 Thank you all for coming tonight to listen to Yaron Brooke talk about an ambitious year in 2024, the Objectivist approach. We got this started. Colleen and I moved to Colorado about two years ago and just looking to get people together in the local community that are interested in these ideas and see some faces we've seen before and meet some new ones and I'm going to leave it at that because you didn't come here to listen to me. So without anything else, Yaron Brooke. Let me take that. Yeah. So you don't have stereo. Thank you. Thanks guys. This is my traveling studio and I get a sense of how I do my shows live when I travel and sometimes I do these talks. So one of the things that's really, I think, interesting is if you go to any company, any business, small, medium, large, almost any successful business that takes itself seriously takes a period of time during the year once, maybe twice, and they sit down and they do strategy. They really think through what the business is about, what the long-term plan is, what the short-term plan, what to do next year, how to do it. They set specific goals and then they actually brainstorm about new ideas, about how to do it differently, maybe something completely different than the way they've been doing things. And they really take the time and sometimes hire external consultants to come in and facilitate a strategy session. I mean, this is done professionally and with a lot of kind of focus and effort and thought dedicated to it, all with an effort to maximize profits, to maximize the business's success. However, they choose to measure success. Usually it has to do with profitability. And they do this once a year, twice a year, and then they monitor their success throughout the year. They constantly are looking at, well, are we matching the strategy, are we achieving what we do? Or are we not? What are we doing wrong? What's going on? How do we change? How do we adjust? And maybe we have to rethink the strategy. Or maybe something that we're doing is not quite right. And businesses take this whole process very, very seriously. CEOs lose their jobs because they don't follow strategy or because the strategy sucks or because this doesn't add up somehow. What I find really fascinating about that process, which I think is incredibly valuable for any kind of business, is that we don't do it in our personal lives. What's more important? The business are you. In a sense, it's you, right? Business is an extension, but you. And we don't do it in our lives. We can't just live. We just go with the flow. How often do we stop and strategize? Am I doing what I'm doing in my life? Is it good? Is this the direction I really want to head in? Are the values I'm pursuing the right values? Have I really thought this through or have I just fallen into it? What is my long-term goal? What do I want to do very long term? I mean, we think about it, but not in a same kind of systematic way. And we don't devote the same kind of time to it. And one question is why? And the second question is, should we do it and how do we do it? And I think the reason we don't is fairly straightforward. Now it's hot. Why is it cold? The reason we don't is pretty straightforward. Nobody teaches this. We don't grow up thinking about ourselves. We don't grow up with a strategy to achieve happiness, success, and career. I mean, maybe with a career a little bit, right? Maybe spend a little bit of time. But we're taught to choose what subjects in school you like and do those subjects. And then go into a career that appeals to you, follow your passion maybe, or follow the money, or follow what your parents tell you, or follow something. But there's no, in the culture, there's no attitude that says really think it through, really figure this out. What is really your aim in life? What do you really want to do with your life? And the idea of taking time and really thinking about yourself and how to really do a great job and how to really achieve greatness in your own life. Well, I mean, if you spend too much time doing that, and you'll be labeled, I don't know, a narcissist, or a hedonist, or something like that, right? Our culture just doesn't value the pursuit of one's own happiness. Or if it does, it kind of brushes it aside, right? Yeah, we're all supposed to be happy, but OK. Just go be happy. But how? What do I need to do to be happy? What do I need to do to be successful? Have a good career. What's the tools? How do I achieve a good career? We're really not taught that. Nobody focuses on it. Nobody really spends time on it. You might get some guidance like mentoring and things like that from people you might know. But there's no real energy behind how to live a great life. If you're ambitious, you have to figure it out yourself. And of course, what drives that is the morality that dominates our culture, which is a morality of altruism, a morality that says, you're happiness, who cares? Your real goal in life should be other people's happiness. Your real goal in life to be really moral, to be a sane, to be a good person, you should be focused on sacrificing for others, other people. That's what's important. You? Who cares? If you think too much about yourself, nemine hedonism or narcissism, the worst is, oh, you're being selfish. And that's not a good thing, right? In this group, maybe you guys think it's a good thing, but nobody out there thinks it's a good thing. That's a term that is supposed to marginalize you and is supposed to put you down. So the whole concept of think about how to pursue your own happiness is foreign in a world dominated by altruism. Think about how you can help the community, yes. Think about how to save the world, yes, we like that. Think about how to make yourself happy. Oh, God, don't be so self-indulgent. So it doesn't surprise me that we don't do it. It doesn't surprise me that the culture is antagonistic to it. It doesn't surprise me that we don't give our kids the tools to do it and we don't ourselves embrace the tools to do it, because our whole moral code is set up against it, is set up to do the exact opposite and in a sense to undermine it. And the last thing that people out there, particularly those in authority want, is a bunch of people with self-esteem who are confident and have planned out their lives and have a strategy and want to achieve their goals and all they're doing is getting in our way, right? Then they're in trouble, right? I don't know if they even know that, but certainly somewhere down there they know that if we actually attain the kind of self-esteem that we deserve as human beings, they're not in business for very long. They're out. So the culture has massive incentives not to encourage it, but I can't think of anything more important that people do. Life is complicated. There are many, many choices you can have in terms of what to do in life. I know I find one of my biggest struggles is just to figure out what I'm gonna focus on because I could do a lot of different things. I like a lot of things. I like doing tons of stuff and my biggest challenge is weighing him in, weighing myself in. Don't do everything, right? Challenge I fail at often. But life is complicated. You know, relationships are complicated. Friendship is complicated. Love is complicated. You know, being a spouse is complicated. Work is complicated. Choosing where to go to vacation is complicated. The whole array is complicated. And we know in our business lives, we know that if we face a complicated situation, what you really need to do is think it through. Really plan it. Really check out different scenarios and figure out what makes sense and what doesn't. And the same needs to be applied in our own lives. Our lives are not less complicated than a business. In many ways, they're more because they include our career. They include, therefore, our business lives. So I think it's really crucial to spend some time every year really thinking through where you are, where you're going. Is that where you want to go? And not be afraid to