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Sept. 29, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:38
GIVE ME 30 MINUTES, I WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
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You don't get any points at the end of your life for the emotions you didn't spend, the vulnerability you didn't express.
You don't store it up.
You don't carry it to the afterlife.
You're dead and done.
You're dusted. You're done with this planet.
You're food for worms. You're a ghost in the sky.
Or calories in the belly of a worm.
There's no backup. There's no extra points.
It's not like death is winter and you've got to store up nuts so you can eat while you're dead.
What are you keeping things for?
What are you holding back for?
You spend your passion.
You gain a life.
You hoard your passion.
You're dead before you even hit the sod.
You're dead before you even hit the sod.
Fly high, live large.
Have your passions in full spread and full display.
Be full-throated, full-voiced.
Cry your barbaric yorks from the rooftops of the world.
Hoarding is death.
Hoarding is saying, ah, live later.
Not now. Soon.
Later. When everything's just right, I'll be passionate.
When the stars align.
When all the traffic lights between me and my destination are green, then I'm going to hit the gas.
But you understand that hoarding your passions.
Every habit starts as a cobweb and ends as a chain.
Every habit starts as nice and ends as a noose.
An object that is at rest stays at rest.
An object in motion stays in motion.
You think you're going to be passionate later?
You think you're going to put it all out there later?
Leave it all in the moment.
Put it all in the moment.
You might not even have it later.
Hmm... I'm going to go after my dreams...
Maybe three months from now.
The fuck do you know you've got three months?
You don't know that. It's like the miser who hoards all his money so we can go on the big trip.
Then trips over his luggage on the way out of his house and breaks his neck.
You don't know! I'm not saying be completely hedonistic and live for the moment.
It's a balance. I get that. But way too many people out there Live this small, cloistered, half-dead armadillo, curled up, guarding something that turns to nothing, in this chilly, frightened, empty embrace to protect something.
Like taking a fragile candle and putting it in a tiny airless room.
Runs out of air and goes out.
We have fires that roar in the high winds of adversity.
We are swords sharpened by whetstones.
Get out there and be passionate and follow your dreams.
Or you're in a nightmare of immobility.
You think, I mean, do you genuinely think?
Honestly, it's like exercise.
Do you think that if you don't exercise right now, Let's say you haven't exercised for a while.
Do you think if you don't exercise right now that it's going to be easier next week or next month or next year?
No, it's going to be harder. You'll be more, hell, I'm a pear.
You'll be more doughy, more flabby, more prone to injury.
Oh, do it now. Just do it now.
I mean, not right now because I'm talking, but you know what I mean.
Just do it now. You think it's going to be easier to ask out the girl if your dreams next month, next week, tomorrow?
No! Because that will be one more day, one more week, one more month, or God help you, one more year where you haven't asked her out.
In other words, you've developed the muscle called doing nothing.
Goose egg.
Bagel.
Donut.
Zero.
Thank you.
Whatever you feed gets stronger.
Whatever you starve gets weaker.
You feed inactivity. Inactivity gets stronger.
You feed avoidance.
You feed keeping your passions to yourself.
If your workout is self-strangulation, your self-strangling muscles get pretty strong.
And you're...
Speaking to the world, muscles get incredibly weak.
I don't know how long I've got.
I know I'm probably at least two-thirds of my way through my life.
If it's any consolation, it's halfway through my adult life, which is where I had choice.
I don't know how long I've got.
I mean, it's the post-cancer thing, but it's everyone.
I'm just a bit more aware of it than most.
I don't know how much time I've got. I could die on this livestream.
So... What am I holding on for?
What am I waiting for? I get to carry nothing with me from this world.
There's no money that I take with me.
There's no unspent feelings.
There's no unexpressed words or ideas or passions or thoughts.
None of it.
Life is fucking use it because you're going to lose it.
It goes either way.
Every dollar you have vanishes for you when you die.
You spend it or you lose it.
And again, I'm not saying don't save.
I'm not saying blow everything in the here and now.
It's a balance, right? It's a balance.
It's an Aristotelian mean to these things.
But way too many people are erring on the side of caution.
Pornography instead of families.
Video games instead of real accomplishments.
Fake enthusiasm for bullshit narratives like movies rather than being a hero or a protagonist in the truly exciting adventure called your life.
Letting other people dream for you, letting other people tell the stories, letting everyone else define the narrative.
Fuck no. Are you getting the woman that you want?
Are you getting the man that you want?
Are you making yourself ready for that?
Are you being enthusiastic and positive out there?
Are you drawing the right people towards you and pushing the wrong people away?
Are you living deeply and passionately?
Virtuously? Meaningfully?
Are you killing time?
