Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: I have sort of a wild follow-up question. So I'm an investor, and my focus is on investing in people that are doing what we call their life's work. And our definition is very simple: it's a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. And we were wondering, like what are the natural limits of this? Steve Jobs because he was doing his life's work and look at the impact that it's had. What is the highest form of self-expression? And I wondered if it was like Jesus and Buddha, the people whose ideas or work has reverberated most through history. And you said you had never seen anyone that actually got to this definition. Do you think maybe the only ones that have are like the world's religious historical figures or something?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: It's possible that of all the candidates that Jesus was one who, the day before he died, was most authentically himself. I think you're right, that would be a good definition or a good role model. In terms of what are the limits, your question was, would the ideal person look like that was doing that. And I could be wrong, but for me, I think what we will find is that they will be themselves unlike other people. Not like a Jesus, not like a Buddha because those, again, those are niches that are occupied by them. And the whole point of being authentic is it's going to be slightly different and weird. And the way I say is, do you want to invent a new definition of success? That's what your life should be. Your life should be inventing a new definition of success. That success should have its own metrics that are going to be different from then Steve Jobs' metrics. If they aren't different, then they haven't really achieved that thing of being authentically unique. Or what I would be looking for is looking for people who really had a completely different definition of success. What I tell people is that there are a lot of people whose definition of success are very different than what we normally associate with success. And we don't know about them, and that's part of their definition of success. They may be a huge success, and maybe people outside their family don't even know who they are, but they are just incredibly successful in their own lives because fame was not part of that definition. And so this doesn't mean that everybody has become famous and quite the contrary.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: We think about often the goal here of becoming fully yourself as being so obviously true, but the reality that, like you said, almost nobody does it by definition means that the impediments are enormous, the counterforces are enormous. So what in your experience are those things that most commonly stop people from getting down this path?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: I think that the #1 thing is following other people's definition of success, is being swayed by other people's definition of success. And that's so hard to let go of. It's so hard to surrender the idea that unless you have $1 million by the time you're 30, whatever it is, that you're not successful. That's a very narrow, well-trodden niche and is likely holding you back from your true greatness and your true benefit and your true authentic self and your best self because it's probably going to look very different. And so we have these role models like a Steve Jobs. So a lot of people want to be Steve Jobs. Wrong. So -- no. So first of all, he was a jerk. Having met him a couple of times, he was a jerk. He was a brilliant jerk, a genius jerk. You don't want to be him. And I think just trying to let go of and overcome the cliches, the assumed cultural biases that we have on what it is, that, to me in my opinion, has been what I see is the largest impediment to people achieving this because a lot of really authentic success may not look like that to us, to everybody else around you. You don't own a car. You're walking everywhere, whatever it is. And you're saying, I don't think that's successful. And part of it is you're educating people about that, other people so that you have the kind of support that you need or else ignoring it. But it's a very, very difficult thing to let go of and to surrender the assumptions and the prejudices that we have of what that looks like.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S0: Do you think that -- surrender is a powerful word. Do you think that surrender is a big part of this, that the key step is accepting the things that you want may not be the things that other people want, and that's hard? [00:00:00] S1: Yes. And I have a little bit of wisdom in the book saying, the thing that made you weird as a kid, it'll make you great as an adult if you don't lose it. And the problem is that most of the time, you're losing it, you just beat it out of you. You're weird. Who wants to be weird, right? I think surrendering is one aspect of it, but I would say something else, and this is the paradox, that you cannot truly become yourself by yourself. You can only become unique with the help of everybody else. That is the paradox, all right? It's like it's not like you're going to become unique on your own. No, it never happens. It takes everybody to make you unique. You can't do it by yourself. And that is, again, because we are opaque to our own selves, and we need the friends, family, clients, colleagues, customers to show us what we are becoming, to show us who we are. We can't see it by ourselves. We can't get there by ourselves. We need this help. So that is, again, the paradox. The paradox is the only way you can become somebody unique and different from everybody else is by relying on everybody else to help you do it. And so this is not a matter of, okay, you're just going to ignore everybody, that anything says, and you're on your own. You're not going to get there.
· Kevin Kelly, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Yes. And I have a little bit of wisdom in the book saying, the thing that made you weird as a kid, it'll make you great as an adult if you don't lose it. And the problem is that most of the time, you're losing it, you just beat it out of you. You're weird. Who wants to be weird, right? I think surrendering is one aspect of it, but I would say something else, and this is the paradox, that you cannot truly become yourself by yourself. You can only become unique with the help of everybody else. That is the paradox, all right? It's like it's not like you're going to become unique on your own. No, it never happens. It takes everybody to make you unique. You can't do it by yourself. And that is, again, because we are opaque to our own selves, and we need the friends, family, clients, colleagues, customers to show us what we are becoming, to show us who we are. We can't see it by ourselves. We can't get there by ourselves. We need this help. So that is, again, the paradox. The paradox is the only way you can become somebody unique and different from everybody else is by relying on everybody else to help you do it. And so this is not a matter of, okay, you're just going to ignore everybody, that anything says, and you're on your own. You're not going to get there. [00:00:00] S0: Why do you suggest that people prototype their life versus drawing up grand plans?