Episode 32

I'm SIGNIFICANT! w/ Crystal Kirk [The Zero Dot Podcast #32]

June 17, 2026 · 01:29:31

I am significant.

What about me?

All that and more here at the Zero Dot podcast.

up.

Welcome, welcome ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, boys and girls, everyone of all
ages.

It's good to be back.

It's been a good two weeks since we were back here in the studio and we took a little bit
of a break and we are back now in Zero Dot Podcast land for a special summer season.

That is right.

Every single week.

We're going to be making stuff in the Zero Dot Studio, but every other week is when you,
our general population, will be able listen to our longer extended versions of our Zero

Dot podcast episodes.

For our Patreon members, they'll be able to get access to even more content on the weeks
in which we don't publish an episode, more information about that later.

But before we get more involved, you know, I don't think I'm alone in the studio.

I think there's someone else here.

Who's that?

Silence beckons.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have the smartest person in the room, literally,
literally the smartest person in the room, my lovely wife, human resources aficionado, and

overall spicy literature enthusiast, Crystal Kirk.

Crystal, welcome aboard, my friend.

Hello.

How are you doing?

I'm doing good, how are you doing today?

I'm doing fantastic, thanks for being with me today.

thank you for having me.

I mean, you're always with me, but I mean, in this particular space, it's nice to have you
here.

Thank you for welcoming me into your studio.

Oh, thank you.

I worked really hard on this space.

know, it's beautiful.

What she's not telling you, listeners, is that this studio is a hodgepodge of things all
across the room and it's messy and the cat is lying right behind me and there's fur

everywhere, but it's fine, it's fine.

It sounds good.

And if we had our cameras up, it would look good as well.

Well, it's a work in progress and this half of the room looks amazing.

And the other half of the room...

The room that I'm in, Yeah, we don't need to see that.

Let it be known, Zero Dot patrons and listeners, that I always make sure our guests have
the utmost incredible treatment.

I myself, that doesn't matter, but my guests have to have an incredible treatment.

Well, folks, I'm super excited.

Yes, this is my lovely wife.

Is this nepotism?

Sure.

But also, more importantly than that, she literally is the smartest person in the room.

She is my confidant in many things, and she has been a silent partner in the Zero Dot
space.

So we really appreciate all your support.

kindness, candid feedback, and all other things included in that regard.

with that said, honey, you've been a listener of Zero Dot.

You know how this works.

We're gonna start with some good news today.

Some good news.

I think we need some good news.

Love the good news.

All right, let's get in with the good news.

Good news hails from one of our lovely, wonderful bastions of health, vaccines, and all
good things that happen thanks to medical science.

Cheese over at Blue Sky, also known as sailorrooscout.bluesky.social, they say, good news!

A new cancer treatment has demonstrated unprecedented results in a large trial for cancer
patients whose disease has become resistant to chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

Tumors shrank in over a third of participants.

with 15 patients experiencing complete eradication of their tumors.

Wow.

What about that, honey?

It's amazing because I remember when cancer was just like basically a death sentence and
it's amazing how far we've come in cancer research.

Seriously, zero doubt.

We've mentioned a couple of different breakthroughs in this particular capacity, but this
is even more exciting.

mean, knowing that when you have cancer, it's not just, oh, you have cancer and the
likelihood of you surviving is, we can go, you have cancer.

and it's more positive.

There's more of a leaning slant we have historically in the past couple of years for sure.

Thanks to medical research and science of this like these results were presented in
Chicago at the world's largest cancer conference, the annual meeting of the American

Society of Clinical Oncology, also known as ASCO.

And I will be quoting what she says here.

She says researchers have hailed, quote, unprecedented, quote, trial results that show a
triple action cancer injection can eradicate

entire tumors in patients.

Wow!

In an international trial spanning 11 countries, the injection was offered to patients
whose cancer had spread or come back and whose diseases had failed to respond to other

treatments.

The injection, known as amavantamab, shrank the tumors of more than a third of patients,
with dramatic changes seen within weeks.

And in 15 of them, as said before, researchers found amavantamab had melted away their
tumors altogether entirely.

Holy cow.

Melted away.

That's really vivid language.

It is melted.

I wouldn't have used that language, but I guess, you know, this is scientific literature
here.

Melted.

Melted away.

I like it.

Eradicated, dissipated, whatever the case is.

Wow.

That's incredible.

You'll find more research in our description here.

We'll send you the link on that, but I think that's fantastic good news.

In the world of RFK Jr.

the world of that, it's nice to know.

But in spite of all that, the science community, the medical community, incredible
bastions of just progress and change for everyone around are still making a dent for good

old team human.

And that makes me pretty happy.

We love that.

I love some good news like that.

Yeah, we do.

And I think that's all we got to talk about.

I think that's it.

That wraps up.

Our podcast is over.

Nothing else to discuss.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're done.

I think that's it.

Nothing else is worth talking about at all.

Never, ever again.

Except maybe like one thing.

Uh-oh.

One thing that's right.

We were talking about this earlier, We now have as of this recording our very first
trillionaire in the planet our very first trillionaire I'm referring of course to Elon

Musk founder of SpaceX Founder or adopter?

I don't know did he I don't think he he took Tesla from someone right somebody else
invented Tesla He purchased he purchased it.

Thank you um and you know

the progenitor, the lead, the quarter master of Doge.

uh Sure.

Not to be confused with the meme coin, which, know, cryptocurrency crap all aside, you
know, it's a funny meme coin.

But yeah, he is a person, isn't he?

He is an entity.

He is an individual that has a lot of money now.

Yeah, he sure is.

Yeah.

And uh what I was fascinated by as I was looking into this a little bit further, uh

There's a graph that the BBC has dropped kind of showing the comparison of his net worth
over the past couple of years.

I'm showing my wife right now who's in the room with me and we'll drop a link of this in
the description here.

But we'll see here from like 2020, he was like well below the other known billionaires,
Bernard Arnault, which is chairman and CEO of LVMH, as well as Jeff Bezos.

But as things scored on, this is the scary part from like 2025 onwards, which is right
when he started owning Doge.

his net worth has skyrocketed and specifically once SpaceX and XAI merged as well as
reports of SpaceX going public, the stock soared astronomically to like a straight line

from like, he had a net worth of somewhere between 600 and 800 billion, now he's over a
trillion.

Like overnight, it just happened.

And why am I talking about this?

you know, I wanna believe that if you work really hard, you earn your money, all that good
stuff.

But a trillion dollars is a lot of money.

Like a lot of money.

I don't think I'm saying anything controversial by saying that as much as I want every
person to chase their dreams and do whatever they wanna do, no human being on this planet

should singularity own a one trillion dollars.

of either money, assets, net worth, all that other good stuff.

uh But we know how this stuff happens, right?

I mean, there's a system in place, and my wife and I have talked about this quite a bit,
where if I'm a rich person and I have a net worth in a company that I've made an entity, I

can go to the bank and borrow against my own net worth without getting capital gains tax,
having to pay taxes on it over and over and over again.

And that is the funniest thing to me because the whole purpose of stocks is because their
stocks are not realized yet.

They're not realized until you pull them out.

Yet the banks and how we borrow loans, consider them semi-realized in that capacity.

so people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, uh other billionaires of their ilk are able to kind
of weaponize this over and over and over again.

And so I bring this up not to say, my gosh, boo, trillionaires, but I wanna just give you
all.

everyone that's listening and everyone that's watching, kind of a little bit of a
solidarity in the fact that if you are a tax paying individual, which 99 % of people that

are listening to this podcast are, you're doing the good work.

That's what should be done.

If you're paying your taxes, you are doing good work.

And I am reminded of the great wise words of specifically Rutger Bregman, who several
years ago, back in 2019 at the Davos,

World Economic Forum spoke about this particular topic and let's take a quick listen right
now to a summary of what he said.

Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.

em So again, I can't change what Elon Musk is doing.

I wish I could.

em Elon Musk is an entity that has a net worth far beyond anyone's dreams.

We can say all our hate speech to that person if we wanted to, but I want to thank every
single person on this planet who is paying their taxes.

Because if we want things to be done in a way that helps everyone, that's how things can
get done.

When we get upset at our local and state governments for

not doing what we want them to do, the question is do they have the resources to do them?

