The Certainty Of Unexpected Chaos

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I've spent a long time on this podcast talking to all of you about the certainty of unexpected chaos. And that sounds like an oxymoron—certainty, unexpected—but life is full of it. If you've lived, you'll know that. It's not the ebb and flow of life that risks displacing us; it's the certain but unexpected chaos that arrives suddenly, unwelcome, and without prior warning.

The type of chaos so unimaginable that we didn't want to prepare for it, and we couldn't. Because of our lack of preparation, significant chaos relies solely on your reaction. In the last couple of weeks, chaos showed up again in the form of a global pandemic, one like we've never seen before.

That has meant for the last couple of weeks, as the CEO of a large multinational company, I've been having to make a lot of tough decisions. I've had to focus now more than any time before. That’s also meant that this podcast has taken a back seat in my list of priorities, if I'm honest.

But I also realize that if there was ever a time for the world to see my diary, for you guys to tune into me and my thinking, surely it's now. Surely now is the time for me to share with you what I'm thinking, how I'm coping, and how I think we can get through this together.

I believe there's really one thing, above all others, that can help us get through this period more than any other thing. I think that will become clear in today's podcast. There's so much pain, uncertainty, and confusion out there right now, and I'm hoping today's episode might, in some way, help you to relieve a little bit of yours.

This is a different episode for the very different times that we're living in, but I think you need to hear this because I did. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is *The Diary of a CEO*. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Isolation is a very funny thing. Right now, the whole world is pretty much locked in relative isolation. We can't go to restaurants, we can't see our friends, we can't go outside and socialize. When you're in isolation, your mind can go one way or the other. We're not used to it.

But I know someone that is: a guy called Shaka Senghor. He was locked in isolation in prison for seven years in a small six-by-nine-foot solitary confinement cell. He wrote a letter, which I'm going to read to you, which speaks to the correct mindset and also the incorrect mindset when you're in a period of isolation.

Here is the letter: "For seven years, I spent every waking moment inside a six-by-nine-foot solitary confinement cell. For years, I witnessed the men around me suffer the mental anguish of being in an environment designed to crush souls. For the first two years, I suffered alongside them. I was anxious, I was stressed out, and I was deeply depressed until I discovered the root cause of my state of being."

"An indeterminate sentence in solitary confinement. I simply didn't know when, or if, I was ever going to be released. Not knowing when the torture would end nearly drove me to the brink of insanity. Every time an officer, counselor, or anybody approached my door, my body would tense up and my palms would start sweating profusely. 'Is this the day that my nightmare is going to be over?' I would tell myself silently."

"When they whisked past my cell, my heart would sink into my stomach and my mind would drift deeper and deeper into depression. What I learned in the two years to follow was that I was trying to control something that I had no control over, and I suffered as a result."

"In my third year, I began to journal. I discovered that my thoughts and my actions were the only two things I could control, and this was a pivotal moment in my life. I went from being the victim of my circumstances to being the master of my destiny. I had stopped worrying about when this prison administration would let me out, and I started focusing my energy on becoming the best version of myself."

"I realized that I could turn my prison cell into a space of enlightenment, one of creativity and higher learning. It wasn't easy, but with hard work, dedication, and a commitment to come out on the other side of this pain and this hell as a whole, I was able to do it. And it really all starts with your thoughts."

That's the letter written by Shaka Senghor, who spent seven years in solitary confinement. For many people, adjusting to this new reality that we've found ourselves in isn't going to be easy. We've had to make tremendous lifestyle adjustments. It’s scary; it makes us feel uncertain.

We know that businesses are being destroyed, the stock market has plummeted, and many of you are caring for family members. With all of this going on, it can feel incredibly scary. Even though people don't like to hear me say this because of the context we're in, there are upsides here.

I'm not saying to ignore the downsides, but there are upsides in every form of chaos that arrives in your life, whether it's a learning moment or an opportunity to pivot and change.

There's an opportunity for us to grow spiritually, become more resilient mentally, and to become healthier physically. I would really focus a lot of your light central energy on that. That's what I'm doing. Before I get into the real granular details, there are five things that I'm incredibly focused on at the moment.

The first is meditation. Once upon a time, like a lot of you listening to this now, I thought meditation was hocus-pocus, airy-fairy bullshit. But the way that I meditate is simply by creating a moment of stillness in the day. A great time to do that is at the start of the day when you wake up.