Waiting for the giant eraser of mortality to just rub you the fuck out?
Are you staying super small hoping that that helps you avoid disaster?
It doesn't! Spoiler!
It doesn't! Oh, but if I ask that girl and she says, no, that'll be a disaster.
No, it won't! It'll find your level.
And if she doesn't see the value and the virtue in you, her loss.
I always had this feeling from when I was a teenager, really.
It's like, well, you could date other guys, but why?
Why would you? So, you ask the girl out.
She says no. I feel so bad.
What's wrong with feeling bad?
You understand there's no feeling good without feeling bad.
No pleasure without pain. Two sides of the same coin.
I just want to spend one side of the coin and keep the other.
I want to have my cake and eat it too.
It doesn't happen. I only want to experience success.
I don't want to experience loss. I don't want to experience happiness.
I want to feel unhappiness. I want to feel calm.
I don't want to feel anxious. It doesn't work.
It's just a way of flatlining yourself before nature does it for you, which she's going to do.
What's worse than asking the girl out?
And she says no. You know what's worse than that?
Not even asking the girl out.
Way worse. Infinitely worse.
Infinitely worse.
You ask the girl out.
She says no. It hurts.
But you fucking tried.
You aim for the job. You don't get it.
It hurts. But you tried.
You avoid the pain of the moment by avoiding the concentrated unhappiness and you just diffuse the unhappiness until it totally takes over your life.
Well, I don't want there to be a cloud in the way of the sun so I'm going to live in the fog of nothing.
Of scampering around the feet of the dinosaurs of people who matter in the hopes that Somehow, the greatest T-Rex of mortality is just gonna miss me, just gonna miss me, I'll just slip under, I'll slip by.
Nope. And this is even more important for women than for men because we have a longer fuse in the create the new people scenario.
But for women, it's like, yeah, I'm still waiting for the one.
But here's the thing, instead of asking who's the one for you, ask How am I going to be the one for someone else?
How am I going to be so fantastic that I'm going to be the one for someone else?
You want a great woman?
Shop in your intellect. Shop in your conversational skills.
Shop in your sexual skills.
Shop in your exercise.
Shop in your courage. Shop in your morals.
Be a treasure.
To get a treasure. Exchange.
Fair exchange of value. You wouldn't walk into a Maserati dealer with five bucks, would you?
What the hell are you walking up to some great woman, settling for just being an average guy?
There's no average in any of us.
There are glories and gratitudes and powers in all of us, in you, in me, in everyone.
You focus on your strengths.
Be someone that someone else would walk over broken glass to get to.
Thank you.
Settle for nothing less than vivid life.
You know, entire stars gave their lives so you could breathe.
Entire massive burning billion nuclear bomb stars went super fucking nova so that you and I could get up from the mud, walk around and say shit.
Now imagine you're a star.
You're a star.
A massive, Beetlejuice-style sun burning your way through the universe.
And God comes along and says, sorry, dude, this may sound kind of weird, but you're going to have to blow up.
You're going to have to detonate yourself. You're going to have to die.
Why? Why do I have to die? I'm big.
I'm strong. I've got planets.
Maybe I can foster life. No, no, no.
Sorry, man. You've got to die.
Because in a couple of billion years...
Like, after you die, after you explode, after a couple of billion years, the shit that's in your innards is going to hit this planet.
Third from the sun is the Sol system.
It's right in the Goldilocks zone. It's going to hit that planet, and it's going to animate, and people are going to get up, walk around, they're going to have thoughts.
We're not going to be wrong, that sounds kind of cool, God, but...
I don't want to explode and die.
I don't want to be a pirate.
I don't want to explode and die.
It's like, no, no, no. Trust me.
They're going to be so grateful.
They're going to honor you with everything they do.
You are going to die so that thought may live.
You're just blind matter.
I get we're having a conversation, so we'll break the narrative for a sec, but you're just blind matter.
You're just burning. But the word burning doesn't exist because consciousness doesn't exist.
The word sun or supernova or atoms or molecules, they don't exist because there's no thought.
We're just blind atoms doing their thing.
But here, the purpose of what you're doing, you immolate yourself.
You blow up. You sacrifice yourself.
They're going to be bipeds walking around who can comprehend the entire fucking universe, and that's pretty cool.
It's like, you know what? That is pretty cool.
I am just kind of blind matter. Okay, fine.
I'm going to hold my nose and hold in a sneeze and explode my shit all over the universe.
And you and I are this incredibly lucky recipient of this ultimate gift of self-sacrifice of the universe.
Literal stars exploded to give us brains.
We didn't have brains without the complexity of atoms and molecules.
The complexity of matter that comes from the innards of a died and exploded star.
a seppuku star gave up its innards so we could embrace life and so many people take that gift of a star that died so that they could live and think What do they do with it?
