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March 21, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:00:44
Episode 459 Scott Adams: Talking With Writer, Boxer, Brilliant Guy @EdLatimore on Success
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Time Text
Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
I know you want to.
Tyler, Russell, Mark, Carla, and Arlene, and the rest of you, Polly and Kevin and Olga, gather round, make sure you run, run I say, to grab your cup, your mug, Your flask, your thermos, grab it all.
And when you've got it, you know what time it will be?
I think you do.
It will be time for the simultaneous sip.
Will you join me, please, and lift your tankard for the simultaneous sip?
Oh, that is good.
In a few minutes, we are going to have a guest on, Ed Latimer.
I'll give a more detailed introduction in a minute.
But while we're waiting for him to fire up the Periscope and select the guest option, let us talk about some things in the news at the moment.
All right. So, apparently President Trump is getting a lot of pushback for his horrible, horrible comments about war hero, deceased statesman, and Senator John McCain.
And every time I watch somebody complaining about the President's treatment of John McCain, I always ask myself the same thing.
Would they say that privately?
Would any of the people who are complaining terribly about the President's treatment of John McCain If you were in a room privately with a person who was like, oh, my God, it's so terrible that he's besmirching the memory of a dead person.
And I keep saying to myself, I don't know that anybody would say that privately.
Would they? I mean, literally, would anybody say privately that That they personally are offended.
Now, I think most people when they're talking about how horrible it is that we're talking about a war hero in a negative way, I think most of those people are assuming that somebody else is offended.
Could we make an agreement to simply be offended by things that offend us personally?
You don't really need to be offended on behalf of other people who may or may not exist.
Ed, Ed Latimer, if you are listening, I think I've got a message from him.
Can't see the guest option.
Can one of you who is watching this on Periscope, we're waiting for Ed to join, but Maybe, can somebody explain in the comments where the prompt is?
Oh, actually, let me call on somebody who's on here.
I'm going to call on a guest just to explain how to find and click on the guest button because I think it's not obvious.
So, watch how I solve this problem using all the technology.
Guests, can you hear me? Good.
Could you tell me how you found, because I haven't used the guest option before, where is the icon or the prompt to join as a guest?
There's just a little button at the bottom near the left with two sort of smiley faces.
So, Ed, look for the icon that has two little smiley faces, one superimposed on the other one.
Click that and that should get you in.
While you're here, did you have a question or a comment?
Yeah, I did want to question you about the transgender thing and the women in sports.
Oh, before you do that, somebody just made an important point.
Ed, if you're watching this, you have to watch this on the Periscope app, not on Twitter.
Twitter will show the video live, but you can't join directly through Twitter.
So if you're watching it on Twitter...
There should be a Periscope icon.
If you click that, it'll take you to the Periscope app, and then that will let you join.
So I think that was the problem.
So yes, while Ed is getting ready to join, what was your comment about the transgender?
I feel that your position on transgender women and sports is sort of inconsistent with your position on abortion.
I'm not even sure they have anything in common.
Well, you say you stay out of abortion because we should go with what the majority of women want.
So if the majority of women, say, wanted to not have transgender women competing against them in sports, shouldn't we consider their opinion?
Well, let me go back to rule number one.
Rule number one in the Scott Adams universe is that analogies are not the same as reasoned.
So those are just two different things.
So when you ask me that question, here's how it sounds in my head.
Scott, you say that transgender people should be able to compete in women's sports, but how do you explain the fact that oranges have peels?
And I just say, I don't.
Those are just different situations.
So I don't accept that there's any commonality in those two situations.
However... Let me not try to use the trickery to get out of the question.
The issue is whether or not the majority can block the minority.
So we live in a world in which you wouldn't want somebody to have said in the past, we don't want to integrate the military because the majority of the military says they don't want to do it.
So you would never take the majority opinion on a question of discrimination because you wouldn't even have a question of discrimination if the majority was already in favor of it.
But is it discrimination? Right.
Is women discrimination?
Because they're biologically men.
So if women don't want to compete against biological men, which they don't right now, should they be forced to?
Nobody is forced to compete.
Everybody can say, I would rather not be on this team.
So I think what you would find is that it would be more like the Renee Richards situation, which is Renee Richards was transgender and played women's tennis, and it didn't destroy the sport.
In fact, she didn't even become number one.
She started when she was older.
But the question is, if you were, let's say, an MMA fighter or a female boxer, that would be a situation where you definitely, you know, you would want to give all the competitors an option to not fight if they thought it would be dangerous.
And I think that that would be something that they would take that option.
But if the rules of the sport are that women are in a certain league and the rules of society is that transgender is, let's say, taking you to your true gender or the gender that you prefer and the one that society has decided collectively that we're going to respect,
As long as those two rules are in force, that this is what it means to say that you're a woman in society, and the rules are that women are in this league, you would have to change one of the rules to not let them compete.
Now, if somebody wants to talk about a rule change for that purpose, that conversation's not happening.
