Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: Money is a tricky thing because money corrupts society. And most people basically have set up that more is better, more is better, and we measure things in money and value and the value of your company and the value of your business. And in reality, if you focus exclusively on money, you miss the journey. You miss what this is all about. After a certain amount of money, and everybody is a little different, but it's a lot less than people think, it doesn't really affect your lifestyle. And at some point, it affects how people treat you, and it affects your kids. It affects what you're going to do with it, your responsibility with it. It affects all of it. I think money is one of those things that is a privilege to have. But if you're not careful, it can change you. Or more importantly, it can make you so addicted that you spend the rest of your life accumulating something that is worthless beyond a point. We trade all our time for money, that's what we're doing. We work our butts off for money. And at some point, if you keep doing that, you'll end up realizing that you completely missed the point. And that when you make enough money, you use that money to give you back your time. One of the things back to this point of 39 and 57, I was big into time and that's why we have all these principles around time and how do I think about compounding time and all these things that are kind of weird. But in the last couple of years, I realized that time is actually a subcomponent of something more interesting or more important, which is our energy. I only want to invest my energy in things that give me multiple currencies back. And I'm very aware of my energy. If I'm with somebody and I feel like it drains my energy, it's like, you know what, I'm not doing that again. Or wow, I love my energy with this person in this situation, then you lean into that energy, right? So I'm very thoughtful of today is like I just want good energy in my life.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S0: Had someone that just tweaked my lower back, likely due to my rising age, how have your views on your body changed? [00:00:00] S1: I think the body -- it's like heart. Heart disease starts in your 20s, it doesn't show up until your 50s. And heart, specifically, for example, there's nothing you can do to reverse it. You can slow it down. We abuse our bodies because we can take it. But once you get into 45, 50, 55, the same thing that's happening to your thinning hair or to whatever it is on your body, it's happening to your organs. It's happening to everything. You and I are both friends with Peter Attia, but I really want to live really well. I want to age as well as I can, given the gene code I got. And for that, I need to take care of myself. So I'm probably 50 pounds lighter than I was when my kids were born, and it's been five pounds a year for the better part of 10 years. I want to enjoy my life at the end. But not for any other reason. I don't want to be the healthiest guy in the cemetery either. I think life is to be enjoyed in balance and all those things. [00:00:00] S0: Can you draw the contrast between good and well?
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: That's my favorite new thought. I think in life, things are good. Like people are, I'm good or business is good and all these things. And that's okay, that's a reflection of externalities or what's happening in the world. I've been through some pretty difficult personal things in the last couple of years. And I have found the notion of people will ask me how are things, "Oh, they're good." I'm like, I'm lying. They're not good, they're horrible. They're actually really, really not good. And what I realized -- but even though they were not good, I felt well. I felt well because I was dealing with all the circumstances in the best way I could. And I was finding a tremendous amount of insight and peacefulness in that growth that I was having on how it was showing up. And I realized, wow, this is what the part of well-being comes from. If you think about well-being, it's really two different words because they're connected when we say them, we think about it as one thing. And if you look at the definition of well-being, it makes no sense. It's like double talk. But if you couple those two words, well is actually that feeling that you get a peacefulness inside, that connection to your soul. That sense that you are showing up the way you want to show up, that you're in control. That you're your own best friend. That no matter what's happening in the world, nothing can change that feeling inside. And that, to me, has been the biggest realization of the last two years. It's like I am really well. And I am well because, you know what, I'm kind to myself. I like my life. I do the best I can. I screw up all the time, I laugh on myself. And then being is the one that I find so interesting. We were talking about goals and no goals and the value of goals. And think about another one is like we spend all our time doing things. We have to-do lists. Everything is a do. Society rewards us for accomplishing things for 450 podcasts, for this and that. That's doing. And what you realize when you get to my age is like being, it's like a much better state of mind. Being is a place where there's nothing to do, where you're actually doing things for no reason at all. You're doing it because you feel connected to whatever it is. And it's really hard when you spend 110% of your time doing, to find the muscle and find the space to start being.
· Ric Elias, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
And well-being is a place where you feel really settled inside and you spend the time you want just feeling connected to whatever you want to be connected to. And you suspend all the societal bulls*** that we give so much power to, that manipulates the way that we think the world wants us to show up. So to me, this is like a really interesting journey, and I think I'm early in this journey. My hope is in the next 10, 20 years, is die peacefully, will be understanding that I became super clear on how to live life the way that I think my soul was intended to live. [00:00:00] S0: How would you assess a peer group? Let's say a group of financially successful people that appear on the covers of magazines or something, how many of them are well or are thinking about this?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S0: How would you assess a peer group? Let's say a group of financially successful people that appear on the covers of magazines or something, how many of them are well or are thinking about this? [00:00:00] S1: I don't know many people that are well. I think everybody is on a journey, but you and I know a lot of people that are in those magazines. And it's not that they don't have well moments, and it's not like their good is a bad thing either, but it's just really hard for our egos, it's really hard for what others may say of us, it's really hard for society's value to put on us not to affect us. And the fact that you're in the cover of a magazine tells you something. Vanity is life's greatest sin. A little bit of this, you got to decide what it is, but it can become you. You can't put that inside of you. And I think we're all in some struggle, in some journey to find our connection to ourselves. And crisis usually reveals that. And that was, to me, the big transition for me is this crisis is giving me a perspective of like true appreciation of the really nice things you and I get to do every day. The rest will come and go. [00:00:00] S0: You were in a very high-profile crisis once, in the plane that Sully landed on the Hudson River. I think in the front row seat. Can you describe the last five minutes of that experience? [00:00:00] S1: The experience, I think, was 3.5 minutes. So I think you're like a little... [00:00:00] S0: The whole thing?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S0: The whole thing? [00:00:00] S1: The whole thing was 3.5 minutes. So look, it's the greatest gift one can get. It's the greatest gift to know that you're going to die. [00:00:00] S0: Were you certain of that?