You.

One of my friends said to me back then, they said, you're either going to be a millionaire in jail. I was that desperate to leave a.

Situation that you know isn't right for you. I think that is the hardest decision on the planet for most people.

It all comes back to what is the most important goal for all of us. And I would argue that the most important goal that we can all aim at is our own happiness.

You have been at war internally with what the world was telling you how you should feel, and knowing deeply that that's not how you feel about yourself.

I thought I was different in a good way. And the system told me I wasn't realizing at ten years old that the narrative that my school had given me, that the only way to become rich, successful, and happy was through getting A's on these exams, was when I sold that first pack of cigarettes on the playground and someone handed me five pounds. I could not unsee it.

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and it is such an honor to be able to spend some time with you. And I wanted to start by acknowledging you. You're thinking, what are you acknowledging me for? I'm going to tell you what I'm acknowledging you for, for your commitment to making your life better. I mean, I know that's why you chose to listen or to watch this today. So, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family, and thank you for being one of those people that is a force for good on this planet and for making the Mel Robbins podcast one of the most popular podcasts in the entire world. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on confidence and motivation. And I'm on a mission to inspire, empower you with the tools and the expert resources that you need and that you deserve so that you can create a better life. And today we have an awesome expert, and I'm really excited about this person because this is somebody I really admire. In business, you often write in, and you're like, mel, who is it that you look up to?

And you're about to meet somebody that I really look up to in business. And you and I also talk a lot about the importance of having people in your life that are doing things that you want to be able to do and studying them and following them and learning from them. And somebody that I look to all the time when it comes to business and podcast in particular, is a guy by the name of Stephen Bartlett. Now, that name may be familiar. He's a wildly successful entrepreneur. I'm going to get into that in a minute. But he is really well known on a global basis for hosting a podcast called the Diary of a CEO. It is hands down the number one ranked podcast across Europe. It's climbing the charts here in the United States. It dominates globally. And I study this guy. I've learned so much from him. And today you're going to learn from him. We are going to talk about the art and science of decision making. And I'm going to get into Stephen's credentials in just a minute because they are crazy impressive. But let's just pause and let's consider the importance of the art and science of decision making and why this matters to you.

Well, stop and think about your life. Your life is the sum of your decisions. And if you want to create a better life, then you're going to have to make better decisions. I mean, if you just keep doing what you do now, ten years is going to go by and nothing's going to have changed. And there is so much power in your decision making. In fact, research has proven that you and I, we make about 35,000 decisions a day. Let me just put that in context. That's like taking a soccer stadium and putting a decision in every single seat. And that's what you do every day. And here's the thing about decisions. Decisions are kind of like dominoes. They tend to trigger the next one, right? That's why you're sitting on the couch and you only intended to check one thing and next thing you know, boom. That one decision led to 3 hours of doom scrolling. We're not going to be doing that. I'll tell you why. Because there are tools that you can learn and use from some of the world's best thinkers and most successful people on the planet to help you make better decisions.

And you're going to learn some of those tools today, like the 51% rule that really is going to help you. If you struggle with perfectionism, self doubt and overthinking, you're also going to learn about the two different types of decisions, the speed of decisions, and something that my friend Stephen Bartlett lives by. He calls it the first principles. So let me tell you a little bit about my friend Stephen Bartlett. First of all, this guy's only 31 years old and one of his companies was valued at $600 million. He's also a serial entrepreneur who advises and sits on the boards of so many global brands. And he's going to tell you today and teach you the direct connection between the decisions that you make and improving every aspect of your life. Your health, your relationships, your business. The other thing that I love about Stephen is that his story is so wildly compelling. So we're going to begin the conversation with his story. Stephen grew up so poor that he was stealing food, a fact he was hiding from his schoolmates. He dropped out of college to start his first company. And he has so much to teach you, not only based on his own life and business experience and success, but also based on the wisdom that he has gained from interviewing hundreds of the world's most innovative, influential, and successful minds in business, sport, science, all of it.

And one of the reasons why I admire Stephen so much is because you know how you can tell from afar when somebody is literally in a class of one, meaning that they are the very best at what they do? Well, that's Stephen, because it's very clear to me that he's doing things his way. And here is what I want you to take away from today's conversation. You need to learn how to do things your way. See, you have your own unique story to tell and your own genius to share. And in order to unlock your full potential, you have to learn how to make better decisions. Decisions that align with what you want personally. Decisions that align with your creative and business instincts, and decisions that help you become more of yourself. Wouldn't that be awesome? You better believe it's gonna be awesome. So let's jump into the conversation I recently had with Stephen Bartlett. And because you're watching here on YouTube. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for spending time. Thank you for being here with me. Please take a minute to subscribe. Steven asks his watchers to subscribe. This is. I learned from him.

Please subscribe. I want 50% of the people that watch this channel to be subscribers because it helps me get people like Steven to you for free. All right, you ready? Good. Let's jump into that conversation that I recently had with none other than the amazing Stephen Bartlett. So, first of all, I know you don't do a lot of interviews, and I'm thrilled, because, selfishly, you are somebody who I really admire. And if there's a pace car in personal development, you're it.

Oh, wow.

And so this interview is a huge gift for everybody listening, because I am just curious about how you think and how you make decisions and what, to use your word, drives or drags you. I personally think anybody listening at any age could take what you're about to teach us from your own experience and apply it to the beliefs that are holding them back. And so I want to.

Oh, gosh.

Show you.

This is a photo of me in preschool when I was. Must have been three years old. Yeah, three years old. Feels like a different person. It's so strange looking at. Looking at my former self, it feels like such a different person.

Is it a different person that you're looking at?

He looks so naive and so happy, and I feel much more weathered.

Well, you are.

I've walked the length of the earth, whereas he just seems like he doesn't care about anything, and I'm jealous of that.

Well, he did care.

Yeah, he did.

