2024: Harness the Chaos! A Revolutionary Approach to Redefining Success and Conquering the Unpredictable

[00:00:00] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. So 2023 was kind of a sucky year. And I mean that in the most personal sense, but also in

[00:00:24] our broad sense, like, okay, COVID 2020, 2021, maybe 2022, we were just getting out of COVID. So what was 2023 all about? And I'm going to talk about this in the context of how you can think about 2024 to improve your life. And I feel like 2023, the world, this is going to

[00:00:51] sound a little weird, but the world was a little bit on pause. Like we didn't really know which direction or what direction the world was going in. Like on the one hand,

[00:01:00] politically, it's just a train wreck out there. Like every scenario, like if you watch a movie about, oh my gosh, World War Three is coming. It might be a movie about 2023. Like everything that's

[00:01:13] going on in 2023 seems like a pre-cur... Like people were talking about the Bible and like this might be the end times. Like that's pretty scary because there's all this conflict in the Middle East and it's horrible conflict. There's these proxy wars in Russia, Ukraine.

[00:01:27] There's the entire world is looking at what's going on in these sort of proxy wars that are happening around the world. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve was first, they were panicking about inflation and now it seems like everybody's panicking that there might be a recession.

[00:01:44] I'll talk about that in a second. You know, which is it? Is it inflation or a recession or both, which is called stagflation. Then we have everybody's nervous next year about politics and the presidential election. I'm going to make one prediction about the presidential

[00:01:58] election. Hear me out. Everything you could possibly predict right now is not going to happen. So I think 2024 is going to be totally unpredictable in a lot of ways. And right now everyone's going on TV telling their predictions for the year, but here's the only thing I

[00:02:15] can predict is that it's unpredictable. So what did you say, Jay? What if it's the Asian president? Asian became a president of the United States. Who Asian is running? I don't know. It's unpredictable, right? So maybe the Asian running made or candidates is not running yet.

[00:02:33] Yeah, that could be. So, okay. Tip number one for after you listen to this podcast, Google Ronnie Chang, C-H-I-E-N-G. And he has this one clip about why Asians should rule the world. And was that the clip, Jay? What he's talking about?

[00:02:53] No, I think that I don't know if it's the clip, but we saw it in person, which is why Asian would be the best presidential candidate for United States. Yeah. So Google that Ronnie Chang funny guy. You've seen him in movies,

[00:03:06] but okay, that's tip number one. We'll give various tips throughout this. Meanwhile, my prediction about, about unpredictability is that Biden will not be the nominee for the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. And Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee.

[00:03:21] So these are the things that seem like no brainers. Like if I go to predicted.org, let's go to our favorite gambling site. I love gambling on politics. But right now Donald Trump, they're giving him an 80% chance

[00:03:34] of winning the Republican nomination and Nikki Halley is second with a 14% chance. Ron DeSantis is amazingly was six cents. Vivian Gromis won me five cents. And for the Democrat nomination, by the way, Donald Trump is and predicted.org.

[00:03:49] Donald Trump is more likely to win the Republican nomination than Joe Biden is to win the Democratic one. So they give Joe Biden a 73% chance and Gavin Newsom, 18%, Kamala Harris, 7%, Hillary Clinton, 3% and Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, 1%. Is he running?

[00:04:10] No, he's not running. They're just, you know, just like Kamala Harris is not running, but they're giving her the reason they're giving her a 7% chance is because they're saying there's a slight chance Joe Biden could die. Kamala Harris will be

[00:04:19] the new president and then she would be the presidential nominee for the Democrats. So, but I would vote no or I would bet no on both of those. So you're getting a bargain,

[00:04:30] I think, on both of those. And I think you'll make money because even if one of them doesn't get the nomination, you're going to make a huge amount of money. Now, when I say a huge amount of money, the maximum you could bet on predicted.org is $1,000 per

[00:04:43] bet. So knock your socks off. But so what were you about to say, Jay? I just want to say this is not a gambling advice for anyone that's No, it is gambling. I am giving gambling advice. I would, I would gamble.

[00:05:00] I would bet no on both of those people and I'd bet no on Kamala Harris too. But I certainly, but you know, that's not worth it. You only want to make gambles that are worth it where

[00:05:11] the risk reward is there. So I think if you just get bet no on one of those, it's not a good risk versus reward bet. But if you bet no on both of those, I think it's extremely likely that at least one of them will not be,

[00:05:25] I think both of them won't be the nominees, but I think it's extremely likely that it won't be the case that both of them are the nominees. So you can make a lot of money

[00:05:33] if you bet no on both. That is official gambling advice and, but you can't hold me to it. So it's not a normal period right now. So what does a normal period mean? Like from 2010 to 2019,

[00:05:47] that was sort of normal. We were in between the financial crisis and COVID and just it was business as usual. Yes, we had weird elections and so on, but whatever. But now everything's a little bit

[00:06:00] weird. Like what's going on with remote work? What's going on with cities? What's going on with the economy? What's going on with the Fed? What's going on with all these wars? What's going to go on with the election next year? What's going on with crypto? What's going on

[00:06:11] with AI? All these things are very confusing. And to be honest, a little bit stressful. I feel like I personally, I'm just going to be honest. I don't think I really had a great year

[00:06:23] this past year. Not there's nothing specific. It's not like I experienced any real loss in my life. And everything went, you know, everything, you know, continues to do the podcast. We had great guests, continued other business activities. But like for instance, on, you know, over the past

[00:06:41] 15 years, I make my living, you know, investing in private companies and eventually, you know, they get bought or hopefully IPO or whatever. But because of kind of this post COVID lag and the Federal Reserve raising rates, nothing really happened. Nothing, no companies were acquired.

