody wants this guy that's really good at you know, Power BI and all these things, so build me a resume that says I'm really great at that, you know. So it's I think yes, we're we're compounding the problem and we're creating uh a space for a larger failure, as it were. Um I do understand the necessity as a higher, you know, if someone's a hiring manager and they've got you put out a job wreck and they get a hundred, hundred and fifty. Some of them, I mean, gosh, think about companies like Walmart, probably get thousands of applications for any one job requisition. That's that's uh I mean, that's a full-time job as it is to read resumes, you know. So I understand the ATS system and and its necessity, um, but I I I do find that it has its own weaknesses, um, you know, and creating more tools to combat tools. I I we're we're working in a circle, and I think we're just we're creating larger failures um, you know, in the workforce.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

So no, and I I would agree because you know, part of that is, and maybe this is the solution, right? I'm I'm not telling people, I'm not prescribing anything, just suggesting, right? You know, maybe it is that for low-skill, high volume jobs, you do need that system in place. You know, I I was on I was on an interview today talking about a sales role. Um, and they asked me what I would use AI for when they were telling me kind of how their system works. I was like, well, I would use an AI agent to help me make phone calls. I'd train it on my voice so it sounds like me, and I would use that to help me get things going, or at least like set up scheduling so I can talk to these people in person, because that lowers the time window and you can get more deals, right? Um but if we're talking high skill, you know, if we're talking like chefs, we're talking engineers, we're talking lawyers, etc. Um I would argue you do kind of need that human element there. Absolutely. Because it's a low volume. You know, sure, are you gonna get like, you know, could you possibly get a hundred resumes on something like uh credit analyst for Goldman Sachs? Sure, at any one time. But that's a pretty low volume and it's high tech it's a high technical skill.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

The AI is not gonna know how to fig how how to parse those out correctly.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

It's just not. You know, I'm gonna make a very critical video for the YouTube channel here today, probably, but definitely the next couple days. Because I'm using AI right now at my job, we're using it for development. And what the agents gave us is not up to bar at all. At all. And it was very like I was shocked with how much time it's taken to build what it built and how off it was. But again, that gets back to, like you said, it gets back to the why, it gets back to the context. Um because we've seen and we've seen, I think we've seen recently with uh all the news coming out about people using millions of dollars of tokens in a day. I don't think anyone's stopping to ask those questions or to make the determination of okay, what exactly is the scope of this? You know, they're going in and saying, build me my cash flow model, and it's gonna cost, you know, $100,000 worth of tokens and it's gonna take 15 hours because this thing tries to figure out how to do that. And I think that's I I think we're going the wrong direction in that person.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yeah. Well, and obviously the the token play is because everybody that's invested in all the AI companies are they're losing money. They're they're upside down and they're trying to recoup. So I mean that's that's a clear the clear move on all of a sudden your unlimited usage for $20 a month became that's a certain number of tokens. And you know, so it's it's a it's a money grab for sure. Um, you know, and I just the thing my my thing with AI, um, and I use AI, I use AI constantly, um, for, but I use it for tasks that I can't complete. Like, you know, I built a a quick web page, a landing page so that I could sell tickets to an event because I'm not a web designer. I know how the basics of HTML, and there's a lot of web designers out there right now going, HT what? Don't use that, you know, because JavaScript. And I mean, I just, you know, uh I lean on my friend for that. But I don't know how to I I just I don't have the time. I don't have time for that. So I throw those kinds of things at AI. But when I write and that kind of stuff, I we're I think we're moving so far away from the human element, and I think that's the fear that a lot of people have, the artists, and you know, with the AI covers of music and being able to take your own voice and make it sound like you're singing a song, all these different things that are happening. I can understand the fears that a lot of creators have because if AI can just generate an image of something really quickly, well, then you don't need a photographer, do you? You don't need an artist. That's how it feels. I don't personally believe that. I still think the the human element is AI is never going to be better at something than an expert at that same thing is. AI can maybe think quicker on its feet and it can kick some things out, but you know, I can ask AI, oh, I've got this pain in my side, what could it be? Well, it could be all these things, but AI can't diagnose me, and I'm not gonna rely on that. So there's still things that AI just isn't going to be. I I don't know how AI is ever going to get there. I know a lot of people think, you know, Skynet goes live and whatnot, but I I don't I don't know how AI is going to ever get to the point that it can actually replace an expert in certain things. If we're just talking about creating websites and engineering things, I mean maybe that could be a real fear. Um, but you know, yeah, we're just we're we're creating a space where we're we're doomed to fail, and we're all gonna be sitting in a big powwow one day looking backward, asking why did that happen? And you know, coming back to that why is almost as important as the why we did anything to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Right. Um, it's I'm glad you tied it back because that was where I was gonna go with this. Um one comment, then we'll we'll loop back around to this. For people at home, and this is my personal opinion. Um AI will never get there because and this is this is the way that I look at it AI outputs are a derivative of all the inputs that go into it. And less technical jargon for everyone. Obviously, a derivative is a piece of something that's created from kind of kind of some kind of base piece. So, like in mathematics, a derivative is a line based off of the slope of the line. In finance, a derivative is an instrument that trades on the movement of something underneath it. Um and in this case with AI, it's a derivative of everything it was trained on. And so uh it's never going to get there because that requires it to make content of its own uh that's as good as the training data, which I'm not sure it can do. I'm gonna be honest, AI has never given me a it's given me some really interesting things. It's never given me an original thought. Oh no. And you know, uh but I want to jump back into this this why that we're talking about and how where failure comes in, because I think, you know, part of this, and I could be totally wrong, but I think part of this is the major frontier labs and the hyperscalers. By the way, Ren, thank you for joining the live show. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. Um but the hyperscalers and the frontier labs, I don't think they ever asked why are we doing this? And why does it need to be done this way? And you know, what's the purpose? Where is this going? As much as they you know built something, they're like, look at this neat little thing that we built, this A AI, artificial intelligence. Um and people started throwing investor dollars hand over fist at them. And they're like, Oh, I guess we'll just run with this. You know, everything that I read news wise about how the model companies and the Frontier Labs run their businesses tell me that there was no strategy going into this. And there was no process in place for how to put that strategy into effect. It's literally flying by the seat of your pants, is what it sounds like from out here. Um and it goes back to like what you were saying, where they didn't ask the why. And personally, I think they're scared to fail because there's so much writing on this. I mean Oh, what was the statistic I read? Right now, the big hyperscalers make up 40% of our entire US equity market. And with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic going public, it will be half. So if those companies have a downturn, like for example, they say we really screwed up and their stock price falls, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of investor dollars are going to disappear.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