change, just like businesses, productive businesses, good businesses are not afraid to change and shift directions. You can't change the CEO in this case. You're stuck with the CEO. You're it, right? But everything else is changeable. In life, we get into these grooves and stuff is comfortable and it's just is and we just do it. But is that optimal? Is that the best we can be? Is that the best we can do? Because I really do believe that life is to be lived, fully. Life is to be lived to the highest potential that we have to our best of our ability. Life's not to be cruised through. It's a waste. You only have one. I've said this many times, one life, kind of trivial, obvious but people need to be reminded. I find myself thinking and next time I'll do it differently. What next time? That's gone. There's no rewind. You don't get no tribe travel, no reincarnation and even if there is, no guarantee you're gonna come back human, right? It's just, there's just no, nothing else. Every minute you spend doing something that's not optimal you never get it again. You never get it back. Nobody can give it back to you. So given there was so anchor to reality, right? As a philosophy demands, you gotta take seriously the time that you have and the reality that exists. And then for the question comes down, am I doing the best that I could do? Am I using my time the best that I can use it? Am I pursuing the goals that are most appropriate for what I want to achieve in my life? Am I achieving happiness? And if I'm not, and if I'm not achieving my values, what do I need to change? And how do I need to change it? And I find, and I think most people do that, you know, the period of the holidays, Thanksgiving to New Year, it's kind of a sweet spot for doing that kind of thinking partially because everything kind of slows down. You know, the business world, other than wars and politics, everything else kind of slows down. And you get a chance a little bit to think. But again, people, I don't see people doing enough of that. And I think it's really, really crucial. And what does that entail? What does it mean to slow down and think? It's really to focus on what's important to you in your life. And I always like to start with the most important thing, the thing that I think shapes our character, it shapes out ultimately all of our other choices. And that is to really think about morality, about the moral values and moral virtues. Because those are the tools that Ayn Rand has taught us, and hopefully we've integrated and proven to ourselves, that these are the tools that will indeed, practice properly, lead to success. Success at what? The tools for what? The tools for? Living for life. Success at life, if practiced properly. So it's good to go through those and remind ourselves, what are these virtues? Why do they work? Why do they succeed in terms of life? It's not obvious. 99% of the world out there thinks we're nuts. So it's not obvious. And what do they mean? How do they apply? And how do they apply to my year? You know, what did I do in terms of productiveness? What did I do in terms of, are there any breaches of honesty? You don't have to tell anybody else, but you can admit to yourself, and it's important you admit to yourself, did I live up to the standards that I hold, that I believe in? And if not, can I figure out why not? And can I fix? Can I make amends? Can I adjust? Am I being just to the people I know? Am I living up to those virtues? And if not, again, how do I fix them? How do I make sure that in the future I don't? I don't screw up. So spending a little time with morality, which again, the rest of the world would look at us and say that's kind of weird. Morality's not for really for contemplating and doing that, right? Morality's all about going out there and suffering. That's the goal, right? If you haven't suffered enough this year, then yeah, maybe you should suffer more next year, but it's not about a list of actual virtues that are gonna lead to success in life. They're gonna lead to a better life. They're gonna lead to happiness. So I think spending some time on that is really important. It's really crucial in reminding ourselves. Again, I think a big part of that is maybe a lot of this, a lot of this would become much more second nature and less acquired contemplation if we lived in a rational world where people basically, well, this was all around us, but we're constantly being batted in by irrationality, by people who think the exact opposite of us. And it's hard sometimes to stick to your principles. And sometimes you don't. You can all admit to the fact that sometimes we don't. Well, that's good to know about yourself and good to understand and good to fix where it needs fixing. You know, we got family pressure, you've got cultural pressure, you've got from everywhere. So it's, all right, slow down. Where did I do well? Where did I do poorly? Where did I live up to my expectations, to my philosophy, to my beliefs, and where didn't I? All of that is so worthwhile doing. And again, it refreshes those ideas. It brings them back into consciousness. It brings them back into that excitement that I think we all had when we first read Iron Man. And it was like, yes, this is the life I want. I want this kind of life. I want to be the best that I can be. It's good to remind yourself of that and bring it back and bring that emotion back and bring that sense of life back so it gives you energy. It gives you energy as you go in and enter in the new world again because everything else is gonna beat you down. Politics and regulations and controls and April 15th writing that check and all of that is constantly beat you down. You need the energy and the spirit to come back up. So I would definitely look at all the virtues and how you're living up to them and how you're living up to them and what can you do to do better and where are you failing to the extent that you are? And then there are values. What do I want to achieve? Rand has three cardinal values. Life, sorry, reason, purpose, and self-esteem, right? Reason, purpose, and self-esteem. So am I achieving those? Those are things to be achieved. Reason, how is reason something to be achieved? It's kind of weird, right? Reason is just there, isn't it? Well, no, reason needs to be turned on. It needs to be engaged. It needs to, you need to bring it to the forefront. You need to engage with it actively. It needs to be achieved. It's a value. It doesn't come automatically. It's not automatic. Am I doing that? Am I bringing reason to all of the decisions that I have to make? As that, the guiding principle in my life is rational thinking, the guiding principle. Am I engaged? Am I in focus? Am I putting the energy forward that is required in order to make proper decisions? Purpose, what is my purpose? And purpose primarily tends to be career, tends to be career-oriented. What do I want to achieve? What's the integrating kind of idea that I am striving towards? Is the purpose today the same as it was last year? Do I still think the career that I'm on, the integrating purpose that I have is the right one? Is it making me happy? Am I enjoying it? And if not, is it because the purpose is wrong or I'm pursuing it wrong? What's the disconnect? Why am I not? And I mean, these are all hard conversations to have with yourself. And they require one of the virtues. Which are the virtues they require? Honesty, right? They require a lot of honesty and courage, which is a sub-virtue of integrity. They require courage and they require honesty. To really think about am I pursuing the goals that I want to pursue? And then finally, self-esteem. And self-esteem in a sense is that positive sense of living on this earth, of I belong here, I can deal with it, I can handle anything, the world throws at me. I am comfortable in this world, in this environment right here and now. And that's always a good warning sign. If you feel a little doubt there, then something is going on because it's the integrator. Self-esteem is the integrator