Transcription
As Joel Salon said, the worst thing in life is to grow old and realize you got good at the wrong thing. So, what do you want specifically? What do you want?
They'll just say, when people say, "I want to be rich." I'm like, "Why?" That's that's strange. Is it for ego? Is it so you can pay off your debts? Is it so you can have more freedom? Well, okay then, how much money do you need for that?
Focus on what you want. What does everybody want? The theme, my theme for 2024. You can borrow my theme or copy my theme. Focus on what you want, specifically what do you want? That's why I'm not going to talk too much about the negatives, because that's what we don't want.
What the hell do you want? What's important to you? Do you want two homes? Do you want a home in Europe, a home in America? Do you want a farm? Do you want three kids, six kids, zero kids? You know, do you want love? Is that the main thing? Someone said, "To serve God's will." But but that's too broad. What's specific? You know, people who have served God's will have had a specific goal, like they want to spread the gospel in India or something.
"Crush all my haters." That's that's a, I think that's a negative goal, right? So you're saying, "I don't like these people," and so therefore, "I want to prove them wrong." I don't love that. That's not the theme. My theme for 2024, the theme for 2024 is, "What do you want?" You know, you can't undo the fact that you had people who were haters in the past. So you can't rectify the, you can't go back and say, "I want a time machine to fix that." What do you want now?
Watch this. Watch the comments right now. Watch how few people, people can say what they want. Watch. Look right out. Everybody put what you want. Watch how hard it is. This was never taught in school. Nobody's ever learned this. Nobody's ever learned this.
I see people talking about, "Okay, well, what do you want?" "Money." That's that's just a, that's not a thing. Money is just. What do you mean? Cotton? Money is made out of cotton. You want cotton? I don't think so. You know, I can understand when people say, "I want to collect jewelry or cars," because there are humans that like to collect things. But money? Okay, so you want to collect money. Fine. You're a collector of money. What else? Like, what do you want?
"What do you want to adopt?" Okay, but how many kids? Boy? Girl? From what country? Like, what does that mean? Do you want to adopt, or do you want kids? But maybe you can't have them. Then don't say you want to adopt. Say what you want. You want kids. And then let time, universe, God, fate, luck, fortune be on your side and give you.
"Somebody said, 'Digital nomad.'" Is that really what you want? That your life dream be a digital nomad? Or do you want to travel to these seven countries? Do you, like, what do you mean, "digital nomad"? That's not the thing. Watch how hard this is.
"I want a cottage in the mountains where there's a lot of mountains." "Building scale on my startup." Is that really what you want? Or is that a means to an end? Notice that almost everybody's putting a means to an end. Everybody's putting their means to an end. You know, don't be careful putting the means to an end. "I want to be a digital nomad because I want to have a nice, relaxed life with my wife or my husband." And like, what is it? You want the digital nomad is the means to the end. What do you actually want? Not being stuck somewhere because of money. That's what you don't want. That's the negative goal, isn't it crazy?
"Okay, retire parents." Would be great. Okay. Is your whole life to retire your parents? That's your one goal? You were born in this world to retire your parents? It seems like not a real goal. It seems like an objective along the way to your vision of your life. But it's not possible that the purpose of a child being born is to retire their parents. That's a, that's a, might be an objective along the way.
But I felt that what you want out of life, what do you want out of life? We can go back to history. We can see different people. We can see Sigmund Freud. What did he want? He wanted to understand the human brain, specifically the unconscious. That was his driving passion. He woke up. He was obsessed with understanding the new field that he created, essentially called psychology. He wanted to understand the psyche of humans. That was an interesting goal.
I'm reading a book about, you know, Van Leeuwenhoek. He's the guy who invented the microscope. Wanted to see what was... he was passionate. He woke up. "I want to see what's what are these cell things?" Nobody knew about cells and bacteria really until he invented this. He wanted to maybe cure people. He was a healer. You know, it's like Elon Musk says he wants to have put man on the moon, uh, on Mars, sorry. It's an objective goal. He wants to put man on Mars so that we can spread out across the universe. This is a very specific, specific. What he wants. He doesn't want to be the richest man in the world. If you gave him a choice, be the richest man in the world without putting humans on Mars, you could be the richest man in the world and you would put humans on Mars. He would choose. I don't want to put words in his mouth. Put humans on Mars. Now, being the richest man in the world makes that possible, but that's not what he, at least, says he wants.
What do you? You know what I want? I'll tell you something. I want. I'll give you an example. Believe it or not, just like everybody says about me, I was reading a book, book of the day yesterday. I read basically a whole book, pretty big book too, by the Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote the book on cancer, "Malady of All Maladies." But I was reading his other book, I forget the title, it's on cells. It's the story of cells. And, um, I realized I want to have time every day to continue to read a book a day. I love it. It brings me intrinsic happiness. Intrinsic. It's got a means to an end. I do know. So think about what's the end point. Like, I don't want to read so people admire me. That's not important to me. I don't want to read so I can have kids. I don't want to read so I can be healthier. I intrinsically enjoy reading. That's an intrinsic goal. I intrinsically like to be able to move around the world. I don't, I seem to get bored after a certain amount of time in one place. Intrinsically. So I will like, I like having enough money that I can go where my curiosity leads me next. I'm going to Dubai next week. I like it. I like that I don't have to fly, you know, economy. That's a little tough on the body, 15-plus hour flight. So it's not that I want money. I want to be able to read a book a day. That takes three hours a day for me. That means I got to have free time.
What do you intrinsically want out of this life, ladies and gentlemen? Nobody can answer. Almost. I can walk through 100 million people and one or two or three can answer what they intrinsically want. It's a problem. You know, so what do you want?