One of the things I find most fascinating about you is that you experienced a lot of very challenging and painful things in your childhood. And yet somehow all of the challenges that you faced as a kid have fueled success in some way. And I'm so curious to understand how that happened.

Someone once said to me, there's two things no one wants to be in life. Not enough and different. And I think at some level, I felt both of those things. So that was certainly a belief that I had. I also was firmly believing in the social narrative that we're not moldable. Our destiny is kind of pre prescribed for us. And that started to pull apart all of that bs that most of us are conditioned with. I mean, we all grew up in the same, relatively the same system of education and the same society, and it programs us, I think, to limit us. And one of them, my great passions in life now is I firmly, deeply believe that people are operating at 1% of their potential in all facets of their life. And I'm, like, desperate to tell them that. I'm desperate to show them that I can't tell them, but I can encourage them to take that first step into a situation where they'll be exposed to counteracting evidence. That is my mission, is to push people off the cliff so that they can figure out that they can actually fly in a world where society has made them disbelieve in their own wings, per se.

Since so many of the folks listening are not going to know your story, they know the accolades, but they don't know your story, I would love for you to just talk a little bit about how this all started.

I moved to the UK from Botswana when I was a baby, and we moved to an area called Plymouth in the southwest of England, which is an all white area. It's a relatively middle class to lower middle class area with some areas of poverty. You understand the value of everything in life by the context in which you see it and the context in which I saw myself was we were the poor black family in an all white area. There must have been 1500 kids in my school, and we were pretty much, from what I recall, the only black kids in the school. So sort of confounding that was, my mother is nigerian and she came to the UK. Can't read, can't write. I think she left school when she was five years old or six years old in Africa, starts working on a stool, moves to the UK because she meets this white man in Nigeria, and she undergoes a ton of racial abuse in the area. And by the age of about ten, our life completely flipped. Because my mother had what I can only describe as an addiction to gambling, the lottery, whatever.

If I opened any drawer in our house when I was growing up, every single drawer was full of lottery tickets. She would steal my maths book when I walked in the door. And she would stay up till 03:00 a.m. In the morning going through it, looking for numbers to then play in the lottery. So I would lose my textbooks to my mother because she was trying to find some secret code within these books. Although my father has a good job and we live in this nice area, all the money goes. So we basically get to the point of bankruptcy. And that's when things I think start to change. Because she spends all of her time in her corner shop, trying to make money, trying to start businesses. People are breaking into the corner shop at night to abuse her and steal her stuff. So she decides just to sleep in there on this bag of rice in the back room. And at ten years old, being the youngest of four kids, I think my parents just assume that they've parented all the kids, as parents sometimes do. Youngest is kind of like he's 25, 24, 20, 310.

Like, they're done. And by the age of ten, if I woke up, there was no one there. And when I went to bed, there was no one there. And so you have these two forces in my life. You have a huge amount of independence, which comes from my parents absence. And then you have this huge amount of shame and insecurity because I'm the only black poor kid that I know. I'm chemically relaxing my hair to try and be a white person. I'm stealing stuff to try and buy the shoes that my friends have. I'm going to great lengths to try and fit into the detriment of a lot of things in my life. None of my friends know where I live because I lie about where I live. None of my friends know I don't have birthday presents for christmases because we just lie about that. And there's this subtle sense of shame in me and that shame drives me. So I so desperately needed to find ways I could fit in that I can control. And one of them was trying to find ways to have nice things with money. And I remember very early on, like at six, seven years old, going around my school looking for money, which meant waiting for my teachers to leave the classroom at 03:00 hanging around and then going through every single drawer in the classroom.

And that was, I was desperate. And then I'd take that money and if it meant going down to the sweet shop so I could pretend I had the same suites as the other kids, I would do that. And it was a desperation. One of my friends said to me back then, they said, you're either going to be a millionaire in jail and that for me, I remember where I stood when he said that to me at seven years old because I was that desperate. Which means if I need money and if I think money equals fitting in and belonging, then I'm going to sell everything in the house, I'm going to start businesses at twelve. I'm going to sell the cigarettes my mom bought back from Nigeria in those black bags in the spare room. I'm going to do whatever I can. And from those experiments, you end up building a ton of evidence about yourself. I just had a different perspective on the world. And by 16 I realized that grades weren't going to get me where I needed desperately to go. And when you realize that the system is telling you success and happiness is a result of getting an a on that exam that you can't get an a on, you have to find another path.

And for me the other path was if I can persuade all of my peers in this school now to buy a ticket to this thing that I just came up with or to come to this website I just launched or buy coffees from this machine that I just put on campus, these are going to be the adults with me. So when we're all adults, I'll just do more of that. That was my reasoning. And then with that, I felt safe not to come to this school anymore. So I stopped coming. My tenants hit 30%, they expel me. I take the expulsion form to my head teacher. He says, quote, and I've been back to the school multiple times. He's been on national tv to confirm this. In the UK, he said, you're my little Harry Potter. I keep you under the stairs because you've made this school a lot of money. So he unexpelled me, and then in the last week of school, they expelled me again because I just wasn't coming. By then, I had so much evidence that I didn't need the system.

Well, here's the part that I just find mesmerizing, and that is that there are so many stories of people who have an experience of I don't belong. This isn't working. I'm not good at this anyway. Nobody cares. And instead of going, I'm going to just do whatever I can to climb on top of this situation in order to control it. That's what you did. But so many other people in that moment light up the blunt, or they start drinking, or they don't go to school ever again and just start down the path of, I must be a loser, my parents aren't here, and you didn't do that.

It doesn't sound like it's hard to take credit for something that's always come so naturally to you.

What comes naturally to you questioning if.