of everything else. It's the sense that you have. Because you've achieved, I can do it. Because you're pursuing the right values and you're achieving them. That gives you self-esteem. Because I've achieved all those virtues. Yeah, I've lived up to my moral standards. I gain self-esteem. So it's a great indication of, again, what is going on? Is it good, is it bad? Is it right, is it wrong? You know, pride, which in objectivism is a virtue and almost everywhere else is a vice. Pride is the virtue of taking morality seriously. It's a virtue of taking your life seriously. It's the virtue of wanting to be the best that you can be and striving to be the best that you can be. And being willing to recognize the fact that when you do, patting yourself in the back is a good thing, not a bad thing. Again, our culture doesn't believe that, right? It wants you to pat yourself in the back even when you fail. You get a ribbon, at least when you're a kid. It's not so much as an adult. The kids all get ribbons, which is a fake self-esteem, of course, in a fake sense of anything, right? Because you haven't achieved anything. But when you really achieve, when you really do something, when you really have lived up to your own standards, yes, patting yourself in the back is crucial. Recognize, it's justice, right? Justice is treating people the way they deserve. Well, it's really, really important you treat yourself the way you deserve. Pat yourself in the back when you deserve it, beat yourself up when you deserve that. So this should all be part of your strategy, right? Your strategy session of how to live in the next year and the next five years and the next 10 years. I can't do much more than 10 years. Partially because I'm getting older and Hawaii's gonna start shrinking. 10 years is still safe, but 20 years becomes shady. But yeah, the younger you are, the further into the future you should think and the further into the future you should plan. Not in detail, because you can't tell what's gonna happen in the future, but at least in terms of general ideas. And general goals and your general sense of ambition. And ambition is important, it's important to be ambitious. You know, your purpose requires challenges to achieve self-esteem. You need to push yourself to live a great life. You need to want to live a great life. That's all part of ambition. Ambition is the striving to do better. And we wanna constantly strive to do better. And it never ends. One of the things I love about, I assume everybody here knows who Leonard Peacock is, but one of the things I love about Leonard Peacock is, no matter how old he gets and how difficult everything becomes, because as you get older, everything becomes more difficult, he's always doing something. And many of the things he does, he fails at. Like he wanted to write novels. He was no good at it. Short stories, no good. He became a songwriter, I mean, and he's 90, right? And this is just over the last, I don't know, less than 10 years. He's always striving to do something. He's always ambitious about his life. He always wanted to be productive. And failure doesn't deter him. That is, you feel, okay, that I can do. I'll do something else. He even sculpted. For a while, he studied sculpture. He wanted to become a sculptor. He played piano, he was gonna be a piano, jazz pianist. So, striving, constantly wanting to be productive, to do something, to push the envelope, to challenge yourself, no matter what age you are, is so crucial to being alive, feeling alive, and being successful at living, at life itself. So, strategy session, where one thinks about morality. Is the video working? I don't know, it looks like it is. All right, we're not. Technical problems, always. Looks like it's frozen at some point. All right, so strategy session. First, morality, which is the most general, right? It's the principles. And remember, why do we live by principles? Why principles so important? It's so important because life is so complex. Principles make it manageable. They condense huge amounts of information, instead of having to figure out, what do I do now? Should I, this person, do I lie to them, or don't I lie? I can't remember for, you know. No, you don't lie, period. Principle, right? You're honest. Should I be productive today or not, right? I mean, there's so many definitions. Should I compromise? I mean, moral compromise, not where we're going for dinner compromise, but an important compromise. Should I compromise in this case? What are the outcomes? You don't have to do all that, because you figured out that the answer's always the same. So because life is so complex, because there's so many decisions to make, because there's so much going on, you have to live by principles. And these principles are the basic strategy around living. And you have to reaffirm them, and on an annual basis, you know, religion understands these concepts, right? It understands this need to reaffirm, constantly reaffirm. It's why they're holidays. Holidays are not for barbecues. The original purpose of a religious holiday is to remind yourself what it's all about, what you're supposed to be worshiping, what you're supposed to be cared about, what kind of life you're supposed to live. It's to remind you of it. It's to bring it back into consciousness, because life is complex and you drift in all kinds of directions and this brings it all back. Well, that's true of any philosophy for living. Any philosophy requires you to reorient yourself to remember those principles and to recommit to it, to actually recommit to it. And it's not a bad idea to do that once a year, just like a business, again, does it once a year. And beyond the kind of abstract principles of morality, of course they're not, they don't stay abstract. It's an issue of, I mean, the next step would be to take some of the concrete things that you're actually doing. Take every aspect of your life and judge it. Evaluate it. Judging is a good thing, not a bad thing. You live in a culture that's supposed to be non-judgmental. Yeah, you don't judge when you're dead. I mean, other than that, everything. You should judge. What do I like? What I don't like? Constantly, who's good? Who's bad? Who do I like? Who don't I like? Constantly, you should be judging. Life is about judging. So take the different parts of your life and judge them. Whether it's my family, your kids, your spouse, your relationships, your friends, your career, your dating life, if you don't have the spouse and you're dating. Or if you do have, well, anyway. You're dating, your hobbies, your sports, whatever it happens to be. Your health, as you become older, that becomes a big one, right? Am I doing what's necessary to keep myself in the kind of condition that is gonna allow me to achieve my goals? Something most people under, I don't know, 50, 60 don't really think about. But once you cross a certain threshold, where it's too late usually, then you start thinking about it. So the earlier you think about it, the better. Because you won't have to, you know, it becomes again one of those strategic places. Think about it once a year. Am I doing what is necessary to keep myself healthy? And there's science. It's not completely arbitrary. There's science, so do the research, right? So for every one of those fields, do the research, do the thinking, challenge yourself, figure out how you're doing, give yourself a grade, and what do I need to do better next year? How do I do better next year? For each one of those, what are my goals? Are they the right goals? And how do I achieve them as I move forward? So, okay. So do a strategy session of your life once a year. And then, if you do that, you know, monitor it through time. Don't just do it and forget it. Some businesses do that, you know, bad businesses do that. They do a strategy session, they come up with an exciting vision, exciting strategy, and then they forget about it and they do everything the same they've done before, right, nothing changes. I know, I take a lot of businesses do