Transcript of Dr. Benjamin Hardy: The Mindset Shift That Stops You From Feeling Like a Failure | Mental Wealth Series | E4 New

Hey, App Fam, we are about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcast for 8 years and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous, you may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale. Gail, and we wanna hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers, and I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry. So that's what I wanna bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm gonna be interviewing people who are making anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million a year. They're not super famous, they're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes, and we're gonna uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more.

If this sounds like you and you wanna be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com/apply and share your story. Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com/apply, and who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting podcast. Yap gang, we made it. This is the grand finale of our mental wealth series. All month long, we've been talking about how to build a successful business without burning out, numbing out, or losing yourself along the way. And today's episode ties it all together. I'm sitting down with organizational psychologist, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, to talk about how to stop chasing an impossible version of success and start becoming the person you actually wanna be. If you haven't yet, head to yapmedia.com/mentalwealth to download your free mental wealth playbook. Your final challenge is the I Am, I Should Future Self worksheet where you'll get clear on who you wanna become and start acting like that person today. Let's close this out strong, Yap Fam, and get right into it. Ben, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

I'm happy to be back.

I heard you say on another podcast that when you released that book in 2018, that you came on my podcast to talk about willpower, Doesn't work. You actually considered it a failure because it didn't reach New York Times bestsellers list. And that's like every author's dream. But nonetheless, like when you came on my podcast, I remember thinking it was such a big deal. You were such a big blogger and we, we had scored Benjamin Hardy like episode number 7. And so you were a big deal to us and to the outside world, but inside you felt like a failure. So I wanna talk about that. I think it'll give us some color on your, your, you know, your journey and help us understand the gap in the gain concept as well.

Absolutely. No, I mean, I think it's a beautiful, interesting place to start. So I guess for a very, for a little context, um, I would say in 2000, ever, so I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010. And like going on that, that experience was very transformational for me. I grew up in a really intense environment. We probably even talked about it, but ever since I came home from that experience in 2010, I wanted to be a professional author. So like that was a dream of mine. But I didn't know what form it would take, and I didn't really start approaching that goal into, until 2015. So from 2010 to 2015, I went to school, studied psychology, got into a PhD program, uh, for organizational psychology. And then once I was in my first year of my program, that's when it really hit me and I got really committed, I guess you could say, to my future self of becoming a professional author. So this was early 2015. You know, I was very already very excited, very motivated. Um, and I had already learned a lot of success principles, I guess you could say.

And so I actually grew very fast as a blogger and that's what took me to the medium.com and I grew and, and so essentially over the, from 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously as a blogger and was able to get a book deal and be able to start providing for my family. I mean, that was essentially my dream was. To become a professional author and to be able to provide for my family. At the time, my wife and I had 3 foster kids. We've adopted them since and et cetera. But so essentially I got a multi-six-figure book deal to write a book. I'm living my dreams. It all happens way faster than I thought. Into early 2018, honestly, it was March of 2018, the book comes out. Mm-hmm. And I did have way in my head, like I had built everything up in my head that it, it needed to be a certain level. It needed to be a New York Times bestseller. And I admittedly as well, threw so much money at it. Like, that early 2018 was the first year I started to make, like, pretty dang good money, and I threw a lot of it at that book.

And I was just throwing everything, kitchen sink, at it. And yeah, it just didn't end up launching and exploding the way I thought it would. Like, I just expected it would go a certain way because most everything to that point in terms of, like, my writing and my growth just It was all going very, very well. And so yeah, it didn't hit the goal. And for probably 4 or 5 months, I was in a very deep depression, very deep slump. Um, and kind of back to the idea of the gap and the gain. Now it's kind of funny that I launch a book. I am a, I mean, I'm a professional author. I released my first book. Like I've never written a full book before. I released this book in to my publisher, they were very happy with the results. But for me, in my head, I just totally felt like a loser. And I guess I've learned to measure my own self differently. Um, so the gap and the gain is something I learned from Dan Sullivan. I read his little book on the subject, maybe actually it was in 2018. I read his little book and I was still blogging back then, and it was just an idea I loved.

And I thought, if I ever get a chance to write books with Dan Sullivan, I'm going to make this a major book. And the idea is very simple. I mean, it's, it's basically the idea that as a person, you're, you're, we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves and how we measure our experiences. The reason I went into a deep depression after I had made a monumental achievement, I mean, I'd never done that before. It was totally new. And yet I felt like a loser cuz I was in the gap. I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be, which is an ideal. When you're in the gap, you're measuring yourself against your ideals, which are always changing, always moving. Whereas the gain is the opposite. You measure yourself backward against where you were before. Truth was, is I was way further than I'd ever been. And if I was just measuring myself backward against my past self, competing only against my past self, I was radically further than I ever was. And I just did something huge. And so I've just, I'm, I'm learning and I've learned over the years to be more in the gain.

And it, it, it's a far more enjoyable, far happier, uh, experience.

Yeah. And I'd love to kind of dig deeper on this if you can help us understand the difference between ideals and goals and why that matters with all this.

So ideals are very, they're very ephemeral. Like they're not actually tangible. Like, and so like how, how I learned it from Dan is ideals are like the horizon in the desert. Like you can see 'em out there and like, but every time you take a few steps forward, The horizon keeps going. And in America, we're actually trained to always be pursuing happiness. That's even in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so we're very big on ideals in America, which is good. Like, it's good to have ideals. It's good to be idealistic. There's nothing wrong with ideals. The problem is, is that they're immaterial. Like, I think a definition of ideal is whatever you, whatever you believe is perfection. So when you're in the gap, you're literally measuring yourself against your view of perfection. But back to the idea of the horizon, that view is never-endingly changing. Like, my former self would've felt like it was perfection just to get a book deal. But then once I got there, the ideal changed, the horizon moved. And now, and so if you're always measuring yourself against a moving target and also a moving target that by definition is unreachable, you can't actually reach an ideal.