And maybe it would.
But my point of view is that these things always look like there's a reason to discriminate against Until we go ahead and make the change and then time goes by and you say to yourself, I guess it didn't make any difference.
Imagine going back in time to the conversation about the women having the right to vote.
Can't you imagine being in a room back in whenever this was, early in the 1900s?
Can't you imagine that the men were saying, well, if the women vote, all hell is going to break loose.
It's just going to be terrible.
And then women voted.
No, that sounds like an analogy to me that doesn't make sense.
I'm giving you examples, not analogies.
I'm telling you that throughout time, examples are always useful.
Throughout time, whenever we thought the way you're thinking now, which is, wait, there's a really good reason that we should discriminate.
We've always had a reason, but when we got past it, We found out our reasons were pretty much in our heads.
And I would say that the Renee Richards situation would be one of those.
Try sending the guest again.
All right. So the guest option is turned on by default.
So right now I have five guests who are...
Scott, when I did it, I had to authorize it to enable my microphone.
Okay. Oh, but I think there's a...
Yes, there's a different issue here.
I think he's not seeing the option.
Oh, okay. It is...
Has he updated? I don't know.
It could be... Oh, maybe that's it.
Because I just had to update this morning.
Is app updated?
Yeah, that option wasn't in the old version of the app, right?
All right. Okay.
Let me... The part that people always argue with me is the part that we're not disagreeing about.
So if I could change one thing about the world, it would be for people to stop arguing with me while agreeing with me.
And... Oh, yes.
Not browser.
Um... The thing that people keep saying to me when I talk about the transgender issue and my position that they should be allowed to play in the women's leagues is that people keep saying, Scott, don't you understand that they will have more muscles and have an advantage?
And I say, yeah, we all understand that.
We all understand that.
That's not part of my reasoning.
All right, I think Ed is here.
I believe I just saw him joining.
And so, Nicholas, I'm going to drop you and go to Ed.
Thanks for calling. Ed will be with us in one moment.
Ed, Ed, Ed, are you there?
Yes, I can hear you.
Hey, hello. That took a little while, but I figured it out.
Sorry, I was unclear in my directions.
I think you may have been using the browser version that doesn't have that option.
I started with the browser, and then I realized, okay, I had to download this app.
So I downloaded the app, and then once I went in with the app, now everything is all good.
We're right here. All right, great.
Well, I'm glad to actually talk to you live.
I've been following you on Twitter.
I will tell the viewers here...
Twitter, you're missing one of the best follows.
So here behind me is Ed's Twitter handle.
And what I love about Ed is that he has one of the most interesting talent stacks, and we'll talk about this in a minute, which is a completely different sets of talents, which when they're put together are really strong.
And I love his views on how to succeed, how to see the world more clearly, how to take more responsibility.
And I'll let Ed do some talking about that too.
But Ed, could you tell the audience some of your biography highlights?
Where were you raised?
And a couple of your career highlights so they can catch up.
Where was I raised? It's funny, the app For Android, I think iPhone has it too.
The TomHop app takes you back to posts you've made over the years.
I saw a post I made eight years ago where I was talking about where I lived and I grew up on a street called Mount Pleasant Road that's right in the heart of the worst housing project in Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up in the projects and I'm a product of that environment, the ghetto, all that type of stuff.
I got out when I was 18 and tried college and wasn't prepared for it whatsoever at all.
I fell out in three semesters.
It was three fun semesters, man.
It's probably where I got the first taste of drinking, which got even worse in my 20s.
Eventually, I got sober and put the bottle down.
I really had to. I probably was going to do something It's unforgivable or irreversible.
So I stopped drinking at 20, 28 or 27.
2013, however old I was then.
But during my 20s, I started boxing, and that really helped the change and really gave me something to chase.
Because when you stop doing something that's so integral, To your personality, you know, like drinking was for me, you have to replace that with something.
And fortunately, I was very...
My life was set up for success in that I was really getting more serious about boxing.
I was taking another step at school and I had just joined the military so I could get money to go back to school and then serve and build points on my resume.
And I was just starting a serious relationship.
And I was like, okay, I think there's some potential in this.
And, you know, it's still here today.
So I guess my judgment was sound.
But, yeah, that's the abridged version there.
So you didn't?
You were a teacher for a while, right?
Did you teach physics? So what I am is I'm a tutor with a school district around here, and that has defaulted me to the role of teacher for a lot of the kids.
And now I have some homeschoolers as well, because as you do something well, I've learned people talk, especially when it comes to their children.
And so I've got a few kids, and I really enjoy Tutoring slash teaching, depending on the situation and the student.
For physics and math, I'll do anything.
Well, rather, I used to do anything when I had to do it for money.
Now that I don't do it for money at all, you know, if it's not physics or math, I'm not really interested.
So all of my kids now are related and are pursuing those disciplines.
So your talent stack has, you know, you went to college and you were a physics major, right?
Right. You were a professional boxer, 13-1-1 was your record, right?