that. But the more successful you are, the more you take it seriously, the more you apply it. And that's true in life as well. We come to, you know, what is it? New Year's resolutions and then we do nothing about them? Well, but there's a disconnect there. Either the resolutions were bad and therefore we won't do them, or they were good and we're not living up to them. But there's gotta be, you gotta figure out what's, why there's a disconnect and solve the disconnect. If they're good resolutions, then follow through with them. If they're bad resolutions, don't make them. Make different ones. Figure out what are the right resolutions and what are the wrong resolutions. But the idea is what you believe is what you should do. If you're going in different directions, one of those two is wrong and you gotta figure out which one and get them aligned. Life is about, to a large extent, aligning your behavior with your values, with what you really want. Because sometimes our emotions lead us in one direction, even if we know we should be going in a different direction. You wanna align, ultimately, your emotions with that. You wanna figure out what is right and then bring their emotions and align them with that. So the bottom line is we gotta take, we should take our lives as seriously as businesses, take their businesses. We gotta treat our lives as a little entrepreneurial venture. Think of your life as I'm an entrepreneur of me and I'm gonna approach it as if I'm a entrepreneur. And I've got certain principles that I know are right, just like in business we have certain principles we know are right. And now it's just I'm out of filling in the content of how I want to live my life based on these principles. And then I'm gonna monitor throughout the year. I'm gonna make sure that I'm living up to them and if I'm not, I'm gonna self-correct and figure it out. And you've gotta be particularly in this world, but I think in any world, nothing is achieved without courage and without the willingness to take risk. And that includes without the knowledge that you're going to fail. We all fail. And again, hard, life is hard. Relationships are hard, jobs are hard, all these things are hard. And not everything's just gonna go, if you've read Atlas Shrugged, we're not all Francisco where everything you touch turns to, it's just, right? We're just not. And even Francisco doesn't get what he wants in the end, right? See, even he doesn't quite get it exactly the way he would like it. I'm not gonna give it away because some of you might not have read the book. But we've gotta be willing to take on the risks, be willing to face failure, be able to deal with failure, learn from it, become better as a result of it, and keep striving towards the one thing that we have and the one thing that's most important, our lives. And when I say life to me, I often say capital L life because it's not just life, everybody's alive, who cares? It's life. It's like what we're most capable of. It's living life fully in every moment of it, filling it so that towards the end you look back and say, yes, I lived an amazing life. And without thinking about it and strategizing about it and then having some kind of plan at some level, it's kind of gonna be a fluke. But having a code of values, having a code of virtues, knowing which principles lead you in that direction and then really thinking about the alignment of your values to what you really want in life, that's the way, I won't say guarantee happiness, but at least increase your chances of attaining it dramatically. So hopefully you come out of today just with a little bit more energy around planning it out, thinking through, and living life to its fullest. Thank you. All right, we have plenty of time for questions and you know, you can ask about anything. It doesn't have to be about the specific topic, but. And don't be shy. You look like a shy group. What's a collateral? I'm a finance guy, I want collateral. They count it, well, and I count it for as long as I can go buy stuff with them. The sense in which they count a fit, but not really. What? Well, they're not count a fit. Money is what we use as a means of exchange and as long as we're willing to exchange dollars, it's money. What's that? It's fiat money, but it's still money. We use it as money. You know, people who use tobacco as money, they're using paper right now as money with nice printing on it, right? But it is being used as money. It's not good money. It's not by far really good money, but it is money. Mises define money as, you know, that which is commonly used as a means of exchange. It doesn't have to be something of exchange. It turns out it doesn't have to be something of value. It turns out it can be a piece of dollar. This is money, whether we like it or not. And I don't, right? I don't like this as money. It's money. I can go and buy stuff with this. And almost anybody, 99.99% of the people in the world will take this and give me stuff in exchange. That's the definition of money as a means of exchange. It's a medium of exchange. It's not good money. It's not just money, as Francisco says in his speech. It is money, though. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably less rigorous than maybe it came out to be, but I really do. But I really do spend the time starting with Thanksgiving as things kind of slow down, thinking and planning for the next year, and really thinking about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, who I'm doing it with. And I really do try to, and changes that I make, new experiments, I typically do them in January. They're typically something that I either done in December or January because they come out of this kind of thinking. But I do spend time, partially because I teach it, but I do spend time thinking about the virtues and how they apply in a particular context. I don't necessarily block out every Monday of the month or something like that. But I block out time to just think and to just plan for the next year. And it's incredibly rewarding because it gives you a chance to reflect back on what you've done, and it gives you a chance to really think about what you want to do, where you want to go. And during the year, so many things change, that you kind of have to take a step back and say, OK, all these things have changed. Is the plan I had last year still good today? So I actually go through that, even if it's not a mathematical, rigorous spreadsheet process. I do go through that thinking. Yeah. You adjust. You either scrap the plan. You question whether the goal, what you're trying to achieve with the plan. If you still want to achieve the same thing, but the plan didn't work to achieve it, then you have to completely redo it and do something different instead. And we all do that. Failure is actually relatively easy for us, in a sense. If something is collapsing, we all jump into action. We all are very good at a fire hose drill. The bigger challenge is, I find the bigger challenge is, it's not failing, but it's not doing great. That, to me, is a much more difficult situation. Failure is easy after it's only different. But is it failed enough so that I scrap it and start over? Is there still a chance to continue? And those are tricky decisions to make. But again, important to evaluate. And you're going to make mistakes. Again, error, failure is all part of the game. None of us is infallible. You're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to drag a project on longer than it should. And sometimes you're going to kill it earlier than you should. But you have to think about these things. And you have to evaluate them. And you have to make a call at some point. Yep. Yeah, I mean, I think then it's kind of co-CEO. It's kind of not, right? I mean, there's certain things you probably are CEO. And there's certain things she's probably CEO. And there's probably things that are really joint and really need unanimity. And even knowing what is what is important and knowing who's responsible for what, just like in a business, who's responsible for what activity and who gets to make decisions is crucial. But yeah, the challenge there is communication. It's to make sure you're communicating what you think the challenges are in any one of these realms or any of all in the communication itself. And then working through disagreements or working through challenges or working through new goals that you're going to set. But yeah, it's, I have to negotiate how many days I can travel every year. I mean, not literally, but yeah, I mean, it's you have to be responsible to another person. And that has to be a joint planning project. So it makes it more difficult. There's no question. Once it's not just you, it's two people. Cause you have to, the values are aligned, but that's what a relationship is. It's aligning values. And if they're not aligned, well, that's something, that's a piece of information that's important as well. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think of it as self-proprietorship with no board of directors. I mean, this is the problem with metaphors. You can only take them so far, right? So you're not really the CEO of your life and you're not delegating responsibility to other people in terms of your life. You are it. You're both the decision maker, the actor, the strategist, the everything, you and your spouse if you have one. So it's, the metaphor is limited in that sense. I take the virtues and values as the same as what was it, a corporate mission statement and a corporate values and virtues. A lot of corporations have that. Some of them take them seriously. Most of them don't. Just like most people don't take them seriously, right? You have beautiful mission statement and value statement or at least they think they're beautiful and then nobody pays attention to them and nobody knows what they are. And they look at them once a year in the strategy session and then they ignore them. Well, living a life based on the right principles, you shouldn't ignore them. You should always follow them. But it's the same. You should have a mission statement in a sense which is your purpose, what you wanna achieve in life and then you have the virtues and values that are gonna guide you in achieving that purpose, happiness, success, living the best life that you can live. That's ultimately your purpose. Don't take me too literally. You had your hand up. Yeah. Oh God. Problem with me is I don't remember anything from my past. It's like my memory is shoddy. But look, I've had a lot of crossroads like that because I've done a lot of different things in my life. Starting with reading Atlas Shrugged, which was a huge crossroads for me. I was 16 and I was intellectually, philosophically very much not aligned with a book. I did not agree with Ayn Rand about anything pretty much except religion, which I had been an atheist since the age of six. But other than that, I didn't agree with anything she wrote. And that was a huge thing because I spent months reading that book. Not because it's big, because it challenged everything I believed in. And I didn't want to take it on faith. So I argued with her. I tell the story. I used to throw the book on the wall. I used to yell at Ayn Rand. I mean, it was challenging everything I believed in. Anything I held, all my emotions were being turned upside down. It obviously challenged family and everybody around me and everything. So that was a huge crossroads. By the end of the book, she was right, I was wrong and that was clear. And then it was a question of, okay, what do I do now? What do I do different, right? And that's hard when you're 16 because the reality in spite of what you think when you're 16 is you don't know anything. 16 year olds are unbelievably ignorant. If only they understood how ignorant they are, their lives would be so much easier because 16 year olds are convinced they know everything and they act as if that and that only messes them up. It doesn't help them at all. One of our oldest parents is to show them how ignorant they are. Reality, it's real. So that was a huge turning point for me. It's like, what do I do differently, right? And some things I did right, I think, some I didn't. So first, my values changed. My orientation to a lot of things changed. My emotions didn't always follow because emotions are being cultivated over a long period of time and it takes time for your emotions to adjust. I had just, you know, before I read Atlas Shrugged, I'd lived in the United States for two years and hated it as a teenager. Mid-1970s, I was an innocent, ignorant teenager coming from Israel right into the midst of sex, drugs and rock and roll. I had no clue what was going on. I was, blew me away and I hated it. I hated, I hated American. Then I read Atlas Shrugged and it was like, okay, maybe there's something more to this country, right? Maybe America is something different than what I thought it was. I also was a raving socialist, so America didn't fit well with my socialism. And I had to reevaluate all of that and my attitude towards America. And I basically came to conclusion, I want to leave Israel and move to America, which was a complete upside. My parents heard that and I go, you hated it, what are you talking about? You couldn't wait to get back. I had to rethink, and I didn't. Here's one way I didn't do it. I was going to rethink what I wanted because I was going to go into military service, right? Which was unquestionable, right? It was a draft and you go in and that's it. And I just didn't just want to go into the military service. I was going to be, I was going to be a Navy SEAL and I was going to be a hero and I was going to sacrifice my life for the state and I was going for the community for whatever. I was a real bought-into-it nationalist, altruist, the whole shebang. And suddenly, wait a minute, is that really what I want to do? And that's the one that took me the longest to get over is that whole, I'm going to be a hero and I'm going to jump on the grenade when it comes and I get teary eyed when the flag goes up. I mean, that took a long time for it to go. It went, but it took a long time. But then at every major step, you kind of face these, how do you get to the United States? I'm going to sneak through the border, marry an American. How do you get here? Right, it's really hard. Yeah, but then you're stuck. You can't really advance in life. It's not the land of opportunity if you're here legally. It's complicated, it's really, really hard and you guys make it, we all make it really, really difficult for ambitious young people all over the world to want to come here, to do good things, to come here. They can't. Legal immigration is, you know, not impossible, but it's one in a hundred. I don't want one in a hundred dollars. So I went to school now because I wanted to go to school. Here's a decision, right? I, strategic decision. I came and got an MBA, not because I wanted an MBA. I couldn't care less about an MBA. I came and got an MBA because that was a way in. And I figured once I'm a student here, I find a way to get a job and then I couldn't find a job. So I got a PhD and then I got a job and then it, you know, years and years, decades later, I got citizenship, right? Still made it difficult. They still didn't make it easy, even with a PhD and a job. Still made it difficult to get a citizenship and get a green card or whatever, right? So, but strategically, you sit there and you say, okay, what am I going to do? Go back to Israel? No. Stay here how? Do what? It's difficult to get a legal job. At that point, well, no, my wife was pregnant. So, what do you do? Finance, getting a PhD in finance, that sounds cool. I mean, but those are the, it's not what I would have thought five years earlier. Never planned to get a PhD. Never thought about it, never, we can see. I knew I was going to get an MBA, get a job and that was it. It turned out that as a foreigner, it was much more difficult to get a job after an MBA than otherwise. I think it's both. You got a plan ahead because you know