Want to be rich? Stop letting THIS affect you...

The bigger the monster, the greater the hero. The things that we go through work on us more than we work on them. And in this video, what I want to break down is the things and how we call the traumatic events that happen and how we view them can change how they affect us and how they create us and shape us as people. And I was recently interviewed in a two-hour podcast with Graham Stefen. If you don't know who I am, I'm Alexi. I own acquisition. com. We own a portfolio company does about $85 million a year. And so on this podcast, probably the most shared and retweeted and cut section is the section I'm about to show you. Um, it was where I got into it with one of the other the the interviewee or interviewer of the podcast talking about trauma specifically. We get to some really deep stuff and I think that you'll get a lot of value from it. If you've never watched any of our videos, welcome to Mosy Nation. Lots of love and I'll see you guys in the next couple

seconds. Would you consider yourself emotional? Yeah, I mean probably. I think I have emotions. Got it. Cuz a lot of the times, at least in my experience, like and what I've seen people that are nihilists, it's easy to that's like an easy out. If something bad happens, if something good happens, it's just like, oh yeah, that's fine. Sweep it under the rug. It's not like it matters anyways. Something bad happens. And it's not like you actually deal with or process whatever you know event or action occurred that make you felt that emotion. If we believe that we have to like why should we why should you feel that emotion? Like why should we process a traumatic event? Like what does that mean? Well, I do believe that there are, you know, things in your brain biologically that if they are deprived of something or there's like some bad traumatic event or something like that will affect your biological traumatic versus non-traumatic. I mean, I feel like the definition of the word trauma would probably but what would be the line between like okay in like let's give an example of something terrible. Actually, not because it's a podcast and people might hate on crap. So, let's just say something bad happens that we describe as bad in this culture. In another culture, that might not be bad. It's trauma in this culture. It's not So, if the circumstances the same, why was it traumatic? Circumstances weren't the same. Why not? Cuz the culture, the facts were the same. Well, we describe the facts as changed, which means that we can choose to call

something trauma. But wouldn't isn't it doesn't it make sense that people would be built up due to culture and environment. 40-y old guy sleeps with a 15-year-old girl. Terrible. Rewind 200 years. 100% normal. How is it trauma now and not trauma then? And mind you, like this is not my statement. I'm just I'm you have to pull an extreme example if we're going to talk about trauma to illustrate the concept. So if it's traumatic in one instance and not traumatic in another, then it means that we can basically change the cultural narrative that we're ascribing to our context and make it not traumatic. That makes sense. Which means it didn't matter. Which means the only thing that matters is that you chose to make it meaningful. But let's say like the the passing of a parent or like a loved one or something like that. If we think we feel like we have a narrative that says if I don't mourn it means I didn't care about them, right? That's a statement of belief. I could say that if I don't mourn about them, it means I totally cared about them. like why does my morning have any indication of how much I cared? They're non-correlates, right? But it's just because we have like we have so many of these belief statements that quote society or things that we inherit, but we just choose to say that this is how life is. And so I think it's just like monitoring what those statements are. And so like one of my favorite sayings probably like if I had one thing on my tombstone, it would be a permutation of a quote by Orson Scott Card, which is we question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe and those we never think to question. That's a good quote, right? of course I'm opening my beliefs like traumatized were you or do you just choose to label this trauma and then now you call it trauma when 200 years ago it was life and a thousand years ago having your parent killed in front of you was just nature if you want to go biology and so we're just like we just choose to create meaning around things and so like at the end of the day like end to end bottom bottom root all our brains do is just create and destroy meaning and so we say this is a threat this is not a threat we make like we need to reinforce this behavior we don't all through meaning. And so if you can control what you deem meaningful, you can massively shift the odds in your favor because you don't need to ascribe meaning to Couldn't that be let's say like 500 years ago you see like a parent killed in front of you. Isn't that because all you have in your mind is like food, shelter, water, and now that we have those things taken care of, our minds go to other places. Sure. I just don't think it changes the actual facts. So it's like we have we there's stimulus response, right? And so like we get control of the response, we control the stimulus. Was it um it's either Senica or Epictitus who's like no one yells at a rock, right? And so it's like if you are the rock then like just doesn't matter, right? Like you just like eventually like people just [ __ ] off and just leave you alone. And so like and if you see stimulus of life that way in terms of like how you deem things or label things traumatic or not traumatic or good or bad, you know? It's the same thing, I'm sure, with like the hate comments and whatnot is like if you deem the comments of the fans as meaningful, then you will both care about them being positive and you will negative. But if they're not meaningful at all, then like I don't think you can do either. I think you just either have to participate in both sides or you remove that is also a belief statement, right? So maybe you can. So you know, interesting thoughts.

