North Star
host: Mackenzie Belcastro
gratitude, relationships, website development, beliefs
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
Derek Sivers
All right. Hi. Good to see you again.
Mackenzie
It’s so nice. I was thinking like wow, it’s been absolutely years since Oxford.
Derek Sivers
2019.
Mackenzie
2019. Good memory. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Well, I mean, it’s easy because, you know, a few months later, Covid, everything, everything changed, you know.
Mackenzie
So, I mean, yeah, the whole world really changed. I was just reflecting so much on, like, how much you probably don’t even know-- but like, how much you you did for me with just even just talking to me back in, I think probably 2018. When I first kind of got a hold of you and didn’t think that you would email me back or, you know any of that and I was shocked. And then my whole website and yeah, I’m sure you don’t know, but like, I think about you and I’m like, “Oh my God, Derek.” Like, it gave me so much actually at that time. So like, I’ve always been grateful whenever I think about you.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Mackenzie
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
And now look at you. Every now and then, you know, I’d go check in on your website and it kept growing and improving and changing and growing and improving and changing. I’m like, oh my God, you’ve got a lot going on now.
Mackenzie
Tried to teach myself because I wanted to use that website. I didn’t want to change to Squarespace or change to something else, like how can I still utilize like make it look a little bit more fresh, a little bit whatnot. So I had to kind of take a Derek card and learn how to put in this new template and whatnot. But I was like, “If Derek can do it, I can do it. I can figure this out.”
Derek Sivers
Good. I’m glad you had that approach. My guitar teacher taught me that long ago. He just said, “Look, if another human can do it, you can do it. It’s a human possibility. Come on.”
Mackenzie
Yeah. Well thank you. Just like for for taking the time again, I emailed you and I was like, “God, I don’t know if he’s going to say yes, but it would be amazing to be live with you and to have people here where you’re at now.” Because I also look back because I know you had a podcast shortly.
Derek Sivers
Not really. It was always like, I would occasionally record the audio of my articles, and then I tried putting them into a stream, and I might do that again, but I never really did a podcast.
Mackenzie
Yeah, it was these bite size, just like your work in general. Yeah, again, I appreciate because it’s like you’re someone who takes all this time to edit down so that people ultimately have something that’s easily digestible and transformative if they want to allow it to be, let’s say. Yeah. So so I read your whole book yesterday. I read the whole thing yesterday, I had a lucky cancellation as well for a meeting. So I was like, “Oh great, this is perfect. I can finish the whole book.” Because I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to finish it all. If not, I was like, I know we have enough to talk about, even if I read the first half of it because it was great. So “Useful Not True”. The new book, when is it coming out? Just before we kind of get going.
Derek Sivers
Who knows? I’m still writing it. I was writing it up until five minutes ago before we hit record, and five minutes after we hang up, I’ll be back writing it again.
Mackenzie
You’ll be back writing it? Yeah. Okay, I love that. I loved the book. It had me reflect so much. And interestingly, I’m not sure if this will surprise you or if it will be kind of course, to me, it actually had me reflect a lot on relationships because of the whole nature of the book being essentially about beliefs, which made me think about how we engage with others and their beliefs and the dynamic that can create between people. You know how you accept their beliefs, how you reject their beliefs, and kind of how that kind of peters out from there. So yeah, I and then of course we get-- oh I don’t know how much I can share, but at some point can I share.
Derek Sivers
You can share anything. Yeah, wait. Audience assuming that you’re listening now. Mackenzie is the first person to read my new book. Just last night, I was like, “Oh, hey, I should send you this.” It’s not completely done yet, but I sent her everything that is done so far. And she’s officially the very first person to read it.
Mackenzie
So very honored, by the way I was like, “Oh, this is exciting.” Okay, we get approximately halfway through, and then there’s a great line where it’s essentially saying, “This is all about you.” Like this whole book is about you. And I was like, “Oh, of course it is.” Because in the beginning, you’re kind of moving through beliefs about other people. And for me, I’m like, “Oh, this is great.” It’s like helping me accept and we’ll get back in a moment and define things, because I think that’s important. And you start the book with that. But just to say, like, for me, it was I was like, “Oh, this is great. It’s kind of expanding my mind.” I’m not judging people as much just by thinking about what it is that you’re saying about beliefs, which we’ll get into in a moment. But for myself and my relationship to myself, I was kind of getting, “Oh, crap. What does this mean about my own beliefs?” And so it was interesting how it shifted when I thought about myself and my own beliefs. Okay, before we go any further, I actually just want to take a moment. So this book is called again “Useful Not True”. And I would love if you could define useful as you have it in the book. True and not true.
Derek Sivers
Okay. So the very first page of the book says, “First let’s define true as absolutely objectively necessarily true. Meaning it’s not only in the mind. In this version of true means there is no other answer. So let’s save it for absolutes.” Like, you know, I just clapped my hands. That’s true. What does it mean that I clapped my hands? Well, we could all have different meanings for what clapping hands means, but the only true thing that happened there is, I clapped my hands. But notice then that when I say something is not true, it doesn’t mean it’s false. It just means there is another perspective or possibility we could take. So then useful. I define as whatever helps you do what you need to do. Be who you want to be or feel at peace. So I don’t know whether to reveal this now or later, but I’m going to try revealing it now. The reason for defining true so tightly is because ultimately the book is about reframing. And so whatever you think of as true. It’s closed. No further questioning. That’s it’s non-negotiable. That’s true. And it’s the things that we call not necessarily true. As soon as you say not necessarily true. It straight up invites another perspective to come next. If somebody says, “You know what happened to you was bad.” And you say, “Well, that’s not necessarily true.” As soon as you say that, you think, “Oh, okay, well, what other ways are there to look at it?” And that’s what the whole book is about. It’s about reframing. That’s why it’s important to define true so narrowly to just the few non-negotiable, basically physical things in life, because everything else in the mind is free for reinterpretation.
Mackenzie
Yeah, I love that you defined it in that way. It also had me reflect on a lot of conversations I’ve had with people when they’ve just sort of-- and I understand things can be defined in different ways, in different contexts. However, it’s always historically annoyed me, let’s say, when people just go, “Oh well, this is true.” And when I was reading your book in the beginning, I was thinking to myself, “Why does this annoy you so much?” but you know, it annoyed and I thought about it an it came to me and I was like, “Well, it makes me kind of like not trust people if I feel like they’re just going, ‘this is true’. And they’re just building a case.” Which you speak about like you can build a case almost for anything. And then for me, then I had to bring it back to myself. And then I was like, “What is that actually kind of like bring up for you?” And then I go, “Oh, do I not believe myself? Like, do I not like, trust my own--” And you get into all of this in the book. Like your beliefs are not necessarily true. I mean, I think they’re not true. Can you actually speak about beliefs.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. This is fun. I love-- by the way, thanks for indulging me. I have had my head buried in this book for over a year now without talking about it much. So this is a blast for me. Thank you, I love it. So it takes a while to digest this definition of true, meaning, like, the only right answer. So anytime we say that’s not necessarily true. Some people might get offended when they say, like, “It’s important for a parent to love their child.” You say, “Well, that’s not necessarily true.” It’s like, “Oh, how dare you?” It’s like, hold on, just open up. There are some children that grow up wonderfully fine and healthy without a loving parent. It can happen. I’m not saying it’s suggested, but let’s just open the possibility that it’s not necessarily true, that it must be certain ways. And this is so important to practice doing, because where this is all getting to is that when you’re in a disempowered state, like you’re feeling stuck or depressed, or like you failed at something, or that your situation is hopeless in those moments.