What I've been told is the truth. It's like one of the prevailing principles of my entire life, my professional life, everything is. It's so natural to me to assume that things I'm being told aren't actually the truth and that the systems, the society we live in, the institutions, the narratives that surround all of the above, are true. I just naturally don't accept that. And that means that you go the extra distance to find out what is true about the existing systems. I. E is me getting de on these exams. Does that mean I'm going to be lonely, poor failure? I didn't accept that to be true, and so I did a piece of work, which was the experimentation in my own life, to find out if those systems are true. And it turns out when you push on most doors, like, there's really nothing behind them, I think most of our experience is a bunch of social myths, bunch of doors that we just haven't tried pushing on yet. And I, at a very young age, started pushing on those doors. And when you start pushing on all of them and you realize that there's nothing behind them, they lead to nowhere.

I think it develops into a habit where you start questioning things a bit more. You start questioning, like, social norms about, you have to do this at this age, and you have to go to university, and you have to pursue a career, and quitting is for losers. And all of these narratives turns out most of them are bs. And it is in taking them on that you find yourself reaping life's greatest rewards.

Isn't his story fascinating? And I want to just jump in and make sure you were really paying attention at that very last part, because this is critical. Stephen has always naturally questioned if what he was being told by the adults is the truth. I mean, just stop and think about that. Can you imagine if you did that in your own life right now? I mean, I'm talking about questioning all the things that you've been told that are true, whether it's big or that it's small, in your everyday life. I mean, just imagine for a second, if you ask yourself, is it really true that I'm too old to go back to school? Is it really true that I can't eat healthier? Is it really true that I'm never going to find love again? And here's what you're going to find as you start to question the truth, right? And what you tell yourself is that you can see that the truth could be of your own making. Like, as you start to question it and you say to yourself, wait a minute, is it true that I'm not a morning a person or that I don't have enough time in the morning?

All of a sudden you're going to say, well, wait a minute. Why can't I get out the door every morning and take a walk? Why can't I get up 30 minutes earlier and start the day in a much more empowering way? And that's just one tiny example. And this notion of questioning what you believe to be true, that is just your very first takeaway. There is so much more in store for you. But we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsors, and then we're going to pick right back up where we left off. And Stephen is going to explain that once you start questioning, is this even true? Next, he's going to teach you how he started to figure out the truth for himself and why you need to do the same thing. And a little later, we will be jumping into those tools like the two different types of decisions, the 51% rule and the speed of decision making. So stay with us. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm so glad you decided to keep listening because today you and I are talking about the art and science of decision making and how you need to learn how to make better decisions.

And you're getting a masterclass in this from somebody I deeply admire. And that's Stephen Bartlett. Now, we were just in the middle of the conversation where Stephen was sharing about his childhood and how it just came naturally to him to start to question what all the adults were telling him. So let's drop right back into the conversation with Stephen.

You start questioning, like, social norms about marriage and about. You have to do this at this age and you have to go to university and you have to pursue a career and quitting is for losers. And all of these narratives, turns out most of them are bs. And it is in taking them on that you find yourself reaping life's greatest rewards. And this has just developed in me over the years where now I believe that the answers I'm looking for in my life probably won't come from books, systems, teachers and schools, because the world is changing at such a terrifying rate. They will come from tuning in to how I feel in certain situations after.

Trying some stuff, if I had to synthesize the difference between how you coped with that situation and how so many of us cope, which is to tune out or to numb out or to just create a narrative in our mind, well, that this is it. I guess I'm just a loser. I guess my parents hate each other and they hate me and nobody's going to be there for me. You developed this really unique skill and this is what I really want to explore, which is there was something in your need to survive that situation. Nobody's home, older siblings not doing well in school, the only black kid in your neighborhood lying about this, that and the other thing. You developed this unbelievable skill at a very young age to tune into how you felt in the moment and to actually trust it.

Yeah, that's accurate. Yeah, I always thought I was. And I don't know how to say this because people think it's a bit arrogant. I always thought I wasn't the things that the system said I was. I thought I had loads of talent and potential. I thought I was different in a good way. And the system told me I wasn't. When you put a kid in exclusion unit and you make him copy from a piece of paper and over and over again for hours and you make him look at a wall and you give him this report card where you grade him every day because you think he's naughty, I just thought. I thought the system was wrong and I thought I was right. And I became very good at tuning into that voice. It's one of the things that I think is the most liberating thing for anyone who's looking for answers to do is instead of searching for answers in books and on podcasts and all of these things, take a second and just ask yourself, how do I feel? This is a lot of what you talk about as well, is your body will tell you long before your brain will.

And I heard you say this on my podcast, which is exactly the way I always view it, is we are all born with this internal signal called call it intuition. I just call it how you feel. And as we grow up, we're almost brainwashed by society to tune out of that voice which is there, and to tune into this external voice, which is how you should feel, and this how you should feel. Voices, you make a million pounds, you have a nice car, you should feel like this. So we tune into that and we let that voice guide us, but it just guides us to nowhere good. It guides us to midlife crises. It guides us to health breakdowns when our body starts to rebel against the decisions we've made. I've developed through trial and error the belief that how I feel should also correlate to how I act. And in the short term, there's a shedding. There's a mom stops. Caught speaking to you for two years. There's a you lose a friendship group. You might end up in the exclusion unit in school. But if you can persist, if you have the belief that that internal voice is actually guiding you to somewhere you should be, where your health and happiness is, then you will create a life in a very short amount of time that very closely resembles the one you've always dreamed of.

If you're very bad at tuning into that voice, you'll live with this sense of hopelessness and stuckness. If you spent too long tuning into the external voice, which comes from your parents, from school, from Instagram, from university.

Can I point something out about you that's really interesting? You have known this since you were little. I just had this insight about you, that you have been at war internally with what the world was telling you, how you should feel, and knowing deeply that that's not how you feel about yourself.

That is the story of both my childhood and my life, which is just that belief that most of the obstacles that we stand in front of us are self imposed. There's this incredible video I love watching whenever I need to watch it, as a reminder of these self imposed limitations. I don't know if you've seen it. An ant. And they put it on a piece of paper and they draw the circle around it. Have you seen that video?

