The Daily Stoic - Kevin Kelly On The Courage It Takes To Live Your Own Life

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Ryan speaks with Kevin Kelly about his new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, how his remarkable life and career is shaped by his quest to do things his own way, understanding that life is fluid and mistakes are important to development, the best lessons that we can pass onto our children, and more.Kevin Kelly is a writer, photographer, painter, lecturer, conservationist, student of Asian and digital culture, and the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. His work focuses on digital trends, futurism, the exploration of the natural world, and the convergence of nature and technology. While he is most known for his hugely influential essay 1000 True Fans, Kevin has written five books and published three volumes of art and photography, including Asia Grace, a collection of over 600 photographs that Kevin took throughout 30 years of exploring rural Asia. His work can be found on his website kk.org, and on Twitter @kevin2kelly.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives

and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. If you haven't ever read the 1000 True Fans essay, it's one of the most important things that I've ever read as a creator. I don't think this podcast, the Daily Stoic email, I don't even know

if half my books would even exist if it wasn't for the great Kevin Kelly, who was the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine, but really one of the pioneering bloggers and thinkers about the internet as we understand it today. And he's just overall a fascinating guy, one of those most interesting men in the world type. Instead of going to college, he went to Asia as a poor solo photographer, and he went through villages in Asia, and Iran, and Japan.

And took tens of thousands of photos. He sent me this beautiful coffee book a couple years ago that's on my coffee table actually called Vanishing Asia. He has a great chapter in Tim Ferriss's book Tools of Titans. He's written a bunch of fascinating books, what technology wants, out of control, new rules for the new economy, the inevitable. But his new book, I think he's actually the most well-suited to the daily stoic. And for daily dad, his new book is called Excellent Advice for Living and its Advice and experiences that he wants to pass down to his kids and his

grandchildren and he came out during South by Southwest, one of the first guests in the New Daily Stoke podcast studio. And we just had an amazing conversation that I was super inspired by. And it was definitely like a full circle moment for me because I remember I did a post about building my library like 15 years ago, one of the first blog posts that I ever wrote, and Kevin limped to it. Now it was one of the first bits of validation that I ever got as a writer, someone that I admired was linking to my stuff. And so it's very cool for me to get to interview him and talk to him about his new book, especially

a book about advice, because he's given me so much advice over the years. And if you want to talk about libraries, this dude has one of the coolest libraries you've ever seen in your life. You should definitely check it out. But maybe start by adding his new book to your library. Excellent advice for living is out on May 2nd. And you can go to kk.org. That's his website.

You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Kevin to Kelly and on YouTube at Kevin Kelly. Thanks so much to the one and only Kevin Kelly for trekking out and for this amazing interview, which I'm sure you were all going to love. It's funny, I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers

for a long time, they've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen audiobooks, don't you? And it's true, and almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part.

Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, and exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key, the daily dad I just recorded. So that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books. So all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. That's

audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stosism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like.

It's convenient. It's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable. So why wait? And Toxbase can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers as a listener of this podcast you can get 80 bucks off your first month with talk space when you go to talkspace.com slash stoic to match with a license therapist today and go to talkspace.comcom slash still to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the day we still that's Toxbase.com slash still.

Well, I had one job before I came, which was to bring the vanishing China books, which are at the on the coffee table at my house. And I went all the way there. And I forgot to bring them back. But I actually think it's for the best because I'm not sure. The table was looking at you. You're right. It's a beautiful book though. Well, thank you. Incredible.

I was actually reading them with my three-year-olds who I was the can't read and he was just like enthralled. Just the pictures are incredible and you would not believe they're that old. You know what I mean? Like, did you have to do a lot of restoration to get the photos? No. First of all, they spanned 50 years. Some of them are only a couple years old. Right.

Some of them are 50 years old. Yeah. And no, I did very little. I did the minimal amount of photoshopping or retouching as I could just because of the volume. I don't have definitely against photoshopping, but just like, 9,000 to work on. So, yeah, to the practice side, some people can tell well that's film and others is digital, but the other important thing is I'd never used a professional camera for the entire thing. So these were some were point and shoots and others were just

you know, I'll use a Lumix Super zoom and I had necrumats instead of Nikons. So Yeah, so the quality varies, but it's you don't pay attention. It's kind of like audio. Yeah, you're listening to the Melon's you get into it. Right right right right right right. No, there was something I read this article once they're listening to the melody. Once you get into it, you don't suck. Right, right, right, right, right. No, there was something, I read this article once, they're talking about the white rhino. You know, there's like one of them left

and eventually they'll die. And so someone was saying like, at some point, this will be the last photo of the last rhino, right? There's something kind of beautiful and terrifying and humbling about the idea, I mean, the book's called Vanishing China. But like a lot of the stuff you took pictures of, it doesn't exist. Those people are no longer alive.

That way of life no longer exists. And there's something very ephemeral, but also permanent about photography in that sense. It is. It's a document. And even the people in those countries, even at that time, were not really aware of that because very regional and it was medieval. And now, of course, they're amazed at what their own country and Asian hat, and they didn't see that themselves. And so there is a joy in kind of bringing that back. And for me, of course, it's a time machine. Yeah.

It's really, I had the privilege of being in a time machine and living in medieval times. Well, we think the past was this thing that happened a long time ago, but in fact, like not only is it often not that long ago, as not even dead, as in fact, like, not only is it often not that long ago as not even dead as a falconer said, but that there are people for whom it was not the past, but it was their life. Like, I was thinking about Jimmy Carter, who will probably leave us sometime in the

next few months. And I've read a bunch of memoirs about his boyhood, and you go, this is a guy that grew up barefoot in a house without electricity or running water, ends up as the president lives all the way into this age. I mean, you know, works on nuclear submarines, but like that, that is the span of a single human life. And you think about the lives that were there when he, like, what one human life intersecting at the beginning of his life was, it's, it's, it's humbling and very distant very quickly. You could argue that he's seen more change in his life than you will see in your life. Probably. And we going from, you know, the

future'd have to be pretty good or pretty bad. I mean, going from, you know, the future'd have to be pretty good or pretty bad. I mean, that is an incredible leap from no plumbing, no electricity, no schooling, whatever the situation was. Till now, that's a huge change. I don't think, here's what it is. I think, materially,, we're not gonna see the same kind of change. Most of the change we're seeing is much more conceptual and intangible. Yes. The material world's not gonna change as much as he saw. Well, Winston Churchill was personally there

for the last cavalry charge of the British Empire and then lives to see the Beatles. Right. And, you know, like, there are, there are lives like that. Right, right, right. That have that sort of connection to the Beatles. And you know, like there are pretty good. There are lives like that, right, right, right, right, that have that sort of connection to the past. I knew this guy here in Austin. He died in three or four years ago. His name was Richard Overton. And when he died, he was the oldest man in the world. He was 112. And I was, I was thinking, so I took my oldest. He was like two then to

meet him. And I one thing I think about is like, my son will never meet anyone born earlier than that. Right, right. So like my son, however old he was, he touches a person born in 1905 and 1906. But then yeah, you think about who was the oldest living person when that person was born? Yeah, yeah, I did this idea that I think Tim Merubin

did even better of doing generations. And I would say like if you could touch somebody who was living and someone who's about to die and that the number of generations between that to like back to Jesus or somebody is like only, you know, it's not that many. It's like was a couple hundred. Somebody told me it was six handshakes.

