Derek Sivers

Being and Doing

host: Aleksandra Vancevska

“How to Live”, pursuing extremes, cognitive behavioral therapy, achieving goals, parenting, individualism vs. collectivism, file backups, digital minimalism, useful not true beliefs

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Transcript:

Aleks Vancevska

My guest is Derek Sivers. And we are going to talk about your book on how to live. And I think that ability of yours to hold that complexity of life has really been something that was kind of the most attractive about your book. So the first question is, how are you?

Derek Sivers

Hi, Aleks. I’m great. Yeah, it’s funny. We are talking across the world. I think last time we spoke, I was living in Oxford. But now I’m all the way across the world, in New Zealand. But it’s nice to talk with you again.

Aleks Vancevska

And I always start this podcast with asking, what are some words that you yourself identify with because you are so many things. And do you even choose words. How do you introduce yourself to people now?

Derek Sivers

Oh, like that. Oh, that’s two different things. There’s the introducing yourself to someone, it depends on the context. Sometimes you don’t really want more of a conversation with somebody. If somebody just chit chat and they say like, “Oh, what do you do?” And you don’t really want to go into it. So if I don’t want to go into it, I tell people I’m a computer programmer because I do spend a lot of my time programming. But if I actually want to get to know somebody and want to tell them the truth, then in short, I say I’m an author. People always then say, “Author of what? What do you write?” And I say, “Pop philosophy.” So that’s my short answer. An author of pop philosophy books these days, it would have been a different answer 10 years ago in and different answer ten years before that. But that’s what it is now.

Aleks Vancevska

I mean it truly is philosophy. I felt like when I read the book, the way I experienced it is that you try to explore edges of thinking. So you would take a topic and then just kind of go and see how far can I get with this? Is that true?

Derek Sivers

Exactly. That was the mission of the “How to Live” book. It’s like, I can believe different ways that we should live. You could say that we should live for the future, or you could say that we should live for the present. Or you could say that we should focus on pleasure. Or you say that we should focus on pain. Any of these things could be true or are also true, simultaneously true. So the challenge of writing the book, “How to Live”, or maybe the creative challenge, was to take each one of them to their logical conclusion, where it’s like if being independent is the way to live, well, then how would that look if we take it all the way to its logical conclusion? And then in the next chapter, it’s like, well, if being committed to a person or a place or a career is the way to go. Well, then how would that look if taken to its logical conclusion? In an early draft of the book, I took them to more ridiculous extremes. Almost every chapter would end when it was taken too far. You know what I mean? Like the way that we can say that somebody can be generous, but then we can say they can be generous to a fault. Like it means you take a good thing and you go too far with it until it breaks. So in an early draft of the book, every chapter went too far. And although that was fun, I felt it was distracting and after a while felt too formulaic, like a M. Night Shyamalan movie where you know that it’s always going to have a big surprise twist at the end. You know, you could do that once, but if you do it every time, it gets tiring.

Aleks Vancevska

I’m almost curious to see the endings because that’s an interesting thing. What you’re saying is because I told you and when I approached you that this was really reminding me of psychotherapy and how we how we work with people in psychotherapy. And it’s never about, you know, people normally come to us with like, “I don’t want to be this.” And then you kind of want to be something else. Like, I don’t want to be angry. I want to be always generous, for example. And then you as a therapist know, “Oh, if I would get to that desired outcome, I’m not sure you would like yourself.” And so when I was reading it, I was always almost like, “Oh, I’m so angry. I like this. Be independent. Yes. Like, yeah, that’s true.” But but then I was going to the edge with those conclusions. And so it was very interesting because I feel like I was I was making those conclusions in myself and I feel like that’s how our brains work. So my question in this is, what has going to those edges taught you about how to live?

Derek Sivers

Oooh. I like being an explorer. I like going to the edges of things to see what’s there. It’s a personal challenge. It makes life a little more interesting than staying on the normal moderated path. So yeah, I’ve always had a tendency since I was a teenager, it must just be in my DNA. No, we shouldn’t blame DNA. Somewhere early on, I just got this value system that said that it’s good to go to extremes. Maybe because when I was a teenager, I really wanted to be a famous musician. And I knew that that’s not something that happens by just living a normal casual life. That’s something like being an Olympic gymnast. The only way that you’re going to win the gold medal at the Olympics is to live a very extreme life, to not be normal. And so I think I’ve always had it in my value system since my early teenage years to not be normal, to look for the extremes, to push myself in ways that most people don’t. Now that I’m not trying to be famous or successful at a certain career path, I think that probably comes across in my general approach to life. So yes, if I think that simplicity is good, well then I kind of want to push it to the extreme and see, well, how simple can I make my life? If I feel that independence is good, then I think, well, how independent can I make my life? You know, any one of those things that are in the book, I believe them all.

Aleks Vancevska

And I’m also curious, when you were pushing yourself to extremes, what was holding you to go just about to the extreme, but not breaking.

Derek Sivers

Oh, I guess we all just have to have our own sense of when you’re about to crash. Have you ever run down a steep hill?

Aleks Vancevska

Yes. I’m trying to think of it. Yes.

Derek Sivers

We often would do it more as kids. You know, there’s, like, a big grassy hill, and you run down and you have this feeling of, like, you’re just on the verge of collapsing, and maybe you do actually collapse. Maybe you run down a hill that’s too steep and you actually fall down. But then after you’ve done that once, you get a feeling for when you’re about to fall down and you try to slow it down right before you crash.

Aleks Vancevska

So you felt like going to the edges was the way for you to learn and somehow there was something inside of you that was keeping you safe enough. In that learning process.

Derek Sivers

I don’t usually think in terms of safe. I think I feel capable of handling whatever life throws at me so I don’t try to be safe.

Aleks Vancevska

Was that always the case?

Derek Sivers

I think so. I think it’s also just kind of a decision early on. Again, formative years deciding I wanted to be a successful musician gave me this self image of somebody strong and resilient, able to handle the hard times that are to come. I made this part of my core identity so that I just have a self confidence that I can handle whatever the world throws at me.

Aleks Vancevska

Wow. And I’m I’m curious there as well.

Derek Sivers

Wait, sorry to interrupt. But why is that a wow? Don’t we? I didn’t mean that to sound like bragging. Is it surprising?

Aleks Vancevska

It is. I would say I have it probably in myself, not so consciously as you maybe that I do have that feeling of I can take whatever comes. Many experiences have taught me that yes, I can take whatever comes. But I don’t know if I had it so strongly as you express it. And even every now and then, I have this feeling I’m just going to fall apart. Like, the next step is dying or that kind of level of fear or kind of a break.

Derek Sivers

Does it actually feel like when you say dying, is that just being dramatic or do you actually feel that death? Actual death. Turning into a corpse is next.

Aleks Vancevska

Yes. Like, literally that’s the internal experience. There is obviously an observing part of me that would be like, “I know you’re safe. The next step is, okay, maybe just going back to Serbia or whatever.” But I think I need to bring back a little bit of history. I’m from Serbia and I guess the threats were literal death during the war. So it takes time to teach my body safety because I guess when when you actually are exposed to a possibility that you know, very early on when I was eight or nine. That it’s not even in your power whether you will die or not because you are bombarded. Then I guess it just creates a very different wiring for safety.

Derek Sivers

Yeah. I’m going to make a strange comparison. It’s funny that the story we tell ourselves or the image that we have in our mind, like the metaphorical image of what we’re doing. Can change your behavior. And so it’s like maybe growing up in Serbia, like you said, eight or nine. In a way, it felt like you were on a tightrope over a fire pit, that any false move a volcano shoots up a piece of lava out of your control and suddenly you fall and you die. Whereas I grew up feeling that I had a big safety net. You know, I grew up in a rich country. But also I bring this up because I grew up thinking we were rich. It’s really interesting. So my dad’s side of the family has a real estate development company in Portland, Oregon. And so growing up, I felt that we were rich. I would see a building with my family’s name on it and felt that this was my safety net. Like, I’m going to go try to be a musician. If all fails. Well, it’s nice to know that at least I can go back to Portland, Oregon, to my grandma’s house, and everything will be okay. I knew that I wouldn’t starve, you know.