And if they don't have the resources, the question comes, how can we do whatever we can to
make sure we pay our fair share?

So when we speak about trillionaires and we speak about the fact that Elon Musk, despite,
we could talk all day about his character and things we feel about this person, but just

any person having trillion dollars, what do you think about this, Well, um it's a really
wild proposition to think of.

trillion, like even million is a little mind boggling to the vast majority of people,
would say.

Billion, even more trillion, I cannot even fathom.

uh But to your point, there is a game that is played um for people who are wealthy or very
privileged.

And, you know, they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

But in this particular case,

It's kind of easy to also hate the player.

Yeah, maybe we're allowed to hate both, right?

Yeah.

Maybe we can hate both.

Hey, why not both?

Right, why not both?

We can have it all.

I mean, we are in an interesting time right now where, you just said it, don't hate the
player, hate the game.

like, when we recognize that the game isn't fair, there's two groups, there's groups that
are going, okay, this isn't fair, let's avoid that blind spot and let's play the game.

quote unquote fairly.

And there's one group says, nope, if that's the way the game works, that's the way the
game works and all that matters is winning.

um And in the world of sports, I'd say, yeah, sure, absolutely.

Whatever technicality you gotta do to win, absolutely.

But this isn't a sport, this is what Simon Sinek would call the infinite game, which we've
talked about before on this podcast.

The infinite game of we all wanna make it through.

And uh what scares me about...

People like Elon Musk, not him specifically, but people like him.

And to be fair, this is a minority of people.

This is not the majority, but some, there's a minority of people who believe, the goal is
not for all of us to make it through.

The goal is for me to make it through.

It's a very solid point.

um That's kind of why some of these like estate taxes, um tax percentages are not as
popular because people think, yeah, I could be a millionaire and I wouldn't want my taxes

to be that high.

trillionaire billionaire But it's very unlikely for everyone especially in the way that
our common economy works To ever get that high Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it was 2020 I

was looking at like retirement stuff and it was like Do you want to retire comfortably
make sure you have like 2.5 million dollars something like that?

Which is a crazy high number but that's even more than it used to be to only in what maybe
2010 it was a million

So 2.5 and then in 2025, it became 5 million.

In five years, it doubled.

So imagine, mean, everyone listening and everyone watching right now, like you're trying
to think, how do I get ahead or how do I make sure I have a comfortable life?

And there is no answer for you.

It's just scramble until you die.

And that's because of stuff like this.

Yeah, so once again, thank you for those that pay your taxes.

I'm proud to be partnered with my lovely wife who's sitting here in the studio, who we
agree in paying our taxes.

We don't do the game.

em There are games to be played by the way.

We could make an entity and we could make Zero Dot entity.

I could make it and I could borrow against it.

I could do funny, weird financial stuff, but we don't do that.

We play the game straight and I'm proud of that.

em I don't have an answer yet for the trillionaire, but I have an answer for all of us as
we keep doing that, even though it's...

It sucks.

And it is true that for a majority of us who are paying the taxes, we are probably being
taxed way more than we should be.

Because the trillionaire isn't getting taxed the way he is.

They are because of the way they're able to play that game.

But the only way we can, as he said, as Rutger said, uh avoid broad social backlash.

Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.

And it's an old, old, old issue stemming from not even the 1950s, but before then as well.

I know that there's the idea of, know, no taxation without representation and we were very
much against taxes.

That's how the American dream got made.

But in order for social programs and things to be made, that stuff has to happen.

mean, yeah.

So um to Elon Musk, I'm not going to tell you congratulations because you don't deserve
it.

em I'm sorry.

We live in a world where that's even possible.

but I'm glad that enough people are having eyes on this, we're recognizing it.

And hopefully something can be done on the backend to kind of adjust that wherever it can
be.

em That being said though, question for you, Crystal.

There's been this idea of eat the rich, obviously.

And there's always been the idea of like, there should never be a billionaire.

You should never be allowed to have a billion dollars.

I feel really confident.

No one should ever be allowed to have a trillion, period.

I feel very confident in that.

I've always been 50-50 on saying no one should be allowed to have a billion, but what do
you think about that?

I think that...

I think that inflation is going to change this for us year after year.

It's so hard to get a billion dollars.

It's difficult.

I mean, I think probably once you hit a million, it makes getting to a billion easier.

compounds, yeah.

But it makes me feel like a billion dollars is just so much money.

It's more money than you could spend, isn't it?

Yeah, I think you're right.

Absolutely.

It's way more money than anyone can spend.

What I keep thinking about is like, I think...

Someone's gonna have to quote me on this, but like in 1938, 39, when Batman first came out
on Detective Comics, I think he was a rich man who might've owned a million dollars,

might've.

Then later, as inflation has gone on, we've had to change his story, so he was a
billionaire, holy cow, or a multimillionaire, then a billionaire, now he's a

multibillionaire.

now...

I mean, he's gonna have to be a trillionaire He's gonna have to be a trillionaire, right?

The next time they reboot everything.

Just to make it the narrative of Bruce Wayne being that mega rich makes sense.

And I'm not at all saying that I would condone Elon Musk and being a trillionaire if he
suddenly was Batman on the side.

I'm not saying that at all.

But yeah, inflation is also a big thing.

And I think that's probably my biggest criticism of the idea of no one should ever be a
billionaire.

Yes, right now, no one should be a billionaire.

But 10 years from now, billionaires, a billion dollars might not mean as much as it does
now.

mean, a dollar doesn't mean

Five dollars doesn't mean as much as it used to.

um We've gone out to eat a couple of times recently and like, you we're not going to super
fancy places and the bill is extraordinarily expensive when it wouldn't have been that way

a couple of years ago.

Meanwhile, you know, I was lucky to uh work in a nondescript redacted, I can't say more
than that, but a government entity building where the food was all.

It was subsidized and was all prepared by professional chefs.

And I paid like $4.65 for this lovely rice and edamame and veggie and seaweed, like
caramelized onion, like bowl thing that I would have paid $20 if I was at the airport, you

know, for.

And I paid like $6 for a black bean burger the next day.

Like there's something wrong with how we're doing all of this.

And of course, you know.

even though you are the smartest person in this room and I'm the second smartest person in
this room.

Although I'm not as smart as our cat, That's not true at all.

Doom has one brain cell and I'm pretty sure the other cats use it.

Yeah, for those that are listening in right now, we are in the studio and we have a big
fluffy Maine coon who is dropping in and out into our studio saying hi.

We're doing this because if we don't, you will hear the cat literally scream through the
walls.

So if you hear a meow or a

a row here and there, that's doom.

But doom does have one brain cell.

So I at least have more than one brain cell.

We won't be able to solve this today.

But again, just wanna highlight that as well.

I know it's on a lot of people's minds right now.

And I think at the of the day, a lot of the social issues we're dealing with, we are
incentivized to tribalize it between us versus them.

And it's over things that...

don't move the needle that much, but you know, it does move the needle is the ultra rich
versus everyone else.

We are not ultra rich here in this household.

uh And it's unfair.

You know, we can talk about that some other time, but you know, my wife and I have a
certain story and a journey how we got to where we are.

And we're very proud of that, it was, it was part fortune.

It was part luck.

It was also part, a lot of hard work.

And the fact is a lot of people didn't get that same opportunity, aren't going to get that
same opportunity.

And then you get Elon Musk who,

not only grew into wealth with blood diamonds in Africa.

I don't know, when is it enough?

I guess that's my question.

When is enough enough?

Because that's my question when I talk to people who are real entrepreneurs, who are real
business people.

I mean, that's what, I'm sorry, that's what capitalism is.

There is no enough, there is no ceiling.

And that's why I never became hyper into business because I'm like, well, there's a
certain amount of money that I need and I want that will make me comfortable.

Any more money than that will cause me more stress and I don't want more stress, so.

Let me define what that is.

And that's a pretty foreign concept with some people I talk to.

uh We've interfaced with some people who struggle with value in their life.

They struggle with meaning and they don't know what their purpose is and like they're
depressed right now.

And so their only thing they're shooting for is, I should just make more money at my job.

Like, and that's where they're gonna try to get their value.

And that's their only way of finding purpose.

And that upsets me on a lot of different levels, but.