[00:07:00] Nothing was bought. So that was like a slow year for me. And I'm still getting used to, you know, living in a, you know, I lived in New York City my whole adult life and now I'm living

[00:07:10] a little north of Atlanta, Georgia. I'm still getting used to that. Like I don't really have a lot of friends here, although I'd like to, and I'd like to meet, have more friends in general. So I've been starting to speak at a little few more conferences just to,

[00:07:25] just to meet people and get out there. And I really like my podcast guests, but I feel like I used to do them more in person and then you can get, build more of a relationship

[00:07:35] with them. And now I do them remotely, like everything's remote now. So when I thought I would enjoy that and I do, but I miss kind of the bonding that happens. So, and then,

[00:07:47] you know, like I've been on this journey where I thought I've back in 2022 when I started early 2022, I started playing in tournaments or late 2021. I started playing at least chess swords. I thought

[00:08:00] it'd be right away. I'm going to get back to my old level. Like no, nothing's going to stop me. And I did all my techniques for learning and I've learned an enormous amount and I've had

[00:08:08] amazing adventures. And we'll talk about the concept a little more in a second, but I still didn't achieve the level I wanted to achieve. And that was somewhat frustrating. Like I go to a tournament and I lose a bunch of games, doesn't really feel great.

[00:08:23] And then I start thinking what's wrong. And on the one hand, I feel like I know more than I've ever had before. And that's been very, very pleasurable. Like learning is always pleasurable, but I just didn't achieve the goals I set out to achieve in for 2023.

[00:08:39] Can I ask you something? Like when you set out, when you went out and set out a goal, like you said you're frustrated and you're still disappointed you hasn't reached a goal yet. Like how long were your initial thought that you could achieve?

[00:08:51] Honestly, I thought it would be six months tops. Six months. Yeah, I thought like, for variety reasons, I thought six months. And now it's been like two years. And again, I think I am actually better than I ever was, but my variance is so big

[00:09:09] as I've talked about in prior episodes, like my best moments are really are much better than my best moments were 25 years ago, but my worst moments are so much worse that they average out to me seeming like I haven't improved at all. And so it's hard to demonstrate

[00:09:25] that I've achieved any goal. And so, you know, and Robert Green remember on the podcast, I don't know if it was before the we started the podcast or during Robert Green disagreed with me, Arthur Brooks disagreed with me. Like all these people I really admire

[00:09:39] disagreed with me aiming more and disagreed with me. You know, she's author of 13 things when police trust people don't do. When did she agree with you disagree with you when you go on her podcast? Yeah. Oh wow.

[00:09:52] So because she thinks that what I've achieved has been meaningful and worthwhile and enough worthwhile enough, for instance, to write a book, which is what I've been planning on doing. And that's the other thing in 2023, I didn't really write at all. I mean, I wrote a

[00:10:07] little bit but not like, I mean, I used to write for 20 years. I wrote every single day. And I didn't really do that instead of pursuing this other thing, you know, and

[00:10:18] is it as it is meaningful? Is it is it as worthwhile? So so I was just, I don't even know it's not like I'm depressed or down all live had moments, but I've really been reflective lately.

[00:10:34] Like how could I make next year a little bit different? And so I want to talk about, you know, everybody's sitting around now thinking, well, what's your New Year's resolution? And I've always hated the idea of New Year's resolutions because it sort of feels artificial. Like why

[00:10:49] January 1st is the day everyone's going to, okay, it's January 1st. We the entire plan it has to change their lives now today because it's January 1st. I marked it in the calendar, changed your life on January 1st and like 7.8 billion people have to change their lives on

[00:11:03] January 1st. So I sort of don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I think I have a theory why January 1st. I think I'm going through this as well. It's because there's this thing called when winter, these pressure, you know, like, you know, you depress during the winter because

[00:11:19] yeah, like seasonal affective disorder. Yeah. So when the New Year comes around, it's supposed to be this grand thing. Like we're going to be happy on the 1st of January. We have to be happy. So

[00:11:32] it's like, okay, now I got to be happy. So I have to change my whole thinking for the past couple of months because of the seasonal depressions. I think that's the reason why the whole

[00:11:43] New Year's resolutions comes around. Yeah. And but I sort of agree with that. Like, but you know, also why is January 1st the beginning of the year? Like I sort of feel like every year