Oh, and they draw a circle. And it just literally walks in circles.

It stays inside the circle, right? So they draw the circle around it, and it stays inside the circle. And they've drawn it with a pen. And objectively, you look at it and go, that ant isn't trapped. It just believes it is because they've drawn this sort of limitation, this figment of its imagination, this circle around it. They do the same thing with a spider in this other video. And as they're making the circle smaller and smaller and smaller, the spider accidentally steps over the pen line. And then they try and trap it again with the pen. And for the rest of that spider's life, it can never be trapped by the pen again. So they chase it down the table, drawing circles around it, and it is free. And it's the same thing I'm describing. It's once you see behind the curtain and you realize that most of our limitations, yours and mine, are both these figments of our imagination that we've accepted to be real and true and to stand in our way, and that they're false. There's very little that can take you back to that place. But how does it happen? Well, you have to step over the line.

When I hear you talk, I'm like, push my ass off that cliff. Let's go. Tell me where the circle is, Steven, because I want the light bulb moment that you have that is part of the belief system that you have cultivated and that you, over and over and over and over and over again, demonstrate with how you show up in life. And so let's take a couple of scenarios. Let's take an example in real life. Yesterday in the airport, woman walks up to me and says, mel, could you do a show on finding purpose in your twenty s? And I said, sure. What do you do for a living? She said, I'm a banker. And I said, well, what do you like doing? I love being with kids. I'd love to be a teacher. And obviously, it's very easy to say to somebody that you've just met, well, duh, then stop being a banker and go be a teacher. I do feel that the reason why somebody wouldn't quit banking is they're afraid of what other people would think.

And here we go. So what they've done there is they've put the most important goal that any of us can have in the world below someone else's opinion. And that in there is the problem. It all comes back to what is the most important goal for all of us. And I would argue that the most important goal that we can all aim at is our own happiness. And happiness is such a strange word. So I'm using it intentionally, ambiguously. You can define it for yourself, but I think that should be the North Star. And when that is the North Star, anything that stands to compromise your chance of happiness is the greatest risk of all. So you are, by way of that decision, a huge risk taker.

You are the biggest because you're staying in banking, and it's a huge risk.

Go and speak to people that have zero days left and you've got it.

Exactly wrong, because the biggest risk is staying in banking.

Yes.

When the greatest, the biggest risk is.

Not what people might say. When you leave banking, the biggest risk is doing another decade in banking and looking back with the retrospective clarity that you had your priorities all wrong. You cared about Sally and Jenny's opinion in the WhatsApp group, not your own happiness. And you had one life to know. That breaks my heart. And that's what I observe in the world. I observe people overstaying their welcome for decades and situations, and risking the most important thing, which palliative nurses like Brony Ware talk about when they interview people on their last day of their life. They just wish. The number one regret of the dying is they wish they'd lived, that they'd gone and been that entrepreneur. They'd taken those ballet classes in Peru. They desperately wish they could have one more day to do it. I'm not going to risk laying there with those regrets. You can if you want to gamble that much with your life. I'm not going to do it. And I'm so attuned to the fact that I'm going to die someday. And when you really understand that, that's why there's a sand timer on the shelf behind you.

There's sand timers all over my house. It's the reminder that, by the way, buddy, your time is ticking away. You can't see how much you have left. And that gives you the required urgency to take on big challenges, to quit quickly, to leave situations that are compromising your health and happiness, and to go in pursuit of yourself. And when people ask myself, me, you're 30 years old, you start all these businesses, you've done all this stuff. I go, yeah, because I'm not going to risk my happiness.

You have this, I'd say, more than almost anybody I've ever met, and I don't know you very well, but I just watch what you're doing from this side of the pond. And I've listened to enough of your interviews and read your books that it is very clear that your superpower is in making decisions that you know are right for you, and trusting yourself in that. Trusting yourself in the decision that you're making and trusting yourself in your ability to face whatever comes next.

There's two things that came to mind when you said that. I was reading about Jeff Bezos, who built Amazon, second most highly valued company in the world. I think it's worth $2 trillion or something. And in one of his shareholder letters, he says that there's two types of decisions in life. You have type one decisions and type two decisions. Type one decisions are the doors you can't walk back through. Take your time on those ones, right? Like me resigning from my company. But most decisions in life are actually type two decisions, which are doors you can walk back through if you were wrong. Most of the things that we end up mulling and ruminating over and worrying about are type two decisions. He says, make those decisions as fast as you possibly can. That's how you could get to where you want to go faster in life and in business. And I also thought of Barack Obama, who I spoke with on stage many, many years ago at this event in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And he was recounting the time he was faced with the decision to fly to Pakistan with those two Apache helicopters, with about 50% certainty that Osama bin Laden was waiting in that compound.

He was risking two Apache helicopters of american lives. And he says, on the big decisions in life, like getting Osama bin Laden, you have to get to 51% certainty or as close as you can to 51 50% certainty and make the decision with the peace of mind that you made that decision in that moment with all of the available evidence. And you have to let it go, because we all know in life that the 100% certainty on these big decisions that everyone's seeking only exists in hindsight.

I want to take a highlighter and repeat that line, that in life, 100% certainty on big decisions, it only exists in hindsight. And you've had that experience, haven't you? Where you look back and you say, oh, God, I wish I would have. Or if I had only known. But here's what Stephen's trying to get you and me to understand. The information that you have now you didn't have back then. If you had it back then, you would have made a different decision. But we're not talking today about making different decisions. We're talking about how you make better decisions. And here's what you have to understand, you will never have 100% certainty, and you cannot wait for it. And this is what I am going to now refer to as the 51% rule. And you have to know about this, because if you're somebody who is constantly overthinking or worrying or doubting yourself when it comes to making decisions in your life, that's the formula. You can only be 100% certain years after you make the decision, but you will never be 100% certain before you make the decision. That's why you have to use the 51% rule.