Like the Demonstrateable people who knew each other, who touched Queen Elizabeth, arching a huge pond park. Right, exactly, right. But to go from Obama to George Washington. Right, right. Yeah, like 13 generations or something, it's not very far.

So you can actually imagine passing something verbally. Yeah, in that span. Like when we think of oral tradition. Exactly, right. Right. So that's one of the things that we're trying to do at the LNL Foundation to encourage thinking in terms of generations rather than say years or days. Yeah. And with the idea that if you had a better sense of both your past, you would be a better ancestor into the future. So that's our goal. Well, I, um, I found this last night, actually, I saw it on Reddit, but it was, I guess Thomas Edison did a bunch of recordings. He had that wax cylinder thing that could exactly. And so he went and he, he went and recorded a bunch of the

imminent oldest people alive. Right. Right. And I guess in 2012, a bunch of them were lost. They rediscovered 2012, and it's some French general reciting some lines from Shakespeare for getting his name, but he was born in the 1700s. And that is the oldest recording. There's a photograph of someone from the 1700s, but this is a voice of someone born roughly before America was America, or around the time America was America,

around the time America is America. It is amazing, but that's actually there's another lesson in that rose wax cylinders with Edison, which is that one of the things I talk about in technology a lot, which is that the inventors of technologies very rarely have any graph of what it's actually gonna be used for. Because Edison made a list after he did the funnograph of what he thought is gonna be used for. Because Edison made a list after he did the funnograph

of what he thought is gonna be used for. And number one was preserving the last words of the dying to, like he did, to be transmitted. He thought that was a number one use. Yes. And that he had 9, 10, and 10, like 11 and 12. He was like, maybe you could do music. So he was clueless.

And that's true now with AI and other things is the people inventing it don't really know what it's going to be used for. We only figure out by using it. Yeah. And so I'm always amused that that that that Edison would have been shocked by what we actually used as invention for. No, and this sort of publicity stunt he was doing with the device has these major historical implications. Exactly. I wrote about Florence Nightingale and my book on Courage,

and I'm just checking some facts and I pull up her Wikipedia page and it's like, lo and behold, there's a voice recording of her and she's giving advice. In the thing, you're just like, you know, I thought this was this historical figure. That was, you know, although you could read and study that there was some uncrossable chasm between, and then you're listening to their voice. And suddenly you realize that these people were people

and the distance between us and the past evaporates very quickly. Yeah, yeah, no. And it's true. I mean, I got some cheap Roman coins. And to hold Roman coins in your hand and to realize that people 2000 years ago were holding these, there's something we do. Yeah.

Brad right. And you know, and either lost them or they stored them somewhere to be found. And that's just, I don't know, that connection is just amazing. I have a, a segment ring, not not this one, that I don't wear, that connection is just amazing. I have a, a signet ring, not this one, that I don't wear for this reason, but it's a Roman signet ring. Like, you can just slide on a piece of jewelry. This, it's from like 300 AD, so late in the empire,

but you're just like, a ring is a ring. The same type of jewelry still exists. Fingers are roughly the same size. And you're wearing this thing that a human being, hey, should I wear the ring today? Or I'm a bit swollen and the ring is tight today. Just like people are people. And as much as technology changes

Life doesn't change that much right that's Jeff Bezos is a little secret He said he wanted to build a business around what doesn't change. I love that and say what doesn't change is people Always want better selection for cheaper Okay, I can build a business on that well, I mean, I think this is why people go, how did the Stoics last? You know, how did the how did they endure? And it's like, they're giving really practical advice about dealing with the things that are outside of our control which fundamentally remain unchanged.

Advice, and this is what I love about your new book, advice is advice and people are people. And a lot of stuff changes, but a lot of stuff changes but a lot of stuff more stuff doesn't change than changes. Right and that's true by the way for technology. Most of the technology in the world that we counter is old stuff. Yes. Wooden tables, pipes, electricity, plumbing and that's the majority of stuff. Yes.

And that's like Alan Kay's definition of technology was anything that was invented after you were born. That's what we tend to think of it. Yes. And Danny Hales modified that even further saying, it technology is anything that doesn't quite work yet, which is an even better version of it. So, but really most of technology is old, old stuff that have been around. Well, I've talked to people a lot about this, people love audio books, people like eBooks. I go, this is also a piece of technology. Oh, absolutely.

And it's really good. I wouldn't say it's a flawless piece of technology, but it's a pretty good one. And it solves most of the problems of reading. Not all, like the problem of I want to read lots of books in care of them with me, that it doesn't solve that very well. But like as far as I'm sitting down to consume one piece of long form literature, the book does an amazing job. And I liken it to, you know, like in every sci-fi movie,

like it's like the door is like, yeah, and then here we are living in the future and we're still using wooden doors with knobs. Because it mostly solves the problem. Like it doesn't need to be that fancy for most of what music works. Except in a hotel or somewhere where there's lots of people and it's still a door.

I mean, it's not some massive electronic first-field door. And you know, books, it's not it's not some massive electronic first-field door. Right. Right. And, and, you know, yeah, books, books do a good job. Right. And we're surrounded in the studio for the books, but what was interesting was that books did lots of jobs. And they began to shed some of those jobs, realizing that they were, it was not the best for them. So a telephone directory was like in a book form, but it's like, I don't really, the book saying, you know, I really didn't want to have that job of being

a telephone director. I should that one. Sure. You know, and so they were reference books, reference books. It's like, no, that's not really the best thing for a book. So we're going to, we're going to give that job to somebody else. And I think that, yeah, you're right. The idea of having a bound sheet with things is good. And I think we're going to come to the e-book version of this, as I'm hoping for, a leather bound, you know, 100 page flexible thing that is readable like this with ambient light, but you know, click it twice and it's a different book. Yeah, it's a different book.

Inside, but I have a really good one. I love the feel of it. It's really well worn. It's just the size and the format that I want. And I'll have a couple of them, have different sizes and brands, whatever. And that form factor is just luscious. But there is something, Mara was about this permanence of books, and we did a, we, it long now, did a whole investigation about long-term digital storage, which is hugely problematic, because I don't, because there isn't. There's long-term digital moveage, I call it moveage. The only way is you have to keep moving it, migrating it from one platform to another

because the platform go away and they're not very stable. So if you are thinking about long-term storage of information, actually, paper is very, very good if long you keep it dry. When the funny thing is also, I end up bringing a lot of older books, books that are out of prints, going Amazon or get some book. It's either $200 or it's two cents, right? Because either nobody wants it and there's a lot of them or everyone wants it and there's not a lot of them. But I'll get these books and I go, oh, the technology was actually better before.

The book had lay flat binding. It was not mens. It wasn't printed overseas, it wasn't meant to be disposable. You were meant to have this book in your family for a generation. And so actually some of what we don't like about books is just a function of modern,

you know, sort of commodity publishing. And not the collected works of Mark Twain or whatever, which you bought from a subscription salesman in 1902 or whatever. I have a two story library with a catwalk and the whole thing. And at one point, maybe about 10 years ago or something, I actually thought about deaccessing,

getting rid of most of the books, moving to digital. But I changed my mind. I went to a library run by Prerognajur, which is I walked in, it was like, if something felt like I was in, there was like a beam of light going into the universe. It was this sense of power. This was the PowerPoint,

like almost like a sacred PowerPoint of the world, because he was collecting weird, femurous stuff, like telephone books, things that people would normally throw away, zines, all kinds of stuff. And so I realized that actually we're at peak book right now. that actually we're at peak book right now. The books will never be as inexpensive as they are right now because they'll stop printing them over time. They'll be fewer printed. And there's already fewer printers. Exactly, right.