So how did you transition from assuming I'm assuming you used to care a little bit more about beliefs and stuff like that? How did you transition from that to now not caring? And did you have to completely change your mindset to where your automatic response to things was just like what are these chains of emotions and like the cultural constraints and stuff like that are making me feel this way that did you just switch that light switch or do you still on occasion catch yourself slipping I just did right now I was like I just said that as a belief right that's what I figured 100%. Yeah. I mean I think you systematically you hear like that's why the talking is so important like what words are we using? What do those words mean? Like you say trauma and like define that. What do you mean by that? Which is why you hear good writing that's academic like the first few pages will be like we're going to talk about this and this is how we define this. It's like we're putting constraints around the words that we're using because they mean they equate to thoughts. They're just buckets right that we like say a word like trauma and like it means something different to all three of us. So it's like we have to agree on the definition before we can talk about it. Does that make sense? Um and so no I had um so I I definitely made a conscious effort when I was like 19 or 20 I became a born again Christian. Um the dunk the whole thing was like oh my god life's amazing. Jesus is great. And then I ended up falling away from that because I was like, I don't know if this is true. And then I spent the next 5 years dedicated to apologetics, which is defense of faith of the Christian faith. So just learning the arguments around like why Christianity like is true, right? I ended up not believing uh in it. And I can give a variety of reasons, but I I'll give you the simplest one. Hopefully I'm not insulting anyone. This is just my belief that I'm sharing which is a lot of one of the biggest one of the strongest arguments for Christianity against other world religions is that other world religions say like if you go to the good place so if you do a good job you go to the good place right and fundamentally that's it's a hard paradigm because it means like at what point are you 51% good versus 49%. Should I have just held one more door open and I would have gone to the good place forever. Not even talking about like finite circumstance and creating infinite outcomes but like whatever. And so if you can draw that line then it makes it kind of makes it ridiculous right? It like kind of breaks down on the like be a good person system. And so that's all world views with the exception of Buddhism and Christianity. With Christianity, they're like, you don't have to be good. You just have to have faith. And if you have faith in Jesus, then you go to the good place, right? And so the reason that for me fundamentally I didn't believe in that was because you actually create another false binary, which is believe or not believe when in reality is to what extent you believe. It's how hard you believe. And again, you create another 50% line, which is I believe 1% more. And then I would go into the good place forever. So anyways, the point is that I I studied apologetics for a long period of time and then I was really sad and I was just like, "Fuck being sad. " I was like, "Fuck happiness. " I was like, "I'm just going to do stuff that I think is cool. " And that was like the first break in the chain for me. Um my slogan to myself was actually just [ __ ] happiness. And that was wildly freeing because I stopped judging myself for not being happy. And then I was just like, "Oh, I'm like I am unhappy. " I'm like, "Cool, whatever. " And I just kept going and all of a sudden it just like stopped mattering to me. Like I don't think about it. I genu like does this make me happy? It's not like I don't think about it. You just do what you want to do in the moment. Do whatever I feel like doing. And it's not like it's like all short-term like all pleasure- seeeking, whatever. Like I still have a long-term perspective of like this is what I want to build. Like I want to write these books. I want to build these courses. I want to do this stuff. But it's like those are things that I enjoy. So that's what I do. I love it. That's great. All right. I don't have anything to say. I mean, I had questions, but now I know the answers to them just based off. I'm just listening. Like I'd rather just listen and not say, you know, like I don't want to mess it up. But then I created a belief that now I'm going to mess it up. Oh god. Why does it matter, man? Why does it even matter that I messed up to begin with? It doesn't. And you can't mess it up. And then the comments are going to be messed it up in the comments. Why does that matter? I know it's I mean I know it's crazy stuff, but like I think that like if you want to you can't do what 99% of people are doing if you want to be in the 1%. Fundamentally. And so like you have to have like what I would consider like maybe uncomfortable conversations. Just be like that's okay. Like cool. Like I just I'm going to do my And then they're like, and the thing is a lot of times if you just even just make your statements of like this is how I believe like people feel like you're attacking them, especially if you articulate it well because they're like, well, I don't. I'm like, cool. Like I don't give a like do whatever you want. Like it's all good to me. And so which is why I don't talk about it as much publicly. How about this? Yeah. What bothers you?