Derek Sivers

But what’s interesting is that years later, my sister was running the family real estate business. And this is just a few years ago. She called me out of the blue and said, “Hey, growing up, did you think that we were rich?” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Well, guess what? Now that I’m running the family business, we’re not. And we never were. I also thought that we were rich growing up, but like all of these buildings that the family business owns are completely mortgaged. If we sold all the buildings, we’d basically break even. Like, we’re actually not rich. We’re not poor, but we’re not rich.” And so I thought about that later after we got off the phone that it was almost like my tightrope walking on the tightrope in life. I thought there was a big safety net down below, so I was very adventurous and I would take risks and I would jump up and I would do brave things because I thought there was a safety net there, but there actually wasn’t. Unless you could argue, I had the safety net of being safe in America. But like in my family, there wasn’t the safety net there that I thought there was, but it made me more bold thinking there was.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s interesting. There is one. And you reminded me of one movie, which is called “Three Idiots.” And there is a metaphor.

Derek Sivers

I know Three idiots.

Aleks Vancevska

And in that in that movie, there is this metaphor. All is well. And it’s like he says, there is this village in which every night there is a person who rings the bell to say the city is safe and everyone can sleep calmly. And after some time and they all say to themselves, all is well. And then after some time they figure out that this person is blind. And although they are kind of telling them all is well, actually they they don’t have the capacity to actually see whether all is well. And there is even a Serbian novel, actually a short story, which is called “The Leader”. Where the leader is leading them. And they always think, “Oh yeah, we need to go through this pain and we need to go through this hassle because the leader knows.” And then they again get to know that the leader is blind. So it’s very interesting. I’m actually quite happy that we opened this conversation in this way because many times because I growing up in Serbia, I always obviously thought, “Oh my God, look at all these people who have money, who are rich” and everything that you’re just explaining. Then I read Michelle Obama’s memoir. I was like, “Ah, everything has a price.” And sometimes we are not even ready to pay the price for some of the things that people consider successful or great or incredible. And as you said, safety is something that we also create in our heads. I find it very interesting. So I’m curious now that I mentioned the word success, part of this part of this podcast is what is success for you now that you are successful?

Derek Sivers

To me, I think success is just achieving what you set out to do. And I think that’s it. I don’t think there’s some objective measure. Like a certain amount of money equals success unless you set out to earn a certain amount of money then whether you would achieve that or not. Is your measure of success. I don’t think there’s any objective measure of success except achieving what you set out to do.

Aleks Vancevska

And I’m curious, one question that stayed with me from before, was you said that you’ve gone to extremes, but you always believe that you can make it. Was there any time of where you felt like, I actually have no idea what I’m going to do now? This looks big and overwhelming.

Derek Sivers

Oh. Yeah, but those moments last. An hour.Then I just turn to my journal and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I mean, an hour tops. I just start writing or thinking or at very least talking with a friend of like, “Oh my God, I’m feeling so lost or I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And I’ll just talk to myself, you know, usually in a journal like, “Okay, what am I going to do? What do I want? What am I doing? Where am I now? How can I make the best of this? What are some possibilities for getting out of this situation? What’s exciting right now, what could I do?” And I just ask myself these questions and. Pretty soon I get. re-empowered.

Aleks Vancevska

I have another wow here. And my wow is basically you have an internal psychotherapist.

Derek Sivers

Yes. I learned about cognitive behavioral therapy just recently. I went, “Oh, that’s what I’ve been doing since I was a teenager”, asking myself these questions, talking through things, rationalizing, thinking, challenging everything I say. Like, what’s great about this situation? Nothing. It’s terrible. Is that really true? Okay, well, I don’t know if that’s really true. You know, writing to myself like that.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah, that’s interesting thing because, you know what? There was, again, a difference between you and me where I was like, “Wow, listen to his inner dialogue.” Mine is like, “This is horrible. You’re stupid. How could you do this?” There are all these narratives of fear or being incapable. And then I’m listening to your narrative and it’s so gentle. And I’m wondering, was that something that was instilled by your parents? Do you feel like that’s how they have been talking to you?

Derek Sivers

No, that was instilled by Tony Robbins. I’m a little embarrassed to say because he’s so cheesy in so many ways. Formative years, 19 years old, I joined a circus. My boss at the circus was this amazingly sweet woman named Tarleton. And I just loved her. And she just loved me. We were very close. We traveled together in the circus and did 500 shows together. So we got to know each other really well. And she was much older. So it really mattered a lot to me when I was 18 or 19 and insecure. Not very insecure, but just a little bit more like on a personal level, I think I was very secure in my skills as a musician, but insecure when it came to say love life. And she said. “Oh, you got to check out this guy, Tony Robbins, read this book. It’s so good. I think it’s the best thing I’ve read in a long time. I think you especially need it.” So there was this book called “Awaken The Giant” Within by Tony Robbins. I read that book because she told me to. So coming from the best recommendation, right, somebody that I love and who cares about me told me, “You need to read this.” So I read it very intensely. A lot of my beliefs come from the mindset taught in that book. So he straight up said, “When everything goes wrong, ask yourself what’s great about this?” And he said, “Your first response will probably be nothing. This just sucks.” He said, “Well ask again what’s great about this. Or what should I do now?” And if your answer is “I don’t know”, then you ask yourself, “Well, if you did know, what would you say?”

Derek Sivers

And they’re like, these little mental tricks you can play on yourself. Or if you ask yourself, “All right, well, if I did know, what would it say?” Actually, a lot of that book teaches the power of questions. And he said because “Whatever question you ask of your brain, your brain will answer.” So if you ask yourself, “Why am I such an idiot?” Your brain will answer that question. “Here’s why you’re such an idiot.” He said, “You have to be really careful about what questions you ask yourself. Don’t ask yourself, Why am I such an idiot? Ask yourself, What can I learn from this? How can I make sure this doesn’t happen again? How can I use this to go to a better place.” So I got all that from this book at 19.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. I mean, that’s interesting. There’s one of your blog posts, I don’t remember the name, but it’s around: What would you ask your mentor? And then you end up actually not needing to ask your mentor because you have already asked yourself all the questions that your mentor would have answers to.

Derek Sivers

The wisdom in that is that just formulating a great question is most of the hard work. So when you think like, “Oh, I don’t know what I want to do, I’m lost. What should I do? I don’t know. I need a mentor to tell me.” Instead, if you say, “Okay, I’m feeling I need a mentor to tell me exactly what would I ask the mentor if I only had a minute of their time? How would I take my whole situation and put it into a question that a stranger would understand?” And then, of course, your first draft will have, you know, too much information. Well, “Blah, blah, blah growing up it is, well the whole situation. But on the other hand, I don’t know this.”

Derek Sivers

It’s like, no, no, no, nobody has time for that. How do you compress that? How do you get to the essence of your problem? So then you you define it a little better. You say, okay, well, this is extraneous information. This doesn’t matter. The essence of my problem, really is this A-B-C-D. And I don’t know what letter is next, but once you spell it out like that, you go, “Oh, wait, ABCD. I think the next letter is E.” And you think, “Okay, never mind. Don’t need the mentor. I think I know what I’m doing next.”