And the ones that are around will become scarce or over time. And so like books that have never been as expensive or cheap as they are now, and they will not ever be again. And so I decided to keep my library because I think over a long term, they're gonna become a little scarcer. The paper books.

Books are kind of in, you could say like in a state of managed decline. And every once in a while, during the pandemic, when books became popular, or when the Obama once in a while, like during the pandemic, when books became popular or when, like, the Obama's published a book and they're like, they sell suddenly, like, five million copies of something that, you know, it actually, it clogs up the printers because there's only a couple of them.

Exactly. And there's only a few major publishing houses. Right. And like, like, I have a book coming out in May, and then I have a book coming out in the following May, the Daily Dad book, and then this will be the third in my Virtue series. But like the publisher's already like, we have to lock in a date if you want a slot

from the printers because consolidation, and then also like elimination has meant that there's fewer and fewer printers. And so wow, yes, we're at this weird convergence of people still read quite a bit. The trending signs are not in the right direction. And so, you know, as they try to get as much in real time inventory as possible, they're reducing the, the capacity to make new books. Right.

So let's talk about your new book. What is the difference between feedback and advice? Because you talk about, as one gets advice, how one asks for it can determine whether you're getting feedback or advice. or advice? Feedback will often include criticism and complaint. Advice tends to be a little bit more positive and forward looking and because someone's giving you advice, it's usually not about like something you did wrong

in the past, it's usually about next time you do this or it's, here's what I would do. It's forward bent a little bit more. And therefore it's, I find it's more actionable. So yeah, I think that's a good point because people go, oh, I'm gonna go get some advice or they, for feedback. So it's like, if you put up a request

to give you feedback on the book that you just published or article you wrote. That's likely to include a lot of criticism or things that people didn't like, which is a good signal. But if you asked for advice about the article you just wrote, I think the other thing too, this is I did not thought about this. I think there is more of a sense of trying, there's more empathetic because there may be trying to put themselves more in your position or more thinking of you as you're giving it more than you would do if you asked for feedback. Well, I think what I take from that is how you ask for advice, who you ask advice for, how you frame what you're looking for,

determines the quality of what you're gonna get. There are enough. So like, when I, I'll give you an example, when I was thinking of opening the bookstore, I had a bunch of people who were like, oh, it's very awesome, you should definitely do it. It's exciting. And I obviously thought it was a good idea.

So I said, I need to get some advice or feedback from someone who's gonna give it to me straight. And so I called Tim Ferris, who I thought would actually tell me, I basically called Tim and I was like, tell me why I shouldn't do this. Of all the people who tries to eliminate hassle, you know, expense, imposition, outsource stuff.

Yeah, things efficiency. And also just approaches it from an unusual angle. I was like, this is a person I want to get advice and feedback from. And so I basically said, you know, why should I not do it? Right. Because so many people had said I should do it. Yeah.

I might have gone to Tim for the exact opposite reason. Also, if everyone said it was a bad idea, I would think it was a good idea. But Tim actually gave me a great advice. He basically said, what I would do is whatever you decide, like think of it as an experiment. So, I'm opening a bookstore forever. He said, think about it as, I'm opening a bookstore for two years. Sure, sure. Which is also the advice he gives people we're thinking about starting a podcast. He says, say I'm going to do six or ten episodes. Sure, sure.

Don't extrapolate out what the bird is doing. It's going to be forever. And then also don't just do one, and if it doesn't work right off. But I think deciding whether you're trying to get confirmation or disconfirmation, do you want what that person would do or do you want them to think about what you should do? And so all advice is not created equal. How you get it and who you get it from is really important. Well, what you're suggesting, and I totally agree,

is that there's a skill in asking for advice. Yes. Not just giving advice and skill, but there's skill for asking and receiving advice, which is absolutely true. And I think that, yeah, it's like lots of things you can get better at it. Yes. And I think that, yeah, it's like lots of things you can get better at it. Yes.

Well, and first off, the idea that advice is really important because I think a lot of people go, I'm gonna figure it out on myself, I'm auto-diagnetic or whatever, where they don't like, they just, I marched to the beat of my own drummer. There's a line from Bismarck, I love, where he says, any fool can learn by experience.

I prefer to learn by the experience of others. To me, advice is how you save yourself painful bumps on the head. Sure, sure, sure. Like, hey, there's a beam. Be careful, you know. And so I think advice is critical and yet probably weirdly undervalued and underrated because people

prefer to learn it by painful and error. Sorry, by painful trial and error. Right, yeah, exactly. And no, it's, and that's sort of why I began, I began jotting down a little bit of advice and my assignment was to reduce it to a sense to take a whole book. And have a gram. And you're making it to a little proverb, a little axiom, a little thing that I could remember, that I could repeat to myself as a reminder to change my behavior. Sure. So I remember at Wholeworth, there was this thing, and Herbert, I think, first told me,

which is, oh, oh, oh, like, when you're invited, when I get invited to do a talk, to go somewhere, to have coffee with someone, to meet whatever it is, ask yourself, would I do this tomorrow morning? Yes. That was like, because most of the time it's like, no, I don't want to do it tomorrow morning. So those are the compass that kind of immediacy test, don't want to do it tomorrow morning. So those that can pass that kind of immediacy test, you're golden. And so when I get the invite, I repeat that all the time. That's really interesting. What I want to do that is tomorrow morning, I don't think so. So that's the kind of thing that I was trying to do was to put a little handle on it by making it memorable and something I could repeat to myself.

It's also transmittable like a tweet very nice, but it was actually originally thinking of it just as a container for me to hold it and grab it. The best version of that I've heard is hell yes or no. Right. Either you really want to do it. They're really serious, right? Yes, yes, yes, yeah. And that's very, that's very equivalent. Yes.

And all these have ancient sources and ancient parotages, a lot of them. I mean, I don't, I made up some of them, but I'm sure deep down, maybe I heard it. I don't know, but that's the whole thing about influences. They can't be unraveled. Or someone, yeah, independently, like convergent evolution, multiple of time. All people came up with the same concept. Right, so my study of science is that the norm

for all invention, all creation is simultaneous and independent, that is the norm, yes, not just in science, but also in the arts. And so, yes. So I tend to think that things are created in the comments. We can give a little bit of a tiny short monopoly to encourage people to make them real. And then you go back to the comments as fast as possible. And I think, obviously, not just seeking out advice from people.

And I'm going to get into some of the specific advice. But to me, reading is the great, or talking about books, reading is the way to not have to learn everything by trial and error. General Mattis has talked about, he basically says, people have been fighting wars for five or ten thousand years. They've been writing books about it for about five or 10,000 years. And he goes, if you're a leader of troops in battle, he says, it's unconscionable for you to try to learn lessons by experience, because that experience is paid for in the blood of other people, maybe even yourself, when someone else has been in more or less the

same situation, not only learned a lesson, but then wrote a book about it, or someone wrote a book about that experience. And so advice isn't just a nice to have thing. It is, there's almost something selfish and reckless about not availing yourself of the fact that somebody, I like to say, somebody either smarter than you

or much dumber than you has been in the same situation and you should benefit from what either of them did. Or both of them did. Exactly, yes. I think you're 100% and then there's just in terms of not a device, but reading one of my bits of advice is that the best schooling you can give your kids is to read to them by far.