[00:11:57] September 1st, like Labor Day really is the beginning of the year. And the reason I think that is because summer's over and everybody goes back to school. Now I realize this is only

[00:12:07] true for the Northern Hemisphere, not the Southern Hemisphere. But it always seems to me like the beginning of a year starts in September because that's when for the first 18 or sorry, for the

[00:12:19] first like 25 years of my life, that's what would happen is that my life would change in September of every year. And even when I took my first few jobs in my 20s, they always seem to

[00:12:29] start on around September 1st. So it's like, it's like our life sort of naturally follows that cycle. But anyway, that's another thing completely. With all these New Year's resolutions coming up, I want to talk about the types of things

[00:12:59] people think about when they think about resolutions. And so specifically, all of these concepts are important. What's the difference between finding meaning in your life? Like as in Victor Frankl's great book, Man's Search for Meaning. Or what is it? Is that

[00:13:14] different from finding purpose in your life? Is that different from having goals in your life? Is that different from what I've been talking about recently, having quests in your life? Is that different from what I talk about in my book Skip the Line, having experiments in

[00:13:26] your life? And then how is that different from things like what I call the daily practice and choose yourself or what how Al-Rod calls the miracle morning, like these daily rituals and habits to improve your life. And all of these things are related and I feel are important

[00:13:42] when thinking about New Year's resolutions. So with that said, I will begin with meaning. What does it mean? And I do think this is all important. Like if you're listening to this,

[00:13:57] this is what I plan to do. I plan to quote unquote write a manifesto for myself, which means I ask myself, what is the meaning I feel I have in life? What is a purpose for myself? What are goals

[00:14:13] that I have for this next year? What are quests that I'm on and what does it mean quest, which I've talked about before here, but I'll briefly talk about again. And then what sort of experiments

[00:14:24] do I plan on trying? And of course, I need to, I feel I've drifted a little bit from my daily practice, which is a concept I write about in several of my books, but started writing

[00:14:35] about it in Choose Yourself, which this was the 10th year anniversary of that. And thank you to everybody who still sends me very nice emails. Like it's been very encouraging book to many people

[00:14:48] and which encourages me like I was telling someone the other day, I have to reread my own book because you know, it's sort of, I remember one time I was going to pitch this TV show

[00:14:57] called Gru's Gone Wild. Like I know all these like self-help people, like famous self-help people and I don't consider myself a self-help person, but I can, I know all these self-help people

[00:15:07] whose lives are just like a wreck. And so I wanted to make a funny TV show called Gru's, Gru's Gone Wild. And I pitched it to Steven Spielberg, but his group said no. They wanted

[00:15:20] me to do something else, which they didn't end up doing. But there's this idea that, oh, you write this self-help book and then now you're the living example of all your advice and

[00:15:30] life is great after that. And it couldn't be further from the truth. You know, the reason someone writes a self-help book really, and forget about all the Gru's then sell like courses about manifesting, you know, miracles in their lives and so on. Like the reason you

[00:15:47] have to write a self-help book is A, you're a writer and B, you went through something incredibly difficult in your life. Like you suffered at some point and out of that suffering,

[00:15:58] you came up with a solution that worked for you. And it might be the case that it just worked for you and nobody else, but you then write about it. And sometimes that's considered a self-help book. The reason I don't like to consider that self-help is because just

[00:16:13] because something works for me, might not, A, I might have been lucky and B, it might not work for anybody else. So when I talk about self-help, I'm talking about helping

[00:16:24] myself and I love writing so I like telling the story of it and other people could choose whether or not they are inspired by that and wish to try similar things or their own thing or whatever.

[00:16:36] But let's talk about meaning for a second. So Victor Frankel wrote this book, beautiful book. Well, I should say half of it is beautiful, half of it is garbage. And people say it's

[00:16:47] the most beautiful book ever, but literally only read the first half, which is the story part, not the theoretical part. And here's a guy who went to Auschwitz, his entire family was killed,

[00:17:02] and the only way he would survive every day, the only way he would avoid killing himself was by or wishing he was dead, was by finding meaning in his life. And the meaning,

[00:17:15] he had two things that he focused on. One is that he wanted to live his, he had meaning in that he really wanted to see his wife again and sadly he didn't. And just thinking about it makes me

[00:17:27] sad for him. But the other meaning he found in his life is that he felt if he survives this concentration camp and this period of his life, he was going to write about

[00:17:38] his search for meaning. And that gave him meaning in life, enough meaning that he gave him, meaning gives you energy and it gave him the energy to survive the worst, most horrific conditions like he was, everybody was scared, everybody was starving, people were dying every

[00:17:56] day, the Germans were randomly killing people in Auschwitz and every day he could have, could have been his last day. But what gave him the energy and bravery and courage to continue

[00:18:10] is he had meaning in his life that he knew he could live for a reason. Now, is this different than purpose? Maybe a little bit like purpose might be him saying my purpose, he would never