Yeah, yeah. And every now and then I still think like, oh man, I might come back.
And then I remember how much work and energy it takes to compete.
Even at a mediocre level, you know, I was putting in Freaking 20 hours a week minimum.
And as fights get closer, we're looking at 30 hours a week, and that's just training time.
We're not talking studying and physical fitness and all that, or lifting and running.
And that's way too much at this point because my time is valued in other areas.
So now you have a book.
It's called Not Caring What Other People Think is a Superpower.
It's on Amazon. You can get it.
And I love the title, by the way.
One of the things I love about your tweets is that almost every time I read one, I end up almost hurting my neck by nodding in agreement too hard, like, uh-huh, uh-huh, that's it, what you just said.
And I'm fascinated by where you came to your mindset, because you started with every disadvantage, right?
You were in a poor, terrible neighborhood.
You were born black in America, and then you started drinking when you were a young man.
You pretty much were starting in a deep hole.
Tell me what it was.
Was there something about maybe your parents, one of your parents?
Did somebody give you a leg up in terms of your mindset?
Where did that start?
Well, the real thing that really helped me out, I was just writing about this, Is boxing.
Because really, really prior to boxing, and I started boxing late.
Prior to boxing, I was afflicted with fixed mindset.
I really thought that where I was was kind of what I would have to work with, and I could not improve anything.
And one of the reasons I was writing about this is, you know, in high school, I think I failed I'm really close to it, many of my math classes, if not all of them.
And now I have a physics degree and a math minor, and I think my math GPA was like 3.9.
And the reason I was able to do that...
And even have the confidence to go back after this horrible experience with math is I watch myself go from an uncoordinated, really untalented guy in boxing and just by little practice every day and working with it.
Because I got into boxing because I wasn't doing anything in my life.
So I go and do this and I'm like, alright, I'm either going to get beat out the gym or I'm going to die.
I'm not going to quit this at all.
And so I just watched myself get better and better and better, and I said, wow, okay, if I can improve my physical abilities this way, what can I do for my mind, right?
Can I do the same thing for Matt?
Right. And that's where I came from.
Now, in terms of applying that to my emotional makeup or the way I see problems or my psychological disposition, It's very similar.
I really understand that nothing's going to Okay, there were things that were going to kill me, I guess.
But most of the things that people freak out about, you know, I've seen people get killed, man.
Like, come on, like, how bad can life be?
You know, I've had to eat and all that.
Well, let me drill down on a few things.
So there was the first message, and it's very, again, it's so compatible with things I've said and felt.
I often advise people to find something that they can do well.
Once you experience going from being bad at something to being good at something, you often surprise yourself, which is exactly your story here.
And I find that finding anything you can excel at just through practice, because the person who practices the most is going to get in the top 10%, you know, all other things being equal.
So if you can practice your way into the top tier of any skill, any knowledge, anything, you suddenly think, well, I could probably do this again in a different area.
So did you get any of your philosophy from either parent?
Well, some of it.
I mean... I wouldn't say, it's not accurate to say I was raised by a single mother, but to say my dad had a formative hand in my upbringing, that's also not accurate.
He was around and he exposed me to some stuff, but for the most part, I think I spent like 95% of my time with my mom.
My mom taught me not to be afraid of people and afraid of things.
She had a lot of Flaws herself.
But the one thing I really took from my mom, my mom was the kind of parent, you know, if somebody was messing with you outside, you know, we went several times and lined up kids that would be picking on us and we would just fight.
You know, we figured out.
There was no, it was the kind of, you know, you either get your ass kicked by them or your ass kicked by me and then you're going to have to go back out and fight them anyway, so you might as well start.
So that mentality of facing problems It's probably why I decided, or how I approached boxing to begin with, and then that little nudge kind of thing.
So it sounds like your mother told you to go at your problems instead of away from them.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I wasn't, and you know, there's always the genetic part, you know, I gotta remember that my sister, you know, she didn't turn out like me, and we got the same parents, right?
Yeah. But what made me me is there are some things, you know, I'm also just...
I'm stoic, I guess.
I don't really get attached to outcomes naturally.
That's very... I trained it, but I came with it naturally.
And then when you have that kind of perspective about, okay, it really doesn't matter what happens combined with, all right, I do have to face it because right now it's an inconvenience.
You... You don't have a problem.
Let me give you some of the things that my mother taught me and see if any of these ring true.
I basically came out of the birth canal hearing the words, you're going to college.
My parents didn't go to college.
There was nobody in my family that had gone to college at that point.
But when we were born, my mother said, you're going to college.
You're going to college. We didn't even know there was another choice.
The other thing she told us is that you could be the best at anything you want to be.
Totally untrue, but very motivational.
Because she taught me a world where I had unlimited potential until I found out otherwise.
She also told me to make decisions even if I wasn't sure, to have a bias for action.
So it was always act, you know, it's not about thinking, it's about acting.
