Visakan Veerasamy is a writer and an entrepreneur. It's perhaps the biggest competitive advantage no one ever talks about because it's so obvious. But just what does it mean to be a serious person? And if it's such a help, why is it so hard to find? Expect to learn why being serious is so important, how to deal with being too harsh on yourself and holding high expectations of others, how to get better at being disliked, the relationship between seriousness and earnestness, ways to deal with procrastination more effectively and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get a 20% discount & free shipping on yourThe Chairman™ Pro at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM20) Get a Free Gift, 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Why is being serious so important? Why is being serious so important? Well, you know, we have a limited life, right? We have limited resources and we get to live it however we want. I just think it is really tragic if we don't make the most of it, basically, right? And, you know, it's funny. It depends on who you talk to because there are people who kind of
get very hung up on the kind of thing I just said. And you can kind of go too far with it. And then you get really stiff and grimaced about, oh, I got to make as much money as possible. Oh, I got to acquire as much status as possible. And in my mind, that actually isn't. So when I describe seriousness, that is slightly unserious.
It's kind of a fixation on a particular model of trying to make some number go up. So if you read my essay, the conclusion is that seriousness is love and curiosity expressed earnestly over a long period of time. And that I just think, really, it's like life is a feast and you really want to sample everything you can and find the thing that's yours and really enjoy it.
Yeah, and actually, the way I would answer that question other than that is,
having lived through the opposite which is you know being around unserious people going to school or other institutions where there's like an unserious energy where people are kind of you know just not taking things seriously and they might have their reasons maybe the job's not that important to them and they want to focus on something else which is fine but what I found is that when I reflect on my life and think about when are the moments when I've really had a great time it's
But invariably, when I'm serious about what I'm doing, which involves, you know, playfulness and so on, and I'm surrounded by other people who are also serious. And that just produces something, you know, there's that je ne sais quoi, right? That excellence that is, once you've tasted it, it's such a, nothing else compares. And so I kind of, I talk about things like that in part to...
My friend Kevin Kwok has this quote that's like, tapping a tuning fork, see what else resonates. So if in a sea of people, you have a distribution of different kinds of seriousness, you want to find the kind of people who vibe with you and I'll...
So I was at a bachelor party, a stag do, in the UK about two years ago. And we were playing shuffleboard. And we'd been going for maybe six hours or so. So people had kind of gravitated into whatever their normal social groups were. Some of us had priors. Some of us had known people from before. But a lot of the people in each of the groups were new.
And I looked over at the other table of people, and the guys were sort of like flicking the little pucks, and they were sort of being playful and messing about, and no one was really keeping score. Meanwhile, on the table that I was on, we were whispering tactics to each other. We were talking about, oh, he's really weak when he has to come short, so blah, blah, blah.
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