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. No, that’s, that’s so true. Because even Science, I think good Science is not made of good results. It’s actually made of good questions. And basically when I was learning science or learning how to do it, I was always reading the old papers to see and actually not even the results, but the introduction of old papers, because that’s how they explain how they got to ask that question. That’s basically where for me was like the most enjoyment because I wouldn’t learn anything from them explaining the results because then I would not be able to replicate how did they get to those results? So that was very interesting for me. But every time I think about you, there is one person that said “Poet, Scientist” and I feel like your brain is that. It’s a very well integrated left-right hemisphere connection. And I’m curious. Where was the music and was the music always both left and right? How did that start for you or did it start as something that was more bodily embodied and then you kind of understood the structure or was the other way around?

Derek Sivers

Sure this is an unpopular perspective. But to me, music was never just pure expression. As soon as I started learning music, it was always a combination of left brain, right brain. Like I got good at guitar by doing lots of finger exercises, so I’d do these patterns up and down the fretboard and arpeggios, and I do 135135135. Then I’d say, okay, 135713571357. Then I’d add on the 1357913579. And just already you’re doing kind of number patterns on the fretboard. And then when I started learning more about songwriting and analyzing why is it that this melody works so well, what is it? And so you get analytical and you take a melody and you say, “Okay, it’s that melodic leap that I love. It’s that it doesn’t just meander like a river. It’s that it takes a jump like a waterfall. And that’s what I love about this melody.” So I’d sit down and I’d write ten melodies using that technique. Which already then is very analytical. It’s not just like, “Oh, this music is just flowing through me.” No, it was very deliberate and conscious, but yet it’s still creative. It’s music. So it’s giving yourself a concrete assignment and doing it in a creative way. See music always held that role for me and similar to the writing that I do now with my pop philosophy, it was always very experimental. Like,”Let’s see what happens if I do this, you know? If taking a melodic leap is good, what would be a very leapy melody I could write? Can I do that more than that melody.” And then I’d sing. “Okay, well, that took it too far. That melody is too leapy me.” Yeah, it was always just very exploratory. Very left brain, right brain combination.

Aleks Vancevska

I’m curious about little Derek, like, you know, three, five, seven years. Do you remember yourself doing similar things, but not in such a deliberate, conscious manner? But you were still,kind of, “Oh, can I pick this apart?” When did you become conscious of this process, actually?

Derek Sivers

Probably with music. I don’t really know my younger, younger self well at all. It’s like just faint little memories of things here and there, but nothing like this. Really I feel like who I am began around 14 when I first started playing guitar and said like, “Oh, this is what I want to do.” So that’s kind of when it all kicked in.

Aleks Vancevska

And then I’m curious about the book and the final.

Derek Sivers

Actually, I’m sorry, Alex. Wait. I’m sorry to interrupt. I should go back. Actually, I kind of forget about this, but I think it actually started earlier. I think I was 10 or 11 when my dad brought home a computer. And that’s like 1979 computers were not common. There was no internet. And I got really, really into that computer in 1979, so much so that it became my obsession. So I was poring over computer magazines. I think in 1982, when I was 12, I was even an assistant teacher of a computer class for adults. I got really good at computers and really deeply into it and programming, right? Because at the time there was no mouse, there was nothing to click on. You would turn on a computer and it would just be a black screen and you would have to type commands to make it do anything you had. Everybody had to write their own programs, basically, not complete programs, but you had to have serious computer skills to know commands and know what to type, even just to connect up the thing that would then load a program.

Derek Sivers

But even then, there was no mouse, there was nothing to click on. You had to type commands to make everything happen. And I got so deeply into that. That I obsessed on it in a real, like, introvert kind of way. Like had no friends almost deliberately and just spent all my time in my bedroom just reading through computer books and computer magazines and making programs and making things happen. And then when my interest flipped into music, I took that same approach to music. Suddenly I was obsessed with this thing. I was trying to figure out how to be the best guitarist or how to make the best recordings. So actually, I have to just take it back for the record because nobody really asked me that before. Like, when did my personality begin? I really think it was more like ten when I got really into computers. I think it’s before that that I don’t really remember much, but I do remember being really into computers starting at age ten.

Aleks Vancevska

Well, in psychotherapy, we often ask our clients, “What’s your first memory?” So what’s your first memory?

Derek Sivers

My second birthday. Yeah, there’s an interesting insight here. I remember turning two years old. I remember that day because there were two Rice Krispie treats on the table. And I remember my uncle came along and said, “Oh, those look good. Could I have one of those?” I remember this feeling of, “Oh, I don’t want to give him one of my birthday treats, but he’s a grown up and I have to do what grown ups say.”

Derek Sivers

“Ahhh what do I do?” So I remember this moment for two reasons. One, because it was upsetting. But two, because there’s a photo of it. I mentioned this to my dad years later, that’s my earliest memory. And he said, “I think that’s because we had a photo of it on the fridge.” So somebody took a photo just about of that moment. Of me at the head of the birthday table with these two treats in front of me and a kind of worried look on my face. That photo was up on the refrigerator for years. I think that’s why it kind of kept that memory active. I’d see that photo like, “Oh, yeah, I remember that moment.” I think that’s why that’s my earliest memory, because my next memory isn’t till I’m five. So photos make a big difference in knowing that. That’s why I make lots of videos of my kid who’s ten years old now. I know lots of parents do this, but I actually make a point of going back and showing him older ones to keep those memories active so that he has more of a recollection of his younger years to kind of fit it into the bigger picture.

Aleks Vancevska

There’s an interesting thing that now as I’m obsessing, I was laughing, but I was not laughing at you. I was just laughing because you reminded me of what I do is like when I get something and I’m like, you know, when a kid takes a toy and needs to unpack it to really fully understand how it works. That’s how when I enter a new field. So in Serbia, we didn’t get computers until about 2000, I think. So when we got them, they were already quite advanced. So the only thing that at that time we were kind of trying to make flash based games. So I remember dreaming of how is the game going to look like and things like that. So it’s really interesting for me to see that. Different people will start obsessing at a different stage of technology development.

Derek Sivers

Nice.

Aleks Vancevska

But the thing is, as I started obsessing about psychotherapy, is how we still have an embodied memory of things. Even though we don’t have a physical recollection if we close our eyes. There is the book The Body Keeps The Score. So there is probably something like as you were talking, I could already see it in your face, the feeling that you remembered from that moment and it somehow seems to still be there. And I was curious how much of that kind of connection do you have in your left/right integration of embodied experience of music, of memory even as you are thinking? Because at one point when I was starting to do yoga. What happened for me is, I started to know when I’m thinking by knowing which muscles like, you know, the thinker. I was trying to see, how can I actually think without this constant tension? My question is: What are your embodied experiences?

Derek Sivers

I don’t know. I don’t think I really think that way. I think that I probably to a fault in my head too much and disconnected from my physical self.

Aleks Vancevska

Hmm.

Derek Sivers

But that’s okay. I’ve heard that I should not be like that. But it works for me for now. And if the day comes when I feel that it’s not working for me, then and hopefully I’ll do something about it.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. That’s interesting. So when you’re listening to music, where are you listening to it?

Derek Sivers

Oh, in my head. So music’s a tough one now. Maybe it’d be different if I’m looking at a painting or a sculpture or a building, then I wouldn’t be in my head because I don’t know anything about that craft. But music, I’m a little too trained, I graduated from a music college. I know too much music theory so that whenever I’m listening to music, I’m analyzing in my head, like I’m analyzing the chord changes, I’m analyzing the melodic structure, I’m analyzing the production values of how the engineer recorded the cymbals and what arrangement they’re using and the structure of the song. Listening to music is very heady for me.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s very interesting. And do you dance?

Derek Sivers

No.

Aleks Vancevska

Oh, wow. That’s so cool. As in interesting in getting to know you. Yeah. That’s the big question mark I had on you that I was like, “Hmm, this person that’s so connected to so many things.”

Derek Sivers

But does he dance?

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah exactly. And one other question, which is also part of your book is one chapter is pursue pain. One question I often ask in the podcast is what is a painful experience or a pain which you think has significantly shaped you into being who you are now.