And then she also taught us to figure it out ourselves.
So my college experience was figure it out.
Figure out where you want to go and how you're going to go there, and I'll help you pay for it.
So those are the big lessons I got.
You seem also big on the taking responsibility.
That seems to be a theme that runs through a lot of your tweets.
Oh, for sure.
And I also see the not caring what other people think is a superpower.
Yeah. If people only got one thing out of this, it would be a superpower.
I tell people all the time that my superpower is the inability to be embarrassed.
For example...
Right. So, for example, we started this Periscope, and I, as your host, did a very poor job of making sure that you knew what to click and which app to use and stuff.
So I had to tap dance.
And in any normal situation, I should be embarrassed that I failed so hard in front of so many people, but I'm not, because I'm doing a Periscope with you, We're providing value.
I'm having a good time and I'll never remember that I had some trouble getting the tech to work.
So tell me about not caring what other people think.
How did you get to that point?
Because most people can't get their ego out of the picture.
How did you get your ego free from other people's opinions?
How did that happen? For me personally, I was suffering for it.
I really felt like I was wasting...
Some of my friends can't understand why I'm so hard on the way I lived my life prior to drinking.
And it's because, you know, a lot of my drinking was centered around trying to be this guy that fit in.
I wanted to be liked.
I didn't care about being respected so much as I did about people wanting to invite me to a party or invite me out.
So that meant that I had to go harder than everybody.
I was like, I wasn't going to be the most respected, but I was going to be the most respected drinker, right?
I was going to really pick myself in that realm, right?
And then I woke up, you know, it all starts with the bad hangovers and, you know, that text, you're like, oh, I can't believe I said that.
Are you still going to be my friend kind of deal?
And then it graduates and upgrades to doing stupid shit like Driving with some booze in the system to being flat out drunk.
And I really sat and I looked at myself and I was like, yo, what is all it is for, right?
Like, why do this?
You're smart enough to know, so what are you doing?
And really, I was trying to build an image.
An image I thought was what other people would care about or something.
And it would make me be liked.
And eventually I said, you know what?
I was 28.
I said, you know, I'm going to turn 33 one day.
I just happened to use that number, five years.
But now I'm 34.
And I said, I'm going to turn 33 one day.
Am I going to be doing the same shit or am I going to...
Have more options in my life.
You know, I never imagined, for example, I'd be talking to you, but I guarantee if I was doing the same stuff, you'd have no interest.
You'd probably never heard of me. People probably put them in jail would have heard of me.
And then that's why I've been famous and popular.
So that's where it came for me.
I was paying a significant price, but it didn't seem that bad.
Until one day, you know, when I enlisted, because I was still drinking when I enlisted, and then I showed up to a few drills, you know, still, you know, reeking of booze, man.
It must have been awful. But I went away for the basic training and AIT and all that, and I spent, for the first time in my life, I think I spent It was like 10 weeks, man.
10 weeks in basic training, no drinking.
A lot of thinking, though, because you can't talk.
And then 22 more weeks in AIT, no drinking, a lot of thinking.
And I said, yo, I am fucked up.
Like, that's pretty much where it came from.
And when I got back, man, I tried to go out and party again, and I made a fool myself, and that was it.
That was the last drink. I said, you know...
There we go. And that's related to not caring because that's where I was paying for it, right there.
In fact, in the book, you know, I got the chapter on sobriety, which seems, even though I wrote another book afterwards about being sober and my journey, I got a chapter in there about how you use your time and its relationship to sobriety because it's that important to me.
And that's where my pain point was.
Yeah, one of the things that Naval Ravikant said on my Periscope was, he said that in the old days, if you went far back, winning meant working hard, and then in more modern times, it really meant about what you've learned.
It was about your education.
That would be the key to success.
But he says that in modern times, now and forward, that the key to success might be your ability to handle your own addictions.
That might be the single most important variable because we all have access to enough stuff that we could be successful if we were not addicted to something that would prevent us.
So my great revelation in terms of how other people thought about me was one time I had laser treatment on my face to get rid of some spider veins and for a few weeks my face looked like it went through the windshield of my car.
So it was all black and blue.
It looked like I'd been in a boxing match with you and I hadn't trained.
For the first two days, I said, I can't go outside like this because everybody will look at me and stare.
But after a few days, you get cabin fever and you just say, oh, screw it.
I'm going to go to the mall.
And I remember walking through this crowded mall with hundreds of people walking past me and me with a face that was sort of like, you know, the elephant man, you know, got in the fight sort of thing.
And I'm thinking to myself, there's no way that people can do anything but stare and make fun of me or at least stare.
And then I noticed that absolutely nobody cared.
Nobody looked at me.
They all have their own problems.
And so my illusion was that other people care about other people.
They care about their loved ones, but they don't really care about strangers.
People are busy, right?
They got their own issues and their own problems.
I thought about something you said earlier about your ability to not be embarrassed.
I was thinking about this.