There's got to be something out there that like I also have wasting my time. I only It's the only thing I don't have a lot of. This may seem like a silly question, but if you go to a restaurant and you order something, let's say you order a steak and you order it medium well and it comes back medium rare. Do you say something? It's not worth his time. No, I don't actually. You don't? No. Why would I? I don't care. But at the same time, I was like, well, a lot of people would be anxious to say something and I figured you probably wouldn't care about those emotions, right? I wouldn't even have an emotion first. I mean, that's such a non Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe like we have a big ad campaign that's supposed to go out and like I get all the creatives the day before and it's supposed to launch. Would that annoy me? I would be like, "Yes, but let's fix it. " You know, like, "This is bad. We can't run this. Let's try again. " You know, and in the end, it won't matter because we're all going to die and this money is going to go back to the game. I'll give you this one analogy. This might be a good wrap-up. So, this is like my mental analogy that I makes sense to me, which is like if if life were a game and all of us are given a token to like enter like a casino cuz we're in Vegas, right? And so, we're all get a you know, a token, we enter the casino and we sit down at the table to play poker, right? And everybody's playing, everybody's got cards, and all of you know, we're dealt cards. Everybody's dealt different cards and we got to play the hand we're dealt and depending on our level of skill, we amass more and more chips throughout the game. And um at the end of the game, the difference between the real world and the c and the game of life, in the real world, you just you go and you can cash out your chips and you walk out with money and there you go. There's your day. But I feel like in the casino of life, you get tapped on the shoulder by the grim reaper and he says, "Your time's up. " And then all your chips get pushed right back to the middle of the table and then you leave the casino empty-handed because it was a fake game with fake rules that didn't matter. And so like we accumulate these chips that I'm just going to push back in the middle again that other people are going to play on. And like the reason that analogy became real for me is like I bought this piece of land in Austin. And I was like that's neat. And then I was like how many people have owned this piece of land. It's like the guy you know the guy before me owned it and the guy before him owned it. And I was like and they were like this is mine and then they die or they sell it and someone else this is mine. It's like they're just chips that just get played with and they just get amassed and then they get redistributed. It just doesn't matter. Like death taxes everybody 100%. So like everyone's like estate planning it's like dude 500 generations from now a your offspring are you know 500 to the you know. 5 or you know 1/ half to the 500th power of like diluted they're basically just humans at that point. So if your wealth somehow is a big enough that it can be diluted that much and last that long. The people who own it are just humans. So it like they're so they're just as close to me as you are. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. Um and then the alternative is the people that I'm giving this to are just the ones that I care about are the immediate family. But then when people get resources that they didn't learn how to uh use or manage, then it destroys them because it's too much potential energy. They can't handle it. And so it's like it's really for nothing. And so like if you want, you can build something that you think is cool, but like at the end of the day, like we're just going to cash the chips in. So anyways, Alex's worldviews, but wow. It's a great analogy. Lots to think about this one. Yeah, I'm going to have to rewatch this, but you know. Yeah. You know what's funny? I was actually thinking I would never listen to podcast segment. I would actually listen to this. Yeah. Money, income, no earth. Investing, indexes, savings accounts, what credit cards, that's good. Jeez, [snorts] thank you so much. Thank you, Alex, for coming on. This has been an incredible podcast. Yeah, really. So, I appreciate I appreciate you having me. And to the audience, like, I know that a lot of the stuff that I say can be uh triggering, and I know that at different points in my life, if I had heard someone say what I'm saying in the position that I am, I would be offended. Um and I want to make it clear that it's not my intention to do that um at all. Uh it's just me sharing beliefs that uh as I understand the world and that is no way projection on you or how you see the world etc. It's just this is how I see the world and these are beliefs that served me well. Um that helped me overcome a lot of things that I thought mattered that you thought. There we go. That was it. That should be our intro. That could be our intro. unoffensive. That's a good segment to put right there in the beginning cuz it's going to catch people's attention. They were like, "What? What's offensive? What's what am I going to disagree with? " Perfect. Let's do that. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on, man. It was nice meeting you, too. Thank you. Good luck on your Tinder date. Thank you. Thanks. Should grow the stash out, by the way. You think so? I mean, if you want to That's why I shaved it last night, by the way. Get some thumbnails. Oh yeah.