It's an ideal. But if you're always measuring yourself against it, then you never feel like you've moved anywhere. And that's, that's, that's actually why we wrote the book is because high achievers by nature have huge ideals, but they also usually measure themselves against them. And, and our culture is trained that way. Social media trains us to have ideals and to always be comparing ourselves externally. And sometimes ideals are other people. Um, but if you're always measuring yourself against something that's way up ahead and also something that you can never actually reach, then what that does for you internally is it feels like you've never made any progress at all. It also devalues everything you've done to that point. And so whenever you're in the gap, it does not matter how much you've achieved. It doesn't matter if you're living way, way, way beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would do. You actually feel like you've made no progress at all and you feel like a loser and you've devalued not only your current self, you've devalued everything that got you here. And so ideals are beautiful. They're just not useful as a measurement tool.

They're useful as a direction tool. Goals are far more concrete. Obviously you can have goals that you set that move you toward your ideals. Um, and so goals are, are specific, they're concrete, they're, they're mile markers on a journey. Uh, and then the useful thing to do with your goals is to obviously become increasingly intrinsically motivated towards the goals you set and even the standards you set for yourself that they're less about. What anyone else thinks, what anyone else wants. Um, and you actually get better at doing that when you just start measuring your progress backwards. So like, I'll set a goal for myself. I've got huge goals for 2023, but in terms of where I'm, where I'm measuring myself and in terms of my benchmark, like my benchmark for 2023 is what I accomplished in 2022. Like I accomplished some cool things, but I'm using that since, since it's tangible. Ideals are not tangible. Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022. And I can use that not only to propel me forward, but I can also use that to say, what do I wanna do that's even gonna be bigger and more exciting?

Yeah. So you can just measure yourself backwards and use that as the baseline for what you can do.

Yeah. So I hear you saying a couple big ideas here. The first one is ideals are a moving target. You're never gonna get there, so you're never gonna be happy trying to go towards those ideals or because you're never gonna actually achieve that. You can't actually achieve your ideal and it's always moving further and further as you become more successful. Right? Second is comparing yourselves to other people. That never helps in terms of our mindset or happiness. And then I hear you saying that goals can be tangible and you can have mile markers and it's okay to have goals, but you need to make sure that you're judging your progress on those goals based on your past, not necessarily how far you are from your ideal place. Right? I know I probably didn't say it as good as you, but that's basically what I'm getting. Yes.

No, you broke it down beautifully. I think that this is one of the main problems with the narratives. Like, you know, there's a lot of narratives about how you shouldn't have goals. Um, obviously I think it's impossible to not have goals. Um, I think human beings are, we, we can't not have a goal. Um, that's part of being intentional. Um, but the problem is the measurement. I mean, even if I had hit my goal, I would've gone into the gap. I would've moved the target. So even if I had hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Mm-hmm.

From a gap perspective, I still would've felt terrible about myself because I would've moved the target. The target would've been, well, why wasn't I on it for 4 weeks?

Or why wasn't I number 1 New York Times bestseller? Yeah.

Yeah. Or why didn't I hit number 1? So it doesn't even, whether you hit the goal or not, doesn't even matter. If you're in the gap, it will never have been enough because the target will keep changing and you're measuring yourself against something that's immeasurable and something that's external and always changing. And so yeah, whether it's other people that you're measuring yourself against or whether it's just your inflated ideals, um, that's the point is, is that you won't be happy hitting or not hitting your goals if you stay in the gap.

Yeah.

Um, and that's just, that's just the key.

Yeah. So then on the flip side, let's talk about gain thinking. What does it look like to have gain thinking or to practice gain thinking?

So I look at gain thinking two ways. One is, is it's a way of measuring your progress and measuring your experiences. So for me, for example, like I have, I've had a number of experiences already today, like even just to this point, and some of them went to plans and some of them didn't go to plans. Um, but if I'm in the gain, I'm measuring what actually did happen and I'm measuring myself backwards. I'm only measuring myself against where I was before. And the truth is, is I'm always ahead of my past self, even if things go backwards seemingly, like even if I lose my leg in a car accident, right? Like a lot of bad things can seemingly happen, but if you're in the gain, you are finding the gains and you're creating gains from your experiences. Mm-hmm. And so you're, I, I consider it, you're squeezing as much juice out of your experiences as possible. You're also always choosing to become better as a result. No matter what happens to you, you are in the gain. So everything ultimately happens for you. So I guess it's, it's really two big ideas. One is, is it's measuring yourself backward against where you were before.

And always realizing that you are further than you were before. And that the only thing I'm actually measuring myself against is myself, which is where I was before. So that's number one, is just measuring yourself backwards. The second one is literally turning everything that happens to you into something that happens for you. So anything, no matter what it was, you can actually gain and grow from it. And if you do, then you're always getting better. You're always learning from every experience. Whereas if you're in the gap, then your past becomes a problem. Like that's from like a psychology standpoint, what you need to be happy in the present is you need a happy past and an exciting future. Mm-hmm. And the past is literally a meaning. And so the gain is just a lens of using your, or of transforming your past into more gains, more learning. Uh, even from your most extreme traumas, you can learn to turn those into gains so that you're constantly better and even grateful for them. Which is what psychologists would call post-traumatic growth. So it's really just those two things. I'm only measuring myself against myself backward, and I'm literally turning every experience into my gain.

Hmm.

And we're gonna touch on post-traumatic growth later on in this interview, but first I wanna get into your new book, your latest book, Be Your Future Self Now. I think this is a great tie-in. So in your book, you say it's not about becoming our future selves, it's actually about being our future selves. Now, I think we just got a good foundation of gap thinking, gain thinking. Here you are telling us basically, let's not compare our our progress to our ideals, but you're also, you know, not opposed to the fact of thinking in a futuristic way or thinking about our future. It's not like you're saying, don't think about your future at all. It's just that you've gotta be your future self. It's not about becoming your future self in the gap between where you are and, uh, you know, and where you wanna be. So tell us about how future self is sort of related to this gap and gain thinking. Um, because I, I have a feeling that you really got the inspiration from this book, from this other book, uh, after reading both of them.