Look for 51% certainty in the moment. That's the goal. Because 51% certainty will stop you from overthinking and doubting yourself. And I want to remind you something. This is such an important point. Overthinking is a decision. Doubting yourself is a decision. Not making a decision is a decision. And think about how much time has gone by, how often you doubt and overthink, and you let perfectionism rob you of the ability to make a decision and just do something you've wanted to do that you didn't go on that trip, you didn't say yes to that date. You didn't start writing. You didn't start the YouTube channel. You've been thinking about it for me. I've talked a lot about it in our conversations for years. I didn't start this podcast. That was a decision. Why? Because I was waiting for 100% certainty. The 51% rule will help you get started. So grab onto that tool, start using it, and you better stick around, because we're just getting started in terms of tips and tools and the art and science. And when we come back, Stephen has another story. This one is about a father and a son who run a business together.

And the story will help illustrate the next tool that you're going to learn, which is the speed of a decision. So stay with us. I'll be waiting for you after a short break. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. Thank you for deciding to stick around and listen to this conversation between me and Stephen Bartlett. Today, you and I are both learning about the art and science of decision making, how to make better decisions for you in your life from none other than Stephen Bartlett. And you've already learned two really important tools. The first one is that there's two types of decisions, type one and type two. Type one, as Stephen describes them, are decisions that are irreversible. Okay. The second type of decision is a type two decision. This is something that you can decide to change later. And as you heard me say loud and clear, almost every decision is a type two decision, because almost every decision is reversible, and yet you get so paralyzed because you think everything is fixed in stone, as my daughter likes to say. Mom, it's not that deep. Okay. Your decisions, not that deep. Now, let's remind you of the second tool that you and I learned.

The 51% rule. You're never going to be 100% sure. And as soon as you're 51% sure it's a yes, or 51% sure it's a no. Make the decision. Now, we're ready with that quick recap to drop back into this conversation. And Stephen is at the part where he's going to explain something about the speed of a decision. And I love the story he's about to tell you, because it's not only going to help you make a lot more money, it's going to help you stop wasting so much time thinking things through.

I spent ten years working in marketing, and there's this one particular company, which you'll know that is run by the father, and the other part of the company is run by the son. And the son's business started a little bit later, but they're both in the same industry. I'd go to the father's office every week, and I'd present him new ideas. And he'd spend six months, nine months, waiting for Rochelle to get back from annual leave to sign it off and arguing about the details, et cetera. I'd bring the same idea to the sun that same day. Literally. They live on. The offices are on the same street. He would interrupt me halfway through. He'd go and tell his assistant, go and get Nikki. He'd call the marketing team in, tell me to repeat it. He'd look at both of us without a contract, his marketing team and me, and say, do this now. And what he intuitively knew is what a lot of the successful people I interview know, is that the biggest cost in life isn't a failed experiment being wrong about a decision. It is the nine months, the ten years, the 15 years you waste deciding whether to make the decision, because that was a type two decision where if we were wrong, okay, 20k.

But the next day, we're closer to conducting another experiment to find the right answer. And I sat there for five years watching this son's business just gradually creep up on his father's take over the fathers. And I was in both boardrooms thinking it's just because he makes decisions at a much faster rate and his risk equation is reversed. Daddy thinks the risk is being wrong in a decision. Son thinks the risk is not making a decision. And his business grew, sold the company to son. He now lives in Monaco, in Dubai, and he's got more, hundreds of millions than anyone would ever know. Dad's still there running the business. And so that sense of urgency to throw open those type two doors is so deeply ingrained in me. Same way we run these businesses. It's all about experimentation.

Let me give you a personal example of a type two decision that I think people think is a type one. One of the best things that you could do if you are in a relationship that sucks or is sucking the life force out of you, is to break up or if you're married, to say out loud, I want a divorce, I'm miserable. And the reason why that is a type two decision that people mistake for a type one is because simply saying this isn't working causes a change in the relationship for the better, or not, or not. But the only way that relationship is actually changing is if you make a decision to say the way that it is isn't working. And so I personally feel like part of the framework of the type one and type two decision is insanely helpful. And the issue for most of us is that we mistake those type two decisions for something else.

She can go back and be a banker.

Of course that's true. She can go back and be a banker.

She's doorstepping Mel Robbins in an airport. And I'm telling you now, as a banker, she's got a couple of know, probably, but she will probably become the dad in that example and ruminate over that decision for three years. She might go and try working with kids yesterday and find out it sucks. And that's what the son knew. The son would conduct the experiments, right or wrong, he was closer to the correct answer. The problem is, people never make the decision to get the feedback. Failure is feedback. Feedback is knowledge, and knowledge is power. They never get the knowledge because they never want to fail. So they live sort of entrapped and imprisoned in their current misery because they've got the risk equation the wrong way around, and they don't realize that urgency is part of the answer to the.

Person that is in that conundrum. I'm a banker. I think I want to be over here. How do you find out? Or do you have another matrix that you use to figure out what you actually want in a moment where you're just engulfed with uncertainty?

My natural reaction was to go back to the way I've built and run all my businesses, which is scientific method, which is experimentation. And I think that's the only way we find out in life. But no one wants to do it. If I had a seven year old kid and they said, dad, I want to sell pen lids, I'd fantastic. That weekend, we're going to go to the pen lid museum and find out. Because failure is the feedback that you're searching for. It isn't doorstepping Mel Robbins in an airport and on life matters of purpose and meaning. Mel Robbins in an airport can't tell you what your purpose and meaning is and whether it's kids or banking. So failure is feedback. Feedback is the knowledge you're looking for, and knowledge is power. So therefore, failure is the power you're looking for. Currently, you feel disempowered, and the only way that you're going to feel empowered and feel the power that you're seeking.

