In this episode, we explore the undeniable role routines play in our lives. Whether consciously chosen or unconsciously formed, routines shape our days and, ultimately, our future. We delve into why embracing and designing the right routines can lead to greater productivity, mental clarity, and a sense of control. Learn how to structure your day effectively by itemizing and automating repetitive tasks, freeing up your conscious mind to focus on what truly matters. Discover practical strategies for creating routines that align with your goals and how even small, intentional changes can yield significant results. If you’re ready to take charge of your time and energy, this episode is for you! Reach Daniel at www.danmolgan.com

In this episode, we dive deep into the journey of self-discovery and the importance of asking ourselves the hard questions. Are you living a life aligned with your true goals and values? Are you making the right choices to get you where you want to be? Join us as we explore a series of critical questions designed to help you assess your current path, realign your actions with your dreams, and ensure you’re on track to the life you deserve. We’ll discuss practical ways to evaluate your progress, uncover areas that need attention, and make adjustments for a more fulfilling journey. Whether you’re feeling stuck, unsure, or just in need of a reset, this episode is your guide to self-check-in and intentional growth.

In this episode, we dive into the importance of maintaining the right pace throughout the day to stay on top of your tasks without feeling overwhelmed. We explore how moving too slowly can leave you feeling behind, while rushing through the day can lead to mistakes and unnecessary stress. By finding the perfect balance, you can work hard and stay productive, allowing yourself to enjoy quality leisure time without guilt or burnout. We also break down the principle of “work hard, play hard” and how setting a fast enough pace can maximize your efficiency, leading to more fulfilling downtime at the end of the day. Tune in to learn strategies to manage your energy and time better so you can achieve more and enjoy life to the fullest.

Ever wonder why some people seem to accomplish so much more in the same 24 hours? In this episode, we dive into the secrets of maximizing your time and reveal why the most productive people don’t skip sleep, instead, they use it as a tool to boost their energy and efficiency. We’ll explore time management strategies, the science behind sleep, and the power of prioritizing rest to make the most of your waking hours. Plus, we’ll share actionable tips on structuring your day, avoiding burnout, and leveraging small habits that lead to big results. Whether you’re a busy professional, entrepreneur, or student, this episode is your guide to mastering the clock and achieving more without sacrificing your well-being.

In this episode, we explore the nuanced tension between two powerful forces in the pursuit of success: efficiency and intensity. Should we strive to be the tireless worker, pushing boundaries with sheer effort, or the master strategist, carefully calculating every move to conserve time and energy? As we unravel these opposing yet complementary concepts, we delve into how both can shape our paths toward achievement. With thoughtful reflection, we offer our perspectives on the art of balancing hard work and smart work, revealing how to harness the best of both worlds in your personal and professional life. Join Daniel Molgan for an insightful conversation about the rhythm of productivity, and the dance between effort and wisdom.

In this episode, we challenge the long-held belief in the "self-made" success story. While the idea of the lone entrepreneur achieving greatness is often celebrated, you learn the truth: no one truly makes it on their own. Daniel Molgan explores how the most successful people have learned from others, received mentorship, and benefited from support networks. From personal relationships to professional guidance, success is a collective effort, and we break down how recognizing this can inspire your own journey to greatness.

In this episode, Daniel Molgan dives into the unique challenges introverts and extroverts face when it comes to maintaining a healthy and fulfilling social life. Whether you thrive in lively group settings or prefer smaller, more intimate gatherings, Daniel offers practical tips to help you find the right balance. He discusses how introverts can ensure they get the solitude they need while still engaging in meaningful face-to-face experiences, and how extroverts can meet their need for connection without feeling overstimulated or drained.

In this episode of BTP podcast we tackle the burning question: "Will AI take away all of our jobs?" The short answer is no. Tune in as we delve into the reasons why AI is not a job-stealer but rather a job-enhancer. We provide reassurance that governments worldwide are actively developing policies and regulations to curb the impact of AI on employment, ensuring a balanced and fair integration into our work environments. Instead of fearing AI, we encourage our listeners to embrace this powerful technology. Discover how AI can be a tool for boosting your productivity and reducing errors in your everyday tasks. From automating mundane activities to providing intelligent insights, AI has the potential to transform the way we work for the better. Join us as we explore real-life examples, expert opinions, and actionable tips on how to leverage AI to your advantage. It's time to shift the narrative from fear to opportunity and harness the benefits of AI to excel in your professional life. Don't miss out on this insightful short talk that promises to reshape your perspective on the future of work! 

In this episode, Daniel Molgan delves into the age-old adage, "You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with." While every person deserves respect, compassion, and cooperation, it's crucial to understand that not everyone should be part of your inner circle. We explore how the people you associate with can significantly influence your mindset, habits, and overall success. Join us as we discusses the importance of carefully curating your social circle. We examine the traits to look for in close friends and associates, and why it's essential to surround yourself with individuals who inspire, support, and challenge you to be your best self.  Discover how to build a supportive network that aligns with your values and goals, and how this can propel you towards a more positive and successful life. Whether you're looking to enhance your personal development or simply seeking a deeper understanding of social dynamics, this episode offers valuable guidance on fostering a healthy, empowering social circle! 

In the wake of yesterday’s global IT outage, we witnessed a wave of frustration and anger that swept through airports, leaving many employees bearing the brunt of the blame. But what if there was a better way to navigate these crises? In this episode of “From Chaos to Clarity,” Daniel Molgan dives deep into the importance of shifting our focus from a problem-oriented mindset to one that seeks solutions. In this episode you learn about the psychological and practical benefits of maintaining a calm, constructive approach during emergencies. By understanding the difference between reacting and responding, you’ll uncover strategies to stay composed and proactive, even when faced with overwhelming challenges. Whether you’re dealing with tech glitches, workplace conflicts, or everyday obstacles, this episode will equip you with the tools to turn chaos into clarity and frustration into forward motion. Tune in and learn how to become a beacon of calm and competence in any storm! 

In a world where perfectionism often paralyzes progress, we champion the art of completion, that is, embracing flaws, mistakes, and the beauty of getting things done. Join us as Daniel Molgan offers practical tips that will help you overcome the need for perfection. Learn how to break free from the shackles of perfectionism, prioritize finishing over flawlessness, and celebrate your achievements, no matter how imperfect they may seem. Whether you're a student, professional, or creative, this episode will empower you to shift your mindset, embrace imperfection, and commit to completing your tasks with confidence. It's time to redefine success and start valuing progress over perfection. Tune in and discover how to get things done, one imperfect step at a time!

In this episode we dive into the importance of focusing on daily victories to achieve your weekly goals, even when some days don't go as planned. Join Daniel Molgan as he explores what it means to "win the day," offering practical tips for setting realistic goals, effective time management, and maintaining a positive mindset. Learn how to turn even the toughest days into small successes and understand the cumulative effect of daily wins on your overall progress. He’ll share real-life examples, personal anecdotes, and strategies to help you stay motivated and productive throughout the week. Tune in to discover how small, consistent efforts can lead to significant accomplishments by the week's end.

In this insightful episode, we delve into the complex relationship between excessive social media use and its impact on mental health, exploring how platforms designed to connect us can sometimes lead to feelings of depression and anxiety. Daniel Molgan shares practical tips and strategies to help you engage with social media responsibly, ensuring that it enhances rather than detracts from your mental wellbeing. Tune in and learn how to maintain your health while staying connected in the digital age.

Happy New Year! As we celebrate entering the year 2024 we are also wondering what the year has in store for us which is why in this episode you will find out about what experts have predicted 2024 to be like, subsequently you will be offered a few vital tips on how to prepare yourself for what’s to come and make the most of the year ahead! 

Did you know that working for me to do list will simultaneously increase your productivity while reducing your stress and mental load?  In this short episode you will learn why it is important to work from an to-do-list and how you could do so using simple apps on your devices!

Your level of commitment to any goal determines whether you can achieve a goal and how fast. In this episode, you will learn why it is important to be equally committed to all of your goals even if you think some might not be as important as the others because doing so well train your brain to never bother looking for excuses. The way you do anything is the way you do everything, and if you teach your brain to be committed to any goal then that habit will be repeated again and again. Listen to this short program to find out how you can do just that!

We are living in an era when political polarization has reached an all-time high all over the world. Media outlets and pundits from both sides do their very best to attract as many followers to their cause aa they can often by going down an extreme route. In this short program, you will understand how you could immunize yourself against falling for the trap of polarization and developing an independent mindset that allows you to make sound decisions based upon objective thinking rather than media hype.   

Achieving whatever you desire will inevitably demand a lot of energy which is why in this episode you will learn some tips on how to boost your energy naturally and without resorting to caffeine or other stimulants! 

Your choice of career will probably have more impact on your life than any other important decision that you ever make in your lifetime simply because we spend the biggest portion of our time at work and a bad decision can doom us to a life of unhappiness and underachievement.  In this episode Daniel will discuss the most critical factors that should be considered in choosing the best career for you, one that makes the most of your interest as well as strengths so that you can be engaged and growing while at work and avoid unfulfilling career paths suggested to you by parents and the society which are often jobs that bring more security often at the cost of taking into consideration the natural inclination of the individual. 

There is a huge difference between wanting something and needing something and the root of that difference is the inherent detachment in the pursuit of a goal. When you are attached to an outcome you are much more likely to do something that prevents you from attaining it; on the other hand when you are detached from the outcome you almost never get in your own way nor send out negative vibes and therefore are much more likely to attain it.   In this episode you will learn to think like Zen masters and keep your mind detached from the outcome of the goals that you pursue so that not only you enjoy the journey towards your ideals but also achieve more in the process!

It is said that everything we strive to accomplish is for the ultimate purpose of becoming happier yet most of us are not fully capable of defining and understanding the notion of happiness and are looking for easy fixes to make ourselves happier often in vain. In this episode you will be able to thoroughly understand what happiness actually is and will be able to plan to manifest all its three types in your life! 

In this episode of the BTP Podcast, Pouya speaks with Tugrul Guner, a Physicist by training and Machine Learning Engineer by trade. Enjoy!   Tugrul's Social:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tugrul_Guner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tugrulguner/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, creating, expectations, idea, conversation, risk, means, fail, entrepreneurship, product, optic, agree, investors, science, deep learning, market, lose, discuss, questions, company SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Tugrul   Pouya LJ  00:00 Hello and welcome back to yet another episode of the b2b podcast as always here with Tulou. continuing our conversation from last last week or so I think it was exactly last week, same time ish.   Tugrul  00:29 Hi, Sue. How are you doing? I'm good. How about you?   Pouya LJ  00:33 Oh, good doing well. As always, we are joining forces to have some conversations, some fun conversations. There's a lot of things a lot of topics we won't talk about for the next few episodes. But today, we're going to stick with a continuation of our last conversation, we started last conversation with immigration, we talked a little bit we pivoted towards the end to talk about some experiences you had personally in entrepreneurship, but very briefly, so now we would like to expand on that. So first of all, we are in a country that has good, pretty good opportunities to be an entrepreneur supports you in terms of the regulation in terms of the support system, incubators and such, of course, nobody does that one of the top countries would be United States, but we are also in a not so bad of a country in that department. So and you have done some basic studies on your own reading free readings and such in the space. So I would like to, you know, for you to give some like general background to our audience, and what do you think of? First of all, let's start with actually defining entrepreneurship. I'm not sure most people know, probably everybody knows what it means. But let's get our definition straight. So what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What is an entrepreneur? Oh, that's   Tugrul  02:01 a good question. And it is really like kind of depends from person to person. But what I like about the definition of it is like, if you're creating something of benefit for society, or benefit for humanity, or something like that people can use people can benefit of it. You're an entrepreneur, when it doesn't necessarily mean that you have millions of dollars of company like startup, like your own company, but actually, whoever, even nonprofit, even like, they call it like an internal, or like maybe something else. But even if you didn't a company, if you're creating a value, creating a project, creating something you're like, internal intrapreneurs to, or if you're working for a nonprofit, organization, if you're creating something, if you're like creating a value, you're still an intrapreneur, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make a profit out of it. intrapreneur is something that you're creating a value out of it, let me   Pouya LJ  03:11 write it as you say, value doesn't have to be monetary, although it can be but it doesn't have to be monetary. Okay. Okay. So that's the definition. You go with it. I agree with you. But like, you can define a different, many different ways, I guess. Yeah, that's right. And that's why I wanted to I mean, the definitions will be related, even if different, but I wanted to get that out of the way. Okay, so, so a personal or group of people who venture to do something that generates value to to others or potentially themselves, okay, and the value doesn't have to be monetary. All right. So so what was your so what was your the first time you became, you know, interested in this concept, and started thinking about it?   Tugrul  04:00 As far as I mean, as far as I know, I always like, had this spirit. I'm like this feeling that I want to create something, I still consider myself an intrapreneur even though I don't have a company yet. I never like I tried to start a company one or two years ago, that because of this immigration issues, I couldn't do that. But I try. But in the sense of like creating values, I always consider myself an intrapreneur. It started when I was like probably in bachelor. Like I always wanted to like, since I love tech, I always wanted to be part of it. First I wanted to be part of a scientifically that's the reason why I did my PhD then postdocs, but then I realized that maybe in the sense that Okay, so if you're a professor, you're creating values, like publications, etc. But it doesn't necessarily mean that The things that you're doing are gonna be like practical soon or ever? I don't know, it depends if you're if you're a theoretical physics, I mean, so it is going to be hard to create a value from, like a practical value like a business kind of value from a wormhole studies. But maybe why not maybe like 100 1000s of years later, it depends like, how is the human humanities going to evolve in tech? Yeah, I had this feeling of, apart from my physics or scientific interest, I always want to create a value. So it started that I had some attempts in back in Turkey. So like, I wanted to create a company focusing on solar cells, renewable energies, but I couldn't get any funding from anywhere. So yeah, I think as long as you feel you want to create something from scratch, it means that you have not 100% all the suffering for Spirit for the intrapreneurship. But you have it at some point, like, at some level, you have it partially. Or if you're, if you want to do this for Horrell whole of your life, like professionally, of course, you have the 100%. Ownership spread, because it requires risk taking skill. So, for example, okay, of course, you maybe you want to create values, but you're kinda like, okay, but if I lose my savings, what if I fail? What if I do this, there's something wrong, and I lost, like some something. So if you are not like a risk taker, if you don't like taking risks, you can consider yourself still intrapreneur? What partially, I mean, you have to take risk, you have to be courage. I mean, you have to this is kind of, I don't like to say it like a gamble, because it's not exactly a gamble. It's not something totally random. There are things that can be random niche, based on what, for example, you have an idea, and it has to be the right time. Right? This is kinda like, you can't control it, you it is what it is like, I mean, you have to be there at the right time at the right place. So this kind of stuff like this being lucky is still like not, you cannot ignore it. But I mean, if you have this creativity, skills, and also you like to take risks, you're okay with that, then you have to go for it properly. Right?   Pouya LJ  07:43 Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think I agree with you too, because there is there's risk taking, there's loss of your control. But there's also lots of out of your control as true probably with anything in life. But this this area, specifically more because inherently you're trying to venture in an area that has not existed. Or if you're replicating somebody else, then you're not you're just competing against them, okay, at least it's an industry that is tested, but then you the barrier to entry might be high in that. Others have set their foot straight, like imagine if you want to be now in new Google. Good luck, you have to offer something new, or we're probably not going to happen, right? So for that reason, I think there's so many forces working against you, or out of your control, if not against you. So, so yeah, I agree with you. There's definitely inherently some risks. So you have to have some appetite for risk, you have to be a little bit. Actually, this is why this is why this became an extension of our previous conversation on immigration, because we basically said the same things about immigration, because you're stepping into the unknown, you're giving up a lot of things, a lot of comfort, a lot of support structure that is there, right? And same thing with the being an employee, okay? It's not, it's not terrible. You have a support structure, you have benefits, you have salary, you know, where your next bill come, meal comes from, where it's going to be paid from. Now, you can do that, partially with entrepreneurship, of course, but that inherently means that you're trying to build something and convince others this is something that generates value for them to get them to adopt. Now typically for monetary gains for you. It doesn't have to be as we said, but typically it is right. So so yeah, I agree with you. I think there's there's there's there's that there's the speaking aptitude but then I want to ask you, what else do you think it takes for one to be an entrepreneur? Trying to stay excellent, except for risk taking?   Tugrul  09:46 Yeah, of course, like courage. First of all, like apart from the stigma, they're all parallel, like I mean, if you're a risk taker, you're you've means that you also can be courageous but You have to be patient, but at the same time you have to, it is not exactly the patient because you have to really understand and feel when you have to change the strategy, or you have to keep going. That is really a hard problem. I mean, for example, you have an idea. You, you think that this is going to be something important for people. But something happened and people started to not respond it I mean, when you when you release it to the market, like a first product, like proof of concept, well, you can say that minimum viable product, when you ask people to click and use this, and can you give me please feedback, and you can face something like, people don't like it, or people are not willing to give a feedback. And you can think that, okay, this is a moment that should either I should like, change my idea or my strategy, or I should keep going. So you have to understand that patience in the sense that if you're really be sure, and if you really feel that it's gonna work, it has to work in some way, you have to be patient. But if you're patient for something, there's not gonna be anything in future. So it's not gonna be worth anything, people are not gonna use it, whatever you do, then being patient doesn't mean anything, because you're on the wrong path already. So I mean, it does who nobody is going to care how much distance you like, to be on the path, because you're going in the wrong direction. But in the right path, for sure, you have to be patient. And you have to mean also you have to, like, be able to act quickly. So when I was taking this training from this incubator for three months, I didn't learn this directly there. But people were keep saying, if you're gonna fail, fail fast. This is it comes from, I think it was from Zuckerberg speech, or something like that. Maybe I'm just combining some irrelevant stuff together. But somebody said that, from the top, like a well known figure, I guess, because it was like, I remember, it's coming from somewhere like that. But they were in the Silicon Valley, they were saying that if you're going to fail, fail fast, because you have to be really fast if you're going to fail. But you still have need time to like, find the correct path. Other than that, if you're like, like, just keep chasing this wrong path. It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. So it has to be fast. That's what they mean. Also, like, um, the way that I started to learn the details about the intrapreneurship, of course, I was an academic iPhones in academia when I was taking this training, so most of the things were so new to me, still, I'm here. Not saying that I'm an expert of intrapreneurship. I'm not an expert, also not an expert. intrapreneur I'm here just feeling some stuff about intrapreneurship I have some feelings, I'm just expressing them and not just like saying, please, what I'm saying is take it through about intrapreneurs now, I'm just just just giving my opinion about it. But yeah, whatever I understood about it is like this Lean thingy, this Lean Startup i Oh, I'm also reading right now the book and it is kinda like argues about, you know, the, I don't know, you remember that back in the day, like, like 15 years ago, like a starting a business was all about like having the perfect product, almost. If you're going to the market, you have to have it, you have to have the product that is not going to fail, like frequently it's going to fail. So in so rare cases, so everybody's going to have the product and it's going to work like a flawlessly I mean, everybody's gonna be happy today, it's about the change with this concept. With this people are saying is release the product, but it released it in a in such a way that it should teach you something if they're not saying that because they some people are criticizing this idea, then in the market, they're like a garbage products a lot. Of course, if you're doing it like just to release anything doesn't make sense to you, then they're gonna be like garbage products all around. You don't need to really create the perfect product even you don't need to maybe spend lots of times on it. Even like just some brick, stone and wood if you're able to like give the idea with them. have a basic idea, then you can measure the response of people on board. And they can be like, Oh my god, yeah, I like it. I like to have it. Or they can be like, This is good. Let me use it. Two days later, they're like, yeah, it was good. But this feature was, I didn't use it at all. I don't think it's necessarily, although I voted in, you know what, I use this, but I really needed this feature for this. These are the things. And you really have to approach this problem kind of scientifically, you have to have this viable pro minimum viable product, like a Bridgestones woods, for example. But when you're providing this, you have to have correct questions in your mind, you have to design it in that way. Because you're going to focus on not profit at first, you're going to focus on what you can learn from market from because you, your product is not going to be shaped by you, is going to be shaped by the customer. Whatever the idea you have, you can think that this is the perfect idea. You know what, everybody's gonna love it. No bullshit, no, maybe the problem is not gonna work. Probably nobody's going to care most probably, of course, there are some rare cases proven that just worked at the beginning. But most of the time, what I heard from the story is even the people were like, what we thought was this, at the end after those feedbacks, etc, it was it evolved in such a different way. We didn't even like, imagine that, of course, because it's kind of shaped by customer is, you don't know their need. Exactly. I mean, the we're talking about these people, like lots of people, everybody has different needs. But what do you need to do statistically? They need not micro needs, of course, you need to figure out the macro need at the end. And that's what is it is actually like, I mean, of course, I probably oversimplify it. But this, this is kind of like evolutionary approach for business. You're, you're loving your product to evolve with the customer need, your environment is deciding who is going to live who is going to die in I mean, it is going to be customer so customer is going to decide what is going to die. What is going to survive.   Pouya LJ  17:33 Can you so so the name of the book is lean startup? Yes, lean startup. Okay. And do you remember the political the author's name by it?   Tugrul  17:46 Sure. Okay, so let's click New   Pouya LJ  17:50 for sure. Yeah, please, just for whatever might be interested to, you know, maybe?   Tugrul  17:55 Oh, yeah. Yep. Every price. regrets. Okay.   Pouya LJ  17:59 All right. Okay, so Lean Startup by Eric Ries. You guys heard it here. First. No, it doesn't matter. Anyways. Okay. So. So the idea of Lean is that you don't you don't sweat. Okay. So that's, that's another thing. Like I've seen people get bogged down by the details. Right.   Tugrul  18:18 So yeah, you can lost loads of time for that. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  18:22 Yeah, exactly. Let me get the perfect office, let me know. Yeah. Find the best curtain, or the best laptop I want to use.   Tugrul  18:31 Yeah, but you know what, because there's stories that people have verb like, months years for the product. And at the end, they realize that this product, people are not going to use it. Imagine that they were they were like, oh my god, he did it wrong, we have to ask first, then we have to build this product based on the feedback. But the good feedback, of course, there will be some garbage feedbacks, you have to be able to like filter and filter them out. Like you have to be careful about that. But at the end you're going to spend your time on something you you know that people are going to use because you have their feedback. So other than that, like you can these like these guys, they six months for nothing. I mean, time is important. Time is precious. And we have to   Pouya LJ  19:24 Yeah. And then you don't get you don't want to get on the right idea too late either. You might have a generally right idea, but then narrowed down what as you said, what the features are, if somebody beats you to it, when you're too late, it's not like you have infinite amount of time in a competitive market. Right. So that's fair. So so that's that's where I guess the Lean comes from, of course, for you to fully understand the Lean part. You need to read the whole book, which is simplifying. I haven't even read the book you at least have are reading I'm not sure we're still here and you're still reading right anyway, so you're still ahead of me but anyways, okay, so So we talked about what it takes to be an entrepreneur at a general level, we talked about some concepts in entrepreneurship. And of course, there is different markets that you, you know, participate in, and different regulatory structures, different financial structures. Like a lot of times, in North America, in general, you end up raising capital through venture capitals, investors and such. Sometimes you fund through smaller means sometimes you raise you take loan from banks, for example. That's generally the pathways for raising money that goes on. And in North America. Of course, different parts of the world might be differently, but more or less will have similar structure. Now, so of course, you have to have the idea, right? Is there a way that you can be in a start something without an idea? I can't, I can't imagine them. But okay, so you have the idea. Now, so the first question is, do I have the right idea at the Grand level? Or don't I? Right? How would you able to answer How would you? How do you think you would be able to answer that, of course, you can ask close family and friends, but they're really probably not the best advisors because they don't want to be your cheerleaders. Typically, we give you not so objective. So how do you evaluate the general idea? Or should you spend too much time evaluating it in the first place?   Tugrul  21:42 Oh, yeah, sure, definitely. Why? Because you're going to put some times put some effort on it, if if you decide that like, Okay, I, this idea is going to work. So it means that you're going to take some risks, you're going to spend time on it, etc, etc. So the first thing you have to do is go out there to the market, find the the companies, startups that are close to what you have as an idea, like maybe not exactly the same, but at least there are some similarities, that they're close in the same industry. Or you can think of potential customers, potential companies that can be customers or something like that. I mean, you have to find make some make some market research, you have to contact people, CEOs, I don't know, like HR, maybe not HR sales, maybe if you're planning to sell them something, you have to first before pitching anything, you have to talk to them like oh, like oh, how are you? The I was thinking this? Do you think? Do you need something like this? Or I? I am thinking this? And do you think in future this kind of service or this kind of product tenure help with you? This? Is this is important to be specific, if it's possible, because maybe they don't know it, maybe you figure that out. But you have to show it, I mean, okay, this, do you think you may need this like, in this process, for example, this can make your life easier because of this, this this? For example, it was what how much time it take for you? They can say like five hours? Oh, yeah, this can reduce it to for example, two hours. Either you can first ask questions to find the data need to show them they need it, or the need is already there. And you can discuss about it, but not in a teaching level. Not you're not there at first, during the market research to sell something, of course, you're gonna you need to sell something. But first, you need to contact as much as possible, like people as much as possible. Ask questions like, like a record like this like a podcast like you have, they're going to ask you, you're going to ask them because at the end, if you not make them bored, if you're interested in the conversation, this is going to be Vin Vin it goes into the correct letter in the correct path. Because they are going to if they understand that they are going to use it and this is going to be beneficial for them. It is going to be something good because then you're going to have some feedback maybe maybe you can see the first you thought the need was this but then they they can say something that you need to you may need to change a bit modified. I mean, what I'm trying to say here is you have to go out there first. Go ask as much as possible when I had this idea of microscope like make the microscopy autonomous, just automatic microscopies I even found a cut pool of people from India using microscopies. So we just chat. I mean, on LinkedIn, for example, I send the messages they send me back. My we chat maybe became not exactly very, like close friends, of course. But I mean, we had a conversation a couple of times. So they tried to help me, for example, I had a company in Canada. So they showed some interest on this because they needed something like that. It didn't go well, because we couldn't even start the business. But, I mean, we had two or three meetings with CEO CTO, this service people that they like, really presented what they have there. So they even ask some questions. We need this, we need that. The questions they asked are totally different than the idea that we were like, contacted them. But you know what, that that is more valuable? Because they need it. It is a need my idea? I don't know if there's a need. Now I know that there's a need of from them, right? I mean, this is you have to go first. I mean, this is free. I mean, of course not everybody is going to respond you like maybe on 100, like 1015, I don't know, it depends on your connection that your network. But even one it's going to be can be very important for you. So yeah, you have to go out there and you have to ask, I mean, even though you don't have any idea, like but you you think that for example, I didn't have a specific idea on creating optical computation, accelerators. I was working in optics laboratory. Two years ago in university. I knew it, there is now a big startup in United States called Light matter they are using optic to accelerate deep learning calculations. Deep learning process, really, this they designed it specifically for of course, severely, like a kind of niche for like a deep learning purpose. But you know what? It is a need, actually. Right? If you're increasing the time that it takes for the training for some models within deep learning more than GPU. Mining God ECU has something. And these guys are also like, what they're using is not electronics is optics. So it means that energy efficient, also, you're not creating heat. It was hybrid, of course, you're creating feet. So because your hybrid system, but not totally electronic system, you're still gaining something out of it, reducing the at least the energy consumption, electricity consumption and energy release. So that's yeah, I mean, this kind of stuff, of course. Can change. But yeah, the the answer is you have to go out there first, of course.   Pouya LJ  28:06 Yeah, I mean, think. So the second, you go out there, and you see that you have the right idea more or less. Now, I think the second step is to kind of like, maybe it's even before this, maybe it's I think this is a continuous thing at every step, you have to adjust for it. But I think you kind of also have to have certain, like, manage expectations. Okay, what do you expect to achieve? In what sort of time horizon? And what is your, your fault tolerance? How much are you like, Okay, this is this is the expectation I have this is the hopeful expectation, I haven't this is the minimum expectation I have. And if I'm falling below the minimum consistently, then that's an issue. I cannot afford it for whatever reason, or it doesn't work for me or that. That's where I'm going to call it quits, essentially. So I think those think those conversations to have with yourself and with your co founders, teammates, team members, investors, everybody, I think it's very, also paramount, because a lot of times people just have the wrong expectations. Just that doesn't mean that they're failing, per se, it just means that they're not, they're not, you know, on par with a certain expectation that they created for themselves. Or there's a miscommunication at some potential, you know, people have different expectations. Let's say you got some investment. And then your investment, investors have high expectations. And your expectations to yourself internally is slightly different, then that miscommunication can cause problems when you're not able to deliver to the expectations of your investors. So I think expectation management's and communications, of course, are paramount. And I think this is us. That's why I'm saying it's continuous because I did sees this thing may change, because your idea may get modified to a degree by going out there talking to people. Maybe it gets trimmed, maybe it gets argumented And therefore you have to continuously re evaluate and recalibrate. Okay, so we're coming to the end of the the this episode, I wanted to see if there is anything. So of course, one more thing before we come to the end, of course, the next natural step is execution. And I think you do your market research, you decide that this is viable, you set expectations. Now it's time to execute. And I think this is the part that you don't want to you want to go, you got to go lean, right? You want to go after the main thing, you don't want to get bogged down again, by the details even in execution. So is there anything you want to say to that to the execution stage of this thing?   Tugrul  30:52 Ah, I mean, exactly. Oh, yeah. This tricky? It is tricky. Because I, maybe that's, since I don't have much experience it is. I can say, some like, things clearly. But execution step is probably the hardest part of it. I mean, so we we have ideas all the time, right? I mean, you we can think this list, we can go for this, we can go for the What about this idea, whatever that idea, but we are not doing anything because first, we don't have that much experience. Second, we still like we still are living for to pay our bills and our rent. As long as we are able to do that paying our bills or rent I mean, to be able to live. Yeah, then the rest is okay. I mean, you can fail, you can just lose something, you can just start again, you can fail, you can start again. But the barrier is the point is, you cannot go below it. I mean, you cannot go become like, Okay, I can't pay my rent this month. No, it is not. It's unacceptable. So you how are you going to do it? How are you going to survive? You need to eat you need to be able to pay your bills, you at least for your for example, internet to be able to communicate with people on like, for example, social media, right? Yes. I mean, these are like the basics, your as long as you're okay with that, okay, whatever happens, we are not going to go below this, we are going to be able to pay our rent, bills, etc. Then you can like try something you can fail. Because you're not gonna lose by the end, you're gonna be able to eat and survive, and you're gonna find a shelter. Like home, to be able to live sleep. I think that's that's the that's the basic like a base level, like, you can't go below. Right? That's, for example, why I can't be like a more brave than that. Because I can lose I can tolerate to lose my current job, for example, or my current conditions. So because we don't know, of course, like, let's say that you started the business, you raised a couple of millions, 10 million, let's say that you an investor came and just or a company acquired you and you just earn 10 million. Yeah, then I can start to that's what my dream. I mean, I really want to go there and invest money on tech. First of all my ideas, together with other people's ideas, I want to invest all of them. The ones that I think I like and I see potential for future. I think we can also like for the next episode, we can continue on discussing that because there are like, also things that we can discuss probably like, what kind of market or what kind of like, areas that you would like to go and invest on both time and money. So that's my like, that's what I think it like, if you start something and if we like, earn something out of it, then the rest can be the risk. And of course, you're going to fail some of them, but but at the end, you are going to make some contribution to the technology, sometimes science because these some companies, for example, the one that I gave you an example like light metals, like optic computation, they're basically doing science. They're also Xanadu, for example, the court computers like they are developing optic quantum computers that they're doing also science they're publishing continuously. So did today. I mean, the things are not the science and tech are not like just coming up from the universities anymore. Companies are doing that, too. That's why I really changed my idea from being an professor to become an entrepreneur or to dive into the industry. Right? But there are lots of things to invest on still, I mean, invest with not only time time is we have it, I mean, that's what we have right now. But, but in future like, we were gonna, as like, this generation, as like, technology lovers, like a scientific minded people, or like, I don't know, like, whoever loves it to increase or improve people improve humanity in in this path. We're going to do it, we have to do it. Because we are living on a planet and we are planning to go other planets. And one day, we are not going to see that of course, but the sun is going to explode. And this even this, this system, the solar system is not going to be habitable. I mean, so we have to go somewhere else. You never know. I mean, you have to do this. Now you have to invest on this. I mean, for sure.   Pouya LJ  36:34 No, no, I am with you. And actually, one of the next episodes, we wanted to talk about space travel. And so so maybe we'll discuss about that. Yep, no, I guess the time is now. It's always now. For sure, I agree with you. There's a lot of areas of interest in investments, which we also can talk about in the future episodes, as well. Anything that maybe you wanted to talk about? We didn't get to? As of now?   Tugrul  37:05 No, no, everything is I think everything is? Okay. Of course, if there are like questions. If if someone is listening to this and have questions can always like comment on the podcast and ask questions that we can discuss. I'm not saying that we are going to answer it, because we are we are right now. This is these are the questions that everybody is as long as they're not convicted, like convinced. Everybody's right. Yeah, it means that you're right. It's your idea, because I can't convince you. So we can discuss, of course, what I don't know. Like, there are lots of things to discuss, of course, some, some can criticize me, by the way. They can say that instead of like thinking about going to space we can focus on like, people in Africa, for example, people are like, they they it is so hard for them to find food. They sometimes like most of the time, maybe they starve they sometimes like they can't find water, clean water to drink, of course, but science and tech, if we boosted it can resolve everything we can find the like a solution for everything for everybody. Not only to go to space, I'm not telling you that even the Clean Water Genie like having a clean water is science. Yeah, we will have to eliminate it. As long as you figure that out like food. You can create food, like farming, it is also science. Okay, it is something old, but we know it's technology. If you if you know how to do it, you can go there. And you can do it. Maybe you can do it free. Why not?   Pouya LJ  38:55 Yeah, this is this is the thing like a two to many main it seems sounds ridiculous. But actually yeah, farming is a is an was is a technology. Same with writing, language, technology, with technology, all of these that we take for granted nowadays. They were all technologies, very advanced technologies at their own time. For sure. Okay. Yeah, no, I agree. And I really like the point you made about comments. Yeah, for sure. If there is something you want us to discuss further on this topic or any topic for that matter? please do leave your comments. And as Stuart said, it doesn't mean that we are right and we have answered, but it means that we can spark a conversation and you can take that thought, go discuss it with your friends and family or in your own podcast. And and yeah, let us know either way. We will welcome your suggestions, criticisms, thoughts into the comment section for sure. Okay. Thank you through for today's conversation too. It was very interesting. I really enjoy Was it? And, yeah, so we'll talk more. We'll talk more on future episodes. But until that time, thanks again.   Tugrul  40:12 Thank you get ready. Have a great weekend.   Pouya LJ  40:15 And thank you. We're recording as a Friday when this episode might not be Friday for you guys, but I'm sorry if it's Monday through Monday. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for tuning in and I hope to see you on the next episode. Take care