So this is a really interesting concept in psychology. So like when typically the way we look at time is we look at it as past, present, and future.

Mm-hmm.

And we kind of look at it sequentially. So, and we also look at it chronologically, like my past is behind me. There's, there's no way I can get back there. My present is now and the future's up ahead of me. I can never, I'll never actually be able to go into the future. All there is is really now. From a psychology standpoint, that's not how psychologists view time. Psychologists don't view time sequentially. We actually view it holistically. So what I mean by that is, is that the past is currently existing in my life. Like how, who I'm being right now is a complete amalgamation of, of my views of my past, my experiences of my past. We even today, we're talking about us having a conversation 4 years ago, right? And so like my past is of course influencing me right now and my narration of the past, my story of the past, the feelings I have toward my past, the anchors I may have. In my past that are unresolved, call it trauma or, or whatever. But also my goals are heavily influencing me. I mean, uh, anyone who's listening to this is listening to it for a reason.

They're listening to it because they feel like this is gonna help them contribute to their goals or help them move forward in their lives. And so everything about my life right now is a combination of my feelings and my perspectives of my past and also my excitements or my feelings towards the future. Mm-hmm. Um, and so Uh, they're certainly not mutually exclusive in terms of being in the gain, but also having a future-oriented mindset. Most people who read the gap and the gain are very future-oriented people. Um, the gain, the gain doesn't stop you, I guess, from having a future. Actually, in my perspective, whenever I'm living in the gain, it actually helps me to be more, uh, it helps me to have a future that's more genuinely coming from my own self rather than something that's coming from the outside. Usually people's goals and their, call it their standards or their ideals actually were fed to them by culture, by society. They, they don't even, you know, the future that they want actually isn't genuinely intrinsically motivated.

Mm-hmm.

And so for me, tapping into the gain just helps me to stop worrying about the outside world as much, stop competing with other people. Um, and so in terms of future self, um, I guess I would say in simple terms, We all have a future self. What the research shows us is that most people, especially the older they get, they stop thinking about their future self very much. Um, most people probably 30 and above assume that even their future self 10, 20, or 30 years from now is mostly gonna be the same person they are today. Mm-hmm. So most people don't have huge imagination towards their future self. What the research does show is that your future self is gonna be a wildly different person than you think, even in 5 or 10 years from now. It's gonna be hard to fully predict who your future self will be, but if you start imagining it, start thinking about it, and importantly, getting really connected to your future self, who you want to be in the future, you can then start using obviously your vision of your future self to guide and direct who you're gonna be today, and you can be extremely intentional about it.

And so from my standpoint, the best, you know, the best thing to do is get really clear and connected to your future self, who you wanna be. Get very specific about that. And then use that as, I guess you could say, the North Star for directing everything you're doing here and now. And each and every day as you're moving forward, you're measuring yourself against where you were before. You're measuring yourself backwards and you're always seeing that by increasingly living intentionally as your future self, you're always outgrowing your past self. And I, I do this daily. I mean, if I even look at where I was a week ago, Uh, I, I am not the same person I was last week. Um, I've changed a lot. I've grown a lot. I know a ton of things my past self doesn't, didn't know. Um, and so I'm never my past self and I'm always growing into my future self. I, that's kind of how I see it.

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I've had some of my biggest wins and I've had also some of my biggest mistakes, but I know that I'm not the same person I was again, like I said, even a few weeks ago. And so I don't, I'm not mad at my past self though. Like my past self was coming from a different place. I'm not. And so I think it's always good to have compassion and empathy towards your former self, um, because you now know so many things that they didn't know. You know, you're in a different place. You, you see things differently. And so one, I think it's very beautiful to recognize you're not the same person as you were in the past and, and, and to have only empathy towards your past. Uh, there's no upsides to having bad, bad or negative emotions towards your past. It does nothing for your future. It does nothing for your present. Um, and so always transforming your past into gains and, and greater perspective learning. Um, that is again, back, you know, back to post-traumatic growth. It's that you are grateful. Um, like the idea of trauma is really that something happened to your past and you feel like you're now in some way in like inferior.

You've gone backwards. Um, you're also crippled in some way because of what happened. Whereas the opposite is, is that now you are empowered because of what happened. Um, so I, I guess that's one in terms of always seeing your future self as a different person. To me, what that does is it propels a, a growth mindset. Like the definition of a fixed mindset is that you've purely defined who you are based on your past, and then you assume that who you are now is who you're always gonna be. So you have a fixed mindset. You don't think you're gonna change. You've, you've already kind of painted your future self into a box that your future self is the exact person you are today. And so that. That leads you, I mean, what, what the research shows is that leads to kind of having a fragile or a brittle approach to life where you're too afraid to fail cuz you're trying to prove yourself. Whereas if I know that my future self a week from now is gonna be different, they're gonna be way more knowledgeable, they're gonna be less ignorant, then that gives me right now a lot of grace.

Like you said, like I don't have to have all the answers right now. Like one of my favorite, um, kind of models for this, it comes from Brené Brown's book, The Atlas of the Heart, where she said you're either trying to be right or you're trying to get it right. And if you're trying to be right, that's the, that's the definition of a fixed mindset. Like you're trying to prove your current self because your future self isn't gonna be any different. Like you've already, you're kind of stuck. Whereas if you're just trying to get it right, I know I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes. I know I don't have all the answers now, and I know my future self's gonna have better perspectives. And once I get there, they're gonna be blown away at how different they are from who I am today. But also they're always gonna be trying to figure it out. Like you're always trying to get it right and you're always growing and changing. And so. It just leads you to not needing to, not needing to have it all figured out. Instead, you're just in a state of learning, which is a growth mindset.

Yeah. And something that I, I think is really interesting is that it's actually hard to imagine ourselves as a future self. I think some people are better than others, but a lot of people have trouble imagining who they are in the future. Can you talk to us about why that is?

