Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· 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?
· Ric Elias
[00:00:00] S1: 100% certain. It was either I'm going to blow up, and that will be a lot better than breaking into pieces in January 15 in the Hudson River in New York and freezing in 40 seconds. If you were given those two options, I think blowing up is better. And then you have 90 seconds to say goodbye to your life with no suffering, zero suffering. And then on the other side of this, no one dies. So you can talk about it and celebrate it and understand it at a time where our country was in incredible crisis. We were coming out of the financial crisis of '08. This country was in a low place, looking for a story. So we were really lucky that we had the most incredible pilot on that seat that day that in many ways -- and we can talk about him. He'd been preparing for that moment his whole life. He was a gliding instructor. Later on, I've gotten to know him really well. And you say that you're only a pilot when you lose an engine. Otherwise, you're just managing the autopilot or whatever the inputs in the computer. In that day, it was a New York cold day. I was coming home to Charlotte. And my biggest concern was landing and coaching my son's basketball practice. And as we take off, there's a large explosion in the plane. Bang! Half asleep, as you're taking off, you realize -- I look at the flight attendant. And I'm in 1D, so I can see the flight attendant, there's nothing in their face, just like annoyance of like there's going to be whatever because we turned the plane right away, and nothing is happening. Smoke is coming in. You can hear the engine struggling, but you think we're just going to go back landing. We're not that high, probably 3,000, 4,000 feet high. And then all of a sudden, Sully gets on the microphone says, "This is your captain," so he identifies himself and he says three words. The only three words he said, and this was the moment. He says, "Brace for impact." The movie is actually very true to a lot of it and especially to this. But at that moment, I look back at the flight attendant, Patrick, and then all of a sudden there's complete terror in her eyes. She's like, holy cow, in training, this is we are not landing at an airport. I don't know that, but I can see her eyes, and I know that, that's what it means. And the great gift at that day was 90 seconds to literally say it's over.
· Ric Elias, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I am sitting there going like, oh, my goodness, it's over. Not only is it over and then some people, you may have a near-death experience of a second or two seconds. This is a minute and a half to basically sign off from life. And that's, for me, been super formative. Previous to this last year and a half, it was a real moment of kind of resignation in life. And lots of things happened from how have I dealt with spiritual beliefs from that time all the way to how it did impact my life. And I did that TED Talk not knowing that it would ever get published. But by the way, it was the greatest gift I gave myself because people talk about it. And it's a reminder of me, of a promise I made to myself that day, which is I was not going to let that experience. Someday, I want it to be a part of me, not something that happened to me. I've tried to live very hard and very consciously of the gift I got that day. [00:00:00] S0: Can you remember sequentially what went through your head in those 90 seconds?