Is to fail at the thing you're doing, which is banking.

Fail or fail at teaching, failing at trying something new. We can find the right answer. In a world that is so nuanced and ever changing, not by reading a book or doorstepping melon in an airport, but by running the experiment like a type two decision, as fast as we can, the world is only going to change faster and faster and faster and ever before. Which means the correct answer to these life questions. How to structure a marriage, how to work from home or office, how to build a business, all these things. The correct answer is going to change so quickly that you're not going to get it anywhere else other than conducting an experiment in your life, which means taking that first step. And my whole thesis for why any of the companies I run will be successful is because we outfail the competition. Any of my businesses. I can tell you how many experiments, my head of experimentation and failure conducted this week can tell you how many. And I take the same approach for my life, which is in my romantic relationship.

How does that work in relationship?

I'll tell you. So convention says, for example, that two people in a relationship I know have to sleep in the same bed at night. But if you reason from first principles, first principle is basically like something that you know to be true about now and your situation, which is if you reject all conventions nonsense and think that's other people's solutions for other people's times, other people's situations. So, put simply, a first principle of mine and my girlfriend's relationship is that we have different chronotypes. A chronotype, basically, dictates the time when you are activated, you're creative. What time you wake up in the morning, when you get hungry.

Does that mean like a night person versus a morning person?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And then that has implications for how you sleep. So my girlfriend is a whale chronotype, which basically means she goes to bed at like 09:00 p.m. She gets up at six. That's you?

Same.

I'm an owl, which means that I go to bed at one or 02:00 a.m. And I get up at about eight or nine. Kind of just let it run. As you know, I don't set an alarm. That's one. First principle, we have different chronosypes. First principle number two is that so many relationships end. According to Matthew Walker, who's the sleep expert about, I think he said ten to 20% of relationships can be linked back to sleep issues. Couples not sleeping problem properly, which causes arguments, all kinds of issues.

Wow.

In their relationships, he says ten to 20%. So we know that we need to get sleep. Maybe a third point is when you understand sleep cycles, as I know you do, the restorative sleep happens about 60 minutes into the cycle when you go into stage four, which is REM sleep, but also most of the REM sleep. And those sleep cycles get shorter late at night. So if I go to bed at 02:00 a.m. It's by six, seven a. M, that my sleep cycles are really, really short. They go down from like 90 minutes to like 45 minutes. All of my restorative sleep is happening between the out. Most of it is happening between the hours of six and nine. So in that example, if my girlfriend wakes up at six, she can destroy 50% of my restorative sleep, which is then going to put me in a terrible mood the next day.

Right?

So on days where she has to get out of bed early for whatever reason, we have a spare room convention goes, he doesn't love you. Right? But first principles and thinking for yourself in a world that's always changing and you're conducting experiments to find the answer goes, you're both going to be happier when you wake up, giving your relationship more chance. It's the same thing with me quitting university. It's the same thing with all the stories I've told about quitting, rejection of convention. And I'm going to find out by conducting an experiment myself. And in my partner, I've got a good experimentation partner who understands that the goal here isn't satisfying external expectation as we said it goes back to, how do we feel?

Amazing.

So we have a spare. I sleep in a different bed, and.

It sounds like it's a great thing.

It's a great thing because we don't have insecurity. The insecurity comes from external narrative. It comes from, well, if he's sleeping in that room over there, then he doesn't love you. Of course I fucking love you. Where did you get that nonsense from? Instagram. And it's the same thing with our lives. Where did you get that nonsense about you wanting to be a banker?

From your parents.

Your parents or your friends. Yeah. Or some teacher in school said that would make you happy and rich. You didn't run the experiment yourself, so you never got the feedback, you didn't get the knowledge, and now you're disempowered.

Wow.

How I build all my businesses, it's how I run everything in my life is just the assumption that I probably don't know the right answer, and convention probably doesn't either.

But if I actually sit down with a blank piece of paper and I go, first principles, which are the things that I care about, the things that I know, and what I actually want, then I can make a decision for me.

You can reason up from there.

I want to go back to the ant and the spider in the circle. How would you advise someone who's listening to this? And they're like, but I don't trust myself. But I have a string of examples of how I've blown it.

Evidence. You have a string of evidence about.

How you've blown it? Yes. So what would be just the next right step for somebody who's like, I'm in. I want to go off the cliff. I want to erase the circle. I want to sell the pack of cigarettes. I really want a breakthrough in testing what I believe about myself. Is there a way that anybody could kind of set up something like this?

Yeah. So I think the going off the cliff analogy is so terrifying that it's inaccessible. And this is part of the reason why I think people don't act in line with the person they want to be because they see it as climbing Mount Everest. They can see Amel Robbins at the top of the mountain, but they can also see the 15 years of walking they're going to have to do to get to where they want to go. And as Nero Il said on my podcast, we are creatures that are discomfort. Avoiding. We avoid discomfort. I always wondered why I procrastinate in some things in my life, and he made a very compelling case to me when he came on my show near Il that it's because there's some discomfort I'm avoiding. So the book I have to write, I get to chapter eleven. It's about something I'm not that familiar with. I end up picking up my phone and doing the dishes. I'm avoiding the psychological discomfort associated with the task, become aware of the psychological discomfort, and then break it down into little pebbles so it doesn't feel like Mount Everest. And for me, that's how I've taken on some of my biggest challenges in life.

It has to start with an action that sometimes feels count contrary to how you feel. Something you said as well, right? You can't rely on emotion to get you there, but it's the smallest step you can take to counteract your existing evidence about yourself. 14 years old. For me, that was walking out on stage in front of my peers, pissing my Hanson, running out the room after delivering a talk. I then went back onto the stage. A couple of days later, I ran out of the room and the piece of paper I was given, my hands were shaking so much that I couldn't read it. So I just made up the words. Blurted out. The words ran out.

Got it.