The main reason that people have a hard time And this is something that Daniel Gilbert said. He's a Harvard psychologist who's been studying this concept for 20 years, and he actually gave a mainstage TED Talk called The Psychology of Your Future Self back in 2014.

Mm-hmm.

But he said that the reason people have a hard time imagining their future self is because they don't do it. Like they literally don't take the time. Like if anyone here was sitting listening, I would ask in the last 7 days, How much time have you spent imagining your future self? How much time have you spent journaling and thinking about it? Um, my guess is, is that the average listener, and this is a very like, you know, and maybe this group would be different because this is, these are young people who are actually, you know, have big visions. But I'd say the average person who struggles to think about this, it, the main reason is just because they're not taking the time to think about it. Um, imagination is very much a skill. Uh, it's a skill that you can get better and better at. Um, psychologists, there's kind of levels to, to seeing your future self. The first one is honestly just connecting with your future self and having empathy for them, just like you would wanna have empathy for your past self. A, a crucial first step to connecting to your future self is having, is having empathy that your future self is a real person.

They're coming from a certain place and they're being impacted by what you do. And so like, if just like I would have empathy for another person, if I was more emotionally intelligent, I would realize. That they're coming from a different place than me. They've got different perspectives, different values, different goals. They're in a different situation. I would wanna start by understanding. Um, but then you go from connecting to getting really vivid where it's like you now start to kind of see the context of your future self. And obviously you get to create that. Like your future self is gonna be different from mine, and I get to choose in large part what I want my future self to look like. Um, and so I think you just take the time to think, Who do I want my future self to be in 5 or 10 years? What do I want that to look like? What's gonna be really important to my future self? Um, what's gonna be really important to them that I should be paying attention to now? I mean, so you, I think it's just taking the time to really think about it and putting yourself in the situation.

Like just as one simple example, like let me just put myself into my future self's shoes.

Mm-hmm.

Call it in 2030. So 2030 is 8 years away. One way of putting myself into that person's shoes is literally just thinking things through. So I know that it's a little crazy for a lot of people, but I have I have 6 kids and the oldest one is 15, the youngest one is 2. So like, I know that my 15-year-old in 8 years from now is gonna be 23. Like, so that's one thing is like, okay, I'm gonna have a 23-year-old son. My youngest is gonna be 10. And so I'm just starting to like actually start to think about that. I'll be 10 years older. What do I want that to look like? Where do I wanna be? What do I wanna be focused on? What's gonna be really important to me then? Like literally starting to put yourself in the shoes and start to think about it. And then starting to think, what are the most important things that I could do now that would set that future self up? I know that, and you can do it in shorter timeframes, but it's literally just actually putting concrete around it and, and context to really start thinking about it.

Yeah. So related to this, in your book you say that your identity is what you're most committed to, and it's your identity that actually drives your behaviors or, or your future identity. Can you talk to us about that?

Yeah. So identity is such an interesting concept and I really do think it's, it's kind of the driver of everything. Um, but then the question is, well, what drives identity? And identity is really actually driven by what your goals are, what you're most committed to. Um, and when, when I say it's what you're most committed to, it's really two things. It's the story that you're most committed to in terms of your past, present, and future. Like we all have a story about our past. And who we were and what led us to this point. We have a story about who we are now, and we also have a story for our future. Um, and so that's one commitment is the story or the narrative you have. The second one is actually your standards. So your standards as a person are what you're committed to. Like we all have standards. Um, like I'll give an example. Like I was recently back home visiting home and I have a cousin who's been living at my dad's house for, call it 5 years. He's just, he's a cousin that lives at my dad's house now. And he's one of those people who plays World of Warcraft literally like all day unless he is at work or sleeping.

And actually, honestly, that's how I used to be. Um, um, like I used to be that way, um, where I played video games like 16 hours a day. But it was interesting cuz I was talking to him and I was just catching up with him and I was just asking him what was going on in the game cuz that's kind of the main thing he does. And he said, well, I recently left my group, my guild. It's a guild in this online game. And I said, well, why did you leave the guild? And he said, cuz they're just up to my standard. Like, I have bigger goals that I want to achieve in the game, and there's things I want to do, and I just can't do in this group. And he's one of those people who's like at the top of the top of the top in this game. And I said that was interesting that his standard for himself is really high in the game. Like, I have zero standards for myself in that game because it's not valuable to me. Like, it's not what I value. So I have no standards there.

But the question is, well, where are my standards? Where do I actually care and how high are my standards in those areas? Mm-hmm. Uh, and your standard does reflect what you're committed to. So like he showed that he was committed to something more, which is why he left that group, cuz his standards were higher. So as you elevate your standards and your story, you change your identity. And so your standards are just whatever you hold yourself to. Um, that could be in your finances, it could be in your health. And when you raise the standards, and it's a true commitment, you don't go back below those standards. You start saying no to everything that's below those, and it stops resonating with your identity. Like, mm-hmm. Because your standards and your identity are pretty much the same thing. Um, so as you elevate your standards, basically you no longer can go back to doing what you were doing before because it just doesn't resonate with your identity anymore. Like, I, I, there's things that I was even saying yes to call it a few months ago, which would be unfathomable to me now. Like I, I, it just doesn't fit with, with, with what's acceptable or even with what's relevant to me anymore because it no longer fits the standard.

Yeah. So basically it's, it's having this very clear, vivid picture of your future self. And then whenever you have decisions in terms of how you act or the things that you do, you're always being true to your future self. And it helps you basically be able to say no more often and make the decisions that will be good to your future self or what is aligned to your future self.

Yeah. I mean, when you start to make your future self the standard, then it becomes a massive filtering tool where it's like, what would my future self do? Or if I was my future self now, how would they approach this? And how would my future self want me to do this? Um, we were talking about Viktor Frankl, you know, earlier in this call, and that's literally what Viktor Frankl invited people to do. He said, I want you to imagine this moment that you're sitting in right now. And imagine that you had already lived it. So whatever you're doing, you know, let's just call it, you're on your way home from work and you're about to go home from work. So let's just imagine that this moment right now has already passed and you acted poorly like you, you did. You acted the way you're, you're, you're about to act now. I want you to, and you're, and you're having to deal with the consequences of whatever it is you're gonna do, but now you get to come back and relive it again and you get to actually do it differently and better. Like that, that's something that like, and so that's just using your future self as the standard.

