WHY SO SERIOUS? – Don’t Let WORK Suck the JOY out of LIFE! – 046

Smile, be grateful, be thankful. – AUDIO NSFW

Oh man, guys, I just had to laugh about today’s topic and I’m just gonna jump right into it. The title of today’s topic is Why So Serious? Now, obviously, you guys have heard this phrase before by the infamous or famous Joker from The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger. We all know that he did such an exceptional job of portraying the insanity, the complete insanity of a man and if you were to extrapolate to the extreme, a man who seriously not seriously takes life somewhat not so seriously but yet is serious about not being serious. 

You see that’s the tension, that’s the tension as I thought about this and I wrote these notes down. I think it’s easy for us and I know that I can do this and I’m gonna be preaching mostly to myself today. Sometimes, we can take life way too seriously. Me? Raising my hand 100%. I take life sometimes way too seriously. It’s part and parcel, if I may, of who I am. It’s how I was created. It’s how I was built. I’m a passionate individual. I put everything into it. I’m not a guy with the plan B. I’m not a guy with a plan B or a plan C or a back-up plan. I’m a type of dude who’s just like let’s do it. Let’s go hard. Let’s get serious. Life is fucking short.

As you can probably imagine, someone like me deals with this tension a lot of taking life too seriously and thinking that other people aren’t. And that, my friends, is completely on me. You know, we get caught up so easily in our own little world and as I wrote that word down “little” on my notes, I was like really? Is everyone’s world really just little? The answer, if we’re intellectually honest, is yes. Your world is infinitesimally small. It is so small it is just a speck in terms of the grand plane that we live on, this grand world that we live on. You’re just a speck. We get caught up in all of this. 

Let’s be honest, I’m sitting here right now and as I try not to take life too seriously and letting the ambulances fly by, we get caught up in our own little world, don’t we? We think it’s like it’s all about us. It’s all consuming. It’s all about what we want, our expectations, our needs, our desires, and what happens when we get caught up in our own little world is it sucks the joy out of life. I’ve wrestled with this. I am not admitting it or admitting it or whatever how you want to say it. I mean I get caught up and joy gets sucked out of my life. 

Joy is replaced by and I’m sure many of you guys can resonate with this is that joy is replaced by “have to”, “I should”. That’s what happens. I have to do this. I have to do that. I have to get this done today. I have to make sure that this happens. I got to make sure that this happens. I mean it’s all self-imposed. It’s a self-imposed joy-sucking mentality when life gets too serious or we believe that others aren’t taking life serious. What we become is we become our own joy killers for ourselves and for those around us. 

You can ask my wife, guys. It’s not that hard. You can ask my wife. You could say, hey, does your husband sometimes get into joy killing mode where everyone around him becomes a barren wasteland of destruction especially when he gets involved deeply into very complex parts of the business or areas of time within a project? I just need to be ridiculously focused and I need to get this ish done. I need to get this shit done. I need to get it out the door. Ask my wife! I get ridiculously serious. 

Here’s a story. I can remember with one project with one guy that I was working with. I remember sitting with him at a Starbucks. We were maybe, I don’t know of half-a-year into this project, and by the way this project failed, but we are halfway into this project and I remember guys, I was pleading with him over a fucking caramel macchiato and a yogurt parfait. It’s so crystal clear this event. I was pleading with him, pleading with him to understand my passion. I was on the verge of tears. I remember looking in straight in the eyes and being like, “Look you have to understand. This is everything to me.” 

I said I’m going to fucking die. That’s how far emotionally I went with this guy. This was years ago. Thank fuck! Thank the Lord I’m far more mature now. But I literally told him I said I’m going to fucking die. For me it so serious about that I was moving into the verbage of I have a short life on this planet and I’m going to fucking die and I need to do this shit now, like now, like right now and you’re not taking it seriously.

I was pleading! I was like please understand! This individual is older than me that worked for me and he just he just couldn’t get it. He sat there and I remember him with his blank stare like what the fuck are you talking about, Peter, you’re going to die? You have to do this. Please understand my passion. As if the brother didn’t know that working with someone like me requires that you have to keep up at least in terms of interest in grind and passion and these types of things. He knew who he was dealing with. I take things so seriously sometimes especially if I believe that this is something that has to be done. 

What happens is we become consumed. That’s what it really is. When we’re too serious, when we get caught up in our own world and it sucks the joy out of ourselves as we become consumed by our priorities and our work. Hand raised, guys, totally guilty right here. Do I get consumed by my priorities, my work? 100%. We get consumed by our desires, our passions, and our agenda. Hand raised again. Am I guilty of this? 100%. I get consumed by this.

We also get consumed by our worries and our anxieties and the unknowns. Raised hand again. Do I get caught up in this? Do I get consumed in this? Ultimately, at the end of the day, what is it really when we were too serious? When we are too serious, we are ultimately consumed by our own needs which is ultimately selfish. Why? Because we have an unmet expectation because the joy has left our hearts. We have an unmet expectation, that we have created, that we had conjured up, and i what happens is that unmet expectations becomes a joy killer in our hearts and destroys those around us. Why so fucking serious, Peter? I have had people say that to me. Why so fucking serious? 