And on top of that, all of our productive GDP growth came from AI last year. So there's so much writing on this where I think they're afraid to fail. So they're gonna do whatever they can, they're gonna play whatever games that they can to make this work, because if not, the eggs on them and they look like a whole bunch of idiots who just did irreparable damage to the economy and to our culture as well. You know, AI, like uh obviously that's not AI as a whole. AI will continue to be and will continue to exist and do things, but specifically the hype that and the narrative we built around AI, I think, is very damaging because they never, like you said, took the steps to figure out why are we doing this.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah. Oh, for sure. And I I think that the um the thing about AI is that it is artificial, right? The the it's not it isn't easy to create intelligence. We can only create the artificial intelligence. That's you know, it's it's a it's uh it's mimicking intelligence, the the imitation game, old Mr. Turing back in the day. And we're we can't really create intelligence. Like you said, no matter what output you give, or rather input you give to any AI LLM, what it kicks out isn't original thought. It's literally just it's as if you could access all the information in the Encyclopedia Britannica collection, just like that. If somebody asked you about hippos, you could you know pop up everything about hippos. Um, and that's really all it's doing. It's just referring back to what it learned itself. And it's no different than it's no different in the learning model, but the intelligence required to act on that information and act both appropriately but also ethically, that's where the real uh challenge comes in. And I think that's where the real failure is, where AI will fall apart, is that it is artificial. Um, and without that human touch, that human element being able to say, because you know, like I I tried to as a as a exercise, a little experiment of my own, I was on chat GPT for a bit, and I took all of my old writing from way back, like 20 plus years ago, and I just started feeding it into it. And I'd feed it piece by piece and say, assess this piece, give me a feedback on tone and voice and style, etc. And I did it on every piece of writing that I had, and then some of my current writing. And then I just had what how do I write? Give me a voice. And then when it would tell me, I would say, okay, now give me a little piece on you know how to how to tell somebody how to ask a girl out or something and say it the way I would say it. And it was surprising how it could kick something out that did in a way sound like the way I would speak, but it still wasn't actually me. It was an imitation of me. And so if I were to use that information and go out somewhere with that and start using that to, you know, kick out to give advice to people, that's it's gonna fall on its face. It's gonna fail just because there's no human element to it. And once somebody starts responding and asking questions to my answers and want it pushes back or whatever, and I can't give them anything back, then you know, it's obvious that I'm not really thinking through this stuff on my own. I'm using AI.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Right, right. Well, I think that's a good segue. Let's let's jump into something else here because I think this is worthwhile, especially for people at home who are watching. Um, let's talk about why do people fail? Like, what what do you see? What what are the causes, right? Because, and maybe this is just me, you know, I'm very much a numbers guy. Um, in the world of finance and accounting specifically, there's a very predictable set of steps that lead to certain outcomes. Like if fraud occurs, there's usually an element of justification where they determine they deserve to commit the fraud. The ability is there for them to commit the fraud, basically in their own job, or like poor security practices. And then there's a need to commit the fraud. You know, there's a very, very repeatable and very testable framework for what causes it. So, what what's the framework for why people fail?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Um, well, I think it actually is kind of the same. Uh, there are very predictable things that happen. Um, when you look at different segments of someone's life, their dating history, their job history, their friends, you know, how those things go, there are predictable things there. There are repeated patterns. Uh, I don't want to call them repeatable, because the better move is to solve those and not continue to repeat them, but that is what's happening. Um, you know, if if all of your exes are crazy, then either you like crazy people and that's who you choose to date, and you need to own that, or there's something that you're not figuring out on your own, and you are not just attracted, attracting them, but you are attracted to that. And that's so the the pattern is that familiarity that we go back to. We're accustomed to um, we're accustomed to what feels right, what feels normal. Um, I don't like to call it a comfort zone, it's more of a familiar zone, but uh, it's the same model. It's the same model as it is in finance. There's a there are predictable things. So if I look at somebody and they can tell me if I could see the course from day one to the last day of somebody's relationship or their job cycle, um, you could probably chart those. So this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. And I can look back at your last five relationships and I can tell you that that same pattern repeats itself every time. So I think it's the same, same model. That's the framework. Habits we create that become patterns in our lives that we don't escape and we just keep living that cycle until we stop and say, wait, I don't like this anymore.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