Derek Sivers

I think the pain of fear, if we can call those. It’s coming from the same place. I have a rule of thumb that I’ve pursued for many years, which is whatever scares you, go do it. And the next sentence is then, because then it won’t scare you anymore. So over and over again, I would find that the thing that feels the biggest and scariest thing I could do is probably the right thing for me to do and even on a small moment to moment basis. I’m talking with somebody and I’m scared to say something to them, then I think, “Well, whatever scares you, go do it. Here I go.” And I’ll say the thing that scares me to say, which may be asking my grandpa like, “So how does it feel to know you’re going to die very soon?” Or saying to a girlfriend that I’m in a relationship where things aren’t working out, saying, “I think we need to break up?” These things are terrifying to say, but that little inner compass usually means this is what I should be doing. And then the big compass of life. It would scare me to quit my job, jump out and take a chance on this thing. There’s probably a nuance that needs to be added to communicate this idea to others, because somebody could say, “Well, then why don’t you just jump off a building because it scares you.” So there’s probably, I don’t know if it needs a better word than scares, but it’s when you feel that this is the challenge that you would rise up to. This challenge would improve you, that’s the thing to do.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s interesting. And again, goes into what we were discussing in the beginning. If we would take this to an extreme, it can be life threatening. But if you find your own sweet spot, I think it’s a Serbian expression in psychotherapy. But they call like finding your right measure. Then it kind of works for you. And I guess it’s like a work of a lifetime to find your right measure in many different spaces. I guess. Where was maybe the most difficult area for you to find your right measure?

Derek Sivers

Probably romantic relationships. I think that took me the longest to find my right measure.

Aleks Vancevska

Do you want to say more? And you don’t have to.

Derek Sivers

I don’t know. I don’t want to involve other people in this. But I think that, let’s say at. I actually kind of referred to this earlier when I was talking about Tarleton from the circus and telling me to read this book that I think somewhere around like when I was like 12, I was really good at computers but really unpopular at school. I was just this kind of nerd with my head down in the computers and I wasn’t friends with anybody. And people would tease me and I think I got this insecure self identity of like knowing I’m good at this thing, but feeling like I’m not lovable or not desirable, but kind of not caring because I’m into this thing. But then that stayed with me where I felt undesirable. So then I think for years and years and years and years and years and years I would pursue the wrong women to see if I could win her for my ego. Even though this wasn’t somebody I should actually be in a relationship with because we just want different things out of life. But I would do that to satisfy this 14 year old self that still feels insecure. I don’t do that anymore, but that’s what I did for many years.

Aleks Vancevska

And what do you think helped you on that journey of not needing to do that anymore except many failed relationships?

Derek Sivers

Yeah but also winning someone’s heart over and over again. I mean, winning many different hearts over and over again and finally just made me go like, “I think I’m done now.” I think I’ve done that. I think I’ve proven, you know, kind of like cognitive behavioral therapy, right? I think that this belief of mine has been completely disproven. This, “I’m not desirable.’ I think I’ve proven that wrong. So I’m going to stop this now or catch myself when I sense that I’m doing that again.

Aleks Vancevska

So there there was again the internal observer and the psychotherapist where I was like, I observed myself, I’ve seen I’ve done this too many times. I catch my pattern and then I kind of sense when I’m doing it again.

Derek Sivers

Yeah.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. That’s very interesting. Would you say that’s not a pain anymore, or is it something that you’re still finding yourself going in and out of?

Derek Sivers

No, no, I think that’s not a pain anymore. Not at all.

Aleks Vancevska

I’m curious in having your son. What was the challenge of seeing him grow up and kind of relating to how you were growing up and seeing all these stages. Did it teach you something about yourself and your childhood?

Derek Sivers

Huh? Sorry. I don’t know. Do you have a kid?

Aleks Vancevska

I don’t. But this is what I would imagine I would be learning.

Derek Sivers

No it’s funny a lot of people say that I didn’t have a kid until much later. So he was born when I was 42 and he’s ten now. So I think that maybe if I would have had a kid at 21, they’re more of a connect between my childhood and my child. But not having a kid until I was 42. And then at that point, my life, like my childhood, feels like it was like three lifetimes ago. It’s like very faint, distant memories. And it was a different era to I was born in the sixties, you know, like it was such a different time. So maybe I could blame all these things, but maybe it’s just that I just don’t see that much of a connection between them. He is not me. His life is not my life. I don’t really project my childhood onto him. And I also don’t project my parents parenting of me. I’m not channeling that, people say that a lot to like, “Oh, you’re going to end up acting just like your parents.” But no, not at all. I don’t at all, because that was so long ago. I’m 52. I left home when I was 16, 17 and haven’t been back to my parents since. So how they parented me when I was a kid is so far away and faint that, no, I’m not channeling that. Instead, I think what I do parenting wise for my son is like trying to be the best parent I can be.

Derek Sivers

And that’s through reading books, learning about parenting. Deliberately applying what I’ve learned from the books like doing what I think is the right thing to do, whether I feel like it or not. But then also just responding to his unique situation. I mean, the dynamic between the two of us is he’s the leader and I’m the follower. So I really just like, let him lead the way. And then metaphorically, I just catch him If he’s about to jump off a cliff, you know, or say, “You lead the way, I’ll follow you.” And we do what he wants to do and we go where he wants to go. He sets the path and tone. And then only if I get the feeling that he’s going to hurt himself in some way, I’ll stop him. Or if I get the feeling again, I’ll just use the metaphor like, Hey, if you were to just step on top of that rock and look over, you’d see that there’s a huge field of flowers down there. I might occasionally just give him a little nudge saying, like, “All right, you’re leading the way, but check this out. Try this.” And then the whole time, keeping in mind what I’ve learned about parenting from the wise books I’ve found on the subject and just trying to apply it. Yeah, but as you can hear, my own childhood has nothing to do with this process.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah, that’s again, a very interesting thing. As I’m listening to you, there is something that I really like and I partly wanted to discuss about the book. Which is you somehow live grounded in the now. And kind of make decisions about them now. But then again, there is a part of living in the future. But Gestalt therapy is the one I’m studying is about how do you get to the here and now and make decisions that what is it that we can do here and now with the best of knowledge from the past and with the information we can gather now, because obviously we can process amount of information that’s about everything and kind of predict every outcome. And so in the book, when I read it, I was like, that’s why I say it’s kind of like an oracle. If I feel like I need more past going more towards the past. I can go and read. How do I do that? If I feel like I need more of this spice, I can go and read how to do that. But then there is one of the therapist says that it takes years to be present in the here and now, especially for a lot of people who have gone through trauma because they often react from this past space and projected onto the current moment. So my curiosity lies in how do you get grounded in let me see what’s now.

Derek Sivers

Sorry, I don’t have any big insight into this except meditation. Like I don’t even regularly meditate, but I’ve done it just enough to know how it goes. And I think it’s kind of like that. You catch yourself having a thought about the future or the past. And my metaphor is I just chuck it in the river. I often, when meditating, kind of picture myself sitting by a river. Not a big forest around me. I just picture just the river, almost like an empty VR room with nothing but a river. And whenever any thought of the past or future comes into my head, I just chuck it in the river, and the river carries it away. So that’s to me, just the basic meditation 101. These things come into your head and you just let them go because you know if it’s important, it’ll come back later. See, when I do it with work, I’m just completely engrossed in the work itself. You know, whether I’m writing or I’m programming. I’m just completely lost in what I’m doing.