Derek Sivers
You will catch yourself saying like, “This sucks, this is awful, this is terrible.” And you have to catch yourself in those moments to say then like, “Well, hold on, that’s not necessarily true.” And those are the hardest moments to say because it’s easy to disbelieve what other people tell you. It’s really hard. Or let’s say the hardest thing to disbelieve are your own beliefs. So when you catch yourself saying this situation is awful, that doesn’t feel like an opinion, that feels like a hard, concrete fact that this situation is awful, this is terrible. And those are the most important moments to catch yourself and say, like, “Hold on, that’s not necessarily true. What could be good about this? How could I use this in my favor? What’s great about this? What are the benefits of this?” And that’s basically what this is all leading to. What this is all about is when you’re in those disempowered states, that’s when it’s most important to realize that not even your own beliefs are true. None of them.
Mackenzie
Yeah. And that’s why it’s funny. I always think--, you know, I always end up speaking to people at exactly the right time, which is also a belief. So it’s funny because now everything I’m saying, I’m like, “Oh my God.” But another point that you make is that and I love that you kind of come to this point as well like choose your beliefs for the ones that ultimately create the reality that you want to live in. If I’m saying that in a way that you would agree with, that sort of was one of my takes on them. So I’m going to hold that belief knowing it’s a belief. But I love it. Because actually, as of maybe the past month and a half or something like that, I’ve also been sort of digging into all this stuff sort of to help myself and noticing what I’ve been thinking, noticing my beliefs. And I’ve had so much health anxieties probably since university and I thought I kind of did away with it. I thought I was fine until I--. And this is also something that you sort of live by. In my opinion, you’re not very plugged into media. You’re very much like someone who’s creating and I love that about you. But for me, I’d been very plugged in. I’d always been listening to something and even when I was eating, I was like listening to a podcast.
Mackenzie
It was like there was never a moment of peace or silence. I was just always plugged in. And so I actually did not notice that I still had a lot of these thoughts sort of moving through me. And it was like it got to a point where I had this thing in my throat, and I noticed when I took out the headphones. Every time I’m eating, I’m worried, is this thing going to affect my throat? And it was like all these beliefs again that I’d been upholding that had been affecting me and causing me to hold stress and create this tension in my shoulder and all of this stuff. So in the past month and a half, I was like, “To hell with this. I’m done.” I’m not doing this anymore. I’m taking out the headphones. I’m just going to be very present, and I need to start noticing what I’ve been thinking because I want to change some things here that are going on and want to release a lot of this anxiety. And that’s been really powerful. So that’s sort of the journey I’ve been on lately. And it really relates to this because I just started to notice, Holy cow, there’s so much, especially with food. I’ve just been so scared of it because of this like throat thing that I’ve had for three years.
Mackenzie
And it’s crazy because when I did that, the throat thing kind of eased off. So the body and the mind, that connection is huge. And I do have a bit of a bacterial whatever. There’s still a little bit of truth ultimately that lives there. I have a little bit of a sort of persistent infection, but I was making it so much worse with my thoughts and my beliefs that sort of everything was out to get me, almost like any food could affect my throat. And so this book just came at such a beautiful time where I noticed I don’t have to believe these thoughts. And actually, probably I can expand my palette. In the past few weeks, I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by not only like what my taste buds get to enjoy now because I’m not so anal and uptight about every single thing that I didn’t even realize I was. But also like I can be more at peace. Like I don’t need to hold on to this. So I could let a lot go sort of mentally as well. And so just to share with you, that was incredible. To read what you’ve written because I’ve experienced it, we don’t have to believe all these thoughts. And yet we can also choose to believe certain thoughts. Yeah. Go ahead.
Derek Sivers
It’s so hard to separate the few concrete facts in the mountains of meanings we give them. You know, the needle in the haystack, the needle of facts, in the haystack of interpretations. There was even a workshop I went to once that I mentioned in the book that life is blank underscore. Where at that same workshop a woman said, “My husband hates my cooking.” And the leader of the workshop said, “Well, that’s not necessarily true. Why do you think that’s true?” And she said, “Well, he told me.” He said, “Okay, exactly what did he say? He said he hates your cooking? She said, “Well, no, he said it’s too salty.” He said, “Okay, so do you remember exactly word for word what he said?” She said, “Well, yeah. He said, this is too salty.” And he said, “Okay. So he didn’t say all of your cooking. He said, one dish you made. He said, ‘This is too salty.’ Does that mean it’s too salty? That doesn’t even mean it’s too salty. It doesn’t even mean that he thinks it’s too salty. All we know for sure is he spoke those four words. He might have just been angry at somebody else earlier in the day and just wanted to let it out on something, and it’s a good thing he didn’t kick the dog. Instead he said, this is too salty. He might have just had potato chips right before the meal. It’s the only true thing is he spoke those four words. That’s it. Everything else is your interpretation.” And it’s so nice to remember this. It’s so nice to make that delineation between the few concrete facts and all the interpretation.
Derek Sivers
But you know, it’s funny. I might have to address at some point. I haven’t yet in the book, but so many people, when I told them I was writing this book, said, “Oh good, are you going to call out all those deniers? Basically truth deniers and all the people that say that the election results were rigged and I’m like, “No, no, no.” For one, it’s funny that everybody thinks it’s only other people that are denying the truth. It’s never somebody says, “Oh, I’m worried that I am full of shit.” No, it’s always the other people. But no, it’s not about denying the concrete, conclusive, verifiable stuff. There are things that are concrete and verifiable and conclusive that people are out there denying, like a conspiracy theory. And that’s not what this is about at all. And I’m not going to get into that social stuff. But I should just say that whole like, pseudo political world of that stuff. Instead just keeping it to the personal, like, this book is about you. Not them. Just in ourselves it’s so hard to separate the very few concrete realities from all of our interpretations. So yeah, there is something, like you said, maybe you haven’t told me the details of it, but yeah, there is some concrete thing that may be going on in there. But that’s it. There’s the concrete facts, everything else about what you think of it and what you’re going to do about it, what you can do and how long it is and what it means. All of that is up to you.
Mackenzie
Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I honestly cannot even imagine you going into all that, as you said, pseudo political. It’s not what you do.
Derek Sivers
Yeah it’s not my jam.
Mackenzie
No, I cannot imagine. I mean, if anyone’s read your other books, which I’ve had the pleasure of sort of digging into as well over the past few weeks. You kind of make it clear that you’re not necessarily into, let’s say, ascribing to any particular camp.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well, it’s also nice to write a book that is going to be equally valid in 30 years or 60 years. You know, one of my favorite books was “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins, and it was written in 1989, and oh, man, I just went back and reread it for the first time in 30 years. It is so dated. He’s holding up OJ Simpson as a role model and talking about Michael Jackson and all these like very, very dated references that I can’t imagine anybody born before 1980 would even get. Sorry, born after 1980 would even get anymore with like, I barely remember that and that, you know, that was like, wait, what is it, 1990? Oh my God, 35 years ago. And he’s referencing very pop culture at the moment things, and I think it’s to its detriment. I kind of wish that somebody would rewrite that whole book, stripped of all of its two timely expired references. Yeah. So I try to just write timeless stuff. I’m not going to get into today’s current debate about whatever.
Mackenzie
You don’t need to. I mean, people will contextualize things for themselves anyway, right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Mackenzie
Also like again, something that I think is great about you is you put in the work to actually have people kind of do less. You put in the work to edit out so that people have it more easily digestible. Like I said, I mean, this book is readable within-- I’m kind of like a slow-- this is a belief, I’m not sure actually what this is. You can tell me. I think it’s kind of truth as well. I’m quite a slow reader, I guess, depending on how you define slow. So for me it took like 2.5 hours, but I think a fast reader could read this in like an hour 45 or something like that, if you weren’t kind of excerpting things. And also going about it the way that I was so that we could have this conversation. But I would love to know actually what the model is for this like what were you thinking? Where were you at? Were you just jotting notes down? How did this book sort of come to being probably first in your mind, and then what made you decide to write it?