The mind is awash with nightmares and your subconscious worst thoughts in moments like this. So if you're having trouble sleeping or you're having nightmares, I would certainly recommend that you meditate. Just create a moment of stillness in the morning where you focus on your breathing. Whatever that might be for you—it could be with your music playing—just focus on your breathing.

The second thing is you have to write, journal, and podcast. Whatever your medium is of expressing yourself, you have to be doing that. I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail.

Third, you have to be exercising. You're exercising not because you want to look great when we pop back up in summer, but because exercise is incredibly good for the mind.

At a time when there's very little that we can do because of government restrictions, exercise remains one. It's the only thing we can do outside. I would be making the most of your opportunities to exercise right now and really trying, if you can, to do that in nature.

The other thing that I'm intensely focused on is enjoying a process where I get to un-optimize my life for once. What I mean by un-optimizing is, you know, we spend so much of our lives optimizing our time away so that we can fill it with more things to be busy with.

We don't walk to work because we can get an Uber; we don't cook food because we can order it online. For most of us—and I'm excluding the brilliant NHS staff and key workers on the front line—for most of us that have these long extended weekends where we can't really do much socially outside, getting back to basics and un-optimizing our lives has been a real pleasure.

It's almost like a lost pleasure, and it's one that I've come to appreciate. Through this period, that is something that we can enjoy because it's an opportunity we don't get often. For me, it's been a really good way for me to remember some of the things that I sacrificed that I wish I hadn't.

And lastly, one of the most essential things you can do at a time where structure and routine has been torn out of our lives is to start habit tracking. For me, I use an app called Streaks. It’s really, really simple. I write the five, six, or ten habits into this app that I want to do every single day.

Every single day that I achieve those habits, I just click on them. It gives me a bit of reinforcement, and what I'm doing is building a streak of days that I've followed through with that particular habit. This gamifies the process. I use it for everything from making sure I exercise every day to making sure I eat healthy. I would highly recommend it.

The second point in my diary today is again about surviving chaos. I've just written "How to survive the chaos of life," and I've gone into a number of real practical ways that have taken me from being an 18-year-old dropout with no money to where I am now as the head of this global company.

The first point I've written here is "thinking about your thinking." I spend so much time imploring people to keep a journal or to start a podcast or to blog. If you can't afford an on-hand psychological therapist, like most people can't, it's the cheapest and most cost-effective way to become your own therapist.

You have to develop the habit of thinking about your thinking, which is something I don't think people talk about enough. I have to credit a clinical psychologist here called Nick Wignall for this, but psychologically, when someone is healthy and effective, they think about their thoughts. They break them down, they analyze them, and they draw useful conclusions from them.

In technical terms, this is called metacognition. It means you're aware of the fact that you're thinking things and able to assess the quality and usefulness of your thinking continually.

For example, psychologically unhealthy or ineffective people often say things like, "I just got so worried and I couldn't stop thinking all the bad things that might happen, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a panic attack." In reality, worry is something that you do, not something that happens to you.

It's a habitual pattern of thinking that leads to tremendous overwhelming anxiety and stress. But without the habit of thinking about your thinking, it feels like something that just happens to you.

On the other hand, if you have a habit of thinking about your thinking, you'd notice that worry is actually an activity and something that we do, something that we engage in. As a result, it's something we can, with practice, not do, or at least not do nearly as often.

When you're curious about your thoughts, it's a lot easier to work with them instead of fighting against them. And it's our thoughts that ultimately determine our actions. And it's our actions that determine our outcome. So really, it's just all about your thoughts, like Shaka said in his letter.

If we're not analyzing our thoughts and intervening and correcting our cognitive processes on a regular basis in a diary or in a podcast, then it's incredibly easy for you to fall into a negative cycle of thinking. We see these negative confidence cycles everywhere.

They’re one of the main causes of things like imposter syndrome. When someone tries something, they go for a job interview, the outcome is bad, they don't get the job, so they start telling themselves that they are not capable or they are not enough.

Like the lobsters in Jordan Peterson's book *12 Rules for Life*, this has a psychological effect and a physiological effect. These negative thoughts turn into negative actions, and people start doing things in more timid ways with less confidence, and they get more negative results as a result of that. They lose more often, which further reinforces their belief that they are not enough.