  Tugrul's Social:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tugrul_Guner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tugrulguner/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, immigrating, bureaucracy, courage, permanent residency, talent, immigration, canada, focus, country, entrepreneurship, build, challenges, life, permit, lots, emigrate, mentioned, apply, agree SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Tugrul   Pouya LJ  00:00 Well hello, and welcome back yet again to yet another episode of The BTP podcast, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're doing fabulous. We're back with total as per our previous episode. And we're going to talk about some cool stuff today, next few days and so forth and so on. It's going to be a few days of few episodes of lots of goodies around. So welcome back to rule out doing   Tugrul  00:44 good and good. Now in better,   Pouya LJ  00:47 whatever. That's great to hear. Not bad. It was a good day. Very productive. Lots of work to do, though. And now whether it was nice, so it for walk that was that was also good.   Tugrul  01:00 It's a bit dark, though. Yeah, it's getting dark again.   Pouya LJ  01:04 We're recording this at 9pm, which is good. Yeah. So so how are you doing? Overall, life is good. Life is treating you well.   Tugrul  01:13 Here are some work, work work with the Friday. So we are celebrating Happy Friday. Yay. But not today. Of course, unfortunately. Looking forward. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So then we look forward to Monday. Yes. And so to celebrate Happy Monday.   Pouya LJ  01:34 That's right. All right. So today, we're going to talk about a little bit about tooth topics, which kind of go I guess, hand in hand, at least in your story. And that is about initially about immigration as a whole. I mean, of course, you can share your personal story, but then immigration as a whole, what are the Will you will you advise it on others? Will you tell others to emigrate? Let's start there. So what are your thoughts on immigration? I then to break the ice a little bit to give the audience a little bit of a background. So the reason we're talking about immigration is because the way I personally looked at immigration is immigration is basically an uprooting of your life. So you have to, first of all have the courage to leave so many things behind in and I kind of look at it the Vikings way, if you will, I look at it as going after something different, something more something better, something different, I think the different borders the key. And for the upper. Hello, of course. Exactly, exactly. So that's how I look at immigration, I feel like it's because you're just seeking more opportunities, a different opportunity. The broad level, but what are your thoughts as a whole? And will you suggest it to others? Should they be in a position to be debating it?   Tugrul  03:07 Yeah, of course, I agree. I mean, it depends on where you're where you're immigrating to. Right. So so when you're living so many stuff behind the like, your parents, your I mean, whatever, like you, you're just leaving your friends. Not only like a friends and friends may maybe you're living some thing that you love, I mean, your books, I mean, your car, you never know. I mean, who knows? Right? So you're leaving them for to build a better feature. Right? Other than that, like, there is no point or, or, or you somebody or something like somehow you should be forced to do that. I'm not considering that this. That's a whole another story. So I mean, I don't I can't say anything about it. If you're forced to emigrate, this something is not an option for you, but is an option. If you're immigrating. The whole idea is to go somewhere, that you think that you're gonna You can live better, with a better life, better conditions, anything like for example, in our side, like, we don't have kids, but if you want to have kids, we want our kids to live in a place that they can be happy. They can live like they supposed to. Not like like I mean, not should they shouldn't work on the like heart conditions or they they should they like they can work and work and work but at the end if they can't get anything, and they're still like at the level of being poor and starving. So that was the point that mean so so many countries are on there, like people day and night are working. But at the end of the day, they can just live serving for not to die to survive. They're just surviving. I mean, this is unacceptable because I mean, we are living this life once and just surviving it, we are not Indonesia, we are just not just trying to build something for our kids, because we have the complexity we have that civilization, the the, like, we evolved, we, we have this complexity. And so I agree with you at that point. So we just with K, we came to Canada for the purpose to like to live a better life to, to, like, make our dreams come true. Like I have lots of dreams, and I want to make them real here. And I know that this country allows me to do so. As long as I have like, like a vote permit permanent residency or like, of course, the citizenship. Something. authorization of this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it is hard. It is hard. Not this this. Not everybody can do it. I mean, I know I am thinking in my parents shoes, like, they complain all the time. But they don't have that courage to leave everything and go somewhere else. Especially like, because of the language barrier, of course. Right, right. Yeah, but I'm not sure if my parents know how to speak English, for example, I'm still not sure they can leave everything behind and go somewhere to speak English. But this is the first step. This is the first thing the language barrier.   Pouya LJ  06:45 And this provides an excuse,   Tugrul  06:47 yes, oh, who is gonna like who's gonna learn at this age? I mean, people are, some people can graduate from university. Sure. 70 years old. But it depends from person to person, of course, is called a comfort zone, of course, your book for your parents, they happy. So anyway, so. But it's also full of challenges immigrating to somewhere like, okay, let's say that you already can speak a language of the country that you're immigrating. Let's keep that part. Let's say that we all know that language, for example, hear English. Then the next thing, the next challenge is the culture, of course. So you're coming from a culture, mostly a different culture, some common things, of course, but some different things, it can sometimes get hard to use it. Learn it, of course. I mean, you should find a way to learn it, you should find a way to have some friends. It is also a challenge to like to meet people, because I'm not talking about being young. I'm talking about like me that I emigrated here, like around 30 years old. So you know that right? Like, if you get older, it is becomes harder to find friends or like, have close friends. I mean, you you become picky.   Pouya LJ  08:17 And you don't you don't get those opportunities. As often. For example, if you come at the university level or high school level or even earlier, then you get to, you know, build those relationships in school and university and so forth. So, so that would be different. You're right, yeah. Okay.   Tugrul  08:33 Yeah, I mean, also, you need yours. They came as a postdoc here, like I had a, like, we have people in the group like PhDs, master's students, okay, at the school, you're called, like having, like a nice conversations with you, you're enjoying the talk, etc. But when the day is over, or everybody goes to home, and you don't go out, even on like weekends, I don't remember that I call or somebody called me to Let's go here. Like, just happened. Rarely. Yeah, I mean, I don't know maybe I didn't call or they didn't call because we all like we are picky or we already have some other friends. Or we are just lazy like laying down at home and let's let's go live. Watch this. Let's go watch that. Like, of course, going out something you don't prefer if you don't have a hobby outside. So that, like I, I was lucky. Of course, I came here with my wife. So I wasn't alone. And I know that I had friends who were like, alone. They were like, struggling with that they were like sometimes depressing. This is this is something challenging for people, especially who like rating by themselves. This can be challenging after like language barrier because having Frances bit hard. Um, next thing is of course, paperwork, some governmental issues, for example, right? Yeah. Oh, amazing. I mean, like, pull off, like being anxious about being anxious, like pulling nerves like I mean, what's going to happen full, you're just getting stressed. You're applying, for example, I came with a work permit. So it was like a one year or two years for at first. The first year was okay, because I have one year more, but when like, I'm given a deadline. Oh, yes. I mean, it's full of like anxiety, let's have we have to apply and you're waiting sometimes months? And you never know, maybe maybe you always have been back of your mind labor? What if they reject? What if I had to go back home after one year this even in one year, even imagined, like, yesterday, because you're trying to build something here, you're trying to do something you want to like, instead of thinking about this stuff, you want to focus on things about what you can do next? What is the next step? What should I do? Well, but this, you do this at some point, but then when you are approaching the deadlines, you just stopped doing that? And okay, what should I do? Like we have to apply this and we have to wait in response of my hope we can, we will get rejected. Yeah, that kind of stuff. This, this is something challenging also, like, mental mentally challenging. It can, it doesn't help you with that. So. So then you're you're looking for people who sponsored you to extend your contract, or look for another job that they can sponsor you to continue living here. Unfortunate ly my contract was extended by my employer. But it was one year, so that was full of challenges. And also, if you want to vote for work permit, there are two stories like one is open work permits. For example, one is closer permit, I had the close work permit, so I can't legally work for someone else. I wasn't, I wasn't able to vote for someone else. Of course. That's also like something problematic. I mean, I pro like the Pro. There are lots of reasons to do that, of course, but I mean, for a person who was having close work permit, it's hard to find a job like I mean, I was like, interested in going to industry at that time. So not all the companies are able to provide you the necessary paperwork to sponsor you. They are like, okay, so we are done. Not that big, we are still started up, or we are this and we can't Sorry, sorry. Yeah, whatever. This is how the system is. So you survived somehow, if you're if you want to, like stay or if you really want to, like, do something. And if you just focused, you know, will you find your way? Of course. Yeah, I like for example, I came to Ottawa, in my in my business for my second postdoc last year, and I got another contract to open but then I applied for permanent residency, and now I have a permanent residency, which, which is good now, I don't have issues. Like I don't have concerns about these kinds of permits, etc. But   Pouya LJ  13:51 yes, free of the bureaucracy.   Tugrul  13:55 Even like I when I was in my first post to get my chair like, at, like, two incubated with a project, which is accelerator called Suntec. I was good. I got accepted for the project. And I like me and my professor X professor was like, we were cofounders the ideal I always liked it. The name of the project microscope bought I mean, it was an amazing name, I still like it. It was a kind of idea that tries to automate microscopy with the AI I was so involved in the even though I didn't have any expertise like I didn't study I didn't have that much expense all personal hobby and but I was like, I was using microscope electron microscope so I was like, why not? I mean, not electron microscope me because they are expensive toys but why not for the like regular traditional Microsoft optical ones. Maybe I can design a system the If you can just put your samples and leave for the coffee and the whole system goes back for Drive left focus, then deal with everything by itself automatically collected data after like a couple of hours. So you have 1000s of images. Wow, amazing. You were just drinking your coffee. And you know, after one hour, you have 1000s of images. So yeah, I pitched the idea I took like, the train by them, like three months, it was like an intensive three months program from this intrapreneurship level, they were teaching you that   Pouya LJ  15:35 the what were they teaching, if they were teaching you only the entrepreneurship intrapreneur technical stuff to   Tugrul  15:42 networking, how to build network and how to prepare your minimum viable product MVP is what you should have to do how you can deal with the business plan, they mostly were using lean startup idea, like, don't try to get the perfect product, just start with something that you can show potential customers potential investors, that my idea is this how this is a demonstration, no limit, it can be even, you don't need to pay, like it can be cost free that you can just some build something or you can just create a software like or like a file, what I did was like, for example, I applied object detection with the for a video that I created from microscopy. I just applied object detection over it. And I showed that how the objects are like a tracked with the algorithm and how was it moving left, right? And how was it detecting the focus and the system if not focused on aligned? Axis, etc. Like that? It took me like, five hours, six hours. Yeah, but the problem was, then everything went well, like there were like lots of brilliant ideas around. So you will also be able to connect with them. You can also I don't know, like, if there's a good connection between you and someone else, you can just that guy or you can join him or her they can join you. So very dynamic environment. But the next step was you have to build your startup really officially have to start it to be able to go to the next step. But I couldn't do that because I had a work permit. And there was no way there was no way to start the company, you have to find someone who has a residency or citizenship, that needs to be at least I don't know, I just gonna, I don't remember exactly the number is 20 25% or something like that, to have that share in the company to be able to like a build it. So that was the time that I'm like, oh, okay, so I'm not gonna be able to do anything, unless I received my permanent residency. Just hold me back for some time, to be honest. These are all challenges. I mean, cultural, going immigrating to somewhere else, language barriers, then this kind of stuff. I mean,   Pouya LJ  18:21 the bureaucracy. Yeah. So I do want to go a little bit back first, and then come back to this. So you mentioned a while back, you mentioned courage. And I think that's a key key word in immigration. Because anybody who's like, had gone through immigration will tell you more or less, it's not an easy endeavor. Even so some people have it worse, some people have it better. Some people have a better experience, easier experience, some people have a more difficult experience. But ultimately, even the ones who have a relatively easy experience is generally difficult, because first of all, you have to move on from something, as you mentioned, you have to put some stuff behind. Either they're actually you know, literally stuff like inanimate objects or books and you know, whatever. Or, for example, job maybe, or there are people that you have to move, move away from and it doesn't mean that you don't keep contact with them. But it means that while you're not going to be seeing them every day, and then the second fold of that is that there are going to be lots of challenges. As you mentioned, there's many faults, cultural language barriers, cultural barriers, experiential barriers, sometimes it's not easy to find the right job in the same industry because you don't have the right experience in that country. Now, you may have experiences in other countries, but sometimes they don't translate all that well depending on the field of course. So it takes a lot of courage to leave what you have behind and as you mentioned, some people are forced to move and just go somewhere else because of wars or refugees, so maybe it's a different story there. But for those who choose to emigrate, then it does take courage because it means that you have to uproot your life. Whether it's good or bad, however good or bad it is. Nevertheless, you have to destruct your environment. And I think it takes courage. But with everything, if you have the ratio, if you wisely choose and you're courageous, odds are that you're going to get something out of it either a good result ultimately, or a good lesson, even if you fail. So I just wanted to point that out and see if there's anything you want to add on that courage point, to the whole story of immigration before we move on to bureaucracy.   Tugrul  20:47 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, if it's courage, in my case, I was planning to, like, move somewhere like Europe or United States or Canada. When even when I was like, in bachelor, that was kinda like my plan already. Because I really wanted to have a portunity to build something big. Yeah. I mean, you can do it in your own country. Yes, maybe. But the effort? Okay. They're not saying, Oh, that's it, the dynamics are very different. For example, my country. First of all, there are not much technology companies around like not, it's like, consider Silicon Valley. I mean, come on. Like, if you go to Silicon Valley, somehow, if you started to be become an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, the network the people, like, what we're talking about here is environment, you need that you need that. I mean, for example, Canada. In Ottawa, I'm not in my mantra that there was an environment for sure. But wherever you are, doesn't matter. Like a country wise, you feel that there are opportunities here. If you have the idea, if you have the motivation, if you have this, like, Okay, I'm going to do it, if you have this motivation here, you know, that nothing can stop you. But this is not the case for all the countries. You have to either be really lucky or you have to be like, you know, people, really, you have to have this kind of network. Yeah, there are people of course, there succeed in these countries. Of course, I cannot say that. You can't you can. This is no way. No, I'm not saying of course you can. But I mean, having an idea and to become a giant is more possible here.   Pouya LJ  22:58 Yeah, there's definitely more opportunities more different. No, I agree. So I guess there is another element to the courage that you're basically mentioning, and that is, well, first of all, you need ambition, you need a reason to move. Now, in your case is ambition. Sometimes it's something else. But in your case, it seems to be the ambition, and I think it's the same in my case. And then you need also to be slightly adventurous, if not extremely adventurous, you need to be at least slightly adventurous to step into the unknown and be comfortable with that. So you take you take a courage, you take a reason to have to move to uproot your life. Otherwise, why would you? Well, it was you seem to be an idiot. And you need to be adventurous to a degree. Would you say that's, that's probably the base criteria for somebody to emigrate?   Tugrul  23:46 I mean, you're right, definitely encourages and being adventurous, I think they all combine the single point, which is, I think, not being scared of failing. If you if you're not scared of failing, I mean, if you're like, Okay, I can fail first time, second time, third time. Now, no worries, this life goes on. As long as I'm alive. And as long as I'm capable of doing stuff, my brain works or I can do something as long as I can do that. Nothing can stop you. You can fail. Of course, you're gonna fail you're gonna fail because you're trying something new. If you're not failing, you're it means that you're not learning not trying something new. It that means that you are following successful people because they pass this road and they like design. Now you cannot fail on this road. You're just following it that you're not learning. You're just like, clot and like I was called, like, you're just doing exactly the same. They did but in a way that when they became successful, you're not taking the part that they failed, but for sure you should be able to accept that you're going to fail. And you're not going to scale of that. If you're scared of failing, this is not the correct way you for your life that then you shouldn't maybe emigrate, I mean, you can still, you know, that can I   Pouya LJ  25:22 don't think I don't think you can really emigrate without failure, like it will be there, you're gonna make mistakes because you don't know them. As you mentioned, you have the culture shock, you have all these problems that you just don't know a lot of things. Honestly, even if in your perfect environment, it's impossible to not make mistakes and fail, but the odds will be multiplied 10 times 100 times 1000 times as much, because that's just the nature of things, you're stepping into the unknown. And when there's lots of uncertainty, the chances of making a mistake goes higher. But then that's okay. That should be okay. So that's where the, as you mentioned, the courage and adventures converge, essentially, and then you need the reason. Now, for some people, it's just ambition, or, you know, curiosity, or both. For some people, it's just, you know, what I want to give my children children a better life, potentially, or I want this or that. And for some people, unfortunately, it's not a choice. They're forced, as forced upon them. Okay, so let's just move on a little bit before we come to the close of this episode. So next episode, we'll talk about a little bit more about the entrepreneurship aspect of it. But I just wanted to address because we mentioned the bureaucracy. So as with all governments, when you deal with them, they tend to be a bit bureaucratic. And that obviously creates a lot of hurdles. Now, one of the advantages of I guess, specifically United States, and I guess in recent years, Canada has been that actually to try to remove lots of these bureaucracy to a high degree or reduce them, at least, when it comes to talent when it comes to entrepreneurs, when it comes to investors. So that you can tap into a pool of talent, and capital all over the world, not only within your own confined borders. And I guess that's one of the success stories of America that actually, United States specifically, I mean, America is a continent, the United States of America has been that the one of the stories has been the fact that they were able to attract the best of the best talents all around the world. And they've done that by trying to, specifically the past, but maybe less so presently, but then cannabis taking place a little bit. They have been trying to do that by reducing those beers, because they basically gave people a chance to, you know, focus on your own thing. Focus on things that you're actually good at. And of course, there's going to be some bureaucracy, that's just impossible, as you deal with governments that want to make sure that who you are, that their borders are made safe, that you're not misrepresenting yourself in one way or another. So there is going to be a little bit of that. And governments being the huge entities that they are not really good at producing these bureaucracies actually add to it. That's just the nature of things. So what do you think can be done in the case of entrepreneurial entrepreneurship or generally speaking, talent acquisition, from the standpoint of a country, let's say, like Canada, or any country, for that matter, that wants to accept immigrants and wants to accept talents? Or, you know, specific kinds of work workforce in different industries doesn't matter? What can be done in your personal experience? Now, you had the experience of Canada and had a very specific experience. Of course, I had a slightly different experience, but similar in terms of being theocratic. So what are the Do you have any thoughts? Have you thought about it? What can be done to or Not? Not? Specifically? I'm not talking about specific things, but directionally is there general ideas that you think can help with reducing this tension and allowing talent to just flourish?   Tugrul  29:17 Yeah, I mean, it kinda is doing actually good when I was like, like in this intrapreneurship program, the last day they mentioned me this intrapreneurship immigration program, I didn't know that before like it you had to apply it. Like, we just I was in Montreal. So the problem was, I couldn't speak French so I couldn't apply for the permanent residency, but I didn't know you can apply for intrapreneurship program even within within Montreal in Quebec. So if I knew it before, but the thing is, like you have three months, but usually it like takes one one and a half year. So in any As I won't be able to, like I couldn't probably get my permanent residency, even that case to build my startup. But this is tricky. To be honest. There are lots of talents around the world, of course, the country's companies, are they fighting to get this talent? But while you're like if you make things so easy for people to emigrate the country with talent, of course, is something good. But you have to care about the society also, like who you are like, like a given residency, these guys are, okay talented. But who are they? I mean, maybe they are not. Some of them. They are not like, they can be rude. They can make things harder for other people. You never know. I mean, just because they are mine doesn't mean that they are just struggling with other people.   Pouya LJ  31:04 Yeah. In my experience, criminals are very talented, especially the successful ones, but you don't Oh, yeah. Okay, so yeah, that's a good example. Yeah. You want to make sure that you're letting in the right kind of people and not international criminals, for example. Oh, yeah. Maybe very talented. But nevertheless, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know. It's a level. Yeah. Yeah.   Tugrul  31:27 I mean, the software level, maybe hackers, they mean they are just stealing people's information, credit nerds, etc. They are so extremely talented. But then you're saying, okay, so you're talented. Come to my country. Still people here   Pouya LJ  31:40 like, no, it is. It is a tricky business. I understand that. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I think overall, Canada is not the worst for by any stretch of the imagination is doing pretty. Okay. Pretty good overall. Still, I think there are some aspects of bureaucracy that can be trimmed. If not, yeah, they're doing pretty good. But yeah. So   Tugrul  32:02 leaving times alone, for example, can be reduced this processing times? That can be much better. Of course,   Pouya LJ  32:09 people have options. Yes. You don't have to stress about it. If, for example, you get a rejection of some sort, and you have the time to respond to it in a timely manner. Yeah, I agree. I think I think that would be probably the best place to start to actually reduce this processing times. All right, we'll continue this discussion, of course, specifically, more on the entrepreneurship side. But before we close, though, is there anything you want to mention that we missed? Or you wanted to talk about that? We haven't?   Tugrul  32:43 No, not so far. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's tricky. Yeah, I agree. This everything is tricky. This is tricky for government. This is tricky for immigrant. I mean, this is not easy for anybody. Everybody is just trying to make things better. Immigrants, they are trying to make their lives better, or they're, like me, them and they have some they have ambition, and they also want to provide a better life for their kids for like, their belongings. And so you can do this here. And you just You need courage. So as long as you have courage, okay, that you can fail. I mean, there are things that are tricky, of course, you can hold you back for some time, you can just get mad, but you have to focus on the feature, not the problems, you always have to you should always have to focus on the solution, not the problem. Problem is there focusing on the problem is not going to solve the problem by itself. Focusing on the solution is going to help you to solve that problem. Most of the people or they miss this, but they just focus on the problem. Okay, I have this problem mine. I hate this. I hate that. Yeah, I am complaining also like, everybody complains because it's a good way of releasing energy, they have tension. But at the end of the day, the seriously you take this focusing on the solution part more serious. Complaining is something else. But focusing on problem is another thing, not that you shouldn't focus on that so you don't need to scared of immigrating. Just think about what you can achieve afterwards. But if Okay, let's say that if I immigrate to Canada, I want to immigrate to Canada. I want to move there. And I believe there are these are going to be problem this is going to be problem. Okay? But think about what you can do here. You can start a business you can find a good job. You can do something in quantum computation. You can do something good in AI. You can Go to a very high ranking university, you can study neuroscience, I mean, of course, there are like lots of opportunities, you have to focus on that you have to focus on what you're going to do next. Yeah, but meanwhile, governments are also struggling have to make have to pick talent and correct people, for the society to make the society better, of course. Yeah, because everybody wants to have a society that everybody gets along well, everybody shows respect to each other, like, everybody's happy, they can focus only on the things they they love, like, for example, you ai me a quantum computation, to, to move this technology move the science forward, let's let's move everything in a better way, like, like, let's focus on how we can make this work better in terms of how we can live better how we can make the technology better science and how we can make more discoveries, how we can go to other galaxies or the planets, how we can colonize them how we can mine the streets, we should focus on this because at the end of the day, we were just polluting our, like our home with mining, we need those chemicals, of course, because of many things. But if we focus all together, on the future, and on the things that we can achieve all together, like on the space, even like in the science, tech and anything art, I mean, everything just focus on improving things. It is the way how it evolves. I mean, it's the way how we should go instead of like fighting each other.   Pouya LJ  36:54 Yeah, has always been agreed. That makes a lot of sense.   Tugrul  36:57 No, I can't at this point. But   Pouya LJ  37:00 that's good. Actually, this is this is something we're going to continue talking about, the more the you know, the entrepreneurship aspect, the you know, the the innovation and improvements aspect. For sure it will start next episode, we'll continue that this conversation basically. From will we'll move on a little bit from immigration side, but we'll maneuver more on entrepreneurship and the Lean Startup philosophy that you were telling me about so we'll be could delve into that a little bit. All right. So I'm not going to say goodbye because we already said that we're going to have that next episode very soon. About Yeah, about the entrepreneurship aspect. But I do want to say goodbye to our audience. And I as always, I'm really glad that you guys tune in, listen to us. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you will join in next month. Thank you all for joining and until next episode.   Tugrul  38:01 Yep. Thank you very much. See you everybody. Take care.

The Polyglot Guidebook written by Daniel Molgan is now available in paperback and kindle on Amazon. In this episode Daniel reads the introduction of this book for you so that you can understand whether you should get yourself a copy to become fluent in speaking any foreign language! 

