Stephen Bartlett
speaker
413 appearances
7 recordings
5 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 12 Jun
Stephen Bartlett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And I would, and it's like I have this visual of the 300 movie where the queen says to the king as he goes off to battle, she says, come back with your shield or on it. And I kind of see like my work that way. Like I can't imagine a better way to go out than like doing the thing I love. And it bothers a lot of people that I love something different than they love.
And it bothers me that it bothers them, to be honest, because I make no projections. Do whatever you want. And I feel like if I ever had one thing that people took from me, it was absolute freedom. And because of that absolute freedom, we are 100% responsible for our own lives. And so where we place the finger of blame is also where power flows.
So if you blame your parents for your life, your parents have power over your life. If you blame your boss for your bad life, your boss has power over your life. If you blame you for your bad life, at least you can change you and you can do something about it. And so I think absolute responsibility has been my core tenant.
And if you have a life where you're like, I don't want to care about work that much. And I just want to spend all my time with my family. I'm like, congratulations, you fucking won. That's amazing. Just don't assume that everyone's you. And that winning for me is the same as winning for you. And I think the times that I talk about this...
I know that my message won't resonate with everyone and that's okay. But it's for the few people who were like me and felt like everyone told them there was something wrong with them. And I still get people to tell me there's something wrong with me. And if wrong means not normal, then yeah, you bet. But it's more so that like you are different and that's okay.
And I think that if you're okay with that, then it unleashes this whole new realm of possibility of being able to do what you want. And kind of like I had the, you know, you do 100 of these and you look at the top 10%, do 100 of these, look at the top 10%.
That was my way of trying to operationalize happiness because it was this ephemeral thing that when I was 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, I struggled a ton with. I was very depressed. I looked at, you know, religion. I looked at a lot of different things. And this is common for people at that age. And I came up with a mantra for me at that time, which was fuck happiness.
Now, people will then hear this, and I'm sure this will get taken out of context, but that was basically like this release moment for me, where by continually chasing happiness, it always existed outside of me. And so it was always this carrot that was in front of me that I could never really get to. And so by saying, fuck happiness, I was like, it's unattainable. I'm just going to work.
And I'm just going to do the stuff I want to do. And when I started doing the stuff that I wanted to do, I looked up years later and I was like, I actually kind of like my life. And I was like, is this what happiness is? And I was like, I don't know. But I think one of the major plights of humanity, myself included, is the expectation that life should be different than it is.
And so we create this idea that whatever we have right now is not what it should be. And I think should is the root of all pain, is that all the things that we think should happen but aren't is basically the measurement of our pain. And so I've tried to eradicate should from my life. Should for other people. She should do this. They should do that. And just lean into is. It just is this way.
I work, period. Not I should work more, I should work less, or I should work differently, or I should see my mom more, I should call my dad more. I do this. And if something changes, I will change. And so unconditional shoulds. Now, if there is a condition of like, if you want to make more money, then this is a higher likelihood you might want to consider doing this.
Those are things that I don't consider in that category. But just the generalized shoulds of... He shouldn't do that. He should build a family. He should have kids. He should have gotten married earlier. He should have gotten later. He should have married someone different. He shouldn't have the life that he has. He shouldn't work this way. According to what?
And so for me, that is my theory on life, on happiness, work, and love has been very unified because I love my work so much that I got out of a relationship and when I started dating Layla, I said, I am not willing to change this. And so you have to be willing to deal with me working this way or this won't work because my relationship with my work is the most satisfying relationship I have.
Now people will hear that and be like, well, that's because he's never experienced true love or whatever narrative they'll say. But it's like, you haven't lived my life and I haven't lived yours and I don't project anything onto you. But I love what I do. And I get attacked for liking what I do so much. And I like working a lot. And it's because they have negative associations with the word.
And that's their own history of their experience with the word. But I see my goals and my relationship with my goals as one of the most sacred things that I have because I see them as a relationship with myself. And so those proxy, when someone comes in and says, hey, you know, sweetie, you've been working too much. According to what? Why should I stop, right? Now let's do this other thing.
And people will probably see this as a, they'll put whatever labels they want on it. But like, I just said, this is what I would like to do with my life. And if you can incorporate yourself into that, that would be amazing. And so my second date with Layla, after we talked about business for four hours on our first date, was I said, I'm going to be working all day.
It'd be cool if you worked with me. And she just worked next to me. She had her own thing, but she just worked beside me. And I was like, this is nice. And over time, eventually it was like, hey, maybe you want to work on my thing with me. And she was like, yeah, that sounds good. It was a little bit more than that. But fundamentally, I got her to switch to working on it with me.
And at that point... What we got to talk about was what we were creating together. And to me, that's been the journey of my life. And it's been amazing. And I'm not saying it works for everyone. I would say it probably doesn't work for most people. But it has worked really well for me.
And it would make sense for me that my path would be different than most people's because I don't behave like most people. And so I would have to have a different formula for how I drive life. you know, meaning or joy from my own life.
And since I don't believe in inherent meaning, just the meaning that we choose to ascribe to things, then it's up to me to create that meaning within the work that I do. And so the reason acquisition.com was all based on, and it was during that year where I just basically had nothing to do, where I was like, what do I want to do with my life? Because I don't need to work anymore.
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