Like I know that my future self wants the best for me and also wants me to be my best. And so if I start to make my future self the standard, then all of a sudden I, I'm gonna start making a lot better decisions in the present because not only am I, am I, am I thinking about what's best for me in my future, but I'm now using that as the tool. For making the best decisions now, whether that's, call it, I'm at home and, you know, I could be engaging with my kids on a really high level, which is what my future self would probably want me to do. But instead I'm just kind of spacing out, like sitting on my phone. Like if I'm using my future self as the standard and my future self being what my would, would be ultimately best for me and what I value most, it becomes a lot easier to make the decision here and now to do what's best for the present and the future.

Mm-hmm. And I, I could imagine that if you don't have a clear goal or vision of your future, your life is just willy-nilly, right? You're just doing things to do them. You don't have a clear goal. It's chaotic. Um, so what's the downside of not even having a future self vision?

Yeah, so if you don't know who your future self is in any degree, or if you're absolutely not connected to your future self at all, like the extreme end of that. And, and like, you can see this, the extreme end of being disconnected to your future self is someone who has zero perspective of consequences. And like, they're like almost so, they're so out of touch. Like, and I've seen this even with my kids where it's like they're acting so poorly, like right before bed sometimes as a family. Like if they do certain things like our night routine really well, sometimes we'll like, watch like half a movie or something like that before bed. And like we will tell them sometimes like, if you go through these, if you do the routine really well, we'll, we'll like have ice cream and watch a movie. Like, you know, for like 40 minutes. If they're not connected to that future self, even 45 minutes into the future, like they will do absolute terrible things that then lead us to saying, nope. Can't do it. And then they throw a fit. They're like, they can't even believe that they lost what they did, but they were so disconnected to what they were doing and the consequences.

And like, this is what happens for extreme addicts where like you do something and you're so disconnected from the consequences that you're shocked when you, when all of a sudden, like everything's falling apart. And so like one degree of looking at this is, is like if you are so disconnected from your behavior and, and re reality being consequences, which is what my kids were like, they're acting so opposite to the results that they want or think that they want, but they don't even know it. It's like, are you aware that what you're doing right now is literally sabotaging you in 10 minutes from now and you're about to throw a fit and they don't see it like that is utter blindness. Um, But the other angle, which is kind of more the direction you were going, was it's kind of like the Alice in Wonderland thing where, you know, Alice meets the cat and the cat says, you know, well, Alice says, which way should I go? Because there's two different paths. And the cat says, well, that depends on where you want to go. And she says, well, I don't know where I'm going.

And so he says, then you can literally go any direction you want. Because if you don't know where you want to go, if you don't have a destination in mind, then it literally doesn't matter. What you do today. And that's, that's part of, I guess what you would say is being connected to your future self is once you get specific about where you want to go, about what you want, then you can start to formulate pathways of getting there. But if you have absolutely no direction, no destination, then it does not matter what you do here and now. Uh, you're essentially rudderless. I mean, your future self becomes the anchor and it becomes the compass to like the decisions you make here and now. And that's, That's actually literally what all the research shows now. And, and by the way, the Psychology Today magazine that just came out in September and October was all about, um, future self and about the person you're gonna be in the future because this topic is becoming so, so big in, in psychology and even in therapy. Like therapists are finding that there's really no way we can help someone change long-term without getting them connected to their future self because if they're not If they're not thinking about who they want to be, it's very hard to change without a goal or without a why.

Like that then just becomes behavior change, which is kind of willpower focused. And you can't really sustain that without a direction. And so yeah, it's, it's, I would say it's very difficult to, to be intentional if you don't have a future self you're working towards.

Yeah. And you know, I interview really successful people all the time, like yourself. I had Alex Hormozi on the show who's like everybody's new favorite sales and marketing entrepreneur and guru. And we were talking about focus and this idea of focus is becoming such a big theme lately. I've been doing podcasting for almost 5 years now, and more and more it just sounds like people saying you need to get focused. If you're unfocused, if you're unprioritized, you're not gonna really achieve extraordinary success. Like you can be successful, of course, but. To really, you know, become that 1%. Scott Galloway was on and said the same thing. And so what you're saying is aligned to that, you know, understanding your future self is having this extreme focus of who you wanna be, right? And the steps you're gonna take to get there because you understand who you wanna be and that target's always moving, but you're always taking the actions that's gonna help your future self. Yeah, fam, have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't? It happens to the best of us, and in business that adds up fast because when somebody is ready to talk, speed can secure the deal.

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And so I'd love to understand how MrBeast used this concept to be a 17-year-old kid, no money, no skills, to one of the most famous people in the world.

So this was really interesting to me. I was shocked when it happened. Um, cuz I was writing Be Your Future Self Now. Um, it was kind of, so I wrote a book called Personality Isn't Permanent, and I did not know about the future self research, even though like I had already done a PhD. It was still kind of a growing, they call it like a branch or a vein of research. Like it was a topic I had never really heard of and it was kind of small, but it was burgeoning, meaning it was growing and. Anyways, while I was writing that book, call it end of 2019, early 2020, I fell upon the research on future self and I was like, oh my goodness, why have I never heard of this before? Like, why have I never even seen this? Why have I never heard people talking about this? Whether it's in psychology or in self-development or anything, like, why is this a new idea? Uh, it seems like this is like the grounding of all self-development ideas and also like psychology. Like I'm, but anyways, I, I knew I wanted to write a book on it.