where you want to go. I planned ahead to come to America. I knew I was going to come to America. Then it was a question of how that evolves a little bit. And then when you face a problem, like you have a plan and then it doesn't work, right? Then you have to change. But if you only wait for the problems, then you're not guiding the ship. You're just waiting for the problems. So you have to have a plan and you have to be willing to revise that plan as you go ahead. And then when you face points of decision-making, points of crisis, points of problem, then you'll have to reflect again and go at it again. It's a never-ending process in that sense, right? Yep. Yeah, I mean, again, you only live once. So you should always be overly ambitious. Because if you're under ambitious, you'll always undershoot. You'll always not be the most you can. If you're over ambitious, maybe you'll achieve it. But if you don't achieve it, at least you'll achieve something a little bit less and you'll have the experience of trying it. So you know, go for it in life, particularly when you're young, when there's less people dependent on you, there's less things to lose, right? Then you should be as ambitious as you can imagine being and strive for great things. You want to strive to make your life great. You want to live a great life. So push for it. So I'd say, yeah, maximum ambition. Yeah, screw the motivation. Go try something else. So I don't know why you don't have motivation to try something else. I mean, that's maybe a psychological question that I can't answer. But you just have to do it. If you're not finding joy in what you do, change what you do and just plow through it. And see if you can find something, you do find joy in. And then the motivation will come. But you've got to try. And if you're heading a psychological barrier of not doing it, get help. I mean, I think one of the things we don't do enough is get help, whether from friends, family, whatever people we respect, but also from professionals. From professionals who know psychology, you can help us work out, work through the problems and the barriers that we face. I think there's a stigma to that in our society. We have no problem going to see a doctor for physical health, but somehow there's a stigma on going to see somebody for mental health. No, I mean, we should be willing to be the best that we can be in every realm, every aspect of our health. So I'd say, you know, you've got to figure out why you're not finding ambition, why you don't have the ambition to try something else. But in the end, you've got to try something else, whether you have ambition for it or not. I'd say the best way to, when you don't know what you want to do in life, go try a bunch of different things. Take some time and say, OK, I'm testing. I'm in testing mode. I'm not committing to any particular thing, and I'm going to try different things and see what I'm excited about. Again, some of us are born like, not born, but develop like a hard work. And when we're very young, we know I'm going to be an architect, and you know that, right? And there's no question, and that drives your whole life. But most of us, I don't think I like that. Most of us don't know what we want to do. Get to age 18, and you're supposed to choose, and you don't have a clue, right? And I had no clue what I wanted to do. I didn't discover what I wanted to do until I was 40, literally until I was 40 years old. And that's why I didn't mind getting an MBA, because it wasn't like there was some other track that was super important to me that I had to do, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. So getting an MBA sound kind of cool, and it was way into the United States. And then getting a PhD in finance was like, yeah, I like finance, it's not that I hate it. And I don't have an alternative, I don't have some other thing I have to do, and I'm kind of enjoying the finance, so I got a PhD in finance. And again, until I got the job at the Anne-Marie Institute when I was 39 years old, I didn't know what I wanted to do. That's what I wanted to do. This is what I want to do, right? But it took me a very, if you told me 40 years ago that this is what I'd be doing, I'd say you got to be kidding. I have no skill, no talent, no interest in any of that. What do I know? So you've got to constantly try different things and be willing to shift when you discover something you love. Yes, but don't use that. I worry, in this case, right? Don't use it as an escape. Getting a degree can sometimes be an escape. I don't know what I want to do right now, so I'll just go and hang out at college for a few years and study something that's mildly interesting. That's one option. But there should be a few options on the table for you to consider and really think through and make sure that you're not using any of them as an escape from, university can be an escape from life. Most professors are professors because it's an easy life that is an escape from the reality of business and making a living and so on. They get tenure, they can never be fired, they can do what they want, it's easy, it's repetitive. When I was a professor, I remember sitting at the coffee shop and today my business partner, but there's a professor with me as well, we were sitting there and I looked at him and I said, can you imagine here, sitting here in 20 years, teaching the same stuff to the same students just a younger every year, right? And sitting exactly where we are right now, writing the same papers, doing exactly the same thing. And it was like, I can't imagine myself doing that. I didn't exactly know where I was gonna go after that, but it just didn't, but they love it. That's exactly what they're looking for is that comfort that where you can be fired, you can't lose your job and you can do something the same thing over and over again, and that's okay, professionally, yeah. Yeah, so in every meeting, because most of these people are Christians, every meeting starts with a prayer. And the prayers are great, like people really have good things to say, there's a lot of the reaffirmation that you talk about, having good prayers. But you're an object of this, or you follow or buy a brand and you would like to inject reasonable justification for all these ideas of morality, and you'd like to get some deposit messages from your beliefs out there to share. How would you do that when you go ahead and give a prayer? Perhaps, because everybody would listen and it would be really easy for them to receive, they wouldn't be distracted by, forget their defenses up, or do you have to make some, do you have to make some sort of statement that you're talking about? I don't think you have to make a statement, but I wouldn't make a prayer about something I don't believe in. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere in terms of integrity and not, yeah, but you're praying in a context to something, right? I wouldn't, you know, you don't have to rub it in the face and you don't have to declare, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in all this crap and stop doing it, right? It's not gonna help you and it's not gonna change anybody's minds, but I wouldn't play their game either. I would just stay silent or if somebody asked, yeah, I don't believe in that stuff, so I don't do it. And the opportunity, I think, to raise awareness in terms of your ideas is the way you deal with the different topics, the way you engage with the different things that come before you as a commissioner, right? And the principles that you use in making those kind of decisions and they're different. They're gonna be different than everybody else's and that's how they're gonna figure out that you're different and they might maybe ask questions and so on and answer. But I wouldn't, you know, I've had fundraising lunches with people with, you know, wealthy people who will then take my hands and say a prayer over lunch and then tell me how sorry they feel fine ran because she didn't believe in Jesus or whatever. But it's