Modern Wisdom
#900 - 11 Lessons From 900 Episodes - Alex Hormozi, Mark Manson & Winston Churchill
Sat, 08 Feb 2025
To celebrate 900 episodes of Modern Wisdom, I broke down some of my favourite lessons, insights and quotes from the last hundred episodes. Expect to learn what unteachable lessons are, why we decide to learn lessons the hard way over and over again, why money won’t make you happy and fame won’t fix your self worth, why you might regret working too much, what it takes to choose a good partner, 5 questions to ask yourself if you’re unsure about any relationship you have, why men can be frustrating at times and how to understand them better, how to make marriage and easy yes for someone, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a 20% discount & free shipping on Manscaped’s shavers at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM20) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are unteachable lessons and why do we learn them the hard way?
All right, what's happening, people? Welcome back to the show. It is the 900th episode of Modern Wisdom. Big number. Didn't think that I would do 900 of anything. I don't know whether I ever have done 900 of anything, but today I'm going to go through some lessons I've learned over the last 100 episodes from life and from reading and from the show and from other stuff.
So you're going to get to learn that. You're also going to get to indulge in this beautiful facial hair for a while. I don't know how long this moustache will last. So it's a limited time offer for you to be able to enjoy it. So bask in the reflective glory of my upper lip and let's get into it.
So the first one, I was trying to put a name to this idea for a while and I came up with Unteachable Lessons. It's a special category of lesson, one that you can't discover without experiencing it firsthand. So there is a certain subset of advice that for some reason, we all refuse to learn through instruction.
No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it's going to be, for us to find out for ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings that we get from our elders and songs and literature and historical catastrophes and public scandals. And instead, we think some version of, yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me.
We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way over and over again. And unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things too. It's never insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about.
Things like money won't make you happy, or fame won't fix your self-worth, or you don't love that pretty girl she's just hot and difficult to get, or nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. You will regret working too much. Worrying isn't improving your performance. All of your fears are a waste of time. you should see your parents more.
You'll be fine after the breakup and you'll be grateful that you did it. It's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life. And even listening to that list back, I find myself sort of rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is because they are all basic bitch, obvious insights that everybody has heard before.
But if they're so basic, why does everybody so reliably fall prey to them consistently throughout our lives? And if they're so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim those facts with the sort of renewed, grandiose ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious revelation?
It's strange that stuff everybody kind of accepts as being true, we all are surprised about when it happens to us. And the other thing is, it is a very contentious list of points to say on the internet.
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Chapter 2: Why doesn't money or fame make you happy?
All right, some more dating stuff. This is insight from Chris Bumstead. Awesome episode with him last year. And I was asking him about how to choose a good partner, how to know when you've sort of found the one. And Chris said, find someone who you just feel safe being a burden to. You're not going to intentionally be a burden, but sometimes you suck, you know? Sometimes you're a burden.
And even if you don't feel safe being like that around your partner, if you have to withhold things from them and put on that show, you're never going to feel safe around them and you're not going to want to be there for them as much when they're being a burden as well. You just become these two people dividing and conquering all of your problems rather than taking on the world together.
I think I always felt like I wanted to be great at everything I did and great at what I pursued. And I never expected to be as good as I was. So it would just be such an interesting relief to be able to give myself to think you are going to be great. You are going to have all these things that you want, but you're also going to realize that they're not as important as you think they are.
You're going to come to the realization where your relationships and your values and everything you enjoy and experience aren't going to come down to spectacular moments on stage. They're going to be much simpler than that. They're just going to be these moments where you're being yourself and the people who love you for that are going to be everything. It's awesome.
You know, this guy who has conquered the sport, has sort of defined an entire generation of bodybuilders, and then bowed out at 30, is able to say, completed it, but even in the process of completing it six times in a row. the big wins weren't the big wins.
The big wins were the little ones and they were the shares and the opportunity for me to celebrate what I'd done with people who cared about me, who knew me. And it's great and magnificent and impressive and all the rest of it. But it wasn't what mattered. You know, a successful career in a terrible marriage can make your life miserable.
An average career in an amazing marriage can make your life delightful. So you need to choose wisely. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Look, it's officially 2025 and that business idea that you've been thinking about for ages is collecting dust on the shelf. It is time to do the thing. Here's the good news.
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