In this episode of the BTP Podcast, Pouya speaks with Tugrul Guner, a Physicist by training and Machine Learning Engineer by trade. Enjoy!   Tugrul's Social:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tugrul_Guner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tugrulguner/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS quantum optics, arrogance, imaging, materials, physics, degree, confidence, observe, kinda, people, agree, thinking, science, human, quantum mechanics, postdoc position, field, evolved, point, question SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Tugrul   Pouya LJ  00:00 Well hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of the b2b podcast. We've been away for a while I have for sure. But I am back with a very great friend of mine, tool gunner, and I am happy to introduce him to you what a legendary man he is. He has okay. Oh, you know what? I'm not gonna give you the introduction. I'll let him introduce himself the way he he sees fit. Hey, Joe, how are you doing?   Tugrul  00:43 I'm good, by the way, are legendary?   Pouya LJ  00:48 No, no, I know you well enough to give you that, you know, give you that adjective. So that's all well deserved? For sure. All right, turtle. So why don't you give us a very brief but comprehensive background about yourself, the way you see yourself from your academic background personally. Yeah, go ahead.   Tugrul  01:10 Yeah, sure. Sure. I will start with when everything changed in my life. I was like, I was not cared about anything before, like last year of my high school. So I was like, playing video games going out like playing soccer. And the classes were like, I wasn't. I had zero interest at all. But I wonder I was reading a lot. I was like, I was kind of reading lots of different books, different types of books, mostly like fantasy books, like Dragon land series, forgotten mediums. It all started with a lot of things by the way. Yeah, anyway, but that was also another story. My father, like, gave that present to me like a lot of drinks book. But the second book, he just grabbed a random book from there probably, like, just grab the second book. And then I Oh, what's this looks let me read the first one. Then I started with the Lord of the Rings. Okay. But back then I was reading this Dan Brown's book called demons and angels, or whatever. Demons.   Pouya LJ  02:22 Read the book, but I've watched the movie. Okay.   Tugrul  02:24 Yeah, I also watched the movie, but I don't know. Like, it was a good book. I'm not sure. But the thing that just like was interesting to me when they were talking about like, antimatter. So I just, like stuck at that point, like, Oh, my God, what is this? Like, I never heard of this before antimatter. Like, I wasn't even interested in physics. Okay. No, no, no, no, but antimatter was like, something changed. What? I never heard of this before. And I realized that I mean, we have lots of things we don't know. That was the, like, a break point in my life. Okay. We're, we're just pretending that we are we know stuff that based on our observations, these are like a micro sis macro systems that we are observing daily, like mostly, like, wearing like an eternal outdoors, we all know, so we just ever have that. Like, I mean, if you drop something, it just falls down. Like it's a gravity, I mean, this kind of stuff. But I that was something different. You can observe it you need to be in that field to know what is antimatter. So that was a some kind of like, a break point in my life. Okay, then, I started to read a couple of things about it, then I noticed that oh my god, this is something else. There's another world inside of this like, like quantum mechanics, even though I had no idea what quantum mechanics is, but I was like reading uncertainty principles, something is not clear. But something sounds are like, interesting, like, Oh my God, what's happening here, like the universe is not really like, observed something more and more. I mean, then, last year, in my high school, I develop interest in the physics as you expect, like, then I was like, for the my bachelor degree, I have to study physics. And I have to I have to become a theoretical physics physicist. I mean, because I really wanted to understand everything. That didn't happen, of course, but I'm gonna mention that I'm going to talk about it. So So I in in my country, for bachelor's degree, you have to take an exam and after the exam, you need to write the university and discipline like this university physics. This university for example, electrical engineering   Pouya LJ  05:00 to give his background so when you're originally from Turkey, so you do your Bachelor's there. Yes. Okay. Go ahead.   Tugrul  05:10 Yeah, yeah, my masters and PhD there too, but Right, so, so you have limits, of course. So you can just write 20 University and 20 different subnets. So I wrote physics for all of them. Because I was like, obsessed. So, yeah, I just got into physics. But it was kind of disappointing. Like, okay, I was kind of, I mostly like, thinking about this ideas, thinking about how universe should work. And this kind of like a philosophical way of Lego discussions, I've kind of mostly like that way of it. But mathematics. When it starts to become complicated, you start to lose control of your thoughts. Also, sometimes, like, if it gets too complicated, you start to focus mostly on the mathematics to solve that problem. You're getting away from your first idea, and you can find yourself with into different concepts, different mathematical tools. Of course, it can guide you different discoveries, of course, but you need to, you need to have that skill to have fun with this mathematics. I didn't have that one. So still, I was like, kinda stubborn. So I wanted to do my master's degree also in physics, which did the quantum mechanics from from the fundamentals, which was focusing on the foundations of it like, main things like fundamental things. So we published a paper about quantum tunneling. Because there was a problem about estimating time in quantum mechanics. And tunneling is a phenomenon that happens in time, even though there were people that researchers like arguing about maybe instantaneous, maybe it's not time dependent, but we found the time for that, which we published. It was a nice journey for me, but then I changed my topic, like, very like a, like a 100 watt, like 180 degrees, like, just back with like, a different direction. Which I started doing my like a PhD in material science and engineering, talking about the relevant components.   Pouya LJ  07:35 The way you say. It was 180 degrees deviation. One would think this is a you went to art since fallen artists. No, I'm kidding. Within the realm of physics, you didn't want it okay. Yeah,   Tugrul  07:51 I mean, like, change my direction, like, I mean, it all you can also call it 90 degrees to I mean, I was just like I did, I was like, spanning somewhere else. Yeah, I started to work on some applications. I was kinda materials, material scientist, I was working on polymers, polymer composites, emissive materials, like I was mostly working on alternative materials for the white LEDs, because in LEDs, especially white LEDs, you were using phosphorus, which they contain, like rare earth elements. So I was trying to develop new materials or trying to increase the efficiency of the this phosphor materials inside the tube. It was nice, it was a efficient pH like I published like kinda 20 papers, because it's an application is not a theoretical physicist. So it was kinda like it's highly liked, like you can publish papers, as long as you develop something and you showed us an increase those improvement, it works. Or you even you can come up with a new material, which we were there was like a sample. One kind of material was very popular back then we even published a couple of papers awarded called halide perovskites. Yeah, so I was kinda like optimistic about my postdoc. Because like, 20 papers, so I was like, okay, I can find a good postdoc position around the world, but it didn't go that way. I applied like 600 700 positions with a detailed applications. I didn't get a response from most of it. Probably some I didn't even send the second secondary email to them, but probably they went and noticed, like one of them just, he's a Turkish professor. Also, he's a professor in Montreal,   Pouya LJ  09:59 Montreal. Canada, yes,   Tugrul  10:00 that's Montreal in Canada. So that's he sent me like the position and offered me the postdoc position, which was an amazing subject. It's called water fast electron transmission electron microscopy, which transmission electron microscope by itself is a characterization tool that can image materials at nano scale, which is like 10 to the minus nine is like, how much like 1000 Lower magnitudes higher magnitudes than the human hair, right in 1000, it was micron, so, probably around 1000. Similar things from the human hair. Even more, I don't know, like, probably some that kind of scale. So we were basically imaging nanomaterials at the Nano scale, like we were characterizing them trying to understand the shape some of the properties, but this is regular transmission electron microscopy, ultra fast transmission electron microscopy is where you are integrating your microscopy with laser. Now, you don't only have this imaging, you also have this laser, which you can also send it to your material and observe what's happening when your metal or nanoparticles are interacting with the laser. Which brings, we call it the time dependency for your observations, which is from imaging, a now you start to record movies, and you can visualize what they're doing and understand the interaction of places in time. So, by the way, my professors professor in Caltech, his name was like Zewail, he, like, got the Nobel Prize for this invention, mostly, you got the Nobel Prize for them to chemistry, but this was the part of the invention. So yeah, that that, in today in the world, there are only four or five facilities that can do this. ultra fast transmission electron microscopy is an expensive tool. After that, like I studied two and a half years in Montreal, Canada for as a postdoc, and my second postdoc, I came to Ottawa in Canada again. This time, it is a completely different lab, it is a quantum optics lab, because I also like I am enjoying it. I know I love quantum mechanics. So I came also like to learn quantum optics. And I was planning to apply some of my AI skills. Of course, I don't have any professional skills because I didn't study AI. I didn't study machine learning in any of my degrees. But I, since I love AI and coding, I always like, during my free time as a hobby. I also I tried to improve myself a lot. So then I started to combine quantum optics with deep learning because in quantum optics, you have noisy like results and etc. So you can combine them with the deep learning etc, we   Pouya LJ  13:27 can we take a step back, so can you tell tell me like what is actually quantum optics? Like, can you delve into it? What does that mean? Okay, optics is? Oh, yes, in the quantum, but how do they go together?   Tugrul  13:38 Yeah, of course, I cannot explain that like an expert of it because I work from the burning. But   Pouya LJ  13:43 even if you did, I wouldn't understand.   Tugrul  13:47 In Visual optic isn't just that it's the light. So you don't have to you don't need to have a like coherency, which means that like some kind of like, coherent motion or coherent interaction of your light. Like as a, like a physicist standpoint is like, How can I select it's not random, the photons in the light, if they're not acting random, they are acting in a coherent way. So they have some kind of correlation between them. So regular light is you don't have this year. They're just like, moving. They're just moving like in spacetime. But when you're talking about quantum optics, you need to use some kind of generator of this coherent light because light itself is not generating it with regular light sources. For example, we were using different crystals. You're sending your laser to these crystals. And these crystals are so special that they create coherent light, which they are correlated in the momentum. degrees of freedom. And I mean, they go into two different paths read up, I mean, when you hit them with the laser, out of the crystal, you have two life paths. One goes one direction, or the goals pregnant, the perpendicular direction. The main property of this two beam is their entangled, momentum entangled. So   Pouya LJ  15:25 this one, so the past crystal,   Tugrul  15:28 yeah, after they passed, the crystal crystal generates, of course, what was the efficiency of this generation like 8% 10%, maybe, I mean, it's a lot less not that high,   Pouya LJ  15:41 so you get better you preserve. So the light that comes up at the end of it is less than 50% of what you actually put into it.   Tugrul  15:49 Of course, yes, of course. So you have less light now, but you see that they are momentum in the momentum, degree of freedom, they are correlated, I mean, entangled. One is plus one is exactly the same moment with the negative value. What we can do is that, so if you observe the two beams, so imagine that you have two cameras, one is observing the, one of the beams or the other one is observing the other view. So you have triggers for these cameras. So one photon, when one photon hits one camera, it checks exactly the same time, the other one grabs any photon signal. So if the two photon hits the camera at the same time, you're saying that, okay, two entangled photons, alright. Other than that, you're not capturing anything. These cameras are own only when two photons are era, photons arrive these two different cameras at the same time. Because they, of course, you're designing your optical path in such a way that they like they travel the same distances. Yeah. Okay, because its speed of light is constant. So they have to travel the same distance. So they're like interesting applications of this, if you put an object in one of these beams, if you try to collect the other beam, it gives you the image of the object without touching it. What I mean is that, for example, you have two beams. And in one of the path of one of the beams, if you put an object, you know that right, so some of light is going to pass some of them not because they're gonna be absorbed or reflected by the object. Yeah, so other beam says they're correlated and entangled. So when you get the camera when these photons get the camera, so they are going to be triggered only with the other photons that are passed and reach to the camera. So you're going to have a kind of image of the object with other beam, which has nothing on this path. I mean, this kind of the this is called Ghost imaging. Maybe I just was so bad.   Pouya LJ  18:12 No, no, I think I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Not good boy. Yeah.   Tugrul  18:16 Let's go. Yeah, it's I mean, it was like I was kind of trying to develop a deep learning algorithm to make the resulting images better increase the resolution of it, because you can guess that there's a noisy array. So they're very noisy. Yeah, no, that was a nice thing. Also, I was enjoying working with the group and professional. But so like, last year? Yes, this year right. Now, this year, this is not last year. So I just got an offer. This is really hard to keep track of time. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to COVID. I received an offer from a company, which is not related to my research background, I started to work as a machine learning operations engineer, which are used my skills that I developed during my free time, which I recall, was considering them as my hobbies. Yeah. Yeah, that's a kind of Sir. I mean, I am kinda like, also, like, not because only that was just happened in that way. Not because of that, but also kinda like jumping from subject to subject. Because, I mean, there are lots of things to learn. And I know I'm not gonna be able to learn everything that I want to learn, but still, I'm trying to do my best to learn there's   Pouya LJ  19:47 a there's a huge degree of attention people give to, you know, specializing in something which is like, of course important. I'm not debating the significance of that but I think I Sometimes it gets missed how, how good it is to actually do these jumps between in between topics in that, it gives you a broader sense of understanding because sometimes some knowledge that you gain in one field, although it's not necessarily you're not a specialized, you're not an expert in that field per se. But then it can that knowledge can be analogous in a different field. So it gives you some sort of perspective, I feel. At least that's my personal I had a similar experience, I have a similar experience. And I even for my academic background, I had a similar experience. I didn't know really what I wanted. So I really liked physics. I really like computer science programming, software engineering. I don't know I liked philosophy. I liked psychology I liked, you know, I even liked cinema, like I still do. Photography, cinematography. So it took me a long while to land on where I landed, ultimately. But so yeah, I did jump around quite a bit, too. And I think it is important not to discount it. I'll do a specialization is very important. Again, I'm not doubting that. But I think sometimes when we focus Oh, yeah, you have to specialize. It's what do they say? There's a good thing. Yeah, I don't remember the same but something something and then master of none. Anywhere. Yeah. So it means like, you're you're, you know, so many things, but then you're not a master in any of them. And they see that in it in a in a in a negative direction. Not that either. But there's in a negative way with a negative connotation, meaning it's a bad thing. And I understand they're saying, okay, mastery is important. Of course it is. But one of the things you can master is how to learn different things. And I think that is also important. Anyways, sorry to cut you off, but I just wanted to Yeah, but   Tugrul  21:59 you're right. I think I learned how to learn during all of this time. Yeah,   Pouya LJ  22:03 that's right. That's right. And, and how to think how to think because, again, when you, when you become a master in one very narrow, specific field, then you're very comfortable learning things in that field, but not necessarily in other fields. And you'll get used to and accustomed to thinking a certain way, but not another. If you will, your neural pathways are very much aligned with a certain thing. And I guess in in AI, you're saying you're kind of like memorizing that, that the training set, right. You're overfitting in a way. So that's, that's, that's that's the danger with with over mastering in a very narrow field. I think it's, it's my, from from a personal perspective, of course, it's not going to harm anybody, per se, but it can harm you mentally, not physically.   Tugrul  22:57 But also the other side of it is like, okay, but other than that, like he was, you also, can there's also risk that you can be like, underfitting, I mean, like, he is like, you can have some generalization issue. So, I mean, you can stay like it's not overfitting sense, but I'm kinda you can stay like a generalized way. How can I describe like, you don't have for example, for myself, I have some confidence issues too. So I never I in my life, I never think I am 100% sure of anything. Maybe that's the issue. If you are if I got an expert on some kind of special if I have some kind of specialty if I study or work on something that 20 years, maybe I can build that confidence that level, but   Pouya LJ  23:53 it's tricky. Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. i It's very tricky. I think I agree with you. I don't I don't think I know. I can be 100% Like, I will never give the number 100 I'm 100% sure I'm even if I'm really 100% Sure. I'm 99.999% Sure. Yeah, and okay, but maybe that's part of it. But it's a tricky line though. There's a very fine line between between confidence and arrogance, I think and and that's another issue that arises like you know, when you're too much of an expert in something you're one of the very few in the world who knows something about something then then the ego plays a role and then sometimes it seems it may seem like confidence, but it is actually arrogance. And we see that like I mean the academia that there's plenty of it of course in industry there's plenty of it. There's everywhere like there's plenty of it right? So yeah, I know I confidence aside, you need to like Grow your confidence and all that of course you know you personally but like the rhetorical you any individual needs to go to come Because, of course, but then there's also another aspect of it that I think, you know, I like the fact that I am I remain not 100% Sure on things because I always give myself room to self correct to admit that I was wrong too. Because like, for example, otherwise you become like this politicians like didn't do clearly they're not even sure like, they're not even like if you talk to them in person in a backroom, with nobody listening, no microphones, no nothing with their buddies, for example, they're gonna be like, Yeah, and I don't know, maybe. But then but then they come out and, you know, say with such confidence, because that's how they have to play the game of politics. Right. But then again, you but then that makes them not able to self sorry, course correct. You know, acknowledge mistakes. So I think the fact that you're, you, myself included, like we are, you know, not? How do we say is not? I'm not saying they're not sure, but we leave room for error, or mistake. Because it's how I look at it. It's, even if I am very much comfortable in the field, let's put the word expert or master aside, even if I'm very comfortable in the field, and I have sufficient knowledge i i feel uncomfortable saying that I am 100% sure that something is true or not, or I think that's me leaving myself room that, you know, maybe when I may even caveat that did saying that the current knowledge. And with my current understanding, yes, I'm 100% Sure. But okay, there might be something that I don't know about that, but certainly something that I don't know about and a lot of different ways, maybe in that particular field too. And maybe there's error in the way I think about the world because if history is any indication. Most people most of the time have made mistake, I don't know any famous or infamous individual in the history that you can name that did everything perfectly. Yes. Just outright impossible. And if they if the written record, say that, which I have never heard of any individual, but let's say even if the hidden rows are written record, say that you don't know if they're hidden lives. And anyway, so that's what I think. I don't know. My point is that I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. Although it can have some downfalls in sometimes you seem, may may not even be because I know you'd like your to your humble individual. And sometimes you you know, you're not comfortable. being super confident in your but then, like, I know you like I know that the grasp of your knowledge is high enough that you if you were an arrogant prick, you would be like, Yeah, I'm 100% Sure, get get lost. Right. So, but then you're not that's that's the whole   Tugrul  28:01 thing. No, I mean, I don't understand how you can be like that. How you can be 100% Sure for something doesn't make sense. I mean, today we don't we have so many questions, even Newton dynamics, you can question them, even people came up with like a modification or to Newton dynamics, you can't be 100% Sure, even your observations are like, sinful to fit. With the models you have no, I mean, you can miss something your brain evolved some millions of years as a result of like, trillions of different paths, like a survival tricks, like some extinction, etc, etc. But you're still evolving, your brain is still evolving Darla, so you don't know how much room left for your brain that can evolve, which can be huge, which I think can be huge, because we are probably far from being like reaching the optimal optimum point. I don't even know if there is an optimum point. I don't think so even though we have here like we have full of weaknesses, flaws. And we are not even sure that our brain is really a good tool, even like a perfect tool. Even understanding nature. Maybe this is our problem. Maybe we are not going to be able to solve the universe because our brain is not capable enough of understanding it.   Pouya LJ  29:23 Yeah, no. No, I don't I honestly don't know how you can do that. I think it's not that being too short is a byproduct of arrogance. That's my guess. Like, because the more humble people I've seen, the less sure they seem people who tend to be more humbled who tend to not be arrogant or egotistical. They seem that, you know, they don't seem like that they lack confidence. They're fairly confident, but they're very comfortable admitting that I don't know everything. And I can't possibly know everything. And I may be wrong from time to time. I may I may be wrong a lot of the times, I think that is, again, this is my observation. I don't have empirical evidence to back this hypothesis. But this is my personal observation, the more you know, grounded people I've seen the more humble people I've seen, the less they have that ability to be like, No, this is done. This is settled. And, and let's, let's take a point recently, something from a very recent history, and that was like during COVID, the COVID science, there was plenty of arrogance from very established either scientists or officials in the authorities of science, quote, unquote, that they were like, saying things that you know, this is established science, you should believe it. This is no, this is true. The lab leak is no, I'm not saying that. The you know, COVID leaks from the lab, but they were not even they were they were treating you as a either stupid or racist if you even questioned it. And I was like, How can you be so sure it leaks from not leaked from the lab, and it came from nature, when you don't even know the source of sort of like the origin of species of this thing? How can you be so arrogant about it? And then I gave myself the answer. I was really thinking that and I gave myself the answer. I was like, yeah, that's arrogant. That's why like, there should be no room for arrogance, the human arrogance and, or any kind of arrogance as matter of fact, but we only know one kind. And that's the human arrogance. There should be no room for arrogance in science, but unfortunately, there is. So I think that's that. I think I'd rather being too sure. Is a symptom of arrogance is or is a byproduct of arrogance, I don't know. But they go together. I think that's what that's where he I see it.   Tugrul  31:56 I think this guy, this is kinda like a defense mechanism like this kind of people. I think, probably I'm not sure, of course. They think that they think that maybe, if they're if people start to think that there is a room of questioning their knowledge, they think, in this case, they think they're weak. So that's why they are pretending that they know 100 person, should they become like arrogant? No, you cannot question my knowledge. Yeah. Because they don't want to be seen weak, or maybe they have a higher position in somewhere. If they, maybe they think that if they seem weak, they can lose their status, they lose their position, whatever. I think that's the opposite.   Pouya LJ  32:45 Yeah, so okay, I completely agree. But I also disagree that is completely opposite. I think it's kind of the opposite, depending on how you depending on the area, I think, so for, for, for somebody who's claiming that they are the authority, like a king, or an emperor, or a queen, or whatever, right. So that person needs to maintain that authority. So they need to be listened to and accepted. Right. Okay. So that's that. But that's why I'm saying this should be. So that's, of course, the end. And they lose the grasp if they don't, or they feel that way. Again, it's not necessarily true, I agree with you, if, if a Emperor King was humble, and was like, you know, I'll do my best or even a political leader, I do my best to the best of my abilities to lead, but I'm a human, I'll make mistakes, if they admitted that they probably win a lot of votes. But that's aside, when you're talking about science and technology, you know, specifically science because it's in my mind need to present it should represent something very pure, and remove the elements of human human nature, but rather be a method to evaluate to think essentially. That's why we call it the scientific method, right? It has to leave the interpersonal inter, to like within the human character, human species, ugliness out of it. Of course, it's not going to happen because it's just humans. So I think that's exactly that's the specific area that I agree with you it actually is not. If if you're wrong, and you admitted it, that's the sign of strength. And, and I think people do, maybe not consciously understand that themselves, or or think about it that way. But they really appreciate when you admit a mistake, because then they can rely on your words. Be like, you know what, this guy is not full of shit. This guy admits when he's wrong. If somebody constantly when they when they caught in a lie, or when they caught in a mistake, they still insist, then how can I trust them? So I think I agree with you They just feel that they lose. It's a defense mechanism, they feel like they're losing the grasp on of authority, which is not really true. They're they're losing it when they enforce it too harshly. There was a quote, I don't remember where I heard it or who I heard it from. But basically, it was saying power is like sand in your fist, the more you try to hold on to it, the easier it will spill out of your fist. And if you doubt that just go on a beach someday, not you, anybody who's listening and go grab a because I thought that I thought about I tried to go grab a handful of fist so sad. and strengthen the tighten your wrist fist, rather, and squeeze, the sand will spill out at some point you will not but then the more you squeezed, the more it spills out of your your fist. So that's what they're doing. They feel like they have to, like hold on to this sand tight and make sure it doesn't spill out of their fist, but then doing that they're actually squeezing it out of their, their fists, because by tightening their fist, actually, they're occupying the room that the sand should ergo the sand will spill out because their fingers will not get you know, break the nylon screws that tight. Anyways, so So I agree with you. But the issue is that the thinking is wrong, I think.   Tugrul  36:30 Yeah, but I think yeah, I think the root of this behavior is probably we can investigate, like we can discuss in evolutionary evolutionary way. Probably because of the past like, not too long, like like, if you go to check the history even go like ancestors. Being sure is probably this is above, like a, like a living or death issue, life or death issue. Basically, he has to be shared for a couple of things, really. Because otherwise you can die me somebody can write Okay, so maybe it is rooted somewhere there this kind of behavior? Because you instinctively you want to think that you will surely you have to show us your data, you have to strong you have to seem strong.   Pouya LJ  37:20 Because if you're not so sure you remain indecisive. And that's   Tugrul  37:25 it worse than being so sure in the past, like any evolutionary point of view, probably so, but so sorry, sorry, interrupting you. But sorry, what I was thinking is that, like, when I was saying the opposite is better, like not being sure, I was just thinking in the future. So we already evolved, we already have some complex understanding we already not in the part of nature anymore, we don't we're not scared of like, hunted by like a tiger on the way but so we are even like, not natural about like artificially selected. Because we have our system, everybody surviving. So feature, because we don't have these issues in more which is good, which means that we have a long way to go ahead of us that can focus only on humans feature like including science, technology, etc. So we are also like, complex enough to think about our thoughts. We are in a machine that can question itself. And so we are at this level, and so we can start acting like in a mental like in it, we have to start thinking that we have lots of rules that we can improve ourselves and we can learn a lot with no need to be so sure for everything we are not going to die.   Pouya LJ  38:48 Yeah, yeah. So this is where I classify actually I have this because I've thought about this and I wasn't thinking about it right now but I've thought about this in the past, I actually have I call it I mean I don't have a literal definition out there, but I have internal definition I call it these are two different things though. One is how short I am in theory versus how sure I am theory sorry, practically. So how sure I am in theory okay in theory nobody's chasing me. I have all the time in the world to doubt myself. In practice, in real life, when you're facing life or death or or matters of extreme importance, that can be very costly, either monetary or, or, you know, matter of life and literally metal of life and death then then then it becomes important. So then when it's in practice, then I think you should basically act on the best information you have. Like the highest confidence degree you have about anything, you just act on it. That's it. You're done. You don't need to think, think twice or three times. My point is that you can I agree with you, it's probably something evolved in us. But you can still even in that environment in a chaotic West West world, or or even, you know, rules of the jungle kind of thing, you can still have this element of I'm not so sure about everything and still survive. So long as you're like, I'm not 100% Sure, but I'm 90%. Sure. And that 90% is above everything else I'm sure about. So I'm going to act on that knowledge. That's fine. that'll that'll get you out of it and actually, actually probably get you out of it the best. Because you're not acting on a random information, you're acting on the information that you have the highest confidence. You're most shorter, but basically, but you don't have to say I'm 100% sure about that. You just have to be like, I'm sure enough, but I'm going to act on it. And then the question comes, okay, now I'm sure about something 90% on your shirt about something, some what number of a percent, and we have to do one or the other. And then we get into a fight about who's more sure. So it becomes messy. I understand. That's what I'm trying to say. But But anyway, so that's a theoretical, doubting of yourself. And then the practical being sure of yourself. It's Yes, I agree, sometimes being indecisive because when you don't choose, that's a choice. Sometimes people don't choose because they're terrified of their choice. And then that's the choice itself. They don't choose because if they feel if they don't choose they are they can make a mistake. But then that's the mistake itself, because by not choosing, you're choosing. Anyway, it's not to get too philosophical. But I agree. I think it's it's evolved to be in us because if we weren't so sure, then we were indecisive and would be would be eaten by bears and tigers and such.   Tugrul  42:02 So more. And also, I think we just recently learned what is what does that mean that being sure, I think it's it just came with it like a science and technology or understanding about how we can share about something this came with the some physical philosophical questions, because other than that, we can question about being sure because you don't know what, what is it? I mean, being chill. What does that mean? before?   Pouya LJ  42:30 I think there is a meaning before science in the like, Okay, if we take it to before, 2000 years before,   Tugrul  42:37 like, first of all, let's go down to a Greek oak, but the   Pouya LJ  42:41 Greeks will do the same thing. They would disprove each other. Right? They would but but that's but they were doing science. So I grant that. But let's go even further back, let's go 10,000 years ago, I think there was a degree of being sure and unsure. And I think that was linked to discovery because let's say a caveman that went out of the cave, and they were debating is like, No, I'm sure there's something beyond this hill, I gotta go see it. And the other guy was like, How can you be so sure? I don't know. Like, there is nothing beyond that he'll under you're gonna die and we're gonna starve in the cave because you're the hunter. So   Tugrul  43:11 sorry, I don't agree. I think that okay. Mice kind of my story is like, a guy who is like a strongest one on this, like a society that they had just decides instinctively, everybody follows. There was no debate probably.   Pouya LJ  43:27 Right. But but then he can personally be shown that he his confidence was false. For example, He's sure that there's a, you know, there's nothing beyond the hill. But then to prove himself, he goes, and then he realizes, oh, there's something down the hill. So I was wrong.   Tugrul  43:43 Yeah, I agree. I agree. Probably, like a personal, like, initial level of being sure. Very minor. They didn't question the list.   Pouya LJ  43:51 No, I don't I think you may be right. I think it's it started from the ancient Greeks when they started philosophizing and thinking semi scientifically, yes, I think I think   Tugrul  44:02 because you have different information to be understanding, okay, for the same concept, we have two ideas. Okay, which one is correct? Then you can think about, okay, how we can be so sure about which one is more correct. And compare? Yeah, maybe you need the comparison for ideas, at least. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Like,   Pouya LJ  44:20 I mean, I think, I think for that, as far as we know, at least, as far as I personally know, I think for that you have to, we can only go as far as the ancient Greeks probably. I mean, I think you may be right if we can, or maybe we just don't know about it, because it wasn't well documented. Who knows? Yeah, again, I'm not sure.   Tugrul  44:40 You never know. I mean, you know, you have to go there and observe it.   Pouya LJ  44:43 Even then, you know,   Tugrul  44:46 because we are we're creating stories based on our findings from like for sales, etc, etc. Like his drawings on the cave. They're all good models, but their stories still, like backed by evidences but that everything can be can still satisfy a like all these findings, but in a different way. So you never know you have to go there and observe it with a time machine, which is not possible. But there was that's what all I got all we got.   Pouya LJ  45:17 Yeah, and, you know, these are very interesting questions, and I think we should explore them more. And I'm very happy that we're going to do this. Okay. So for the audience who are wondering, we will be doing more of these kinds of episodes. Now, this was introductory for us to, you know, discuss with turtle get to know Him and who he is where he came from academically. Because not that not in the sense that academic academia is very important, but because first of all, you spend a lot of your life there. And second of all, because I think that kind of tells you what your interests are, where you're coming from where your perspective is at so. So this was the, you know, introductory episode, but we'll continue this discussions, probably from maybe a little bit more narrowed and talk about specific things into future episodes. But for now, before we come to a close, is there something you want to talk about, whether about yourself or about what we talked about or about anything, really, before we close for this episode?   Tugrul  46:22 No, no, I enjoyed this a lot. So I'm just looking forward to other episodes like we can discuss, but I wasn't expecting to talk about cavemen.   Pouya LJ  46:34 That's the beauty of it. I think. I do like some structure in the in the podcasts, but I don't. And I know everybody has a different, you know, style. And I like those who are super structured and those who are completely unstructured. But for myself, I like to be surprised in my conversations in a way that as you said, I didn't expect so. So anyhow. Yeah, there's a degree of chaos and too much control me ruin it. A little bit, just just as ordered enough that it makes sense. Okay, so with that. Thank you all for listening. And thank you all for joining us with the promise of many more of   Tugrul  47:18 these kinds. Of course, of course, I'm looking forward. Thank you.   Pouya LJ  47:22 Fantastic. And thank you all for tuning in. Tune in for more episodes in the weeks and months to come.