Derek Sivers
Sure. I have a few deliberate beliefs that I choose on purpose to counterbalance my bias and nature. So, for example for a while I had a tendency to blame other people for things, especially when I was running this company for ten years. I had 85 employees, and in the final year of it, it all went pear shaped, I think is the technical term.
Mackenzie
What does that mean?
Derek Sivers
Oh, what it just means. Yeah. Where did that term come from? Anybody? Listeners, I would love to know the origin of pear shaped. I heard it for the first time just a few years ago, but it just means, like, it went bad. Things got out of shape. And so, yeah. Why pears though? Anyway. Yeah.
Mackenzie
Yeah, like what’s wrong with that shape?
Derek Sivers
Things turned really bad inside the company. And I started blaming all of the employees for how bad they got. And I don’t mean to their face, I just mean in my own. Like, I ended up selling the company, walking away and I was angry for a year or two. I was like, “They did this, and they did that, and they betrayed me. And they staged a mutiny. And they this and they that.” And one day, it took me a couple of years of saying this before I said, “Wait, hold on. Maybe that’s not true.” And I said, “Maybe it was all my fault.” I mean, “Oh, wow. That feels different. Everything bad that happened was my fault.” I was like, “That feels good. That feels so much better to blame myself for what happened instead of blaming them. Now I’m not the victim. In fact, I’m a fucking supervillain. I’m a powerful mofo now, instead of the poor, helpless victim. Now it’s something that’s under my control that I can do something about. And try not to do again. I can try to learn lessons from this instead of just being mad at somebody.” I was like, “Yeah, I like this. I’m adopting this. From now on, I’m choosing to believe that everything is my fault. Why is that politician in office? It’s my fault. I could have rallied enough votes for the opposition. Why is the war going on in Ukraine? That’s my fault. I could have done something about that. I could have tried harder.” Or just, you know, down to earth, like, everything in my personal life, in my sphere it’s all my fault. Everything is the way it is because of me.
Derek Sivers
Now, I know that’s not true. But it’s more useful for me to believe that than to believe the opposite. I’m taking on that stance deliberately knowing it’s not true. So when I told some people I actually wrote a little article, I think it’s called “Everything is My Fault”. And some people push back going, “That’s not true.” And I said, “I know it’s not true, but it’s useful for me to believe it.” And then this kept coming up. There’s another one where I said, “Men and women are the same.” I said, “We tend to over exaggerate the difference between men and women. But actually the differences among men and the differences among women are much greater than the general differences between men and women. So from now on, I’m choosing to believe that men and women are the same, to counterbalance my bias.”
Derek Sivers
And when I posted that on my site, somebody said, “But that’s not true.” I said, “I know it’s not true, but it’s useful for me to believe this.” Um. This just kept coming up. And I realized, you know, this is something that I’ve never dug into. I think I need to look into this more. So I ended up emailing a philosophy professor I know, Sharon Kaye, one of the best writers I’ve ever read. If you go to my book list on my website, sive.rs/book, she wrote a book called, I think, “Philosophy A Complete Introduction”. I think, hands down the single clearest writer I’ve ever read. She’s wonderful. And when I finished the book, I emailed to tell her so and so, she replied. And so we’re in touch. I ended up asking her, “What is this philosophy of mine? How I’m choosing beliefs because they’re useful not true.” And she said, “Oh, that’s pragmatism. You should look into pragmatism.” So I ended up reading five books about pragmatism. And it’s not quite that and it’s not quite nihilism, and it’s not quite skepticism, but it’s kind of like a combination of like skepticism, nihilism, pragmatism. Probably some other isms I’m forgetting right now. And I just wanted to explore it more.
Derek Sivers
I ended up reading the Bible. I read two books about Hinduism, two books about Islam, a book about Judaism. Atually in September last year, I went and spent a week in Israel and tried to go to Palestine. At the very last minute the guy that was supposed to take me around like had to cancel and long story and then two weeks later was October 7th the big, you know, Gaza stuff. So I was there at a surprisingly weird time. I hear everything’s changed now, but I was trying to get to the root of beliefs. And try to understand, just digging into the subject of beliefs and why we choose them. And some people swear that they’re fact. I mean, so many people in Jerusalem are just like, “Oh my God, the the power of this city. You can feel the energy all around you.” I’m like, “Well, you can, I don’t, but that’s fascinating that you do.” Like to them it’s absolutely real that this place has an energy and they say it like it’s a concrete fact, as if, you know, it’s raining right now. This place has an energy. Uh, and I’d say one of those is true, but the other one is debatable. And I wrote this book as kind of just wanting to dig into the subject.
Derek Sivers
So that’s why for two years I’ve been learning more about it, reading a ton about it. And spending hundreds of hours trying to express my own thoughts or exploring my own thoughts on this, even that whole definition of true. I’d never really thought about that before. I was like, “Well, in order for us to reframe. Then we need to define true as narrowly as possible.” And then even that, I had to ask myself why. It’s like, “Well, I think it’s because once we consider something to be true, it’s a closed matter.” It’s not up for discussion anymore. So therefore we should try to define as little as possible is true. And even these core beliefs that you hold dear, like it’s important to love my child or I should be loyal to my country or anything that people just say, well, that’s just true. I think, “No, that’s not necessarily true.” There are other cultures on the other side of the world that believe the opposite thing, and they’re functioning just fine. It’s a perspective that might have been handed down to you and you’ve chosen to stick with. But don’t call it true because it’s not the only right answer.
Mackenzie
No no, no, that was that was incredible. I think the last point that you said there is why in the beginning of this and I didn’t really necessarily explain it because I knew we would kind of get here. But that is why I think that this is actually quite helpful for your dynamics with other people, your relationships with other people, because we do have that natural tendency to be like, “Well, this is true.” I think, in that the sort of coding is this better. The way that I go about things is kind of better than the way that you go about things, and you should conform to my reality. And that’s what made me look at myself and go, “Oh. Yeah, I’ve done that you know quite a bit.” Particularly in like the very close relationships in my life, even with respect to something I was talking to my boyfriend about that we were talking about dinner and this whole thing had me reflect on it. Because I grew up in a family that, with my dad, especially my dad’s Italian. And the Italian culture is very familiar and dinner and food and it’s like a big family kind of thing that you do every single night. And so for me, it’s “correct or right or true” or to always have dinner together and my boyfriend grew up in with a mom. Just a mom who was working.
Mackenzie
And so for him, he actually always had dinner pretty much by himself growing up as a kid. I remember saying at the time when I created a bit of a tiff about it, I hope I didn’t necessarily put it down, but I said--. I think my first words, my first reaction when I was maybe still in it, was like, “Well, it’s basically better is to get all the fluff out of the way.” It was essentially saying, well, it’s better to have dinner with your family every night. And that’s what came up for me when I was reading this, because I was like, “Well, Mackenzie, like, of course there can be benefits.” But who says it’s better, then actually talking to Derek about this might be a good thing, because you are such an individualist in many ways, and I know you spend a lot of time with your son. But I’m sure you have many beliefs about family. You’ve also written quite openly about it. That would perhaps contradict what it is that I’ve believed growing up with, again, an Italian father who has his own beliefs about things that have been kind of pressed into me as a kid.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s so hard to catch ourselves with all these things, we feel as true. Even, I mean, God, I’ve been working on this book for two years, and even a few months ago I caught myself saying, Wellington--. Sorry everybody, I live in Wellington, New Zealand. And I caught myself saying, “Wellington’s just not a good place for such and such.” The details don’t matter. And ever since I moved here ten years ago, I’ve just held that as a true fact. Wellington’s just not a good place for it. And again and again and again I’ve said that out loud to myself and my diary, despite the fact that I’m writing this book. And so just a few months ago, I went, “Oh my God, wait a second. I’m acting like that’s just a given. Oh, I’m doing it, aren’t I? Wow. Okay, great.” There are still always going to be these things in you that you hold as just like, “Well, of course this is true.” And you have to catch yourself going, “Hold on. That’s not necessarily true.” There’s a little chapter in the book where there are two aliens in outer space with, like, telescopes that can see what we’re doing.