I appreciate that because you know, personally, I I've I experienced that in real time. I mean, when I met my wife five years ago, um, I was so used to dating. You I I felt kind of attacked and said, You only date crazy because I did date crazy. And I feel like you know, nothing against them looking looking back on as I've matured, I'm like, you know, some came from really broken homes, and there was just some stuff going on that was uh that was causing that, and of course my own human failures as well. But when I met my wife, she was so different from everything that I had experienced before. I looked for problems that weren't there. For probably four months of our of our dating, I was like, There's gonna be issues, I'm gonna find them, right? And they didn't exist because they weren't real problems. I was looking for patterns in behavior that weren't there. Um to quote to quote the A, I don't know. I was hallucinating with that where I was looking for something that didn't exist. And so that's really interesting. Okay, so let's let's expand on that a little bit. So let's talk what kind of overarching we'll call them like assumptions, beliefs, uh habits, when you look at someone who's had an experience like a pattern of failure. Um what are some things that come up pretty consistently of being part of that cycle in terms of how they think, how they act?

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Um, well, I know from myself and and from uh I'll I'll speak primarily from my own experiences, but you know, from others that I've I've talked to as well, I think there are a few things that come up right away. Um there's the the value, um, our sense of self-worth and our value. If we find that externally and we don't find it in ourselves, uh, we're gonna repeat patterns of chasing that validation and that dopamine hit. So for guys, it could be chasing women and you know, being able to say, oh, I, you know, hooked up with all these girls, or I've dated models or whatever, or maybe it's money, uh, status, whatever it is. Um that sense of value has to be concrete inside. And it and I'm I'm talking about guys just because I don't wanna I don't want to start talking about women as if I know if I understand everything about women, but they experience it as well. This is a universal thing. Um that validation, that's the first thing. If your sense of self-worth is not inside, if it's external, you're gonna you're gonna repeat unhealthy patterns to get that to get that validation. Um if you're not willing to be uncomfortable, um, that's gonna be a big piece. And I think that's one of the for for me, my my I had a rough year at one point, and I decided to spend time by myself. I spent I I literally went underground for about six months and I didn't go out with friends. I worked and I went home. Um and my goal in that was to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because that's one of the things that I struggled with in my past. I couldn't be alone. If I had to be alone with myself for five minutes, that was too much. Um, I don't know what I thought other like I didn't what what women were gonna do. If I couldn't handle it, how are they gonna, you know, want to spend that time with me? But I didn't think that way. Um so being able to be, or rather not being able, that that inability to be uncomfortable and sit with that discomfort and not try to understand every thought, not try to process every feeling, just sit with it, you know. Like I said earlier, hugging the cactus, let that let that shit hurt because sometimes that's what you got to do. Um, and then, you know, being able to be honest, if someone can't be honest with themselves, and and I don't mean the gosh, how could I have done that better? That's a great question, but pushing harder till you get to the question that you don't want to answer. Because when you reach that point where, oh, I'd rather push that over here, I'd rather point this over at that person, that person, and blame other people, when we want the answer to be that's their fault, that's where you got to start. That's the question you need to really sit with because it's probably not their fault.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