Derek Sivers

So much so I don’t notice that it’s getting dark outside, right? I’m just engrossed and then when I’m with my kid. I think another thing we didn’t mention is that. For me, I believe that the stakes are so high so, so, so high that meaning I’ve seen too many times people’s lives were messed up multi generationally because they had a traumatic childhood, which then they traumatized their child’s life. And then that child goes on to traumatize their children’s life and it passes down for so many generations. This thing like those people that are just intensely angry and resentful inside and they yell at the loved ones in their life. They treat strangers beautifully, but then they treat their loved ones terribly. What the hell is that? Why do so many people do that? I never, ever, ever want to do that. To me any trauma stops here, I am not passing any of this on to my kid. Or those things were too many parents are with their kids while they’re just scrolling their phones and they’re like, “Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah, that’s nice to dear.”

Derek Sivers

And they’re lost in their screen. And I think of what does that doing to a kid’s psyche? Teaching a kid through example that apparently what’s on this little piece of glass matters much more than me, matters much more than life. All that matters according to my parents that I look at and emulate is what’s going on in this little piece of glass. I’m looking at mom and dad and that’s what I see them do. That’s what I’m going to do in my life. My parents are showing me that’s what you do. So I never want to do that because the stakes are so high. I want him to have a great life and a healthy outlook on life. So I would just do these things like never be on my phone around my kid. Any time I’m with him, the phone is shut down, not just put away like I hold down the power button for 3 seconds until it completely turns off, and I’m just completely present with him. And even when I catch myself, say upset about something in the past or worried about something in the future. I go, “Oh, wait, what am I doing? No, I’m just with my kid now. Let it go. Toss it in the river.” And I just give him my full attention because this is super, super, super important. Yeah, the stakes are high.

Aleks Vancevska

I’m curious, what was the most surprising thing you discovered about your kids that you were like, “Hmm, that’s so cool. You’re so different in this than me.”

Derek Sivers

Maybe just that he’s, I wouldn’t say there are big surprises in. Except that he’s just not into music. I kind of thought that I would instill that in him. You know, we’ve been listening to music since he was born. I always kind of surrounded him with really interesting music, like not just pop, but I’d put on Debussy or Indian classical music or Persian music or took him to the orchestra. I had a season tickets to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. And so for three years of his life, from age, say 4 to 7. Every two weeks, we were sitting fifth row center in front of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for whatever they happen to be playing that night, whether it’s Berlioz or Ravel or Mozart or whatever. And he grew up with the sound of the orchestra. And yet, despite all of that, he’s just not into music. So that is. On the other hand, he’s ten. I didn’t really get into music till I was 14, so maybe suddenly at 14 he’ll be super into it. I don’t know.

Aleks Vancevska

So what is he into when he’s in his ten?

Derek Sivers

Building weapons. He likes to build weapons. That’s all he cares about.

Aleks Vancevska

Okay. Okay. And so another thing about the book is the weird conclusion, and maybe you want to say something about that before I ask the questions so that people who may have not read the book can actually know what we’re talking about.

Derek Sivers

Sure. So for anybody listening, if you haven’t figured this out by now, the book “How to Live” is 27 conflicting answers to that question. And then one weird conclusion. So that’s the subtitle of the book, “27 Conflicting Answers in One Weird Conclusion.” So as I was writing it, I was writing the book for two years, not knowing how I was going to end it. I knew that I wanted to have these chapters that completely disagreed with each other. So one chapter would say, “Here’s how to live, live completely for the future.” And then the next chapter would say, “Here’s how to live, treasure the past.” Then the next chapter would say, “Here’s how to live, live completely in the moment.” And the next chapter would say, “Here’s how to live, get rich.” I knew that I was going to have these conflicting chapters, but I didn’t know how to end it. And then I encountered an image of a duck and a bunny. Like an optical illusion. Is this a duck or is this a bunny? And I went, “This is the conclusion.” And then as I kept writing, I thought of one more thing that made me think, “Oh, this is the conclusion.” And both of them then were just a single image. So here is the book of 118 pages of words. And then all of that is one section of the book. And then the final section is just two pages, which is just two images, one of the duck and bunny and one of the orchestra, like the orchestra seating chart. And at first I thought I was going to keep these a secret. But the book’s been out for a while now, so I guess I’m happy to talk about it. And we’ll just say if you haven’t read the book yet, spoiler alert Aleks is about to ask some questions.

Aleks Vancevska

So the question for me was, what did that duck and bunny when you saw them mean for you? Because I know what they mean for me and what I saw in that. But what was that for you when you were like, this fits.

Derek Sivers

It was the epiphany that you don’t have to choose, Is this a duck or is this a bunny? The answer is, this is a picture of a duck and a bunny that it is both like this drawing that someone made is a duck and it is a bunny. It is a drawing of a duck and bunny in one image. And the epiphany for how to live our lives is you don’t have to choose. You don’t have to say “Should I be living for the future moment or should I be living in the present? Should I focus on getting rich or should I focus on following the pain?” You can take the duck and bunny lesson and say, “Ah, I don’t have to choose.” It’s and not or that you can follow the pain in some aspects of your life and get rich in other aspects of your life and live in the present in some aspects, and live for the future and other aspects. And it might be during different times of your life, or you might just completely combine them and say, I’m doing both. Yes.

Aleks Vancevska

That was maybe one of the biggest outcomes of my personal psychotherapy, where I was like always very poetic. But then I was a scientist, but then I was like, I’m drawing and then I’m doing all this kind of different things. And I was always like, everyone say, you know, there’s parts of the book where it’s like, be focused or I don’t know if that’s the name of the chapter, but it’s along those lines. And I was always like, I have a demon in my diary was like, “This is the year of trying to focus.” And then I kind of realized, not me and probably not now. Maybe it’s some day where I actually have to and maybe obliged to. I will find that in myself, but I don’t want to find it now. And so I’m curious. There is an image for me of you, of like a kaleidoscope, you know, like someone who is like a white beam of light. And then it just kind of going through through this, through this mirror, which like shining through with different colors. And I’m curious, like, maybe what was the one of those colors which didn’t feel right for you and it took you time to actually sit in and fit in to kind of that.

Derek Sivers

There’s a chapter called “Do Nothing”, which if you channel all of the Buddhist, meditative monk wisdom. It’s you don’t have to do anything. You can just be in the present. People say you have to react. No, you don’t. People say you have to do this. No, you don’t. You don’t have to do anything. That one is the least natural to me. But it actually made more sense when I thought of it as preparing for death. Because if you realize that once you die or even as you’re like on your deathbed, as they say, you really can’t do anything anymore. All these things you think you have to do. You can’t anymore. And perhaps a way of finding peace before those final days of your life is to get rid of as many obligations as possible to make it so that you feel the least obligation to do anything so that when that day comes that you’re either completely incapacitated or paralyzed or dead, that you can feel okay about that because you’ve already internalized the lesson that you don’t have to do anything.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. Wow. I really love this because I went on a workshop, which was about my true nature, and I was kind of thinking, “Oh, I’m going to understand what’s my calling or what should I do?” The outcome of that workshop is that our true nature is mortality. And it was quite kind of calming to look at that. And another thing that came to me as you were talking is one person I interviewed, he said, “We don’t have free will, but we have free won’t.”

Derek Sivers

What does that mean? It’s cute, but what does it mean?

Aleks Vancevska

I mean, to me, what it means is it’s exactly do nothing. Nothing is almost a no thing. So often we think we are powerless. But in a way our power lies in not doing sometimes. And so to me, exactly this acceptance of the no and and knowing that even my no is a power was very liberating. At least that’s what it means for me. I don’t know. Maybe you hear something else. The orchestra again. I know what it means for me. Well, what it means for you.

Derek Sivers

All right. Do you want to tell me yours first?

Aleks Vancevska

Uh, yes, I can. So the way I saw it is that. Again our life is our art masterpiece and we can be the conductor of it or I can be the conductor of it, and I can create the melody of it that I have with whatever is in my personal orchestra. And I might have only it’s like almost like a Forrest Gump kind of thing. You might have four colors, but you can still draw incredible images with that and you still have the power to draw. So, yeah, what I saw in that is that we have the power to create with whatever is given to us at our disposal.

Derek Sivers

Well, cool.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s my projection.

Derek Sivers

That was not as intended, but I like that. I’m so glad that I left the ending ambiguous like that, because I’m so glad that you looked at that and thought about what that could mean. That to me is so much more interesting than a book ending with, you know, “And let me tell you here’s exactly the conclusion. Here’s what you should think.” It’s more artistic that way. My favorite movies are the ones that end with an ambiguity, and suddenly the movie’s done and you go, “Wait, but what did they meet or not did? How did it?” And you think, “Oh, that’s beautiful. It’s beautiful that they left it open like that.” So that’s what I did with “How to Live”. But all right, we gave the spoiler alert and you asked. So here we are one hour into our conversation, I will spoil the ending completely. To me the orchestra, I think of it as actually quite musical. You’ll notice in the orchestra seating chart there are 27 instruments. No coincidence the 27 chapters with the 27 different ways to live. So the 27 instruments are supposed to represent the 27 different ways to live. And if you are the composer of an orchestra, then you don’t have to answer which instrument is correct. You don’t have to decide, “Am I going to use the flute or am I going to use the clarinet?” You can do both. And not just that, but of course, every piece of music that uses an orchestra has different instruments coming in and out at different times.

Derek Sivers

So the big idea is to use time, like music is sound in time, right? So to use time, the time of your life, there are times in your life where the correct thing to do is to get rich. Just as there are times in a composition where the correct thing to do is to let only the cellos play for a while. Then while you are getting rich, you need to focus on love for a little while and it seems like those are conflicting. But hey, you’ve got the cellos playing now and you’re bringing in the oboe at the same time as the cellos are playing. You can mix them, you can use time, and you combine the different ways to live throughout time, bring them in and out as needed. And that’s where the conductor idea comes in, is then the conductors job is to kind of do this like, “Okay, give me more, more, more, give me more of this. Okay. Ah, there you go. Stop. Slow down. A little less of you. A little more of this.” And that’s your job as the conductor of your life is to look at all these different ways you could be approaching life following the pain versus following pleasure, living in the moment versus living for the future. And it’s your job as the composer in the first place and then the conductor in the moment. To combine and bring these in and out as needed.

Aleks Vancevska

And another interesting addition for me is that as a composer and as you were writing your book, you don’t need to know the ending and you don’t need to know the melody. You can also create it as you go. And so that’s another thing. For example, these drawings taught me is that I can let myself unfold rather than put myself into a box and want to fit myself into that box. And it’s like, I feel like, again, the melody can unfold. It doesn’t need to be a preconceived composition.

Aleks Vancevska

That we need to create. So that’s quite interesting. And I’m almost jealous and I kind of would love and I might write in the show notes, but it would be really cool to hear what other people that have read the book had projected into this images. Did you get any answers to that?

Derek Sivers

Lot. So if you go to the the web page for the book is sive.rs/h. As in the first letter of How to Live, just go to sive.rs/h, and if you scroll down, you’ll start to see the reviews that people have left. And a lot of people in their reviews say what this book meant to them. And some of them mention the ending image. Some of them just kind of holistically say like you said when you emailed me, you said “This book was like a Rorschach test.” I was like, “Yes, that’s great, that’s ideal.” And some other people say, “This book to me is a spoof of the self help genre, where the self-help genre, each book acts like it has the answer to life. And you are spoofing these other books by showing that there is no answer, by putting them all together in one book and contradictory and they’re not wrong either.” That was that was in the original intention as well. And then some people just take completely surprising things out of it. So yeah, go to the web page for it and you’ll see everybody’s reviews down below.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. And I’m very curious and I actually didn’t manage to ask this question, but how did you get the idea to actually write the book? What was that first seed inkling?

Derek Sivers

There is a book called “Sum”, S-u-m by David Eagleman and I love the format of this book. It’s one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a tiny little book. The subtitle is “40 Tales from the Afterlives.” So it’s 40 little short stories, just 2 to 3 pages long each of what happens when you die. And I love this format that every little chapter answers the question differently. It’s like the title is saying “What happens when you die?” And each chapter says, “When you die, you find out that in the last life where you were a creature, but in the next life you can be whatever creature you want to be. So you decide to be a horse.” The next chapter will say, “When you die, you awaken in a mansion that is empty. You walk around all the rooms for the longest time, you don’t find anybody else. Eventually you find out that this is God’s mansion. And he left a long time ago and doesn’t know we exist.” The next chapter will say, “When you die, you find out that you were an artificial intelligence program and the creatures that wrote you want to know the answer of life.” And the next chapter will say, “When you die.” So I just love this format that it’s like every little chapter, every few pages is completely disagreeing with all of the other chapters.

Derek Sivers

And I was like, “Oh, I love this. I love this.” It’s so beautiful to deliberately contradict yourself over and over again in one book, to answer one question in 40 different ways, almost like a creative challenge. Right? Like the the author probably said “How many different ways can I answer this question of what happens when you die?” I read that book. I read it again a year later. And shortly after reading it the second time, I was driving down the road on a long highway in New Zealand, my mind was just wandering. And suddenly I went, “Oh, I want to write a book called How to Live. And it’s going to be like Sum, where it’s going to answer the question of how to live in like 40 different ways.” I was like, “Oh my God, yes.” I got so excited about this that as soon as I had the idea, my fingers started flying and I couldn’t stop. And so for the next two years, I wrote this book filled with everything I had ever learned. I wanted to put everything I had ever learned in my life into this one book. And so the first draft was like 1300 pages. And of course, nobody would actually want to read that. Maybe 12 people somewhere. So then to make it beautiful, I wanted to now take this 1300 page thing and compress it down into just 100. And it turned out to be 115 pages, I think. So each sentence you see in the book “How to Live” now, used to be an entire page. Almost every page got reduced down to one sentence that I very carefully crafted to represent what used to be a whole page. And I’m really proud of it that way.

Aleks Vancevska

Wow. So you did your own editing, basically.

Derek Sivers

Yeah.

Aleks Vancevska

Wow. I’m just now imagining, as you’re saying this, like a big marble. The first thing was like 1300 pages, and then, like, you were slowly chipping off so that you can make this.

Derek Sivers

Yeah, well, just to get ridiculous, if you’re talking about a big block of marble like three meters tall. Then I’m like the sculptor that would like, keep doing it until in the end, all you have is a tiny little swan the size of your thumb, you know?

Aleks Vancevska

Exactly. That’s how it sounds. But it’s like an incredible feat. So I’m quite amazed and I’m happy. I asked this question and then sorry, it take me a moment to stop laughing.

Derek Sivers

No, it’s funny. Here’s something I’m embarrassed to talk about is that I am so fucking proud of this book. Like, I love it so much. I think this is my favorite book ever. Like, not just my favorite book that I’ve written. I mean my favorite book ever. I wonder if filmmakers feel like this when they make a great film that they’ve worked for years on. It’s they made this film because it it didn’t exist until this moment. And then when it’s done, I wonder how many filmmakers feel like this is my favorite film ever? Or like how many musicians? When you write a song that never existed till this moment and you nail it, you really capture what you wanted to do with that song. And I wonder how many musicians then feel like, “I think this is my favorite song.” Like, we’re not supposed to admit that. But of course it’s in there. As the creator of anything, you’re creating what you want to exist, what you wish existed, and if you achieve it well, then it’s like this in theory should be your favorite thing of all time. That’s how I feel about “How to Live”. It’s my favorite book ever.

Aleks Vancevska

Honestly, as I’m talking to you, that’s why I’m laughing, because I can see the joy it brings to you and it brings even more joy to me to see that someone has actually done that for themselves. And that’s basically living your own dream. Is that what dreams are until they actually become reality? So it’s quite incredible to witness a creator that has made it. And it doesn’t matter like how it’s going to impact me or how it’s going to impact someone else, because eventually people will project whatever they need to project into it. But if the composition is sturdy enough, it will kind of absorb those projections.

Derek Sivers

Or just even if you love it that much. You love what you’ve made enough, then it just doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. So every now and then I hear from somebody who doesn’t like the book. I’m like, “Okay, whatever. That doesn’t bother me.” Yeah, I don’t care. It’s my favorite.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. No, that’s exactly it. That’s the feeling where I know when I’ve done something that I really like. And I might not even like it after some time, but like, for now, it’s really something it makes me feel I’ve expressed. It looks like what I wanted to express. And it feels good that you have the tools to do it. And one thing I stayed with after reading it, I did feel you’ve put everything you know into it. It does feel like that. And what I wanted to ask is, because I see them sometimes as tools or as kind of you have your own tool kit for life. I was curious, what’s something that you’re like, “I still want to learn this.” It’s like I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on. Now this book is behind me and I really want to learn this new thing.

Derek Sivers

I never studied philosophy. And so I’d like to learn more about what other philosophers have said and thought much more about. I’m going to have to get through the jargon. That’s a problem with academic philosophies, all this jargon around it. That to me just seems completely detached from how we live our life. But I’d like to kind of learn to see through the jargon and get to the thoughts behind it. There’s something that I’m fascinated with right now, which is the beliefs that we hold that are useful to us, but not true. So I may choose to believe if I’m running a race and I want to run the fastest I can, I might choose to believe that there’s a tiger behind me chasing me. And if I slow down for even one millisecond, that tiger will kill me. I know that belief is not true, but that might help me to believe, to get me to where I want to go. Or like we talked earlier about the safety net, tight rope metaphor. It served me well to believe that I had a safety net. Even though later I found out that wasn’t true. So there are some things that we can choose to believe knowing in advance this isn’t true, but I’m going to believe it anyway. Then there are things that we choose to believe. That might or might not be true. But believing it works for us. So yeah, that interests me right now, and I think that’s probably going to be my next book called “Useful Not True”.

Aleks Vancevska

I love that. It’s interesting again in therapy. I’m sorry I’m making so many references, but that’s my life. There is a part of me which I know that the metaphor or whatever I’m creating in this moment is probably going against all my scientific training and yet just feels good when I think of it. And I’m like, it just feels nice to think in these terms and to just calm my nervous system down. And yet, like I always wonder is it’s like and you know, often is like, who am I to take away someone else’s illusions that hold them safe or grounded or because there’s always this question, even in therapy, what’s good therapy? And do I want to bring someone to see the same reality as I do? Or do I want to feel them more safe in their own reality? And that’s where the question sits with me, because in a way, often realities, as constructivist therapists would say it is whatever we agree on, that reality is until we agree on it differently. And so I guess for me, where this has a particular problem is when I feel when there is like abuse or when there is something that’s life threatening and we are not sharing the same reality. So I always end up if I follow my train of thought, everything is accepted, everything is good, and we can be both and and yet when I come to a moment of an actual physical attack or a sexual attack or things of that sort, where then I’m like, well, I can be compassionate. I can get your reality. But this edge of thought I have, it’s an impasse for me. And I don’t know how to mentally deal with it, basically. So that’s where I’m curious, like, how do I use them as useful and yet shake them when they’re threatening?

Derek Sivers

Interesting. Isn’t it? See, when I think of useful to me, the implied meaning of that is useful for what you want. Like where you want to go. Or useful for who you want to be. It gets you to where you want to go. It empowers you to be useful implies all these things. It’s empowering. So let’s say if somebody were to criticize this core idea of it’s good to believe what’s useful to you, not what’s necessarily true. Somebody could criticize that saying, “Okay, but are you saying then that somebody might find it useful to believe that people they don’t like are subhuman and therefore can be murdered.” Then it’s like, well if where you’re trying to go is to be a mass murderer, then that is a useful belief. But if where you’re trying to go is to be a mass murderer. Then there are other issues that we should be addressing, not useful or true. It’s where you want to go. So I think most people want to go to a healthy place. They want to be not just happy but flourishing. They want to be like a congruently happy person, that’s deeply happy, not too shallow happy. Then believing things that are useful to get you to where you want to go or to get you to be who you want to be. Those beliefs you adopt don’t have to be proven true as long as the belief works for your psyche to help you take the actions and make the change in your life to get you where you want to go.

Aleks Vancevska

I do get that. I’m always stuck as exactly what the example you mentioned. Well, even as a therapist, when do you intervene and who do you talk to? Because you can see that it’s useful and it supports the system they have created for themselves. And yet that what’s useful for them is kind of threatening for the environment. And then there’s this huge clash.

Derek Sivers

I see. So you’re saying working as a therapist with people that have the feeling like they’re either being directly violent or emotionally abusive to others? Okay.

Aleks Vancevska

Because then it always comes to The Clockwork Orange movie for me. I don’t know if you watched it, but it’s always comes to that point. I mean, I guess for him, it has been useful to be who he is. And like this idea of trying to change his personalities kind of totally.

Derek Sivers

Ahh!

Aleks Vancevska

So that’s where my psyche is still kind of not sure, especially like, again, going through a war and having a very vivid experience. There is places where it’s difficult to have compassion and where I can see like, okay, psyche is self regulated and there is where we can find a place to heal and not transmit trauma. But then and yet. There is still people who would intentionally inflict trauma. So there are these things which are kind of on an impasse and that’s where like that useful thing is always a trick for me, but we don’t have to answer it now.

Derek Sivers

No, but I’m glad you brought it up because it’s funny. It’s like before we teach somebody how to drive or before we focus on how to drive, we should make sure that the person driving is not going to be using that car to go run down people, like that needs to come first. Not where you want to go comes first before we talk about the tools you use to get there.

Aleks Vancevska

Exactly. Exactly. One thing that’s still coming from me, which we discussed before we started the interview, which is like I said, Oh, I want to see raw Derek, whatever that means. And what is what do you think is the worst thing about you that maybe doesn’t come through when people project things onto you? Or doesn’t come across not through.

Derek Sivers

I don’t know. And maybe I’d be less to know. People who know me well have said that my public and private persona is very congruent, like this is just who I am. It’s not like I’m putting on this persona now. And then as soon as we hang up the phone, I’m like an angry bastard that’s yelling and hitting my kid. No, it’s pretty congruent. I think that I really spend almost all of my time just sitting and typing. Unless I’m with my kid, then I stop all of that and I’m just with him. And that’s really my whole life. It’s like my life is very, very, very simple by design. Like I don’t say yes to hardly anything, take on no responsibilities. That’s part of why I don’t do things for money. A lot of people have commented when they go to my site that it’s surprising that I don’t have the usual pop up ads. Like sign up for my course, please buy this. I’m not even doing analytics to try to convert people into moneymakers. That’s because I already years ago, I sold my company for more money than I’ll be able to use in my lifetime. And I don’t want any more because I think that would just complicate my life. Like there’s nothing I want to buy. Anything else I could own in my life would make my life more complicated. So I think the maybe something that doesn’t come across is just how simple my private life is. Like there’s really not much more to it.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah, I mean, that’s where I kind of see my life heading. But I guess because I haven’t passed that stage of getting rich. It’s that simplicity is also something that sometimes I imagine life with. Like you start with simplicity, but this kind of naive simplicity and then you go through all this complexity to kind of experience, then you can distill it back into simplicity, but it’s almost like a wise one. I don’t know, that’s my imagination, but it might not resonate at all.