[00:18:28] say my purpose is to see my wife alive again. Like that was, what gave him meaning there was he loved his wife and if he held on to the thought that if he could see her again,

[00:18:42] it would all be worth it and he would be, he would be happier than he was obviously in Auschwitz. So that gave him meaning in life to continue. Purpose might be something a little bit more

[00:18:52] specific. Like instead of just saying I want to spread this message I have about finding meaning and value in your life, he purpose might be a little bit more specific, it might be well how

[00:19:03] am I going to do that? I'm going to write a book and I'm going to write a book telling this story not just that he was going to be a professor and teach classes or give lectures or talk to other

[00:19:13] people about it but specifically that he was going to write this book which he did, man search for meaning, I highly encourage it. So meaning could be the idea and purpose is the

[00:19:24] actions that act to the idea of the meaning. Right like you might think oh my, you know I have meaning in life and that I'm going to seek to increase world peace and then you might have

[00:19:35] a purpose where it's like okay well I'm going to join Amnesty International and create, you know and help them and raise money for them or help them in world situations where I can create

[00:19:49] more peace. And so it's a little bit more specific, it's like how do you execute on what you feel is the meaning in your life? Right. And so the first part of Ammanifesto is thinking about it like

[00:20:02] what meaning, what larger vision can you, so meaning could be thought of as a very large broad vision. Why is your life significant? What will you do in the years ahead to make your life

[00:20:15] significant and to give you a sense of fulfillment? And obviously it should be something that brings you happiness and satisfaction and look, it might be you're going to be a great parent or grand

[00:20:30] parent and that's your meaning like you're going to raise a new generation of amazing human beings who will help the world. It might be that your meaning, and by the way meaning can change but it

[00:20:40] might be your meaning in life is you're going to try to be as charitable as possible or usually involve doing some action that helps people spread some message or it could be your meaning is

[00:20:54] you're going to pursue your passions and be the best in the world at something and show other people how to pursue their passions or maybe your meaning is you're going to find meaningful relationships and you're going to impact, have impact on all the people you interact

[00:21:07] with positive impact on all the people you interact with because often I think there's a saying the grass is greener on the grass is always greener on the other side but really

[00:21:19] the true saying is the grass is greener where you water it. And so if a lot of times we have these relationships that we just kind of take for granted or we don't really find as much

[00:21:34] satisfaction in them as we would like, we just sort of take it for granted and maybe watering those relationships and doing it in this impactful way so you improve the lives of the people

[00:21:46] running you that's enough to say you have meaning in your life. And again finding purpose might be a specific mission that you're on that will allow you to accomplish your meaning. It might be the tactics that you use. So for instance if I want to have more friendships

[00:22:04] maybe I need to go to more meetups and so my purpose is I'm going to go to you know a meetup every week and try to make as much many friendships as possible to have meaningful impact on them. So again thinking about there's probably not much difference

[00:22:21] between meaning and purpose maybe I'm stretching this a little bit but think about this in terms of like you're not just a New Year's resolution for 2024 but make a manifesto for 2024. And this is going to be about the things you value but start with what's the meaning,

[00:22:38] the significance value that your life is going to deliver in 2024. What's going to give you fulfillment so when you look back on 2024 you say you accomplished this meaning was enough to give you energy all throughout 2024 and then you accomplished it. So can I add something on the

[00:22:58] meaning as well? When I read the book you know Mansej for Meaning only the first part by the way only the first half of the book. Second part is crap. It's kind of as I can get to the

[00:23:07] second part but the first part I think he also talked about having meaning also give you hope you know to keep going in the life as well. Like look if you're a nihilist and you think that

[00:23:22] there's just no purpose in life and nothing that could be very depressing and in fact that philosophy is often associated with depression and but having some kind of higher sense of

[00:23:32] that your life can have an impact on others I think does give you energy. And so then I want to talk specifically New Year's resolutions seems to fall under the category of goals like

[00:23:46] here's some typical New Year's resolutions. I'm going to lose 30 pounds or I'm going to work hard at my job and get a promotion and make some dollar amount that's been my goal or I'm going to run a marathon

[00:24:03] this year so that's so my goal is I'm going to be healthier and I'm going to prove it by running a marathon or I'm going to stop dating around and I'm going to meet a significant other

[00:24:14] who's becomes my life partner. These are like new types of New Year's resolutions these are goals and a lot of people start with these I'm saying start with meaning so if your meaning and purpose

[00:24:28] in life is to have impact on your kids or family members this will really motivate the kind of goals you have like maybe if my impact if my meaning in life is to write a book that inspires people

[00:24:46] then okay then I have to turn into a person who's inspiring and if I'm a little bit depressed or down I might not be so inspiring so what will what can I do to not be depressed or down

[00:24:58] well exercise is proven to lift up mood and and community and friendships are proven to lift up mood and and having a sense of freedom is part of uh uh you know this feeling of well-being