I think that's that's really interesting. Um because who was it? There is a philosopher I read about, I read some of his stuff a while back that basically said that he said, you know, everything's your fault. And it it's it's a very pessimistic view. It might have been young, to be honest, but um being that shadow stuff. Uh, but it was basically that concept of like, no, everything's your fault. Um, and that's not from a radical or like how what they didn't scratch that radical or toxic accountability, um, which to be fair for the men of the world. And it's so funny that you said, like, I'm only gonna talk about men, because I was doing I said the exact same comment to my wife. We were watching Love Island, the new season that just came out yesterday. And I was like, I was like, I wanted to pull these dudes aside and be like, stop being a moron. And she was like, I love how you're commenting on just the guys. I'm like, Well, I'm not gonna comment on the women, I don't know what what's going on with them. Like, sure, they're making mistakes, but at least with the men's, I can understand them better. Um, but it came down to that concept of like, you know, everything's your fault, and uh you have to be able to take a look at the things that you don't want to see, which is really freaking hard. Um you know, one of the one of the biggest things, and I actually wrote about this that has helped me on like my personal growth journey, is for a decade now. I've been out of high school for a decade. Um for the last 10 years, probably at least once a week, if not almost daily, I had the these like flashbacks of really cringy things I did in high school, including some that I really feel bad about. And even though like I moved on and like things are better now, I could never forget it. And I couldn't understand why. And so finally, I know you're not supposed to do this, but I just kind of spilled my guts to an AI model. I'm like, what's happening here? And I told them what's going on, and one of the things they brought up is like, have you ever thought about forgiving your like high school self? Because it sounds an awful lot like you know, your past memories are causing you lots of pain and you're refusing to deal with them. And I was like, So I did, and since I wrote that letter, basically forgiving my high school self of realizing, like, oh, I act the way I do because of this, this, this, and this and this that happened to me or I did. And when I was able to sit down and stop blaming myself for those and say, like, I forgive you, you did the best you could, it's gone away. Sure, I still have like the cringy memories of like, oh, I can't believe I asked that girl out or did this stupid thing, but it doesn't have the same pain anymore. I can just let it pass.

SPEAKER_04 39:09

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Um yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, oh, that was weird, but I I love that you brought that up. So but again, I'm gonna push back on you on this. Um I think if we told a lot of people today watching this, oh, you just start asking yourself hard questions, their immediate answer would be, what do you mean, why? and I don't want to do that. Because it's painful. You know, how would you respond to someone if they came back to you and said, Oh, well, you know, I don't know how to do that, or I don't want to do that, it sounds really uncomfortable. Like, there's got to be an easier way. What what would your response be?

