Derek Thompson

You're immoral, but successful.

If you set out to be a bodybuilder, but you only win that weightlifting competition with steroids, you have succeeded, you are successful, but you're successful by obliterating maybe the original value of fair competition.

So tell me why excellence needs values.

Let me tell you one thing that I struggle with in terms of self-help books, self-improvement books.

and counsels to reject sort of external sources of validation, right?

I think we're going to share this in common.

Go ahead.

So I read a lot of self-improvement books that often say you have to find intrinsic sources of motivation and reject extrinsic sources of motivation.

But then I see the authors of these books become New York Times bestsellers

And what do they do?

They post to the world, I'm a New York Times bestseller.

The moment the external validation made itself manifest, they immediately grabbed it and said, look at me, I succeeded.

And it's not just the New York Times bestseller thing.

If they have a meeting with the Dalai Lama, the first thing they're gonna do is post about the fact that they just met the Dalai Lama.

I would love to hear from you

a more sophisticated evaluation and analysis of how we should think about

extrinsic success.

Because it has to be a part of the jambalaya.

It's a huge part of it.

Yeah, you're reminding me.