[00:25:11] where you feel satisfied in your life so you have to become before you can accomplish your meaning in life you have to aim towards being the sort of person who can provide that impact and value

[00:25:23] to the world so that could lead to what your goals are and this is what the manifesto is for well okay let's say uh you know I want to be more impactful in my relationships with people

[00:25:36] well maybe I need to live a healthier life or for for me personally maybe you know I need to be I feel like this year I wasn't as optimistic as I could be I need to have better self-talk

[00:25:48] like I had kind of negative self-talk and there's a lot of evidence that positive self-talk is really important like I was just reading a study yesterday they uh did an experiment with

[00:26:00] maids in a hotel and maids in a hotel they asked them do you feel like you do that you exercise enough and they all said no we're working all the time we don't exercise

[00:26:11] enough so with what with half the maids they said it turns out that the amount of work you do and cleaning all these rooms in the hotel is sufficient is more than the government standards of what good

[00:26:24] physical exercise per day is so they told that to half the maids and they didn't tell that to the other half and guess what a few months later all the maids are still doing the

[00:26:34] same work but the ones who were told that they were doing through their work enough exercise those maids actually had lower body mass lower blood pressure lower cholesterol and we're and less you know illness during the year so so and it continued it continued throughout the whole

[00:26:53] year so so just positive self-talk and keeping and looking at everything in your life as you know everything's got positive and negatives so looking at you know everything in your life and focusing

[00:27:07] on the positives which is really hard to do I think will actually significantly improve your life and again make you closer to the sort of person who can achieve significance in life and so so you

[00:27:21] have to say well okay what are the things you do in life and how can you make them a little bit more positive like let's say I had some job and I didn't I didn't enjoy doing it but I was stuck

[00:27:33] with it for now for whatever reason you're not truly stuck with a job but sometimes you are you have to pay a mortgage you know until you find something new you have to you know keep working

[00:27:44] for your boss you know whatever how can you make it more impactful maybe you could build more meaningful connections with your customers or clients or co-workers and you can help them out in their lives or maybe you could be more efficient with time management at work and then

[00:28:04] you know like we've had people on the podcast who on their commute to work instead of just sleeping or reading the latest gossip newspaper they would write a page a day of a book and publish a novel

[00:28:16] at the end of the year so trying to find the things in your life that you don't like but turning them into positives this could be an important part of your goals or resolutions for the year

[00:28:43] you know the other thing about goals are I feel like goals are focused on self-improvement which is good that's fine so I can say I'm going to have a goal I'm going to

[00:28:55] write 10 ideas a day down which is a goal that I always have and try to live by and but really sticking to that and marking it off the calendar every day okay I did it today

[00:29:06] that's a good goal that improves my life because if I write down 10 ideas a day I will exercise my idea muscle become more creative or keep maintaining my creativity and maybe if I come up with enough good ideas maybe it'll change the circumstances of my life

[00:29:23] for the better I'll at least be watering the creativity side of my life so so I feel like goals and again this is in your manifesto what are your goals what are your new resolution I feel

[00:29:34] like goals are about improving your habits like oh I might have a goal I'm gonna not drink as much I'm not gonna smoke whatever it is not smoke as much whatever then I have what I call

[00:29:47] and I've talked about before on this podcast but I'll just briefly talk about it I have what I call quests which are different from goals so we've talked about quests before but a quest might

[00:29:56] be in my lifetime or in the next 10 years I want to visit every country in the world or every state you know every state in the country or I want to learn 10 different languages or like a quest is

[00:30:12] something that's a little bit impossible a little bit improbable people won't really understand why you're doing it like it'll sound a little crazy to people like maybe you have a quest you want to

[00:30:26] go to the championship of every sports league like you want to go to the world series you want to go to the NBA finals you want to go to the Super Bowl you want to go to the Stanley Cup and hockey

[00:30:38] I'm amazed that I know all the championships for every sport but maybe that's like a fun quest that you have and again something a little weird something a little quirky something where people don't really understand why you want to do it but for you there might be

[00:30:54] meaning in it and in subtle ways it might improve your life like again I have this quest to be better at chess at the age of 55 than I was before I took a 25 year break in my 20s

[00:31:10] where I was ranked a fairly strong master and so I've been on this quest and and it's people don't understand like some group of people think that I'm delusional because 55 year olds are just

[00:31:23] different than 25 year olds and my ability really is different and worse and kids have more natural skills and talents particularly kids who are working at it and so one group of people tell

[00:31:37] me I'm delusional another group of people think it's frivolous so you're so what are you telling me James you're going to just travel around and play a board game with what now turns out to be at

[00:31:50] least 50% kids that's a little sounds a little weird sounds a little strange uh uh I was joking with my daughter about this like she says she said to me like sometimes you're like

[00:32:01] an eight year old and I'm like well that makes sense um I basically love playing board games with kids now and uh it's not just kids like there was all of you know it's at least 50%

[00:32:13] adults and people in their 20s or 30s but very few people as old as me and it turns out the statistics are you could count on fewer fingers than one hand how many people have done what