Okay. The reason why I can then speak in Sao Paulo with Obama in a big arena of tens of thousands of people is because I put myself in situations, whether small or big, to counteract my existing evidence. And something a friend once said to me recently was, the reason we don't do that. The reason we don't take that small step forward is sometimes the small step is so unbelievably embarrassing that we don't think it'll be consequential. We're so ashamed by how small that step has to be. For some people, that's literally getting out of the bed and going to the toilet. And there's so much a shame associated with that. It feels so minute and inconsequential that we don't think it matters. But it's everything. That first step is everything. It's the pack of cigarettes.

I think I can maybe even make this more tactical for the personal listening. So if you think about what Stephen's teaching you, and let's go to the example of the banker, right, who thinks she wants to be a teacher, and I can imagine her standing on a piece of paper with a circle around her.

Yeah.

And the first step is not quitting the banking job. The first step, which literally takes her out of that circle and across the.

Line, can I guess what you're going.

To say, go for it.

Is it using your evenings and weekends?

It could be that. It could be googling teaching certificate. It could be using your evenings and weekends. It's literally one move out of the circle.

I always think this with people when they say to me, they want to start a business, and then they say to me, six months later, they want to start a business, and then six months later, I go, I think part of the reason you're doing it's because you see the challenge as like, Mount Everest, and that's causing you so much psychological discomfort that you're channeling that energy into procrastination, talking and deferring it. What you need to do today is start the Instagram page. This, for me, is one of my big hacks in life, is the minute I go on Instagram, click, create new account, and I just write the name, the train has left the station. And it's that that, for me, is starting the business. But people don't see that as they think they have to launch this website.

And, oh, hold on. I want to make sure everybody just got that. So Stephen has launched and sold multiple businesses and invests in them and sits on boards, and you are constantly leaning into new ideas and curious about things. And what he just told you is that the way that he gets out of the ideation stage and the I should start a business stage, or maybe I'm going to get into this collaborative workspace. Business. Until community. Isn't that what it's called? Until community is, he goes to Instagram and creates an Instagram account with the business name of the business. He hasn't even started yet. Before the business plan, before the other stuff. This is what he's talking about.

If you look at my. I've never written a business plan in my life. I don't know where people get this business plan stuff from. I've never written one in my life, and I don't intend to start now. If you look at my phone, which is in the room behind you, you'll see a bunch of Instagram pages for businesses that I'm yet to launch, because I just want to secure the Instagram page. And I also see that as step one of setting an intention, which is the easiest step one can make, towards the direction I want to travel.

So, to the banker listening, you opening your mouth and telling Mel Robbins, that was your step one. Right. And then step two is the next thing. This is how you started in social media. So when you were 21, right? Weren't you? 21 years old. And so would you please tell give that example of how you just got started, of you made yourself a promise. 07:00 p.m. 08:00 p.m.?

What posting?

Yes.

Okay.

You see what I mean? Like, this is an example of that.

Yeah. I mean, so on the personal brand side of things and the content creation and the storytelling side of things, I created an obligation with myself, where, at 07:00 p.m. Every single day, I would write a 140 character quote or make a video based on what had happened to me that day. And it's, of all the things I've done in my life, it is the single highest yielding, most valuable habit or discipline I ever instilled. Because not only is that the thing that cured the trauma I had around relationships with my parents, because at 07:00 p.m. Every day, I had to look down on how I'd behaved that day, the notes I'd taken, the avoidant behavior I demonstrated in my relationships. I had to summarize it, and then I had to teach it, but also it improved my communication and my writing skills. There's this guy called Richard Freiman, who's this american psychologist who came up with this technique, and they call it the Freiman technique. They say it's the ultimate way to learn and to develop. The idea is you learn something, you then condense it down to the understanding of a ten year old as if you had to teach it to a ten year old.

You then deliver it to the world, teach it to the ten year old, and then based on the ten year old's action, you then go to the top. And the whole principle here is your ability to summarize a concept correlates to your ability to actually understand it. I was doing that. I've done that for six, seven years now. That meant that all of my experience. People say that people use the word wise or they use these words, they describe me as being older. It's purely because I feel like I've got more wisdom out of every day that I've lived because of this introspection. It's the single greatest hack that I could give to any young person or old person in the world is this habit of introspection and teaching in some regard.

So walk us through how to do it.

What I would do, if you want to do it, the Steve Bartlett way that I. Yes, I do is, I get it. I'm going to say something here. Create a Instagram page or a Twitter account, whatever you want to do, don't need followers, don't need to tell anybody it exists. And as you go through your day, keep notes in your phone so you have an argument with your friend. You respond negatively to a situation, someone cuts you off in traffic, you feel something. When you have these feelings, write them down in the notes of your phone. And at 07:00 p.m. Every single night. Six, seven p. M. Every single night. All I want you to do is to fit that experience into the confines of a 280 character tweet or post. And I want you to post it. And I can't tell you that cycle of having an experience, summarizing it down to its essence, which is the true definition of understanding, and then posting out and sharing it with the world. And step four is not so important, which is getting some feedback on what you said drives you forward more, I think in key areas of your life, helps you understand your cycles and does the hardest thing, which I think any of us can achieve, which is heightens your self awareness, which has been this really elusive thing on the podcast that I've asked people over and over again.

How does one increase their self awareness? And I think this is the easiest way to do it in a reliable way. I remember that day.

It sounds like a lot of work.

Oh, it's the easiest thing. And I think it's remarkably enjoyable. I would not be in a relationship now at 31 years old. And I've been in the relationship for four years. Super happy. Going to propose any minute now.

Does she know that we have to hold this?

I don't care.

What's that?

