What Makes A Good Life? - Aubrey Marcus - #117

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi, friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. Today's a big one. Aubrey Marcus, CEO of Onnit, New York Times bestselling author, and one of the biggest podcasters on the planet joins me today. When someone's got a lot of programming time out there, like Aubrey does, it can be a little bit difficult to think of what to ask him that he hasn't been asked before. So today, I wanted to find out what he thinks makes a good life. Aubrey spends a lot of his time both working on his inner and outer self and then trying to reach the world through his companies and his content. And I wanted to kind of try and get him to compile that together into some guiding principles that he abides by in an effort to make sure he's pointing in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, there is absolutely loads to take away from today's episode. Aubrey really is the real deal. Also today's episode is brought to you by The Protein Works. They're giving away a full year's supply of loaded nuts. That is one tub per month, every month for the next year. All that you need to do is head to the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel, find this episode with Aubrey Marcus. Make sure you're a subscriber and leave a comment. Just leave a comment on the video. If you're a subscriber, I will choose one of you to win a full year's supply of loaded nuts, courtesy of The Protein Works. But for now, it's Aubrey Marcus time.
I'm joined by Aubrey Marcus, founder and CEO of Onnit, fellow podcaster and all-round fascinating human. Aubrey, welcome to the show.

**Aubrey Marcus** (1:47)
Well, thanks, brother. Happy to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
Very, very happy to have you on. I'm sure there'll be a lot of people that are familiar with what it is that you do, but how do you describe what it is that you do on a daily basis and your life to someone who's never met you before?

**Aubrey Marcus** (2:04)
Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean, obviously you can describe the things that I've done in my personal history that I've accomplished. I founded the company on it, wrote the book, owned the day, done the Aubrey Marcus podcast. I mean, there's these things that I've done. But really, if you're talking about me as a person, I'm just someone who's trying to learn a little bit more today. That'll make me a little bit better tomorrow than I am today. So just someone who's on the path of learning and the path of exploring and the path of asking questions and trying to figure out the small questions and the big questions.

**Chris Williamson** (2:39)
Isn't that interesting that when asked that one of the first things that we default to is our achievements, quantifiable metrics of status?

**Aubrey Marcus** (2:51)
Yeah. I mean, that's what the typical response to that question is. What's your job? What have you done? What are your validations? It's reinforcing your somebody-ness. You know, as some of the spiritual teachers say, like, this is what makes you somebody. You founded a company. You wrote a book. You have a podcast. You have this, you know, wife. You have this thing. You have these kids. You have this is your somebody-ness.
And that's one level of expression, of course. And that's all fine. But the really interesting thing is like, who are you? And how close are you becoming to the truth of who and what you are and how you serve? You know, that's a really much more interesting question. For me, at least. But, you know, the other stuff is fine, too.

**Chris Williamson** (3:37)
I think it's interesting for me as well, but it's a little bit less sexy and easy to get out in a cocktail party or like when you sat around the dinner table, eh?

**Aubrey Marcus** (3:47)
Yeah, it's, you have to suss out the audience, you know. You have to realize, like, yeah, you got to figure out who's going to, who's going to care about those, those more interesting issues and who's just going to want to talk about the same old stuff, you know, like, and that's, that's kind of the people I like to surround myself with, people that we can immediately bypass, past the banal recounting of the personal history, you know, like that, all right, that happened. I can tell you what happened, but, but that's not what's interesting. What's more interesting is what's happening, you know, like, how is, not who Aubrey was, but what is the Aubrey-ing that's going on right now?

**Chris Williamson** (4:30)
I understand the verb to Aubrey.