If there is no analysis, no intervention, no correction of that initial negative thought after that failed job interview, then you are not in control of your life. And your life can easily descend into misery, depression, and anxiety, all because of one small moment of chaos.

You have to establish the habit of thinking about your thoughts. The most successful people do. The truth is, you can read as many books as you like, but until you can read yourself, you'll never really learn a thing.

The next point here is about being more compassionate with yourself when you make mistakes. Listen, we all make huge mistakes. Me as much as anybody else. That is an unavoidable part of being a human being and trying to live your fullest life.

Psychologically healthy and effective people that are best equipped to survive chaos are able to be compassionate with themselves when they fail or when they make a mistake or when they're undergoing self-imposed stress.

If your best friend failed their exam or failed a job interview and was really disappointed, you probably wouldn't say something like, "God, what's wrong with you? I told you you should have prepared for longer. You're probably just not enough."

If you're a good friend, you'd probably say something more like, "I can see you've tried really, really hard and I can see you're disappointed in yourself. It must be hard, and I understand that, and that's fine, especially considering the fact that you put so much preparation and work into this. But I think you'll bounce back."

"I think you'll get it next time, and there's plenty more opportunities out there." Obviously, this is just a healthier way to treat people. So why do we so rarely treat ourselves like this?

When my business partner Dominic recovered from an alcohol dependency, which you can find on Episode 10 of this podcast, which was primarily caused by the stress of building and running this business at a very young age, I remember him saying to me, "Steve, one of the reasons I became alcohol dependent is because I didn't have anybody to speak to."

And I remember him asking me who I was speaking to about the stress of running the business that we were both going through. And I remember saying the truth is, we were both speaking to someone this whole time. We're all speaking to someone at all times: ourselves.

That voice in your head. It can either serve as your best friend, an inspirational therapist, or it can be your worst enemy, a pessimistic opponent.

In the case of my business partner Dominic, we were both going through the same thing at the same time. But the voice in his head was terrorizing him with negatives, telling him to escape and to avoid these problems, while the voice in mine was telling me that I was capable of overcoming these challenges and that I was going to get there and that this was all just a game.

The amount of compassion that that voice in your head gives you will determine so much. Self-compassion is not just some new-age fluffy positive self-talk bullshit. It’s not fundamentally either about just being nice to yourself. For me, it's about being honest and about being realistic.

If you made a mistake and you feel bad about it, there's a very good chance you'll improve the next time and you'll be fine in the long run. Ignoring that possibility by blasting yourself with judgmental negative self-talk is just as destructive and dishonest as puffing yourself up with overly positive nonsense.

When you make mistakes, be compassionate and treat yourself like you would treat a good friend, with honesty and with support.

The next point in this section about chaos is about responsibility. Psychologically effective people in moments of crisis take responsibility for the things that are under their control and they seek to control their responsibilities.

They take absolutely no responsibility for things that aren't in their control. They don't try and control things they're not responsible for, which simply means that they know they have to be responsible for their reaction to this pandemic, but they're not responsible for the pandemic.

They therefore don't fall into the poisonous trap of trying to control such a global crisis with excessive worry and excessive fear, just like Shaka said. They control that which they are in control of, and they don't depress themselves by trying to control that which they can't control.

In times of crisis, the most psychologically effective people know that understanding you're responsible is necessary, but it's also not sufficient for genuine change. You have to actually take responsibility for your actions and you have to make practical plans and put in practical steps to facilitate change.

That means when shit hits the fan in your life because of choices that you've made or, in this circumstance, because of circumstances that you find yourself in, psychologically effective people avoid blame, they grab hold of the situation, and they plan how they're going to move forward with practical actionable steps.

Instead of relying on willpower or luck or good intentions or faith, the most psychologically effective people take responsibility; they demonstrate that internal locus of control.

Not just for the outcome that they wish to receive, but to building the processes they need to get there. In moments of total chaos like the current pandemic we're living through, you have to take responsibility for your actions.

You're not responsible for the virus, what it's caused, the fact that it might have cost you, but you are completely responsible for every second, every minute, and every hour of your reaction to this situation. You have to be responsible for your actions, even when you're not responsible for the situation you find yourself in.