At the same time, it's like, I don't blame them when we don't do a good job as a quote
unquote society.

Giving people value and purpose beyond money.

We think money is the golden ticket, the green ticket, as we say.

yeah.

So just want to talk about that.

Thank you for level setting with me on that one, one should be a trillionaire.

Hot off the presses.

No one should be a trillionaire.

Billionaires, maybe in 10 years.

Maybe.

then, know, millionaires, know, uh a million dollars is going to be the equivalent of like
a hundred thousand dollars in like a few years.

That scares me.

Isn't that scary?

That's very scary.

Just frightening.

Jeez Louise.

I do want to say that if you are seeing a lot of Elon Musk stuff, you want to balance your
scales a little bit, right?

You maybe want to go check out his daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson.

Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute.

Yeah.

um transgender, uh model, LGBT rights activist.

Check her out because um after seeing something that is uh gonna bring you down, I think
you need to level it out again and kind of get to somewhere a little bit yeah, they're

publicly clashing.

said he was tricked into authorizing um the gender affirming care when she was about 16.

He was tricked into it, of course.

She denies that, obviously.

ah Yeah, let's throw a spotlight to those that are fighting the power, even among their
own patriarchy.

Am I using the word right?

Sure.

Yeah, among their own family.

Yeah.

And just being like, nah, nah, that ain't the way.

that reminds me of who's the heiress of like the Disney fortune?

What's her name?

That's a great question.

I think it's Abigail Disney.

Is that her name?

Yeah, Abigail Disney, she's been a staunch person of like, no, tax me more.

I shouldn't have as much money as I do.

She tries to give her money away.

She's a activist, philanthropist.

Yeah, and she's fought a lot of these endeavors.

So again, we love it when family goes, hey, I have an unfair advantage and that shouldn't
be right.

And how can I fix it?

And not that I'm a big fan of Mark Cuban at all.

uh Mark Cuban has some wins and some losses in my opinion, but one of the things I like
about Mark Cuban is he says, look, I want to feed the poor, tell me how.

Answer that question for me.

Because he'll ask the question, how do you do it?

And no one can answer for him.

And he's like, no, literally.

And uh he does have a competitor to, what's the Trump version of Trumpcare?

What's that called?

Oh, I don't know, but.

I hadn't heard of this.

He has a competitor where he's trying to give people affordable medicine like, you know,
diabetes medication and so forth, over the counter without having to go through all the

rig and roll of going through your insurance company or whatever.

I it goes without saying, but diabetes medication, life-saving required medication is
absurdly expensive.

know.

It's obscene.

And again, the argument is, not the argument, when you get to the...

penetrating root of it is there are people that you interface with and again, this is a
small minority, but they're the people that have power right now.

The minority is, well, not everyone should make it to the finish line.

And that is where I get angry and upset and I go, that's not, that's not only zero dot,
that's not team human.

That is, that's things I won't say on this podcast until I get a couple more drinks in me.

Yeah, ah so.

Shout outs to Abigail Disney and shout outs to once again.

ah It was Vivian Wilson, Vivian Janet Wilson.

outs to those folks um who fight the good fight and let's keep fighting the good fight as
we carry on.

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Peace.

Brings us to our main topic once again.

As we talk a little bit more about those that are the ultra achievers, those that are
making bajillions and trillions of dollars, and we incentivize people to achieve and

achieve and achieve more, what does that say about our place in the universe?

What does it say about our mental health and everything in between?

I'm so fortunate that I'm accompanied by our guest here, Crystal Kirk, my lovely wife,
because she is, in my opinion, the person that I credit and attribute so much to.

helping me kind of massage through this particular topic.

The topic which is of course, our own significance in a vast, vast universe with eight
billion people on this planet and millions upon billions of other planets across the

world.

And yet all of us or many of us, I won't say not all of us are penetrated with this
thought, this idea, this value system of not only am I significant, not only do I deserve

things, but not only should I achieve things.

I'm often thinking about Arthur C.

Brooks, Harvard University happiness professor, literally studies happiness.

And he often speaks about uh achievement from a place of like trauma.

says, know, technically what people who have a high achievement complex of which I have
one now, I didn't used to, uh get it because that's the only way that they were able to

experience love from their parental figures.

And when they achieved something.

you're only worth something until you do a thing.

And he talks more about that.

But as I think about that, I think about my own journey, you know, and I think about, I
remember distinctly the time in my life when, you know, I didn't have any desire to

achieve anything.

It would be nice if I was a writer and that was about it, which meant just writing a
couple of books here and there.

um And then at some point I got shamed into not doing enough from my teachers.

from my peers, from even my, in no disrespect to my parentals who are listening to this
podcast, but even that to an element like, you're slacking behind in school, you're not

doing enough.

And then I learned this skill that, well, if I lean in and I just go hyper productive and
I achieve the things they all ask me to do, oh, suddenly the monkey's off my back.

suddenly, suddenly I'm okay.

Suddenly you're not stressing on.

And then it became this volleyball effect of doing that, then not doing that, doing that,
then not doing that, and then really ramping into it in my professional career.

And then in the past, I would say 10 years, I've been doing a lot of healing outside of
that.

But as we speak about significance and we speak about achievement, I said before, I have
attributed you, Crystal, to kind of helping me even that out quite a bit, because I think

you have a healthier mindset about that than others.

So what is it that you've seen amongst peers?

people you know, maybe even with yourself when it comes to like this sense of, deserve
something, I should achieve things and I'm only worthwhile unless I achieve something.

That's a really solid question.

I think that achievement is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

And I think that, okay, I'm gonna bring it into a gendered thing.

I think that men have it a lot more difficult.

than women in this very small regard because women are told that to achieve, all they need
to do is get married and have babies.

Oh, that's it.

That's it.

know?

You had a baby, you got a ring on your finger.

Then you have done it.

You've done the You're done.

That's not really true to life or my experience.

I definitely when, I'll say when we got married specifically, I felt like, oh yes.

achieved, done.

Now we don't have to work on our relationship at all.

Now we don't, I've done it.

I'm, nothing else in my life matters.

Um, and you have that for about two minutes and then you realize that the rest of your
life has to happen and that, um, you have to do more or else you personally, internally

won't feel good.

You feel fulfilled.

There is a certain level of self fulfillment, self achievement.

um, self-importance that you do need to have a very low baseline of.

Um, you certainly don't have to be a trillionaire.

but you, uh, you know, you also don't want to be the person who is not doing anything with
their life.

Forward movement, forward momentum.

When I think about that, I sometimes get scared because it sounds like we're running in
circles.

Because if you have achieved something, what's the purpose of...

I'm not saying stop, but like...

I'm really sensitive to this idea of, gotta keep moving, gotta keep moving.

And I ask the question, why?

And no one can answer it beyond, you just have to.

And I see it as an observer of all these kinds of systems as well as people, I see them
just run in circles over and over and over again.

Now, on one hand, I recognize that...

Struggle is part of life.

We need a bit of that.

We need the feeling of effort.

um And we'll talk a bit about what I think about.

There's no such thing as truly wasted effort.

It's all worthwhile to life experience.

We need that.

At the same time though, know, how do we interface with that while also not doing
redundant work, but like, am I just running in a rat cage right now?

Or am I like actually moving the needle and going somewhere?

Cause that's always my question I ask all the time.

What's the point?

we all know what, you know, I'm considered a business consultant, a leadership consultant,
and business is just, you know, a funny way of pronouncing busyness in my opinion, right?

We're all trying to be busy all the time.

Like, do we really need to be that busy?

So how do we do that?

Because you spoke about our marriage and yeah, I remember we got married.

was like, yeah, we did the thing.

Wait, there's more?

Now what?

And it took us a while to unpack that lie, which was that marriage is not the thing.

Not the finish line.

It's not the finish line.

There's way more to it.

So how do we do that?

What think?

Well, it's um I mean, the true answer that is balance.

That's everything, right?

Everything is balance.

um Think about it, though, from a business perspective, like you said, um what happens if
you are somebody providing a service and you um you get it, you get all the customers that

you want, you get all the customers that there are.

What do you do next?

Do you improve the service or do you go into another vertical and get more customers?

What's gonna give you more money?

It's getting more customers.