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That is precisely what we discuss in this episode of BTP as we contrast it with the feature of modesty which can be indeed a virtue when done in moderation.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS modesty, arrogant, arrogance, people, modest, brag, black belt, talking, confident, achieve, life, hand, self esteem, leaders, insecure, success, achievements, confidence, inspire, express   Pouya LJ  00:08 Hello, ladies, gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast. As always, I'm joined with Daniel Morgan. How's it going,   Dan  00:16 buddy? What's up guys? What's up Blue Jays, life is great and awesome. I'm so happy to be here with you basically, life is as always amazing. We're now going through the final phase phases basically of this goddamn pandemic. But the Delta variant is still causing some disturbances. But as always, I'm optimistic and life is good. Just waiting for life to move to where it was. And believe me, it will happen. All right, that's okay. Good, good. Confidence, tone, man. That was like a confidence tone.   Pouya LJ  00:50 Exactly. Not only confidence, it was very optimistically confidence. So I like that so lovely. All right, good. Good. I'm very happy to hear that. All right. So okay, today's topic we're talking about. So last week, we talked about to weaken per tooth, you know, phenomenon is called minimalism and luxury. Now recovering to other phenomena is called modesty. And arrogance. So modesty versus arrogance. So what do you make of it? How how much modesty is good, how much arrogance is good? And whereas, which are more important? Yeah, sorry, go ahead.   Dan  01:26 I see before I go ahead and give my assessment, I will actually ask you please find each of these because sometimes people don't know what modesty actually is. Like if someone right forever, perhaps does not, for example, want to have big ambitions, that he's modest. That's not modesty. That's passivity. So let's first go ahead and define properly for our listeners, what modesty and basically, arrogance actually are. So why don't you go to do that for our listeners?   Pouya LJ  01:53 Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point, because we need to get our definitions straight. So yeah, let's, let's say what we're talking about modesty, we basically mean that, it doesn't mean that you're not achieving anything, or you don't want to achieve anything, it doesn't mean that you're not ambitious. what it entails is essentially, you are, you're you are comfortable with not, you know, expressing your your your achievements or your desire to achieve as much as an arrogant person does, or, or, on the other hand, you can you can define it as you are realizing your own limitations within your within your capabilities. And that sense, that sense of realizing those limitation gives you a calm about your position.   Dan  02:42 So you're literally   Pouya LJ  02:44 on the other hand, arrogance, it portrays the opposite behavior, right? arrogance actually goes overboard, like you're achieving 10, then you're bragging, 12, or you're capable, interesting, or you're capable of 1210, but you're not aware of it, and you're going overboard and claiming 15. So that is how I see it, unless you have a slightly different discourse, what   Dan  03:07 you're saying is absolutely true. I just want to add a few points. Mises, D. modesty, basically, as we have noted, basically, it's simply your ability to keep your lips basically accolades to yourself, you see, whatever social success, whatever, you know, personal things, when you keep it to yourself, you're modest. So for example, let's say you have just won the grants for a major, let's say, Blue Origin type of research, because you're a cool astrophysicist from University of Toronto. Now, if you don't tell the whole world about it, including your answer doesn't even know what basically Jeff Bayes actually means. Then you're not exactly very much. So modesty just means you are happy with your success, you keep it to yourself, you don't really share it. Now, arrogance, as you said, well areas isn't just isn't only about you know, showing off, it's more about your attitude towards other people. Those who are arrogant, do not see themselves as superior, so much as they see others as inferior. And they make sure they they know that that right. So that basically they are putting others down, basically. Right. And that's called arrogance. And I believe that both approach, as you probably know, are not in my approaches. Why? Let me explain a moment. If you're so modest, but he achieved a lot of things, give it to yourself. And then you simply can never promote yourself to acquire more success, and others might actually not know what you're up to. So you might actually miss out on a lot of opportunities. If you tell the world that Yeah, I got this great man. Maybe they actually joined forces with you know, far better people to actually have a great lunch. I think they're handing it all to yourself. Yeah, it's easy. I mean, there's nothing noble about now, no modesty because it's easy. Just keep your mouth shut. That's it. You're modest with us. Not gonna necessarily help you achieve a lot of the goals you want to achieve in life, because you are not going to be able to attract enough attention to promote yourself to gain better opportunities and arrogance. Well, that's the sign of lack of self esteem. arrogant people are not show offs. They are those who show up to put others down. You see, if you have, for example, a Lamborghini and it came shown that on your social media story, like oh, check it out. Oh, I'm in my lambos By the way, guys, I'm talking to you. Yeah, I'm going to work now. I'm going to buy my groceries now. What do these things? Honestly projects? How do you feel? I mean, because these feelings are universal. When you see someone intentionally shows off the Lambo in every single store, and every single thing constantly talks about the color of my Lambo. What feeling do you have for this gentleman or lady?   Pouya LJ  05:51 Oh, I just feel like blocking them because I want to exterminate this post from my feed.   Dan  05:57 Because it's not attractive, man knows not attractive. Because we feel like oh, this guy's either lying, or he got it from his daddy, or he's actually faking it, or he's renting it. Because people who are confident in their success, they don't need to always brag about it. So I am not a fan of bragging. I'm not a fan of keeping it to yourself. Now people should do know, basically, if you're a big shot, but ultimately do you want to treat your success for you? or for other people, it's actually relevant a little bit to that luxury versus minimalism. And that when you are not an arrogant person, you don't necessarily need to bring others down. Just because I am rich doesn't mean that others should, you know, suffer looking at my Lambo when they have problems eating. So that reason, I believe that the best approach as always inspired by that, because when you tell others of your ambitions, others people say like, you know, what, why don't I have such ambitions? What does he have that I don't have? And the answer is always nothing, whatever anybody else has, including Jeff Bezos, you have it too. And imagine Jeff Bezos says, like, you know what, guys, I'm going to a trip. I can't tell you exactly what it is. But it's a very long trip. And it was going way up, way up way up. And I'm not talking about like, you know, going to these Fiji Islands. And people are like, Dude, what the hell are you talking about man? because in that case, but people that inspire others, so by sharing your greatness, you actually inspire the world. And let everybody know, dude, this guy came from a very poor background, and he's got all of these things, right? So by sharing your greatness, you actually can treat other people. But there's a huge difference between sharing your missions and accomplishments, versus being arrogant, and bringing others down and bragging to them, like, oh, check out my call, check out my watch, and so on. Yeah, I   Pouya LJ  07:58 think I understand what you mean. And well, I guess, I think is easier to dispute. And, you know, we all know arrogant people in our lives if you're not one. And we know how annoying they can be and how unattractive it is. and all that. modesty, though, I agree with you that it is still the same boat, like you don't want to be 100% modest either. But it has, especially in some culture, it has certain positive characteristics. So Biden by by, you know, by the fact that you are modest, you're getting some social points essentially, though, for you to me, but but for you to exhibit that I am modest, somebody needs to know something immodest about you and then know that you're trying to not brag about it. So it's impossible to be completely modest and everybody knows about it. By nature. So let's let's try and let Now again, I completely agree I you need to sit and that's why I mentioned that you cannot be 100% modest when people know about it, that's just impossible to do just think you don't you don't accomplish shit so. So that's that's that. But is there any place that we can't actually say, say good things about modesty? Is there any benefits in any circumstances?   Dan  09:17 moderation in all things and all things in moderation. As you mentioned earlier? If you are someone who does not overly, you know, basically exaggerate your accomplishments, this actually shows your level of self esteem. Understand, if you really don't need to bring others down to make yourself feel good as arrogant people do, then you do not need to always say like, Oh, please, please tell me how great I am. Because I know who I am. These things oftentimes stem from lack of self esteem and self confidence, and to the degree to which you are confident about yourself. And especially in those areas, because you have to be very confident when it comes to let's say your professional achievements, but very I don't know, perhaps insecure about your success, I don't know what your health or fitness or I don't know what your relationships with the opposite gender. So it is very possible to be quite confident about your money, but very, you know insecure about your wife's like, Oh gosh, I don't want to show it to any of my friends. It's not the wife of a friggin millionaire, Oh, shit. So in that situation, you have to actually look at your life as a whole. And realize, in all those areas where you are more secure about yourself, you generally tend to somehow not want to show off. So I mean, I don't know, some people just don't have a desire to show off how rich they are, because they know they're rich. And I want to thank those who are really rich, as opposed to those who don't take photos of their lambos, 25 times a day. They are the people who actually are rich. That's why it's like, so what's the point? I don't want to show up because I know I'm rich, what's the point. But for that reason, to the guy who's insecure about his, for example, fitness, now puts others down for being fat, or the guy who's in Serrano, some job, they put others down in the same career. So it really comes down to your overall level of self esteem and self confidence. And generally, those who are more confident they tend to be usually more modest. Right, right.   Pouya LJ  11:21 No, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that I think people pick up on that, you know, it's then and that's why I wanted to get at about modesty is that in moderation, as you mentioned. Now, there are certain times as you said, that it pays off to actually share your accomplishments. And I'm not saying bragging about them, per se. You know, you're you're in a social event you're talking is like, oh, what do you do I do this, and I've gone done that and etc. And now you can be proud of it. No problem. You don't have to brag about it, you can still be proud of it. Just imagine   Dan  11:53 you projects, being arrogant when it comes to some talks about, you know, these spaceflights all that like, oh, man, this guy went to sit and like, so let me tell you something about the science behind that your little shit. As a matter of fact, this whole thing has to go to the or from this angle, like, I'm just guessing something like this. But do you actually practice arrogance at all boutiques?   Pouya LJ  12:12 You know, we all have our down moments, I think, and maybe I have done that. But I do my utmost to control that side of me. But again, I'm not shy to be proud of something I accomplished, or something I know. And I distinguished from being in being arrogant about it, you know, meaning that, you know, I know this, and I feel good about it. But it doesn't mean that you can't, it doesn't mean that this is unique to me, or a few people like me, meaning I'm capable, and you're not, it just means that I have done my studies, and I have paid attention to this or that. And I have accumulated this knowledge and I know about it, that's, that's so in, in this specific sense. I mean, you can talk, you can say the same thing about, you know, something in business and income and, you know, worth of how much money you have. So you can say similar things. So in that sense, I think I distinguish being proud about your accomplishments or your knowledge, or whatever it is, versus being arrogant about it. As you said, arrogance is kind of about, you know, putting others down, meaning I have this in a way, but but then, but then it doesn't stop there. It goes to say I'm unique, and you're unable to actually achieve this, or accomplish this, or do this or know this, etc. So it has that element of I am able and you're not the kind of thing that I don't like, personally, because on the other hand, I'm a teacher, I know what people are capable or given the, you know, the right platform, the right, you know, scenery, to express themselves and to develop themselves grow, you know, do business, etc. So, so in that sense, I try to, I think I'm leaning towards a modest side, but again, sometimes I'm, I'm proud of my own, you know, achievements, accomplishments, because, you know, it takes it takes takes a lot takes, takes a lot of work and sleepless nights to study some of these topics that you're speaking of specifically. So I'm like, you know, I think I earned my brownie points, I'm gonna I'm gonna spend them some of them to feel good. So yeah, I think i think that i think that's the that's where I, where I lie in that in that spectrum. And I think, Now, tell me, tell me, tell me if I'm wrong, I think you you will have good insight into this. But I think there's a there's a degree of badness or let me say a little bit better. There's a decree there's sorry, there's a balance of confidence, and modesty, I think, in leadership positions that actually can bring a lot of people together.   Dan  14:42 Absolutely. I mean, just take a look at you know, the last disaster president basically left the White House. Realize that in all top positions, we despise leaders who are arrogant, we despise leaders who feel like they are some special snowflake somehow And everybody should treat them because you're so friggin special. We, as a species do not like these people, believe it or not. Now, there are a very small number of people who suffer from lack of self esteem, who find these things attractive. But the majority of us, we are repelled by that kind of behavior, right? Which is why it's so incredibly important to know that the higher your position, the more you have to show empathy. And the less arrogance is tolerated by your followers, because that arrogance makes them question your true integrity as a leader. I mean, if you really feel like you're the best, why do you keep talking about it? If you really feel like you're rich? Why do you keep showing up all the stuff? I mean, it's like a scan or something? I mean, is it real? Or are you really if you feel like you're the strongest and most powerful person in the world, then why are you so insecure about these things? So people start asking questions, and that is why, by modesty and not trying to constantly brag or bring others down, you actually tell the world that yes, I am. That guy. And that's going to basically impress everyone in this regard. to want to follow each one to listen to you. And egotistical leaders, arrogant leaders, as we've seen, will always go down.   Pouya LJ  16:17 Yeah, that's exactly I think, I think, I think you're right, absolutely. In the sense that, you know, higher you are, you have to be less arrogant or rather natural, less arrogant is tolerated. So by definition, you   Dan  16:30 have to be a democratic systems, it's right, we'll have a choice. Or actually leave, if you are just, you know, for a country, if you are the leader of an organization, you act like this, your team is going to leave, they're gonna find a shop, you know, in a different company, because it's like, another word for this douchebag, this guy is always arrogant is putting already down quantity with these people. Right? And but then again, at the same time, being, I don't know, a doormat is not good either. Because in that case, no one's gonna respect you. Leadership requires setting boundaries, punishing bad behaviors, and rewarding good behavior. So if you're a nice guy, and you say, like, you know what, okay, okay, you came, oh, Johnny, he came to work 30 minutes late today, like the past 30 days, no problem, probably, you really had problems, you can't be a leader like this, you're gonna lose the whole business. So you got to have that balance between the two. And allow them to know that, yes, you know, the boundaries, you are confident in your abilities, but you don't need their approval back and forth, back and forth back. That's just not who basically you are, because that's not what confident leaders simply don't do. They simply believe in themselves, they know what they're capable of, it's kind of like, you know, when you, you know, get your, for example, black belt, I run this, you know, I noticed something, a lot of my friends, when you get your black belt, you start having fights for good. I don't know any of my friends who got their black belts or who, you know, finish tough trainings, for example, like that, you know, for example, the underwater demolition or whatever it is, these when these guys, you know, finish some of the toughest trainings out there. Ironically, after they gain that confidence, that dude, I'm now Special Forces or Dude, I got now the black belt of karate or something, once they have that confidence in them, for some odd reason. Most of them never get into a fight ever again. Because like the way they carry themselves show that and I think we can be like that black belt in all areas of life, financial relationship. I don't know, knowledge, wisdom. Once you have that black belt of wisdom, for example, you're not going to be you know, something like, Oh, I am so wise, please tell me I'm wise. I'm waiting. Nobody. Oh, boy. So that approach simply shows that you're real, you're faking it, that you're no real steps, right? Which is why I always like Dan, I'm afraid of making post on social media share my ideas. I say, Why? say there's no one's gonna like them. I say why do you need their likes, like, but if no one likes me and my posts, then I feel like I'm not important enough. It's like, dude, talk to yourself, as if you're talking, you know, in a vacuum or something, ignore that. And please be aware that it's not about being liked by their sight, but by being heard, which is why I also like, views are always more important social media than likes, likes mean. Views are what generates think of, for example, you know, top platforms, top platforms and top you know, influencers are the ones who don't look to be liked. They say what they want and I like, that attracts more attention, right? But those who are like, well, the guy says, Well, if I take you know, shouldn't my shirt off and just take muscle photos, I get a lot of likes, so I'm gonna keep doing that. So they can never express themselves or the girl says, Okay, if I just get bikini shots that I will get a lot of likes. So they, you know, pages become, you know, boring and meaningless. But once you ignore that approach, and say, You know what, I want to express my thoughts. That's it. I don't want likes. That is that lupino blackbelt, if you will, let's go with confidence and everyone you attract more attention that way. While in all areas of life, yeah,   Pouya LJ  20:03 I think actually absolutely right. Because especially with the advent of, you know, technology, social media, and on the other hand podcast is like the best podcasts are the most sincere and real ones they will relate least super structured like a sort of like a corporate media levels are structured, that the more sincere It seems that the more attention he gets. It said there's a there's a thirst for sincerity, it means it seems shallow there is Yeah, I think I completely agree with that. In my personal experience, anyways. Okay, so we talked a lot about, and I think I think we're honing on a point on many of our episodes about most things, many things. And that is, there's a balance required of finding the point of balance is the hard part is the difficulty. And and you'd never get there without trial and error. You never get there without getting your hands dirty. Doesn't matter how many books you eat, it doesn't matter what you do, you ultimately need to actually do it and see Oh, wow, I was too arrogant here. Oh, wow, I was too modest. Nobody knew what I achieved. So. So I think I think there's a good good segue to say, to bring this show to its conclusion. Is there anything you think we have missed that requires further brush up?   Dan  21:24 Well, first of all good topics is always projects. And as we compared arrogance versus modesty, we realized that in the end, what truly matters is a sense of balance. There's nothing wrong with being you know, satisfied and happy with who you are. There's nothing wrong with loving your success, because that's called self love. And self love is the foundation for loving others. If you don't really love yourself, you can't love other people, if you don't really like and are proud of your work, how do you want others to be inspired by you. So you should like that. But at the same time, being arrogant and trying to show off and especially by bringing others down. That is a short term approach to gain that, you know, feeling of self esteem, which we all look for, it's like in the mass look, you know, hierarchy of needs, right? So for that reason, we believe that it's better to fully stop with arrogance. arrogance is always a bad thing. There is no such thing as moderate arrogance. arrogance itself means you bring others down. So it must be removed. modesty in Your hands should be practiced with you know, moderation, because if you're too modest, you're not helping anybody. Because in that case, you will actually not inspire others. Now, if you are modest about your finances, you're definitely helping yourself by avoiding pay as much taxes as most of you do. Which I'm a fan of, by the way, because I mean, in that one case you've read, you probably don't want to show off. But generally, if you have other ideas, you want to understand that those who are the most confident, usually aren't always talking about that stuff. They aren't talking about their achievements. Rather, they're actually helping others to become achievers themselves, right? So by putting this focus on them, and not on you, you actually become a lot more confident and a lot more popular among those around you.   Pouya LJ  23:08 All right, that makes a lot of sense. I think that was a good conclusion. It had hints of what we didn't talk about and a lot of what we talked about. Thanks. As always, Dan, for joining us and having a moment. And thank you, everybody for participating listening, tuning in. I hope you participate by leaving comments, suggestions, you know, topics that you want to hear about in the comment section or directly to me or Dan through social media. You know where to find us. It's in the show notes as well. And until later episode, have a good one.

Showing off wealth and luxuries is at an all-time high thanks to the influence of social media but what about all the other individuals who resort to a life of minimalism? In this episode of BTP, we contrast luxury with minimalism and offer our solution to strike the right balance between the two.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS luxury, minimalistic, money, minimalism, people, traveling, spend, buy, life, minimalist, mining, lambo, check, cars, education, luggage, pandemic, absolutely, photos, lifestyle SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:09 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast. I'm joined as always with Daniel Mulligan, how's it going, man?   Dan  00:17 Whatever, man, buddy, how's it going? How are you good to hear your voice Been a while, we've been super busy with a lot of things here, and I'm sure you're there as well. So life is absolutely great, I'm actually getting on the road these days a lot more frequently than I used to. So we're getting out of that, you know, pandemic lockdown mode, basically. So I'm pretty excited. I've already actually sorted a lot of my trips. Although these days for the sake of not having to deal with major problems, I actually keep most of my trips much shorter than usual. So if I used to stay in any country for like, one month and a half now it's like more like a week or two, to make sure that there's going to be any major problems. But fortunately, we're seeing gradually the world is opening up. And thanks to, you know, a wide spread vaccination basically. So that's a very good news for people like us who are always on the road and who don't want to just deal with the hassles of having to go through these bs checkups and bring your results. And now we have things like you know, vaccination, passports and so on, which are pretty good, although it's a little bit political, but very good. This is definitely gonna, you know, accelerate the process, moving around, and just, it's gonna open up the borders and make it easier. So I'm pretty happy about that one. And life is great. On my side, haven't you man? How are things? I literally was shocked when I saw a couple of photos you sent me yesterday about you mining Bitcoin with those fancy devices, man. So what's the story in it?   Pouya LJ  01:41 Well, you Oh, actually, I'm actually mining etherium. But yeah, that's it's I don't know, it was one of those things that I picked up during the pandemic, essentially. Yeah,   Dan  01:51 it's probably, I don't know, maybe on your Instagram page or something you just probably shared. That stuff looked really like it was crazy, man. It didn't look like a normal thing to happen. And like, it seems super fancy as if like you have like no laboratory dedicated entirely to cryptocurrency mining or something. It was pretty cool. I mean, maybe should later check and check it out. Guys. I can go to his Instagram. See from the photos. It's really fun. So how long has it been since you've been mining?   Pouya LJ  02:20 Yeah, I'll drop those photos in the shadows too. Just Just because we talked about it. Yeah, it's been I think it's been since late February, something like that. Yeah.   Dan  02:31 You're late starters, it has a lot more than you know, it's not like, four or five months or something.   Pouya LJ  02:36 Yeah, I know. It hasn't been that long. And honestly, at that point, I was trying to pick up a project. And I was looking at, okay, what's out there and I've done this, I've done that. I want to do that later. It's gonna be a lot of time. And then I came across this one, I was like, You know what, why not do this? I haven't done this for so long. It's it's a good time to pick it up. And I did. And I was like, You know what, it's also a good passive income kind of thing. So I mean, I'm not   Dan  03:03 actually listed with the income aspect of it. I mean, I don't know about things in Canada. Are there any taxations By the way, for any mining, or you're not going to be taxed?   Pouya LJ  03:11 Yeah. So not for mining per se. I suppose. If you sell it in in the form of cash then it might be but I have no intention of selling me so I'm not actually selling any of them. So in   Dan  03:26 the Canadian government, so you guys back off.   Pouya LJ  03:30 Yeah, no.   Dan  03:32 taxable a lot. I mean, they're, they're like Europeans. They tax.   Pouya LJ  03:35 Yeah, no, I mean, that's true. But on the other hand, they only texted on currency, as far as I know. Like, I mean, there's no it's not   Dan  03:42 like the US where you're basically crypto wallet is also centered your taxation. It's not like that yet in Canada.   Pouya LJ  03:49 Yes. So I'm not too too sure. Like whoever listening in Canada don't take this as advice to be honest with you, but I'm pretty sure if you hold it as that currency No, but if you do sell it, then you have to Why do you have to so if so, for example, let's say you bought $100,000 I mean, that's a long large sum. But let's say you buy $100,000 worth of whatever bitcoins, let's say, and then you sold it again now you're on 120. So it's similar to stock markets. I saw that prop So yeah, I think Yeah, exactly. I think that's still stays the same. But mining they don't like I don't know technically, that's pure profit, I suppose. But on the other hand, it's not really and it's not so my project is not that massive to be extremely noticeable when I'm talking about it. I guess it's public, but either way I when I if   Dan  04:41 you share those photos, people are gonna change their mind.   Pouya LJ  04:44 No, but if I if I had to be absolutely honest, if I do sell it, I'm going to declare it in my tax returns, no doubt, but I have absolutely no intention of selling it.   Dan  04:53 That's the culture of Canada. These guys just love their government. They're so peaceful they they share all the electricity What I made and here's my tax I'm gonna pay some extra for the sake of the community. Love the Government of Canada. Yeah, that's right.   Pouya LJ  05:05 I don't know taxes to be honest with you absolutely do not. I mean, you got to do what you got to do.   Dan  05:11 I see and one thing is gonna be like profitable. Do you think in Canada, given the cost of the equipment, the electricity and so on? Oh, yeah. So thankfully,   Pouya LJ  05:19 I had some of my equipments from ways back. And the other ones that I added on along the road. A I managed to get at a very decent prices. So yeah, those those Oh, man, so shopping them, I   Dan  05:33 don't know, Black Friday, something you get, like 90% off and something and start mining that stuff.   Pouya LJ  05:38 Yeah, it wasn't particularly like 90% off. But yeah, I got a I got a few good deals, here and there. And you know, how they're very rare these days. So I know, right? If you can even get it out. MSRP it's I think it's fairly fairly good price. But, but yeah, so the class costs are were too high. And electricity is not too bad. Actually, I don't pay electricity at my place, specifically. So it's kind of included. Oh, so you're renting now? Right? Yeah, I rent.   Dan  06:08 That's like that's like miners dream country?   Pouya LJ  06:11 Exactly. I mean, again,   Dan  06:12 I'm not sure about your landlord. Probably.   Pouya LJ  06:15 No, no, my landlord doesn't pay either. It's so the condominium entirely is basically paying one utility for everybody. And again, my project is not so so big that it would cost like if I were to pay it, it would probably add, I don't know, approximately less than 50 Canadian dollars per month. Wow. Okay, I   Dan  06:38 got it. That's right, pretty well, pretty well, but overall, nice, nice, you know, thing and to hope you're gonna succeed. And you can later on later on share with us exactly what happened and how the whole thing went out?   Pouya LJ  06:49 Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, we'll have episodes on that for whoever's interested. Today, though, we're talking about something slightly different. Actually, we can relate it to anything for actually I thought about relating to things already. So it's basically minimalism versus luxury. Let's, let's define them first. I guess for those who don't know why luxury, I think everybody knows. But let's define minimalism. For those who might not have heard of it.   Dan  07:13 I can guess, right? Well, very nice. Of course, the word itself is self explanatory. It comes from the word minimal, meaning living, basically, your life in a way that you just spent enough to meet all of your basic needs, without any money spent on things that are not absolutely necessary. So of course, what is truly necessary, it is really subjective, I guess, it depends on who you are, your background and so on. However, I think that in the end, it really comes down to you living kind of like, you know, below your means as much as possible to make sure that your life is sustainable. And you're not having a you know, a lot of basically consumption at the end of the month, basically, which is called minimalism. Now, there are various types of minimalism some of the extremist types, where they have to just, you know, literally, you have to live in a cave somewhere or something in that situation. Yeah, probably, it's gonna be weird. But ultimately, it's about living below your means trying to save as much as possible. So the focus in that lifestyle is much more about spending less. And in a luxury lifestyle is much more about making more. So these are two very different approaches to life, those who are on the, you know, luxury lifestyle category, they don't believe in not spending, basically, they believe in spending more, but they have to focus on earning more as well. And those who are on the minimalistic side, their focus is mainly on spending less. So they tend to spend their time and life basically in very different ways. And they end up having very different lifestyles. So that's what you know, we were talking about minimalism versus luxury lifestyle, this first lecture, we already know what that means. And there is pretty much no limit to how luxury your life can get. And when it comes to minimalism, however, there are some basic limits, I mean, us really can have, you can literally go on so many few meals per week, right? So you can, there's a lot there's a bottom limit. When it comes to luxury, there's actually you know, the sky's the limit, basically.   Pouya LJ  09:09 Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I actually thought about a few things to relate to whatever we said before now, let's go back to your so you were telling you're back on the road, you're traveling and you know, and you were saying you're on the road a lot, so you don't stay for long periods of time, particularly. And I was thinking actually, you know, a minimalist luggage would actually help a lot.   Dan  09:36 Unfortunately, I always travel with two languages that cover the problems that I have basically. Now, generally, that's not a big deal. It's my habit. Basically, I rarely travel with one luggage, mainly two languages, because I tend to stay as I mentioned earlier, usually Of course now the pandemic has changed that. But before the pandemic I rarely seen any place less than three weeks to a month. Basically so I need to have more clothes, some you know, for business some for, you know, going out and so on some you know, for the gym for that reason I rarely travel with only one luggage so I do not travel minimalistic that to be honest with you right now, because it's not possible for me, quite frankly. And I have a lot of devices. And I don't know, multiple phones, basically phone phones and both androids and iPhones for different countries. So it's kind of hard to put it all in one language and just call it a minimalistic Well, let's go man, I just got this tiny little luggage here. That is not for me, unfortunately. But I sometimes like these people who are traveling with like, you know, like luggage and like, Dude, this guy's ready. It's so much easier that way, I guess for these guys. Right? And generally, it's their style, but for me, unfortunately, I tend to be on the heavy luggage type basically. So if I'm not flying business, then I should always pay extra for basically the luggage.   Pouya LJ  10:53 Gotcha. Gotcha now, so Okay, the reason I mentioned this is so I don't know to me like I know some people adapt luxury or minimalism as a way of life very generally. So basically applying it to all aspects. But for me, I think you know, as Jocko with Jocko Willink would say it's there's, for me, there's a dichotomy, like, there are some things that I absolutely go minimalistic, for example, and this is not by any philosophy or anything, it's just by happenstance, now that I'm thinking about it, for example, travel. Now, I'm not saying I'm gonna go with a fanny pack. I'm not that minimalistic, but I'm relatively minimal minimalistic, let's say, compared to average. And that is, like, I go with as little, you know, luggage as possible, maybe a backpack and a small suitcase? That would be that would be I mean, I also I'm not going on, you know, these kind of travels that you do, you know, I don't need that much stuff. So, my point is that I think it, it's very area dependent. For me personally, in some areas, I'm fairly minimalistic, and I'm so so for example, I have three monitors. That's absolutely not minimalist.   Dan  12:03 I'm pretty sure when it comes to tech, you're definitely not a minimalist. Take a look at that photo, guys. And in the show notes, you'll see that that is not minimalist at all.   Pouya LJ  12:10 Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's what I mean, like, so I think read monitors just   Dan  12:13 in that frame. Just look around the house, you're gonna find out there four or five display somewhere else?   Pouya LJ  12:18 Well, the TV's separate, obviously. No, no, but so do you see it this way, as well? Or is it   Dan  12:26 again, you see, that's what you said, it's about lifestyle. Man, you are definitely not minimalistic when it comes to, this is what I what I think about you, I'm pretty sure you are not minimalist when it comes to technology, or even education. Because I mean, for example, you have a huge desire for learning a lot of new things. You're not a minimalist, minimalist, says, Oh, I got my Bible, I got my Bible, and that's all I ever need from Allah. I'ma read the Bible all the time. That's the only book I need. So, if you're one of those, yeah, that's called minimalism regarding education, right? The Bible, the Bible is all information. God knows all I got the book   Pouya LJ  13:02 has all the information from 10,000 years ago into that, right? Of course,   Dan  13:05 and that's the only one I love me. So that's gonna be basically, you know, educational minimalism, if you will, right? People who are like that will live very differently, right? And not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, we respect people of all faiths and beliefs. It's just that someone who lives that way will have a very different life than someone like Fujitsu. I don't know, loves technology reach a lot and you know, pursue education abroad, right. So these are the, you know, these who are going to have very different lifestyles, right? So minimalism is relative. But usually, when people talk about luxury, they only talk about one aspect, which is, you know, the money and all that stuff, right. But in fact, luxury can be literally defined, depending on how you live, for example, one of the biggest luxuries would actually talk about this issue not long ago, in one of our programs. Generally, luxury can be seen in variety of, you know, wage, yes. When we say the luxury people think of, I don't know, Chanel and for example, you know, leave a ton and super expensive, you know, cars and so on, because they are looking at luxury from a consumers perspective, right, or from a, you know, vanity point of view, right? Oh, show off and all that stuff. But luxury could be seen as you having enough time every morning to go for a jog, without having to rush to work because you know, you are working, you know, running your own business, again, actually dedicate a couple hours in the morning for, you know, some jogging without having to worry about the traffic, right? That's a luxury. And I think that for me personally, as you probably know, that's one of my luxury that I had every day. And I value that a lot more than I don't know, having to always, you know, be in a super fancy car. So if you told me down, I'm gonna give you right now a lifestyle where you can drive a fancy car every single day, or you can have that one hour in the morning for, you know, jogging, and you know, somehow meditation or something like this. I will pick the second one because that for me is a lot more valuable, right? Which is why we should look at minimalism the luxury in different contexts. That by default is about you know, vanity, buying stuff large homes, I don't know, cool, fancy travels and whatnot. But even if it comes to travel, I'm actually really not a fan of most people will let you know what people call traveling, I don't know your book, I don't know, three days stay in a super fancy hotel, you go there, and you're there for three days. And that's it. That's not traveling, when I'm traveling, I want to be there, I want to, I want to feel the country, I want to speak his language, I want to know the culture I want to be and you know, be there for at least three weeks to, you know, one month, one month and a half, to fully immerse myself in their culture, and that it's a form of luxury, which sometimes can actually cost a lot less than your super fancy five star hotel travels, right? So it really I think depends on our value in life. If it, you know, comes straily about you know, just the money and all that yeah, it's just about minimalism means you spend less money, and luxury means you spend more money, but we have different types of luxuries and different types of luxuries bring different types of you know, for example, experiences in life, which is why we should look at this issue somehow subjectively and divide it into different groups of luxuries in different groups. It could be extremely wealthy, and drive fancy cars and you know, drive, get a private jet, but be financially minimalistic, or sorry, be educationally minimalistic, or be physically minimalistic. This means that you don't take care of your body, for example, I don't have time to learn new things, and All you think about is to make more money. And at the end of the week, you say, Well, I'm gonna go to church have a good time I get my Bible, that's all one thing. So this is one lifestyle, this guy lives a very, very high quality, luxury, you know, lifestyle in terms of how he spends his money. But in terms of education, and in terms of health, this person is minimalistic, because he has no time for an ability to shape or improving, you know, perhaps his or her knowledge, right? At the same time, you could have a college kid who has a lot of time in the world for, you know, building a good shape and learning a lot of things but might not have enough money for traveling or buying, you know things right. So generally, I personally, as I've already mentioned, I'm not generally a fan of luxury in his traditional sense, because luxury generally is pretty much about showing off, right? Look at me, look at what I got. And I personally believe that people who try to show off with wealth, especially nowadays, thanks to social media is becoming even more popular. I don't know, you get your show off, you're driving your Lambo. And you take a photo with this, you know, cool thing you got on the yacht in here, or Yeah, I'm an accountant, a junior accountant in this company that I hate, but I'm traveling all the time, take a look at my photos. So these are the things that people tend to show off with which I am against, because I really believe that that can only develop, you know, resentment among those who are less financially fortunate. And ironically, it's not even necessary, because the problem is showing up with money as this money can be transferred to you without you doing anything, you can just inherit that you can just win in the lottery right? And trying to show off with money. And let's be honest, this could just be totally faked. Right, just downright you just, you know, rent a Lambo for two days, that's your entire month's salary, and then you start showing off to create a course on how they can become wealthy. Well, if you want to look at it, you know, basically, as a business point of view, no problem. I mean, you're a scammer No problem, you just got to put your months of salary you earn working in McDonald's, to, you know, take a couple of videos for two days and then create an online course how to become rich. Yeah, you could do that. It's not necessarily an ethical approach to you know, making money, but it is one way to do it. And unfortunately, people who are on social media, you know, do these kinds of things, unfortunately. But in reality, I believe that there are far better ways to show off than just buying luxury, the best, which, of course, is who you are, I think, who you are and how valuable you are, and how much contribution you can make to society are far better signs of how worthy you are than how much money that there are many people in this world. We're not millionaires or billionaires, but who are making great contributions or who have great abilities that can make them stand out and I think focusing on who you are, and your abilities will be a lot more effective means of trying to perhaps show your worth then everybody ready nobody's no one's gonna say like, yeah, I want to do the same thing. I'm a piece of shit that was going to say that the need for self esteem is a basic need as part of it, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, everybody wants to feel that sense of self is everybody wants to feel good about themselves. I am so and of course when that feeling disappears, we have things like depression, suicidal thoughts, and so on. So everybody has to have a self esteem, nobody has to feel good about themselves. And the feedback we get from others definitely does matter. But in the end, you can do that by buying fake Gucci's and pretending to be someone you're not. Or you can simply do it by showing how great you are when it when it comes to painting, or how such a great thinker you are, how such a great athlete you are, how fast you can run or I don't know how well you perform on the stage. When you do your, you know, theatrical plays. There are many ways for us to show our worth. And I think the worst Way to show your worth is by money, because that is probably the, it accomplishes the exact opposite. When a person says, check out my cash, Oh, I got 200,000 in my hand, that's all by the way, like $1 bills, something that you want to get looks so big in front of the camera, I'll look at all these bills in my hand, I'm so rich. Well, what that person is trying to say is look at me. I'm good. Please tell me I'm good. And please love me. That's like the intention behind that, right? Or, alternatively, look at this. I grew up in filth, I came from a shitty background, but now I'm rage. So I'm the only rage and I feel I have a serious complex. So whatever you do, the impact of that will ultimately be negative. Those are like, Who's this idiot, man? Gosh. And sometimes this behavior actually attracts the wrong types of attention, thing criminals who say, Oh, this guy's got some, Where's his location? Oh, see? Or if you're working in business, the tax basically auditors. Oh, wait a minute, let me check this guy's Iris report, ah, this guy recorded only $30,000 of income. But this guy's driving a Lambo, oh, we're gonna go for a new audit. So basically, you end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what you hope for by trying to show up with money. On the other hand, imagine you show off by your ability to play chess, I'm the world's best chess player, no one can take that away from you. I'm show off with my ability to paint well, and I share my photos on Instagram of how such a great painter I am. Well, no one can take that away from you. But money could be stolen from you and could be taken away from you and can simply be faked. Or just got, you know, in order to become great, you know, a chess master, you got to put in the effort. But it can be rich overnight, without working so hard to become a great painter, you're gonna put in a lot of lot of, you know, hours into this to actually reach mastery. And once you get there, nobody can take it away from you, right? That's not the same with money, which is why I am vehemently against luxury, especially the way that we use to show off it just First of all, based on my estimation, most of the people who do show off with money generally aren't either that rich, or even if they are that rich, they probably are lowering their value in the eyes of other people. And but most luxuries are not purchased. I actually had a poster for this a while ago. And I actually looked at those around me, those whose net worth exceeded $100 million, and those who are like in a couple million. And you'll see that as the network comes down, luxury goes up. And as net worth goes up, the luxury comes down to the guy whose net worth is 100 million. You don't see him flashing cool stuff. And even if he has cool stuff, he doesn't show it to anybody. He just maybe some guys really love to drive a Lamborghini. Right? This is like he's a car nerd. Right? He drives his Lambo, but you're never gonna see that photo on his Instagram, right? And the guy who has his entire wealth is $3 million. gets himself I don't know, into trouble by buying two luxury cars and being under debt for many years. Right. Which is why I really consider that approach to you know, luxury to be extremely, basically, probably a great way to show how pathetic you feel and how empty your life is from the inside. Because those who already have the money, they don't really do it. And those who do it, in most cases probably don't have that much money. So just brings it into the whole dilemma back in the you know, the spotlight and how ineffective this bursary is.   Pouya LJ  23:26 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I was thinking about, you know, what I am, in this sense as you were talking and I think by default, I am a minimum. I think that might be true of everybody. I don't know, but at least me. I think by default, I'm generally minimalistic. And then I pick and choose. So for example, as you said technology, education health. I definitely i'm not i'm not shy to spend as much as necessary on three. So yeah, I can't think of anything else that is valuable to me personally, right now. I mean, I haven't thought about it too long. But right now that I'm non minimalistic, maybe a little bit luxury about it. Do you have any areas that you spend a lot of time attention money perhaps on besides I don't know, let's say travel?   Dan  24:14 Well, you mentioned the first one, by the way, I don't believe if you spend money on things you're passionate about that is not you know, showing off that is not you know, luxurious consumption. It's just because of your passion. I told you even if you have a Lamborghini, if you really are crazy. I have some friends who are crazy about cars, man, like, man, check out this. Check out the sound, man. It's so fucking cool, right? So these guys, and they talk about these things, right? This guy, if you really spend money on Lambo, even though it's expensive, that is not a luxury consumption, because this guy's passionate. You see, I consider luxury consumption to be done solely with the purpose of impressing other people, including buying things you don't really believe in, but you feel that gives you that attention. And then is the real. So it's really all about the intention. Bill Gates, loved cars, Bill Gates has a huge collection of cars from the very beginning of his, you know, his career, he still does. He's got many garages full of luxury cars, but not a single person on earth knows that. And not a single magazine has ever shown in brain one of these cars. He intentionally avoids that. You see, this guy is one of the richest men of the world. He's unfortunately, he's not the richest at this moment. But still, the point is this, this guy loved cars. And when he bought these cars, it wasn't for showing off was this. He's, you know, he's just quite crazy about these things, right? The same thing goes with anything else you can spend money on, you know, and spend big bucks on things you really are passionate about. But the question is, what is your intention? when I'm traveling? First of all, I don't even actually post a lot of these Oh, I'm here I'm there is location things often do? We don't travel that much. And number two, I don't even announced, you know, recently that much. Why? Because when I'm traveling, I'm not doing that to say, Oh, yeah, I'm traveling Check. Check this out. Because I from from a person that's like a lifestyle, right? The other thing I knew I spend money on is perhaps clothing and accessories. And again, that's purely because of a personal interest, not because I want to say oh, I spend a lot of nice branch. No, because I like the students, I believe that most men dress like shit. And I don't like that. I think that men should change their approach towards dressing. And if I could be a role model and help other men to change their salad dressing and pay a little bit more attention, not to dress like their grandpa's, maybe that'll be a good thing. But that's just for me personally, right? It's just a personal passion. But I have zero interest in things like luxury cars, or luxury brands, or I don't know, oh, check this out. I got this cool washing here. Yeah, I will have a decent watch a couple of them. But that's it. It's not just you know, to say, oh, check this out, by the way. Oh, what time is it? Man? Oh, that's right. It is 30 minutes to Rolex, good seeing ya. So that's not going to be like, I mean, that's just so pathetic when I hear these things. So I am vehemently against those types of luxuries, pretty much almost all of them. And when it comes to education, I have no lunch. I don't care about the price tag of anything education. Well, there's a seminar, whether it's an educational course, you do give me the price, I don't know, half a million dollars for this course, I'll take it no problem, because for me, education is always an investment. I see it as investment as soon as it tripling that money. So if I put a half a million under education, I'm gonna get a minimum a million, you know, and 500,000 back, right. For that reason, for education, I have no limits. Because for me, you can never learn something too much. Right? So that is just about the personal balance. And for me, that's what matters. So if I wanted to say, to which things I spend money on, you can actually check out you know, know these things by looking at your bills, because I literally do this. Each month, I look at you know, all my expenses, I use all of my, you know, bank accounts for different countries to see what actually spent money on. And it almost always comes down to education. It comes down to health and fitness, you know, healthy food, high quality nutrition, and supplements and vitamins, all that stuff, which I for me, there's no limit, health, healthcare, investing doctors at getting appointments, checkups. And of course, for things that directly helped me like traveling, clothing and so on. But I rarely spend money on things that are absolutely useless. Because for me, that's not going to change me, right? It's not going to make my life better. And if I ever do it, I'm doing it with the intention of impressing others. And that always backfires. Because the worst way to get other people's admiration is to do it directly. Like, oh, tell me I'm so great. Check out my car. Oh, I'm a piece of shit. I feel empty from the inside. Please tell me I'm good. Please look at my Lambo. Oh, no, please like it too. This only shows a big hole inside of you. Right? So any purchase I make? I make because of me not because I want to show it off, or because I want others to say wow. Because I believe that the best way to make up your mind about your expenditure is to ask yourself, Is it for me to actually want to buy anything? I'm pretty sure he did not buy those cool gadgets for mining because you wanted to show off that Oh, check out No, you want it for you. You spend money for education because of you. And when you spend money because of you because of utility and really what you are passionate about that is I think the right expense. But unfortunately, a lot of times we don't buy things because we wanted for us. Many people prefer basically Android to iPhone, but they have to buy an iPhone because that's you know, that's going to be cool. Or I myself, I always get the latest iPhones because I love iPhone, but I never buy the pro version. Why? Because I hate to say like, Oh, my camera got my camera got three lenses and yours got only two. That's just so pathetic, which is why I intentionally always buy the latest iPhone but I always buy the basic version to make sure that it's not a luxury expense. I just use it for utility for the latest hardware for the latest, you know, benefits that comes with the latest iPhone, but I never go for these pro pro max all these crap basically Why? Because my intention is always one thing utility not show up with money.   Pouya LJ  30:15 Alright, I think that sums it up. That's that's a perfect way too. perfect place to stop. Is there anything you want to add? Or? We're good?   Dan  30:23 Well, that was a very special man. And I enjoy talking with you about these two things, we really are the question, we have this luxury approach to life. And we have this minimalistic. And as we probably know, the best approach is somewhere in the middle, I don't recommend our lives, like Daniel said, I should have abandoned Okay, I'm going to live in a cave. I'm going to drink goat's milk for the next two years. So that is not of course, effective. Right? money should be spent. That's how economies function. But the question is, why do you spend that money? So next time you made a purchase? It was I don't know, whatever item you wanted to purchase order online, ask yourself, Am I doing this for me? Or am I doing this to impress other people? Do I really need a you know, for example, the latest and the, you know, the most expensive version of this item? Or is it just to say that I have it right. And above all, please be aware of the prices manage your budget, maybe this item is really cool. But you have to have money left for savings for investments and other things. You know, living by the formula of wealth implies that you must always make sure that your expenses are less than your income. Most of us were the exact opposite. We always spend what we earn. And if our income goes up, we increase our consumption. And that's why most of us are never going to get rich. So ask yourself, have I saved enough money for a future in retirement or for some investment where we're buying real estate or buying stocks or investing in cryptocurrencies, whatever it is, or now, I just all my friends have the latest promax I want to get the promax to even though my entire salary this month. But Dude, that's a huge mistake. You can make that you know, purchase right now. But you're going to regret that a couple months down the line when the rent is due, and you don't have the cash and after what people you don't like. So you're gonna hate your job, you're gonna do some job you hate just to have that friggin phone. Are you kidding me? So for that reason, be aware of what your budget really is, like, make wise decisions. And always ask yourself, am I buying this for me? am I buying this because I want a certain type of reaction from other people. Because if you buy it for you, that's always okay. No problem. But unfortunately, a lot of our purchases, especially the ones that are luxury, are not for us, we're not really doing that because we need it or because we want it or even because we like it. I know people who hate sports cars, but they have to, you know, keep up with the Joneses. Because this other guy who's also a banker has it, so why not? And they hate it. They like oh gosh, this card is so fast. And so should I hate it. You know what, I gotta keep the image. So ask yourself is really from your for the other people. Because the worst thing you can do in your life, is to buy things you don't need. With the money, you don't have to impress the people you don't even like that's like the worst side of you know, capitalism. And please, if you're now listening to us avoid this approach as much as possible.   Pouya LJ  33:17 Okay, no, that was great. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think you should live by that every day of the week and every week of the year. Alright, thanks again, Dan, for joining us for another fantastic conversation. My pleasure. And thank you everybody for listening and tuning in. And if you have any thoughts, feel free to share it with us. You know where you know how. All right until later episode. Have a good day.