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Well, um, I mean, I guess you can balance, like, weigh it out. What's more painful, the constant cycle that you're living in that you clearly aren't comfortable, you don't like, you keep complaining about it, or is it more painful to do the work that might take you a few months, might take you a year, who knows? It's just a matter of it's a matter of deciding where you want to be in life and what you're willing to give up to have that thing. It's like, you know, uh, when you decide you want to be with this one person for the rest of your life, kind of thing, you're willing to give up all the other people. And I know that I I don't mean for that to sound heroic, but the point is that you know this is what you want, so everything else goes. And so I would say to somebody that says, Oh gosh, I don't know where to start, that's fine. You don't have to know where to start. I mean, you you you just kind of start, and it's not about finding the perfect point because that's another way of what you were talking about earlier that ruminating back on old mistakes and not letting them go and just kind of beating yourself up. My therapist used to call it mental masturbation because you're just just you know, just constantly bringing it up and doing the thing, and you're getting something out of it. And a lot of times what we do is we hide inside a story because what that story does is it it helps us, uh, it protects us from what we actually have to face. And so we just stay in that story. And it's, you know, uh one of my one of my hangups that I like to do is I like to constantly get real cerebral and you know, think about, oh, you know, my patterns and read this book about my patterns and write down the processes of my patterns, and then here's how I can fix that, and constantly go through the process of what it takes to fix it, but then I don't ever actually do it. And then I find myself actually doing the thing that I know I don't I need to not do, like, oh, okay, I'm wasting time here. So I would say figure out what that story is that you're telling yourself, and then ask yourself, what is that story doing for you? Because when you understand what the story is doing and what it's protecting you from, that is where you start. That's the question you need to ask.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

That is surprisingly prescient, my friend. The narrative is strong in our culture today. Um some of it's warranted, I think. At least the I'll say this some of the underlying causes of those narratives are warranted. Like I just I I just finished and sorry, side comment back to the Love Island thing. It's so funny where you're like, you know people seem to be uncomfortable with taking with they seem to be uncomfortable taking opportunity risks anymore. And R so you seem like a younger guy, so I'm guessing you're Gen X, Gen Z, millennial, that kind of technology.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

I'm not there yet. Oh, I'm I'm uh I'm uh what uh what I don't remember what Gen X, I think actually, yeah. Uh yeah, 76.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

So okay. But still, it's like you're you're you're in that practice where you've probably seen this, and some of your some like your friends, Greg's probably have probably done this, where we seem to be unwilling to take opportunity costs anymore. You know, with the Love Island thing, what dro what drives me crazy every time my wife watches this and I watch it with her is none of the guys and gals on the show are willing to actually stay with the person that they've been paired with.

SPEAKER_04 43:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

You know, it's like, oh, but I still have feelings to this other person, I still want to explore this. Like, that's great. You're in a you're in a quasi-relationship now. And I understand that the other person came to you and said, No, like it's okay for you to explore. It's actually not. And it's going to undermine every relationship you have if you take that idea of, oh, I'm just gonna keep the back door open. You know, at some point you do have to just take. the job and you have to be okay with that knowing that you can't get back there anymore um because and this is where I was gonna get to with uh what with some with some of your comments there of how you'd respond is you know you can't really avoid that idea you you can't avoid doing doing the thought work as they like to call it um you do have to like you said you do have to actually at some point you kind of have to face those demons yeah otherwise you're just gonna put it off forever.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Right you you've got to find a place where you start understanding you know why do I do this and and I did that I went down a while I actually I started in a weird way down a path uh trying to trying to learn how to convince an ex to come back and then I went down the road that led me to these weird ex-bac coaches that mostly are full of nonsense and but then that that led me to attachment theory and I started understanding a lot of things and then I started understand oh that's why I do that it's it's not because I'm crazy because I thought I was crazy. It's not because I'm crazy it's because I'm I'm anxious and I've got these things and so I started learning that but at some point you can't keep hiding behind oh that's because of my anxious attachment. Oh that's because they're avoidance oh that's because this or that at some point you have to start living the things that you know you need to do and to your point with the Love Island is making the choices my partner and I we we love the all the trash TV too we watch them all the Netflix ones and uh we just uh we had watched uh perfect match um and then a little bit of I love uh married at first sight um and one of the things I found very interesting especially on the perfect match the toxicity is really bad because what they've done is I understand they've created a model where everybody's supposed to date everybody and figure out which one you think you connect with um and that's okay it it's fine to explore connections um I don't think you have to explore them in everybody's bed I don't think you know that's the place to explore every single connection um and that's that's the thing and I was really impressed actually with this last season of perfect match I'm I'm shilling now I guess hey Netflix um need a sponsor over here um but the um there was a guy on the on the season and I uh jimmy I think was his name he had he's a basketball player whatever I really didn't like him when he first came on the show I thought ah this guy's a douche he's gonna be a player a tool I was actually really impressed that pretty much from the jump the he and the girl that he matched with they they stuck it out they're like you know what I think I like you and I want to see where this goes um and that back to the the choice you have to decide what you want and what doesn't align with what you want in your life whatever that is if you want to be super fit then you know eating candy bars and gallons of ice cream while you watch TV on the couch doesn't really align with that goal with that desire that you say you have so what do you want what are you doing and how's it working for you right and so make a choice and this is where I I talk a lot about choosing to stay on the path as opposed to being kept on the path because those are different things. And I think a lot of times you find especially in men um we tend to be kept on the path. We you know stay we a lot of guys would stay true to their you know their partners by you know well you know what is the saying uh just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu that kind of stuff well then you're not choosing to be on that path and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being I'm attracted to other people I'm not gonna get lost in an endless sea of caveats here but the point is there is a path that you decide to walk on and you're either going to stay on it or you're not or somebody's gonna keep you on it. Which one do you want to be?