And I think I was in the fourth grade, and a teacher went out of her way to make me cry in front of the class.
And I cried, man. I cried like a little bitch, man.
And since that moment, I have never had a problem being embarrassed.
That was my reset point.
So not being embarrassed, that was easy for me.
Taking risks was easy for me.
Being a fool was easy for me.
What was hard for me to deal with was feeling rejected and feeling like I was an outsider, like people didn't want me around.
To this day, I still have a fear of throwing or organizing any type of party because I don't think anyone's going to show up because why would they want to come hang out with me?
And that's even weird to hear come out of my mouth.
Even here right now, I'm looking down.
I'm sure a lot of them are here for you, but there are people who follow me on Twitter.
I think, why would people want to spend their time hanging out with me?
We all have hang-ups about this stuff.
It's just, how do you manage it?
My way of managing it was very destructive, and then I went and found a better way.
I said, okay, if I can't be like, let me be the coolest, most respected, accomplished dude And that's working out for me.
That's a much better way because I still have the insecurity.
Now, wouldn't you say, I've had this observation before, that successful people are usually successful because of a flaw.
Not despite a flaw.
I mean, they have to overcome whatever obstacles as well, but I would say in my own case that I'm never satisfied with my own success, meaning the moment I do something I had planned to do, I say, well, that's great, but it really wasn't that much.
So I have this impossible-to-satisfy-myself Type of personality, which you have some version of that.
So wouldn't you say that there's a flaw that drives successful people?
Oh, absolutely. Because here's the thing.
If you like everything about yourself, what the hell are you going to try and improve?
Right. And that's what all success...
What it comes down to is, you know, I was trying to make something cool happen for me or the world, and here it is.
And even the people who are out there, you know, like the Elon Musk of the world, who are trying to genuinely create something that is going to affect and benefit humanity.
You know, he's got to be...
That guy's too driven to not have some issues, man.
Like, we all have something...
That is like, yo, if you don't do this, man, you know you're going to be a piece of shit.
That kind of thing.
It's like sitting there in the back of my mind.
You go do these things.
It's like working on the gym.
People complain like, man, running is hard.
I'm like, yeah, but being fat is harder.
I can deal with killing myself on the treadmill.
What I can't deal with is like Feeling like people are pointing at me going, yo, that dude has got a gut.
Like, you know, and everyone's got their own security, however they use it to push them.
Well, here's what I think. I think you can use it to push you positively or constructively, or you can use it in the most destructive ways to make yourself feel better.
Some people become leaders, you know?
All right, so...
Having learned what you've learned, you're at sort of the perfect spot of your life and you have the perfect life arc to give useful insights and advice to somebody who is, let's say, you at age 14.
So if you were going to talk to, let's say, a kid who didn't come from a good situation and is still in a bad situation, and you were going to give them the most important advice Advice.
Something that would change the way they frame their experience.
Something that would be doable.
Something you could actually act on that would improve your life.
What would that look like? What are some of the things you would say to somebody?
A 14-year-old who's got the same challenges or similar to what you had.
They're trying to make it out.
I would tell them to figure out where they're like...
Their natural motivation is and then try to become like an ass kicker, like a top 10% thing.
Like when I was younger, I always loved communication and telling stories and teaching.
That was just natural to me, you know?
And so I think one of the worst things I did was try to get away from that for a long time.
And now it's naturally where I find peace.
I'm at peace talking to a bunch of people, teaching people, being in front, public speaking.
There's no nervousness there.
That's my natural advantage.
If I had focused on that, it's something that would have taken advantage of that ability.
I would have ignored a lot of...
And I guess I did to some extent.
I was fortunate enough to, when I was 14, go to another high school across town in a very different area and get exposed to a lot of different stuff.
And one of the things that kept me out of it...
I didn't like sports that much, but I said, let me play football because I'm going to stay away from all that.
So that was just like a secondary way to go about it.
You know, I didn't go where I was strongest, which was this kind of communication, leadership role.
I went and played sports and tried to play sports anyhow.
It's probably a better way to put it.
The other thing I would tell them besides find some place where you're naturally interested in trying to motivate and get strong is, man, get in the gym.
Above all things, I think when you watch your body improve, You see, that's a thing you can control and put some time into, and it pays you back quickly.
People notice. Your whole life can go from zero to hero just by spending six months taking care of your nutrition.
That's exactly what I wanted to hear you say.
Because fitness and nutrition are unique in that it's something that 100% of people can succeed at.
There aren't many things where you could put a lot of work in and you'd just be guaranteed to have a payoff.
And that's one of them. And the thing that people don't understand is how much fitness influences the way they think, the kind of challenges they're willing to take, the amount of embarrassment they're willing to take.
Every bad feeling that you have that limits you is decreased after a good workout.
You actually just feel like a different person after your workout.
And most importantly, here's something that I did not lean on that hard at the beginning of my boxing career, but it absolutely saved me in the end.