[00:32:24] I'm trying to do which is why many people think I'm delusional but why go on a quest why find a holy grail like King Arthur was going for the holy grail which he never found why do it

[00:32:36] well there's a lot of reasons one is you're going to have adventures well actually the most important is you love doing it so I might love playing this game and I might love learning more about it and

[00:32:48] I might love improving at it and meeting for and and I might love that subculture so when I was when I had a quest of being a great stand-up comedian I loved the subculture and I loved

[00:32:59] hanging out at comedy clubs and meeting other comedians and studying comedy we were so funny I was laughing all the time and I missed that a little bit I feel like I don't laugh as much

[00:33:08] but and I don't make audiences laugh anymore because I'm not doing stand-up comedy like it was a visceral great feeling so maybe a quest might be just once next year do stand-up comedy but in any case

[00:33:24] that was a quest of mine for many years and I did it and I had so many adventures I mean I traveled all around the country and I had audiences love me but I had audiences who

[00:33:34] shouted and screamed at me in anger and I went all over the world really well right before COVID went to every major city in the Netherlands and performed comedy with Tony Woods which was an

[00:33:46] adventure into itself like Tony Woods was Dave Chappelle's mentor and Jake which reminds me gotta get Tony Woods on the podcast at some point again let's go like Dave Chappelle's even doing a special with him right now so and Dave Chappelle shouted it out when he won the

[00:33:59] Mark Twain Award for funniest guy anyway that was a quest and it changed my life it made me a better writer it made me better public speaker it made me funnier it gave me a wider network

[00:34:10] it gave me more stories to talk about uh it was an amazing amazing event a set of adventures that took several years and I mean I owned a comedy club for a while so I got that experience

[00:34:23] and just just a fascinating set of adventures did it make me any money no did it uh change my life absolutely did it give me a new career no definitely not in fact it I wonder now if I could have had a

[00:34:41] you know more impact on people if I did anything other than stand-up comedy which is mostly useless to other people but again we're not talking about meaning we're not talking about purpose we're not talking about goals we're talking about quests where give yourself a

[00:34:54] break do pick something you love you always wanted to do it's a little impossible everyone thinks you're crazy but this is your quest and it's going to be fun and you're going to have adventures

[00:35:06] along the way and when you're done with it you're going to have amazing stories to tell like that's a quest jay you were going to say something yeah I was about to say like

[00:35:15] I felt like your quest shouldn't just focus on like outsider exterior people like you know like you keep saying like maybe if you didn't go on this quest you could have done more stuff to

[00:35:25] help other people I felt like I agree with you I agree with you which is why quests are very I would say a quest is selfish like I'm doing this I initially I was doing

[00:35:36] this chess thing or the comedy thing for myself and then what I tend to do is and this is also part of a manifesto I do feel it's almost too selfish and so I create a larger meaning around

[00:35:52] the quest like okay I'm going to really explore this from a neuroscience point of view from a pursuit of excellence point of view from a sports psychology point of view and and on and on and

[00:36:03] then I'm going to write a book about it so I'm giving a larger meaning around it but even if I didn't have that larger meaning around it I would still do this quest now it just so happens

[00:36:13] that this quest is going to lead to me writing what I hope and what I think will be an amazing book but so that's the larger meaning around it but I'm still going to do the quest which is I want

[00:36:25] to just get better and win a lot of games and crush other people at chess the way I used to when I was in my 20s even more so but what's happened along the way is I've had these

[00:36:36] unbelievable adventures again if I were to describe some of these adventures which I will eventually it would it would blow people's minds even all the people who said I'm completely delusional if I described what had happened they would say oh yeah I wish that would have

[00:36:51] happened to me too so quests are always worth it because they're amazing and you'll be amazing as you become the version of yourself who could succeed at this quest whether you succeed or

[00:37:04] not and you'll have fascinating stories to tell it's great I just went to a christmas party it's great to be able to tell these these stories people are love the stories so again though

[00:37:19] your quest don't have to be huge it doesn't have to be I'm going to run a marathon or I'm going to learn 27 languages I've had many quests like the time that I you know started a GoFundMe

[00:37:32] campaign to buy Greenland because I remember Trump wanted to buy Greenland and then somehow the prime minister of Denmark said it's not for sale and that sent me on this whole mini quest of like

[00:37:43] well why does somebody want to buy Greenland why did what does Denmark have to do with this how can I make a crowdfunding campaign to buy a country and I learned huge amounts of things

[00:37:54] and I had stories to tell but the whole quest basically took a weekend and so some quests are mini quests and like I call those more experiments so and some experiments could be big

[00:38:06] some could be small I got an experiment of mine has been notepad.com n-o-t-e-p-d.com it's a website kind of twitter like website where you can write your 10 ideas a day I don't know if that

[00:38:19] quest or experiment has succeeded or not six again quests don't require success it just requires that you you go on the on that adventure and you see what adventures happen along the way