Yeah, that's what the food industry is working on right now.

So like they figured out a way to make more food than there are human beings that will eat
the food.

And so what do they do next?

They went down the path of how do we make people eat more of the food than they actually
need?

How do we make it more appetizing?

How do we make it more?

you know, whatever, so you just over ingest more of it so you can buy more of the product.

And that's where I go, that's gross.

Like, why did we think that was, at what point did we say that was enough?

Back to our conversation before about children, when is enough enough?

You say balance, but like, what's the marker that make me go, that's enough?

And it's gonna be different for everybody, right?

So, here we go blaming capitalism again, but.

Capitalism.

This is the problem is that every business is trying to make the new big thing so that you
spend your money on the new big thing and the new big thing, oh, there's a new version of

the new big thing that you have to get.

Otherwise, who are you if you don't have the new big thing?

So that is a great question.

When is enough enough?

It's never enough in a capitalistic Western society.

Yeah, it's never enough.

Yeah, for sure.

What spurs this conversation that we're having is you and I, went to an arts fest recently
and we saw incredible, amazing booths of amazing people making this wonderful art.

We bought way too much art.

And by too much, I mean not I mean, maybe we don't have enough wall space for the art, but
we need more art.

But there was one piece that we loved and it was a recreation of one of my favorite comic
books of all time, Calvin and Hobbes.

And it's Bill Watterson's iconic frame where uh Calvin is staring into space and you see
all the stars and the galaxy.

And he screams really loudly, I'm significant.

And we thought that was just beautiful.

And we loved it so much.

We took an entire walk down the entire artist alley, which was like a mile and a half of
like, it was a long strip.

And we said, let's think about it.

then we circled back and said, no, we got to get that.

And we bought it.

So it's a wood carving, wood burnt carving.

And I'll probably send a photo to our producer, Daniel.

And if our lawyers agree to using that as a thumbnail, we might use it as a thumbnail.

We'll see.

But I think about that a lot and like our need to feel significant and our need to keep
moving forward the needle.

You know, at the same time, the universe just shrugs.

whatever, you're going to die someday.

You'll be flexing the wind.

You're shouting into the void.

um The artist herself is scratched and burned.

Erica Voss, so check her out on Instagram.

Yeah, she's great.

She has a really beautiful one that's like venom.

And all of her stuff is on like real log wood pieces.

She's a beautiful venom piece that I'm a little obsessed with.

Yep.

It's etched and burned, so it's not imprinted.

It's not...

It's it's etched and burned.

That's the way it looks and it's beautiful.

um At the same time, when I say the universe shrugs are indifferent, the opposite end of
the spectrum is, nothing matters.

And that's, as you said, balance, but like, how do you volley between nothing matters to,
I'm the most important thing in the universe.

How do you do that?

I have thoughts, but I'm curious what you think.

I think as a...

I think it's difficult to.

it's difficult to regulate that within yourself.

So I am a person who does not particularly like to be in the forefront of things.

I don't really like to have this attention on me.

I like to be important.

I would say that that significance is both something that you're getting attention for,
that people are depending on you for.

I like to feel like I'm being dependent on.

I like to feel like the work that I'm doing is important.

um But I don't love the attention personally.

So I find a good balance in myself of doing the hard work and not getting the attention
for it.

Does that answer your question?

No, I like it.

I mean, it talks about the very human need that we all have, which is I wanna feel
important.

We all have this need.

I guess the question is, you say that there's a distinction feeling important versus...

having the camera on me, the lens on me.

And I feel pretty, feel pretty good about saying those are two very different ideas.

But they get conflated a bit sometimes.

get construed a bit.

um Again, I'm a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes.

And one of the things I loved about it was it married humor and comedy with philosophy,
which is a philosophy guy.

Seems like it's a match made in heaven.

Yeah, I don't know.

When I learned the game of life and by the game, I mean how to win, how to be productive,
how to do the things and get the job and get the...

Well, first of all, okay.

We come out of college, you and me, we're out of college and this is like near the 2008
financial housing crisis.

Like the workforce sucks.

mean, we're talking about PhDs and statistics getting the barista job over you.

Like this was that market, right?

And also, pensions don't really exist.

401Ks are the new thing.

Like, please buy into our 401K.

That's your only way of like financial safety and security.

And even with your fancy, fancy bachelor's or even double bachelor's, uh you still are
going to get make a minimum wage job if maybe just a little bit more than that, which is

the same narrative we have today.

But that was that we saw it firsthand.

would say that bachelor's degrees are actually not very important in a lot of job.

Not anymore, yeah, for sure.

Requisitions anymore?

Yeah, yeah.

At the time, I think you and I were at the cusp of, bachelors are fine, but you should
really have a master's.

Yes.

And now it's like- Oh, it's total reversal.

Total reversal, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And so we had to really fight hard to get any kind of job to pay the rent, pay the bills.

And I had a job that was very...

embrace uh the right to work concept, like they would just let you go for whatever reason.

um And so I guess I learned- You mean at will?

At will, sorry, at will.

I learned quickly that my only sense of security was if I achieved enough, was if I killed
it every single day, is if when they had to make decisions of who to let go, they couldn't

possibly let go of me.

Because of what I brought that was where I learned that and I had already developed
elements of that from both my parental upbringing and my school upbringing but like that

solidified that for me and At the time you and I were we just moved into a What was
effectively a studio but was built as a one-bedroom?

mean, this is the tiniest one-bedroom you had ever seen it was Barely livable, but we
loved it.

We made it work.

I didn't I remember

during this time, we paid for the rent, the expenses, everything.

We had a uh beat up car that we used and I walked to work all the time.

I think on a month per month basis, had...

maybe $200 at the end of the month that could be used for anything after everything was
paid for.

And I remember the decision I made, because at first I was like, okay, I gotta save it
all.

I'm like, well, if I did the math right and over a year, that wouldn't be that much money.

I did the math and like, we had like 200, maybe it was like 180 actually, hundred like $87
per month after everything that we could use.

on whatever we wanted.

Now that 187 was like, after the bare minimum of food of everything else, I could spend a
year saving all 187 or 150 of that towards savings.

And we'd have very little to speak of.

And we would be miserable that entire year.

Or we could invest in ourselves, work hard on our careers and use that 187 as what I
called play money.

Like we're going to play every month.

We're going to make sure that this one year that we're living this life is

It's going to be rough, but let's have fun while we do it.

And that was the first, that was a risk I made with both of our futures, but I believed it
paid off because it taught me the lesson that you have to invest in yourself.

And shortly within that year, I think I got two promotions and you got a promotion and
suddenly it was no longer $180 we had, we had a bit more money.

And then we moved to another place that was bigger and cheaper.

So we had even more money.

were working on our, for three units that we lived in, we were able to always move into a
cheaper space.

and we were making more money.

So we always had more of a safety net.

had more.

then at that point, savings started happening.

But those early years taught me very early on that the only thing that's going to give you
any kind of security is both yourself and your sense of achievement.

And on one hand, I'm proud of those experiences.

On the other hand, I think that set me on the wrong path for a while.

Why do you think it sent you on the wrong path?

Because in life, it's not a linear graph.

It's an up and down and sometimes it's a bell curve.

Sometimes you go down quite a bit.

And it has nothing to do with your level of effort.

Life just happens.

Yeah, life just happens.

And it also gave me the wrong impression of I can rely on external systems of validation
to give me my self-worth, which is not right.

I needed other people to approve of what I did.

I needed other people to tell me it was the okay before I could relax.

I remember many a time working on a really big case, a big caseload of work, very
complicated stuff.

And it would be like my Friday.

And I wouldn't be able to relax all weekend until the next, my equivalent of my Monday
until I got to see if it went through okay.

Cause I was so worried something would go wrong and then I would get a nasty email or a
conversation with someone.

I remember, I told you this story before, but maybe not in so many words.

So I worked in a travel call center company and I use this example in my workshops when I
talk to people about uh growth mindset versus fixed mindsets.

And I say, even giving someone a compliment in the wrong way can be a fixed mindset, can
be disastrous.

Right?

Like for instance, when I was going through training, they're like, Sam, I hear you're the
all-star of the group.

You're the smart, you're the hotshot.

You're the one that's gonna like ace everything.