And so I was doing all sorts of research on it while writing other books. And then all of a sudden in 2020, and I had known who MrBeast was just 'cause, I mean, I like YouTube. I was watching it. You know, he's the, he's this interesting figure, right? Doing these huge outlandish videos. And I was mostly watching them with my kids and just blown away by what he was doing. And then all of a sudden in October, so it's in October of 2020, a video comes up and it's called Hi Me in 5 Years. And it's got a picture of like a younger version of MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, right? And it's sketchy. Like I turn, I click the video and it's him talking as a 17-year-old kid in 2015. So it's filmed in 2015 and he is saying, hi, you know, whenever you see this video, I just wanna let you know, like it's 2015. I'm filming this video from my room. I should be studying for my history test, but I just wanted to take this minute and have a conversation with myself in 5 years from now. And he basically just starts talking to his future yourself.

It's like 2 minutes long. It's, it's really rough, filmed from a really bad camera. He shows where he is at with his YouTube channel. I think he's got like 8,000 subscribers and basically he just talks about his future self. He is like, you know, where do I want to be in 5 years? Like, who do I think I'm gonna be in 5 years? Um, and he is just kind of having this intimate personal conversation with his future self in public. So basically what happened, and you know, as you scroll way back in time through his channel, You actually see that he did this multiple times, but he did it all the same night. So it was in October, it was, well, you know, if you use the exact date, it was October 4th, 2015. And he was 17 years old and he, what he ended up doing, I don't know where he got the idea, but he filmed 4 different future self videos. Each of them were like 2 minutes long. So the first one was, where do I want to be in? He said, hi, me in 6 months. Months or something like that.

And so he was talking to his future self 6 months into the future and just saying where mostly because his obsession, which as you can see, whatever you focus on expands, he got very good at YouTube. But most of his future self was related to like himself as a YouTuber. You know, he wanted to be a famous YouTuber. He wanted to be, be the biggest YouTuber in the world. And so like as he is talking to his future self 6 months into the future, he is like, you know, if I have 20,000 subscribers, it's gonna be absolutely amazing and stuff like that. If I don't, it's gonna be embarrassing. So he did one for 6 months out, one for a year out, I think he did one, one for 5 years out, and then he did a 10-year all that night. Basically all of those videos were only 2 minutes long. And what he did is he filmed them all in one, one place, one time. He probably took 10 or 15 minutes to film the 4 videos. And then he put them, you know, he set them to go publish on his YouTube channel, but he set them to go into their corresponding times.

And so he set the 6-month one to go live 6 months in the future. The one, one, one year one to go live a year into the future, the 5-year one. And so on October 4th, 2020, when the video just automatically went live because he had set it to go live 5 years into the future, he actually had forgotten that he had made that video. Like it was a shock to him. Um, but in that video he said he wanted to have a million YouTube subscribers and he wouldn't have even been able to fathom what it would've been like to have a million subscribers. Well, when the video actually went live in 2020, his channel had like 45 million subscribers. By that point, he was incomparably a different person. He had a huge business. He was like, had a big team. He was, all of his videos were getting like tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of views. And even since then, now, you know, he's got multiple channels and he's doing so many things. It's even ridiculous. But I mean, he's just an interesting example of someone who is very public about his future self, not afraid of admitting his future self.

And you can actually see when you watch his old videos before that day, October 4th, 2015, 2015, you can see that obviously he got really clear and committed to his future self because the videos started changing after that time and his growth started to like really like accelerate. And so he's just someone who was obviously connected to, committed to his future self. He used his future self as the basis for what he did. He was talking to his future self in public. Um, and that was obviously his identity that drove him forward and he continued to raise his standard for who he became and what he did. So he's just a brilliant example of it.

Yeah. And what a great idea in terms of like shooting videos, uh, basically speaking to, to your future self. Um, what a great—

with no apology, like no embarrassment. Like he doesn't care. And I think that's a huge thing is to not be ashamed of your future self. So many people are afraid to admit what they want.

Yeah. How about in terms of like the timeline of your future self? Is there a certain, should we think about ourselves 5 years from now, 10 years from now? Do we wanna think of like a range? Like what's your suggestion there?

So this is the beautiful part about time psychologically, is that you can use it however you want. One of the areas, and we don't have to go too deep into this in the book, but like obviously a lot of people believe in God, right? Mm-hmm. And so a lot of people believe in their future self after this life. And like, and so like obviously a lot of people are thinking about the afterlife and they're using their views of that to dictate their decisions now. So like you can go as far into the future as you want. You can go beyond this life if you want, and you can think about your future self there and learn about that. Um, which a lot of people do, and that influences a lot of their decisions and the meaning in their life. You can think, you know, Stephen Covey had the old, uh, concept of imagining your 80th birthday party and like what you want your life to be like on your 80th birthday party. Who do you wanna be there? What do they, what do you want people to talk about your life about? So like you can think way ahead and think, you know, big picture, um, you know, and expand that out and really start to think like, what will really have mattered?

At the end of my life? Like what matters? And ideally you spend most of your time on the things which matter, not on the things which don't. Um, but in terms of hyper-practicality, I think it's good to build your future self around various timelines. Mm-hmm. Um, like various important anchor moments. And so like I gave you 2030 on purpose. That wasn't an accident. Um, the reason I gave you 2030 is because in 8 years from now, the youngest one that we adopted, so we adopted 3 kids and then we had 3 of our own. And the youngest one that we adopted is currently 11 years old. In 2030, he will turn 18.

Okay.

And so the older 2 will be gone. He will be leaving in 2030. And that is going to be a big moment for me, my wife, and our younger 3 kids. Because chances are we're going to move from Florida. Like when he moves, we live in Florida. We might not, you know, our future selves might have different plans. But that's kind of a huge anchor moment for my future self, for my family's future self is like our older 3 kids are going to leave. Our younger ones are much younger than the ones we adopted. So like me and my wife have spent some time thinking about like what's going to happen when Logan leaves? Like, where are we going to go become nomadic and like travel the world, live in different countries? Like, and so like we're starting to think about our future self on that timeline because there's a key moment there. Like there's a key anchor. To that. Mm-hmm. And so like, it's good to think about your future self in terms of key anchoring times, cuz then you can really start to map out like, what do I wanna see happen in the next 8 years?