Every single success is preceded by many failures and rejections yet the right attitude towards the aforementioned are rarely taught to us at school. In this episode Daniel clarifies this issue and helps the listeners change their perspective regarding any and all setbacks they encounter on the way to their goals. 

Your outlook on life is ultimately what determines how you feel most of the time, what goals you pursue, and how you interact with those around you. In this episode of Beyond the Present Podcast Daniel and Pouya discuss tell two pillars of human behavior and share their thoughts on how through introspection we will be able to know ourselves and even alter our outlook on life.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS life, people, outlook, values, person, parents, world, nurture, questions, hormones, child, optimist, age, pessimists, brain, growing, genius, man, childhood, experience SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:09 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of the BTB podcast, joined as always with Daniel Morgan, how's it going? My man?   Dan  00:20 What's up, man, buddy, good to be here with you for yet another big podcast as you said yourself pretty cool stuff. I liked it. So overall, I'm glad to be here with you, man, life is wonderful. And we're gradually getting back on track in almost every area of life. And good news, pretty much is starting to pile up after almost a year of nothing but bad news. So life is great. And I'm so glad to be here with you. And to see hopefully if things are also fine on your end. So man, How are things with you and candidate   Pouya LJ  00:51 that is just great to hear and hear things are progressing very well as as well. As you said, we're, we're making, you know, some, some improvements in our quality of life. And things that are, you know, opening up at a large level, but in an unemotional level as well. We're trying our best, you know, moving forward creating fun content, hopefully, very soon for this very podcast as you will   Dan  01:22 awesome. Very nice man. Glad to hear things are fine and glad things are opening up and over there as well. So I'm very happy to hear things are fine, man.   Pouya LJ  01:32 That's it. That is good to hear. That is good to hear. Exactly. And today we're going to talk about a specific topic that has nothing to do with pandemic Well, you can always relate everything to pandemic, I suppose, but inherently not related to pandemic. Right. Yeah, so so what we're gonna talk about why people have different attitudes towards life and how they're living their lives. As we know, some, some people have more, more of a positive outlook, optimistic outlook, pessimistic outlook, realistic outlook, Outlook, etc. So I see is that what makes people happy? Is it there? So my immediate, you know, hunch was maybe it's their life experience that leads them to adopt a particular outlook towards life. But what what are your perspective on the matter?   Dan  02:22 Very good question. By the way, PJ. Sam, thanks for choosing another great topic for this show. today. As you pointed out, of course, what you mentioned in the field of psychology is referred to as nurture. But at the same time, as you probably have heard it, when it comes to behavioral therapy, they should, let's say, kind of behavioral therapy, and for example, CBT, it is actually talked about the issue of nature versus nurture, your cpj we cannot necessarily ignore the influence that our biology and genetics and DNA plays in the way we actually feel about everything. For example, something as illegal, something as little as how many dopamine receptors are, by nature in your brain upon birth, is going to literally tilt your entire life to a whole different direction. For instance, let's assume that you were born with a lot of dopamine receptors in your brain, just by nature, just like your mom or your dad, or your cousin, or whatever it is. And then another guy in the same family is born with very little dopamine receptors, these two people are going to have completely different lives, aspirations, dreams, and so on. So when it comes to behavior, and what truly differentiates behavior, we generally focus on two main main types of hormones that the brain like to actually basically be in touch with on a regular basis, based upon, you know, receptors, we call it the dopamine or basically dopaminergic types of personality. And then we have the here and now types of hormone, also called H and n types of hormones. For example, we all know that a person or a family or friends who is always looking to achieve something, maybe he or she tends to be a bit more hyper energetic, likes to play with abstract ideas. He likes to be creative. And unfortunately, in many cases, he or she might be a little bit too promiscuous. Let's just say that, always looking for that next rush, the next achievement The next thing we call such personality types, basically more dopaminergic type personalities. It's really a matter of biology. Because if you want that person to be like normal, and just enjoy life, and just enjoy the moment, then that brain cannot receive as much stimulation and pleasure and the brain is designed to look for more pleasure and less pain, which means that person simply after a while, quits doing all that cool things and goes back to you know, pumping up the dopamine if you will, and that often happens by novelty seeking, achieving goals and so on. On the other hand, we have those whose bodies are usually less Basically energetic in general, they tend to their natural level of basically, metabolism is lower. And they oftentimes tend to enjoy H and n here. And now types of hormones that are released in body thing, for example, oxytocin. Think, for example, let's say I don't know different pleasure hormones that the brain produces, for example, all of these people are going to have a very different lifestyle. So I made you all these, basically a fancy little introduction here, because I wanted you to know that in reality, we have to focus on determining both nature and nurture factors. The second one he actually mentioned yourself earlier was their lifestyles. So if you are born in an environment, riddled with uncertainty, and threat, let's say you were born, for example, in a very difficult, basically, you know, neighborhood, let's say, and in the Bronx, or maybe in a very, perhaps, challenging, basically country in the world, you tend to grow up feeling a great deal of fear. And that fear that you felt growing up at an early age is definitely going to affect your life. If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend the latest book by Oprah Winfrey. And basically, her a number one psycho psycho therapist called what happened to you. You see, in that book, Oprah and the psychiatrists talk about this issue in depth. And they say that what happened to you, especially in the early years of your life, that primitive years up to the age seven, are going to play a major role in your life. one instance, if you grew up in a family, and you received completely emotional support in the village of seven, and then your life went into, you know, basically the dumps and you experience a lot of problems for the entirety of your childhood until you left the family and you're 20, you actually will have a far happier and more mentally stable life than someone who actually had a very turbulent early four to five years, and then had a very normal, great stable life. Can you imagine how those early years are going to affect us, even if you put this little kid and you deprive this child, for example, enough parental care, that person for the first four or five years of his or her life is going to suffer, and then you give the best life, the best education, the most supportive parents to him or her, it's not going to make a huge difference in most research. Actually, of course, if you wanna learn more, I recommend you read the book, to the end, it's a very great book. On the other hand, you have those who had a very good early few years, and their parents die, and you're stuck in a war zone, or whatever it is. And these guys often actually ended up becoming very successful and happy, because the early conditioning emotionally was actually very positive. So both of these factors are important, your nature, your genetics are important. And of course, nurture, the way you were brought up your experiences in life, were you I don't know, heartbroken, at the age of 12, when you were your hormones were, you know, really surging, and then you thought that all men or women are just evils. And you just said, From now on, I'm never gonna date someone, or maybe you had a couple of great first relationships. And from then on, you never felt that you have to call every man or woman, I don't know, it's such an evil person, right? So both factors are important, both are gonna make sure that we find and see the world very, very differently.   Pouya LJ  08:14 Amazing, and I suppose there's not a lot you can do about the inherited genetic aspect of it. But there yet,   Dan  08:23 and not just with the genetic modification, you know, just wait for 2015 man, we're going to modify all those shitty genes out, literally just like we do a lot of things. Like if you don't like your genes, just change it, man. No problem. Of course, as of now, we have about beyond the present, right? So you're gonna have to wait at least a couple of decades for that to become available and then to be to be made commercially viable, and then to become legal. It's gonna take a while, but hopefully, we'll have that too.   Pouya LJ  08:47 Exactly. And that's the black market is going to be interesting. Yeah. No, but but but good. But currently, as you mentioned, that's, that's your only Avenue, is to tamper with the wild environments, obviously, part of why parents have such an emphasis on, you know, trying to provide positive experiences for their children. And I'm not just saying happy experiences, I'm just saying positive in terms of improving their lifestyle, and, you know, future outlook towards life. So, now let's, let's take it, take it, take it apart, because there's a lot here, but super quickly. So what would you so I'm gonna posit the questions to you. And then you can pick orders in which you want to answer what would you advise a parent due to their for their children growing up to, you know, to to provide a more positive experience for the children. And probably prior to that, I think this would make more sense order of questions, answers, at least, to me, that is, okay. What is the outlook of life that one should choose? Maybe not just not just one, but there's definitely utility differential between the two or various outlooks, in terms of how you're looking at life. If you're too pessimistic, I don't think that has too much utility because you just give up on life. So, so what are you? So first of all, what are the different outlooks like a very few very popular ones that you see good or bad? And maybe to you can compare? And then what can you do at this age, wherever you are in your life? And what can you do for your children growing up with a better experience.   Dan  10:28 By the way, you said something you know about, for example, pessimists being not useful for anything, I want to say that I want to right now here, just quote one of the major basic assumptions of NLP. And that is, you must respect every basically map of reality, and know that there is no such thing as a superior or inferior map of reality, whether someone is a for example, an ISIS terrorist, a firefighter scientists, for example, an entrepreneur or a politician, it doesn't really matter whether their belief systems, in our opinion, are false or true. All beliefs are just that beliefs, all maps of reality are just that maps of reality, if you're holding the map of New York City in your hand, you're not on the Fifth Avenue, you're not going to basically see the Union Square, you're not going to see any of these things. It's not in your it's not in the real world, it's just in your head, you have the map, right. But the same token, the map is not the reality. And number one, number two, there are no such things as good or bad, you know, outlooks on life, you mentioned a pessimist. If I am going to, for example, if I want to, you know, create and manufacture new types of renewable energy, and I need certain teams of engineer to fully inspect these devices, let's say these new solar panels that are going to generate electricity without generating any co2 emission, I want my engineers who are doing the final test to be hardcore pessimists, I'm not going to put myself if I put someone like me in the position of checking, I don't know, let's say quality control in the company, or in the, let's say, factory, I'm sure that I'm gonna go out of business, because if you give it to me, it's like, man looks fine. by me. It doesn't work, doesn't matter, just push a little bit harder, maybe it's gonna work at first. But right now, I'm an optimist. As an optimist, I will be a horrible quality control manager, because I simply just see the big picture. And I think like, everything's gonna work out like, Dude, this thing does not generate the electricity, like, just come on, man, believe in yourself, it's going to be possible, just just hope, hope that there's going to be for example, electricity download, right? So I'm not going to be as an optimist, good as a quality control. I want to pessimists who finds everything, everything wrong, wrong, and pretty much everything that he or she sees, right. So every outlook on life could have a use, sometimes a use is harmful, sometimes is useful. But in the end, all outlooks, I tend to be you know, one of those, as you probably know, I'm a positivity only type of person. But that's because of my position in life. Because in my life, and because of you know, my position, I need to be an optimist otherwise, not only me, but all those people who rely on me will actually falter because it's my job to keep things pushing forward, whenever he loses hope. For that reason, I have to be an optimist. So if you put a pessimist in the leadership position, the same factory is going to go bankrupt again. Because there's one month of no sales like, Oh, it's all bullshit I knew was a bad idea. I had to get a job it is I'm so terrible weather this and my daddy. So for that reason, all outlooks on life, in my opinion, are useful. Now, sometimes the usages are malignant, let's think of that ISIS terrorist who I don't know, Trump's people's head off on the internet, they should have the right that person in his world, he thinks he's the right thing. But in fact, he's wrong. Because he simply is because, you know, values in life are contradictory, with the very way we live in the modern world. So that person needs to correct it. But so long as the person basically is not harming other people, generally, it could be just very creative. I mean, think about most right, you know, for example, rappers, most of the songs they produce are complete garbage. But to me, they're garbage, maybe for somebody else who actually gives them a hope for the future, right? For that reason, I believe that we should respect all Atlas on life. I personally tend to basically believe in that. Because I believe that if you want us to have you know, a very effective, efficient world, we need people of all backgrounds, including pessimists, including lazy people. Bill Gates said, I always hired lazy people because they find the shortcuts you're saving. I mean, think about the virtue of being hard working. I like to think of myself as hard working, but boy, never ever give that you know your job. And if you want a creative, you know, technology to be animated. Don't give that job to Daniel, give it to a you know, a lazy pessimist. He's going to do a much better job than I do. So, for that reason, we have to know that this is the case there is no such thing as a bad outlook on life. However, what I find is there's we have efficient outlook. on life and inefficient, so if your outlook on life makes you constantly angry and depressed, this is very inefficient because you're harming your body. And for that reason, you should look at your life. Are you happy with the way things are in your life? Are you getting your needs met? Are you helping? And ideally, are you a productive member of the society? Does your life really make other people's lives a little bit better, or at least touches them a little bit? Right? If so, you're good. However, if you feel like your outlook is making you feel depressed, negative, alone, unhappy, then obviously, you need to go through the process of re examining all your beliefs and values and changing it. And only then you can actually change your life. But then again, at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, the nature and the nurture, so part of that it always goes back to your body and your biology. But don't Don't worry, we're not talking about you know, genetic engineering just yet. What we're talking about is taking care of the little things in your life that really matter, for your health for your well being. Once you combine these two things, you realize that you can actually change your life for the better. However, just because you're different than other people, that doesn't mean that you're a bad person. If you feel like you're not happy with it, though. That's a different story altogether.   Pouya LJ  16:10 Yeah, now, that makes a lot of sense. And thank you for clarifying, actually, that that is what I meant, I probably didn't, you know, express it well, in terms of its efficiency, rather than wrong or right. I don't, I don't pretend that wrong or right, there is a thing, but also so. So also, I mean, generally speaking, we have this general mindset and outlook towards life. But there's also, as you mentioned, utility to certain situations dynamically, to a degree, shifting your focus from being perhaps a little bit more pessimists or less optimist, or the other way around to, you know, to account for things that are not accounted for by a different outlook. Now, again, and, again, there is a degree of rigidity built in, but there's also a degree of freedom to shift your, your point of view accordingly to according to the task at hand, now, so and so this is what I'm going to, again, ask you to elaborate on. And also, you know, do you have a preference in terms of youth development, the experiences that they should have for various kinds of outlook that could be beneficial to them? And how can you identify which one will be more beneficial to one person versus the other?   Dan  17:36 Very well, good point. First of all, I think that at a very young age, I am currently not a father, although I do have the interest in basically parenting and being a father someday. But currently, I am not a father. So my advice might not necessarily be the most reliable advice, because it'll be purely from a theoretical perspective, I do not have the experience firsthand. However, I've done, you know, a slight amount of research in this regard because of, you know, pure, just sheer interest in the in this field. Because I believe that it's very important. And ultimately, I think that the first thing that we should be doing in this regard is knowing that every person who is born in this world is unique. And in some way, I really despise the old fashioned manner of putting all basically students to go through the same educational experience. And that's just extremely extremely basically passe and not the right way to do things in the modern world. For that reason, the first thing I would do, I think someone should know, at a very young age are number one, their inherent talent. You see, every one of us, I believe, firmly that every one of us is a genius at something. Now, the word genius is officially described as having someone somebody an IQ of 140 or more. But then again, that's a very flawed definition of genius, because genius isn't just about IQ. There are many different types of intelligences that are simply not measurable by the IQ tests, right? So what I mean by genius, I mean someone with a very high degree of basically natural aptitude for certain activities. And we have different types, of course, musical being one kinesthetic being the other, visual and spatial being the other one, interpersonal intrapersonal. Obviously, we have the IQ, which is primarily measured by mathematics, as well as linguistic abilities. So these are all different types of intelligences. So I think the first element is the child right a young person should focus on is what are the things I'm a genius at. And I think people should really ask the question, you know, use the word genius here, because if they don't use something else, they will not find a clear answer. And every single one of us is really good at something and have a great sense of the texture of the food, which could probably show a great pathway towards you know, being a chef in the future or maybe you really feel a sense of rhythm in the noise. And the sound around you a great sign, it could be a good musician or an artist or singer. And maybe you really are great. And you're manipulating your body language, a great pathway towards things like acting performance or politics. So these are all things we have to consider when we want to make plans for our lives. After knowing our, you know, talents, we should then focus on values, values with things that are important to you see projects, there are things in your life that are very important that maybe people around you don't really understand. And vice versa. There are things that others say like man I really care about is like, Dude, why? So values are very personal. Maybe somebody really values novelty, while somebody else really values loyalty, maybe somebody values for example, wealth and power, while somebody else values contribution and discovery. So finding your value, through the questions Why? You mentioned they have to ask the question, why three times, for example, I want to create a new technology. Why? Because that technology is going to basically change the world. Why? Because that allows me to contribute. So contribution right now is one of your values, somebody else might ask the same question differently, like, I want to create new technology. Why? Because that's gonna make me a lot of money. Why? Because that's gonna make me feel powerful. Now powerful this person is the value and not contribution as it was for the previous person. So by finding your values in life, of course, these questions probably will take some time, I don't think that a teenager will answer these questions probably well, because at that age, even the brain has been developed. And I heard that until the age of 25. The brain is not yet fully shaped. This means that these questions probably are better asked later in life around the age of 20, to 23. And ideally answered before the age of 30, to allow the person to make the decisions. That's why we see some people, you know, go to college, and they changed major four times, and the parents get upset. Of course, this guy is 21, what do you want, you want to just choose the right major right away now some do it many will tolerate a bat major for their parents, and then later, you know, change their hurries later on. But you can't expect a 19 or 20 year old to make a perfect decision about their future. That is why I think these questions shouldn't be just asked by the younger generation, but from all of us from any ease that we are especially, you know, the the, you know, adults as well, because that allows us to know what are truly our values, I know most of my friends, or I can remember, I think of almost half of my friends to change major, literally three times three times, that's quite normal. Now there are pens like mug, that's going to mean a lot of you know, tuition fee, goddamnit, just make up your mind, Tommy. But in reality, the person is discovering himself and his values or her balance, right. And finally, after knowing basically your talents and your values, the last one is how can I properly use this, to have an efficient life. And again, from my point of view, a good life is a fine by a life that makes you happy. And at the same time allows you to make others happy a little bit as well. So a bit of contribution should be always one of our North Stars, will this make the world a better place? Or will it actually hurt other people? Will this serve others or not? These are no other good questions. But ultimately, these processes are very complex, which is why I don't think that a child or a teenager will be able actually they can definitely ask these questions, but they might not be able to find the answers until much later in life, maybe in their late 20s or even late 30 sometimes. So for that reason, we should not rush through these. But just simply asking these types of questions from you know, from the young generation will probably be a lot more efficient than just, you know, asking, okay, where's the capital of this country will never ever visit? I think that's going to be a lot better if you approach education from this point of view.   Pouya LJ  23:37 As fascinating that actually makes a lot of sense. I think, who, when, and sometimes the The Undiscovered interest in some young person is due to actually the bad education because they grow up thinking. I don't appreciate the field. But the reality is they're not really they don't really know what the field is actually about. Or that that is a true story about my personal experience. So I guess at least there's one, you know, proof of concept here,   Dan  24:10 which is just, you know, quick preview. I'm actually curious. We don't have of course, time for a full extension, but just very briefly how you went through this?   Pouya LJ  24:17 Yeah, no, I so as you know, my, my majors are physics, astrophysics, and mathematics. And I grew up hating. I always loved physics. That was true, but I always hated maths. And I mean, obviously, we   Dan  24:30 don't imagine that somebody who hated math is now in math.   Pouya LJ  24:34 Yeah, so that's actually and I couldn't do physics without math. So that kind of pushed me to actually look at it again, and try to wrestle with it. But then then through that, I actually had an opportunity to understand what is mathematics as a not such a superficial level, but at a deeper level, and then, you know, it changed my whole outlook towards this thing. This one talking about looks about things. And not just life. But yeah, so I really never liked math and I wasn't even particularly bad at it. I was okay at it. I was not bad. Not good, but I never liked it. But then again, it just all changed. When I   Dan  25:20 wish Ah, you finally got it? Yes. Like, I'm good at this, I should focus on this.   Pouya LJ  25:26 I think it was around 25 for not for you, but probably 25 or maybe even 26. I'm not too sure.   Dan  25:33 So it was not really around your teen years, right at all. Time to figure it out.   Pouya LJ  25:38 That was the height of me hating it.   Dan  25:42 Yeah, I know, you're gonna hate it, you know, when you were a teen, and then love it when you're 25. And that happens to a lot of people not just in, you know, in your field of math and astrophysics. But like anyone that I know, I know, people who hated, you know, let's say blood. And now there are top surgeons, and I know those who will thought they left science and our top entrepreneurs and business people and they don't even can't stand the side of a university. So it already depends on how your brain fully formed, just like on the nature side, and then your life experience that you go through, all of these are going to play a huge, you know, huge a major role in the way you shape your values and your behavior and your outlook on life.   Pouya LJ  26:19 That is, that actually makes a lot of sense. And I think I think there's a value to revisiting past experience. Now rather past subjects, I suppose, or areas of interest. And with an open mind, that's the important part. Because when you're revisiting it, if it's a with a closed mind, then you're going to judge it based on your past experience, not the new experience. So that's, I think it's a very valid point. Okay, so we're coming to the end of the show here. And I'm going to allow you this time to either, you know, if we didn't mention something that you wanted to talk about, you can elaborate on that or sum up the whole conversation   Dan  26:56 very well. First of all, great topic is always projects. And today we discussed if you're how do we come to be who we are. And we discussed behavior, outlook on life, as well as value systems. And we talked about the importance of nature versus nurture, we realize that yes, the things we go through in life are very important. But that's not all that matters, even if you go through a very good childhood. But if you have certain certain biology that makes you sensational seeker, you might suffer from, you know, drug abuse later in life, even if you have been, you know, growing up with a family of two PhD parents, and a very, you know, basically safe and loving environment. On the other hand, you could bring somebody else who was, you know, basically raised in the worst of worst situations with, you know, abusive parents, or even absent parents, and he's the same person might actually end up you know, making a major contribution to the world because of their, you know, emotional wiring and their backgrounds. So, we talked about how these two factors are going to play a role. And more importantly, we discussed the importance of self, basically analysis to understand what we are, what we want in life, and how we should actually go get it. And we are discussed the fact that this might not necessarily be done by the time you're 18 years old, even though the world assumes you to be an adult by the age of 18. neuroscience proves that true adults, which really kicks in a lot later, around late 20s, actually, for most people. So now while legally you're an adult, when you're 18, the chances are, you're still mentally growing, and you have to give yourself some time, and avoid making the kind of decisions that might perhaps be regrettable. Having a tattoo included, just be careful, guys, and please stay away from butterflies, or teddy bears just don't do it, man, seriously, come on. And other than that, of course, you have to focus your attention on the future and know that you can gradually in life, change yourself through that's why this podcast is basically, you know, categorises personal development, because we believe in it, because we know that it works. And we've seen it in action. So it doesn't matter. Just like what, Dan, you just just broke my heart out, okay, I had a bad childhood is that means I'm gonna have to suffer the rest of my life? The answer is, of course not. There are ways to get over it. But if you had a tough childhood, you got to work on it, you can't just ignore it, that childhood is going to continue to play a role. If you have been diagnosed as ADHD at a young age, you're gonna have to do something about that, because you can't just ignore it, that ADHD as a child implies a certain biological characteristic that will affect the rest of your life. And then you got to keep you know, cheating on your parents on your basically, let's say on your wife, who's the parent of your child or on I don't know, your basically husband, and then you realize, Oh, my gosh, I'm a terrible parent. Oh, what did I do? I'm ruining my family. So you have to think about those questions early on before you got married. You have to, you know, resolve that issue. Whether it's with your finances, whether it's all the areas of your life, you want to actually focus on knowing yourself. That's what they say Know thyself, as basically is been basically reported. And I believe in that because that process is going to allow us to make far better decisions about our present as well as the future.   Pouya LJ  30:09 Thank you. Thank you as always for my pleasure, man, fun conversation. Appreciate it. And thank you guys for joining in tuning in listening in and leaving comments and reviews on iTunes specifically that helps us we're not trying to be pushy here. We're just trying to help get the word out. If you liked it, you can also help others to, you know, join in on the conversation and until a later episode. Have a good one.

Your life flows where your attention goes and the ability to keep your mind focused on the positive is the key to overcoming the negative moments in your life. In this episode of Beyond the Present podcast Daniel recommends the listeners to go on a three day positivity challenge and see for themselves how it affects their lives. 