okay because she's in heaven and she's looking down on us now and I would, you know, and you have to tell them, you know, I don't believe any of that stuff and then they know. I mean, a couple of them have told me they would turn me into Christians. I said good luck. So yeah, this is why it's tricky in the world in which we live because we're a small, tiny minority in pretty much everything we believe in with small, tiny minority and that's why this reaffirmation and reminding yourself, I mean, prayer is a very clever thing again. It's a lot of the Christian traditions are very clever in terms of what they do, right? I mean, going to church every Sunday. It's built community, but it also reminds you of what the faith is about. A preacher gives a little talk like I just did every single Sunday to remind you about your values on what kind of life you should live and so on. And it's, you know, and we object to this, we don't have that. Maybe we need something like that and I'll turn it to them. But, you know, maybe my YouTube channel serves a little bit of that, right? It serves a little bit of community. It serves a little bit of reminding people what these ideas are. And I think the more the community grows, the more stuff like that will happen. But, you know, praying is again a reminder of there's something bigger than me and so on. But that's purposeful. Also, Christians are very good at using art to reinforce their ideas. They have music, they have singing, they have stories, they have a Bible which is filled with stories, metaphors. They then hire the greatest artists in the world, at least they did, you know, hundreds of years ago to paint the greatest paintings in the world and make them, they understand human, you know, how to motivate human beings and how to get them in line. And, you know, at least to some extent we could learn from that. We also, by the way, have our stories, right? Most of us came to these ideas because of Atlas Shrugman Fountainhead, which are stories. So, stories are important. That's great. Yeah, I mean, I'd say The Virtue of Selfishness, the book, The Virtue of Selfishness. Objectives of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peacock, Opa, you know, goes into what she writes in The Virtue of Selfishness in much more detail in terms of the virtues and values and all of that and how they relate and how they integrate. And the Opa, Virtue of Selfishness. And then the other thing I would do is, again, Leonard Peacock is, Leonard has a bunch of courses, lecture courses on the virtues and the values where he really, you know, really chews, really goes into depth and really integrates them thoroughly. And you can get, those are now free, you know, on the Ayn Rand University website so you can get all those. I would definitely take some of those, take some of the, if you're not clear about a virtue, you've probably got a lecture on it and you can brush up that way. So, I'd say those sources are best on the ethics. Yes, you did. Yeah? Yeah, I was too. Same thing? Change everything. It changes everything. But I read a paragraph, I go, think about it, integrate it into my thinking. Yeah. Read it into a little bigger, another long walk. And, but anyway, I realized I had thought of a career in public service, like an idiot. So, that changed my whole goal. I decided that every government in the world was passionate. The passionate was a system where everyone controlled the people. And why do I? Why have a passion? Passion is stupid. And I figured it was so stupid, it's so insignificant, so evil, so easy to destroy that one Catholic, the one thinking person, could destroy it for the whole world forever. It takes a lot of thinking, a lot of study, a lot of hard work, and courage, which is being true to your reality, no matter what that reality is, all is different than it is. And the money in your pocket, I knew it was in your 40,000 or more. You don't need armies, you don't need navies, you don't need turns and dollars. You can do this with the money in your pocket. And I got it, but it bucks that in my pocket. I'm a two-year-old, and I'm changing the world. And here's the things that I'm doing now. You got a book? I wrote this book. It's called Fashion Down's Past, versus Capital Down's Glory and Future. Now, this particular book is available on Facebook, and it's kind of free, I think, for a little period of time. I think the book is a fairly good version. But this particular book is terrible, and it's spelled the word for it, glorious, and it's kind of... But you're fixing it? You're fixing it? It's intense. If it's jumbled up, there's no page number. Oh, wow. It's going through the book. And it's like this, you know, they have a page, and it has a page with the... You got the people at it, and they put a page number on it. There's been this, and I'm getting this put away, but that's just what folks are going to remember. But the more I'm saying this, Bertman and I have chose that the creative means of responsibility, that's almost... And this is, I say, all creative means of responsibility. Absolutely. Everybody should love it. Everybody should love it. Absolutely. Yeah. No, but you're right, the way to change the world is you change the world one mind at a time. You change the world with ideas. You change the world every single day by living the best life that you can live and letting people know about these fabulous ideas. And again, it's one mind at a time. We don't measure our success by... If we measure our success by the millions, it's... Yeah. Colleen. Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, you should question everything you're taught. I mean, really, everything we're taught. And it doesn't mean everything we're taught is wrong. But you have to question it because it could be wrong. But pretty much everything. We need to rethink. Yeah, should you buy a home or not? Should you have a family or not? Should you love your parents or not? Do you only think to your parents or not? Do you have kids? Should you love your kids? If they turn out to be jokes. And some of them do. So you've got to really think it through. You can't just accept that the way it's always been, should you get married? Should you be monogamous? I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm saying you should think about it. And you should do it because you really believe it's good and really believe it's right. And have some evidence for that it's good and right. Not just accept it because society has been doing something for 2,000 years. Again, it doesn't mean because society's been doing something, it's wrong, but it doesn't mean it's right. So I'd say challenge everything. Really challenge everything. Now don't be nihilistic about it. You don't break everything. You challenge everything. You think through everything. You question everything. And you have to prove it to yourself. Is it good? Is it right? Is it what I want to do? Good? Absolutely. Don't take my word for any of this. You have to come to the decision yourself. And in terms of what does it mean to have a great life? You know, what it means is to be happy, to be fully integrated, to feel like, to have your emotions and values aligned, not to have, you know, you're gonna have stress and anxiety because the future's always uncertain, but not to live in a state of stress and anxiety, which a lot of people out there do, right? Not to live it because you know what you're doing is the right thing to do. It means enjoying life and being open to new experiences and going out there and exploring the world and what the world has to offer you. Which is again, not something we're brought up to do. I mean, I remember when I first came to America, when I hated it, I mean, Americans never traveled. There's very little traveling going on. There was never exploring and going out. There was a very insular, I think it's changed. I think Americans travel a lot more today than they did back then. But you know, open up your horizons and see what's possible. At the end of the