Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en enthusiasm is uh such a superpower that most people could tap into and totally don’t for whatever reason so i graduated in undergrad and i dropped out of harvard business okay gotcha and you said you studied happiness uh like what was that like one classic i took a class called getting rich and but you know that wasn’t like my major it was just one class um is that really a class yeah so i actually i studied psychology um i i started in a track called migraine behavior and then ended up in psychology um and specifically there was a happiness lab that dan gilbert was running where we focused on like how people make decisions what makes us happy and basically the headline of the whole uh you know my whole experience was we’re really bad about making decisions that make us happy we do things that we think will make us happy but in fact like getting the fancy car doesn’t make you happy because then you have to clean the car or getting a bigger home out of the city doesn’t you know necessarily make you happy because then you commute farther to your work so it’s just really really i think a good perspective of um it’s the little things that really make us happy i love that you know uh this is very on topic so so i remember back in the day there’s a guy who was i think a professor at harvard named sean anchor is that somebody who was yeah that was he was uh he is one of my teachers sean aiker um yeah he’s wonderful and actually um his core professor tal benjahar um and phillip stone were my my thesis so he gave this ted talk that’s pretty great i still remember it and i watched this thing like 10 years ago that’s kind of you know some talks just stick with you and it was called that i think the happiness advantage or the sort of something like that and if i remember correctly the thesis was um being happy is actually an advantage to uh getting great results some people think about it the other way like if a great thing happens then i’ll be happy and his advice if i what i remember from 10 years ago was if i am happy i’ll have better results is that a good is that am i accurate or am i just totally misremembering so the short term is that um in under extreme duress and extreme stress you can outperform in the short term if you’re actually very happy and relaxed and fulfilled you outperform the long call so when you’re building teams for long-term success so you know inspired capital it’s a venture fund uh we have a really unique group of people that have come together to build this firm um and we’re trying to build a long-term fund and so i’m very focused on let’s make sure we have long-term happiness because you outperform in the long run and so um and the other thing is i think one of the things i learned from sean and tom my my professors is um positive energy and attitude are actually an undervalued resource people are very naturally drawn to people that are positive if you’re super negative over and over people don’t want to be around you they don’t want to work with you they don’t want to show up for you um and so i think again you know one thing people always ask me is what would i tell high schoolers and i’m like have a good attitude it goes really far and it’s it’s part of that point of happiness is an advantage so is positivity i always talk about this uh enthusiasm is sort of in complete under supply amongst successful people so you know when you’re trying to compete and you’re trying to be successful you’re the wrong person i’m like the stupidest person obviously you’ve bought in on this what i’m saying is that for most people or most of the environments i’ve been around whether it’s like you know entrepreneurs investors right now i’m at a bigger company because my company got acquired it’s like the execs at this company um in some ways enthusiasm i think people see it as um like a low status thing to do it’s like oh you know sort of um being reserved is somehow more i don’t know prestigious or powerful in some way uh and i’ve gone the complete opposite direction where i’m i’m overly enthusiastic and i i’m like dude i have one tenth of the skills of all the people that have been around me but i’ve been able to go so far because i think enthusiasm is uh such a superpower that most people i i mean i totally uh agree with you um and beyond not only do i totally agree with you i also think it’s worth saying that um it is a skill that we can all adopt right like just trying to have a positive outlook is something you know i can’t grow taller or i can’t get better at um you know a certain trait that i just don’t have trying to be positive and trying to to to be joyful i think actually it’s something we can all put on it may not be easy for everybody to do it but it is possible sam are you an enthusiastic guy uh i think i am i think that’s why people like this podcast so we have a very loyal audience and i think it’s because people feel as though the sean and i have a little bit of a contagious energy and yeah it is it is positivity or it’s very positive but i i think some of my co-workers will say that i’m kind of grumpy because i i’ve got to be the bad guy unfortunately a lot of times i think you have like an angry enthusiasm uh you flip your switch flips from like in extreme enthusiasm and it’s super infectious to like quickly very angry or grumpy about something and then you you switch back sort of effortlessly but for the people around you they’re probably just getting rocked by it yeah i uh like maybe you were like this uh but like i will fight with my like executives at my company but then we could just hug it we’re good we’re good but i definitely like that um