How to Survive the Death of Your Old Self - Charlie Houpert - #1063

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
You're in a very different place now to when you started doing your thing online. What's the unifying thread? Is there one between all of this stuff or do you see it as different Charlies? How do you come to construct the narrative of what your interests have been and your personal growth over the last decade and a bit?

**Charlie Houpert** (0:19)
Sure. The terror was in not having a thread. So there was a time about three years ago where I could not form a story that connected who I had been in my 20s to who I was becoming in my 30s. I was thinking about this. I've heard you talk about the lonely chapter, where you go from, I'm just blending in to I'm going to take control of my life, then I'm going to dial in these optimizing things. I'm going to start my business, get in shape, eat the right food, etc. I discovered a second lonely chapter, which is when you bottom out on the optimizing thing, and your friends are still very much in that optimized zone.
I did not know where to go, but I just knew that it wasn't working.

**Chris Williamson** (0:57)
Wow.

**Charlie Houpert** (0:58)
The common thread for me was that there was this problem in my life that started with, I'm too shy, nobody wants to talk to me, and you start off in victim consciousness, which is this is just who I am and I will just deal with this for the rest of my life. You read the game, which is what I did. You have this breakthrough, read Dale Carnegie, read all these other guys, you go, oh my gosh, I can change my behavior, get different results. But then once I had all the different results, which was, I was 30 years old, had this business that I dreamed of, the girlfriend that I'd imagined myself dating, bunch of friends, money was coming in. The most cliche thing happened, which is there was an emptiness that I could not pinpoint or explain and things, I started unconsciously breaking things because I didn't know where to go from there. So to answer your question, the threat has been, I try to attend to the greatest problem in my life and figure out who I can learn from to solve it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:55)
What does breaking things look like?

**Charlie Houpert** (1:58)
It looks like I'm in the business that I love, that I dreamed of. There was a, one day it was like, if I could just make $2,000 a month, live in Latin America and do work that I found meaningful, that's the dream. And I hit that and then I moved the goalposts and I moved the goalposts and all of a sudden I'm complaining and I go, I have to make one video a week. Three years prior was, I get to do this. And it became so annoying. These people are asking me and I have to hit all these targets that I'd set for myself to surpass views and all sorts of things. I started having issues in my friendships. I started having issues in different kinds of relationships. And I did not know that what was happening, I would say, is like my soul was waking up. I had no concept of a soul. I wasn't a religious person. But the lack of emotional and spiritual nourishment that I'd allowed myself to experience for the last decade plus had caught up with me, is what happened.

**Chris Williamson** (2:57)
Was the success and the pursuit materially antithetical to spiritual connection?

**Charlie Houpert** (3:08)
No. That's the tragedy.

**Chris Williamson** (3:11)
I didn't need to sacrifice one to get the other.

**Charlie Houpert** (3:13)
I had it. I think the temptation is when you have unresolved emotional issues, which I think we all do from childhood. You've spoken to people about trauma, I know, and the ways in which we have these events in our past that happen, and we make vows to ourselves that I will never experience that again, and then our entire life bends around not having that particular experience again.
And so we all have these unconsciously in our lives. And I started off with this business that was, it was just it. It was, I was learning in every video. I made this Donald Trump video. I learned so much in doing it, and people liked it. I had both. I was filling myself up and helping the world and making money. And then that people pleaser kicks in, and then that you could be doing better kicks in, and it became, I have to top the last thing that I did, which was never the early motivation. The early motivation was always, how can I solve my own problem and help people that are like me? But it devolved into, can I have another video that is better than the one before? Can I make more money this month than I did the prior month? And that endless loop became deeply depressing to exist in.