And there's one more point I've written in my diary about how to be psychologically effective in moments of chaos, and that's all about your desires and your values. At all times in our lives, our short-term desires are pulling us in one direction and our long-term values are pulling us in another.

More often than not, in times of chaos and stress, our short-term desires win because they can be satisfied today, now, just by opening the fridge or saying yes to something or adding an item to your cart.

Giving into short-term desires gives us a fleeting short-term emotional boost, and that's why we do it when we're emotionally deficient. You see it after breakups—it feels good to eat a whole tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and binge Netflix and become a little bit toxic. That's fine, I guess, in moderation. It can be a form of therapy.

But in times of chaos, the times we're living through now, completely abandoning your long-term values will have grave long-term knock-on consequences. It’s typically not something that psychologically effective people do.

Of course, it's possible to resist the pull of unhelpful short-term desires like craving unhealthy food or risky sexual impulses or gambling, but a basic principle is that you have to actively stay mindful of the cost of indulging in these desires.

Sure, more sugar tastes good, but type 2 diabetes will make your life a real struggle. Staying in bed, procrastinating every day during this isolation process and Netflix binging is more comfortable, but losing your job because of it and having to live hand-to-mouth for the next couple of months is not comfortable.

Sex is fun, but losing your relationship or getting an STD or having an unwanted baby is not so fun. And gambling is exciting until you run out of money and can't pay your mortgage.

The real problem is not that we have these short-term desires; it's that we so easily forget our long-term values when we face chaos while standing in the presence of something that will allow us to meet our short-term desires.

The trick for me to navigating this chaos that has been sprung upon all of us has been to keep my values and my highest aspirations front and center of my mind. There's a number of practical ways that you can do that that I'll go into.

Because we all know it's easier to resist that third bowl of ice cream when you imagine how important it is for you to feel healthier and to look how you want. We all know it's easier to say no to that risky sexual encounter when you remind yourself of the type of love and connection you really crave in your life.

And it's easier to save your money and to invest it wisely instead of blowing it on cheap thrills and unnecessary material things if you're able to remind yourself about that house you want to buy in ten years and the love of your life that you want to live in it with.

The reality is, no matter what you do, it's going to be hard to say no to short-term temptations regardless. There's really no cheat code for this. But it certainly does help to keep your values, your long-term values, front of mind.

During this period of chaos and uncertainty, it's especially easy to feel pessimistic about the future and it's especially easy to be stressed. When you give up hope and when you feel stressed and when you don't feel that hopeful about your future, our long-term values weaken.

The power and the force that they can have as a motivating factor, they weaken, and our short-term desires can rule the roost. Psychologically effective people are people that achieve success in the long term, however you characterize success.

They’re able to hold their long-term values in moments of chaos, during uncertainty, and they tend to win the war over short-term desires more often than not. Ultimately, I think they understand that the cost of your short-term desires comes out of the bank account of the things you value in the long term.

So here's my advice: During this time when you think the world is melting down around you, actively—don't think about it—actively get closer to understanding what your long-term values are. Write them down. Make a vision board if you have to. Just make sure those things are front of mind.

I've done this in my life in many, many ways. I have family values, health values, love values, career values, and financial values. One of the ways I've done this in my life as it relates to my financial values is I created a document many years ago on Excel called my "Net Worth Document," right? It's really simple.

It calculates my net worth. It adds up all of the money I have saved, all of the shares I own in various companies, property investments, startup investments, and it spits out a number which is my current net worth. Before I made this document, I was very much short-term with my spending.

If I wanted a Louis Vuitton bag, there was no force interrupting the short-term desire to get it. There was no intervention. After I made this document, because I update this document so often—literally every day—and I can literally see how allocating even one pound to my savings or to investments impacts my overall net worth, which for me is basically my long-term future, my spending habits have completely and utterly changed forever.

Now, when I see that Louis Vuitton bag, the voice of my Net Worth Document screams in my head, "Steve, if you do this, it will compromise your long-term financial values." Now my long-term values are beating my short-term desires just because I've built a system in my life to keep my values at the front of my mind at all times.

So I would really encourage you to actively do something in your life to put your values, your long-term values, front and center, especially in these times of chaos, uncertainty, and stress.

And that really concludes what I wanted to say today about chaos. I guess my conclusion to all of this is pretty simple: The enemy in your life is not coronavirus. It's largely your own thoughts. That's really what we're fighting against at all times.

