How To Design A Life You Love - James Smith - #205

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
People of the Internet, pepper your Angus ready for James Smith today on Modern Wisdom. This is an episode I've been looking forward to for ages. Me and James kept missing each other. We've been trying to schedule this in for literally years. But finally, the stars aligned, and today does not disappoint. If you're not careful, life can end up in a place, not only that you don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to. And following your default desires and society's norms is a surefire route to misery. Now, James is not a life coach. However, he is someone that reflect a lot on his experiences. And today we get to hear his principles for how he designs his life to be as happy and fulfilling as possible. This includes how to avoid a dreary existence, his best tips for a first date, how to overcome anxiety, why wealth can't be quantified in a bank account, why dick pics aren't actually all that bad, and much more. If you are new here, or even if you're a long time listener, make sure that you've hit the subscribe button. You are still getting three episodes every single week, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with the most fascinating humans on the planet, just like James. It would make me very happy indeed. The show is growing so ridiculously quickly. During the month of July, we did over 800,000 downloads, which I don't even know what to think about that. Thank you to everyone that continues to support the show. I love you to bits. Yeah, hit the subscribe button. Make sure that you do it, right? You don't want to miss one of these episodes. Oh yeah, final warning. This episode is a little bit sweary. Slight language warning does get a bit sweary. James is sweary. I can be a bit sweary as well. So yeah, there's a few fucks in it, but yeah, it's game time. Please welcome the wise and wonderful James Smith.
James bloody Smith in the building. How are you doing, man?

**James Smith** (2:13)
I'm very well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. I think this has been quite long overdue.

**Chris Williamson** (2:19)
Very, very, very long time coming. Yes, so the internet is waiting on Tentahooks to hear what we've got to say today. So just to clarify, you're not a life coach, and you also didn't write a diet book. So who are you then?

**James Smith** (2:36)
I'm still trying to figure that out myself, mate. I felt like I was someone that didn't belong to the fitness industry, but I was in it. And then I certainly don't want to belong to the life coach industry, but I still want to venture into it. I feel like I'm almost like a lost sheep amongst everyone else. Like getting into fitness, I had such passion for it, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this. I fucking hated most of the people that I was with.
And what I didn't want to do was recreate any of their work in the slightest. And funnily enough, the name for that first book came, I was pissed with my publishers at Hawksmoor. And you go to Hawksmoor for like a nice lunch in London. It's like 5:30 p.m. We're doing shots at the table still with the last people in the restaurant. And someone's like, well, what are we going to call it? Because it's not a diet book. And I was like, smashed. I was like, that's what we're going to call it.

**Chris Williamson** (3:29)
Yeah, fucking, fucking great that, mate.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:32)
Three more tequilas, please.

**James Smith** (3:34)
Yeah, that was pretty much it. And it was kind of like a nuanced title because everyone in the fitness industry brings out their own like fucking diet book or their system or whatever it was. And I wanted people straight from the off to think, oh, not another flipping personal trainer releasing another stupid book about broccoli and burpees. And what pained me was there are people in the fitness industry that I raised my eyebrows when I read their books. And I was like, their book is perfectly right. They did talk about the calorie deficit. They did talk about this. But then the book was fucking boring. And I was like, and I'm not going to name any names. And I was like, how can I do this? How can I kind of come in with enough anecdotes, information and not try and talk about broccoli?

**Chris Williamson** (4:18)
The big thing that I've realised upon doing this podcast and speaking to people, like multiple, multiple New York Times bestsellers and the guys that are the top writers in the world, understand that context is important to deliver a key point. It's the same reason why when you're scrolling through Instagram, you see an inspirational quote, which might be the condensation of an entire life's work from one of the smartest people on the planet, just synthesised into a single sentence. But why doesn't it change your life? Because it's in the wrong context. It's like booty picture, booty picture, dog photo, funny cat video, inspirational quote, booty picture, booty picture. You're not in the right frame of mind. There's no context to it. So I think that you need to have that framing around the message that then actually delivers what people want and that improves retention, which improves compliance, which actually means it becomes effective.