Mood swings are quite common among all of us and the events of the past year have only exacerbated its prevalence which is why having a clear strategy in dealing with these emotional ups and downs proves invaluable if not downright essential. In this Episode Daniel and Pouya discuss mood swings and offer practical solutions to deal with them.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   Thu, 5/20 10:56AM • 28:54 SUMMARY KEYWORDS mood swings, people, pandemic, feeling, day, life, social media, rested, mood, normal, news media, bad, tend, eat, resist, accept, emotional, major, social, swings SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:13 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of the BTB podcast as always joined by Daniel, how's it going, my man?   Dan  00:20 What a man, buddy, how's it going good to be here with you for yet another great show basically, and obviously couldn't be any happier. Because fortunately, we're hearing a lot of great news from around the world and the positive tendency, people are talking about their summer vacations, and they're talking about how they can actually, you know, enjoy their lives. I'm hearing a lot of you know, things regarding my post pandemic bucket list is like now a trend among a lot of bloggers, and even on social media, a lot of like, Oh, my post pandemic bucket list, what's yours, here's mine. And like, that's a very positive thing to hear. And it's very inspiring. So generally, it's pretty good. And we're waiting to hopefully take our lives next level once the pandemic is over. And we can actually return to what basically we have now basically come to a really cherish called back to normal, therefore life is great and couldn't be any happier.   Pouya LJ  01:15 Absolutely, it makes lots of sense. I mean, everybody's planning, you know, what I'm going to do next, the first and second, the third after, you know, things go back to complete normalcy, I suppose. So yeah, there's a lot of those conversations going around, which is exciting. Do you have any   Dan  01:35 curious what is your posts, pandemic? They know, bucket list? What are the items? Basically, on your bucket list?   Pouya LJ  01:41 Yeah, I just just want to hang out with people. That's, that's basically, like,   Dan  01:47 fully deprived, because nobody there breaks the rule or something. Guys basically have been living, you know, without any social contact for almost a year, because the Kenyans are extremely nice. And they follow all the rules and all that. So I'm guessing you really need some social contact.   Pouya LJ  02:03 Yeah, I mean, not I mean, I'm not just talking about like, with one, I mean, like, very group activity, bunch of people, not just two or three, maybe 20.   Dan  02:13 Right, right. Well, we were not allowed to for over a year and a half now. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  02:17 Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's exactly true. What about yourself? Do you have anything that is at the top of your list, as you know,   Dan  02:22 me, I cannot even live with that group activity. So actually, I was the only I was the only basically person holding group, basically, conversations and workshops, of course, we had to scale down, we couldn't have a lot of people on board. But I was pretty much the only person that I know, among my social circle actually maintained a social basically, event on a steady basis during this time. And, quite frankly, if it wasn't for that, probably I would have, you know, really found this the whole experience much harder than it really had to be. So generally, for me, I just couldn't even wait for the pandemic to end it's like, dude, I'm not gonna wait for the end of the pandemic. I got it. I got I need at least eight people in front of me right now. Let's get going.   Pouya LJ  03:06 No, I get it. I get it. And you know, hey, as long as you've done it safe, which I'm sure you did, who cares? Right?   Dan  03:13 Obviously, everything is about safety. Man. We all care about safety. But Exactly. Alright, seatbelts before you start driving.   03:19 Exactly. That's   Dan  03:22 what we're talking about that type of safety, by the way. Yeah, fasten the seat belts. That's exactly what Jake Smith.   Pouya LJ  03:26 Yes, that's that kind of safety. Just check your mirrors and stuff.   03:31 blind spots.   Pouya LJ  03:35 All right. So now let's go back to the topic of today, which we're going to discuss how to deal with, you know, your mood swings and emotional difficulties. One might have obviously, that would be one case in the during the pandemic, but even in normal days, sometimes you don't have you're not, you know, optimally tuned emotionally, if you will. So sometimes you have mood swings, you're not well, your hormones are acting up men and women. Not particularly for specific gender, I suppose. So how would you go about dealing with that? So, so, so that's a very general question, and it's very general topic, but let's get a little bit into details. So, okay, so first of all, first, I think point is, sometimes I personally find that you're not even aware of your Metrix it's especially at the beginning of the day, right? So one element is identifying that as a as a, okay, I'm not I'm not in a good mood today, right? Sometimes it's super obvious, but sometimes it's not the cases that are not very obvious. What are your mechanisms to evaluate your mood on a day to day basis, if you have any doubt?   Dan  04:48 Of course, well, first of all, mood swing is a mistake if you had any because ultimately being human will make you subject to this mood swing. The question is how much how frequently And to what intensity can you actually get it back to normal. Ultimately, we all are subjected to this issue of, you know, mood swings, it happens to all of us. However, some of us by a combination of genetics, or mythology and gender are more or less likely to suffer from mood swings. However, it is something that happens to every single one of us. I know a gentleman who said, I don't have a bad day. That gentlemen is Vladimir Putin. So if that's exactly what he really meant, I'm not sure if he was telling the truth in this situation, although Mr. Putin is not famous for telling the truth anyways. But the fact of the matter is, one of the things that many men are especially proud themselves on is that I do not have bad days where I'm always feeling great, I'm always in the sweet spot. Well, I think that should be an ideal that every man and woman should probably aspire for. But that's not the journey, it means our desire to have no mood swings, it requires us to actually go through a very lengthy process of personal development both physically, because a great deal of you know, mood swings, basically have to do with our general, you know, level of health, energy, amount of sleep we get how healthy Our lives are, are we smokers and non smokers do we drink a lot of coffee in the morning and have a lot of caffeine on our system? Or do we tend to eat healthier, and we avoid all these basically junk foods and stimulants. So a great deal of that comes down to our health. And of course, part of that is just pure genetics, some of us are basically less stress resistant. And that itself means that we are a lot more likely to go through the emotional swings as the environment around us actually goes through all the inevitable changes that it actually goes through. And of course, finally, it's about gender. Again, there are studies that prove that women tend to be experiencing that more often, especially in an age when they are feeling certain hormonal, basically, changes in their body. However, that's, of course, very small influencing factor. This means that mood swings is what basically affects both men and women, across all ages and backgrounds. So it happens to all of us. However, what Vladimir Putin said, but I don't have a bad days, probably like, I tend to have more good days and bad days. And I think that that is a more realistic approach to aim for, and a more honest declaration that a man can make, because no matter how you know, how much you work, because if right now, tell our listeners Yeah, man, there are a lot of people out there who don't have bad days, like, oh, man, I feel like she look at all these people are having all the time they're having good days in my life sucks. Because that's a lie. It's not true, it's quite normal to have bad days, I don't know, I know a single person that I really personally know who did doesn't have a bad day. Even though they are having a very healthy, successful lifestyle, they still go through those ups and downs, just like anybody else will go through them, because it's human nature. However, while it is normal to have mood swings, it is not really normal to have those mood swings happening very frequently. And it's also not very efficient to let those mood swings affect your life in a way that it might actually interfere with your day to day functioning or making, you know, very bad decisions, oftentimes life, you know, lifelong consequences. So for that reason, we need to actually look at the issue of it more seriously except mood swing as an inevitable part of being human. But at the same time, we're going ourselves to actually somehow alleviate the negative side effects. So do I have mood swings? Definitely I do. But does it happen very frequently, I hope not. I try my very best to maintain a healthy lifestyle doesn't happen. And more importantly, so by the way you think so the way you think affects whether you will have mood swings, whenever you're always thinking in a way that is causing you stress or is reducing your self confidence, of course, you will go through those depressive cycles, you're going to go up and down. But if you tend to think in a more healthy positive way, you are more optimistic, obviously, you will go through them a lot less. However, with that being said, the pandemic that just occurred, unfortunately, is a source of tremendous emotional anger among people around the world. And that's exactly what caused us to experience. So many reports of suicidal thoughts, major mood swings, severe depressions, these were like some of the common things we heard a lot during the pandemic. And it's quite normal. If you keep someone in their room all day long for I don't know, months, if not years, obviously, something's gonna go wrong. That's not what the body is designed to do. However, there are obviously techniques around the world that can allow us to hopefully reduce these swings as much as possible and to hopefully increase the amount of stability and tranquility in our lives.   Pouya LJ  09:35 Yeah, that actually does make a lot of sense. And I wanted to actually bring us back to a point that you made briefly kind of an a minute or two ago and that was about the your mentality actually affects your moods as well. Like, that couldn't be that couldn't be more emphasized, I suppose. Because, like look, if you're on social Media 24 seven, I don't know consuming news 24 seven, I don't imagine how your mood would be. So our habits, even even the social, immediate social groups you're holding, I think that's why I think it's very important to, to pay attention to the type of people you're hanging out with, depending on what's your intention, what's your goals are? Well, of course, we're talking about emotional moods, but also life goals. Right. So I think, I think there's an emphasis to be made there. I just wanted to bring it that back. Again, that's why I mean, I have nothing against social media, but it can't be positive, particularly healthy if you're over consuming it. If you're over exposed to the world, I suppose by news outlets, social media, etc. I don't know if you have anything further to say there. And   Dan  10:47 you just put it out. That's a very, you know, two major sources of mood swings, the news media, which is predominantly negative. And because let's be honest, the news media is a business is the I'm an entrepreneur, I look at all things through the prism and the lenses of business and profitability. And when you look at most news media's basic model of business, they just want to attract more viewers, and they do it at any cost. And the cost is ultimately scaring people because people I mean, in the modern world are extremely busy, they have a lot of, you know, ways to keep their, you know, attention focused on different activities. So, in this situation, the media has to really focus on the negative and on the scary to attract enough viewers to make a profit. For that reason, the media, especially the news media is not really designed for informing people of the news. More importantly, it's about generating profit for the mass media. And that obviously entails a lot of negativity and fear, which is why those who watch a lot of news tend to be very stressed and nervous most of the time. The other one that you point at, basically pretty well. And that's so true, it's about the social media, it is proven that the more time you spend on social media, the more likely you are to suffer from depression, the more likely you are to suffer from lack of self confidence. And ironically use the report far less levels of life satisfaction has been done, through you know, throughout various researchers that have been published in various journals, it is proven now that social media has, you know, a direct impact on your level of emotional, basically, perhaps problems, issues, and even mood swings, as we discussed earlier. For that reason. That's one of the issues, which obviously comes down to managing the psychology again, mood swings is not purely psychological. Because nothing psychological really is purely psychological, there's always a link between the body and the mind. So mood swings aren't just if you really had a great time, last time you went to a party, and you drank a lot. And you know, maybe smoke a little bit as well. Don't expect to have a very good night's sleep, don't expect to get four or five REM cycles throughout the night because you're drunk. So you cannot have you know, proper REM basically cycles, you cannot sleep well, because of all that nicotine in your system. And when you wake up in the morning, you know, tired like a zombie, you cannot expect to jump out like Yes, I'm ready for a good day, of course, like, oh, gosh, what did I do yesterday. So that's exactly what happens to all of us. So all these issues comes down to the body and the mind. So the pandemic, you know, put a very major limitation on our physical freedom. So we're going to move as much outdoor, we're going to be in social settings. And that is important because your biology basically makes 50% of your entire emotional makeup. And then of course, the other part is your psychology. Do you tend to be in a happy relationship? Are you surrounded by your friends and loved ones, because we are social creatures, we are not meant to be loners. And so you know, the modern world, unfortunately, sometimes makes it seem like it's okay and normal, to be alone to be like, Oh, I'm so cool. I'm so independent. But in reality, that's just a fantasy. It's just a way of, you know, trying to say things that you're, you know, you're super cool. But in fact, this goes against our basic evolutionary wiring, even if you are interested. I mean, it's not just about extroverts, like me, it's it goes back to our very nature as a species. For that reason. Both of these elements are important. You pointed out social media mass media, you're definitely right about this, which is why I'm strictly against watching the news, especially watching the news is a major stressor. Because these news media basically outlets are trained how to make their headlines extremely stressful, so they can actually attract your attention. And you can watch those material the same thing, of course goes on social media, people posting all their photos. Oh, I'm always on vacation. I'm always wearing this bikini and I never looked fat because I use all these beauty basically apps that made me I don't know, seem to have perhaps 25 pounds, much lighter than I am currently and obviously all those lights gonna make me look like I'm the Miss USA but in fact, if you see me in the in the morning, you don't even want to talk to me. So a lot of girls watch those girl like oh my goodness, look at her. She's so First of all people, and boom, guess what, who's going to get depressed? Obviously, because people aren't there. Everybody knows that people put their very best moments on social media they upload, they're very like, look at me, I'm always traveling. Yeah, working as a, you know, an accountant who hates her job most of the time, and just saving all these travelers to post regularly on a weekly basis, of course, or look at me, I'm so rich, I am currently driving Lamborghini. Oh, by the way, sign up for my $1 course, yeah, you're super rich, you want to sell it for $1. That's just how rich you are. So in reality, people tend to look at these things. They look at his life and look at my life, man, I'm a loser. And they're going to feel like shit. But once we raise the awareness, and realize that social media, especially our posts have no reflection, and I mean, no reflection of our real lives, then we'll actually not take it so seriously. And we spent, ideally less time on these platforms. And we spend more time doing things that are more productive, including socializing, making friends and talking to people directly. Instead of through, you know, sending stupid comments like You're the best, or I don't know, great with a with a with a number eight, gr eight, come on, man, stop it. And all those things, you instead try to meet real people talk to them, call your best friend, what's going on, man? What's up girl? And these are the things that actually get, you know, help us deal with this and not wasting time on social media and, you know, in front of the mass media.   Pouya LJ  16:33 Exactly. And I think I think I missed the, you know, the consumption of the food part, like the things that you eat part. Obviously, that has an impact. Good, good that you pointed it out. Now. Okay, so we have a, I think we established a very good methodology to minimize our downtime, down days, let's call it or downtime, but in terms of emotionally, so but but as you mentioned, it's fairly reasonable to say, probably impossible for any human being to be on all the good day, every single day   Dan  17:12 is practically impossible. Impossible, I practice NLP every morning to get myself in a great state of mind. And I've been doing this for years now. Now, most of my friends have never seen me down, obviously. But at the same time, even someone like me, I have, you know, my bad days, too. I mean, it's, I have my own share of bad days. Fortunately, fortunately, again, I don't want to like, basically, brag, but fortunately, those days tend to not be too many. But I'm still a human being. And even if you know all the science of you know, NLP and psychology and you exercise the way I do three times per day and all that and try to eat healthy, it's still gonna go through those inevitable tough moments. We all have bad days, and it's completely normal. However, like I mentioned earlier, the key here is dosage, the amount the frequency, these are the things if you are living like oh, it's good. It's good to have a you know, emotionally unhealthy life. So doesn't matter I'm going to get through my life the way it was, No, man, if you're experiencing major emotional strings is happening frequently. That is a disease, man, you got to deal with that. But at the same time, don't bash yourself on the head, if perhaps you're not having a perfect day, 365 days, basically a year, that's quite normal. However, our goal is always to avoid perfectionism and instead try to make things a little bit better. How can I instead of being you know, pissed off half the time be pissed off 1/3 of the time? How can I actually have more, you know, fun, and enjoy my days a bit more and reduce these mood swings, that should be I think, our target, which is a lot more realistic, and achievable.   Pouya LJ  18:45 Perfect, but this is where I'm going with this. we land on those days, and happens to humans, you're right, we want to minimize the number of times and then density of it, but it happens with whatever intensity or whatever frequency, you find yourself in one of those days. That is not it sucks, you feel shit. What do we do?   Dan  19:07 Oh, you see, psychologist called is having feelings about your feelings. And that is one of the major causes of rumination and depression. You see, as I mentioned earlier, it's quite normal to have bad days. But the problem is some people feel bad for having basically bad is they feel bad about feeling bad. And this ultimately makes them you know, extremely unhappy. So I understand accept the days that are you know, not bad as as they are. do not reject them. Do not resist them. Don't feel bad about them. Because that's what we do a lot. It's like shit, I'm feeling like shit, and I feel like should because I'm feeling like shit. And this unfortunately creates a very negative inner cycle. It makes it much harder to you know, recover from that. So you will literally program yourself to feel action for the rest of that day. Instead, what do you what you what I would do on a day like that? I would say oh well I'm not as well rested, as I expect, because we're working yesterday on a project. Let's call it a project. And unfortunately, we were, I was not able to get enough rest, okay? So I see, well, there's, for every basically benefit, there's a cost, you got to pay the cost, I pay the cost I see. So we didn't get eight hours as I expected, it was actually six hours. So I am going to go through the rest of the day feeling basically not well rested, I accept it. I'm not going to resist it. I'm not gonna fight it. I'm gonna say, why am I not feeling good? Today? It's terrible. I hate it. No, all right, I'm not going to resist it. I accept that today, I'm not going to be well rested. But just because I'm feeling like shit, and I'm not well rested, doesn't mean that a whole day is going to be shaped like, okay, so I'm definitely not going to be my most cheerful, probably, I'm not gonna be able to make as many jokes today, because I can't even you know, I don't even have a sense of humor today. But how else can I enjoy today, in the best way possible, maybe I should perhaps put a bit more I basically, I don't know, perhaps, I don't know jelly and my breakfast to make it a little bit cooler. Or maybe I should go for a run, or perhaps I'm going to try to you know, go for a, let's say, five, let's say 10 minute run, because I'm a runner. So I'm going to do it, let's do it a little bit longer today to enjoy that. Or, since I'm not going to be very positive today, maybe I'm gonna be a little grumpy. So I will tend to avoid most of the situations where I'm expected to be super funny, and instead will work instead on my sales tax. Today, I'm going to just do my taxes today. I don't, I'm not going to basically go out and meet people face to face, I will postpone my meetings for the next day. And today, I'll do my boring stuff, my tax papers, for example, and other stuff to see, you don't resist it. You don't say why it happened to me why I'm feeling like shit, you don't have feelings about your feelings. You accept them as they are, you don't resist them. And once you stop resisting them, now you open up the possibility to actually make that date much better than it would have been if you simply just blamed yourself on oh my gosh, I'm feeling like shit. So that is what I view myself during those days when I might not be at my peak. And I recommend everybody else do the same. Because once you stop judging it, once you accept it, it actually becomes a lot easier. And you might ironically, this is what happens most of the time when I feel like I'm not well rested in the morning, or I'm not as fresh today, or I'm not as you know, let's say cheerful. I simply accept it. I go through the day as normal. And guess what, by the time I reach evening, I'm already in good moods because I didn't resist it, right? But if you resist that, it's like, oh, my gosh, you will go through the entire day and feel anxious. And probably that feeling might even persist for the next few days or weeks. So why don't we just stop resisting it, accept it is what it is and try to make the most of it. I think that's the far better approach than just feeling bad about feeling bad.   Pouya LJ  22:50 Exactly. If that makes that makes a lot of sense. actually feeling bad about feeling bad. It's feeling bad squared to the power and slowly.   Dan  22:59 Now we're going Superman here. But yeah, that's for those mathematicians and nerds. That's exactly you're literally and as all mathematicians know, when you square something, that feeling that's that's what that's called exponential growth. This means as you go through the day, you're, you know, the negative feelings exponentially increase. Can you believe that? Because you mentioned that Grayson, like squared, that is exactly what happens. So you walk in the morning feel like shit, but that negative feeling will then exponentially grow over time. So by the time you reach the evening, you just feel like hell, and that's what 11 million to get super depressed, even, you know, do crazy stuff. So they start, you know, using alcohol or drugs for that reason, because it's getting worse and worse, like, what should I do? How can I regulate my state? Okay, I'm gonna just, you know, go for drugs, for that reason, right? Once you avoid making it squared, you simply allow yourself away out.   Pouya LJ  23:51 Yeah, exactly. And that and that's, that's, I think there's so many good advice. I actually haven't really thought about what you're going to say. So I wasn't anticipating anything. And I, I'm just blown away. Basically, that's what I'm trying to say.   Dan  24:03 My pleasure, man. My pleasure. All right.   Pouya LJ  24:05 Okay, so we are kinda coming humming along to the end of the show. Is there anything in particular that we didn't talk about or anything you want to revisit at this stage?   Dan  24:16 Well, first of all, you mentioned all the things that we had to say to our audience regarding the the issue of mood swings, the thing that we didn't talk as much obviously was perhaps our biology, I mentioned earlier, there are clear linkages between what you eat and how much especially sugar you consume, and other stimulants and how stable you are. So if you're a I don't know I have a lot of my friends. If you are, for example, addicted to certain types of basically a mood altering substances, let's say nicotine, let's say sugar, let's say energy drinks and these cramps, and I really hate it, unfortunately, that I'm seeing these days. Many celebrities and many basically, influencers are unfortunately selling this junk to people energy drinks I really like energy and should be abolished from from the entire face of the Earth. But unfortunately, now we're seeing a new trend. People call it Oh, I can live like hell and then have energy is going to solve all my problems. Now, if you believe in placebo, Yeah, it does. But in reality, you actually ruined the body. So the other things we discussed, was about, of course, managing our mind being positive and not having feelings about our feelings, because it's completely normal to have bad days, no one's gonna judge you for that you should not judge yourself, either. Just go through the day, accept it as what it is. And more importantly, try to understand that it's going to be just one day, if you don't resist it, probably you'll have a bad day for one day, and the next morning, you're going to feel fresh, and I'm just going to be go back to normal. But if you keep persisting on negativity, you might actually, you know, get them over the major, you know, depressive cycle that could last for weeks, if not months. And above all, take care of your health. That means sufficient physical activities. If you don't like if you're not like a gym rat, the way I am, no problem, go for walks, you know, put that goddamn car away, you're going to be saving the planet by reducing the carbon emission. And at the same time, you will get a lot more physical activities, use the public transport Trust me, I am in a lot of great contexts in public transport. I love public transport, they make me so happy over the years, man, I love the public transport. But the point is, you really need to be more active, perhaps being, you know, perhaps trying to change your basically schedule, the way that you're more on foot and you're less in your car, even ideally, doing more aerobic exercise, perhaps then of course, your diet take care of that. How do you eat? How much do you eat? And more importantly, at what portions and at what times of the day? These are all important factors? Do you take regular supplements for multivitamin minerals, trust me, it is important you simply and I know I want to eat all these things naturally? Well, it is proven that no matter how well you eat on a regular basis, if you're living in a modern city, buying the junk food that we buy these days called, you know, fruits and vegetables, which most of them actually aren't even organic, you're not going to get enough vitamins and minerals. So you need to have that supplements, find the one that works for you. And regularly take the supplements, it's definitely gonna help with your mood swings as well. And above all, do not have feelings about your feelings during those bad days. You can do all these things, you can have the regular exercise routine, you can eat healthy, you can have great relationships, you can do everything right. But you can still have shitty days, we all have them. So when it happens, just accept as what it is. Let it go and try to make the most of it. And trust me if you do that, you will probably not have to repeat the same experience the next day.   Pouya LJ  27:41 Amazing. Biology biology shall not be missed.   Dan  27:45 That was a very Darth Vader type of style. I really liked it.   Pouya LJ  27:49 Well, I mean, introducing drama sometimes from time to time. Alright, thank you for joining us. As always, Dan, for this episode. Pleasure, man. And I appreciate you all for listening in tuning in. Without you guys, we're just humming to the void. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for participating if you're leaving comments, and thank you for your suggestions privately and the DMS and whatnot. And until a later episode, have a good one.

Consistency is dubbed the key to long-term success but we all have at some point struggled with lack of consistency. In this program, Daniel and Pouya discuss how we can remain consistent in the pursuit of our goals and gain streaks that are actually lasting.     Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   Wed, 5/12 8:42AM • 36:53 SUMMARY KEYWORDS consistency, streak, reward, days, called, gamification, duolingo, discipline, pandemic, people, literally, consistent, life, process, trophy, exercise, addicted, book, reinforcement, maintain SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:13 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast as always joined by Daniel Morgan, how's it going? Man?   Dan  00:22 What up man? How's it going miss you a lot, buddy. How you doing? How is life I thought Canada's been shut down completely, thanks to pretty much unfriendly neighbor, which is called United States. Sorry, just didn't happen, unfortunately, to give you the vaccines there. But overall, I'm glad to be here with you, man, life is great. And fortunately, we are seeing as I expected, a much more optimistic, basically summer, we're getting closer to it and couldn't be any happier. We're hearing some good news. Unfortunately, of course, there are still parts of the world that are now suffering heavily, namely, India is one of them. But overall, we are seeing grain Oh, it was announced three days ago, basically, that we have now reached a plateau worldwide. In the pandemic. This means that from here on end, the numbers both in terms of infections and death will only basically come down over the coming, let's say 10 months or so. And that means that we're basically as was very intelligently predicted by Dr. Fauci. By the end of 2021, q4, hopefully, life gradually begins to get back to normal, and we're very happy about that matter. So that's pretty good. This means open borders, open borders means more flights and travels, it means more business. It means just pure happiness. So glad to be here with you, man. How are you doing? How's life in Canada?   Pouya LJ  01:41 No, that's good. Um, I think we're all looking forward to that pure happiness section of the argument.   Dan  01:49 We've been waiting for too damn long, man. God dammit. It was too tough.   Pouya LJ  01:53 It was too tough. Yeah, no, it was long. And I think I think the part that was long was probably, I guess everybody, like most people would say the same thing. But it was probably the toughest part for me, because, you know, endurance is that is the judge.   Dan  02:10 Imagine you are technically an ambivert. This means that you have as much introversion as you have extraversion. Imagine someone who has been diagnosed as 99.9% extroverted will experience this pandemic. Oh, my   Pouya LJ  02:25 gosh, yeah, no, I know. It's, it's definitely, definitely tough. And, yeah, the good thing is, I think, if we're not jinxing it, I think that the hump of the whole thing is behind us. So we are   Dan  02:40 Yeah, we are we are rolling down worst is behind us. That's the good part. The worst is behind us everywhere worldwide, because this issue cannot be solved. If I don't know just the United States gets fully vaccinated this issue that worldwide. And this means that so long as there are nations that are way behind, this is not just going to jeopardize their well being but the entire global community. So this issue can really be resolved. When this issue is resolved International. I mean, China was way out of this many months ago, but they're still not living normally. So until and unless all nations are basically on par with this, we cannot really call it over because it's a pandemic. It's a global issue.   Pouya LJ  03:18 No, that makes a lot of sense. And that's, I think, absolutely valid. And hope. Look, as you said, hopefully by the end of 2022 sorry. 2021 Oh my God, I'm still in the old calendar. By the end of   Dan  03:32 That's how we are. Like, imagine like five years from now like 2020 it's like, no Sonny's over we're past that. And it's all good. It's all good. Right?   Pouya LJ  03:44 Exactly. So yeah, really   Dan  03:46 traumatized by the experiences   Pouya LJ  03:48 like that. I know I Amen. But anyway, so by the end of this year, hopefully, we are going to experience some resemblance of normalcy at a worldwide level as you said, and until then, we keep looking, keep keeping our audience up to date on the subject, but today we're going to talk about something slightly different. But it is I guess, important actually coming out of the pandemic, and that is Right, right. And that is how to keep up our our consistency so I'll give you an example I will sometimes start working on a project and you know you have good days that you really on on task you really feel like it and you're achieving things your mental capacities up or physical capacity depending on your project. But there are days of course, we all experienced this that are not so much optimal and you have this you know feeling of dragging yourself if you will and then the natural question is okay, this is completely detrimental to your process progress because you have so many of those good days and and many days are average or below So, but you need to keep the consistency because you want to achieve your goal. And the question is, how would you basically keep that up? In spite of all of those average or below average or outright terrible days? That is my question to you.   Dan  05:17 First of all, I want to thank you for your overdramatic, you know, description, like literally, I just imagined he basically poo Jake's literally dragging himself out of the bed as he crawls, and the saliva is drooling out of his mouth, like God got to do this gut thing again, like, I kind of imagined that. But let's be honest,   Pouya LJ  05:37 believe me how, believe me, that picture is closer to reality than you imagine.   Dan  05:43 Exactly, I wanted to tell you that as well. Like, unfortunately, this is the pandemic, this really became the norm. I mean, just heard the news from New York Times about all these companies that are now trying to profit from losing all the pounds that they have actually gained with a pandemic. So we've really been living very, in a very unhealthy manner. People call it healthy. But I think in the process of preventing illness, we have actually abandoned health completely, both mentally, psychologically, socially, and, of course, physically. But what you're saying, unfortunately, happens to a lot of us. And I really believe that the key issue here is knowing why these situations occur in the first place, how we can prevent them from happening, and why consistency, as you pointed out, is so important. You see, that's the the main issue. First of all, the problem with consistency is not something that is limited to the confines of let's say, a pandemic or a global crisis. This is a basic fundamental human issue. I mean, we haven't had this problem, if you look at your life, I mean, the pandemic just started last year. So it hasn't been just the pandemic itself. And if you look back, or, you know, history, realize we've had problems with lack of consistency throughout our lives, whether it was in, you know, high school, whether it was in college, and somebody matters. So the problem with that is, we humans generally are wired to be more concerned about the present moment, we have a present bias, if you will, as a species. And I talked earlier about this, basically, on social media, because once we understand our very fabric as a human being, and understand that we are designed in a way that we are rather very unstable by nature, I mean, just if we just miss our sleep for one night, just imagine what it does. Research has proven things far less as basically dramatic and far more subtle can affect the way we think and make decisions. For example, the amount of glucose in your bloodstream, the amount of hormones are you today getting high testosterone or low testosterone. So gentlemen, if you're a lady, is the estrogen progesterone going up or coming down, these little changes in your home analogy is definitely going to change the way you feel. Which is why if we want to leave things to be done by how we feel, we almost never, ever finished a project. That is why we as a species, fundamentally need leaders. Because basically, what the job of a leader really is, is to just keep people going and pushing when everybody else has, you know, perhaps gotten tired, or they have forgotten the goals. And that is why leadership is rather a very difficult, basically the responsibility because the leader himself or herself, is also a human being subject to all of those, you know, things we just mentioned. However, the good thing about this issue is that we all can learn the skill of consistency, like it's like anything else, like a muscle? Yes, no one is born with the capacity, I don't know, to benchpress 200 pounds, I don't know, 12 reps, that's not going to be like nobody's born with that capacity, we have to learn it. And I believe that consistency while influenced by our childhood, upbringing, level of education, and DNA and biology, still could be learned and improved for the most part. And that is why I believe it's incredibly important to learn that if we want to get things done, we better learn to basically toughen the muscles of consistency. Because if we just want to let our feelings run the show, we almost never get any task that is long term or midterm done. Basically, it's just simply not possible.   Pouya LJ  09:30 Now, that makes a lot of sense. And I think the part you mentioned about the leaders is, and that's exactly that's why makes the job of a leader extremely difficult. Like, I mean, let's go to the extreme. Let's say you're I don't know, let's say president of a country, let's say President of the United States, and then you're dealing with international crises well, such as COVID, I suppose, but what they can't really say I'm not in mood today.   Dan  09:57 You know what I mean? Today, come on me. Don't want to just solve the problem. I mean, give me a break for five days, God dammit, man, people are gonna die, I'm gonna come back, we'll see what happens. That's not possible. And again, this is not limited to leadership and politics as part of the same thing, leadership and a team and a group and a business and enterprise, all of these things because ultimately, the leaders job, pretty much if you want to, like, you know, avoid all the sugar coating your team or the entire nation towards the goal. Even during those days when the team or the nation says now I don't feel like it are all the world is coming to an end Oh, apocalypses here, right. So for that reason we need them. However, I still believe that inside every follower, there is a leader. And good nations, just like good teams are made of the people who not only have leaders, but also the followers themselves are capable of practicing some leadership. That's called self discipline. So anytime any person uses the practice of discipline, he or she is a leader in that situation, even if he or she has a boss or a manager or whatever. So we all can learn this skill, it's just learnable. It's not easy nor fun, which is why I also stated that that push by, you know, from the top, but usually we all can learn it. And that is why I believe that consistency should be taken very seriously. Because without consistency, almost no task will get done. We need that inner motivation, we have to persuade ourselves and understand without basically consistency, there cannot be any results, we have no choice. It's kind of like, you know, when you have to take that, you know, medication, you just don't like to taste, you're gonna want to planet, okay, every eight hours or so, Oh, my gosh, I go now send an alarm here, which you got to do it because you gotta get the job done. For that reason, I believe it is incredibly important, not only for the leader to keep pushing people, but the followers themselves to practice leadership within their own basically tasks responsibilities.   Pouya LJ  12:06 Very well. So I think that Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And, yeah, so organization wise, that's, that's, that's one aspect of all of this. But there's also another aspect that you're on a very day to day basis, like you I know. So let's actually bring it to a practical examples, because because I know you have consistency in a few few subjects as least as such as, you know, physical activity, bodybuilding, you know, going to the gym, also language learning, like you have these streaks hours, right, using different apps such as Duolingo, etc. So exactly what what is for, for lack of a better word, and in the hopes that I'm not looking too cliche, but what is your secret? Essentially?   Dan  12:56 That's right, well, first of all, you've pointed out two things, which is exercise, and basically Duolingo, which I do daily, but the truth of the matter is, I have straits in pretty much every area of my life, many of which are not known, even sometimes to myself, but it's just like a habit, you see, I really believe that it's all your life is a result of your habits. And your habits oftentimes, are the ones that drive. So honestly speaking, there's no real secret other than creating the habit, of course, I gotta be honest with our audience, I have basically spent many years learning the concept of NLP or neuro linguistic programming. Now, I gotta be honest with you guys. If you know NLP, it's a lot easier to change your emotional associations with things that will give you motivation. But nobody has to be an NLP expert to be able to motivate themselves or have consistency. But if I want to give you the ultimate secret, everything that we do on a regular basis comes down to a reward and punishment. So the key to staying consistent in any task, whether it is to do your Mandarin Chinese practice, or Andrew lingo, I don't know for 500 days straight, or whether it is to go to the gym every single day, even if it's raining outside or don't feel like or you're sick, or trying to keep certain amount of basically customers on the pipeline to make sure you call them on a regular basis to get the business or to visit. For example, let's say one of my streaks in real estate is to contact a certain number of homeowners, and to offer them a price below the market price every single week. So like if my target is like 10 properties per app per week, I do this. However, I got to give you a little bit of a secret here and it's called rewarding yourself. You see, any time I engage in maintaining, for example, a streak in any activity, whether it is to you know, to go to the gym, whether it is to contact the customer, whether it is to I don't know, perhaps do my exercises or whatever it is at the end of that practice. And by the way, we use the sentence training people as well as animals Believe in your own eye, this technique is used all the time, I reward myself. Now that reward could come in variety of shapes. So as I keep my, for example, daily streak in my exercise, I stay forever, literally, I make a plan for like, for every seven days, when I maintain my exercise, I'm going to have a cheat day where I'm gonna have to Pete says, and I'm going to just enjoy, right, and I literally reward myself. I also have a journal, a gold journal, in which I reward my actions and streets, and I keep track of them. For example, right now, in this month journal, I know that I kept my streak on a daily basis with my Chinese every single day. But I was somehow a little bit as somehow not quite serious with my French, for example, right? So I journal my day and my goals and my habits. You see, when you journal is something we call this process gamification. And gamification is used by gaming, or basically, again, developers and gaming companies to make millions of people literally addicted to their favorite game on a daily basis. I'm I mean, right now, every single one of us who are right now listening to this program, we have some things we have a daily streak on. I'm pretty sure if you're listening to us right now you're, you know, online savvy, and you probably love social media, which means pretty much everyone who listens to this show has at least one daily streak is called Facebook or Instagram. If you're writing and listening, the chances are you have subconsciously maintained probably 300 plus days of straight on Instagram, for example, you got to check that thing that's called making something addictive. So guess what, I have studied the science of addiction and how gamification works to make users sometimes in a very unethical manner, addicted. So I'm pretty sure that Facebook and many other social and social media platforms are using some unethical ways to addict. They're basically users. And I use the exact same principles to literally get myself addicted to good things. For example, every audio book or book that I finish, I give myself a trophy for that. And I literally have used I have basically copied, I ripped off the trophy system that is used in a top gaming companies. For example, if you're a, you know, Playstation gamer, there's this system called trophies, which is a made of bronze, silver, gold and platinum. So you get the Platinum pretty much just like the biggest trophy you can get for getting old trophies in one game, right? Let here's one of my secrets to all my audience. today. I have a real life trophy system that I have ruthlessly ripped off from Sony, and I'm using it in my real life. I'm not kidding you. So on my to do list, there's a set of goals, I have associated every streak with a specific trophy. So if it's a very easy one, like doing 15 minutes of Mandarin Chinese, I give myself a bronze trophy for doing that. If it is a little bit harder and requires me to go through five languages in one day, I give myself a silver finishing a book in less than one week, I give myself a gold trophy. And this little silly gamified system. And I even literally level up myself based on my performance. Just Just for the record. Right now my level is 233 based on my streaks tissue, right? So this little silly games that I play, which I have, of course, I haven't really made that up, I actually learned this from my teachers and mentors, because they have their own similar versions of rewarding themselves. These are systems designed to reward you. And the brain is wired this way. When a certain activity gets repeatedly rewarded, especially if the activity is hard to do. The brain suddenly releases dopamine, as soon as the process is accomplished. And that dopamine rush is extremely addictive dies, I have reached out on a streak of many hundreds of almost two years in the streets on Duolingo. Because quite frankly speaking, I will find it much harder to miss my streak than not to actually go with a streak. Why? Because now I have been literally addicted to the process. Because I know that for every single day that I am going to finish my straight, I will be rewarded somehow. So the brain learns Oh, yes, it's a hard process, you get the reward. Dopamine kicks in. And this process after about 21 days becomes highly addictive. For the same reason I am addicted to exercising if I had a long flight one and I miss my exercise, I will feel much worse than if I actually do this. I was telling the story in one of my seminars. I was actually because I had a very long international flight. I was doing push ups with the permission of the flight attendant during the flight I just couldn't wait anymore. I was like, come on, man. I gotta do it. And of course it's caused a huge scene. Obviously people taking photos and videos. It was a mess, but I had to do it. And I was like now I need something to climb on. I got to do my basically push ups. Do that. Come on, sir, please sit down, and all that stuff, right. So what I'm really saying I have the same thing for every book that I finished and I finish an average of one book per week. Again, my, the books that I finish are usually all nonfiction, I do not consider, I don't know, reading Harry Potter to be certainly growth reading. So when I'm saying reading, I'm talking to like, boring type of reading, I'm talking about like, really scientific type of books, business type of books that kind of looks at you really don't want to read on, you know, let's say, on your vacation. And but the reason is very simple, because I am basically making myself addicted to the process through reinforcement and reward. So if you want to do that for yourself, anytime you want to have any good habits, whether it is to exercise regularly, to do a certain number of calls, as a salesperson, or whatever it is, you need to learn to reward yourself, that reward is very important at work comes in many forms. I use all of them. But there are basically two main types personal and social. So I actually very, you know, unapologetically, I make a public announcement of my streets every I don't know, one year or so. Because that social feedback actually, itself acts as a reinforcement. But given the person that the fact that we cannot rely on social enforcement all the time, I rely mainly on personal forms of reporting, which often comes in forms of rewarding myself, like my exercise every seven days of street and exercise means I get to eat to pee says on the weekends, that's one form of reinforcing. And in other ways, whether it is for example, language, learning, whether it is anything else, so if you want to get good at something, and you want to maintain consistency, understand your discipline cannot get you through all the time, because your willpower will never last. So I never rely on willpower. It wasn't like can you probably are the God of consistency, because you have so much willpower? Of course not. The reason is not that I have, you know, I'm still a human being like everybody else. I'm not a robot. I'm not a Google, I'm not, I don't know what Siri, I'm a human being. And I go through the same ups and downs, basically, as all other people. However, once you love something, and you're addicted to it, it is no longer difficult to do for me. missing out on Duolingo is like somebody who was hooked on social media not to have access to his or her phone for one week, that person will go berserk and crazy right? Here. That's what most people do wrong, if you like, the key to consistency is to make myself do what I hate. Yeah, well guess what willpower doesn't last, not for too long, eventually, you'll get tired. And that's what most people do. They want to go on a date start exercising, they get a little bit tired, they hate themselves start eating again. And they actually end up gaining more weight and actually first started. So the key here is you're making the process painful, I do the exact opposite. Opposite, I make the process more fun, and not doing it painful. So for me losing my streak is now going to be painful, because now I worked on it for 600 days. Imagine you work on a project for 600 days, you it's like a baby, you want to keep going at it right. And that's the beauty of momentum. This means you got to work at consistency is one of those the other series I'm gonna share with you, you get to work with consistency for only a few days, maybe a few months after that consistency will work on you. And it becomes harder to miss than to do. So when you put it all together, we all can use reinforcement, plus, basically making the process more fun. And more importantly, staying with something for about a few weeks. I call it the 21 day rule until it becomes a habit. Once it's a habit. It is no longer difficult. I gotta be honest with you. I do know there are times of course when I feel like yeah, you know what? I don't really feel like doing it. Yes. During those days, I have no choice but to use discipline. But please understand. I'm using discipline not every day. But occasionally on those days when I really don't feel like but what am I really the exact opposite. That is they want to use their discipline every single day because the process is pretty boring for them. And they will run out of juice and boom, they give up. So for me, it's the opposite. It's enjoying the process. And on those occasions, which is quite normal. It happens to everybody where I really don't feel like it. I say Listen, man, come on discipline, do it now. And I get Yeah, I do it. But I use those again occasionally and not every single day.   Pouya LJ  24:39 That's fascinating. It's actually dig. Very helpful. I think you're right. Starting it is probably first few days, weeks, maybe maybe months depending on the task at hand might be most difficult. And that's where most people end up giving up or absolutely not continuing grasp. So, in that sense, I   Dan  25:01 think you're so right now, is there anything in your life that you have really maintained long streaks at, because oftentimes is something that you really enjoy doing because maintaining streaks for some that you really enjoy doing, or something is very meaningful that maybe you don't really I don't really always enjoy doing I don't know my Mandarin flashcards, honestly, sometimes really boring. And you look at this character, it's like, God dammit, they're like, 200 points in this little shitty character. How am I supposed to memorize this? Right? So you don't always, but maybe because it's part of my identity as an international business person. So I got to learn this goddamn physical language, I have no other choice. So either it's part of your identity, or you really enjoyed, but it's something that is meaningful to you, is your writing on any aspect of your life that you feel like you maintain, you know, a high level of consistency at?   Pouya LJ  25:51 Not so much recently. So there are a couple of instances that comes to mind. I was while you were describing, I was actually thinking about this. And I guess I used to well, depends on the timeframe. So I'm still maintaining my relative. So audio books or books, they're in the same category in my definition, but reading or listening to a book for during a period of one year. So I have managed to maintain at least 25 books a year for the last six years. So that's, I   Dan  26:25 guess what? Guess what, why do you think you've done that? Big? Did you find the process to be very painful during these past few years?   Pouya LJ  26:32 Oh, no, I actually really enjoy. So I think a couple years ago or so, it was I was actually sure that I was like, You know what, I'm not gonna get through the 25. So I had to cram two books at the end of the year, which was, which was what you're saying those days that are discipline has to come in? Or you know, you really don't want to lose that streak, I guess.   Dan  26:49 But you use your discipline at the time, because you will never enjoy anything, every single day. Because we're humans, our hormones, our bodies changing all the time.   Pouya LJ  27:00 Absolutely, exactly. But but the task itself, generally speaking is joyful for me. Like reading books in general. But yeah, so so that that would be one thing was meaningful. I mean, I'm not counting brushing my teeth, I guess.   Dan  27:14 How do you reward yourself? By the way? Anybody, like finish these books? Like how do you reward yourself by that? Like, do you share, for example, some ideas about that book with your friends? Or do you put it out on your stories? Like, how do you write? Yeah,   Pouya LJ  27:26 I think I did. I think I do it a couple of different ways. Despite is not necessarily consistent. Sometimes I share a review, or a short article on on my website or Instagram, social media in general. Sometimes that's the case sometimes. So I definitely do check them off on Goodreads. I don't know if you're familiar that website. But   Dan  27:47 yes, yes. You're a fan of that when Actually, yeah,   Pouya LJ  27:50 yeah. So I always, well, not regularly, but after a few weeks, a few months or so especially at the end of the year, I tend to update that often. Now, again, I don't put every single book that I read there. But that gives me a sense of purpose, I think, in a way,   Dan  28:07 and a sense of progress. That's why progress,   Pouya LJ  28:08 right? You check   Dan  28:10 it off on basically, you know, Goodreads, and what I do is like I literally give myself a trophy. And at the end of the month or a year, you have a list that is getting bigger. You see, these are all gamification concepts. So one of the first sports I've ever had in business was gamification. And this was way back before identification was nowadays gamification is using every single application you can imagine. But when I first learned this, this was about 910 years ago, nobody even knew what the implication meant. So this is exactly what you're doing that sense of progress, every little check every little things, your number getting bigger. All of these things are reinforcements. And these aren't secrets that people can use to become literally hooked on that subject or activity. And if we do it, we have a sense of, you know, pleasure. And that pleasure ultimately creates the desire to consistency is to do the exact opposite of what most people do. Most people set a goal that is difficult. They imagined to be hard and difficult. They use their discipline to begin the process. They get demotivated and they leave it the opposite it should be done and that you should first find a way to get hooked on the process. And that process involves linking a lot of positive emotions. Now I'm talking to right now I'm using a bit of NLP concept here and call this that anchoring, or basically emotional conditioning. Now you don't have to be an expert, but you in a simple term, you literally get yourself to enjoy the process. And once you do, then you have to use your discipline occasionally, instead of regularly and that basically is possible because every one of us can actually get us to do one more day of this, you know, task, but if you don't do it every single day, no one's gonna have the motivation. It's designed to avoid pain. Yes.   Pouya LJ  29:57 Having said all of that, I have to preface this then I'm not actually so good at being consistent in general. So I think Don't take my advice   Dan  30:07 with you right now, this is not your problem, right? The problem of 99.9% of the population. I mean, with all due respect, consistency is not somebody can find in most people at the very beginning, it's quite normal. This is something that takes a lot. It's kind of like becoming a kung fu master or something, right? Or getting used to being punched in the I don't know, in the belly and say, Oh, you have no problem, right? So it's kind of like that. And but in reality, you should never ever bash yourself or anybody that you know, who has a problem with, you know, lack of consistency, because nobody is supposed to do that. I told you, we are not by nature designed for consistency. Unfortunately, our very evolutionary programming is designed to make us unhappy, unfulfilled, and live a very short life and die at the age of 25. This is our genetic, original evolutionary programming, just like animals do. Right? So in that case, we are no different in any way from animals, which is why to have fulfillments. And to have patents and to achieve big goals, we have to rise above that, which means we pretty much have to go against the nature or as I do hack nature. gamification is a great example of hacking. It's like a life hack that we use to temper with our very nature as a species, which is why we all need to work even I myself, I would I still have a long way to go in terms of consistent my others of my life. And for that reason, it's like a never ending journey, you're never there completely, you're always getting better. And we all have to work on ourselves consistency. And it takes a tremendous amount of effort. But it is totally worth it. If we know how. And if we put in the effort, then it'll definitely change our destiny.   Pouya LJ  31:50 Absolutely, I think I think it actually does in those short bursts, that I did have consistency or discharge areas such as reading a book, I think I can definitely attest to that. We're shortly coming to the end of the show. So is there anything that we missed out on that you want to talk to talk about or summarize?   Dan  32:07 Well, first of all, it was a great show, I really loved it, we talked about the importance of consistency and why we have been consistent. And then we describe why most of us and by most of them, like really, most of us have problem with this. And no one in this world. If you are a human being if you have a human chromosome, you are not, you're not supposed to be consistent. By nature, no one is consistent. So to become consistent, you have to actually work on yours. This is called personal development. And you don't have to make it so hard. We said the key to consistency is not discipline. People say like, Oh, you gotta be disciplined. Oh, the problem is your brain is designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. That is why you always want to see what is that notification on your app, you always want to check the latest story on your friend on Instagram. These things are not does that you're just like, okay, I should be in touch with my friends. Oh, discipline opened Instagram. It's not like this, you do it because you like it. The key because it's an all others of life is the exact same thing. You have to find a way to get hooked on the process, and to use the same methods of reinforcement to get yourself enjoying the process, which is why I believe that in all areas of life, if you want to get consistent, here's the question you have to ask yourself, How can I make this process as fun as possible? And how can I reward myself, every time I stay consistent, both are important. If you do not reward for example, if you go to a circus, you see that anytime these animals do a certain jump, or go through a certain hoop, immediately, the guy there rewards him with some sort of food or whatever it is. And guess what happens if that person stops rewarding them? Well, someone's going to be a Tigers lunch very soon. This is the story that we have to go through. So you need to learn to reward. Make the process fun, number one, number two, reward yourself for staying consistent. Tell everybody that you're consistent. Go to your coach and say, coach, I've been at the gym for two months. And yeah, man, you're the best you say you bet your ass and the best. And this process is going to give you that. So it's called an example of social, basically rewards. But please do know that if you want to rely solely on social rewards, you're not going to stay consistent. So you have to create personal rewards. One example I gave you guys was doing seven days of exercise in a row without breaking a single of these streets equals to pizza on the weekend. That's one of the things I do for myself and I love pizza, especially with chicken. I love it. But the point is this, you got to create that level of consistency. And once you get hooked once you get rewarded, you do not need discipline every single day but trust me even if you love something, if maybe yes You had a very bad fight with your girlfriend. Of course, the next day, you don't have dessert for anything, let alone doing your Mandarin studies. So what you instead now it's time for discipline, but you'll be using the discipline muscle irregularly, which means you're literally your ego depletion will not get in the way. Because just like you know, using muscle make suit makes your muscles tired, using your discipline will make your ego depletion occur. And that ultimately makes it much harder. However, if you're doing what you love, most of the time, during those days where you're enjoying Li during the process, your discipline muscle is actually recovering and resting. So on those days when you had a terrible night, or you missed your sleep, or you heard a bad news, or you're hurt that you're I don't know, you cannot get the vaccine, even though you're 70 something years old. During those days, you still can use your muscle of discipline because it's been recovering throughout the process.   Pouya LJ  35:54 Amazing. That's just I think that's a good place to end. Thanks. As always joining,   Dan  36:00 buddy. Very nice. Glad to be here.   Pouya LJ  36:02 Thank you everybody for joining us. Hope you stay consistent. Also consistent in leaving comments. That would be nice for our shows. I mean and until later episode. Have a good one, everybody.

The world is changing rapidly and with it so should we which is why in this episode Daniel discuses the three most important skills that prove essential to prepare us for the world of tomorrow! 

In this episode Daniel will offer a brief breakdown of the book the WIERDest people in the world that stands for Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, and Democratic and uses his international experience to contrast eastern and western cultures. 

One of the best tools in the arsenal of success is your ability to regularly check the progress you are making towards your goals  and in this episode you will learn why what gets measured gets done. 

As we get closer to the end of the pandemic many of us are wondering how will our lives change after the pandemic and whether we will experience some permanent changes once life goes back to normal. In this episode, we will discuss this very issue and offer our prognosis for the situation.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript...----more----     SUMMARY KEYWORDS pandemic, life, emission, crisis, problem, people, vaccines, literally, world, technology, months, future, article, ready, managed, major, earthquake, living, fact, hope SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:09 Hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast joined with Daniel Mulligan as always, how's it going, buddy?   Dan  00:17 What a man, buddy, glad to be here with you. Life is great. We're hearing a lot of good news from around the world. I mean, England was the first country to reopen up the first western country to open up, basically, and we're hearing some pretty good news. And based on what we've heard so far of global travel, as we restore, and the level of optimism going up all across the building, so the place that you know, that were hit the hardest, including Europe, which now there's a lot of, you know, sign of hope, basically. And the US, obviously, will be out of this mess. And in a couple, perhaps, three, four months. So that'll be a great news generally couldn't be happier and more excited about the future, the summer is coming. Last one, not the best summer of all, but this one probably going to be a lot better. So the hope is rising. And we are extremely hopeful for the future, basically. And I couldn't be any more grateful about how we have managed to, you know, come along so far. And hopefully things are getting much better, haven't you, man, I heard some stuff about Canada, you guys are probably hopefully going forward a little bit slower than many other development development societies. But still, you guys are making progress too, I guess. Right.   Pouya LJ  01:24 Yeah, it's a it's a bit of a problem with having vaccines in hand to be able to vaccinate people. It's not it's not a it's getting better. But it has been slow. So that's the that's the major hurdle, I suppose. Here in Canada. But yeah, it's it's coming along. Slowly. But surely. Now. Yeah. So I was talking about on this subject we were going to talk about for today's topic, we're going to talk about what are the things we should be doing to prepare because it's going to be a different life the same, the same way we have developed ourselves to adapt to the news situation of dealing with the pandemic, we're going towards the world towards a world, which it's not necessarily the same as before, but it's going to have elements as before, and maybe some argument and an upgrade at once. So what are the things that an individual should do, that may not be even thinking about that should prepare themselves help prepare themselves for a future post pandemic? Hopefully, that is prosperous. And   Dan  02:29 exactly, man, that's exactly what we're hoping for. And I guess right now, we have somehow gotten used to form that new norm is not something that can be strong, especially when it comes to social kind. However, the pandemic did have a lot of positive sides too. I mean, like, we've seen some terms of remote work, which has traffic and emission. Ever honest with you, I was recently finishing my vehicle pulled up put a review soon on social media called you know, how to prevent another plane Oh, and other climate crisis. And in reality speaking, I was really surprised, I thought, I feel like you know, this pandemic really helped the environments and reduce the emission, but base the first that I found in the book, at the impact of the pandemic, on the environment, it was minimal, it was less than 3% emission that was reduced overall, which showed that the majority of the emission in the world has not that much to do with moving around and a you know, complete lockdown can't necessarily reduce the emission that much was for me, I feel like you know, what, there was this conspiracy theory, these guys as well stop moving around, so we can reduce the the emission but in reality, the pandemic itself did reduce the entire global emission by less than 3%, which wasn't even you know that much. So this was not one of them. However, the pandemic definitely did teach us a lot of great lessons. Well, mainly, remote work is indeed possible. And many employees could be as efficient working at home, as opposed to just you know, going to the office, and I'm pretty sure that this is gonna be one of those hybrid things where we'll be having a future where companies are going to offer more such hybrid approach to working that is, I don't know, let's say half the week we'll be working at home, the other half of the office and so on, this is definitely going to be a great thing, but I'm pretty sure this pandemic is gonna make some major changes in the near future. And this is going to be the beginning of a new approach towards life. However, we've had all these things for socialists and they'll and wearing masks. This also happened with a flu pandemic. And like this, they tend to live in the present moment most of the time, and kind of like, as we've been somehow struck by some sort of natural disaster being a major hurricane being a storm. After an earthquake, if you've seen these families who have suffered from hurricanes, especially in the coastal areas, or those who have served from earthquake, the first few, let's say days or weeks or months after the event, they're strongly involved with it, then after a while, they forget that there was a patent, basically, a tornado or an earthquake. And the same thing, of course, will happen with a pandemic. Yes, it is true that this has already caused a lot of change the way we live our lives, but then again, human nature and look at their history and knowing that this was not by any means the first plague anybody ever had to deal with looking at things will tell us that this is just one of those major events that happened, and people will just go back living the way they want it to. So I don't think that dependent per se, make a dramatic shift in the way we live our lives. The rest of our you know, life, because this is not the first pandemic. And unfortunately, by that, by the way, it looks probably won't be the last either. And looking at the history tells us that many societies who thought that this was the end of it all, and that this one pandemic, or this one World War, or this one, tsunami is the end of it all, probably, this is not going to be the case, because I've seen this happening over and over again. So people probably about when who declares they spend it because over space, as you probably know, people are in this momentum of oh my gosh, I still got to do this. So it will take approximately three weeks to about a month or two for most people to get used to a new situation, which means I can assure you now, by this time, this is declared over by nearly a show, almost in less than perhaps a month, maybe two, most people are back to living their lives probably very differently. And if you feel like this is going to change, I don't know social context, you are completely mistaken. Because in reality, people are now going to overdo most of those things that used to be forbidden. Obviously, it's human nature, you want to somehow go for it and knock ourselves out basically, right. So for that reason, I see no change the way we you know, do and socialize at all, what I might see is the exact opposite, we'll see a major surge and the increase in terms of these activities that will occur. However, politically, economically and professionally, we're going to be seeing some changes. The first you know is going to be the airlines, I mean, are these guys going to be actually change their entire plan of traveling, we are definitely going to see some increase in many goods and services that are related to tourism, traveling and so on. So all of these things are going to play a role. So even the trend will be more in demand, the price will also be much higher. The same thing applies to hotels, and so many other industries that were hit hard during the pandemic. But more importantly, we have to look at the political changes in this system, we've seen a major political failure. And I really loved the last article by noble Hurry, who actually mentioned this in detail in his latest article that he posted. I wish I could this pandemic was more a political failure than any other type of failure. So we're gonna see some major changes, I hope by governments to learn from this experience and prepare themselves for the next outbreak. But in reality, I don't think that this is going to be like one of those things that will change life forever. Because we have seen plagues and pandemics and outbreaks repeatedly throughout, you know, human history, we've seen that life simply moves on and everything goes back to normal afterwards. And that's what I personally would like to thank. But then again, there's always going to be a factor factor that how we can take advantage of this and how we can actually get ready for the next outbreak. But I'm pretty sure that most of us are now going to be ready for the next pandemic a lot more than we used to. But still, it's not backed up by governmental support, then that simply will be all in vain.   Pouya LJ  08:55 That's absolutely correct. And I have to read I haven't read the latest article by Yuval Noah Harare, I didn't know there is one. So I got you got me interested there.   Dan  09:06 You can check it out. It's pretty good. Actually, it's a free article. And is he published it on a multi multiple journals. And it fully explains because he's a historian. He's seen these things throughout history a lot. So he describes the fact and it's a very wonderful article proventil all of our listeners to actually check this article out.   Pouya LJ  09:25 Fascinating. Yeah, I will certainly do that myself. And we'll link to that in the comment in the comment section at the end of the comment section but the description section of the episode. Okay, so very, so we're moving forward. We're moving past has has Well, besides the obvious, I suppose, has there any been any lessons for you personally, or for other people that you know of, that you would want to take from this pandemic moving forward changing so maybe not completely going back to normal, but adding to what's going on? Because as you know, you, we are meeting you, and a lot of others are very interested if there is hardship, if there's progress past it. It's useful, right? So we want to make use of it that says, What are the things that you think we can take from this pandemic? And that not from the for sure, there is a governmental aspect in preparation for the future pandemics, but on more of a personal level, perhaps, or individual level?   Dan  10:26 Very well. And I agree with you completely. I think this pandemic did teach us a lot of great lessons. I think that the psychological damage of this pandemic was far more than its impact on the lives of people around the world. We've had, of course, unfortunately, a number of deaths that were beyond what most modern societies could actually have. Because we have advanced medicine and having to deal with all these deaths, as we know in the year 2020, and 2021. It just makes no sense. We are at such a level of development in terms of medicine. However, again, in this article, Harare talks about this. And he says that this plague and pandemic, given that we think it was the worst thing that ever happened, because most of us have no experience of a major pandemic in, you know, modern history. So the last one goes back to 1980s, way before any of these, you know, technologies were there. And at that time, nobody even knew what the virus really was. I mean, they are calling a flu, but there have has been no real evidence of exactly what the virus was because the medical technology did not actually do anything about it. But this time around, not only we could exactly identify the virus know exactly what are the problems? What's the antibody like and have it generally show that our advancement technology has definitely helped us a lot in this regard, which is why in terms of what we did with a pandemic wrong, most of it actually goes back to a policy and not technology. For that reason, I don't think that this pandemic necessarily was poorly handled from the medical sector. Because I mean, the idea of just having a vaccine ready for mass distribution less than a year is just, you know, it's the first time It's never happened before, for the first time in history. And a novel unknown virus happens. And a year later, we have the vaccine, multiple manufacturers have worked on it. And boom, it's like literally going to Macy's and Walmart, you get like, you know, you get like all the flavors to get like the different flavors of the vaccines, if you will. So that was like really incredible, personally, to see how much we've made progress that we literally have now options. I mean, in certain countries. I mean, right now you're in Canada, you literally can pick up, it's just like buying your tariffs from God Damn, it's like buying it. I don't know, internet provider. So you can see like, well, you got Johnson and Johnson here. And then we got AstraZeneca here. And then we got, for example of Pfizer here. And then we got Sputnik v here. So literally, that not only we did not fall behind, we actually made so many different vaccines available in less than a year. And that was just incredible. So we have to Hale and admire our medical progress. This is just quite unprecedented. So that's the good side of it. But obviously, in terms of policy, as a whole from store, we've seen as always how politicians disappoint. And we've we saw how this was handled. Probably I as of now, especially from the year 2020. I cannot think of a single nation that handled this pandemic. Well, politically Not a single one. I mean, if you think of any single country, they could have done things much better, but they didn't. Because the world worldwide, none of us were ready. You're now in Canada, we know that the Kenyan government is you know very well, in most cases. But even the Kenyan government failed in this regard. Because Sure, sindhya happened during the Trump administration, the same thing happened to Europe. We thought Germany was way ahead. And now look at Germany. Dude, these guys have been locked down since November. Are you freaking kidding me? So this is what we've realized that technology won't solve most prompts, if politics is in the way and fortunately, this is going to teach all of us in the future to be prepared for an individual level. But from my perspective, I think that every basically difficulty is at the same time an opportunity. And we saw the fact that this pandemic could somehow be productive for some people, yes, many lost their jobs. Unfortunately, you know, the psychological tool was extremely heavy, particularly among the the extroverted population. So it was very difficult it still is because we're not adequate yet. But at the same time, it taught us that technology can help us I mean, the very fact that we use, you know, Internet technology to have our lives, you know, moving forward, that was just incredible, because if you look at the history, this was not the case. I mean, in the past when a flu pandemic occurred, this had to create the need for another world war two compensate for that, you know, economic damage, because at that time, there was no such thing as zoom. So if you shut down the city, you also close and shut down the economy. But we saw that During this time, we actually managed to keep the economy's running Despite all these limitations, so we should look at the positive side as well. And on a personal level, as you pointed out yourself, we also really, yeah, man, I mean, it's possible to go through difficult moments of, you know, human history and still come out stronger and able to, you know, survive and thrive during this pandemic. I mean, the same pandemic made life perhaps easier for certain people as well. I mean, like, they could simply I mean, I just talked to one of my friends who were just today, we had one of our, you know, group sessions, basically. And he's like, dude, I just love this man. And I don't have to, I think from now on, I only work online and I don't, I can just work in my underwear, man is pretty cool. I love to work in my underwear, man is so much more comfy. So for that reason, we are going to see a major shift towards renewable energy, green energy using that technology, instead of just you know, reducing carbon emission, these are all going to be some of the good facts that will be left after the pennant is over. However, from my point of view, the biggest, you know, reminder of this pennant pandemic for us is that our politicians doesn't matter where you are living right now, you could be living in one of the world's most developed society, and who live in one of the world's Least Developed societies. And you'll see that in the end, it doesn't matter how much technology is available to if policies are not in place to help you to protect you, then we'll see the disaster that we saw, especially early part pandemic, most countries, so I hope that we as we leave this pandemic behind, you know, around the world, we develop awareness regarding policy, and we will prepare ourselves for these such events, because they might happen again, I mean, that's just, you know, part of life. So if we get ready to deal with that in the future will will then hopefully, we will somehow not repeat the same mistakes that we made during this pandemic. And on a very personal level. Obviously, if you have gone through the panic so far, you can look back and say, you know, what, I just went through 12 months of almost everything bad that could happen to human human being right. So you got you got loneliness, you got lack of a social life, you got a lack of entertainment, you got lack of human contact. So if you're right now listening to us, you have, you know, and you've done something with your time during this past 12 months, then congratulations, you're really are a superwoman, or a Superman, because it says, You should literally pat yourself on the back, like, dude, I just went through 12 months of the pandemic, and I'm still here. And you should literally pat yourself on the back and know that you have accomplished something wonderful. Maybe some of your friends right now are not with you because they committed suicide, because they lost hope, because they just stopped, you know, following their goals. And they instead started drinking heavily, right? So for those of us who managed to go through this penalty, the least damage possible, I mean, everybody's going to get damaged in this situation. There's no doubt about it, but some of us got damaged less. And I believe that is exactly what matters for us. Because if you are one of those who got damaged less, and he actually managed to accomplish something, perhaps you focus more on doing your term papers before the end of the goddamn semester for the first time in your whole life. Or perhaps you manage to work consistently on your projects. And to delay, maybe maybe be more on time, because now everything is online, so you don't have to be late and you can blame the traffic. So there were a lot of opportunities for us to go through this pandemic, knowing that it is possible for us to simply work hard and to get the results. So you can look back at this and say, You know what, I did something big here, man I, I have, it's like for our generations, you know, the millennials. For us. It's like our grandparents, or grand grandparents who went through the World War experience, we are facing with something that is actually technically and logistically more significant than a World War, because during a World War, there are many nations that are just simply just neutral, and you can live their normal. So what we saw in the pandemic, we, our generation, we should literally be proud of this because most of us youngsters especially, we went through something that most of our grandparents couldn't even dream of going through. But we did it and that requires recognition. And we have to know that if we could do this, if we could go through such a hell called the COVID pandemic, we can do almost anything else. Because if you feel like this was the last crisis of your life, I got a bad, you know, bad news for you. And the fact of the matter is that life is a series of problems, like the ocean waves, and they are but occasionally interrupted, not by a peaceful sea, but by tornadoes. So life basically is problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, crisis, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem crisis. So this is the wave of life like the wave of the ocean, right? And we will go through with this throughout our lives, and most of us we are on the second half of that crisis, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be the last crisis. In our lives, socially, politically, or even personally, and knowing that we could go through this crisis gives us the confidence to know that we can go through any other prices. And the fact that we've managed to, you know, somehow hold on to it and not give up like all those who unfortunately committed suicide or, you know, gave into drug abuse or heavy drinking. Those of us who didn't do that, we know that we are ready for the next wave. And guess what's going to be the next wave once we finish the pandemic? problem, problem, problem, problem prices, problem, problem, problem, problem, crisis. So you just went through one crisis, hopefully, we're gonna finish this one again in next eight months, if you are living in the Western world, or in the next 14 months if you're living in the developing world, but ultimately, we will get out of this. And once we do we have the confident belief in ourselves that yes, we did it. We went through this, we survived and thrived. And we are ready for what? That's right. problem. Problem. problem. Problem. problem. Problem price. Oh, yeah.   Pouya LJ  20:59 All right. Okay, so that sounded optimistic. I want to say, All right, I'm just kidding.   Dan  21:05 This is optimistic, because this is the life and the whole point of life is to go through problems, problems, problems, problems, problems. Yes. And to grow from it. That's the right attitude. The whole point of life is to grow from all these experiences. And once you realize that it is your job to solve problems. I mean, name one person who has no problem or crisis, oh, I can think of one, that person is dead. So when you are dead, you got no problems, you got no crisis, right? So life is dealing with problems. And optimism is knowing that despite all these problems and crises, you can deal with it, that the future is always going to be brighter than the past. And that no matter how tough things gets, whether a pandemic a world war or major, you know, technological disruption that will make you perhaps render you obsolete in the workforce, you know, that you are capable of dealing with whatever life throws at you. That is optimism, optimism is not denying the presence of problems or crises. There's like, no, there's no bendemeer. Once you deny that, you're not an optimist, you're an idiot. But once you are now, to say, yes, there are problems. Yes, there are crises. No, the last places, but I am more than capable of dealing with whatever life throws at me, I'm always greater than all the changes that we know will be in front of me. And I have the greater bad, I just went emic, which means for whatever, crash, I will be damned ready.   Pouya LJ  22:39 So that's, that's really good to hear. Thanks, Dan. It's I think it's a was a very productive episode we have today. But before we close, whether any, anything that we missed out that you want us to talk about or summarize,   Dan  22:55 or Well, first of all, the topic very much great face on your cheeks, but also discussed the life after the pandemic. Fortunately, the news is generally positive world wide. In some nations, things are much better than the others, obviously, because I mean, I mean, that's called modern equality, obviously. But as a whole, the world will eventually get out of this pandemic. And most of the predictions marked q4 of 2021. And we will hopefully see that happening in most countries around the world by then. And we discussed how we'll change for getting out of the pandemic. And I said that this pandemic wasn't the you know, the first, nor probably the last. So it's not going to dramatically change life forever, like nothing really does. And we discuss the fact that those of us went through serious difficult, will be able to handle whatever life throws at us with the right attitude, we also find what it means to be an optimist. an optimist is not somebody who denies problems or crisis, nor someone who thinks that his or her current problems the last life is, as we discussed a series of problems only interrupted occasionally by crisis, which means we need to understand this, prepare ourselves for it, and develop a belief and faith in ourselves and know that the future was going to be brighter, because we have just proven to ourselves that we can go through an entire year of complete restriction where life comes to a halt. But hope still continues. And that's exactly we did. And it's going to hopefully teach us in the future to be able to work on ourselves. And if we could go through the COVID pandemic survive and thrive through it, we can do anything.   Pouya LJ  24:33 Perfect. That's very good to hear. That's very positive, I think. Yeah, despite that, hints that might suggest that there's negativity. It's not ultimately Oh, yeah, it's very optimistic. Yeah. My point of view. Again, thanks. As always, Dan, for joining us. My pleasure. And thank you everyone for listening and tuning in and until a later episode, have a good one.