I say it a lot.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

If I hadn't done that because there was a cycle going on that I was a total puppet to and I didn't know the puppet master was my childhood trauma and I was just doing it every day. I would be interested in someone, I'd pursue them, they'd show interest in me. I'd run off. I didn't understand the cycle. And then one day, in the notes of my phone, I wrote connecting two dots, which is much easier to do when you're looking down on a piece of paper. I wrote kind of feels like. Like referring to the feeling in my chest that I got when this girl said she wanted to be in a relationship with me. How I felt when I watched my father sat there and my mom shouting at him. The minute the girl said she wanted to be in a relationship with me, I felt like a bird trapped in a cage. The first bird trapped in a cage I ever knew was my father. And I go, oh, okay. I learned love. I learned the model of love from watching those two go at war. And it's ingrained in me.

Now you know what I want you to do? I want you to stop saying that you learned the model of love because you didn't. You learned the model of misery.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Because they're certainly not happy.

Are they together?

They are, which is crazy. They're like co inhabiting now, I believe, because they've got no other friends and they're, at a certain age, they've just made the decision to cohabit, which is not something I'd wish for myself.

And what's your relationship like with them?

With my dad, it's never been affectionate, but it's good with my mom, it's complicated. It's very complicated.

How so?

I still think she's got some issues with money, which is difficult when your child now has a lot of it.

Why does she ask you for money?

Yeah.

Does she still have a gambling problem?

I'll buy anything. I still think her sweet tooth is starting businesses that aren't going to succeed. So I will buy them. My deal with my parents is I'll buy you anything you need for your house, holidays, health, whatever. Food. I pay for their food every week, you name it. Dentistry bills, whatever. But I will not pay to start a business for my mom because I watched for 25 years her start 25 businesses and I watched the impact it had on the entire family. So I'll pay for everything else, but I won't start a business. Unfortunately, my mom only wants one thing. She doesn't want the Christmas presents. She doesn't want me to pay for anything else. She wants me to pay for her to start businesses.

Well, if she's smart like you, she'll just sell the shit that you buy her and use the money to buy.

I think she's tried that a few times when I clocked onto it, but it's an interesting subject because sometimes in life there's someone, usually family or a friend, where you have to say, I love you. But I also love myself. And my number one responsibility is protecting myself. And now, as this 31 year old adult that's about to start a family of my own, I now have the choice whether I let this cycle repeat itself. And letting the cycle repeat itself would be doing the easier thing, which is just sending this individual money. So I said to my brothers. And so rule I have for myself is I have to have a boundary, even against my mom.

Especially. Honestly, especially. And as a mother, I personally feel that it is really important that kids have boundaries with their parents.

It's the thing people struggle with in terms of interpersonal relationships the most, which is, that's my blood, that is my mother or my father. It causes a huge amount of internal conflict. And it goes back to that old plane analogy where you've got to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on the child or anyone else. And that's what I do in my relationship with my mother. I have a boundary and I've had that boundary.

I think it's cruel not to have boundaries. Yes. Because otherwise what happens is people continue to behave in ways that bother you and you don't let them know or you don't express a boundary, but then you sit and judge and are angry at them. I think it's more compassionate and kinder to actually tell people how you feel and what you need and where their needs and your ability to support them begin and end.

I completely agree. And I think in doing so, I'm inadvertently giving my mother an opportunity to learn a lesson that I think she's not been able to learn. Because for 30 years my father has propped up a situation to his detriment from losing all of his money, smashed up house, verge of bankruptcy, which she hasn't learnt.

And neither has he, by the way.

So many examples in my life. My best friend was, he was 32 years old, I was 25, I was living in a mansion, he was staying in my spare room. One day I say to him, I say, bro, I love you. And he talks about this, I say, you got to go. And he, at 32 years old, my best friend on earth had to go back to his childhood bedroom in Grimsby. And it was painful. It was sad. And four years later he's a millionaire living in Dubai. And I've got another friend who I, one of my best friends who listens to this podcast all the time, who was at my company and he was slacking and I fired him. And I sat in the room, cried with him as I fired him. The guy is a CEO now. He has an incredibly successful company. He's had more money than he ever has. Painful getting fired by your best friend. Painful getting kicked out the spare room. It was honestly, in hindsight, the greatest gift I ever, ever gave either of them. And what I was robbing them of by propping them up was honestly unfair.

And so they had lessons they needed to learn.

And I tell you, they learned, you know what's interesting about this is that we call it that we're being kind to people and that we're taking care of them when actually you are helping somebody so that you don't have to deal with the uncomfortable feelings of telling them no. And when we do that, we rob people of the possibility of who they could become 100%.

They're unrecognizable. It baffles me. Unrecognizable. And they thank me. I apologize, because I'm like, I shouldn't have let you stay in the spare room for two years. Wow.

I feel like I have a master class in a million things from you.

You're very kind.

What I love about listening to your podcast and just getting to spend time with you is I really love how you have the courage and the bravery to challenge what is so in order to build a life and build businesses and make decisions that really empower you. It's so obvious. And yet I think none of us really take the time to stop and go, wait a minute. There are so many things that we do in life that we just blindly do without stopping to ask the question. And I just want to thank you because there were so many things that made me stop and not only think, but more importantly, start asking myself different questions.

Thank you. You're a huge inspiration to me for so many reasons, and I continue to learn from you from a distance, but it's a great service that you're delivering for the world. So thank you.

I never know what to do when somebody thanks me when I'm interviewing them. And so I guess what I'm going to do is thank you. Thank you for being here with me on YouTube. I really love spending this time with you, and I love the fact that you made a decision to watch something that can help you change your life. And there's no doubt that if you apply the tools that you just learned and you learn how to make better decisions for you, you will, in fact, change your life. And one more thing I want to ask you. Please subscribe to this channel. Share this episode Stephen always asks his audience I learned this from him. I'm making a decision to ask you for the support that I need because it helps me bring you amazing world class experts like Stephen at zero cost. You got it? Good. All right, you ready for the next one? I know you are. You're going to love this next video. Do this every morning. How to feel more energized. Focus and in control. Bye.