It'll be more impact than anything else that happens in their lives if you read to them. And it's so easy to do. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo, two, one, two. There y'all. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur,

and a Virgo, just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag, love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host.

I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out

of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby Mrs that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and at-freed on Amazon music.

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to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So one of the pieces of advice I liked in the book, you say, don't try to be the best, try to be the only. What does it mean? Don't aim to be the best, aim to be the only. There's, there's a lot there. So the, I mean, there's a natural drive for us all to be excellent, There's a natural drive for us all to be excellent, to push towards becoming the best in things.

Indeed, elsewhere, I talk about trying to become master of a skill and that's actually a better way than trying to find your passion in the beginning. So this idea of mastering and become the better and best is a natural thing. But the idea is that it's not far enough. And the holy trinity of anybody's career is to work on something that you love, to work on something that you're good at, and then the work on something that's well-paid. And if you can have that overlapping, then then diagram like your golden, but there's another level beyond that. And that other level is being the only person to do something or being to doing it in your

own way that no one else can do or to be to do something that nobody else can do. And that is where at that point, your true genius is because everybody has a different face and a different combination of talents. And there'll be some combination of talents that each person is capable of. And I truly, truly, truly believe is unique and different. And we should enjoy. We should be sharing it. There's kind of a, you need to do your art, because otherwise you're selfish,

you're keeping it from us. And so there is a sense in which aiming for that position where you were the only person doing this, or you're doing it the way that only you can do, is one, good for society, we're not replicating, and good for you because you are now in position where you don't have competitors, you don't need a resume, right?

And so the thing about that that I want to emphasize is that that's a very high bar, knowing that, coming to understand what it is that you can do different or better about something. For many people like myself, takes almost a whole life to get to. You can be going in that direction, but to actually come up, you're actually never even done.

You're always figuring out. And I've had the honor and the luck to be around, very remarkable people, some of them very famous, billionaires, and they're still working on, having a million dollars doesn't answer that question of what it is. So list of billionaires. Exactly. And so, so this, this aim to aim to be the only and it's related in some ways to another piece of advice in the book that's maybe careerist, which is that if at all possible, you want to work on something that nobody has

a name for what it is that you're doing. Sure. That kind of takes a long time to explain to your mother what it is. And that means that you're kind of working at this, there's a greater chance that this is going to be something about you and your only skills. But for sure, you'll probably be, you won't have that much competition, and it's much more likely that that is the place where a breakthrough will happen or the frontier, because those usually happen out in front of language. I do agree it's the work of one's life to

sort of do the thing that only you can do to sort of carve out your niche to have the field totally yourself. But there's also something actually very attainable and accessible about it. If you think about it, it's like each of us have a totally unique sort of set of DNA that's never existed before, we'll never exist again. We have a totally unique set of experiences. We exist in a moment in time that will never exist again.

And so it's almost strange, if you think about it, that we're all the same, that we all work on the same things. It's almost as if we are working to deny our own unique and inherent God-given monopoly. Exactly. It's somehow we're going the opposite of the direction that we should go. 100%. Like, you want to be in your own movie. You don't want to be an extra in someone else's movie. And that's often where we are. But the thing about it is, you're right. In some ways, when you are there, it seems inevitable and obvious.

And it's the easiest thing to do because it fits all your natural abilities. But the difficulty is not actually being there or getting there. It's the fact that we are seduced and distracted and in some ways following these other examples of how people become successful. So all these other examples like, well, success is being a basketball star. Well, that's a very limited amount of people and or success is being a movie star or YouTube

star, whatever it is. When to figure out an alternative form of it, if you could get there, it'd be totally natural and insane, really inevitable. But finding that means that you're going to have a path that probably will have detours, sidetracks, turnarounds, setbacks, which every single remarkable person I know, that is the course of their life. They didn't get to it straight away. Well, it takes courage to sit alone, to stand apart, right? There's weirdly, although you would think

you would want the field all to yourself. There's a certain amount of comfort and safety Although you would think you would want the field all to yourself. There's a certain amount of comfort and safety in the competition or the crowded area. This is why, like, confirmation is kind of like you're confirming. Yes, that you're right. When I went to my publisher, I said, hey, I want to write this book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. They were not like, chitching, you know, like,

it seemed like a crazy idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took half for that book that I took for last one. Now, tons of people write books about this. That's why it was popular. And so, like, the loneliness of doing a thing that either no one is doing it, or very few people are doing it,

or no one in your area is doing it. That is, obviously courage is charging, only a sole person into the field of battle and running into a burning building, all of that. But there's also just the courage of like, I'm gonna be myself, even though that's weird, even though the odds are stacked against that, even though people are telling me it's a bad idea,

you have to be comfortable being the only one doing the thing, which is weirdly the scary part. And it is. It's not often comfortable, particularly when you're starting out and young and you haven't had any successes, you will certainly question yourself all the time. I mean, I'm totally crazy as this stupid. And by the way, it may be. It may be. It could be terrible.

And that's the thing. And this is the weird thing, is that you're kind of navigating the thing where sometimes you actually do want to be listening to what people say around you, because here's the thing. You cannot do this on your own. You cannot find your place and who you should be all by yourself. We are just too opaque.

You need your family, your friends, your clients, your customers. You need everybody around you to help you find it because I still had to have an editor on that book. Exactly. I had to, you know, I had to find an audience. Right. You know, you're not doing it for an audience of one

or it's probably not too commercially viable. Right. You can do things for audience, but in terms of helping you find out what it is, you need that feedback from outside because not only we pay to each other, we're a pay to ourselves. And I know this from my work with the quantified self and other stuff. It's like we just, we don't have an easy access to even how we make our own decisions, how we proceed. And so we need these outside signals to help us make those

choices and we go through. And so if you are really, I mean, doing it by yourself or on your own, you want to be careful about that. You want to do it in the right way. I think solitude is absolutely necessary to be creative, but being lonely is not. There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. Well, and there's a problem I find with a lot of creative people, they go off in their cave to make their thing, because that's what they,

that's their image of the audience. And then they make a thing that's only relevant or interesting to the people in that cave, which is one person. You have to have a relationship with the audience, a connection to the audience, a back and forth with the audience, if you want this thing to matter to other people.

Now, it could just be this is solely a cathartic creative experience, but if you're trying to make something that helps or works for other people, you can't- Just have other people involved. Yes, exactly, right. Yeah, but if it's an audience of one,

and I do art for the audience of one, and by the way, most of the 30 million AI generated images created each day have an audience of one. Sure. You ask the computer to make something for you. It's just a pure pleasure of seeing, it's like going out into a metal doing a hike, coming up, lights perfectly against the blooms at that day for that hour and no one ever see the

game, but you were there and you enjoyed it. So audience of ones is fine, but if you were doing something where other people are going to be valuing you, then you have to involve them in the process. Right. Yeah, I heard Peter Tio say one time, uh, competition is for losers, which I love because talking about courage, it's, it's harder to run a race against yourself, right? It is. It's harder when there aren't people keeping score.

Telling you, you thought you succeeded, you didn't succeed, you're a winner, you're a loser, right to race against yourself, to hold your own standards, to do a thing where you're the only one doing it. That takes a kind of a fortitude, a strength, a self-awareness, a self-containment that people who just want to do what's popular or easy just don't really fully understand.

