Why Chasing More Never Made Me Happy

0:00But you lived a pretty aesthetic life for a long time. Yes. Why, like, besides all the nerdy stuff I tried to shoehorn in there, what was it for you that kept you hooked on that? I think it was a combination of two things. I think it was, to put it really frugly, ADHD and avoidance attachment. Yeah, okay. Combined. Okay. And a lot of curiosity as well. Like I think- Oh, there's that openness to experience. Again, you're very high on openness to experience.

0:27Yeah, and I think you and I are very similar in that. Like we love to learn. Yeah. So I love learning. I love new, like a new country, a new language, a new history. Like one of my favorite things to do is just like whenever I landed in a new country, I would just open up the country's Wikipedia. Oh, same, yeah. And I would just go so deep. Yeah. I would like spend five hours just digging through. Yeah. everything about that country's history, its people, its culture, its demographics, everything.

0:53So I think it was a combination of all those things. But I mean, for me, I really, I love novelty. I love new experiences. And I think my brain is kind of predisposed to seek them compulsively. On top of that, I had a lot of attachment issues, avoidance issues. I was a commitment phobe. So very early, I was very adept at building a lifestyle, right? Like I had a nebulous, quote unquote, internet business that was really just like a smattering of websites and freelance work.

1:30So I was location independent. I could live anywhere in the world. I traveled all over the world. Yeah. I never really was willing to settle down with a girl. And like the few women I did end up in a relationship with, like I didn't stay faithful to them. I was just like, I was bad at relationships. I really struggled to be in them. So I set up a lifestyle for myself where I was always in a new place. I was always meeting new people. I was always dating new women.

1:58I was always learning new things. And for, I would say, three or four years, that was really satisfying. It was just like, I was young, you know, I was in my twenties, like it was cool as fuck. It was tons of fun, really learned a lot about myself, had a lot of great experiences. But there was an inflection point after a number of years where, again, that diminishing returns started to kick in, right, where it's like, okay, the more places I travel, the less satisfied I seem to be with each subsequent place I travel.

2:32The more women I date, the less satisfied I seem to be with each subsequent woman I date. The more businesses and websites I start, the more frustrated and dissatisfied I seem to be with each one that I start. And so it was a clear pattern that was playing out on multiple vectors in my life. And I realized that like... I really need to start kind of narrowing here. And I think it happened first on the business side is just like, my dating relationship blog started to take off.

3:08And that was like, okay, we had something's working. I should just shut down everything else and focus on that. Um, and I think eventually I just started kind of applying that across the different vectors, um, throughout my life, but like, it was hard. It wasn't pleasant. Um, because, because most people would see that and they would say, Oh, I just, they would do the additive bias thing and just keep going. Yeah. You know what I mean? They, they just, they're like, Oh, I was happy.

3:33This is when I was happy when I was doing all these crazy wild things. I just need to go find more crazy wild things. Yeah. What was it that you saw? Was it really just the business thing? Like I was like, Oh, my business. I, when I focused on that, if you go back, I don't know if these articles are even still on the website, but there are a couple of pieces back in like 2010, 2011, I wrote that, uh, about being a digital nomad and like, Oh yeah, I remember those.

3:56Yeah. And they're really melancholy. Like they're wanderlust. Yeah. I remember they're very melancholy. And I remember having this experience. I was like, I don't know, I was traveling like somewhere in Asia or something. And I did this crazy thing. I was like whitewater rafting in Indonesia. And I like, I don't know, like met some girl and spent a weekend with her. Couldn't even speak each other's languages and all this stuff. And I remember I flew home and I saw some of my friends from high school and we just hung out and had beers for two days.

4:24And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. And I remember realizing, I'm like, I actually like this better than all the shit that I did. And had some of those points too. Yeah. And I wrote, I remember writing a piece about that. It really mind fucked me because I was just like, I'm like, wait a second. I'm like, I'm putting so much into finding these novel, exciting experiences. And then at the end of the day, it turns out I just like really miss my friends.

4:48And so I started noticing that. I mean, it was a lot of things. The other thing too, on the dating front, there were probably two or three women that I met. So speaking of the dip, right? Like when I was a nomad, I never stayed anywhere for more than like three to six months because three to six months, that's when you start experiencing the dip. That's when you actually, the novelty wears off, the excitement wears off, and you actually start getting really annoyed about all the shit in that particular country.