And so before I know it, they put an attribute to me that I'm like the big awesome guy.

Now you have to meet that expectation.

And I think it was one of like the first days I went live on the phones.

I worked on a really complicated booking situation and I felt pretty good about it.

I asked for a lot of help, but I think I got it done okay.

I thought I thought I did everything per training and I come back the next day and I get
this long giant email of all the mistakes that I made and that I almost cost the company

$10,000.

with this big mistake that I made.

And I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Freaking out.

And keep in mind, another person who had been in my training, who I thought was perfectly
fine, she got let go like the day before.

They just walked her out.

No explanation, just whatever.

And I asked later, hey, why did they let her go?

She asked too many questions, they said.

This person asks too many questions.

So I'm like, oh shit.

So I get this long email and I'm like,

Panicking and I read a big response to my boss saying hey, I'm so sorry, but blah blah and
he's like we'll talk later That's all he says.

We'll talk later.

I Work a whole eight hours without ever talking to him.

I'm just by myself Just I can feel the room just kind of like give me this weird look.

Is it like it was like like a big stink and then uh My boss is about to clock out for his
shift and I'm still working for a couple hours and he passes by my cubicle.

Mm-hmm He almost passes me completely and then he

He takes a couple of steps back, puts his hand on the railing of my cubicle, looks down,
looks at me a little bit and just says this.

Well, you're not fired.

And then walks off.

So that told me they thought about it.

Yes.

They thought about firing me.

And that put me in a path of like, my God, I have to like, I have to really knock this
out.

That was what solidified the decision.

I was working two jobs at the time and I quit the other job just so could focus entirely
on this because I did not want to screw this up.

That other job, by the way, rest in peace, poor one out.

Blockbuster rental video.

That's how old we are.

You're not supposed to.

to carbon data is like that.

Yeah, it's fine.

But then here's the end part of the story, honey.

A year goes by, I'm about to get my yearly evaluation.

I have never received any positive feedback to my recollection.

I've only received all the times in which I've made little mistakes here and there.

None of them quite as bad as that one, but little mistakes here and there.

I have a new boss because my other boss transitions to, he gets promoted and something.

And so I've got this new boss, we talk and we have good rapport, but I'm not expecting
much out of this evaluation.

So we have our quick chat, whatever.

And he gives me the evaluation and it's out of like a one out of five scale and like
almost everything is like a four or five.

It's like through the roof incredible.

And he tells me like, he says his words are, you're one of my best employees ever.

You're the best employee we have in the entire company.

You're knocking the park, you're incredible.

And I'm like having a panic attack.

So like this entire time I thought I was struggling.

I thought I was failing.

Cause I got no kind of positive feedback prior to that point.

And now I'm like, wait, I'm doing well.

How long had you had this manager?

This new manager, I think.

A couple months or?

I think it was more than half a year.

And you didn't have any positive feedback until the review.

That's terrible.

None.

That was that manager style.

I'll tell you what's wrong and that's it.

We move on.

And he told me no news is good news.

So I'm like, okay.

But so that's told.

This is why millennials have anxiety.

Right, this is why millennials have anxiety.

But that told me, okay, this feeling of anxiety that I have for this entire year, never
knowing if I've got it, that must be the right feeling.

That must be the correct feeling I should be shooting for throughout my entire
professional career.

And so I think from that element, as well as...

some small stuff happening at home and some stuff I got learned in school.

I developed the tendency towards perfectionism and I'm very quick to tell people this now
knowing what I know now, but perfectionism is a response to trauma.

It's when something has gone poorly and you have made the choice that I don't want that
thing to ever happen again.

So what can I do to prevent it?

I'll do the most unrealistic thing.

I'll just be perfect.

And then it can never happen again.

And that was, that was my tendency.

And so

why we're talking about this and like significance.

At the end of the day, recognizing what happened at that company and how it worked, it was
a booming company that had a lot of revenue coming in and they had absolutely no human

resources practices.

had no humanitarian effort practices.

I remember one time an old supervisor I had just kept ruffling my hair constantly.

Like she would just pass me by and just give me noogies.

And I had to ask the director, can you please tell this person to stop doing it?

Cause I kept telling her over and over again to stop doing it.

And then she would come to me and says, I didn't know it was that big of a deal.

I'm sorry that, you know,

you're upset that you keep giving you noogies.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not into that.

Like, don't give me noogies.

Like, please don't do that.

And did they have a sexual harassment training at this business?

Never.

But again, this is how things propagate of self-worth or lack of self-worth.

And then for me, it's like, okay, I will become significant if I do these things.

I will be significant if I work my ass off, have this feeling of ambiguity, uncertainty,
power through it, and I see achievement, I will be worth something.

And then of course it happens and I still don't feel that I'm worth anything.

That's the programming.

That's what happens.

And again, that's why you're on this episode, because you did a lot of the heavy lifting
and helping me heal in that capacity.

And I would say that I'm still on the path, I'm still healing, I'm still working on it.

One of the things I've learned is...

there's like the 80 % rule that I believe in, like getting something 80 % good enough,
knowing that the amount of time it's going to take for you to get it to 90 % is double

what you've already spent.

Like using time as your barrier, that helps a lot.

But what I have learned is I have learned to take joy in doing things very intently and
intensely.

I take joy in really focusing on quality over quantity.

And even though that does lean towards perfectionism,

That joy, as long as the joy is still there, I don't want to take that away from myself.

So I bring this all up just to be like, you know, how do we fight this?

Because we have an innate desire as human beings to be significant, to bring value to
ourselves, to have joy and all these things.

Yet at the same time, the other argument is, well, nothing matters, so who cares?

And that I've always fought against because even if it's true that nothing we do matters,
we need some kind of fuel to make us keep going, to make life worth living just for

ourselves internally.

um I met an individual once who told me, Sam, I have no ambition.

I don't want to do anything.

I just want to smoke weed every single day.

And I just work just to make money.

And if I could, I would not try to make money at all.

I would just smoke weed all day.

And this person truly felt this way.

And I'm like, do you think that's healthy?

Do you think that's like, is that bringing you joy?

And he says, yeah, well, everything else sucks.

What's the point?

That was their attitude.

And I reject that notion.

Like you have to take some onus of that.

But as I say all that, what are you thinking?

Well, I think that saying nothing matters is, uh I very strongly believe that there is
something that matters.

Apparently weed matters to that person.

I do, I do understand uh it's, it's powerful to get out of the quote unquote rat race.

It's, it's powerful to get out of these corporate like cycles, we'll call them.

um of, you know, achieving and then needed to go to the next thing and the corporate
ladder.

And I think a lot of corporations do have this false sense of like, okay, well, you've
done really good in your job.

So obviously I should make you a manager.

And that doesn't always equate, right?

Like just because you're good at your job and you know all the things does not mean that
you're going to be a good manager.

And that is a big problem that people always face is like this person knows a lot about
the stuff, but they don't know a lot about being a leader.

or how to manage.

Yeah, it's the biggest foible we do.

You're really good at this one thing.

So now do a job that has absolutely nothing to do with that thing.

Good luck.

um Leadership is not the thing that you learned as an individual contributor.

um I teach this all the time.

um And unfortunately, not just America, all across the world, we don't give leadership
training ahead of time.

It's just like, oh, you've learned how to be a master welder.

now be the supervisor of all the welders.

Well, there's, well- That is a different skillset.

It's a totally different skillset.

And then one of two things happens.

One, the person tries too hard and being a masterful tactical micromanager supervisor, or
the person goes, well, I don't know how to manage, so I'll just keep doing the thing that

I'm good at, and I'll just expect other people to follow me.

And both paths fail because-

When you become a manager, when anyone starts reporting into you, you have to become a
people leader.

And that's a totally different skillset.

You're right.

Yeah.

I just spoke at my workshop about the power of awkward pauses.

uh I encourage them all to weaponize the awkward pause because human beings can't help but
fill in the awkward space.

This is something that I'm trying to take from you.

Like I'm trying to like embody that a little bit because I know when I'm giving feedback
on something or I'm asking a question, sometimes I'll like accidentally answer the way I'm

hoping you're gonna answer.

And I'm really trying to like embody the awkward pause.

It's really powerful.

uh If you find that as a leader, you're the one doing all the talking, something needs to
be flipped, because you should not be doing all the talking.