When you're in the gym and you're trying to maintain yourself, You kind of stop doing a lot of shit that's going to take away from the gains you have made.
That is one of the things that fighting really did for me.
At the beginning, when I was an amateur, I adhered to like, you know, you don't drink the week of the fight, right?
And that was hard. That shouldn't have been hard, not drinking a week.
But as I became a pro and I got really serious, that was one of the big factors.
I said, yo, you're trying to do this thing seriously now.
You probably should just cut out the drinking entirely, you know?
Working on your body just puts you in a place where you don't even have time to do a lot of other bullshit that would work you down.
So the other things that I see you doing productively is that you are a seeker of knowledge, which is, and tell me if I've got this wrong, but it seems far more than the average person.
You are actually testing your environment all the time to pick up a new skill, a new way of looking things, read a book, have an experience.
Am I reading that right?
Are you a seeker?
Absolutely. In fact, that's one of my problems right now.
It's a good problem.
I said when I finished school, I was going to be done with school and get to focusing on other things in my life that need to be taken care of.
And I really should keep focusing on those, but I really want to go and start working towards, because I asked myself, I don't remember where I read this, But the author said that instead of asking kids what they want to be when they grow up, we should ask them what problems they want to focus on, what problems they want to solve.
And so that always stuck with me, and I just kept thinking about the problems I'm interested in and why I was drawn to physics as opposed to other disciplines.
And so now I'm like, all right, when can I start my graduate studies, I guess?
And I know that I shouldn't do that.
But I'm drawn to it.
So instead, what do I do?
I read books and I still do problems on my own to make sure my mind stays sharp.
And I'm always listening.
I just discovered PBS has this great series on YouTube where they just break down different physics problems and stuff.
That's been like the best discovery ever is that I can just plug my phone into the auxiliary cord.
I got the old Cadillac.
The 2010 people who know me and follow me know I take pictures of my Cadillac.
I'm a big fan of this car.
But it doesn't have a Bluetooth in it, so I plug in the auxiliary cord.
I'm always listening to the podcast about mathematics and physics.
And I'm moving to Portugal in the summer, and so now I'm picking up Portuguese.
And that's great because I spent a lot of time working on my Spanish.
There's just so much to learn.
I'm not going to live long enough to learn even a tenth of what's important.
But I try, you know, and I really feel like part of that is my natural curiosity.
But another part of that is I really feel, I feel deprived of a childhood where I had the ability We're good to go.
I didn't play any sports, but I also didn't be exposed to any type of...
I wanted to play chess or learn piano or something.
Things like that. None of that, right?
So now I guess I try to make up for it as an adult where I can do those things and I can take advantage of myself.
Wow. So I'm watching some of the comments go by people.
Somebody said they bought 12 copies of your book and it was amazing.
Somebody else said you should turn it into an audio book.
I've been meaning to do that.
Yeah, because hearing it in your own voice would be more impactful, I think.
Now, the things that you can't really change are you were born curious, and as was I, which makes it easy to learn new skills because you were naturally curious.
I worry about people who are not naturally curious.
It seems to me that might be the biggest, maybe the biggest obstacle anybody could ever have is to not be curious.
I wonder how predictive that would be of people's success.
Intellectual curiosity is the most important thing to me when evaluating.
When I was looking at my girl when I first met her, I was like, oh, what a curious person.
I'm not really interested in, like, What you have learned or what you have accomplished.
I want to know what you are interested in doing and what steps you're taking in that direction.
You know, because we all have different obstacles in our different points in our journey.
But, you know, what are you doing to advance on yours, you know?
So that's what's important to me.
And intellectual curiosity ensures that you're always going to be discovering different ways to improve your life, I think.
When I look at people who are stuck, a lot of them are stuck because Assad, from not acting on the advice they get, they don't find any new advice.
So they don't find, they don't see people who are living this way later, just not exposed to anything beyond what they know.
So how could they know anything beyond, let's go home and wife and wife and wife?
So when I hear you talk and I look at your tweets and your advice and stuff, I always see a theme, which I like to put in my own words, which is systems are better than goals.
Now, I'm sure you've had both, but when you talk about continuously sampling new things, that's a system that doesn't have a specific outcome, but you know it's going to be better than if you didn't do it.
So that's a good system, is that you're going to come out ahead.
You just don't know how.
So I see that in everything you do.
I see a systems kind of thinking, you know, how do I train?
You know, it's not about starting with a win.
It's how do I train? Now, so what else?
Is there anything else that's in your top three things you would tell the 14-year-old you?
Those are like two generals, and I'll give them one specific one.
You know, to quote that old song, man, never trust a big butt and a smile.
Don't do that.
If you can avoid dating the wrong people and picking up alcohol, then that would be crazy.
But really avoid the wrong people, man.
That is a...
I'm going to look at some of your tweets and I want to just unpack one.
So you had a recent one just 11 hours ago and you tweeted that people really have the ass backwards nerve to think that their problem with you is your concern.
So that gets back to your not being bothered by other people's opinions.