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Because there is a there's a sense of of ethics and true value I think in one of those and you have to decide which one of those is the most important to you I appreciate that and we are running short on time here so I'm tempted to I'm tempted to just cut it there but I think we need to bring up one more thing um we need to talk about narrative again really quick just as we're closing out because I think uh especially for men especially for younger men um we get lost in the narrative a lot so a little psychology thing I discovered while I was working at Beyond Abundance here um the one of the big issue one of the big things about human psychology is we actually we go about determining meaning first in everything before we determine what something actually is so to your point like we go and we say I want a long-term relationship that's important to me that has meaning before just by nature before we say okay well what does that look like um and I think the thing that is robbing a lot of young men today of the life that they want and it's I'm I gotta be careful this because I don't want to turn to another blame game but we get so lost in the narrative of whatever it happens to be you know both sides like black pill whatever like it doesn't matter it's all a narrative right whether it's oh all the women are against you so you should just be a player and you know never settle down and work a hundred hours a week by like a a yacht in Dubai or whatever or if it's just like you know I'm I'm not gonna try anything because the world's against me it's all a narrative and speaking to young men I would say the biggest thing that you can do is you've got to stop doing that.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

You have to actually sit and stop repeating that and you actually have to determine okay what the hell do I actually want and what am I willing to do to get it so walk me through some of your thinking on that is like just as a closing thought how do we get out of that how do we get out of that narrative because I think a lot of people are stuck right now yeah um those narratives are tough because that's the stuff that gets clicks gets likes gets follows andrew tate all those guys um all of that red pill garbage in the the pickup artist community um and yeah it's I think it's incumbent on older guys I guess I'm in that camp now uh to to start I don't want to say mentor because that sounds a little cheesy but to start speaking to the younger men and and start getting them to realize this narrative this story that you're living in is a fantasy and it's not a good fantasy um women aren't social climbers they're not gold diggers there might be some that are um but there are just as many guys that are useless so I mean the the thing is that we all have to stop trying to find someone else to be the solution to our problems um stop trying to find the perfect partner and start becoming the kind of person that you would want to be with um and and that's everything that's not just dating that's jobs too instead of I want to be the CEO why don't you just be really good at what you do right now and just be good at that and then you know that may come and it may not but it won't matter because you can walk away knowing hey this is what I'm really good at we have to we have to break out of the cycle and the only way to do it is to start asking those honest questions. And honest isn't a strong enough word because a lot of people think they're being honest if I was to ask people hey are you being honest with yourself well yeah yeah yeah I'm being honest with myself but are you because until we are willing to uh I hate using feeling things that feel like buzzwords but radical responsibility right to take everything that's in my life and realize I own my life there are only a handful of things that I don't have any control over. And you know one of those is other people obviously but those things that I don't have control over I don't need to worry about. I set them aside and I focus on what I can do and realizing that to the to the Tates and the PUA guys women have value inherently as human beings the same way that men do. Men aren't the problem women aren't the problem the problem is that we're pointing across the yard at each other and we've got to start looking at ourselves and we need to start sitting down and having real conversations and that's that's what I think would really help guys uh this younger generation of men coming up because we have such an onslaught of these red pill guys um to have other men step up and say wait a minute no no no no no that's not how you act like a man perfect well Stephen Coffranyb I appreciate it appreciate you um everyone at home please if you could do us a big favor go and follow Stephen Cawthron on Substack um follow the wealth and wisdom show as well I think you have the YouTube channel as well it's in your links so yeah go check out it's not nearly as active but it's it's there go check out the Points of Failure podcast and again thank you Steve um thank you everyone who's watching this have a wonderful week we will see you guys next time bye everybody appreciate it.