You should be asking the questions and getting them to do all the talking.

Questions are super important.

Yeah, really, really important for all the questions.

my big tip I gave to people this week was ask them a question, ask them, you hey, what did
you learn from this week?

And they say, nothing.

Don't fill in the blank after that.

Go to say nothing left.

What did you learn this week?

And they say nothing.

You just wait.

You say nothing and you wait until they fill it up.

Is that it?

Like you let them prompt, you let them speak more.

Cause what ends up happening is people take the easy way route.

We take the path of these resistance.

Let me say whatever I can say to get you to shut up so we can move on.

And when you say, no, we're not going to move on by saying absolutely nothing that has a
very powerful effect all across.

Do you think we're significant?

Hmm.

As in human beings?

in human beings?

No, I actually don't.

As human beings as a whole?

Nah.

No, we're ants.

We are ants.

We are ants in the universe.

There are billions and billions of stars and planets and galaxies, more than we can even
fathom.

Right.

We are not significant.

And sometimes I scare myself by thinking about that.

You think it's a scary thought.

Yeah, I think it's humbling.

I think it's a little scary.

I like to empower myself when I get stuff like that.

Like if we are insignificant, then that means I can do whatever the fuck I want to do.

I mean, not whatever the fuck I want to do.

Like I'm not going to hurt people, like.

Well, I would be really upset if you wanted to hurt people.

Right.

What I mean by that is like, what's that thing I'm afraid of?

Well, if you're insignificant, who cares?

Try it anyway.

Just do it.

You know what I'm saying?

See, have a totally different mindset.

I'm not significant.

Why should I be allowed to do those things?

That's all my uh mental health talking, I suppose.

I'm insignificant, so why should I be allowed to do those things?

Yeah.

What would be the purpose of me trying to do that thing?

See, I'm the opposite.

I'm like, well, if nothing I do really matters, then what's holding me back?

Try it anyway.

I've said this before on the podcast, but one of my lovely moments of euphoria was when I
got to hike the Grand Canyon and the tour guide basically said, know, the Grand Canyon is

going to be about, has a lifespan of about 10 billion years.

And we are 5 billion years into this lifespan.

So folks, you picked the right time.

This is the perfect prime time to be here uh to see and witness this beautiful majesty of
earth.

And I heard that and I'm like, wow, if we're lucky as human beings,

By lucky, mean like really lucky you might have impact Two to three generations forward
then afterwards.

They'll forget everything you've ever done if you're lucky most people not even that and
By 300 years from now, I'll be flexing the winds Totally forgotten you'll be forgotten.

What am I afraid of?

And that was a very empowering thought for me that is very empowering They say that you
die twice once when you actually die and once when nobody remembers who you are anymore.

Yeah

There are people who transcend that, of course.

Yeah.

But then what transcends is the myth, right?

we're getting back to Plato and like the forms and stuff.

Like, I mean, we know who George Washington is, right?

But like the George Washington you and I know is from history books that told it in a very
specific way that slanted toward America.

Whereas you go to England, they have a very different narrative of who George Washington
was, right?

So it's all about the stories we pass on.

But yeah, when I had that experience at the Grand Canyon, it really empowered me to be
like, I want to be as selfish as I possibly can without hurting people.

I'm pro like helping other people, but like I want to experience as much as life as I can
before, because someday I will be dead and all I've done will be practically

insignificant.

So what can I do to make sure that before I die, I've done the things that I want to do.

Not live a life without remorse because I think you have to have some remorse.

I think if you are a good human being, you're always going to look at with some regret on
some things you've done and not done.

But give myself permission to be like, hey, let's try it.

Let's do this thing.

Let's do that.

Let's do this.

And I try to challenge myself on that as much as I possibly can.

But as I say that, I also am aware that many people, and it sounds like you might fall in
this camp, feel the opposite.

Like, no, I don't want to do it.

There's no point.

Why should I?

What will be the impact?

How could we flip that?

ah I'm going to say increase my Lexapro.

That's uh funny.

But it is true.

I think that is a primary mode of my, um I don't know, my upbringing maybe, my own
particular baggage of trauma.

um If nothing matters and I can do anything I want.

Should I do anything at all?

Well, then I guess that goes back to your thought about forward moving, right?

If the idea is not to do anything at all, then how do we fulfill the need of human beings
to always be forward moving, to move the needle a little bit?

But that's the whole point.

I'm not gonna move forward because I'm not gonna jump into this patriarchal, capitalistic,
I gotta achieve, I gotta be significant.

Maybe I don't need to be significant.

Humans aren't significant.

Right?

Yeah.

and I don't want the attention.

Maybe I want the importance.

Maybe I want people to depend on me.

I am a know-it-all.

I like when people ask me questions and I have an answer.

But she does know it all.

It's really annoying.

That's not true.

uh Unfortunately, it's not true.

Do we still play the game even if we say we're not playing the game?

Of course we're still playing the game.

So.

And darn it, I just lost the game.

You lost the game.

Folks, did you lose the game?

I bet you did.

Bet you did.

uh But like, that's a common thing I hear a lot of people.

Well, I'm just not gonna interface with that.

I'm just gonna bow out and whatever.

Okay, even you bowing out is a move to be played in this game of life.

I used to this argument with people about like people that didn't want to be political.

I'm apolitical.

I want to stay out of politics.

What are the things you buy on a daily basis?

everything you buy has a political aftermath and an impact, whether you are recognizing it
or not.

So what you're actually saying is I want to be ignorant, which is a right that all human
beings can have, but I would encourage uh not being ignorant.

So at least you're aware of where your choices are making.

So it's the same way.

Like if you're choosing not to play the game, are you aware how you're not playing the
game is still a move in the game.

I don't know.

That's very, very valid.

um And I definitely don't practice what I preach.

Like, it's not like I never do anything.

It's not like I'm not trying to succeed at work and get that promotion and that raise and
that whatever so that I could have the lavish vacations that I get as cheap as possible.

And let it be known, I'm not the best at following my own words as well.

I like to believe I'm very much a why not?

But there have been moments where I'm like,

And I rationalized why I shouldn't.

And then I realized later that was fear.

It's all was was fear and I should have just gotten over it.

Yeah.

Fear of perfection?

I don't know.

Fear of a lack of perfection.

Yeah, probably fear of being observed as not being proficient.

Probably.

There's an Eastern Buddhist ideology, wabi sabi.

Wabi sabi, yeah.

The enjoying the imperfection, and that is perfect.

So I guess we should talk about how this is all very Westernized thinking as well.

And I'm a big believer in.

Eastern philosophy.

And Wabi Sabi is something that um we have a mutual friend that has been adopting for a
while, um who's actually a Patreon supporter.

Hi, David Rivera.

How are you doing?

Hope you're doing well.

Yeah.

The beauty of imperfection.

And as I think about that, I've been embracing that for...

I'd say a good nine months now.

And what I've noticed is...

So let's zoom out a little bit.

So Wabi Sabi.

What's the actual exact phrasing of Wabi Sabi?

Let's see.

The acceptance of transience and imperfection is often described as the appreciation of
beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

Okay.

Just per Wikipedia, by the way, not AI.

Okay.

in my world as a speaker.

Every single time I speak, every time I do a workshop, I get an evaluation coming back.

This worked, this didn't work.

People liked this, people didn't like this.

And one of the earliest pieces of feedback I got from a really good mentor,

I say they're good even though they gave me what I would call bad advice.

But I would say the advice wasn't bad.

I just interpreted it incorrectly.

He basically said, you need to be a chameleon, Sam.

You need to transform for the audience that you are speaking to.

And you need to transform to what their wants and needs are.

That way you can be them.

And I say that's bad advice.

At least how I interpret it was bad because for the first couple of years when I was doing
this, I...

Every single time I had a new client, a new group, I was literally trying to transform
everything about myself to fit exactly what they wanted.

And the problem there is twofold.

One, at the absolute best, I'm emulating something that is not me.

So it's an emulation.

And uh vulnerability and like approachability is really important.

And you can't really do that if you're not being yourself.

Absolutely.

And then two, if I happened to miss the mark, which I'd say I probably didn't half the
time,

Then I'm getting told that I missed, wasn't, I'm getting criticized on a format of me that
isn't even me.