When external chaos arrives in its unpredictable but certain way, it's so easy to believe that the war we're trying to win is against the external chaos. But we can't win that war. We don't have control over it, and it's not the war we're fighting. Efforts to do so so often lead to anxiety and depression and fear and worry.

The external enemy is uncontrollable. The only thing we're at war with is our own thoughts. Chaotic situations like the one we're living through, they direct your attention to them. This could be a breakup, it could be a bereavement—whatever it is, chaos demands attention.

Which leads to us thinking negatively about the situation and finally that leads us to feeling negative things. So really you have two opportunities before you feel an emotion to do something about it.

You can make an effort to avoid the situation. I.e., if you know you're going to feel like shit if you're in a certain situation, you can avoid the situation. If you know you're going to feel bad if you're around a certain person, you can avoid the person.

But in the current coronavirus crisis, we can't just avoid the situation. Of course, we can tune out of the news and we can watch it a little bit less, but we can't block it out completely. It is a global crisis, and we all have to be aware of it.

So the second opportunity we have is to work on reframing our thinking. That's the second step before it becomes an emotion. Understanding this sequence of a situation resulting in your thoughts, which results in your emotions, is helpful because it allows you to take steps to either avoid the situation that gives rise to your unhelpful emotions or to adjust these emotions with healthier thinking.

One of the most effective and evidence-backed ways for people to adjust their emotions is a technique that psychologists call "cognitive reframing," which is like the central component of what they call CBT therapy.

The premise behind cognitive reframing is that it's not really the things that happen in life that drive our emotions and our behavior; it's what we think about those things. This loops back around to my first point, which is if you want to survive the crisis, you have to think about your thinking.

It loops back around to what Shaka said when he was trapped in isolation for seven years. You need to take responsibility for your thinking and you need to form active processes and establish healthy principles to improve your thinking. For me, those things are the things I've said. It's being more value-oriented, it's having this podcast, it's writing a journal.

And listen, in a world where the internet is capable of convincing millions of people that 5G internet has caused a global viral pandemic, we all need a set of clear, inflexible principles that determine what we believe when we log onto the internet, what we think when we consume information, and also what we think when we're talking to ourselves.

Ultimately, therefore, how our emotions will be impacted. I believe if you can get a little bit better at this, then this chaos and this pandemic will be a little bit easier to endure emotionally, but also from a business perspective, from a productivity perspective, from a work perspective.

You'll be so much more innovative, effective, proactive, and you'll really attack the situation. And as they say, often, offense is the best form of defense. Attacking is the best way to defend.

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And that couldn't be truer right now. But listen, changing subject. The podcast sponsor, which is Boost by Facebook, they are a dedicated one-stop shop for entrepreneurs, for CEOs, for small businesses, job seekers, and anybody with ambition that's looking to thrive in this digital economy.

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The next point in my diary is completely different. It's just something that I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple of weeks, but really developing the concept for in my notes. And I've written in my diary: "What things pay the best happiness dividend?"

Most things we strive for don't pay great happiness dividends. If you don't know what a dividend is, it's a business term for an amount of money paid regularly, usually annually, to a shareholder for owning a company. So basically, it's something that pays you because you own it.

I've made up the term "happiness dividend," but it follows the same basic premise. A happiness dividend is something that continues to pay out happiness because you own it. For example, perishable things pay bad happiness dividends. A loaf of bread lasts a few days, doesn't make you happy—it nourishes you, of course—but then it gets moldy and then it vanishes into the bin.

Material possessions, if you believe the science and the Stoic philosophy about hedonic adaptation, which says that things tend to give you short-term pleasure before they get boring, are also things that pay pretty short-term poor dividends.

However, children, a dog, a cat, good friends, parents—they pay great happiness dividends for decades because they are intrinsically rewarding for a long time. Outside of the tangible things, there are other things in life that continually pay great happiness dividends.

The process of striving for something is a process that pays a great happiness dividend. Being involved in helping others pays a great happiness dividend. The state of gratitude while you're in it pays a wonderful happiness dividend.

But there are also things that seem to pay zero or a negative happiness dividend—an unhappiness dividend. I.e., having these things in your life means that you're continually paid a small amount of unhappiness. One of those things might be grudges, fame, having lots of money sat in the bank, and having lots of followers on Instagram.

