Why Almost Nobody Gets the Life They Want - Jett Franzen - #1130

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
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I'm sitting, I'm working on my mind. This is me being with my thoughts. I'm not being distracted. It's like, yeah, but there's still little pernicious ways that you can use even the most positive habit as a coping mechanism to get away from something.

**Jett Franzen** (1:17)
100%. Yeah.
I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Carl Jung. And I just think every person needs to read some of his work at some point in their life, but specifically about like sort of confronting yourself in your own shadow. And I think that's kind of related to what you're saying because Carl Jung was believed that for a lot of people, the real danger in humans was not the evil that they're capable of, but the evil that they're denying in themselves. And evil is kind of, there's kind of like an ambiguous meaning there in the sense that evil could just be a bad habit.
But if I go to the gym, that is allowing me to steer myself away from that bad habit or it's becoming a mask. And this is all happening subconsciously, so it's very hard to diagnose it. But I think one of the most important things that people need to go through in their life is constantly confront themselves. Like I very, very recently in trying to start this, and it's almost like psychological suicide in a way. That's why it's so scary and dangerous is because you're basically trying to expose yourself to yourself, which potentially is harder than exposing yourself to other people. And you're like, yeah, I have X, Y and Z issue. Now how am I trying to avoid addressing these issues? And it's like if you can't confront that shadow and then embrace that shadow, then it's going to control your life subconsciously. You won't even realize it.

**Chris Williamson** (2:41)
Think about how uncomfortable it is to have done something that you have praised yourself for, that was hard to do, to then have to face the realization that that was maybe a very sophisticated coping strategy. Yes. Like it's not a surprise that people don't really, really want to face it. I had this conversation last night. You know, you ask people, what's your why?
Why do you do, why do you work so hard? Why do you build this business? Why did you start to do content? Why do you, why, why, why, why? And there's always a kind of PR answer. There's like a publicly acceptable one. It's usually quite positive sum. It's even if it's negatively origin, it's got a positive outcome. It's like the underdog story. Yeah.
But for a lot of people, it's like I didn't feel love as a kid unless I performed. And I now fear that people are going to abandon me if I'm not working as hard as I can all the time. Yeah. Or I was terrified in my loneliness, and I realized that if I'm useful, that's kind of the same as being loved because people want me, they don't need me, they want me, and that's a good enough proxy.
So even in your wise, you can kind of get to a level of awareness which is like, I like to do this thing and I felt this way in school, and now this is what I'm doing with my life. You go, okay, what if we take it just a level or two deeper than that? The same thing about going to the gym. Why do you go to the gym? But almost everybody I think, that when you look at someone who is an extreme in anything, an extreme in terms of wealth, an extreme in terms of beauty, an extreme in terms of competence, an extreme in terms of smart and intellect, I would guess that almost in every situation, the reason that those people have developed that is because they feel the opposite. The person who's made themselves very beautiful feels ugly on the inside. The person that has made themselves very wealthy always feels like they're not enough. The person who's made themselves very competent often feels like they're powerless. The person who's created all of this skill and these connections often feels like they're alone. Yeah. Like you are that shadow, and it just some people turn it into something beautiful and alchemize it. Obviously, they get praised by everybody externally, and they can kid themselves. Also, as you said, it's psychological suicide.