I love that one. I think you've talked about that one enough.
But I'm just going to pick another one.
Oh, here's one I love.
Your personal future should make you excited.
If it doesn't, then something is very wrong.
I always give the advice that you should have at least one project going on in your life.
It could be your side project, but one thing that could really change the world or change you.
You know, either one, whichever excites you.
Because I wake up sometimes into a boring life, too.
You know, I just got to get some stuff done.
I got some deadlines. But I've always got, it might only be 10 minutes that day that I did a little research.
I purchased an item I need to get something done.
I talked to somebody. I made a phone call.
But I always have one little project that could change the whole world, if it worked.
And, you know, usually it doesn't.
So it sounds like you're always looking for that thing to, To pull you.
I try to, because look, if you don't have something to get you out of bed, man, I can't imagine that.
Once again, I always talk about my life pre-drink, post-drink, right?
The best part about post-drink is every day, man, I feel like I've got to make up For, you know, pre-drink.
Yeah. So every day I'm working on something to put out there into the world or some way to improve myself that's going to help me put something out better, you know, into the world.
Now let me ask you a very – if you can give – I'm going to ask you an impossible question.
So before you answer, just know that if you could answer this question – It would be the greatest answer of any question because it would unlock such potential.
So let me ask the question and see if I've got my assumption right first.
I'm looking at one of your tweets where you say, success shows you who's really rooting for you and who is hoping you'd fail.
Not all of your, quote, friends are going to be happy you make it and it will show.
Now, I've made the comment that there's something that I call cultural gravity.
Meaning your friends are either helping you or they're dragging you down.
And I feel like I had low cultural gravity because even though I was born into poor circumstances, I was surrounded by people who were literally rooting for me to succeed.
And I could feel it all the time.
Now, where you grow up, did you think that people were rooting for your success or maybe working against it?
Oh, okay.
Let me preface everything I'm allowed to say with the following statement.
I experienced little to no active interference in my progress, right?
Now, in terms of passive, you know, people not really, you know, the environment I was around, the attitudes that I was around, oh, man, the hardest part I think about getting out of a circumstance like that As a child, it's not just falling into it.
It's around you every day, and you're reminded every day that this is the future for 99% of people like you.
Well, let me ask this specific question.
I assume, based on the fact you have a degree in physics, that you were a good student in school.
Did you ever get mocked for that?
Oh, absolutely. When I was a child, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. And how did you overcome that?
So here's the question that could unlock the universe.
I'm hoping the answer is not.
It's just something about you.
You were unbothered by it.
Is there a technique?
Is there a mindset?
Is there anything that can free you from other people trying to drag you down by mocking you?
The thing you're doing for success.
I used humor a lot.
I tried to laugh at them, laugh at myself, and still, though, understand deep down inside that this was better.
So you need a dream, I guess.
Yeah, you need a dream.
To use a cliche term, something you're going after.
Otherwise, that social pressure can wear you down.
I think one of the best things that happened to me when I was a child that kept me from succumbing and trying to become friends and really try to make it in with a lot of people around me is I wanted just different stuff.
I couldn't play sports.
I wasn't trying to be a sports guy.
I was terrified to get my ass kicked at home.
So, I tried to stay away from doing anything that was remotely, like, bad or questionable.
When I was a kid, I didn't even swear, you know?
And because I was afraid they were going to call my mom, and my mom, she ain't care, right?
It was just an answer.
So, those things, you know, I had some deterrence, but what I wanted was just a different life.
I wanted something more, man.
Do you think?
So you know the concept of emotional intelligence, meaning the ability to give up on your current pleasure because you've got something bigger you're working for.
And I hear in you an emotional intelligence system.
That is unusual, meaning that when you started boxing, for example, you knew it was going to be a lot of bad, hard work to maybe get to something good.
You joined the military, which is a lot of risk and work and sacrifice, but for something better, so you could get your school paid for.
When I hear you say you had something better in mind for your life so you could take the mocking about being good in school, that rings true with me.
Every now and then, I was a valedictorian of my tiny little class.
All throughout school, there would be people who would call me a nerd and whatever negative word they could come up with for being a good student.
I always thought to myself, someday you're going to work for me.
There was never one time in my life I didn't have that recording going in my head, and it always sounded the same in my head.
Yeah, you're laughing now.
Check back with me in 20.
I didn't think that way, but I always did say that I probably am not going to end up in prison or with kids when I'm 18.
I used to think that.
That was my, you're going to work for me.
It was, I'm not going to be in prison with you.
That kind of deal. But I'm really, I mean, in terms, you want to talk about luck.
And there are some things that I'm really grateful for.
And one of the things I'm grateful for is that when I was 14 going into high school in Pittsburgh, we have, I don't know if we still have it, we had it, a magnet system, as long as you get a lottery magnet system.
So there was a school across town in a completely different environment.
And my mom got up and we got the first lottery pick for that, and I got to go to a school.
