Pessimism

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to overcome your most basic biological desires, your biological state, which wants to have you sitting around doing nothing, being lazy, just going with the flow. But if you want to be successful, you have to. You have to have discipline and not just rely on motivation. You have to be a bit of a contrarian. You have to be a bit of a risk taker. All of these things which go against your biological imperative, you have to buck those trends. And I think the number one thing that holds back people from being truly successful as entrepreneurs is this one thing, this one biological trait that is so hard to overcome. It’s what I call the default state of the world.

It’s pessimism, it’s cynicism. Most people will rightly point out all the reasons why a thing shouldn’t work. There’s a number of reasons why a thing should never work right in our brains. Our human animal brain is designed to find those reasons. If you think about this from an evolutionary standpoint, our ancestors on the savannah, they were rewarded when they were pessimistic, when they were cynical, when they didn’t take risks and go out and try new things. And the reason is because when you try new things, when you step outside your comfort zone, you fail more often than you succeed. That’s the iterative rate of learning. That’s part of the process.

But the penalty for trying and failing for our ancestors was death. And so it was this asymmetric risk reward curve. And if you think about the fact that you are the descendant of thousands and thousands and thousands of years worth of pessimistic grandparents and great grandparents, then you understand that it’s so hardwired into how you see the world that you will need to work extra hard to overcome it, not only overcoming your own pessimism, but overcoming the pessimism of everybody that’s around you in your life, because their default state is also pessimistic. The thing is, pessimists, they get to be right. But optimists, they get to change the world. And for our ancestors, it was very dangerous to be an optimist. But for you, honestly, the number of things that can kill you, the number of existential crises that you face on a day to day basis, it’s very, very low. So for you to take a risk, to go after that opportunity, to build the business of your dreams, whatever it is, to do the thing, to talk to the girl, whatever, go outside your comfort zone, the downside risk is capped.

You might have a little bit of social ostracization. People might laugh at you. Maybe you get canceled, whatever, but you’re probably not going to die, barring the fact that you avoid catastrophic ruin in the form of imprisonment or death. As long as you avoid those two things in today’s world, in today’s modern society, you can always rebuild and come back. And so the asymmetry of the bet has reversed. For our ancestors, there was very limited upside to taking the risk. A lot of upside to just staying where they are. For you, it’s the reverse.

There’s a cap downside, but there’s infinite upside. There’s infinite upside to going after your dreams, to try that thing, to have that conversation, and to step outside your comfort zone, to try new things and be comfortable with failing. And so the people that are rewarded in today’s society, the most successful people, the most successful entrepreneurs, have overcome this most basic of biological desires, which is to stay comfortable, to stay cynical, and to look for all the reasons why a thing shouldn’t work. Now, that doesn’t mean you should go be delusional and just run headlong into stupid, stupid risks and not consider the downside. And to try to prevent that and plan accordingly. I’m not saying that you need to have a little bit of reason and rationality here, but just understand that worst case scenario, you’re probably going to be okay. And so the other side of this that I really want to encourage you to consider is that the way that you see the world is largely a reflection of the beliefs that the people around you have. So if you surround yourself with people who believe in the status quo and staying where they’re at, not bucking the trend, and not going after the greatness, and staying comfortable and complacent and compliant, all that, if you’re surrounded by those people, then that becomes your default worldview as well.

You become pessimistic. And it’s imperative that if you want to be successful, you surround yourself with people who do not think like that because their pessimism is a self fulfilling prophecy, because they believe the thing won’t work, they do not take the right actions for a long enough time period that would lead to them getting the result, the beneficial result. And so it becomes this doom spiral. But in the same way, if you’re optimistic and you go after it and you say, I think I can make this work, I believe in myself. I believe in my ability to be resourceful, to find the solution, and I am disappointed, disciplined, and diligent enough to stick with this as long as it takes for me to get a result. And guess what? You’re probably going to take that belief, no matter how crazy and weird and outlandish it is, and you’re going to pull it into your current reality. Your reality is a reflection of your beliefs. So be careful about what beliefs you allow yourself, that you allow into the garden of your mind.

Do not, do not let other people till it with their pessimistic seed. It’s not useful for you. So depending on where you are on your journey, you might be asking yourself, okay, that sounds great, Anthony. How do I get away from these people? Because my friends, my family, all the people on my network, they’re not like me. They don’t see the world in that same way. And there’s nothing, you know, I’m not saying that they’re wrong. I just don’t want that for my life. What do I do? How do I find those people who think in a different way, who are optimistic, that are trying to change the world? How do I get around those people? Well, for me, there’s a, a couple different ways that you can do this.

The first is you can pay for access. You can pay to get into communities with other people who are thinking and moving in the same way. That’s maybe not feasible depending on where you’re at on your journey. Number two is you read, you consume the content of the optimists, the great thinkers, the Winston Churchills, the Elon Musks. You consume everything they put out, and by osmosis, they become a pseudo mentor to you. A third way is to be the lighthouse that pulls everybody together. Because the truth is, here’s the crazy thing. A number of years ago, when I started creating content, a part of it was I wanted to be the lighthouse that through my light shining, would give other people in my life the permission to step into their own greatness.

Because what I found for myself was I held myself back for so many years because I believed nobody else thought the same way I did. And I didn’t want to be weird, I didn’t want to stand out, and I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable. But as I started moving down the path of personal development and started growing and striving to be a better version of myself and started getting articulate and telling the world about my goals, what I noticed was that there were people in my life who started to come out of the woodworks to go, hey, I wanted this for so long. I thought I was alone. I just didn’t know anybody else in my life thought these things. And what’s crazy is I think most people do want that. They’re surrounded by people in their own life that don’t think that same way or from an external perspective. They’re posturing in a certain way.

Everybody’s playing the role that they think society wants them to play. And so everybody plays small, but inside they want to play big. They just don’t want to stand out and be the weirdo. And so you stepping into your greatness and starting to let your light shine in bringing people to you and saying, hey, this is what I’m about. This is how I want to move through the world. It will give people permission to step out of their own shadow and into their light. And I think that’s one of the greatest gifts that you as an entrepreneur can do for the world. So that is today’s message.

Just remember, pessimists get to be right, but optimists get to change the world. We’ll catch you in the next episode.