Derek Sivers
And I often think of it from that perspective of, like, if this were really true, then an alien in outer space could see it. And therefore if I’m just saying, like, “Well, you know, it’s better to have dinner together.” That’s not a true observable fact that an alien life form could see. I’m just saying it’s good. God, one of the books I read was challenging. Even something like, “Murder is bad.” It’s like, okay, obviously murder is bad. Well, there are some situations-- I mean, we still have some places on Earth have a death penalty and have decided that’s the right thing. So there is another stance that someone can have. It’s like, “Well, except in some situations when the person you know is doing more harm and would continue to kill unless you kill them.” It’s like, “Well, so you’re saying there are some situations where murder is good?” Everything, death is bad, murder is bad. All of these are just judgment. We see them as true. But no, they’re still one perspective, a very popular perspective with a lot of evidence to support it, but still not the only way to look at it.
Mackenzie
Yeah. I’m curious what beliefs perhaps you’ve unsubscribed from if any?
Derek Sivers
Oh. Should I tell this one? I’m about to tell this one. I was snapped into atheism. It’s quite suddenly while reading a book by Derren Brown and it was in chapter six of a book called “Tricks of the mind”. And I was sitting in Covent Garden, London, reading that book, and up until the moment when I read that book. I believed almost everything, like, because I just felt like, who am I? I don’t know, sure, I was basically positive, agnostic. Everything. Sure. Angels? Yeah. Life after death? Yep. Maybe even, you know, ghosts among us? Sure. All of it? Yep. Everything, why not? I don’t know. And then I read that book, and he just kind of stacked up case after case after case of probabilities and coincidences. And if it was this, then that, and just suddenly I felt like. I stood up after reading that chapter and my whole kind of life view was affected. Went, “Oh, yeah. So none of it’s true basically.” Sorry. Now I’m using my current lingo, but I remember it felt great. Somehow it didn’t feel bad. It felt like just as there is some empowering beliefs, there are empowering disbeliefs. I know a lot of people who are very burdened by their belief that they must be loyal to their hometown or their family or where they grew up, or to their job or to their past public statements.
Derek Sivers
Just because they said something in the past, they feel a need to be loyal to their past statements. And that’s an example of like if you stop believing in the importance of loyalty, if you disbelieve loyalty, it can be so empowering and go, “Oh my God, that was all just a bunch of nonsense. Why did I think I needed to to be loyal to things I said in the past just because I said it once on Twitter, now I need to stick with it. No, I’ve changed my mind. Just because I grew up here--.” Or especially people that come from like abusive families, that they still feel that they should be loyal to because that’s just true. You need to be loyal to your family. Well, you can disbelieve that for great benefit. Yeah. Disbeliefs can be powerful. And so there’s my little tail to where for some reason, I don’t know why. I look back, and I’m still not sure why that disbelief felt better to me. For a lot of people, they feel the opposite. You know, the moment that they start believing in an afterlife or a creator or angels, they feel better. And if that’s what works for them, that’s great. But for me, for some reason, the disbelief was more empowering.
Mackenzie
Interesting. Do you do you think it removed-- well, I shouldn’t put words into your mouth. I’m just curious. I’m wondering.
Derek Sivers
I honestly don’t know.
Mackenzie
Shackles? You don’t know?
Derek Sivers
No, I honestly don’t know. I can’t figure out what felt good about it. But it did feel better for some reason.
Mackenzie
Right. Oh, it’s so interesting because I’m definitely in the former group that you mentioned. Actually. I think where I land is sort of where you were before, in the sense that everything sort of innocent until proven guilty in my eyes.
Derek Sivers
It exists until it’s disproven, right? Yeah.
Mackenzie
Precisely. Yeah, I don’t know it’s true. And so therefore everything is fair game almost. And I think to remove that-- maybe this isn’t fully true, but my immediate thought is maybe it removes a sort of cushiony feeling. Which is why I guess I wondered. But I know my brain is like going into so many directions because I’m wondering, like, are there certain personality types that gravitate to certain beliefs? But then again, are personalities just constructed? And now my mind can go into all this like.
Derek Sivers
Well, okay, hold on. Let me think about this for one second. Oh, I know what it was. Just last week I decided to not get a dog. I had been thinking for weeks about getting a dog and I was leaning towards it very strongly. And just a week ago I spent more introspective time, a couple hours in my journal and also reading all of my past journals and all the other times in the past when I considered getting a dog, and times in the past when I did have a dog reading my journals from back then, and I came to the conclusion that I do not want a dog. I mean, you know, part of me will always want to talk, but the decision to not get a dog. And so what that did is it strengthened my value system, where I highly value being out in the world and like a part of multiple places. Last year, one of the happiest times in my life, like 2023, was one of the best years of my life. Partially because I went to India, to Bangalore and Chennai and met up with 50 people and two of them have become my best friends now, like we talk every single day. And then I went to a place that I previously hated, even though I’d never been there. I had a massive prejudice against Dubai. Dubai, to me, sounded like the worst place on earth. Okay, not worst on Earth, but it sounded like a place I wanted nothing to do with.
Derek Sivers
It sounded like a shallow hashtag, Instagramy influencery, you know, millionaire pandering, crappy place that I never ever want to go to. But then, noticing that prejudice in myself, I decided to challenge that like, okay, that’s not true. So I read two books about United Arab Emirates, the country that Dubai is in, and then one book specifically about the history of Dubai and became fascinated. And then I went there in person, and I loved it because I got under the surface. I talked to people that lived there. I sat down and spent hours with this Emirati Arab dude that taught me so much about Arab culture. And I was like, “Oh my God, I love this place now.” So wow, last year I felt so connected to the world, so energized. And so like, super shy, like, this is my value system. This is what I love. I’m kind of like an anthropologist at heart that I want to be out in the whole world. And so deciding not to get a dog strengthened my value system by reminding me of what I value. You’re like, “Yes, I love dogs, but I love being out in the world more.” Like I’d really like to spend the rest of my life kind of like an anthropologist being out in the world. So that was a very long way to answer your question, that I think, if I can guess off the top of my head, and I’d never thought about it this way before, I think.
Derek Sivers
The moment of deciding that I didn’t actually believe in any spiritual stuff was strengthening my value system of the pragmatic. Which is to say, so what? Like, what would it matter if it’s true or not? Like if somebody says, “Hey, man, did you know that, like, everything we’re in right now is all a big computer simulation?” Whenever anybody says something like that, I go, “So what? How does that affect your actions?” Well, no, man, just think about it like, okay, there. I’ve thought about it. How would that change your actions? Because to me, that’s all what really matters are your actions. And so, are there angels? I don’t know. Is it going to change my actions if you show me some definitive proof? Yes or no? No. It won’t change my actions. Therefore it doesn’t matter. Will it change my actions if there’s life after death? No, I think I would do the same thing. Therefore it doesn’t matter. And that’s what I think the joy might have been. Is it strengthened my value system of realizing that actions are what matter. And these kind of ephemeral beliefs or beliefs in the ephemeral, don’t change my actions. And I need to stay focused on my actual actions. If something changes my actions for the better, like, say, a belief.