These are all things that often pay negative happiness dividends. And I'm not referring to how you might leverage your fame, how you might spend your money, or how you might use your audience. I'm talking about those things in and of themselves.

They are empty things unless they're put to work, and often they are empty things that cost you in terms of mental health and stress and insecurities and other things. But if you use your fame or money or audience for things that are intrinsically satisfying you, then maybe. But in and of themselves, the cost of those things typically nets out as a negative.

As Naval Ravikant points out, one of the surprising things that actually nets out as a negative happiness dividend is being in the state of desiring something. Desire is too often a contract you make with yourself to be unsatisfied and unhappy until you get what you want.

It’s the decision that happiness exists in the future or within a goal in the future, but not completely in your present. It exists in parallel with the innate human delusion that there's something out there that will make you happy, fulfilled, and satisfied forever.

But if you've ever achieved any level of career success in your life—sold a big company for millions, taken a company public, attained something you've strived for for a long time, for a decade—if you've ever spoken to a billionaire at length or an Olympic gold medalist, you'll know that the minute you get the thing you've strived for and longed for all your life, you don't become happy necessarily.

You tend to revert back to the state of desire, especially when you were striving for that thing for external reasons—for social validation, to make other people think better of you, or to become famous.

As Naval says, if obtaining things made us permanently happy, then cavemen would be incredibly miserable and Westerners would be wildly happy. You have to be very careful with your desires and the ones that you pick to pursue in your life.

You have to be clear to yourself why those desires intrinsically, internally matter to you. You have to aim for desires that will pay the best happiness dividend in the process of you attaining them.

You really don't want to suffer to attain something that immediately reverts you back to desire the minute it's yours. The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing and you focus on that one thing, the world will somehow move out of your way. You'll probably get it.

But you'll have to give up the chance of possessing many other things as a sacrifice for that one thing. So you have to be crystal clear with yourself about what you desire.

Here's my overall conclusion: Just as investors seek out companies that pay the best cash dividends, if you want to be happy, you have to seek out things that pay the best happiness dividends. Unhappy people unknowingly fill their lives with things that pay negative happiness dividends.

If you want to optimize your happiness, strive for desires that pay the best happiness dividends both during the process of attaining them but also when you attain them. The things that will pay the best long-term happiness dividends once you attain them are the things that you wanted, not things that you wanted to post on Instagram or brag about or needed to fit in or, you know, to meet society's bullshit fairy tale of how your life is meant to be going.

The things that you deeply wanted to satisfy your soul and your truest self. In a world built on consumerism that is programmed to convince you that there's something you don't have but need so that you buy something you didn't really want, it's hard to sometimes know what you actually want.

What does your truest self actually want versus what society has told you you should want in order to improve your social ranking, in order to be happy, in order to satisfy other people's opinions of you?

I guess this is the challenge. This is the crossroads that we find ourselves at key moments in our lives. Most people don't have a fucking clue what they want. They pull up at 37 years old after making the wrong decision about what they want because of social pressure, and they find themselves having a midlife crisis.

They’re surrounded by a bunch of things that society told them would make them satisfied—that corporate career in finance, being a doctor because your mom told you you should be one, that spouse that makes you miserable but your mother told you you should marry, that shoe-box apartment you were told you should be grateful for in the middle of that concrete jungle city.

As well as obsessing over filling our lives with things that pay great happiness dividends, we have to be intentional with our desires or else the world gets to pick them for you. You have to be intrinsic with your desires, which means they can't come from Instagram or peer pressure or from society; they have to come from inside you.

If they do, and if you're surrounded by things that are paying you a healthy happiness dividend, then you'll feel like the richest person on Earth.

The next point in my diary is just about gratitude. We've had so much snatched away from us, and it goes to show, or at least it should go to show, how many things that you took for granted. There's these two kind of base fundamentals that we all take for granted that have currently been taken away from us.

One is a functional society. We have the privilege in the Western world of living in a functional society. The second thing is the security of our health. Right now, both of those things hang in somewhat relative uncertainty.

Because of that, we can't really do much. We can't strive, we can't travel, we can't see our loved ones. This, for me, has shown me how grateful I should have been for those privileges when I had them.

When you look at the people who are most vulnerable to this virus, it should say to you that your health and your youth is a privilege, right? A privilege that I think we often disregard. Your younger years and your health are massive privileges that you won't realize are privileges until they're snatched away from you, as your social freedoms have been.