Waste it. Imagine that star's got a ghost, it's hovering over the planet, it's looking down, it's like, really?
I died for this?
I died so that you could weep over a Star Wars movie and Whack after furry porn?
Is this what I died for?
That's not good.
That's not worth it.
I might as well have just stayed a star and had the heartbeat of my nuclear bombs go off around the universe.
What are you doing with the gifts that you got?
You got magical soul ownership of the three pounds of most miraculous wetware the universe will ever, ever produce.
Ever. Ever. And we hoard it and we wait till later.
We sacrifice our interests and we waste our time.
We waste our years.
And we complain and we're anxious and we're afraid.
We have the most freedoms and the greatest gifts that the universe has ever bestowed upon any piece of matter.
Think of all the universe, 100 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies, and in the three pounds of wet wear you got between your ears, the universe can see itself.
You created a mirror wherein the universe can see itself.
And seppuku stars have assembled themselves into three pounds of infinite and ultimate thought.
And what are you doing with it? Get the fuck out there.
Ask the girl. Start the business.
Do your thing. Don't dishonor the dead stars by slowly choking your life out out of pointless fears.
Because I'll tell you. I'll tell you what's going to happen at the end.
If you don't, live.
If you don't, live! If you don't live, I'll tell you what happens at the end.
This I guarantee you.
There's not a lot that I guarantee you in this life, but this I fucking guarantee you.
If you don't live...
You'll be left with nothing.
And you won't remember why you ended up with nothing.
Because all the fears that you have, and all the anxieties that you have, and all the upsets that you have, and all the too risky, I don't want to kiss my girlfriend because other people might think that's weird.
You end up with no girlfriend.
You end up with no life. You end up with no great memories.
You end up with no big impact.
And you won't have any memory of what you were so scared of.
None. Now that is the worst fate.
There's nothing worse than that.
If there's hell on earth, it's that.
That you end up with nothing.
And look, that can happen.
You can end up with nothing.
You can throw everything into a business venture and you can end up with nothing.
You could ask every girl out for some weird, bizarre, God knows what reason you end up with nothing.
But you won't end up with regret.
Because you did your best, you tried.
The worst thing in this or any other universe is to end up with nothing for no good reason.
Because of your fears, your anxieties, your nervousness, you're deferring to later, you're not wanting to roll the dice, not wanting to get bad people out of your life, not wanting to get good people into your life, just drifting along like a jellyfish in the tide, just like a trilobite, like a single-celled organism, like a sycamore leaf in a hurricane.
Just... Being blown around like you didn't have any will, didn't have any choice, didn't have any focus, couldn't assess risk, couldn't make yourself do things.
And I really, by God, do I not want that for you.
I mean, I hope you understand how absolutely dead serious I am about this.
I do not want that for you.
You do not want that for you.
I guarantee you do not want that for you.
You do not want to end up later in your life with nothing for no reason.
If you end up broke, but you gave it your all, you got nothing at the end, but you got a good reason.
You ask the girl out, she says yes, and maybe later she gets seduced by some idiot and says no, and there's tragedy and sadness and this, that, and the other.
Yes, but at least you have the experience and it'll be easier to ask the next girl out.
Or if you're a woman and you're chasing all of these swipes and these bad boys, and ooh, tattoo, that's hard.
And you're just addicted to the declining dopamine bullshit of the next like, and the next thirst, and the next heart.
It's women who chase these Instagram hearts off a cliff without creating the real hearts of children.
It's beyond me. It's beyond me.
You have to be willing to sacrifice everything to achieve anything worthwhile in this life.
I mean, I hope I have some credibility.
Like, I sacrificed my whole career to bring the truth to the world.
I don't want regret. I didn't want to have essential truths and not speak them.
Because then I would have regret for how the world turned out.
Lead a horse to water. If the horse doesn't drink, it's not your fault.
If you don't even take the horse to water and the horse dies of thirst, that's on you.
No regrets. No regrets.
Great and deep satisfaction.
But women, you're just chasing these likes and these hookups and this bullshit and this emptiness and this nothingness.
It's straight up Satanism.
It's all flesh. No soul.
It's all pussy and no babies.
It's all tits and no breastfeeding.
You know what they're for, right?
And you will end up with nothing.
And you'll end up with nothing a lot sooner than men will.
You'll end up in your 40s with nothing.
And no good reason. No good reason for having nothing.
That's the worst thing.
We all end up with nothing anyway.
I mean, we all end up with nothing anyway because we die.
We all end up with nothing.
Are you going to have a good reason for what you have or don't have?
What are you waiting for? What magic do you think is coming down the pipe that's going to turn you into an action figure in your own movie?