Derek Sivers
A deliberate belief that everybody’s doing their best or deliberate belief that everything’s my fault or a deliberate belief that everybody’s generally kind and good. If you find that holding a belief improves your actions for the better, it actually makes you do better things, not just sit there and think that you are better, but actually do something better. Then that’s a good belief to hold. Like goals. Sorry, another tangent or related. This was a mind blower for me. I used to think that goals improve the future, that having goals will shape your future. But there’s no such thing as a future. That’s why we call it the future. Because it doesn’t exist yet, by definition. And so a goal is a good goal if it improves the present moment. And if it doesn’t improve your present moment, it’s a bad goal. That’s the only judge. It’s not whether it’s ambitious or realistic or any of those other adjectives. Does it improve your current actions? Because that’s all that’s under your control right now or your current actions? Not what’s happened already. Not what you’re imagining will happen if it improves your current actions. It’s a good goal. That blew my mind once I realized that. And so I think it’s maybe the same thing with spiritual beliefs. Like, does believing this improve my actions? If yes, then it’s worth holding. If not, then what’s the point of the belief?
Mackenzie
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny how everyone sort of being different in their own context, a certain belief will uphold an action that supports the president. So for me, again, on the other side, probably on the opposite side, a belief in probably in something not really necessarily knowing what helps me currently, let’s say sit down to meditate. But for whatever reason, I’ve linked certain things in my mind. And so therefore it does help me. And then that helps my nervous system calm down and notice all these thoughts and funnily enough, kind of come to similar conclusions that you have, at least in terms of this conversation that we’re talking about, in terms of becoming aware of like what we’re thinking. So it’s funny, different beliefs can kind of lead people to not necessarily the same place, but having a similar or at least in some ways similar peaceful state within, which is actually something that you mentioned at the top of the book, and I think probably at the end as well. So you kind of say a few things in terms of useful, but the third one, I believe you say is if it brings you to a state of inner peace, if I’m saying that correctly.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. What did I say? “Do what you need to do. Be who you want to be or feel at peace.” Yeah. If it makes you feel at peace, sometimes that’s all you need. Especially with reconciling the past. Say things in your past that, like I did with suddenly thinking that everything was my fault. Nothing changed in my actions at that moment, but reframing the past as my fault made me feel more at peace. And that was enough. And I think maybe that’s the same with the belief that a lot of people hold that everything happens for a reason. I think that’s also a way of just making peace with the past, like, “Well, that hurt. But I have to believe that everything happens for a reason, and so some greater benefit will come from that.” Like, there we go. Makes me feel better. That’s a good reason to believe something.
Mackenzie
Yeah. Actually, you have a great story about the woman that you had an accident-- a car. I think it was a car accident. I don’t think it was a bike accident.
Derek Sivers
No car accident.
Mackenzie
And you actually share that because it demonstrated sort of this, like reframing almost of your past. And can you share that? I think it was a great example.
Derek Sivers
Sure. Yeah. That was a wild experience. I was 17/16 driving my first car and yeah, just the end of my street, like, smashed into another car. I just wasn’t looking. There was a yield sign and smashed into the car. And I heard later that the woman I hit was paralyzed and would never walk again. And that was 17 years old. I’m 54 now. I felt horrible for so many years about that. And at the age of 37/38, I decided to basically go find her. And I just wanted to kind of make amends somehow. And so, found her. She still lived in my old town of Hinsdale, Illinois. And she answered the door and I said, “Oh, hi. Are you Tracy?” And and she said, “Yes.” I said, “I’m the one that hit your car 17 years ago.” And she said, “Oh, sweetie, sweetie.” Because I started tearing up and she said, “Oh, come in, come in.” And she walked me into her living room. I’m like, it took me a second to realize, wait a minute, she’s walking. Hold on. And so I wrote down in the book exactly how it went, but like off the top of my head.
Derek Sivers
It turns out that this whole time she thought the car accident was her fault because she was eating while driving. And she said that getting into that accident, like, changed her life for the better, made her realize she’s got to pay more attention to her health and focus more. And so she said, “No, no, no, don’t worry, I’m fine.” And that’s where we realized, like--. And I said, “No, but I hit you.” And she said, “No, no, I hit you.” I said, “Wait, what?” She’s like, “Yeah.” This whole time I was assuming that, that accident was my fault because I said, “No, it was my fault because I wasn’t paying to the attention of the yield sign.” And we realized we’d both been telling this story about the past for so many years and believing it. And it’s just amazing that we hold on to a story about the past as if it’s true. But again, there’s some a few concrete facts and everything else is interpretation. I think the lesson I learned from that is you get to decide when a story is over. Like every movie you’ve ever seen and every book you’ve ever read. Fiction decides when this story ends.
Derek Sivers
Like they start it at this scene. And after this scene, it finishes. That’s part of the storyteller’s job is to decide when to stop. You know what happens after Cinderella and Prince Charming get married? I don’t know. We stopped the story there. Yeah, that’s part of the creative choice in telling the story, is deciding where it ends. And that can be up to you. You can still 17 years later add a new update so that the story is not done or maybe if you had a great relationship with somebody that turned really bad. Maybe you can make your peace with it by just ending the story a little earlier to just say we had a great relationship. It was for those six months. It was wonderful. It was a wonderful relationship for those six months. Somebody could say, “Yeah, but it turned bad afterwards. You know, “Cinderella and Prince Charming. I’m ending the story here, and I’m just going to appreciate what a great relationship that was for six months.” That’s my creative choice and how I’m going to think about that. I’m not going to say it was a failed relationship just because we broke up. I’m going to appreciate it was a great relationship while it lasted. Etc..
Mackenzie
Oh, I love that so much because again, it for me almost the feeling is liberation of of like holding on to just like unnecessary pain that feels like weight in the body or stress in the mind. And why would we choose-- if we can choose the life that we are creating, why would we choose to hold on to that? You can just simply let it go.
Derek Sivers
By the way, that relationship one was a real example. I had an ex that I was with for six and a half years, and again after we broke up, I was mad for a while. It wasn’t until somebody said something about like, “Oh, why did that relationship not work out?” I went and maybe just my rebellious streak. I’m like, “Yes, it did.” I’m like, “It was a great relationship for six years and five months. Of those six and a half years, it was great. It was just what we needed at that time in our lives. And then we went our separate ways. And yeah, the last month turned kind of yeah. But, you know, let’s just forget about that and just say that like it was a really good six year and five month long relationship.” And that was that. I’m not going to say that was a failed relationship. And so yeah, I had to deliberately rewrite that. And I think it’s actually more accurate because most of our experience in that relationship was good. Only the last month was bad. We don’t need to dwell on that. That’s your choice not to.
Mackenzie
Again, I’m curious for you, like, how does that affect you? Because again, for me, it’s that almost like imagery of just like liberation, almost like an armor being taken off the the chest. But how does it affect you?
Derek Sivers
Again, I think it keeps me focused on-- well, I guess that’s making peace with the past. I was going to say it keeps me focused on the practical, the things we can do something about. But no, I think it makes me appreciate more. You know, the most popular example of a useful, not true belief that we’ve all heard of is when somebody is being a jerk in traffic and they’re dashing and they’re darting and they’re tailgating, and you can be mad at them. And we’ve all heard this one before where you say or you can think, what if they have a sick child in the back and they’re trying to race to the hospital? Now, it’s probably not true, but just thinking that for a moment puts you into a more peaceful state of mind. It pulls you out of it, pulls you out of your own noisy monkey mind crap, and reminds you that there are other people with problems in the world. You know, I’d say that it’s concretely better for you to deliberately choose that belief even though it’s not true. So I think that appreciating my past relationship like that, it made me feel better. Yeah, I’m not sure if it actually changed my actions for the better. You didn’t ask me that.