And like, where would I like to be when Logan leaves? Like, I can really think big, uh, on an 8-year scale. Like I can do a lot of things, um, between now and 2030 when he leaves. In terms of super practicality, I think 3 years in terms of tangible goals, in terms of like If I want to accelerate toward a big progress, um, 3 years is a really good timeline for really achieving big specific things. Like, you know, you and I over the last 3 years, you know, it's been a little over 3 years now, but like in terms of you, 3 years ago, if you were thinking about like, how big do you wanna see your podcast go? Like over 3 years you can grow enormously toward a very specific goal. And so Thinking in terms of like, if I want to grow really big in a very specific direction, call it me as an author, you as a podcast, someone in their finances, someone towards skills, 3 years, you can, you can get really specific and you can still grow like quant, like 10x, 100x, 1,000x big in a certain direction. So I think 3 years or less in terms of really big sprints towards big goals.

Mm-hmm.

I love that. I think that's super, super helpful. Okay, so I wanna go, I wanna move into purpose and understanding how purpose is related to all of this. And so I think a good place to start would be understanding the levels of every behavior. You say it's the what, the why, and the how. Can you talk to us about how your why really drives the what and the how?

Yeah, so the why is the reason for doing it. So this is where you start to become intentional. So as an example, if someone's listening to this podcast, my question would be, well, why are you listening to it? And the why would then highlight what you're ultimately trying to do and what you ultimately value. Like everyone's going to have a different why for why we're doing this. You have a different why for interviewing me as I have for being interviewed. Right? Mm-hmm. And so it's important to clarify and understand what the why is that's driving everything you're doing. And I'm of the belief that you do choose the why, like you do choose it, you clarify it, but you can scrape away levels of understanding it. But the why is just the purpose. The purpose is the goal. Like what is the ultimate reason you're doing this? Aristotle would call that final cause, which is basically the end. So as an example, like if I'm hungry, you know, like if I get up and go to the kitchen and start eating, well, it's like, well, why did I get up and go to the kitchen?

It might've been because I'm hungry, but it also might've been because I was triggered and I'm just trying to avoid, like, I'm just like trying to avoid working. And so it's just understanding the why and the purpose starts to help you realize what's driving your behavior. Is it something you really want? You know, like when you're a teenager, maybe your why was, which again, the why is the goal, and this is why the goal drives everything you do, including your identity. You know, when you're younger, the why might've been just to impress your friends, right? And so there's always a why behind every action and how psychologists frame it is every goal is either an approach-oriented goal where you're trying to approach what you want or you're trying to avoid what you don't want. And so the why is always going to either be approaching something you want or avoiding something you don't want. And so it's helpful when the why is more approach-oriented. Sure, you want to avoid bad things from happening, but if everything you're doing is just to avoid negative things from happening, that kind of probably shows that there's a lot of trauma that's unresolved in the past.

And so you're trying to avoid a lot of pain.

Yeah. I, I'd love if we could like just dig on this a little bit. So we're talking about the difference between approach motivations and avoid motivations. When we approach motivation, we're basically creating our future rather avoid motivation is just avoiding a future we don't want and it's better to proactively create one is what you're saying. I just wanna understand what you're trying to say.

Well, I mean, it's good to avoid things you don't want. Like it's good to be strategic about avoiding, call it bad decisions, avoiding bad people. But if you're always just avoiding, then basically every action you're taking is a reaction against something else. Like I'm trying to not, but even avoiding things is based on the future. Like I'm, you know, so I'm like, I'm trying to avoid being out of shape, right? Like that could be, I don't wanna like be obese in the future, so I'm gonna avoid that. Like that's one way of approaching your future, but it's far more powerful and more proactive to say, well, what is it I truly want to approach? Like what is it I wanna like direct my attention towards? And focus on and create. And yeah, I can avoid landfalls along the way and I can learn from experiences and avoid those kind of people, or I can avoid those kind of dumb mistakes. Like certainly you can avoid things, but it is very powerful to be proactive and, and kind of consciously creating like, this is what I want. And then to watch yourself go and get it.

And, and so both are useful, both are incredibly useful. Um, both are motivations. And I think it's helpful when you're trying to observe yourself, like, why am I doing this? It's either going to be to approach something you want or to avoid something you don't. Um, and, and that can start to highlight kind of the why. And I guess one reason why avoid motivations can have downsides is because if you're always just trying to avoid something, then that means that one of the things you're avoiding is fear. Like, you're avoiding going through the, going through the emotions of getting what you want. Like, if you're always avoiding then you're also avoiding the hard truths. You're avoiding the fear. You're, you're avoiding hard conversations. If you're always avoiding, then that what, what that means is that you're not passing through the emotions and the fear that are gonna get you where you wanna go. When you're, when you're operating with commitment and courage, you're not avoiding, you're going right through it and you're transforming through it.

I love that. This has been awesome, Ben. So just to round this out, I thought a good story that kind of ties into a lot that we were talking about, and I know he's a big inspiration for you, is Viktor Frankl. Frankl's life. So, um, you tell, can you tell us the story about Viktor Frankl and how he used his purpose of protecting his book to survive, uh, while he was in the concentration camps in the Holocaust and what you learned from his story about hope and purpose. And then we'll, we'll close out the conversation.

So the reason Frankl is so important is that Frankl highlights a lot of what MrBeast understood, but Frankl makes it even more dramatic. Basically what Frankl shows, and again, "Man's Search for Meaning," one of the most important books in the world, he was a Jewish person who in 1942 was taken into the Holocaust, right? One of like the German Nazi concentration camps. And what he found with people who were living in such dire situations, we really, I mean, unless you actually study the Holocaust You don't even understand what I'm saying. It's gibberish right now. It was almost unfathomable how bad it was. Like everyone was there. The people were starved. They were thrown in gas chambers. People were shot in the head right next to you. Like you're sitting doing grunt work for months, months, months, years and years and years. Everything's been taken from you, even the clothes off your back. You're standing there naked, deprived of everything, deprived of your dreams, deprived of everything. And what Frankl noticed when he was in those situations, 'cause he was a psychologist and so like he was paying attention to this stuff, he was very in tune with what was going on in people's heads and like whether, why some people could be resilient and even be happy in these crazy conditions and why some people would get desperate, lose their minds.