[00:38:35] and so success is not a requirement it would be nice but it's not a requirement and so I've done many mini quests and again I refer more of those to experiments like I'm trying to think Jay what

[00:38:48] other experiments my bit my memory has gotten really bad because I have to memorize all sorts of stuff for this podcast like every single day do you remember any other experiments I've done I

[00:38:58] feel like I've had like dozens over the past year or so you always do experiment right we we try x coaster oh yeah we tried to build a competitor to zoom which totally failed but we learned a lot

[00:39:10] about the whole business of uh streaming yeah that made me appreciate like squad cast more like it's very hard thing to do yeah and also what didn't we learn that like on zoom or in a lot of these

[00:39:23] streaming platforms all the video gets kind of goes to china it gets processed and then comes back here yeah in real time like even this video we're doing right now is like going to china and right now this second getting processed and coming back here because there's some

[00:39:37] company in china that does it for everybody but apparently not squad cast so squad cast said that they're using the company in taiwan so i yeah so that's a company right there we're in

[00:39:48] trouble then we're in trouble but uh yeah we have that and then we did then we did like the experiment like you go on instagram live almost every day oh yeah so we did that was my experiments and that

[00:39:58] was great and that was that did have meaning so the quest was like can I do go on instagram live every day and talk about things relevant to people but it had meaning in that over the

[00:40:08] year or two after that and I did that mostly during the covid period a lot of people you know a lot of people were scared during covid and I was trying to interpret the news every day in a way

[00:40:18] that was a little more optimistic than I felt the news was the news was being more pessimistic than they should be so that was like an experiment and that experiment worked and that was like a

[00:40:28] mini quest um yeah but there's all sorts of experiments like oh i'm going to go for pilot lessons and I might not succeed in becoming a pilot but i'm going to fly a plane and so I did

[00:40:39] that a few months ago do you actually yeah you don't remember like John and I did it um and John's my stepson and right we went on a flying lesson nobody I don't even drive like my

[00:40:51] wife was trying to talk me out of it she said you don't even drive they're not going to give you a pilot's license but I didn't get a pilot's license but I did fly a plane I flew from basically

[00:41:01] where I am right now to Atlanta so it's like a you know it was like a 20 minute plane ride and and I landed the plane so it was that's the hardest part there's the hardest part yeah I took

[00:41:12] off I flew there and I landed and what was really hard for me where I don't think I could become a pilot I didn't understand everything they were saying on like the the micro you know the

[00:41:23] communication device on the plane like the instructor had to tell me what they were saying I just there they were talking so fast I didn't understand anybody but you know another I don't know another experiment might be saying yes to things that you normally say no to like

[00:41:40] there was a conference I wanted to say no to and as an experiment I just decided it was a whole month where I just said yes to everything people asked me to do and I went on all these wild

[00:41:50] adventures and it was it was interesting that was like a mini quest and then finally I want to talk about habits so like again habits are sometimes intermingled with goals but I want to

[00:42:03] talk specifically about like how our odd came on the podcast recently he has the miracle morning where he has his savers acronym which you know you can read it to see what it is but I have

[00:42:14] something I call the daily practice which is a daily set of habits that whenever I've been broke or really suffering or down or depressed and I don't think I'm a naturally happy person I

[00:42:25] think I'm a naturally anxious sort of person and whenever I've done this on a daily basis and I try to do it every day it's really helped me and that is to just and and you could fill in the blanks

[00:42:38] what all these things mean to you but every day improve physically emotionally creatively spiritually so this is where you can fill in the blanks but here's how I do it physically

[00:42:48] did I sleep eight hours did I do a little bit of exercise did I eat nutritionally uh emotional did I cultivate the important relationships in my life like today I spoke to both my daughters for

[00:43:04] instance and had a coffee with my wife so I feel like I emotionally moved the needle forward 1% creatively I wrote down 10 ideas originally I was going to do this podcast on 10 scams to

[00:43:22] avoid on wall street but I switched it to this but that was my 10 ideas was 10 scams you might encounter on wall street and we'll do that episode some other time and uh and spiritually it might

[00:43:35] mean for some people prayer it might mean meditation it might mean reading the bible or some other spiritual text but for me it just means you know kind of kind of surrendering

[00:43:49] that 99.99% of the universe is out of my control and just surrendering to that the good and the bad and and trying to find uh Robert Greene I like how he describes it find the sublime in your life

[00:44:05] like right now as we talk the the sun is setting and it's sitting behind the trees near my house and that's beautiful so so taking moments in your life to surrender and to notice the sublime

[00:44:18] in your life I really can't wait for Robert Greene's book on this to happen but again for everybody they could fill in the blanks themselves and so that's basically it make a manifesto what what

[00:44:31] higher meaning is there in your life that gives you the energy to move forward what might be narrow that down to a specific purpose what might be goals you have that will improve your life

[00:44:42] this year that that will help you achieve the meaning and purpose in your life what fantastic improbable quests can you go on that are going to give you adventures and excitement and the

[00:44:55] people around you will marvel at them and you'll marvel at them you'll say to yourself I can't believe this is happening to me because it's something you love by the way how do you find something you love well that's hard because sometimes we get into these routines

[00:45:08] and I get into this where okay it's six o'clock time to eat dinner and watch Netflix for four hours and then go to sleep and start the day again so how do you spend the time finding things you love

[00:45:22] there's no real answer but the way I've done it in the past is you know sometimes I'll go to a bookstore and I'll it's almost like a magnet which section am I gravitating towards where I would

[00:45:34] be willing to read every single book in that section that might mean that there's something I love there or what did I love as a six year old a seven year old an eight year old a 15 year old an 18 year

[00:45:45] old a 25 year old is there something there that I could always wanted to return to that maybe I could return to in a new way with my new experience and wisdom and whatever

[00:45:55] or lack of wisdom whatever or or read a lot of books and it's like when I started day trading I remember the whole reason I started day trading back in 1999 2000 because I read this book

[00:46:08] market wizards by Jack Schwager about day traders and it blew my mind I said I wanted to be a day trader and I started doing it and so sometimes reading things reading really good books by

[00:46:20] good authors will excite you like the great thing about reading is and and I feel and I'm saying this to myself because I feel I haven't read as much as I used to this particularly

[00:46:32] this past year but the great thing about reading is you're like a vampire you get to absorb the entire life experience of another human being the author of the book you're reading

[00:46:44] you get to absorb that in just a few hours or a few days when they end has been a whole lifetime developing that experience so it's like there's this vampire like thing that happens

[00:46:54] when when you read and vampires have like superpowers and they live forever so if you could find a way to be a little bit like a vampire without necessarily sucking people's blood out although it's almost like that in a metaphorical sense then your life's going to be better

[00:47:11] so reading has often gotten me on quest sorry I just wanted to mention like when you say you don't read as much this year you mean you only read a hundred books yeah I mean that's

[00:47:23] that's just it is that I've read the books of all of our guests so I read probably on average two or three books a week so that's but sometimes but it's not like okay I enjoy reading all those

[00:47:34] books and and sometimes I'll seek out guests after I read their books because I like the book so much but I haven't read a lot of fiction I haven't this year I haven't read a lot of

[00:47:42] books just for that were unrelated to the podcast less than I usually do so I really meant it that way but um I think this quest came out of me being depressed like after my August 2020 article that

[00:47:58] had that backlash and Seinfeld trashed me and my family trashed me and friends trashed me and ex-girlfriends wrote articles about me and the whole thing I think I got a little depressed

[00:48:09] and I sort of went into my office and shut the door and didn't come out for a while and then the TV show The Queen's Gambit came out and it reminded me oh I really love this thing called chess which

[00:48:21] is what this TV show is about and so I started playing chess all the time and then I figured you know what I need to give I need to it's I'm wasting time I'm just playing chess all day

[00:48:32] and night and so I said okay well I'm gonna go on a quest I'm gonna get back to the level I was before but even that seemed frivolous so that's why I then put meaning around it so really this quest

[00:48:42] was born out of really kind of sadness and depression and fear and everything's changed like you know I then began this quest which forced me to improve my life and have these goals and do

[00:48:59] these experiments and reawaken my daily practice and this has provided meaning in my life where I'm going to write a book about it and hopefully have some impact and so it's so this notion of a

[00:49:12] quest not only has given me adventures it really brought me out of in 2020 early 2021 which was almost three years ago now uh well I was a pretty I don't want to say severe depression but I was

[00:49:25] I was down and medication wasn't really helping therapy wasn't really helping and my daily practice wasn't really helping at the time I was kind of avoiding doing it and it was ultimately finding something I love doing and attaching some goals and adventures and experiments and missions

[00:49:45] to it and meaning to it that really catapulted me out of the depression and even though it's still a hard thing to do like I'm not always succeeding at it and that's frustrating it

[00:49:57] really makes me happy getting up in the morning knowing um continuing on this quest as does doing this podcast I love doing this podcast Jay thank you once again for 2023 how many years have we been

[00:50:10] working together it's like it's like the seventh year we've been working together yeah it is and I'm forever 17 18 19 20 I have to count on my fingers now I used to be a math genius but now

[00:50:20] I have to count on my fingers 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 eight years holy moly yeah oh my god Jay you must be getting sick of me I mean I'm having fun the thing is like looking on the

[00:50:34] James Otter show it's also like kind of fulfilling because I know I I'm helping people in a sense not me personally I I'm hoping that our show your show the James Otter show has an impact on

[00:50:46] other people live and also give other people meaning and and and we see it from just the letters and the emails we get like send me an email at altatrachemail.com if you want to say hi I would

[00:50:59] I would love it and subscribe to this podcast so that we go up in the rankings and continue to build audience and get great guests and share this with your friends if you want and for now

[00:51:13] um you know hopefully this was useful and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled podcast in the next day or so so thanks so much everybody thanks Jay thank you