Mackenzie
But it makes you feel better, which might affect your actions, right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Maybe it’s just the-- feeling bad about the past is almost like a little poison pill inside of us. That we’re just holding on to that bitterness and to just reframe it in such a way that there’s no bitterness left yeah. There are some songs that I love that have a bad line in them. Like there’s one lyric in there that’s like, they could have done that better. It’s like, I’m not going to focus on that one line. I’m going to love the rest of the song and just kind of ignore that one line. A long relationship that had a bad ending. We don’t need to focus on the ending. You could just appreciate the good in that relationship and it lets the venom out of you.
Mackenzie
Yeah. While you were sharing this-- by the way, are you okay time wise?
Mackenzie
Yeah, okay. I have a few more questions. It just kind of occurred to me, there’s a few people in my life who it seemed to always choose-- and I’m sure there’s many people in the world probably, unfortunately, a majority who choose to hold on to those negatives. People who get oftentimes sick after holding on, maybe not always, but it’s something I’ve seen, unfortunately, with like older people in my life or maybe in their 70s at this point. Have held on and have chosen and for me it’s been kind of confusing almost. Like we’ll talk with him and I cannot understand why they would choose to frame things in such a way. What are your thoughts on that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’m good.
Derek Sivers
Oh, Mackenzie, I just hours ago finished reading a book on cultural psychology that explains why in some cultures holding on to resentment is the culturally correct thing to do. And they held up Turkish culture as an example, where if somebody and I might be getting this wrong. So, you know, audience, forgive me if you’re an expert on Turkish culture. But they said that in Turkish culture, if somebody wrongs you, by that culture’s rules you should ban that person from your life and never speak to them again. Because letting somebody wrong you and forgiving them is showing a huge weakness, which devalues your status completely. And if you’re known to let somebody walk all over you and forgive them. You’re the lowest of the low socially now. And so in that culture, it is the correct thing to do to hold on to the bitterness and block somebody and never speak to them again if they wrong you. And they even gave another example of a Taiwanese mother who was deliberately shaming her young child, and I mean like two years old saying like, “No, you’re a bad child. Mommy doesn’t want to see you right now. Go away, because you annoy me.”
Derek Sivers
And the cultural psychologist was meeting with this mother and observing this behavior going, “Oh, my God, what are you doing?” And basically the conclusion they came to is in Taiwanese culture, shame is a culturally valued trait, “I am deliberately teaching my child to feel shame because that’s the respectable thing. If somebody doesn’t feel shame in our culture, they’ll be ostracized. Feeling shame is the correct culturally thing to do here. And so I am deliberately teaching my child to feel shame so that she can get along well in this culture.” And like, whoa. So again, all of these things of the mind are not objectively good or bad. We can’t say, “Well, you know, Mackenzie, it is definitely good to let go of resentment. And it is bad to feel ashamed.” No, that’s just that’s just our culture. There are other ways of looking at this.
Mackenzie
Wow and yet, maybe I don’t know if this is fully devil’s advocate sort of side to that. Not really, because what you’re saying doesn’t really have another side. Like if it’s not an emotional thing, it’s just sort of a fact that’s the culture. But, I mean, I’ve also spoken to people of who are who are from parts of China. And with that culture there are things like, let’s say, I think something that in North America, let’s say people who grew up within North America, probably, as you and I both did-- and I’m not sure about Europe. I honestly, I’m still confused about European culture. I’m here now and I’m like, every country seems different. So I don’t know about them. But I know in North America, if someone says like, “Oh, you’re getting fat.” Like, that’s pretty rude for people from Canada or from the USA. At least I know first hand for people who grew up in Hong Kong that there is nothing behind. Apparently, in the culture there’s no emotion behind it. They’re stating facts about or I guess that is probably a fact. I don’t know, however you define that.
Derek Sivers
If you gained weight, you got fat. That could be that could be a fact. Sure.
Mackenzie
Yeah, and yet, at least from some younger girls that I’ve spoken to from there, that it even though it’s part of their culture, it still hurts them in a way that I was a little- I mean, it’s weird, almost to say I’m surprised about that. But I perhaps would have thought, okay, if it’s part of their culture and they’ve grown up in those waters, maybe for them the emotional charge isn’t there. But interestingly, I’ve actually heard the opposite that it is still there and they don’t want to talk to those people. And it’s so it’s very interesting.
Derek Sivers
Where are you now physically?
Mackenzie
I’m in Finland at them moment.
Derek Sivers
That’s what I thought. Um, yeah. Have you, have you heard of Jantelaw?
Mackenzie
No.
Derek Sivers
Okay. J-a-n-t-e-l-a-w. I’m not sure the Finns have it. I know the Swedes have it. I know the Norwegians and Danes have it. Ask around about Jantelaw. It is the Nordic social rule that says you’re nothing special. Don’t think that you’re better than anybody else. So I wonder if the telling somebody as soon as you observe somebody gained weight just saying, “Oh, you got fat.” I wonder if there’s some kind of Jantelaw in that of just like bring everybody down to earth whenever you can. It’s good for you to not think that you’re so special. Let’s knock you down a peg. There’s a version of this called the tall poppy syndrome. You know, that the tall poppy always gets cut down. So maybe there’s this thing about, like, keeping people humble. Maybe if you were to analyze it, or if they were to analyze it, they would think that they’re doing the right thing by knocking their friend down a peg to say, “Hey, you’re getting fat. You know?
Mackenzie
Interesting. Yeah, I’m just kind of sitting with that. It’s so hard. I mean, to speak again to this whole book of yours. It’s so actually hard to take yourself out of your frame. Like to take yourself out of a again, I’ll speak for myself, my Canadian upbringing, which is so polite. I mean, again, the definition of that is debatable, but in the Canadian context, it is very much, you know, you speak nice things, quote unquote “nice things”. Now I’m like questioning every word that I use. But, you know, I speak in a specific way that makes people feel uplifted is perhaps the easiest word to use. And so for me to like, even hear what you just said, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so hard.” It’s like emotional for me to hear that, like take someone down a peg and not being a maybe useful in another context.
Derek Sivers
I read a fascinating book. I can’t believe I don’t remember the name right now. But it was a book about positive nihilism, saying, in short, like, nothing has any meaning and that’s great. I feel a bit like this after diving into this subject more, that if you start realizing that all of these meanings are just culturally projected, that none of them are true, and that even, you know, like we said, like even murder is bad. Well, okay, usually not always. It’s bad to insult somebody. Well, in some situations and in some cultures, you’re doing them a favor by insulting them. Suddenly you get back to nothing, having any inherent meaning and that being liberating because then the next step after you digest that is to just assign the meanings that you choose instead of the ones that you got by default. One of my favorite lines I came up with in the book is, “Your insticts are an obstacle. Your first thought is an obstacle. You have to get past it.”
Mackenzie
I did pull that one.
Derek Sivers
Oh, good. I like that. It’s fun. As a writer, when you’re writing something, you’re just like you’re sitting with your thoughts. You’re like, “Well, the first thought is something you need to get over. Oh, what do you need to get, an obstacle? Your instincts are an obstacle. Oh, I like that.” You know, those are those moments of joy when writing.
Mackenzie
Yeah. All of these questions are seeming like hard to even phrase now, because I’m just so aware of my words. But have you just for the sake of just casual speak, have you found that hard to believe? Like, I mean, how are you practically moving through your day now? Are you are you looking at--
Derek Sivers
How do you do anything if nothing has any meaning?
Mackenzie
I would be sitting here with my brain exploding, I think.