And he started to draw an interesting correlation, which was in those dire situations when you're kind of deprived of everything and you're also starved physically. I mean, they were only given like a small piece of bread every day. Is he saw an immediate correlation that like when someone lost hope toward their future, within days they died in those situations. Like their body didn't have enough to sustain them. If you and I lost hope in our future, we'd start to fall apart physically. Like we'd probably lose our health, you know? And hope from a psychology standpoint is like air to your physical body, like food and air. Like you need hope psychologically. Because you're— who you are right now is largely dictated by your views of the future. So basically what Frankl found was, is that unless you had a specific goal, which is a huge aspect of hope, without a specific goal that gave your life meaning and substance, you couldn't handle the present, especially when it was that bad. And so that's why he always quoted Nietzsche, which is, when you have a why to live for, you can bear almost any how. And so everything he did, and he literally, he layers it, and I share the best quotes of it in "Future Self," but he says, you know, when you lose hope in your future, you know you're doomed.

But he also said that everything we did in the concentration camps to give people hope or to even help them to be able to manage their mind or manage their emotions was we had to give to them a goal in their future which they could work towards. And he himself, you know, he literally stated the goal that gave him purpose and gave him meaning and allowed him to endure the trials. And for him, it was he wanted to be reconnected with his wife Tilly, who was taken to another camp. He didn't know that she'd already been killed, and she was pregnant with their baby, but he didn't know that. He wanted to be reconnected with her, but also he wanted to rewrite his book, which was almost done being written when they got basically taken by the Nazis, and they took the manuscript and tore it apart. And so he really wanted, he literally states this in Man's Search for Meaning. He said, my deep desire to rewrite that book anew and publish it allowed me to overcome the rigors and the pain of the camps. So when you have a why to live for, you can bear almost any how.

If you don't have a why to live for, if you don't have hope and commitment in your future, then you're not gonna be very productive. I mean, little things in your day can throw you way off, right? But for him, in those situations, it was life or death. It's literally life or death.

Yeah. So, so fascinating. I think this is a great way to close out the interview. So I always end the interview with a couple last questions and then we do something fun at the end of the year and recap them. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our Young Improviters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Um, doesn't have to be money related.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, here's what I'm gonna say. It goes back to the Alex Hormozi comment for me right now, which is, I love the quote, "It's better to be a meaningful specific than a wandering generality." And so the more clear you get on your future self and the more specific, um, that obviously takes you down a specific direction. You're not trying to be everything for everyone. Like some of the recent decisions I've made in my career and in the books I'm writing have to do with like becoming even more focused, even more specific in a narrow range. It's kind of like the 80/20 principle. Like 80% of what you're doing is kind of a distraction, whereas it's just the core 20 that makes sense. And so you want to go deeper and deeper into that. Like let go of everything else. Like actually commit and go deep and get 10 times better in something specific. Like if you get really, really good in something specific, it kind of reminds me of that quote, become so good you can't be ignored. Like it, but it's really about qualitative, not quantitative. It's not about the quantity of what you do.

It's about the quality of how you do it. And that requires focus, commitment, uh, and purpose. And so just commit to something and commit to getting really, really good and unique in that thing. That's actually what mastery is. It's not about doing something well, it's about doing something uniquely well, incomparably well. And that takes commitment and depth. Depth, not broadness.

Love that. Mic drop. All right. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

Um, defining what profit means to me. Uh, not everything is profitable. Not everything is worth my time. Not everything is useful. And so defining what I value, what I care about, what matters most, and then going all in on those few things and letting go of everything else.

And Ben, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

BenjaminHardy.com and FutureSelf.com.

Awesome. And we're gonna stick all of your links in the show notes. Ben, thank you again for coming back on to Young and Profiting Podcast.

I'm happy to be with you. You, your future self, who you are today is ima— is unimaginable to who you were 4 years ago. It's so cool.

Thank you so much. What a powerful way to close out our mental wealth series. I have to say, this episode is one that I always think about. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from this conversation, it's this: you are not behind, you are not your past, and you are not limited to the version of yourself that you are today. Benjamin reminds us that high achievers often get trapped in the gap. We measure ourselves against the ideal, the dream, the bigger goal, the thing we still have not reached yet. And when we do that, even our wins can feel like failures. But when we measure backwards, when we look at who we were a year ago, 5 years ago, or even just a few months ago, we start to see the gain. We start to see the growth, and that gives us the confidence, clarity, and energy to keep going from a way healthier place. So here's your final challenge, YAP Gang. Go to yapmedia.com/mentalwellness. Again, that's yapmedia.com/mentalwealth, and open the Future Self worksheet. In the I Am column, I want you to write down who you wanna become in 5 years from now and try to make it bigger than just work.

For example, it could be, I am a present parent, or I am a great leader, or I am a healthy, creative, joyful person, whatever it is. And then in the I Should column, write the small actions you're going to take right now to become that person eventually. Because your future self is not built someday. It's built in these small choices that you make right now, today. And as we wrap up this series, I want you to remember this: your mind is your greatest business asset, not your sales funnel, not your calendar, not your strategy—your beautiful mind. So protect it, train it, listen to it, and build a life in business that your future self will thank you for. Thank you so much for joining me. Me on this mental wealth series. This is the final episode of our program, and I hope you enjoyed it. Keep doing the work, keep choosing growth, and keep becoming the person you were meant to be. This is your host, Hala Taha, signing off. Hey, App Fam, we are about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit.

Now I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcast for 8 years and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous, you may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale, and we wanna hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers, and I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups. And learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry. So that's what I wanna bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm gonna be interviewing people who are making anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million a year. They're not super famous, they're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes, and we're gonna uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market and And so much more.

If this sounds like you and you wanna be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com/apply and share your story. Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com/apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast.