In many ways, you live a pretty stoic existence. I got a chance to spend a couple of weeks with you. In many ways, you seek to minimize the negative effects of the outside world on your mind. You've written, quote, 'If you want to reach your full potential and maintain clarity of mind, stay away from addictive substances. My success and health are the result of 20 plus years of complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs. Short-term pleasure isn't worth your future.' Let's talk about each one of these. Alcohol. What's been your philosophy behind that?
That one is quite easy. When I was 11 years old, my biochemistry teacher gave me this book he wrote. It was called The Illusion of Paradise. There he would describe the biological and chemical processes that happen in your body once you consume this or that substance. It was mainly related to illegal drugs, but alcohol was one of these addictive substances that he covered. So it turns out that when you drink alcohol, the thing that happens is that your brain cells become paralyzed. They become literally zombies. And then next day, sometime after the party is over, some of your brain cells die and never get to normal. So think about this. If your brain is this most valuable tool you have in your journey to success and happiness, why would you destroy this tool for short-term pleasure? This sounds ridiculous.
Yeah, in many ways it's a poison we let in our body. But by way of advice, what advice would you give to people who consider not drinking? You know, a lot of people use alcohol to enable them to have a vibrant social life. There's a lot of pressure from society, you know, at a party to drink so you can socialize. So, what advice would you give to them, to people who imagine having a social life without alcohol?
Well, first of all, don't be afraid to be contrarian. Set your own rules. Secondly, if you feel you need to drink, there must be some problem you're trying to conceal. There's something, some fear you're not ready to confront and you have to address this fear. If there is a good-looking girl you're afraid to approach, get rid of this fear, approach her, practice, do it again and again. It's pretty banal, but this advice works. Fix the underlying problem, which usually at the very bottom is always going to be fear. Work on that. And very often people are trying to escape something in their lives with alcohol. What is it they're trying to escape? What is this problem? You have to get to the bottom of it. Your mind is trying to tell you something valuable. And instead of addressing it directly, you are flooding it in alcohol, which is sort of a spiritual painkiller but works only temporarily and then you have to pay the debt with interest.
So what do you do? I mean you've been in a lot of gatherings, a lot of parties. Is there some challenges to saying no?
For me, not at all. I've been always ready to stand my ground and say no when I feel something is not right. And it's extraordinary how easily we humans are affected by what we perceive as majority, because nobody since ancient times, since millions of years ago, wants to be left out by the tribe. We are scared that we won't become accepted anymore, which thousands of millions of years ago meant we're going to starve to death. So we have to consciously fight this inclination to be agreeable with everything that the majority imposes on you, because it's quite clear that many things that the majority, many activities the majority is engaging in, are not bringing you any good. So that's another fear you have to face going to a party and the fear of being the outcast at that party, of being different than others at that party, at that social gathering, in the crowd of humans. Be different. That's a fear. That's a fear and it's quite irrational if you think about it. It was something that made a lot of sense 20,000 years ago. It makes zero sense today because if you think about it, if you do the same thing everybody else around you is doing, you don't have any competitive advantage and you don't get to become outstanding at some point in your life.
Yeah, that's one of the things we talked about sort of by way of advice is if you want to be successful in life, you want to be different. And perhaps I think you said you want to achieve mastery at a niche. So find a niche at which you can pursue with all your effort and achieve mastery, and the niche being different than anything that anybody else is doing. Can you explain that a little bit more?
So obviously in order to contribute to the society you're in, to the economy of the country you live in, you have to do something that is valuable. But if you're doing something that everybody else is doing anyway, what's the value of it? Now it sounds easier than it is done to do something that nobody else is doing, because we humans are surrounded by all kinds of information which makes us want to copy what we are perceiving. At the same time there are so many areas which you can explore that have nothing to do with the information you receive on a daily basis. So it's extremely important to curate the information sources that you have, so that you wouldn't be somebody who is left to the will of AI-based algorithmic feed telling you what's important, so that you end up consuming the same information, the same stuff, the same memes, the same news as everybody else. But rather you should be proactive. You should deliberately try to set a goal, an area that you want to explore, and then actively search information that is relevant to this field so that one day you can become the world's number one expert in this field. And it's not that difficult to do that. You have to just remain consistent, because nobody else is trying to do that. Everybody else is just reading the same news and discussing the same news every day. But this way they don't get to have a competitive advantage.