Derek Sivers
Kind of yeah, I spend a lot of time in my journal. I turn to my journal a lot. I turn to conversations with friends a lot. It helps to realize that-- it’s actually the part I was writing. And I’ll go back to writing as soon as we say goodbye. Is that that you don’t have to reframe everything. It’s just when you notice that holding on to a certain viewpoint is disempowering for you. If it’s not working for you, especially if it’s working against you, those are the things that you can reframe. But on the other hand, there are plenty of things that we can believe. Like, all right, hey, maybe it’s my American culture, but I am quite an individualist and I’m quite a positive thinker, and I believe it’s good to be nice to people and all of that. All right, well, those beliefs are working for me, and I know that I can sit down and acknowledge them as handed down by my culture, but, hey, they’re still working for me, so I don’t need to replace those parts. You know, they’re working great. I actually heard an economist I like.
Derek Sivers
His name is Tyler Cowen. He’s a wonderful blogger and podcaster. And somebody asked his thoughts about doing psychedelic drugs and he said, “No, no interest.” He said, “I like my brain. I like the way I think. I understand that the whole point of doing drugs is to change your brain’s patterns. Some people feel it makes them more creative. I’m feeling pretty creative. I like the way my brain is working now. I have no desire to do any drugs because I’m happy with the way my brain is working.” I like that perspective. I never thought about it that way. Like to be. I’m just happy with the way my brain is working now. I don’t think that’s something I need to change. There are other things I might need to change, but that’s not one of them. Same with our beliefs. If your beliefs are working for you, great. You could just keep almost all of them as is, and then just look at the ones when you notice that a belief is holding you back.
Mackenzie
Yeah. And that’s sort of how you conclude at least the draft that I have, which I love. So I again, I don’t know if there’s really an answer to this, but sort of getting more to the closing of this because honestly every example you brought up, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, we could talk about this one, and this one.” Which is true. I love the one about traveling and like how that’s not necessarily running away. And there’s so many and there’s so, so many. And I think you and I probably both really relate to that as people who have lived kind of in different places, have a different lens.
Mackenzie
So as to allow you to go back to writing and not to be here for five hours. Again, I don’t know if there is an answer to this, but if you find something to be disempowering and you’re maybe not like yourself because I think you have, I don’t know. Is it a superpower you developed? Is it your natural way of being? But you seem to be able to sort of let beliefs go. Let beliefs come in, fairly easily. You don’t seem super attached. But I’m thinking of a family member who I’m not very close to. But again, I know his whole story.
Mackenzie
And he just seems attached to disempowering things. And again, like, it’s the same one I was thinking of before. When I was speaking about how it can lead to ill health because now he’s in a place of ill health. And I’m here thinking, I mean, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, obviously. But I’m just thinking-- I believe one of my beliefs at least is that there is a correlation between the mind and the body. And like if we’re holding on to so much disempowerment, it plays its part-- again in my belief system of perhaps some form of illness. And I don’t know if you have advice or whatnot for someone who finds it hard to detach or attach to beliefs that would empower.
Derek Sivers
That’s a good question. I mean, my first thought is that you can’t make somebody else change. They have to get inspired enough. Feel more pain than pleasure from holding on to their beliefs, to the point where they are inspired to do something about it themselves. But I’ll bet you that coaches would have something to say about that. Like people that help people quit smoking or lose weight or quit other bad habits. There are ways of associating very deliberately associating so much pain with something. To say like, “Okay, let’s imagine you keep eating five cookies a day, which seems like nothing now, but hold on let’s count. How many calories is that? Okay. Based on the five cookies per day for the next 365 days per year, you will be gaining on the average of 8 pounds per year. Now let’s go, ten years from now, you’re 80 pounds heavier. Here hold on, let’s go down to the local gym and pick up an 80 pound weight. I want you to just carry this 80 pound weight with you all day long for the next week and realize that’s what you’re doing by having five cookies a day. Think what it’s going to do to die early? Think about your kids that are going to lose their parent sooner.” Uh, You could stack up all these negative associations with eating five cookies, you know, in this very deliberate way to help somebody associate more pain to their behavior than they were before. So imagine that. That might make a difference for some people with habits. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just exposure like prejudice.
Derek Sivers
I would straight up prejudice against Dubai until I went there. I went, “Oh, my God, this place is great. This place has soul. This is the most international city I’ve ever been in in my life.” Oh my God. In fact, I kind of want to live there now because it is the most international place I’ve ever found in my life. And all my life. Let’s say, ever since I was a teenager, I’ve always thrived in the most multicultural locations. You know, I lived in first Boston, then like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Singapore. The more multicultural the place, the happier I am being there because I love the pluralism of it. I love the day to day anthropology of being in a place that has so many different mindsets. Yeah. New York City, Los Angeles, Singapore, London, all of these places are about 35% or so foreign born population. Dubai is like 94% foreign born population, like everybody’s a foreigner there. It’s fascinating. Sorry, prejudice, racism. It’s the classic thing where somebody is racist against the people that they know the least about, and when they get to know them, they go, “Oh. Okay, well, never mind. They’re not so bad.” Actually, we don’t even say racism. They even say prejudice because it could have to do with gay marriage or whatever. You can have prejudice against those people that you know nothing about, but then you get to know them. You go, oh, “Okay. Never mind.” So that’s not associating pain with a bad belief. That’s just. What is that? No, it’s just updating your mental model of the world.
Mackenzie
Right.
Derek Sivers
I don’t know, but how can we do that for somebody else? Maybe if you find that this, family member is extremely racist and holding on to that, well, then maybe it’s a good time to, you know, look who’s coming for dinner.
Mackenzie
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Or somebody who’s very prejudiced against-- I actually still have some prejudice against China right now. Okay, mostly a fear. It seems like a very intimidating place to me. And so my boy’s school holiday is coming up in a month from next week. And I asked him where he wants to go for his school holidays, and he said, China. So a month from next week, I’ll be in China for ten days with him. And I’m really looking forward to that. You know. I hope that’s yet another prejudice I can overcome.
Mackenzie
I love that and that brings me beautifully. I thought it was going to be a left turn, but it’s not because you did it for me. I was going to say, we’ve been talking about belief. You’ve been talking about “Useful Not True”. And you said the book will be-- to be determined because you’re still writing it.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. This year.
Mackenzie
Later when it is, I’ll go back and I’ll link everything up. But for now, I’ll link your website. But actually I was thinking, oh, it’s going to be a bit of a left turn, but I wanted to end with this because I knew your words would be great either way, but now it’s not. I wanted to ask you because you do have such this like from everything you’ve written. I’ve seen that you have this like distinct relationship with your son almost as compared to other people perhaps in your life, you spend a lot of time with him, you put a lot of time in with him, and I just sort of open endedly wanted to close with asking you, maybe as of late or whatever comes to mind, what it is that you’ve learned from this relationship that you have with your son?
Derek Sivers
Everything I’ve learned has been very specific to him. That’s why I don’t write about parenting much. Some people said, “Hey, you should write a book about parenting.” No no.
Mackenzie
What about yourself, then? Is there something you’ve learned about yourself via this dynamic?
Derek Sivers
I think it’s the surrender. What I’ve been doing since he was born is I’m not on duty full time. Like I’m not with him 24 hours a day. But when I am with him, I shut down everything. I physically hold down the power button on my phone and turn it off, go to the computer, shut it down completely. I don’t just close the lid, I power down, shut off everything and give him my full, undivided attention. And that’s been so good for me as well. It’s been great for our relationship. He knows how much I care about him because I show him that he’s important. Although maybe that’s bad in Taiwanese culture. It’s been great for me, though, because it’s kind of like meditation that when I’m with him, everything else ceases. All my ambitious thoughts or thoughts of my work, I’ll toss them in the river and they’ll maybe come back someday. I don’t try to hold on to them. I just let go of all my work thoughts and just give them my full attention. So it’s been kind of like daily meditation since he was born, that all of my time with him is like meditative time.