Derek Sivers

I agree with you. I think that’s kind of the ideal. I’m just remembering that the fact is, when I was making a living in New York City in my twenties as a full time musician. The way to make a living as a musician in New York City is to say yes to everything. Like, I had to take every gig that came my way. I had to go pursue gigs. I had to learn new styles of music in order to get a gig playing jazz guitar. And then I had to learn how to play a little classical piano in order to get a gig doing that. My life had to be kind of complicated because that was the way to make a living as a freelance musician. So only then later, like as I started CD Baby, and my life got simpler, I started like letting go of everything else and did this. And then it got simpler. And then once I sold my company, then my life got very simple. Now, I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do anymore. So I think it’s circumstantial. It’s not like my freelance musician self of the past or somebody who’s currently a freelancer. Probably shouldn’t be simplifying their life too much because that would not be the correct strategy for success as a freelancer, which may be to say yes to everything. And later in your life at a different time in your life, at a different situation, then the correct strategy is to say no to everything. But these these strategies change over time. You can’t just say this is the right answer and this is what I’m going to be using for life. It’s all situational.

Aleks Vancevska

Yeah. Also, I want to ask something that I really love, which again, I don’t know the exact names of the chapters, but there is the chapter about traveling and getting as many passports and getting more experiences. And I love that. I’m curious, when you went out of the US for the first time. Although US is very international anyways. So it’s a bit different than when I go out from Serbia. But, what do you think that you started to realize is your collective unconscious? Are these kind of beliefs that were part of your culture that you just took on because you didn’t question them? Everyone was thinking the same around you, and then you came out and you went into new culture and you’re like, “You guys never thought this through.” So I’m curious for people who are living in the US particularly, what’s that?

Derek Sivers

In the U.S. We think that individualism is like the highest good. Individualism is the ultimate ideal. And that might be shaped by the cowboy mentality. This idea of like, “No, I’ll go at my own.” Even in a lot of these hero movies. I won’t even say superhero. Let’s forget the Marvel movies for a minute. But even like these hero movies, there’s a bunch of people doing a thing. Then in the final moment, it’s just the one person who goes out to get the bad guy by himself. And that’s celebrated as like the ultimate ideal. So the individualism that I just took is just a given. Like, well, of course, individual achievement is just the best thing ever. That’s what it’s all about. And then I moved to Singapore where. People would tell me things like, “Well, I really wanted to be a musician, but my parents said no. So I stopped.” And I’m like, “No, how could you no that’s wrong? You need to follow your dreams.” And they would tell me like, “Well no, my family’s wishes matter.” And I’d say, “No, they shouldn’t, fuck your family, do what you want.” And it took me a couple of years of living in Singapore and meeting hundreds of Singaporeans,not just meeting, “Nice to meet you.” But like real two way conversations over hundreds of hours.

Derek Sivers

And slowly the mindset started to sink in that, what is best for your group matters more than what’s best for you. It’s the greater good. And that group might be your immediate family, it might be your neighborhood, it might be your community, it could be your extended family could be your community. It could even be your country. And this idea that, well, I’m not going to pursue my dream to be a poet. Because what’s for the greater good for my family is for me to get a degree as an engineer so I can make more money and support my family. And it was really hard for me to understand that that was right, not wrong.

Aleks Vancevska

And I think to just wrap up, is there anything about the book or yourself which you feel like I haven’t asked you, which you would still want to add? Because potentially it can open a new 20 minute topic.

Derek Sivers

Right? Yeah. Here are the numbers we have discussed. Are there any numbers that exist that we have not discussed? Yes, there are. No, I really appreciate the way that you take your psychotherapy angle into things. You said I can’t remember if it was right before or after we hit record that you said that you wanted to try to get into the raw Derek. I think I was very unfiltered. The only place I draw the line is like not mentioning my romantic partner’s personal life. Like to leave them out of it. Yeah, I tried to get as personal as possible, so thanks for going to that place instead of keeping it at the shallow business kind of level that a lot of interviews do.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s a compliment. So I will take that one. I have two rapid fire questions. One is, what is an absurd thing about you that not many people know about the people will not connect to you?

Derek Sivers

Absurd. Okay, well, the simplicity thing, I really take that to an absurd level. Like I really only have one pair of pants. And yesterday I did the laundry, and so I had to be in my underwear for a few hours until the laundry was done. But I think a lot of people would guess that about me. What’s absurd about me. Hold on, I think that’s more like what’s incongruent about me. I’m a minimalist in almost every way. But when it comes to my file backups, I’m not. I know this is a really specific thing, but like, I have two computers that are clones of each other, a desktop and a laptop. And every day I sync them out of this kind of paranoia that at any moment one of them could completely die and stop working. And I never want to stop working. So that’s why every night I sync these two computers so that they’re clones of each other. And then my files that matter to me, which is like all of my writing, my home movies of my kid, my photos and stuff like that. I have backed up on like four places on four continents, right? Like every week I back them up and I have a server in the U.S. and a server in Europe, and a server in Asia and a server in New Zealand that I back up my files to all four of these. My life is minimalist in many ways, but when it comes to my file backups and my main tool, which is a general purpose computer, I make sure that it’s my life is not too simple in those ways because that would mean like single point of failure.

Aleks Vancevska

That’s an interesting thing as someone who has. So we had electricity restrictions in Serbia. So basically to me thinking that the world might lose electricity at some point is something that I take very seriously.

Derek Sivers

Yes.

Aleks Vancevska

I am wondering, do you have that in mind? And what would be the memories you would you would want to keep in case that happens?

Derek Sivers

Yeah, to me, the videos of my son are precious that I’ve made of him since he was born. My diaries are precious. My writing is precious. My computer code is precious. Probably the side of me that the public does not see. Is I put more hours into my computer programming than I do into my writing. And nobody ever sees it. But I’m really deliberately, consciously pessimistic about things like that that we could get like a coronal mass injection where like a solar flare might just not just knock out all electricity, but might also kind of fry your hard drives. Losing internet at any point is really common to me. Maybe because I got online in 1994 when the internet was still like you’d use a dial up modem to dial in, and then sometimes it just wouldn’t work for a day. And so that’s why I don’t use Google Docs or any of these tools that are always online. I do everything offline that matters because I’m never counting on the internet working. I do use very low power. Sorry, I’m looking over here at my computer. I use very low power electronics so that if I lose electricity I can go off of battery backup for a long time. Yeah, things like that. I’m deliberately pessimistic about. Actually, you know there’s a reason in the “How To Live” book that the very first chapter was like, be independent. That one matters a lot to me. Like, I’m always very, very wary of when I’m dependent on a company or a service or anything like that. I try to make sure that I’m never too dependent on any particular service or technology.

Aleks Vancevska

And the last question, is there any question you have for me?

Derek Sivers

Uh huh. Oh, God, yeah. But I think I have, an hour of questions I would want to ask you. I mean, that’s why we first spoke. I think we spoke in 2019. But like, just as friends, because you just seemed like a really interesting person that I want to know. So I have probably 100 questions for you, but someday we’ll reverse the podcast format.

Aleks Vancevska

Yes, that will be amazing. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. So thank you very much. And yeah, thank you for your honesty and for your time because as you said, you said no too many things and I appreciate it. You said yes to me. So thank you.

Derek Sivers

I really appreciated your take on “How To Live”. I love that you taught me this quote that, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a paradox to be experienced”

Derek Sivers

To me, I wouldn’t even say manage there. So to me, that captures the essence of the book, “How To Live”, which is like life is not a problem to be solved. You know, the title “How To Live” is basically sarcastic. This book does not teach you how to live. It’s making fun of the fact that we could even say how to live, but a paradox to be experienced. So thank you so much for the attention you’ve given this book that I love. I really appreciate it.

Aleks Vancevska

You have just heard the story of Derek Sivers, a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, best known for his company, CD, Baby, TED speaker and book publisher. He’s a monomaniacal introvert, slow thinker, and loves finding a different point of view. He’s a California native and now lives in New Zealand. If you want to find more about him and connect to him, you can visit his web page: sive.rs. Thank you for joining me on this journey and please share and subscribe so that these stories can reach more people.