Yeah, it's tough. So you, you, yeah, you have this paradox or dilemma, these cross tensions of, um, being smart enough to, um, ignore other people when you need it and smart enough to pay attention and quit when it's not working. So this idea of, you know of you know the virtues of quitting are Part of this process and and you know you were talking before about These iterations that's another piece of advice is that you want to prototype your life instead of making grand plans Yes, this idea you're kind of inching iterating towards things

Instead of making long gonna make a bookstore and I'm gonna move there and it's gonna be forever, no, no, no, it's like it's a trial, it's experiment, it's a prototype, you try something that works, we go forward. And that idea of prototyping was absolutely something I wish had known when I was younger, because I've been a maker all my life, but I didn't know about prototyping,

I didn't know about this iterative process, even in writing. I thought that if you made something when all the way to the end and it didn't work or whatever, that was kind of like a failure. The new model is you build one to throw away. You write a first draft to throw away. You evolve and iterate towards it.

And that's been transformative. And I really wished I knew that when I was younger. Yeah, I think if you have more of a vague idea of where you want to end up and you're open, it makes it easier for you to admit error, makes it easier for you to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, and it also makes it easier for you to course correct. Right. Whereas if, like Paul Graham says, keep your identity small. Right. If you identify with everything that you're doing, if there's a very specific outcome that you have said, this is success, anything short of this or different than this is not

success, it makes it hard for you to go, I really hate being a lawyer. Right, right, right. I probably shouldn't have gone to law school, you know? Right, right, right. But the ability to be like, no, actually, here's what I, here's what I want my days to look like. Or here's what I really feel fulfilled. Or, you know, there's actually seasons for things

in my life. If you think about it that way, I think you have the ability to adjust and you're flexible. Whereas, you know, if you're identifying with any one thing too strongly, you're sort of blinding yourself and then you get stuck really easily. Well, that also extends to beliefs and positions. So the danger of having your identity around certain of having your identity around certain axioms or conditions or doctrines is that you can't change your mind because then you have to change your identity. You want to have your identity revolved around your character or values that aren't going to change. And focus on the things that don't change.

Exactly. Right. And so the other thing too, I would say in the same kind of vein, is that So the other thing too, I would say in the same kind of vein, is that if you should be really careful if your positions on one situation or one question can be determined by your position on others, you are likely to be in a grip of an ideologue. Yes. Right? Sure. Real people with complex personalities and many dimensions to them are going to be slightly unpredictable because they're thinking for them

literally thinking for themselves and having decided and they're not going to be consistent and so and so and also by the way if you're too predictable it's too easy to be replaced by AI. One of the reasons, and the modern world, that you're going to want to have a sense of not being that predictable by your things, is because you'll be more you. And so there'll be less likely that you could be imitated. Yeah, I think about this in terms of what you're reading. Like how often do you read things that you disagree with? Right, how often do you change your mind? How often do you find that you agree

with this person, with this school of thought on most things, but not these three or four things? And that's a sign of intellectual independence. It's a sign of thinking for oneself. And it's also, I think, a sign that you're being active, as opposed to you've solidified, and this is just simply who you are. Now, you can get into trouble, right? Because I think, to me, actually one of the dangers

of our time is not just group think or misinformation or disinformation. And I think you see this most in Silicon Valley is this kind of contrarian thinking, which can serve one really well. But if your thing, like Mark Twain says, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority pause and reflect, he doesn't mean, as a knee jerk reaction, on the side of the majority, pause and reflect. Right.

He doesn't mean, as a knee jerk reaction, think the opposite of the crowd at all times. He's saying, pause and reflect. Right. Most of the time, you actually probably should end up on the side of the majority. You should have a couple things that you're contrarian about, but it's not just, I do the opposite of what most people do. That's actually less independent, because you're almost being wrong on purpose. Right. We actually, I mean, we were talking about how most of the technology in the world

is old. Most of the things that everybody knows are true. Yes. Everybody knows. Most of the things that everybody knows are true. And as Carl Sagan said, you know, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein and laughed at Bozo the clown. Yeah. They laughed a lot of people who were totally wrong. And so, yeah, being crunchier and contrary about everything is ideological only dogmatic as anything else. I think it's interesting in real time to watch Elon Musk sort of do this on Twitter about everything is as ideologically dogmatic is anything else.

I think it's interesting in real time to watch Elon Musk sort of do this on Twitter where you're just like, that can't possibly be a position that you thought yourself into. I think that's a position of you taking the opposite of the position of someone you don't like or trying to be someone that other people don't like, right? And that sometimes can work.

And sometimes it can work in a huge way. It's almost a dangerous lesson for a maverick thinker. And sometimes identified as a maverick is like the thing that got you there, it's like you can only be a maverick about a couple big things. Or you end up being a crazy person because you've rejected all the foundational tenants of Diojeny's The Synic is fascinating, right? The philosopher who lives in a barrel, questions,

it's like, yeah, he was right about some things, but he also lived in a barrel. You end up becoming the person talking to themself on the street. You can outsmart yourself essentially. Yeah. So the ability to change your mind, my little saying is that your only as young as the last time you changed your mind, and you do want to be able to change your mind, my little saying is that your only as young as last time you changed your mind and you do want to be able to change your mind, but as you said, you have, you can only be a heretic to some degree, you have to have some orthodoxy to function because most of the things everybody know or certain true, if you're questioning everything, that's wasted effort. It's unproductive. And so that kind of light touch that stance of getting into this, all the things we've talked about, they're tensions. There's an art to this.

It's not a rule bound thing. There's trade art to this. There is not a rule bound thing. There's trade-offs involved. So it costs you something to be contrary. Yes. So you kind of live in the budget. I'm like a jury in budget. I got a, where am I going to spend it on? And I have this idea, my definition of heresies,

are things that you believe that the people that you most respect do not believe and You probably have a Contrary in heresy budget to spend on and so where is it worth Taking a stand kind of investigating and putting your energies because it will cost you something to do that Yeah, I was talking to a friend who's sort of always questioning stuff. Right, right. Do you have to do it that way? What about this way?

Someone was saying that he was very so critic and I agreed and I said, I just think it's worth pointing out or as a reminder, they did kill Socrates. You know, like you have a limited budget. Yeah. You know, you're only gonna be put up with for so long. And you got to figure out how to choose your battles.

Exactly right. And it's not so much the questioning. It's like, again, it's the only thing you can do. So I mean, the great people to work with are people who do, maybe question a lot. But then, I think what they call it, loose, there was something like open debate and then high commitment. And this is what we tried to practice at once.

The opinions strongly held. Well, at least the opinions strongly held is one of it, but there's another sense of it within a group, which is that we're gonna kind of question everything, but once we decide we're just, there's no questioning anymore. And that's sort of what I have found in working work. Yes, there's this period of time,

we're questioning everything, but once we decide, there's this period of time, we're questioning everything, but once we decide, there's no more questioning, we're gonna go forward. Because what's obnoxious is always questioning, always questioning, always questioning, and then not standing for anything, there's no there there. And so that's almost in a way the easiest thing to do

is what about this, what about this? You can't do this, that's not gonna work, where it is. So yeah, no, so it's like, this question, everything, and there's this, and it's very much like the difference between the creativity, creative, and the editing, yeah, functions that you do, there's a moment where everything's up for grab, this blue sky, no judgment, it's kind of question everything, and then in the second phase, it's like, no, this is gonna hammer down, no dissent, we're moving forward, we're going to optimize.