And that hurts even more than if I actually stumbled being me.

I can see that.

So eventually I said, I think this is doing me a disservice.

And going back to Wabi Sabi, I'm like, screw it.

I'm not gonna be a chameleon anymore.

I'm gonna be me every single goddamn time.

And...

The feedback has been phenomenal.

People resonate with me better.

They like me more.

And yes, I have a lot of imperfections.

I generally talk fast.

I...

That's an East Coast thing.

It's an East Coast thing, but I generally talk fast.

And whenever I try to slow myself down, and I can slow myself down, I can speak a lot
slower.

You know what happens?

What?

I get the feedback that I'm boring.

So I would rather be a little fast with some people not be able to hear everything that I
said while being exciting and interesting.

That's the trade-off that I want.

I get that.

So I generally talk fast.

uh I am okay with awkward pauses and some people find that uncomfortable.

Nope, I won't give you that awkward pause.

But all my strengths come through as well.

I'm very good at poking at the bear.

Like, hey, wait, you mentioned something about this.

Let's talk about that a little bit more.

Wait, wait, wait, you talked about this.

Let's circle back.

I'm good at remembering what people said in the beginning and circling it back to the end.

I'm good at remembering people's stories and what their challenges are.

And when that happens, when people walk away from my workshops and my talks, go, Sam was
such an incredible speaker.

He's so naturalistic.

my gosh.

It's like he brought it all together.

I just got recent feedback from my work at a redacted entity.

in the Virginia area, I can say that, that said it didn't feel like a speech or a talk or
a training, it felt like a conversation.

I love that.

That's really good feedback.

It's great feedback.

And I only was able to do that because I embrace all my warts.

I call them warts.

I have imperfections, things that aren't great about me.

uh Your imperfections, uh this is important.

Your imperfections are neither good nor bad.

They are just imperfect.

We savvy.

It's like we both watch, follow the social media account with a plant slant.

Yes.

And says, all food is guilt free because guilt is not an ingredient.

Yes.

In the food list.

Shout out plant slant.

Shout out plant slant, we love him.

ah Yeah.

Yeah, and so I've embraced that and my imperfections are me.

Like people respond to that, to who I am.

And I think they see a little bit of themselves in me because I'm not trying to be perfect
public speaker.

eh So Wabi Sabi is important and that has been a very huge healing point for me and how I
interface with my perfectionism as well as my achievementism we'll call it.

There are some days when I feel like I want to get a lot of stuff done.

And there are some days I'm like, I need to rest.

My body is achy.

My aura ring says I haven't gotten enough sleep.

I've got a big day tomorrow.

I'm just gonna do a whole lot of nothing.

And that's okay because in the grand scheme of things and a hundred years I'll be gone.

And is it really going to matter all the days I poured at the midnight oil, just cranking
and cranking and beating myself up and working on something that did it ever even move the

needle a little bit?

That's the last thing, you know, when I talk to people, one of the big points we talked
about our workshop this week and something I try to tell everyone is we have no idea

what's going to be our biggest impact.

We have no clue.

When I do a workshop and I feel like I kicked ass and I nailed it.

I get the feedback later and it's like, it's fine.

It was mid.

And then I've had some workshops where I'm tired, I'm exhausted.

I'm just phoning it in because I just got to get it done, get the feedback later.

This workshop changed my life.

And so I had a really good moment this week of talking to someone who was really
struggling with like, how do you deal with the anxiety and the pressure of work and trying

to make sure you're good enough?

And I just gave that person permission, I said.

You are your own worst evaluator of who you are and what you're bringing to the table.

Your community will tell you, your mentors will tell you, your peers will tell you, you
will never know the conversations and things that you said and did and propagated that

made the most amount of impact.

I had someone once come to me and say, my gosh, it was someone I used to work with,
someone we both know, and said, Sam, that one time you had a coaching conversation with

me, it was like a quick.

two, three minute conversation, that changed my life, man.

And I still think about that conversation today.

And I told everyone at the workshop, guys, I don't remember that conversation.

I don't remember what I said.

I think I probably asked a few questions and that was it.

So it's really about being at the right place, right time, occupying that space and
allowing yourself to be in that mix of wabi-sabi.

And at the same time, giving yourself permission to, I would say,

Divorce yourself from your prior plans.

You might have intentions of what you want to accomplish in your life and say, this is the
plan, this is the plan.

Well, tomorrow you're smarter than you were yesterday.

So are you going to hold yourself accountable to a dumber version of yourselves plans?

That's a good point.

Be flexible.

Try to allow yourself that.

We're the main characters of our own story and we don't have the benefit of alternate
point of views.

We don't know what we're...

We don't know what we're doing to other people.

We have no idea.

Good or bad.

Yeah.

So in the beginning of my journey, all I cared about was what people thought of me.

In the middle of my journey, was like, all that mattered was me.

And now I think I'm approaching a mix of like 70-30.

70 % is me.

70 % is what I care about.

But then I'll take 30 % of feedback.

And even then, I don't listen to all the feedback I get.

Like some feedback I get, it's like, this course was too long.

I have no control over that.

This course is too short.

No control over that.

The materials were confusing to work through.

um I had one piece of feedback that was like, I wish the instructor spent more time
telling us what page we were on for each material when we were there.

And I wish you had been there because I literally, every time we on a page, I would say,
here's the page number.

And if you're looking at the digital version, it's PDF page seven.

But if you're looking at this on a printed handout, it's printed page four.

I can't tell you because I did a lot of onboarding training uh in my previous role and uh
the amount of times the managers would come to you and be like, well, they said they

didn't learn this in training.

I'm like, OK, let me show you the 20 PowerPoint slides that I have on this one individual
topic and see where they signed off that they actually understood and read this

information.

So funny how they didn't remember that.

When I worked in training, that was like,

Everything all the time.

That slit of the wrist.

Like how dare you say you never learned this in training?

Like here's the receipt buddy.

Yes.

Oh, had somebody in our compliance department asked me if we send out a specific form and
I said, yep, you signed it on your first day.

Sorry that you didn't remember signing it.

So again, our brains are unreliable.

memories are bad.

We are so fallible.

We really are.

So if our brains are fallible,

know, callable, then give yourself credit to fire your brain sometimes, I say, like my
brain.

We've talked about this and I told the Zero Dot podcast people this, but like I have a
brain of which my self-esteem is incredibly low.

Like very low.

I do not have a high esteem or value of myself, but I have a very high self-efficacy.

And the difference there is I trust myself to get things done.

You give me a problem, I'll handle it.

I have enough receipts from my prior past where things have gone crazy and I've found a
way to make it work that I have trust in myself.

but I still don't have a high evaluation of myself.

And I know that is flawed.

I know that is flawed.

Am I working on it?

Yes.

But more importantly, I'm trying to work on my network of people who hold me accountable,
who measure me honestly, who can give me that whenever I'm failing in that regard.

And I encourage that to everyone.

We have two eyes in front of our head, nothing in the back of our head.

We're human beings.

We are built with blind spots.

So how do we interface with that?

It's our network.

It's our friends.

It's our family.

It's our peers.

It's our work groups.

It's our business partners.

Hold each other accountable.

Hey, Sam, you're doing that thing again.

Okay, got it, thanks, thanks, thanks.

Or, hey, Sam, we're knocking on the park.

we are?

Really?

I had no idea.

Yeah, we're knocking on the park.

You that kind of thing.

Have other people with their own purviews kind of hold us accountable because we don't
know.

We have no way of knowing.

Try to have those difficult conversations even if they're difficult.

Yeah, yeah.

Can I ask you a question?

Absolutely.

I'm to ask you two.

Two questions.

Do you hear that, Zero Dot?

Two questions.

Let's go.

Who is the oldest person that you can think of in history?

And then I'm going to ask you, who's the most significant person?

Oldest person in history that I can think of.

That you can think of.

I mean, maybe that's not a fair question, but.

It probably isn't to me because of, I would say, I'm forgetting their names, but the
pre-Socrates philosophers.

Okay, so really you're only thinking of Plato and Socrates at this point, right?

If you can't think of their name, right?

Sure.

That's my thought.

by the way, we've talked about Plato a couple times.