You're waiting for somebody to hand you a script so you can be a protagonist?
No, write your own fucking script.
No one is coming to live your life.
No one is coming to give you instructions.
Nobody is coming to fix you or save you or heal you or solve you or inspire you.
There's only one guy coming.
There's only one guy coming.
And he's got a big fucking black cloak, a scythe, and a date, an appointment.
Step by step.
You hear him down the hall? You hear him?
Step by step.
He's coming. His feet are soft.
Cloth, mummified feet.
He doesn't want to scare you, but he's coming.
And don't give him a fucking inch before you have to.
Don't give him any death in life.
Don't give him any cowardice.
Don't give him any failure to morally go for what you virtuously want.
Don't let him seduce you into backing down from reaching out for what you want in this life.
Don't wait till the day after tomorrow and don't listen to this speech and say, yeah, that's good, I'll put that on my agenda for next week.
Start tonight. Fuck, turn me off, start right now.
I don't care. I'm telling you.
I'm telling you. I grew up around death.
Man, I grew up around death.
The family history that I write about in Almost is not imaginary.
I grew up with death.
A lot of my family members died in World War I. A lot of my family members died in World War II. I grew up all around death.
I had several friends of mine die as children.
Just awful.
Really good people.
Good kids, nice kids, thoughtful kids, caring kids, moral kids.
And they just got wiped the fuck out.
One beheaded on a motorcycle.
One just turned out he had a congenital heart defect.
He just didn't wake up. He's my first friend in the new world.
You know, when the other kids were saying, come on, limey, let's go punch the girls in the groin.
I don't want to do that.
My friend was like, yeah, let's not do that.
Let's walk and chat.
And we used to just walk.
All the lunches, all of the...
Recesses. We just walk and chat and walk and chat and think and walk and chat and think.
beautiful, beautiful kid.
Death stepped on his heart and he died.
Thank you.
Another friend of mine was jogging and Some kids in a stolen pickup truck just ran them down.
The country road is dead.
I mean, I don't know. Do you know people who've died?
And not in the normal course of things I know, but do you know people who've died, just never got a chance?
I think of my friend's mom from time to time, the guy who died in the motorcycle accident.
I think of my friend's mom from time to time.
She's still alive.
You know, I got close to 40 more years than this guy.
I can't obviously give him any of my years.
I can't give Mark or Jamie or Anyway, I can't give them any of my years, but I tell you what I can do is I can honor their deaths by not giving any of my years to death.
Absolutely not. You stay the fuck away until I'm ready.
And if you've got to come when I'm not ready, at least I won't panic that there was so much more that I needed to do, so much more that I wanted to do.
No, I'm not ready! It's too soon.
It's not too soon if you've lived well.
Right? It's not too soon if you've lived well.
And you've lived a life that, whether publicly or locally, redefines what people are capable of and what it means to live richly.
Move the envelope, move the starting goal or the end goal.
Move the metrics. Move the scale in some manner.
Personally, locally, for your kids, for your family, for friends, for the world.
Do something to have people question whether they're living deeply or richly enough so that they do.
And maybe you can defeat death then, in a sense, by living on Forever.
In the heart's minds, words and deeds, memories and inspirations and achievements of others.
Maybe. It's a cheat code for immortality.
And why not you? You don't think you have as much to offer as other people?
Of course you do. You're a human being.
I'm a human being. Who is to say what we do or do not have to offer?
Who puts that cap or that lid upon us?
Fuck whoever does. I don't care.
I'm going to live with no lid and no limits.
No fuse, no breakers.
You want to ask the girl out?
Please, I'm begging you. I'm on my knees begging you.
Go ask the girl out.
You want to start that business?
I'm begging you. I'm begging you.
Death is coming either way.
Start the fucking business. There's an important truth you want to tell.
There's a difficult person in your life you want to confront.
Do it. You want to ask for that raise?
Ask for that raise. You want to learn piano?
Learn piano. You want to learn a new language?
Sit down and learn a new language.
Cram yourself full of value and experiences and depth and power and grace.
When death comes, you can at least say, fuck you, I did it all.
Yeah, take me. I did it all.
And as you... Ascend to wherever on either side of you will be some giant stars saying it was worth blowing up for you.
Yeah, that was worth it.
All right. Fine.
It was worth seppuku-ing in a supernova so that you could do that because that was some cool shit.
That was some cool stuff, man.
That was great. It's a short time, man.
It's a blink and it's gone. Don't wait.
Don't wait. It's all the bad people in the known universe.
They just want you to wait. Live small.
Stay small. Never explore your potential.
Never take risks. Be too afraid of rejection.
You know who's not going to reject you is death.
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