And then you go to the next period where the next level and so can now we're open up again for mistakes, whatever else. And so I think you do have to divorce those two functions almost. What advice do you have for making better decision? Let's say big decisions. So that's a good question. The biggest decision I made early in my life that I could have used more advice on was a decision you also made, the decision to drop out of college. And I realized that there wasn't anyone who could really give me good advice on this

thing. Sure, sure. I think we kind of touched on this. It's like an experiment. You want to do it so that you keep your options open. You don't want to burn bridges behind you. You don't want to step into something where you reduce your options open. You don't want to burn bridges behind you. You don't want to step into something where you reduce your options.

So for college these days, taking a gap year, there's one way to kind of try out this idea of maybe I shouldn't be here at all. Let me see what it looks like if I don't have, can I keep myself busy in moving forward? So gap year would be one way to drop out of college without burning, you know, leaving options open. Getting married people, you know, they live together, they have all

kinds of ways in which you're going to try that out. So I think, I think that I would emphasize this idea of prototyping your life rather than making grand decisions, make iterative decisions that you could reverse. And most decisions, except for, I don't know, getting a leg amputated are pretty reversible. I didn't understand that things are reversible, is really freeing and probably a good piece of advice onto itself, right?

Because when I was dropping out of college, I remember I went to the Registrar's office and I said, I'm here to drop out of college and they, I remember I went to the register as a office and I said, I'm here to drop out of college and they were like, that's not a thing. They were like, you can fill out this form and I actually just found that they were like, it's $60 to pause your classes. And then they were like, you can come back literally whenever you want. Yeah.

For the next 10 years. You're right. And I remember thinking, well, I wish someone would have told me this, but sometimes, or the last week when I was torturing myself, and then sometimes when I went to my parents and they more or less disowned me for this life-changing decision, which was actually just a one semester break on auto-re renew, right?

And so we tend to think, oh, if I do this or that, that's me forever. And it can never be undone. And when you talk to people that, I remember when I was thinking of dropping out of college, I talked to someone who was like, they were like, I got mono in college, and I had to spend a year in the hospital or something like that.

I maybe it wasn't mono, but they were like, I spent a year in the hospital when I was in college, so I graduated in five years. And he was like, do you know how often this has come up in my life? Never, right? And realizing that, oh, even if it took me 11 months

to figure out this was not the right decision, it would be a blip. Right, right, right. And so when you understand, hey, I'm quitting my job to start a company, it feels like the craziest thing in the world to do. And then you talk to a million people who've done that exact thing for some of them it worked out.

For other ones that didn't work out, you realize, oh, the stakes on this are actually lower than I thought. Right. So I'm trying to think of how this is my middle assignment to myself is how I reduce this all to this little tiny phrase. And it's sort of like the best way to make big decisions is to not make them big. Just to make the littlest decisions. Yeah, to reduce all your decisions

to a series of little decisions. And I think that's what you're doing with prototyping is you're trying not to have big decisions by making a bunch of little decisions. That's right. How do you lower the stakes? So then you can actually be more rational because you're not thinking,

well, is this worth my entire future? Your entire future's not actually on the table here. Exactly. The next six months are on the table. Exactly. And if something outside of your control disrupted the next six months of your life, you go, okay, right?

Like, I thought about that during the pandemic It's like hey like yeah if I got sick for a year or if we took a year off and traveled We go what an amazing adventure, right? This is so cool. Yeah, or or hey, I'm so glad I survived Right, right, right. I wouldn't be going the last year of my life. I'll never get that back I wouldn't be angry, right year of my life. I'll never get that back. I wouldn't be angry. Right. Sure, sure. And so finding another, the other thing I think, what's another way to phrase this?

What's another angle to look at this? Not the one that's intimidating you or scaring you or whatever. That's one of my pieces of advice for young people again is to spend a year or something like that. Living as cheaply, simply as you possibly can. I mean, like living in a tent, like almost like a homeless person, living in a tent, cabin, whatever's eating beans and rice, spending almost nothing, use a local library, whatever it is, just like see how little you can get away with, because that'll be your worth case scenario and you

have lived through that and when you have to make a decision about well what if all fails and I don't have any money in your income it's like you've already practiced that you're not and it won't be scary you'll be empowered it'll be an adventure at that point and so that's another way to kind of take the wind out of these big decisions is to rehearse what the down view, the less optimal scenario, what that would look like, and you'll discover that it ain't so bad. Seneca says, we should actually do that one day a month. Because you, one day a month, you should wear your worst clothes, you should eat the worst

food, you should sleep on the floor, you should, he says practice, like, you know, basically the life of most of the people on the planet. And then he says, when you get through it, you can go, this is what I was so afraid of. And I think that is really important. When I think back to, you know, when I was sleeping on a futon, on the floor, and making no money, and it wasn't just not that bad, I loved it. I think back to those as the good old days, right? And then you go, oh, actually,

if there was a lean year or a disruptive year, 20 years from then, I wouldn't, again, be thinking, what a tragedy I would be going, that was an experience. Exactly. And kind of aligned with that is another piece of advice in the book, which is that, if you can, while you're young, spend a bunch of time doing things that look as, that don't look anything like success, that are crazy, demented, unhinged, completely unprofitable, out of the ordinary, uncommon, dumb, a waste of time, all these things, the further they look like success, the better, because as you go on, that experience will

become your touchstone and the thing that you will return to and oftentimes some basis for your later success. What? Speaking of parents, my next book is The Daily Dats. It's one piece of parenting advice every single day. What advice would you specifically give parents? Sure, sure, your parents are three kids. So there are some parenting advice in the book. One of the ones that was sort of surprising to me is when we were kind of disciplining setting up household rules, we let the kids choose the punishment for the thing. And they were much harsher than we would. It's like, okay, here's what it is.

Like, what do you think should be the consequences of if you know, you were to break that rule. Yeah, and how should we do it? And they're kind of like they're going through it and they're saying, oh, I wish you had candy or no dessert or whatever it is. Okay, and that's that and when you have them participating in that it's very powerful. There's buy-in. There's buy-in. Right. Another bit of advice, again, something I wish I'd known earlier, I almost have a regret about it, but it was to manufacture, to invent as many rituals as you possibly can.

Traditions. Traditions, rituals and stuff. And I ritual is almost defined as if you do it three times in a row. It's a ritual. And it doesn I ritual was almost defined as if you do it three times in a row. Okay. It's a ritual. And it doesn't matter whether it's like deeply symbolic or religiously significant. It's just something you're doing and the key thing is there has to be anticipation.

On Christmas morning, this is what we do. Yeah, or in Sunday morning, for 20 years, every Sunday morning, I made pancakes. That was something, and like, there was something comforting, grounding, incredibly anchoring about something as simple as that, that on Sunday morning, there will be pancakes, you know, I'm be making pancakes. And so there's Austin Cleon does the pizza night on Friday night without fail. There's something about that. There are even things like that, or there are seasonal things you do, or there's annual things, or things that you do at a birthday, or there's things that you do to evoke, start the games, Richard.

We say a grace before every meal at dinner. That's our ritual and everybody's ready for it. Everybody participates and that's what our family does. And so you wanna have things and the related bit of advice for parenting is that is thinking of the family as a unit and trying to develop an identity to the family that the kids can join so that becomes their identity. So that they, their identity is widened to include the family.