This is something that I've really thought about. There's going to become a point, even though I sometimes struggle to believe it, as we all do, where I am elderly and I am vulnerable. At that time, the things I'm capable of doing with my life will be significantly reduced.

If I could just say something to people that are listening that are currently healthy and that are currently relatively young: this is your life. This is the chance you have. Coupled with that is you're going to die someday.

When you really embrace those two ideas, the risk aversion, the playing it safe, the caring about people's opinions—all of that pales into insignificance. Hopefully, I'm hoping that once the lockdown lifts and we get a chance to really live our lives, the gratitude of having emerged from that situation and once having our freedoms returned to us, I hope will cause a change in people. I really think it will because I really believe it's going to cause a change in me.

And the next point in my diary is about *The Diary of a CEO Live*, which is the live event I was putting on in Manchester on April 15th, which unfortunately has had to be canceled because of the lockdown and the virus. It’s being postponed to the end of this year.

I just wanted to say something. First and foremost, thank you to everybody that bought a ticket. Because we've postponed it and moved the date back, I've said that I'll buy every single person that comes to the event—and there's about 900 people coming—a drink upon arrival.

But also, I just wanted to say a few words about this particular event. The significance of this event in my life is it's the first time that I've really tried to express myself in a much deeper, more creative way.

I'm not going to give the game away too much, but this is much more than just a live podcast. That's what I'm going to tell you. It’s much deeper than that. I cannot wait. I really, really cannot wait.

In fact, this delay has only led to the event becoming better. I've expanded everything, I've invested more in the event, and I've had more time to really think about making it a special event.

If you're not currently coming to the event, if you didn't manage to get a ticket—the tickets sold out in about two minutes, so that wouldn't be too surprising—but go to thediaryofaceolive.com and just put your name and email address in.

Nearer the event, there may be another batch of tickets released depending on some conversations we're having with the venue. But put your email address in if you do want to come and you're able to get to Manchester sometime in September.

I really highly recommend that you do come. I wouldn't say that lightly, but I think this is really going to be a special evening. I really, really believe that. I can't wait to meet all of you.

I know there's some people that listen to this podcast that I've never got to meet before. If you know me, if you've ever heard me speak before anywhere in the world, you'll know that I never ever leave until I've met everybody that wants to meet me.

This evening will be no different. We can have a couple of drinks—whatever those drinks might be—and we can have a chat as well. I really hope that a lot of you are coming because you guys that listen to this podcast are the ones that know me best and that have followed my journey the most. So yeah, I can't wait to see you there.

This podcast always tends to end on my romantic relationships, which is kind of a look behind the curtain at what's going on in my personal life. And yeah, I'm super happy. I'm in a relationship with a wonderful person, and they live in a different country, so I've not been able to see them in two months because of this lockdown.

Their country got locked down before mine, which was a bit of a fucking kick in the balls, but it's fine. We're communicating well. All is well in my relationship life, which is quite a significant change if you've listened to this podcast for some time.

Over the years, I've gone through so many battles with love and relationships and the competition with my business. You know, can I have a romantic partner and be successful? I've played with all of these ideas.

For me, the current situation I'm in, where my romantic partner lives overseas and I see them infrequently—but like one week a month probably—just works really well for me. It gives me the space that I need and the space that she needs.

It also means that when we see each other, it's amazing. It’s really, really good. It means that I get to miss them a lot. I've thought a lot about this idea of living together and how proximity can sometimes put such a big stress on relationships.

I've always wondered—I'm sure my girlfriend is going to be listening to this and she's going to be like, "What the fuck?" or this might be a surprise, or maybe she's down—but I've always wondered about the idea of, could you raise a family with someone that you don't live with?

It's not to say that I don't want to live with someone one day; of course I do. I see myself living in a big house with a big garden and a picket fence with loads of kids and a wife.

But I've always wondered if that would be a more healthy dynamic for a modern relationship where you have space from the other person. I spoke to a friend of mine, the founder of Huel, a guy called Julian Hearn.

He told me about his first marriage and how for his second one, he's adopted a different approach to that relationship where they don't live together. I think I'm correct there; if I'm wrong, Julian, forgive me, but that's what I believe he told me.