Mackenzie
Wow. That’s beautiful I love that it seems like a very, I don’t know if this word suits you, but to me, it seems like a very, like, sacred relationship.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah.
Mackenzie
Even as someone who’s unsubscribed.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And it’s paid off, too. I mean, that sounds crass, but like, he’s 12 now, and we have such a great relationship and at every stage ever, you know, when he was one year old, people say, “Oh, just wait till the terrible twos.” And no, he was greatNat every step along the way. You know, even when he was five, somebody said, “Oh, just you wait. Once they turn eight, you’ll see.” Then they said, “Oh, you know, you wait till he’s a teenager.” Well, he’s almost a teenager now. And he and I have just been super close and just so great the whole time. And I think it’s because of this full attention. Like, I hear him fully, you know what I mean? I hear everything he’s saying. We have really open hearted talks every day about whatever’s on his mind. He feels very seen and understood. So there’s none of this need to throw a tantrum in order to get attention, you know? So it’s great.
Mackenzie
Wow. That’s incredible. And I guess to finally link it back actually to your book, it’s like you didn’t allow these beliefs of other people to be superimposed on yourself.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, exactly. A healthy, rebellious disbelief of, cynical disbelief of everything that everybody says around you. Yeah. See.
Mackenzie
Yeah. And that’s how it brought you that usefulness, that piece actually within your relationship. So, yeah, I guess the cool thing about this book is that you can actually tie anything to it because there’s never--
Derek Sivers
I’m going to have to stop writing it at some point. You know, I’m such a minimalist. I’m always trying to subtract instead of add, but at some point I’m going to have to just say, “All right, that’s that’s enough.” I like that we have that. We say we release a book. You know, the book will be released on this date. It’s a nice double meaning of that word. Right? Let it go. Let it go out into the world.
Mackenzie
Yeah. Let it out. So you are in a fairly easy person to find because of your not being, let’s say, scattered all over the place. You are simply at your website.
Derek Sivers
Go to my website, sive.rs. That’s me. And not really on the socials, but go to my website, send me an email. That’s how I met Mackenzie. And then you know what my favorite thing is like for the people that I think are really cool, we end up meeting in person. So yeah. Audience I last saw Mackenzie in Oxford, England when I was living there, and she was passing through and we hung out for a few hours in the afternoon. I took her to my favorite, like classic English pub in a grassy field somewhere and-- so beautiful.
Mackenzie
So beautiful. I loved that. The whole pub culture to me is is beautiful. It’s so different than.
Derek Sivers
Yes. I was so surprised because growing up, I hate bars. Like growing up in America. Yeah. Bars, yuck. I just assumed that pub was just a word for a bar. But no, you get to England, you realize oh, it’s a very different thing. Pubs are these warm, cozy, friendly places where you bring your family and have good food and they’re just happy social places. I love them.
Mackenzie
So different than I remember there being a dog there. I don’t know why I remember that, but I remember there being a dog not far from our table and I was like, oh, that’s cool.
Derek Sivers
Like, actually, it might have been my dog. Did I have my dog with us or.
Mackenzie
Did you have a big dog? Because my mom--
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. There you go. That’s my big dog. But yeah, pubs almost always have-- people bring their dog to the pub. I love that too. It might be my single favorite thing about England, surprisingly, is that the pub culture, the dogs.
Mackenzie
Yeah, I actually ended up living-- I don’t think you need to know this. But I think it was after we met a few months later, I ended up living in a smaller village, actually in England in the--
Derek Sivers
Oh you did tell me this.
Mackenzie
I did okay. And yeah, I thought the pub just--. This is like a very random conclusion of this episode, but it’s fun. There is this, like, beautiful pub in the sort of the center of that little village. There is not much else, honestly but there is this pub and people would come together at like the holidays, you would just hear people singing. Even if you weren’t there, you would hear people singing and gathered. And I was like, this is so cool. Like, this is nothing I would have seen in Toronto growing up. At all. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
What was the name of the village you lived in Cotswolds.
Mackenzie
Adderbury, outside of Banbury.
Derek Sivers
Oh, wow.
Mackenzie
So you might know Banbury. It’s a little bit bigger. Adderbury’s a village.
Derek Sivers
God I love that whole--. It’s one of my few regrets in life. I regret that we left Oxford. I was a legal resident of the UK. I owned a house, had a dog and then Covid hit. And remember there was just no telling how long this was going to last and we’d only been there a year. We didn’t have a lot of friends, we were mostly there for the school and the travel and school was shut down and we couldn’t travel. And yet we were citizens of New Zealand, which was one of the only Covid free places on earth. So we just kind of had to make this decision like, “Well, yeah, let’s go back.” So we moved back to New Zealand, lost my UK resident status and we miss it. We all miss it. My boy misses his school there. I miss the pub culture clearly. And just just living there. It’s a great place to go cycling. I like English weather. I like the grey drizzling skies. It makes me really happy. For some reason I am not happy in those really hot Mediterranean places because they just make me want to hide in the shade. But when the weather is kind of overcast and a little drizzly, it makes me want to go outside. Yeah, I miss it. Oh, well.
Mackenzie
Yeah, also for you’re writing. I think.
Derek Sivers
Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. But see, that’s one of those things like I can say this right now and that’s a classic case of like knowing that I’m feeling like I have that regret and made a mistake. I’d go pick that apart in my diary and I’d say, “All right, why am I feeling like things would be better if I was still living there? Can I make this place?” It’s all about asking yourself these questions, right. Like can I take what I love about that and make it happen here? Or can I just appreciate that? Or what’s another way I can get that benefit? Or what was the benefit that I was really feeling or how could I? You know, you can keep challenging these things until you come to some more empowering way of looking at it that might make you actually jump out of your seat and go make something happen where you are, instead of just regretting something that didn’t, you know anyway.
Mackenzie
For sure. Last summer I lived in this. I mean, still in this country, but I lived in this place that I disliked for many reasons. And ultimately I was like, well, I cannot as long as I’m living-- which is not long. I was doing maybe 1 or 2 months or whatnot, but I was like, as long as we’re here, I cannot add my mental, like my negativity onto it. Like it’s already for me not the best. So why would I add my negativity onto it? And so I ended up using that time as like a very powerful, basically personal growth time. Because if there was nothing that I loved in my surroundings, then perhaps my inner world could get richer and could sort of fill that out.
Derek Sivers
Yep. That’s a conclusion that I’ve come to with New Zealand, which is like, I like the people here, but I haven’t really clicked into the local culture. And at first I felt bad about that. And then I spent some time deliberately reframing and I went, “Oh, this is a good thing. This is a great place for me to be working.” Because if I was living in, say, whether it’s Dubai or Bangalore right now, oh my God, I’d be so distracted with all the people around me that I’m fascinated with, I’d never get anything done. How cool that I’m in a place where I’m not really clicking with the local culture. Lucky me.
Mackenzie
Right.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, reframing. I got it. If you think of a good subtitle for the book, anybody let me know. I think I got to put the word reframing in there somewhere. It’s definitely called “Useful Not True”. But for the subtitle, I think I need to put the word reframing in there somewhere, because that’s really what it’s all about.
Mackenzie
It is. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Would it be funny to do a one word subtitle? Useful Not True.
Mackenzie
Reframe?
Derek Sivers
Reframing. Nobody does a one word subtitle. Subtitles are always longer than the title.
Mackenzie
Well, you have been known to do things differently, so.
Derek Sivers
That might just be confusing. Anyway, thanks for having me. Anybody listening, email me. Say hello. Mackenzie, keep in touch.
Mackenzie
Yeah. Thank you so much, Derek. This was just incredible. So nice to catch up with you in this public way for other people’s benefit as well.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I think we’re using this as an excuse to catch up. It had been too long.
Mackenzie
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
All right. Take care.