Now granted, now I had a new challenge, which was part of that school did feed into a different hood, but I wasn't around those kids.
And it was an hour and a half bus ride every day there.
Oh, hold on. Hold on.
I feel like we just hit the key to everything.
And I may be missing this.
But you had a mom who was willing to completely upend your situation and make you go an hour and a half to school to get a better situation.
This is very much systems, long-term planning.
I mean, your mom sounds like she was modeling What you have taken as a life philosophy, which is this is going to be seriously hard right now.
Well, let's give credit where credit is due sometimes.
I said earlier in passing, my sister is not like me.
She's doing all right, better, certainly.
But one of the big differences is that I had this unpleasant experience.
experience in the middle school and elementary school in my neighborhood and I didn't want any more of that and I knew that if I stayed there I wasn't going to get more.
So I pestered and I said that's where I want to go.
I said, I don't want to go around here.
So we're going to go and put the lottery in.
You have to go down to the Board of Education and put your name in and all that.
Wait, did you say I had it completely backwards?
It was you talking to your mother?
Yeah. My sister went to the local school.
All her friends are from there.
Really, going to that school...
It's one of the things that I credit with me not turning into a total scumbag.
What do you think about the idea of charter schools then?
Are you up on that? I'm not a big expert on that.
I hear such good things about that.
As far as I understand it, and I'm sure I'm going to get this completely right and someone in the comments is going to kill me, but as far as I understand it, it's still just another curriculum.
That is mandated by someone else.
And my big thing, while I'm a big fan of homeschooling, is that you're not moved on the pace of your peers.
You're moved on the pace that you're on, and what your parents feel is important.
I mean, these are the people who decided, hopefully decided anyhow, that your life was important enough to produce, so they should get some say, and certainly more say than I think most people have.
And how it's directed and what you're exposed to.
I have to say, I started out the first time I ever heard about homeschooling when it first started being in the news.
My first impression was feeling sorry for those kids because they didn't get a regular school experience.
But I realized later in life, and I heard more about it, and I saw more kids who went through homeschooling.
I don't think I've ever seen A homeschooled kid Who was messed up.
Right. Because people, the wrong idea.
It's not like, you know, you're sitting in a room and your parents are your teachers and that's all, you know, your only, now granted they are like, they should be instructing you.
But it's not like that's your only exposure.
Like, my girlfriend was homeschooled in a homeschool co-op.
It was a neighborhood of people and then, and to be part of that co-op, one of the parents brought a skill set that they would teach to, you know, the kids and then they switched off and then They were just raised in a different environment.
People always talk about they need socialization.
I'm like, have you seen the people that come out of regular school?
It's not like dad's doing a great job.
Yeah. If I look at my school experience, if I had never heard of homeschool and somebody said, well, how was your school experience?
I'd say, normal, good, no problem.
What about the way you'd expect?
But then if you actually think about it, because you just get used to your own experience.
You just think whatever you're doing is the normal thing.
But much of it was horrific.
Much of it was just horrific.
And I wouldn't have had that if I had been homeschooled.
A lot of stuff, as they say, you can't unsee or unremember, man.
School is not. We're not talking about the normal taunting, man.
I mean, we used to. Just between the fighting, and the fighting is a big thing, because that's one of the things that set me back, is when I was coming out of middle school, where I was supposed to be learning, we were too busy dealing with disciplinary issues, so I never, I'm like, oh man, this algebra thing is busting my ass.
Well, turns out no one ever, I never learned algebra.
It was too busy dealing with kids getting kicked out in fights having me broke up.
Right. All right, so we're coming to the end of our hour here, and this was great.
And I want to remind everybody, if you're not already following Ed Latimer on Twitter, you're missing one of – I put you in my top five whenever anybody asks me who they should follow on Twitter – I usually have several names, but you're always in my top five and always enjoy seeing your tweets.
I love your story.
I love what you're putting back into the universe, Ed.
I love the positivity.
And what I'd call the useful thoughts that you're projecting into the universe.
They're amazingly useful.
So I appreciate you very much.
I hope everybody goes and buys your book and follows you.
And say the name of your book again.
Not caring what other people think is a superpower.
Insight from a heavyweight boxer.
And also, if you're struggling with any type of addiction...
My other book, Sober Letters to My Drunken Self, is about the emotional transition that I made from being an alcoholic to being sober now for five years.
And I hope a lot of people get a lot out of that.
I wrote that book because it's a piece of my heart, man.
I wanted to give something back that was really good for people.
That's very valuable and I would say my startup makes an app called the Interface by WenHub in which experts, which could include addiction counselors or just people who are experts in any field, can take calls for people and people can charge for those calls anything they want.
So Ed, if you ever wanted to use that someday, you probably would have a built-in audience and I could help you promote that.
Yeah. I'll just throw that out there.
You don't need to answer about that.
And say goodbye, everybody.
Bye, Ed. See you.
Thank you for having me.
All right. Thanks, Ed. All right.
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