Did you know that Plato is not his real name?

I did know.

Plato's not his real name.

Do you remember what his name means?

I don't, do you?

Yes, it means broad or buff because that was his like wrestling name, which I think is so
funny.

Oh my God.

We don't even know Plato's real name.

We know his like wrestling persona.

And they also say that he would win arguments by going and like flexing sometimes in their
like little forums.

Anyway.

That's hilarious.

So do you think he's the most, maybe Socrates is the most significant person?

Or do you think it's, is there another more significant person that you can think of?

Gandhi?

Malala?

Significant.

Yeah.

Who are significant people to you?

Like we're talking about significance here.

And I sprung this on you, so think about it a little.

I think, strangely enough, when I think of significance and what has informed our life
experience, it makes me think of uh King Tut.

Ah.

Which is pre all that, if I recall.

I think it's pre-Socrates.

think time-wise.

Yeah, I believe King Tut is before Cleopatra.

Cleopatra is older than Socrates.

And I think of that because of our understanding of worship.

because King Tut is most famously known for his tomb.

We don't know that much about King Tut except that he was very young.

He was like 14 or something and a Pharaoh.

And when I think about that, when I think about significance, he is known for his death,
for his preservation of death.

And I cannot answer this question.

Maybe much smarter people can, but like, how does that propagate all of our understandings
and worship of the afterlife and death and preservation of our physical bodies and

metaphysical bodies and so forth?

And I think that has probably informed us far more than we are able to give it credit.

So Egyptians were really like,

on top of this whole significance thing.

think about their pyramids and their monuments, sphinxes and um whatnot.

Which is crazy, because that's the entire antithesis of what I just said, which was
reflects in the wind or just ashes.

And they're like, no, it's preserved, especially if you're royalty, preserve this little
physical entity.

They also believe that the heart was in the head and

the brain was in the chest.

I love talking about momification.

Can we talk about that for a whole episode?

do it.

What do you want to say about it?

Oh, just the stuff that most people know is like they would take a like hot poker and they
would throw it up your nose and scramble up your brain and then pull it out.

And then they would put it in a jar because, your body had to be emptied so they could
preserve it.

Right.

And then they would put all your organs into jars like next to you.

Yeah.

We don't have to get into it.

And then then like I said, they thought

The heart was the brain.

Yeah, they thought this was the heart.

I'm pointing to my head there uh

And what I like to think about when I hear that in my world I try to argue and I've had
people come to my side the science and art of things there's the intellectual and there's

the heart there's the Heartbeat of things uh And the heartbeat of things can't be 100 %
explained but it can be spoken to like yeah that feels right that doesn't feel right uh

and

I've gotten, if I'm successful in some of my workshops, I encourage people to incorporate
both of those elements.

Be intellectual, be science, be pro-science, be pro-advocacy, all that good stuff.

But let's not forget what the heart also says, because it's about how we communicate.

And I think, again, going back to impact, think Egyptians, um they, with their very
limited understanding of us as human beings, might have given us the key to beginning

that.

that prospect of understanding.

And that's huge, that's massive.

So you asked me who I think is the most significant and then you asked me who's the oldest
person I can think of.

What was the significance of your question?

Oh, I just wanted to um determine that like, just because something is old doesn't
necessarily mean it's significant.

Although I think we just disproved that because we're talking pyramids, we're talking
Genghis Khan, we're talking Mesopotamia, we're talking Mayan temples.

These things are like fascinating to us in a way that's like transcendent because it is
significant.

Yeah.

But I was trying to think like, just because something's old doesn't necessarily mean it's
significant.

Just because something's significant doesn't necessarily mean it's old.

Like I think Maya Angelou is very significant.

And interestingly enough, you know, when people are alive, they sometimes are less
significant than when they were dead.

And Vincent van Gogh, not very much appreciated until after his passing.

His art is, I don't know, transcendent.

We have this desire to put people on pedestals.

We love that.

We love.

We almost have a desire to have someone be a god-like figure.

Going back to Plato's forms.

Yeah.

we have a desire to worship things.

We have a desire to revere things.

talking about things that make you uncomfortable, that makes me uncomfortable.

Like I don't mind the spotlight being on me.

I don't mind.

I actually don't like all the attention being on me, but if the attention is on me, I find
ways to divert it and get you to realize it should be on you.

I'm good at that, that's part of my job.

I don't like reverence.

And if there's one criticism I have about this week, I had a few people like revere me
like, my gosh, you're such a master, you know all this stuff.

I'm just talking to you about stuff that's happening out in the world.

I'm not the actual person pioneering any of this stuff.

All I'm doing is like connecting with you and letting you know there's another way of
thinking about things.

I'm not the guy.

But we have this desire to revere people.

have this desire to go, my gosh, you are someone of importance.

um This is a lot of like celebrity gossip stuff where we love to like really build up a
celebrity and be like, they're amazing.

And then we really love to watch them fall.

Fall apart because we think they're amazing for a short period of time.

And then we're like, we're kind of upset that they're amazing.

There's got to be something wrong with them.

And then we dig at it until we find it, unfortunately.

It turns out we're all human.

We could have an entire episode talking about cancel culture.

Oh, man.

You really could.

mean, let it be known.

Harvey Weinstein.

Oh, many horrible things.

But on top of that, the issue was the amount of power he had and how he's to weaponize
that.

His significance.

The significance.

I think it was a good thing that it got challenged and says, you're the guy with the money
and you're the one funding all these movies, but like, why should you have that?

I think cancel culture is a thing people don't use as much anymore because now we've seen
an entire political party, the one that's in power right now in the United States,

literally use cancel culture.

uh I think it's safe to say in cases that I've been able to observe, and I'm an ignorant
piece of you know what, like I don't know anything, but like in some cases I've been like,

are we missing the mark here?

this person did horrible things, cool, call them accountable, but like what power did this
person have?

That's my question.

It's always my question.

Who gave him that power?

gave him the power?

Let's ask that question.

Who gave the person this power?

Like for instance, back, know, Harvey Weinstein, but like there's many actors who've been
canceled.

Why did this get let go?

Why did the director think that was acceptable behavior?

Why did the director let it slide?

Why didn't someone say, hey, if you're going to behave like that, you're out?

Fear.

They're afraid of losing their jobs.

They're afraid of losing their forward momentum.

They're afraid of losing.

Money, power, won't happen unless I have this person here, right?

I think when Kevin Spacey got axed, he had finished filming this movie that Ridley Scott
had done, and Ridley Scott reshot every single scene with another actor, I'm forgetting

their name.

And then apparently the movie flopped anyway.

So I mean, there's an example right there why directors do that, um producers do that.

It's all fear.

But what are we afraid of?

Not making enough money.

Ugh, the shame.

Which is where I wanna give shout out to Ryan Gosling recently where he basically said, is
on us, the movie makers to make movies that are appealing to you, the movie watchers.

It is not on you movie watchers to support our industry.

It is up to us to make something worthwhile for you to watch.

And that's really, that's good because there's this...

this theme that happens sometimes of like, we have to be the ones to keep the industry
afloat.

Fuck no.

The industry has to make something you want and you buy it with your money.

Big Hollywood.

Man, we're talking about Hollywood now.

Geez, I don't even care about Hollywood.

Sorry, it's my fault.

Nah, it's all right.

Yeah.

It's been really fun not paying attention to that side of the house.

I get glibbers here and there because it gets shoved in my face, but for the most part I'm
like, what?

What?

Yeah.

Yeah, and maybe we can talk more about that during the Patreon section of our episode.

Which, speaking of...

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Big shout out to our Patreon members so far, David Rivera, God of Grunts, Aid, JP, William
Kirk, and Robert Restone.

Thank you so much for your continued support, my friends.

Also, as you're aware, Zero Dot is doing a summer season where we are doing a bi-weekly
release schedule.

That means every other week we'll be releasing Zero Dot podcast episodes.

But on the off weeks, if you want more of Zero Dot, every single other week we will be
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So again, big perk, $3.99 per month gets you all that and more.

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you

uh I have been Sam Kirk.

This has been Crystal Kirk.

Hello, goodbye.

And that's right.

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I'm SIGNIFICANT! w/ Crystal Kirk [The Zero Dot Podcast #32]

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