And how that's working out better. I remember him making the analogy of trying to keep your romantic relationship like your non-romantic relationships, like your relationships with your friends.

It's funny that those relationships so rarely break down. You see your friends twice a week down the pub and you're close and whatever. But for some reason, I think that maybe the answer is creating bespoke models for relationships.

Which means that there's not one right way to have a relationship. Some people shouldn't maybe live together, some people shouldn't have kids together.

That’s really your objective when you get into romantic relationships: finding the dynamic that works for you and for them based on who you are and who they are and also based on your career and your goals and your ambition.

There's no book, there's no Instagram quote that encourages people to create like new dynamic, bespoke, tailored models for their life. Our lives are just this fairy tale of you go to school, then university, you get a job, you buy a house, you find someone to love, you settle down, you have two girls, two boys, you retire, you have grandkids.

I often think when we're so different inherently, all of us, and we all have such different goals and aspirations, motivations, and desires, how could it be the case that there's one model for all of our lives?

In fact, it's the social pressure to fit into that box, to fit into that storyline or fairy tale, that's causing so much anxiety and depression and unhappiness and midlife crises like the ones I've talked about today.

I think the same with my romantic relationships. I think at any point when I start to believe that my romantic relationship should be going a certain way according to the fairy tales of Instagram and society, then it'll probably fuck up.

I've seen so many good relationships that have fucked up because deep down you wanted it to look perfect online or to your friends or to the Joneses or whoever it might be. Again, relating back to one of the earlier points I made in this podcast, that's another form of living extrinsically, and it never fucking works.

I'm going to say something and then I'm going to wrap this podcast because this is kind of controversial. But here's what I think: When I see young couples repeatedly posting about their relationship—especially when it's a new relationship, so a relationship that's under a year—when I see them posting about their relationships online, on YouTube, on Instagram stories, wherever it might be, I always tend to believe that those relationships won't last.

I'd love to get the data on this. Maybe there's a study I could do about this. But the reason for that is because they're making their private intrinsic relationship something that should be intrinsic and rewarding for your own reasons, an external extrinsic issue.

They're making it the business of hundreds of thousands of other people. It's almost like they're misunderstanding the purpose of a relationship. The purpose of a relationship isn't to get likes on Instagram. It isn't to get feedback from the public. It's for intrinsic benefit. It's for that internal feeling of belonging and love which comes from being a human in love in a relationship.

Whenever I see someone, especially when they've only been in a relationship for a couple of months, be so public about the state of their relationship or showing their girlfriend off or their boyfriend off, it makes me think that their relationship is built on the wrong things.

That external factor is a big part of something that should be an internally motivated thing. And I tend to be right about that. I tend to be right. My general stance is that my personal relationship is the business of my friends and my family and me. And that's why I always try and keep my relationships confidential.

I'll talk about things I've learned from relationships on my podcast, but that's it. I don't post my relationships online. I don't share photos of them on my Instagram. That's something that's intrinsic and I want to keep it that way.

I think if I keep it intrinsic, I'll keep it special and I'll keep it meaningful. And it will stay serving me for the right reasons.

Thank you. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for hanging with me. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy these podcasts. Your feedback, as I've always said in these podcasts—this isn't some bullshit I say to promote it—your feedback is genuinely the reason why I make these podcasts.

It's literally often just one tweet or one Instagram post or something that I see that makes me think, "Fuck, Steve, you need to go and pull out that microphone." In a time which is clearly a very unique one, we're living through a moment of chaos, and you need to do this because it matters to people.

Every single time I do it, it serves me in such a great way that I'm thankful for the fact that you guys push me and that you give me that feedback. So if you're listening, do me a favor: hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button on whatever platform you're listening on. Leave a review and let me know that you've subscribed.

When you leave a review, please just put your Instagram or your Facebook or whatever way that I can reach you on there. Share it on your stories, give me your feedback, message me in DMs, whatever you want to do. I love to hear it. I'm going to see you all next week for another chapter of *The Diary of a CEO*.

When your cat is acting weirder, or your dog is being louder, your turtle moves slower. Hello, Ted? Your cat seems thirstier. Whoa, slow down buddy. Or your puppy is acting clumsier. Day or night, if you don't know what's wrong, know where to go. Veg ER for pets, this is Kate. Veg, the better, kinder ER for pets.