And that, again, is very anchoring so that our family does X or a family does not do X. And being able to actually articulate that, that that's what our family is and does. And that's, as they get older, becomes more and more, again, of an anchor in their own identity is part of, I'm part of a family and our family does this or not that. There's one I have, I actually have a coin on my desk, so I look at it all the time.

And it just says, all time is quality time. There's one I have actually have a coin on my desk. So I look at it all the time and It just says all time is quality time. Yes, it's all your your your sign bill. Yes I don't know if you heard his rant. Yeah, he said garbage time first quality time He says forget the quality time give me the garbage time And so I shortened that for me is that it's all quality time. That being stuck in traffic is quality time, sitting on the couch is quality time, going to school is quality time. And he, like, as you think about it, it was like a parent like,

we're gonna take them on this big trip. Like, we're going on vacation. And then you forget that driving to the airport is part of the trip. And being stuck at the airport is part of the trip. And waiting for your airport is part of the trip. And being stuck at the airport is part of the trip. And waiting for your bags is part of the trip. There's no moment when the quality time, the gains, or ends, it's all quality time.

If you choose to one be present for it, not be an anxious, nervous, stressed out mess, which I am find myself following into it all the time. And if you're not, you know, in some anticipation mode of, I can't wait till we get there. Because you don't know if you're gonna get there, but you know you're all in the car, strapped in right now. Let's enjoy that.

Yeah, I think so. It's, I was just gonna say something, but it's that idea of the way I would say it in my book is that you should spend half as much money on your child and twice as much time as you think. Time is children are just not at all generally sensitive about lack of money or how much money you have. This doesn't register.

What they are paying attention to is how much time you're giving them, which are very sensitive too. I saw the thing, it was like, what was a rich kid growing up? And it was like a kid whose parents picked them up from school, right? And because they had time, like they had freedom. It might actually be, those might be the parents

that actually didn't have any money. Because they weren't sending a nanny or something to do. But it was like, I love that in two senses. One, it was time, but two, Rich was like, you got time with your parents. Right. So I actually have a different definition. I think the Rich have money and the wealthy have time as much easier to be wealthy than

rich. By that definition, I am the wealthiest person that I know because I have had a life where I have constructed my life to have total control of my time. That has made me wealthy beyond belief. I was I was with a bunch of billionaires doing a walk and I was boasting to them that I was a wealthiest among them because they were all bound by their billions. Yeah. You know, what are you doing after this? Oh, I'm getting in my private jet to fly to this other thing to fly to this other thing, to fly to this other thing. When are you seeing your kids? Yeah. No, I can very safely tell every single one of your listeners that do not get a billion

dollars. Do not try your hardest not to have a billion dollars because that is such a burden and a burden on your family and it does not answer the questions of what you can do that nobody else can do. Well, I was actually just writing about this for the Daily Dad email recently. I was, it's like, we all know that getting a billion dollars or having generational wealth tends to wreak havoc on the family.

The kids fight about it in a bill, they get a cocaine addiction, they drop out of private school. We think about that. And we know that it's like, we know that, hey, there's there's rapids and dangerous water fall ahead. And yet, what are we doing? We're paddling as fast as we can towards that exact outcome. Like you go, what are you doing?

I'm trying to make more money. We all want to hit, strike it. Right. And even though there's another part of us that deep down knows that might well be the worst thing that could possibly happen to your family. Yeah, I was just trying to find in my little book about my advice about this, but here it is. Aim to die broke.

Give to your beneficiaries before you die. It's more fun and more useful to them. Spend it all. The last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce. So yes, it's like you don't burden your kids. I like wearing buffets a bit of advice, which is I'm gonna give my kids enough money

if they can do what they want to do but not too much that they can't do anything or don't do anything. I have two maybe rules you can tell me how you think about them as sort of epigrams or rules for parenting. Number one is number one I got it from from Bruce Springsteen he said we can choose to be an ancestor to our children or a ghost. Do we haunt them or do we guide and inspire them? And so I think about it, like, while you're living, while you're parent, you're living and after we're gone.

But like, so what are the decisions you're making today? Or tomorrow or after we're gone? Are you a thing that haunts your children, or a thing that inspires and guides and supports that? Sure, sure. You're going to be the voice in your child's head. You think about where the voice in your head came from. It's eerily similar to your mom's voice or dad's voice.

Is that a positive voice or a negative voice? Yeah, okay. All right, good. What do you think of that? Yeah, I think it's true. I'm just thinking of my own parents right now. My parents, one thing I did learn from them was I paid much more attention to what they did than what they said.

And that's how we raise our kids. And the interesting thing about this book is, I didn't give any advice to our kids at all. We never said any of this. You tried to live it. We tried to live it, and it worked. It really struggled with it. You showed them that you were struggling with it.

And I actually, people have asked, because I wrote this kind of originally for my children as adults, trying to put it down, the question was, well, what do they think of us? And so I sent it to my son and I said, people want to know what you think of this. He's 26. He said, well, you know, I mean, he, no prompting at all. He said, I never heard you say of this, but you actually were trying to teach us that. Yes. And I thought, oh, wow, okay, that worked. That really worked. The stokes would say, don't talk about your philosophy, embody it.

Yeah, exactly. And that's really, really true. They're going to pay much more attention to what you do than to what you say. And so you want to embody it. And that is, that's really good. There's also, maybe this is your next book, there's Grandparent Advice.

There's Grandparenting. And here's my, I've now a new grandparent. And I've been around my mother-in-law, lived with us for years. And so we've seen grandparent in action. And here's the thing that I say about grandparents, which is when you're to, grandparenting is not parenting, is grandparenting. And that when you at parents house, parents rules, grandparents house,

grandparents rules. So one of the things is that you, we can have different rules. Then our kids do for theirs, but when they're around us, they're going to follow our rules and whatever it is, there are intensities. And so that's another level of how do you be a good grandparent? I have thought about why do some, why do one, why do kids seem to like grandparent

sometimes wear other parents? And why do parents who struggled end up sometimes being great grandparents? Yeah. I think suddenly they've stopped caring so much about things that never mattered. You know? Like you're right. And I think that's a lesson of how often, they've stopped caring so much about things that never mattered. You know, and I think that's a lesson of how often,

like as a grandparent, you're not, if you're doing it right, you're not sweating what they're wearing, you're not sweating this or this or this or that. And you're much more accepting and your love is much more unconditional, which it should have been all along. Yeah, I think, you said it, We've always been grandparenting our kids. Yeah. You've been, that's what an an ancestor to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

More as an example, a more of a, and not a strict disciplinary, right, right, right, we're a tyrant. Yeah, that we didn't, we didn't parent our kids. We just grandparented them. Oh, yeah, that's great. That's great. I'm gonna write about that.

Yeah, the other one, there's a song by the highway women, and they talk about the crowded table. And I've taken that to be like, what is success as a parent? It's hard to define what success is, right? And so I think a lot of people default to, as they do in life, we're talking about, how much money does my kid make? How many grandkids do I have, let's say, or did they marry the right kind of, do they marry up or down, you know, are they in a prestigious professional, no? And to me,

success, when you're older, if you're still lucky enough to be here, success is going to be your kids are around. They want to be around you. Like they could live all over the world, but do, do you have to call and hound them to come home for Christmas? Are they secretly miserable the whole time? They're visiting or do you have, do you have people around you? There was a writer I was talking,

I was reading about once, he was talking about how, you know, his kids were all home for something. He and his wife went to bed early and they could hear their kids talking in the living home for something. He and his wife went to bed early, and they could hear their kids talking in the living room for hours. And he wrote, it was the poet William Stafford, and he was saying, he turned to his wife, and he said, this is the eulogy that we get to hear.