5:14It just so happens most... Tourist visas are three or six months, too. So, yeah, that, too. That helps. That, too. You got a hard out. So, I was never anywhere long-term. And there were a couple women that I met that we had a really great thing going. Like, a really good thing going. And, And then I'd go. And, you know, the first time it happened, it's like, okay, well, that's sad. But okay, you know, life goes on. But then it happened again. And then it happened again.

5:46And each time I was like, am I a fucking idiot? Like, what am I wasting here? Like, I could potentially actually be wasting a lot here. And so I actually promised myself the next time I feel this, I'm going to stick around and, like, see where it goes. And then that's when I met my wife. So it's like that combined with the friend thing, combined with the business thing, like everything just kind of led back to the same principle, which was like narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow your options, narrow your focus, narrow what you care about, narrow what you're paying attention to.

6:18And there's a reason why like subtle art. I mean, there's a reason that's the central message is like. find a few things you care you really give a fuck about and just go all in on it because that that was like the antidote to everything i'd kind of been experiencing to aesthetic hell It was Stedic Hell. And I think it turns out that it's like, it was a little bit of a premonition of like where our culture was going. We're doing a 10th anniversary edition of the book.

6:45And, um, you know, so I just wrote, I just went back and edited the original manuscript. And it was interesting because the things that jumped out to me the most going back 10 years later, um, were the small sections about kind of the aesthetic social media smartphone culture. It's interesting because in the book, they're not a significant part of the book. They're kind of just little asides and observations here and there. And at the time they were not kind of the conventional wisdom or the accepted wisdom.

7:20And at the time, I also just thought they were kind of clever. you know, things that I noticed that I hadn't really seen other people say coming back in 2026 and looking like those, those little sections jump off the page. And it's like, dude, like you had no fucking idea where this was going. It was going to get so much worse. But we really didn't realize. So I do think that book was, I was one of the early adopters, but it was like at the front tail, people kind of experiencing, getting thrown into this online aesthetic lifestyle.

7:55Yeah. And all of the, hazards and downsides that come with it yeah yeah i remember going i remember this transition in the blogosphere from people telling you how to be a digital nomad and you know all the pictures and instagram photos you know you're in front of a mountain with your arms up and all of that i remember that transition to people saying here's some of the downsides too and it was probably 2016 17 18 yeah and there's when that started i think yeah I alluded to this in the previous chapter a little bit too, though, but I think one of the things I'm hearing from you is that you kind of did this to an extreme degree.

8:38Mm-hmm. Okay. There's a lot of people who do it to the extreme degree that don't get out of it, though, too. I think what you had with it, though, was some degree of the introspection around it. I think what I'm hearing from you is the writing. Yes. And what is what actually really helped you because you had to sit down and introspect about this kind of stuff. Yeah, it actually might've saved me. Probably. Yeah. Because I do know people who never got out of it.

9:00Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. My wife and I, we actually had a conversation about this recently about some of those people who never got out and how now they're like in their 40s. They're literally doing the same thing they did 20 years ago. Like their life has not changed at all. And it's gotten kind of sad. Like it's hard to watch. Yeah. One of the things that she and I were talking about is that a lot of this stuff, building community, setting roots somewhere, developing routines, hobbies, rituals, right?

9:35These are all soft skills that nobody really tells you that you need to learn. But if you are bouncing around to a new place every six months or every year for 20 years, you'll never develop those skills. And I see that in these people now. It's like they never learned how to build a real community, build lifelong friendships, build lifelong rituals. And there's a certain groundedness or stability that comes with that that I think is extremely healthy for people.

10:07But nobody explains that to you. Nobody tells you. And I think it's just because for most of the human history, it was... It was just implicit. Like, it just happened. Nobody had to think about it. We're the first generation in history that actually has the opportunity to fuck that up and, like, ruin it for ourselves. So, yeah, I look back and I'm actually, like, very grateful I got out when I did and forced myself to kind of learn these things. But it's funny because I actually do think some of my struggle, I guess, in midlife around a lot of these questions, around friendships, community, stability, consistency, is that I'm going to do it.

10:43Um, I think part of it is, is that I never got good at those skills. I never developed like that kind of connective tissue to, to the world around me, or, or at least I'm like a late bloomer. Yeah. And like trying to figure it out. It hasn't really come naturally. Yeah. Okay. Hey, everybody. Hope you enjoyed this video. It was just one clip from a much larger, more thorough episode. If you want to watch or listen to the full episode, click on the link in the description.

11:09And if you want to work on the topic at your own pace, we have a free PDF guide with all the resources, citations and exercises at SolvePodcast.com slash commitment. See you in the next one.