day, only you can define what a great life is for you. And look, this phenomena of people going, turning to religion to find, you know, Ayan Hirsi Ali did it recently and many other people are doing it. It's true that if you don't have a moral anchor, if you're not fully committed to yourself, to being an egoist, to being selfish, right? To really living life for you, then where is your anchor? What are you attached to? What do you do? So you're an atheist, you don't believe in God, okay? And therefore you're not accepting these scriptures. So what do you do? What's the plan? How do I form a plan when I have no principles? I have no anchor. And so yes, they're constantly looking for an anchor. They're looking for principles. They find themselves living in a state of constant. And she says this, if you read Ayan Hirsi Ali's essay when she talks about becoming a Christian, she implies, I mean, it's subtle, but she writes there about living in a state kind of an anxiety and uncertainty and fear. And she is, I mean, she's a hero. She lived this tremendous life, but she never found, she never found a set of principles to guide her life, to really anchor that life. So she felt it, felt it drift. And it's not like now that she's kind of a Christian. I don't know how seriously she takes it. She's gonna suddenly, she's still gonna find challenges and problems, right? But yeah, so I wanna be the best that I can be at the things that I do. I wanna be really, really good. And I wanna have fun, right? I wanna have fun. I wanna enjoy what I do. And that could involve having fast cars. And it might not involve having fast cars, right? It could involve a lot of travel. It might not involve a lot of travel. But it's, everything's open. And the answer is not gonna be a material, but in a sense of houses, cars and stuff. But that is all part of it. I need a place to live. I need a means of transportation. I need these things, right? So it's, you have to figure out what the right balance is around these things, but it's focused on you, your values, what you love, what your passions are. And assuming the values and the passions are rational. It's part of what you always have to be monitoring. Is the fact that I am passionate about something, is it rational? Does it make sense? And rational in the context of human life, given what we know about a human being, the nature of human beings. Yeah. You don't know that there's an answer to how do you gain the courage, right? You just do. I mean, you use your will, right? Your free will, and say, I gotta do this. I mean, what is courage? Courage is not that fear disappears. It's overcoming the fear. It's doing it in spite of the fear. And that's just as an act of will. And it just requires doing it and remembering. You know, I think it's easier to be courageous when you know what the goal is. And when you know that your happiness and your life and your values are at stake, right? It's about you. Versus a morality that's kind of floating and it's not clear, you know, why should I, what am I doing this for? Who am I doing it for? Then it's really difficult to be courageous. But the more you internalize and integrate the idea that what I'm facing now, what this action that I'm going to take is necessary for me, for my happiness, for my future, for my success, I'm just gonna do it. Sorry, anecdotes just don't come to me. I'd have to think about it. Yes. Courage, or what has to do with it? Yeah, I mean, I think you'll always should be looking for opportunities. I think pessimism needs to be overcome by looking at what opportunities open up to you and what opportunities are available to you and what opportunities exist out there. I don't think that's necessarily related to courage, but it's certainly something you should always be open to and open to new opportunities, right? To something coming out of the left field and providing with an opportunity to better your life in a significant way. And God, I didn't think I'd land up in Puerto Rico. Not on my long-term plan, but circumstances change and suddenly, whoa, there's an opportunity here, so you take it. If it's good for you. Well, introspection and emotion are not the same thing. So I think you spend a lot of time introspecting and choosing your personal values. Introspection is key to choosing your personal values. But, and emotion is important, but I don't think it's the right approach is because I feel it, therefore I must do it. I'm passionate about X, therefore I should do X. It should be I'm passionate about X, that's interesting that I'm passionate about X. I want to introspect about why I'm passionate about X. And then is X good for me? Right, you could be passionate about a romantic partner and then think about it for 20 minutes and discover maybe that passion is not guided by rational reasons. Maybe this person is not good for me. And then you won't pursue that passion or shouldn't pursue that passion. But you might discover that a passion is good for you. It is right, and then you do want to pursue the passion. So I wouldn't leap to, if I'm passionate about something, do it. Passion's good, but making sure that it's aligned with the other values in your life, it's aligned with reality, it's aligned with what's good for you, only then do it. So your values should be vetted by reason. Yes. They're so hidden. Absolutely, and also to learn about yourself. One of the ways in which you learn about yourself is by assessing your emotions and by assessing what you observe about how you react to different things. That's how you learn about yourself. You learn about what maybe needs tweaking, fixing, aligning, and what maybe leads you in a new direction that you didn't think of before. So yeah, absolutely, yeah. There's this kind of a groundswell of all this new media, wondering if they or I have looked at all that speaking and I kind of noticed some of these leading shows, providing speakers to provide some of the moral foundation for all these enemies, which are completely dominant in Christianity. Yeah. I mean, I think we look at all those opportunities and certainly have in the past, the challenges they don't want us usually for a variety of different reasons, not just because of religion, but because I've used and I've aligned with them on a lot of different things. They're not capitalists. They've used on a lot of particular issues, not aligned with ours. We did a lot of work with the Tea Party. A lot of work with the Tea Party. And what did it get us? Not that much. Not that much. Partially because the Tea Party were older people and older people tend to be fixed in their ways and they're not that open to new ideas and learning new things. And so I could get a Tea Party audience to give me a standing ovation every talk I gave. And it would go in one ear and it would come out the other ear. It did nothing to the audience. And as soon as the religionists or the nationalists or the something came up, speak after me, they got a standing ovation too, right? If they knew what they were doing. So as a consequence, our programs are really oriented towards young people. I think you can really make a difference in how they think about the world. You can really change them. You can create the kind of change that many of us went through when we were young and red and early on. Not to say you give up on everybody else, but you've got limited resources, you need to focus. We focus on young people because we think that's where you get the most bang for the buck. And a lot of these more politicized groups are usually captured by others, by the Christians or various forms of conservatives that and in the end of the day, they're not really open to ideas. They'll give us the time of day, but they're not open to the ideas, sadly. We need to wrap up. Yeah, we need to wrap up. Yeah, okay. Well, thanks everybody. Really appreciate you coming out. And I'll see you on my show. Don't forget my show. And yeah, thank you. Thank you, Colleen. And thank you, Ryan, for putting this together. Thank you.