His kids having fun together in their house after they've grown up and moved away. And so I kind of, that's what I think about the decision, when I think about who I wanna be, and how I wanna parent, especially when they're a little bit older, and I'm less in charge, is I wanna, it's not that I wanna be their best friend, but I want to sweat the right things

so that when they have choice, they choose to be around. Exactly, you're 100% correct, and that's our experience as well. that when they have choice, they choose to be around. Right, exactly. You're 100% correct, and that is, that's our experience as well. And I also think that going back to the credit table, there's one of the affordances that, if you are lucky to afford, is to have the extended family.

Cousins, grandma, if they have them around, there's nothing that I think helps that towards that kind of a success. Because that's part of what we found. We had a large extended family. My nephews and niece lived with us different times. And so even though we had only three kids, they were part of a larger group of siblings. And that is some that also, again, going back to your role, it kind of eases your role as a parent because you have these cold paradigm.

Basically, it's not just you parenting them, but the other adults in their lives, which are really essential. And I love the picture of that as a success state, a victory state, is to have your kids, which our kids do. They want to travel with us. They want to go with us when we're going somewhere. Why can't we come? They're adults, right?

Right. They call you to tell what's going on, ask for advice. Exactly. Everything like that. And so, so yeah, I think that is a good, I think that is a good thing to aim for. And if I may offer some unsolicited advice to parents, have as many kids as you possibly can have,

you will never, ever regret it, those additional ones. Absolutely, and there is no population over population problem. Sure. It isn't there, and it's certainly not in this country, have as many kids as you possibly can, and everybody's situation is different, but you will not regret that. And the kids love it.

They just, our young son was asking us for a little brother all the time time because it was so much fun. So as we wrap up, you've written many books. This is a book sort of advice. I imagine you're starting to think about legacy. How do you think about, and we talked about vanishing China at the beginning, like nothing is here forever. How do you think about the ephemerality of life?

Obviously, I think one of the most interesting things about the Stokes is the idea of momentum. Sure, sure. The tempest few get. How do you think about that? I've been thinking about my own mortality since I was very, very young. And I've always been aware of it.

I had a religious conversion when I was 29, and I had this assignment to live as if I was gonna die in six months, which I did. And that book of the bicycle across is actually my journal of coming to my last days. What changed for you thinking on in terms of a six month time? Well, the thing I realized as I literally did everything to prepare for that

is that there is this, the future is taken away one day at a time. It's like what you're going to not be here, you don't think about the future. And I realized how vital it is to have a future. It was really very, very, I was word sobering, despairing, not to have a future. So I became much more interested in the future after that, after that rebirth when I regained my time. But so I feel I have completely rehearsed already. When I was already on, I rehearsed like being prepared, saying, I mean, I am ready.

I don't want to go, but I am prepared to go. And so I have a countdown clock, which I've been running. I started, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, and it took the actual table of my average lifespan for someone born was taking that date and turning it into days left that I have. And on my computer it counts down each day. How many days I have on average, you

know, typical thing. And it's very, very sobering and very, very motivating with 5,000 AD two days or something. All the stuff that I need to do so much to do. So I find that that kind of focus. And there are two kinds of death. There is the death where you kind of expire your gun. But more tragically, I guess, is the idea that at the best, maybe three generations of people might remember who you are, but very, very unlikely that generations beyond that. When the folks would say, you're not going to know whether it's three generations or 50 generations. Like, their posthumous fame is not a thing. Legacy is not for you. Statistically.

Yes. I'm saying, yes, there could be somebody, you might do something amazing, but statistically, you're not going to be remembered beyond the third. But I'm saying that even if you are, it's not for you. So for that to be the thing that you spend your life trying to, if you spend your life trying to beat that statistical average, that is a waste of your life. So, I think about that a lot. And what it drives me to is, I take a single day for granted, I try to really think about, is this what I want to do today? Because I have that choice.

I'm lucky enough to have that's decide what it is I want to do with my time. And so I'm very, very aware of it. And I also, a number of years ago, did a very large oversized graphic novel called The Silver Court, which was kick-started in successful at one level. And that was about robots and angels. And the idea was that there was these other realm of intangible beings, we can call them kind of souls, that would in soul each human being born. So the souls came from these angelic beings. And the angelic beings were all, they spent all the time,

they were completely obsessed and craving embodiment. Because when you had embodies, when you had the sensual thing of enjoying the mangoes and bare feet and the grass and the whole thing, and they were just like, oh my gosh. And but more importantly, when you're embodied, you have impact. You can affect things.

You can hit somebody, you can influence them. You can't do that when you're all disembodied light and stuff. And so they were just weeping at the fact that we are squandering our ride here. They were just like, oh my gosh, if I had a body, this is what I would be doing. And you guys are complaining about whatever it is or Twitter. It's like, come on.

You know, you have the thing everyone, every other animal on the planet would show that. Every angel in the heavens is dreaming of. And so I'm very aware of this sort of the shortness of a ride. The fact that this is the most incredible ride that we'll ever have and trying to, you know, optimize, maximize that for that time that we're here. And so that's what I think about. No, that's beautifully said.

And I imagine at the end of that six month exercise, six months and one day, that was an incredible day. That day when the end that you'd imagined, and when you got the future that you had written off, like Senaqa says, if you go to bed each night going, that's the end, I've lived my whole life. You wake up the next day and you're, well, it doesn't matter

how bad the weather is or how bad the traffic is. You're like, this is wonderful. No, it was a total rebirth. You hear the Christians talk about the beam. That's what I was. I was born again. I literally went to bed and when I woke up, I remember opening my eyes and I suddenly was like being born.

And I had the rebirth experience that it did not have when I converted. And so, um, and so I, yeah, so that kind of looking forward. And I know that, you know, sometime my going to wake up and there will be the end. But, um, I feel as if, um, I'm not afraid of that. I don't welcome it, but, um, that's not. I feel as if I'm not afraid of that. I don't welcome it, but that's not distorting my time here. Well, it sounds like you've got a great momentum worry practice, but I thought you might like this. This is a coin.

Challenge coin. A challenge coin, but it says momentum worry. And then on the back has a quote from Marcus Rios, he says, you could leave life right now. He says, let that determine what you do and say and think. Wow. Well, thank you. This is really, really great.

The way Santa Cahs talks about it, which was life changing for me, if he's somebody, he says, he says, don't think of death as something that happens in the future. He says, think of death as something that's happening right now. Yeah, just because the time that passes belongs to death. Yeah. It says because the time exactly belongs to death. Yeah.

And so actually we're dying every minute, we're dying every day. Death isn't a thing you do one time. It's a thing you do literally every second that you're alive. Right. And that changes your relationship to time and walks you into the present. Right. Right. So let me read the penultimate littleultimate little bit of advice to it. Your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you've fully become yourself.

That's my goal. That's perfect. That is that is success that very few billionaires have probably been able to say and yet anyone, no matter what their circumstances, disadvantages, error, religion, that it's equally accessible to all people. It's not to mean it's easy, but it's accessible to all people and probably has more of an impact on the world than some great fortune or invention. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Ryan. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.