I’ll tell you another story. I remember when I had another project that ended. I had one employee that I worked with during the kind of the exit interview. He asked me with almost, I wouldn’t say tears, but it looked like he was on the verge of tears because he was so frustrated with what had happened. And I understand. I was frustrated too. I’ve lost a lot of money, but it was a great experience. I remember him saying something that was just so soul-cutting, just pierced me to the bone. He said this and he was so well positioned to deliver this punch to my gut. He was kind of hunched over. I will never forget these moments in life. He was kind of hunched over, kind of cocked his chin up just a little bit and so his eyes had to look through the side of his eyes to me. I don’t know whether it was because he was fighting back tears or was just imminently frustrated with me in the whole situation. 

But so he’s kind of hunched over, chin down, chin cocked up a little bit, eyes looking up, and he asked me. Do you make it part of your job to make it almost impossible to keep up with you? I wish I had responded in a positive and humble way. I really wish I did. I really wish I did, but I didn’t. Him there broken and battered, just like I’m broken and battered off to this long battle with a failed project, a failed idea, it had lots of legs. 

There’s no need to go into why it didn’t work, but he asked me this piercing question. Do you put us in a position, right, do you make it so that it is impossible for others to keep up with you. I wish I had a better answer, but I was salty and I was way too serious and you know what my answer was to him as I looked him right in the eye? My answer was yes. I make it nearly impossible to keep up with me and if you can’t fucking keep pace, then it ain’t gonna work. 

Now, am I absolutely dead serious about that today? 100%. Should I deliver that message the way I delivered that message way back then? No, I shouldn’t have. Should I’ve been more humble? Should I’ve been more at peace? Should I have said something that was smarter? Absolutely! Was it wrong for me to say? Was it technically wrong for me to say that? I don’t know. I haven’t done too much thinking about it. 

Here’s the point. I don’t want to make it impossible to keep up with me. I want people to keep up. I want to do work together. I want to succeed together. We have opportunities and we have issues sometimes where we get in to taking life way too fucking seriously. I wrote a couple notes down here. 

How do you know if you’re taking yourself too seriously? It’s really simple. It’s really simple. People around you and other people that you care about become objects of your fury and wrath, that’s what happens. That’s when you know. When do you know that you’re taking yourself way too seriously? When people that you care about become the objects of your fury and your wrath that is hidden behind a thin veil of hard work, grind, and hustle. At least that’s always my excuse.

The issue is they never take it seriously enough. Right? They never take it serious enough. You can’t match me in my seriousness about this project, that my desire, my passion for success, my desire, my grind. You can’t meet me where I am. This hard work, you can’t keep up. What does it look like? It looks like in terms of these types of questions, we say if only they worked as hard as I did. If only they grinded as hard as I did. If only as they hustled as hard as I did, then everything would be okay. They would fucking keep up. They would understand how to do this. They would be able to match me, stay pace with me. 

Another way we know that we’ve taken life too seriously or things too seriously when we started saying stuff. If only they did X. If only they did Y. If only they’d see. If only they thought like this. If only they acted like this. If only they were able to do the things that I can do. Golly! Do you understand guys? Our own unmet expectations. They are self-imposed. It’s a have to attitude of this joy-stealing, why too serious mentality. 

For me, I re-realize that I’ve taken life too seriously is when I realize that I’m not here to save anybody. I’m not here to save anybody. Frankly, I’m not here to do their job. I hired them to do their job and to do great work or to do what I’m hoping they would do. I have to let them be them. I’m not here to save them. I’m not the savior of the world.

Another thing that I realized whenever I take life too seriously is I realized that is that I need that I need help too. Just like maybe the other people do. I need help too. I can’t do it by myself. I always talk about this. I can’t do this alone. I can’t do this alone. I struggle with the idea in the phrase that goes “Want something done right? You got to do it yourself.” Oh really? Well, if you want something done right, do it yourself. That doesn’t work all the time. It doesn’t work certainly forever. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Shed the world from your shoulders, my friends. You’re not the savior of the world. Calm down. Take life less seriously. Enjoy things. Be humble. Realize—and this is something for me—that you have leveraged so many people who helped you get to where you are today. They didn’t take life too seriously. They let you go at your pace. Empty yourself of unruly expectations on other people that you self-impose on. Yo self-impose on yourself? Well don’t impose them on them. Not everyone’s gonna match your grind. Not everybody’s gonna match your hustle. Not everyone’s gonna match your why. Everyone has a different why for doing it. Understand that. 

Here’s another one. Empty yourself for the desire of a reputation. Who cares? Who cares about your reputation? Reputation doesn’t mean shit. It’s a vapor. I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I have lots of ideas, but I don’t want to get into them. 

Harmony not hostility. Be a man of peace. Be a man of peace. Smile. Be grateful. Be thankful today. These are the solutions to when you’re feeling too serious in life, when you get into that mode of hey, I have a self-imposed expectation, I have a self-imposed have to, and everyone else is not doing it the way it at the pace that I want. They’re not taking it seriously enough. Calm the fuck down, Peter. I’m just preaching to myself. Calm the fuck down. 

Smile. Smile. Be grateful. Be thankful the birds are singing, that things are happening, that we’re moving 1% every day. We don’t have to be so serious in life. Guys, this for me is certainly something that I wrestle with and struggle with. 

For you guys out there today, smile, be grateful, be thankful as I try to be thankful as well. There’s so much to be thankful for. There’s so much to be grateful for. We don’t need to take life so seriously.

This is Peter, The Bitcoin Lambo. If you enjoyed this episode, smash the like button, subscribe, and please send this to one person in your network. Share it guys. Don’t be so serious and have a great one.