Financial literacy is the main difference between those who have to constantly worry about money and those who don’t. In this episode you will learn how financially literate people think about money differently than the rest of us.

It is said all things in moderation and moderation in all things and in this episode Daniel discusses why it is important to avoid an extreme path and stick to a moderate one in all personal and professional areas of life. 

Following the 2020 election which marked the dawn of Biden's presidency, the world saw a turning point in history as the nationalist policies of the previous administration were replaced by a globalist one. In this episode of the Beyond the Present podcast Daniel and Pouya discuss what the Biden presidency means not only for the US but also for the rest of the world   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS trump, president biden, biden, world, vaccines, administration, russia, approach, earthquake, president biden's, pandemic, run, nations, policies, ministration, major, talking, vaccinated, obama, highly SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:10 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BGP podcast. I'm here, as always with Danny Mulligan, how's it going, buddy?   Dan  00:18 What's the man buddy, glad to be here with you pretty happy and excited to be here for you to another let's talk edition of Beyond the present podcast, life is great we are gradually approaching this summer, which as many know is thought to be our first get away from all of this madness called the COVID pandemic. So pretty happy and excited, because as you probably know, I am the kind of person who is pretty much always on the move. And having seen our lifestyles change over the past year or so has obviously made me even more hopeful about what's about to occur in the near future. So life is pretty good. on all fronts, we're happy about the pace at which most of the world is being vaccinated. Although quite frankly, I'm a little bit disappointed by the European Union, things are much better. I mean, the US started off his way back. But after President Biden took, took the office, fortunately, things have gotten a lot better. And now we are hearing that, hopefully, by July, the US will be pretty much fully vaccinated. The stories are also pretty good in many other countries, let's say and, for example, in Russia, I heard they're gonna open up pretty soon, because as you're filming, I was pretty active there. Middle East is doing pretty well so far, apart from a few countries. And the only problem that I have right now is the pace, the slow pace of which Europe is actually moving forward. And it's quite ironic, because I remember Germany was thought to be one of the best countries in the world in terms of the way they handled the pandemic. And that was one of the least efficient, I have no idea why and how it all changed. But generally speaking, you're probably going to be a little bit behind. But for now, the world as a whole is moving forward. I don't know about how things are in Canada, by the way. So you're telling me how things are? And when you guys yeah, that predict things to go back to normal?   Pouya LJ  02:02 Yeah, no, unfortunately, it's not going that well here either. Maybe similar to European Union, I'm not too sure how they are doing but maybe even worse, because the problem is Canada does not have production of vaccines within its country. So it has to get all others. And given what it is it's been proving difficult. And also not not just politically difficult, but also very transportation, apparently, of this vaccine is very, very difficult because of this, especially,   Dan  02:27 you know, the western vaccines. Yes, sir.   Pouya LJ  02:31 Yes. Yeah. Exactly. My maternal Yeah.   Dan  02:33 Now, what is the current statistics in Canada, by the way, in terms of those who've been already vaccinated? The numbers? I mean, is it actually going down? Or is it still going up?   Pouya LJ  02:45 Like numbers,   Dan  02:46 so it's infectious? Yes, of course, yes. Oh, no, infections   Pouya LJ  02:49 are good, it they're not that bad. They're the combination of social distancing, some restrictions, and the vaccines are helping a bit so that the infections, at least within Ontario, are not really that bad. They're like, less than 1000 per day, for your lifestyle, generally, because   Dan  03:06 now gradually, we're seeing, you know, places getting opened, and people are gradually going back to your regular life, are you guys still under a lockdown or life is kind of back to normal.   Pouya LJ  03:17 So it's not a lockdown right now in Toronto, or wrestle Ontario. But there, they have created this tearing system that depending on the statistics, they're gonna put it in different color coded. So, quote, unquote, so what does that mean is that if numbers go higher, they have certain sort of, like 20% capacity 50% capacity indoors outdoors, like these kinds of restrictions vary depending on the numbers I have, across population. So about but generally speaking, for me personally, it didn't create a huge difference. But But I'm thinking for the months to come go into summer, similar to last year, when it was more outdoor activities started, did but because of the nature of this virus itself, probably things going to open up even regardless of the vaccine, and hopefully, the vaccine if then going back to the fall on the other end of the summer, which will also hopefully not be a problem. But we will see. Yeah,   Dan  04:24 I see. Well, personally, I have already planned all my trips, I am not going to spend basically the next summer like the last one, I do want to hit a couple of countries. So definitely, we're going to get started regardless. But let's hope that this thing is going to get better, although we're all hopeful. And we know that this year is going to make it a lot better. Although then again, the pace at which the vaccine is being basically done in most countries, unfortunately, outside of those nations where the manufacturers right now, in terms of the way nations have handled this, so far some of the best nations in terms of payment. wish they were actually vaccinating is indeed, Russia, United States because these two nations have their own vaccines manufacturing in China is also quite close. All of these guys beat the pandemic long ago without even having the vaccines. But generally, when you look at the nations that are manufacturing their own vaccines, the United States, Russia and China, you're sure that they are way ahead of the rest of the world who need to actually import those vaccines.   Pouya LJ  05:24 Yeah, absolutely. That's true. And that that says a lot. I guess there's a there's an inherent value in being able to produce the stuff that you need, especially especially the essential ones, you know, like, the PPS, I don't know, the masks and whatnot, and obviously, vaccines, drugs and stuff. Because Yeah, when the world is good and dandy, everybody's happy to help everybody. But when the cover and push comes to shove, you know, you always go first. Right? So that's that's part of it. Exactly. Anyway,   Dan  05:54 so true.   Pouya LJ  05:55 Right. I actually our topic is not too far from this subject. And it's not the same. So we're we're talking about, we're, how many months like almost three months, two and a half past Biden's inauguration and the new administration in the United States. That's right, as I'm correct to a two and a half,   Dan  06:15 three months, of course, your most jagriti January 23.   Pouya LJ  06:18 So the first so two and a half. That's   Dan  06:20 right. But in terms of the election, yes, actually, more than that, but yeah, right.   Pouya LJ  06:24 Yeah. But since he took office, and well, obviously, with any new administration, comes new, you know, policies within the country and foreign, which is going to affect obviously, the entire world as it did when we move from Obama to Trump. And, and it was a drastic one, and I suppose this one could have, we could have anticipated that it would have drastic, you know, effects on the entire   Dan  06:53 world.   Pouya LJ  06:54 Now, my question is, from what you have observed that this is the topic today, obviously, my question is, from what you have observed from the past couple of months or so, where do you see this administration going? And what the priorities are? And how does that affect the our other countries   Dan  07:12 in the world? Very good question. First of all, we should consider the fact that buyten does not equal Obama, that's a huge misconception that is nowadays quite common. Even from the very beginning people fall Okay, Biden's Obama to point out, no, President Biden does not have the exact same approach towards leadership, as President Obama did, because while they are from the same party, and while they even have worked together in the same administration, President Biden is thought to be a middle left, not a far left. And that, of course, is going to lead to a variety of different approaches, that he will can, you know, control and manage the country is being a left or a democrat does not necessarily mean that you will all follow the same guidelines, or the same approach towards policies in all years of basically governance. Rather, what it really entails is that you have the same background and the same goals. And yet, so for that reason, the first issue that we have to take into consideration is the fact that Mr. Biden is not going to leave the nation exactly the way President Obama because the times basically have changed. And that requires a new approach towards all forms of strategy, the world in which President Obama, let the you know, the United States and the world was somehow very different than what we are seeing today. And especially after what Trump did, a lot of the US alliances have now been severely damaged. So along with us reputation as well, to some degree to some degree, and that, of course, is going to cause further problems and complications. But from my point of view, if you want to look at President Biden's approach, think of someone who is definitely not a Republican, but is also not a far left far Democrat. So for that reason, you can guess someone who is tough, but not crazy, like Republicans, but at the same time, not necessarily all left and all Okay, no problem, we're gonna make deals with everybody, no problem whatsoever. So because of that, we can see the US keeping certain approaches that were initiated by the Trump administration in place while adding new stuff. So these are not going to be basically diametrically opposite, rather, a there's gonna be some major differences in the way the policy is there. Because obviously, you have like republicans versus Democrats. But in terms of the actual direction, it's not going to be like a complete opposite. So many initiatives, like, you know, made in America, for example, are going to continue whether it's buying or Trump because that's part of the you know, the the system. So, since today, we're talking mainly about the international community, and how the Biden presidency affects the international media. Of course, there's going to be a lot of differences. Now. If you probably follow the news. You basically have heard about Trump making an appearance recently and a republican You mentioned saying, did you guys miss it? Oh, I'm sure you did. So for that reason, we can imagine right now what's happening in that people are a little bit concerned whether Trump is going to actually come back and run again, and so on. But right now many of those initiatives are still in place. And I'm not going to be changed that. However, what we can see again, to quote Trump himself, he said, in a simple one month, we went from America first America last. So what what is really actually means is, is that America is back in the global stage. So what the previous administration wanted to have for the world was to make policies solely in a way that benefits especially those who are on the Republican side, so those who are not concerned about the long term us influence. But now the US, of course, would like to take things back in a way that it was during the Obama ministration. So revitalizing the US alliances, the European Union, for example, empowering NATO, returning and rejoining the Paris Agreement, and more importantly, healing a lot of the wounded relationships, and also taking a certain relationships that were favorite for Trump, like those of Saudi Arabia, and you know, a little bit differently to see if things are necessarily reliable in that regard or not. And we're now seeing things like stopping the sales of weapons and sleep aircrafts to Saudi Arabia. So basically, when it comes to foreign policy, we're going to see some dramatic changes by the Biden inspiration. But that does not mean everything's going to change overnight. Because as you probably know, in the world of international politics, there is no such thing as rapid change, that cannot basically lead to some sort of conflict. For that reason, all the changes that will occur in the administration will be slow lunch, we cannot undo the damage of four years of complete, basically, ignorance when it comes to foreign policy, in over I don't know, a couple of months. So what we can predict from the states in the near future is to follow on the same path as that of Obama, but with very different unique strategies. So the Paris Agreement was signed on the first day of basically office. But that doesn't mean that those regulations will necessarily go in place immediately. On day one, they are going to require a lot of time. The other force major approach was about the trade agreements, United States and Canada, and Mexico, NAFTA. And that is, of course, right now revitalize as well. So all of these rejoin these agreements, that doesn't mean that the world has already changed, it simply means we are on the path towards recovery from all the damage done. Now, the other key issues for the Biden ministration, when it comes to foreign policy, is dealing with the threat of Russia, as you probably know, Russia is AB bait for the Democratic basically, side is thought to be the most important and serious threat. So we're gonna have to see how the United States deals with Russia, but mainly through targeted, basically sanctions, not for the economy as a whole, but target individuals to make sure that, you know, the economy does not suffer so much. And that's the major difference between sanctioning strategies of the right administration versus Trump. So when Trump wants to, for example, sanction a country, they will sanction the whole economy, which is going to affect the entire, you know, economy, a great example was Trump's leaving the nuclear deal with Iran. So that itself was a great example of how they actually crushed the old economy. Now, what President Biden right now is doing with Russia, is trying to actually maintain the economy stable, but target these sanctions in a way that sends a message that, you know, the United States is not going to perhaps tolerate certain Russian, you know, aggression, or saying things like, the US will never recognize Crimea as a part of Russia is one of those other examples. So you can even like recently, in one of his first two military, basically campaigns, Biden targeted certain, basically, Iran back basically bases in Syria. Now, they could have actually done some something like that in Iraq directly, but they avoided that. So what this implies is that the Biden ministration does not want serious confrontation the way Trump did. Instead, they are also not going to be like, extreme left and back office. You know what, okay, do whatever you want. I just want to talk. So they are also going to show some strength. That's the thing that got me elected because in the primaries, Biden said, I am not a real radical left, if you will. I am basically a middle left. So a lot of the his initiatives are going to involve certain strength, but not the way Trump did, of course, right. So for that reason, the first and most important impact of Biden ministration on global politics is understanding The fact that the US is willing to strengthen relationship with the allies, at the same time, they are willing to negotiate better, instead of just fighting with the adversaries basically, that the United States currently has. And as of now, when it comes to the, you know, the whole global politics, there are a few nations that are of particular concern for the states, and namely, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and to some extent, what is happening in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia, outside of that, basically, then states is also quite concerned with dealing with the threat, you know, the problems that are currently facing Europe by mainly trying to strengthen NATO, in order to go a face the threat of Russia. But at the same time, the trade agreements, a lot of which Trump imposed on certain nations should be removed the bands of let's say, tariffs, and imports, all of those, but the fact of the matter is, this is all going to take time. So we are going to be seeing a lot of changes. But if you're waiting for those changes to occur overnight, or in the first few months, the chances are, you're a little bit too hopeful about it. Because I think, you know, all these changes to really start kicking in right after the pandemic is basically many months over because by then, hopefully, the bike administration is going to actually change a lot of these policies and make sure they're actually implemented. So that is the major factor that we're currently seeing occurring.   Pouya LJ  16:29 Okay, and that was very elaborate. Now I have a couple of questions that are more, you know, fantasizing, and just daydreaming and talking about these stuff. way out. And that is, why it's not not in that romantic sense. But   Dan  16:44 I mean, we all love daydreaming, man, we all have time.   Pouya LJ  16:48 Right? So in the four years from now, do you see Trump running for presidency?   Dan  16:55 Well, actually, it was officially announced that he is interested. And he actually shows interest, although not officially declared. But the fact of the matter is, as you probably know, the Republican Party currently is putting a lot of value in Donald Trump, because of his popularity, that there simply cannot be any other candidate who can reach the same level of support, especially among the hardcore Republicans. You see, the other states of america is highly divided right now. And it is this major segregation is between the the fluid type, and the more basically, rigid type, if you will. Now, if you want to learn more about this, I remind you a great book called Prius, or pickup, which talks a lot about this major divide in the American Society among the left and the right. But the fact of the matter is that the party that represents Donald Trump has supporters primarily made of what we call their rigid type, oftentimes suburban, not highly educated, usually more concerned, basically, with general basically, and tradition and religion, and at the same time, highly suspicious of basically the outside world. Because most of these communities generally do not have a high level of trust towards the outsiders, whether it's immigrants, whether it's the foreign countries, and this is a specific mindset that is, unfortunately, quite prevalent today in American society, made primarily from a conservative background, highly religious, highly suspicious of anything that is not traditionally thought to be American, and more importantly, generally, less, basically, a suburban and a more rural, if you will, most of whom are all Trump supporters. I mean, how many times have you moved around and saw a truck driver with a Make America Great cap driving his pickup truck, I mean, that's a very, very common thing, especially in rural areas. So Donald Trump is almost like a God. He's even like, almost worshiped by a lot of these people, and thought to be some sort of Messiah who's bringing, you know, peace in order when he says, the line order, we have it all the law and order and all those things. So for that reason, I really believe that this is definitely going to make a huge difference. And for that reason, it is likely for him to run again, although having lost his access to social media could seriously impede his progress. But then again, he could run again. Now, will I say that he will run again, necessarily in near future. I don't think that that could be guaranteed as of now, however, it is very likely that he could run again, although it's not sort of going to mean that he will win again, because as you probably know, there's a great book about this, the key to the White House, basically and in this book is talk about what it really takes to change administration, while the president is an incumbent, so even if Trump runs again, he kept No matter how much his followers love him. And even if he runs again, and he tries to say, yeah, guys, I'm back for making America great again, and all those things In the end, it's almost impossible for an administration to lose its power and make it basically in between two terms. Unless there's what we call a political earthquake. This is what Professor Lichtman talked about in his book, this is a White House. So whether Trump runs people should not be concerned about who is going to run against Trump or not, because that is not a very important factor. Because if Trump runs again, but President Biden's decisions, both at home and basically internationally, will lead to basically a situation where a political earthquake is avoided. So perhaps there isn't a major economic downturn, or there is no major international conflict, let's say with the adversaries. So it all really now the ball is in Biden's courts. And it really doesn't matter who is going to run again on the Republican side. So long as President Biden avoids a political earthquake. Because for Trump, we saw major such earthquakes, I mean, his international deals and then at home that black life matters, racism, he caused a major tsunami on Earth, but a tsunami, political tsunami, right. But for those who are this is want to know more about this, check out the book, the keys to the White House, there are 13 keys, by the way. And for a, you know, a candidate to house basically an incumbent president out of the White House that requires him to win at least six of those keys and causes of earthquake. As of now, it's too early to say whether this is going to happen. But I can tell you this that the odds of President Biden with his moderate approach, neither extreme left because you know, Trump when extreme right? When you move towards any strange, the chance of any earthquake, whether it's in a relationship or in politics goes higher. But since President Biden has already declared himself to be a moderate Democrat, I highly suspect any major political earthquake to happen. And even if President Biden does have certain plans, for you know, taking some extreme left approach, I'm pretty sure just like previous Democrats, is going to be smart enough to keep those things for his second term, not the first. That's what Trump did wrong. He went all extreme. Right away, he went all in from the very beginning and that constantly election, right. So for the next election, I highly doubt that President Biden's gonna cause a political earthquake, if you will. And for that reason, it could be Trump, it could be Trump's Trump Jr. It could be Trump's grandson, it could be anybody. I hope not Ted, Ted Cruz, because I really don't like his facial hair. It's just super weird. But ultimately, it could be anyone. But if President Biden does not basically lose that momentum, there's no chance Trump can win again, even if all of his voters basically in supporters vote again, he could still lose unless Biden, so basically, this election proves that basically, Biden's gonna win again, unless Biden really mess up. So it's, it has nothing to do with Trump. If you already want to be concerned about the future America and the world, be concerned about what Biden is doing, and do not concern yourself so much with what Trump has in store. He says, oh, I'll be back. I'll be back again. That's just a bunch of you know, media because the guy loves the attention. Right. But in reality, it's not about Trump whatsoever. It's about what President Biden does, if he avoids any major political earthquake, if you will. He's got his next four years right after that.   Pouya LJ  23:40 There's a natural question, given his age, whether he would want to continue that.   Dan  23:45 Well, that's another story. People are talking a lot about that as well. Whether we the illustrations, regular habits, first female president, I personally think that us currently is not at this very stage is not ready. But hopefully in the coming years, hopefully, the US will be ready to also to have basically its first female president, because as you probably know, the US is highly divided right now. And among the traditional, basic conservative communities in the US, which are, by the way, everywhere, they do not have that approach. They are very patriarchal in nature, they don't believe that a woman could be on top of everything. It's like, very traditional old fashioned, if you will. So for that we need a little bit more time, but then again, probably there's no better time to get started, then, basically 2024 We'll see about that. But until then, we have to keep our eyes fixated on President Biden, and just watch Trump for you know, its own sense of fun. I mean, the guys are, you know, showman. He's funny. I mean, like, I can't imagine a single time I watched a speech and didn't laugh at some point because oh, yeah, entertaining man. It definitely is. I mean, the guy was a reality TV star, right. I mean, he knows how to entertain his audience, but the problem is global Politics and International. Politics is not a goddamn reality TV. We need a real president. Like President Biden, not a reality TV president like Donald Trump.   Pouya LJ  25:08 Yeah. Amen. Amen to that. All right, that was that was a great, great talk. And I think we covered a lot, because we covered more than I thought we would. So thank you for that. My pleasure. I don't know if you we left anything you want to wrap up, or we can? Well,   Dan  25:23 first of all, great topic, and I wouldn't like to wish and hope all our listeners, because we're going for a very tough time, I'd like to wish them you know, peace of mind. But please do know that a lot of the policies that Trump ministration basically had earlier was what led to the current situation. But fortunately, hope is really inside. And we can actually see some light at the end of the tunnel. But more importantly, today, we're talking about President Biden's influence globally. And we mentioned that, based on what Trump said, we've gone from America first America last. But the fact of the matter is, what has really happened is that America is now open again to the world. So this is going to make some major difference, because the states has a very special role in controlling basically, this situation all over the world because of the influence that the country has, right. And that will make us very hopeful. However, people should not think of Biden administration, as you know, miracle workers, because the world of politics is very complicated. And changes rarely occur. I mean, you can damage things very quickly as Trump did. It's kind of like in like a building, you can demolish an entire building, it took you years to make it you know, with one that nation, but you cannot build it also with one that nation right. So for that reason, while the damage that Trump administration caused on the global community was huge, and the rapid, basically, healing of the alliances, and bringing back ordered to the world is going to take a lot longer and saying we have to spend a lot more time to build and construct than it does to destroying. So for that reason, we should be hopeful and know that this change is going to take a while but in the end, hope is hopefully inside, and there is light into the tunnel.   Pouya LJ  27:08 That's great to know. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan, for joining us as always.   Dan  27:12 My pleasure, man. Love it.   Pouya LJ  27:13 All right. Thank you all for tuning in listening in. And if you have any comments or questions, please ask us leave comments, and if not until later episode. Have a good one.

Today Pouya is speaking with Tyler Martin, Physical and Mathematical Specialist with extensive research into Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 data and String Theory.   Tyler's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylerjamartin/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   The article discussed in the talk: NYT article on modelling paths to herd immunity in the USA   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS herd immunity, people, models, vaccination, assumptions, lockdowns, mathematical modeling, vaccinate, talking, deterministic, masks, number, means, mathematical models, strategies, politicians, frontline workers, account, restrictions, predict SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Tyler Martin   Tyler Martin  00:16 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BGP podcast. I'm here joined today by my good friend and colleague, Tyler Martin. He is okay. Why don't I hand him I'll hand it over to him to tell. Tell him tell you guys about himself. Hey, Tyler, how are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you?   Pouya LJ  00:36 Very good.   00:36 Thank you for having me on podcast. I've always heard your podcast. So.   Tyler Martin  00:43 Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure. to to to be talking to you. Now. Okay, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do? What are you? What are your likes and dislikes in this? crazy world? Okay, um, a little bit about me. I'm doing physical mathematical specialist utsc with, with you, we're in a lot of the same classes. And so my dislikes COVID right now is a big dislike. Yeah, yeah. But I love physics and math. That's my go to. Yeah. No, it's great stuff. I do agree with you in that. In that sense, we share   Pouya LJ  01:26 the love of physics and math. I so I don't know if you remember, Mr. He was on the podcast A while back. Now, now we got you. And hopefully bunch of other people join in the cohort. But yeah, today, actually, we're going to talk about something very relatively timely to all the COVID stuff. And so you have done some research and studies on, you know, mathematical modeling, modeling, which I think it's I guess people are getting tired of hearing it. That is surprising, because now politicians are talking about it, right? Like, oh, yeah, these are the numbers and mathematical models based on these, we're making these decisions. Never, you could you could never get politicians to pay so much attention to science, I suppose. As we do now. So now, all of that is about the spread, mostly, that's what they were talking about. But all of that also applies to vaccination strategies, which is probably the most timely because those are the decisions that politicians and then the world leaders around the world are making decisions on, right, all of these numbers that are jumped out. So now, for the audience, we are trying today, with the help of Tyler to make sense of all of this. What are these? You know, modeling that they talk about? What What is it behind the scenes, and to simplify it to a degree basically. So why don't you Why don't you go ahead and like started us start us off with? What was the what was the starting point of your research early on? And what were your, you know, thoughts going into it? And immediately after you started reading some papers and articles.   Tyler Martin  03:10 Yeah, definitely. So first, like, you watch the news. And you see all these politicians, like you said, talking about mathematical modeling, and then you go, what is even mathematical modeling in the first place. So then you have to do a little bit of research if when it first started. First off, we haven't even done a ton of research and mathematical modeling. It only started around, like going up around 40 years ago. And recently, there's two big definitions of mathematical modeling we can use today. One is the deterministic, and the stochastic, those are big fancy words. But they pretty much mean stochastic as in random randomness. So we can capture the randomness of humans, because no one can actually predict human behavior or human psychology. deterministic is a little less complex. It just kind of puts humans as a person with no emotion, no thoughts of what they're gonna do. They're just there. And then we can judge how a disease reacts from these two different types of models.   Pouya LJ  04:22 Right. Right. And do you know, so I mean, that's a natural, we're gonna delve into what they are in a second, maybe in further depth. But do you know, what are the when people talk about these models? Is it is it mainly stochastic or deterministic? Or sometimes just sometimes that are a combination of both? What are they usually talking about? Or what are the most effective   Tyler Martin  04:46 perhaps I don't know, the most effective from my point of view from what I found is stochastic modeling is most effective, although it's more complex, meaning we have to have big Fancy computers to run all our simulations, it's more effective in actually grasping our results and accurate results. What to when you compare it to deterministic modeling? I would say, for deterministic modeling is more better for handing paper. So if you're wanting to do a model by hand and paper, like we all do in class, then that's a good way. But stochastic modeling is definitely the way to go. When you have the time. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  05:30 Right. So so the deterministic model doesn't take into account just to clarify, right, it doesn't take into account human behavior. So for example, if you're supposed to be social distancing, your social this, that's absolute state, like, it doesn't consider that, you know, if you're on a lockdown, you're going into grocery, and you might happen to you remove your mask to unlock your phone. So none of these is accounted for. I mean, I guess it's not specifically accounted for in this   Tyler Martin  05:58 model, either.   Pouya LJ  06:00 But it basically treated as absolute steady state, meaning that it's everything being perfect. Is it? Well, I guess it depends on the assumptions you make to right you can also be assumption that, right? So so but whatever assumption you make is a fixed one in this in the, in the, what do you call it? The deterministic modeling? Right? Yeah, everything is fixed. For the stochastic model, we actually have a probability, right? So like, if you're more probable to go outside, or if you're more probable to stay inside, so it's not like you're fixed to do one certain thing. We have a probability density. Right? So instead of means 01, it's somewhere between zero and one. Exactly. Potentially. And our deals models like this stochastic ones. Are these probabilities dynamic, maybe changing in time? time?   Tyler Martin  06:51 Yeah, for sure. They change in time because people's reactions to a pandemic changes with time as well. So like, like we saw when the pandemic first started, a lot of people were outside and about not really caring. But as soon as the stay at home orders and stuff came along in the lockdowns, then we had to stay inside. So then our model has to account for that as well. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  07:17 Yeah, that's, that's fair. Is there anything specific you want to talk about in either of the two? In the technicality? So what are the factors that we're looking at? When we're saying probability of, for example, you mentioned human behavior, but what other factors are relevant here,   Tyler Martin  07:35 because actually, it depends on how complex you want to make your model. So if you want to make a super complex model, then you could take in a ton of factors like not only just human behavior, but like traveling around the world, and which planes travel to which countries and which are bringing back stuff. Or another common thing is for Western societies, we like to shake hands. And so for other societies, we don't have that type of contact. Like in Asian societies, it's normal to bow. So just like even the smallest things, just like that you can take into account into our model. And but as the more you take into account, the more complex it gets, so it's kind of like a trade off. Right, right.   Pouya LJ  08:23 Yeah. And then you did mention the, we get to be practicing soon enough, I suppose. But you didn't mention like, it is really deep. It's all these these models all started with some sort of assumption, right? And that assumption, determines what the what so let me take actually a couple of steps back for people who are not maybe thinking about so the idea is that you want to see, you want to model meaning try to predict what will happen given a certain guesses like so you you, you say okay, if there's no lockdowns, right, I'm correct me if I'm wrong here or if I'm slightly off, or you can add a caveat to it. But the idea is that if we make certain assumptions, meaning for example, there's no lockdowns, everybody's behaving like they would there's no pandemic at all right? What is the number what are the numbers are going to look like? What are the number, the number of people who are getting sick or who are dying, what demographics what you know, geographical neighborhoods, perhaps are the country, the city etc. And based on that, and then you combine and then you create different models with different sets of set of assumptions and find out what you want to do depending on what you want to achieve. So for example, you want so what is that absolutely no restrictions What? at all, one with minimal restrictions, maybe just socially distancing, and mask but then do whatever you want. Or maybe to 20% capacity, restaurants, whatever or absolutely locked out. So you create certain, you take certain assumptions, and you model these and you see, try to see into the future, essentially, and then try and then politicians come up and based on those predictions, if you will make certain decisions about what to do, what restrictions they were they want to impose on the population and whatnot. Is that Is that a fair summary of what what is the point of these models? in the first place?   Tyler Martin  10:25 Yeah, yeah, that was a great summary. And the big point is, is the relationship between the politicians and the scientific researchers, so if they don't have a good relationship, and they're not constantly communicating over what they're finding from these models, then the politicians will have a harder time making decisions on health policy issues, right. So that you have to have that constant communication going back and forth. So you can make those good decisions. Exactly. Now, that's   Pouya LJ  10:57 a very fair, fair point, actually. And so, now, I said all of this, to clarify all of this, but the beef I have with these models at some point, not not all the time. But first of all, they're not the so this is the this is the idea that some people talk about, actually, my dad always talks about this, he's like, the carpenter only cares about the wood, or the shoemaker cares about his shoes, and the electrician cares about his wires. At the end of the day, when you're talking to somebody whose job is to save lives, the only thing they're going to care about is to save lives. And yeah, the save lives doesn't comprehensively and take into account everything. It just takes into account saving lives who are being lost due to COVID. Period. Yeah, you know, like, if it if it. I mean, I'm not saying those people actually thinking like this, but that's their priority, because that's their job. The same way My job is, I don't know what it is. But right now to talk. So all I'm gonna focus on this fucking right.   Tyler Martin  12:00 So   Pouya LJ  12:03 my point is that, okay, all these things are getting done, I guess, supposedly, the politicians job is to take into account all of these models from the, you know, the, the scientific community from the, from the health community first in the first place. And then similar models are going to be done slightly different, obviously. But similar mathematical models are going to be done in on the economical side by the economist, or what is what are the impacts are going to be based on different assumptions, again, to the economy, and then eventually politician is going to be a general person, taking all of these into account, that's at least the idea, and then make some some decisions. Anyways, let's back up. So the beef that I have is that there, there, the there is no caveats, by when when you're talking about me, and you know it, the scientists know it, but when you're communicating this to the public, there's no caveat that all these modern things, though, they predict into the future, they have, they highly depend on your assumptions. And as you mentioned, ultimately, they're completely probabilistic. Like I, some of these models I have seen specifically restricted to Ontario is where we are in Canada. So and, and some of these don't take in taking don't take into account at all that they're, in fact, travelers coming from different countries. And I'm not saying they shouldn't, right. And, and they're, they're their only variable is human behavior due to lockdowns or restrictions or whatnot. And sure, that changes the numbers. But But let's let's let's toy around with no travels whatsoever, or where are these? You know, where are these outbreaks actually coming from? Is it is it because of travelers? Or is it not? Or is it because people are going to restaurant or is not? So I think this is very last Sunday? Again, and it portrays outside to the public so much that, you know, these are God given things, which I think and Would you agree with that they're they're very, very varying, depending on your assumptions.   Tyler Martin  14:12 Definitely assumptions is like, probably one of the biggest things like you can have a model that is almost exactly the same. But if you vary one thing, they can go completely different directions, like you can be off by if you're calculating the number of deaths, you can be off by quite a lot. So our underlying assumptions of our model are particularly important that we make accurate assumptions from what we actually perceive in the world.   Pouya LJ  14:45 Perfect. Now, I just wanted to make sure that I'm on track. They're not just spewing nonsense out there. Now, obviously now, the more interesting subject today has become the vaccination and vaccination. strategies, how are you vaccinated when vaccinate, who which population to vaccinate, which geographical location to vaccinate, etc. And so all of these are very good questions. And again, similar models are being done. And I know you were talking about before we started this conversation live recorded. You were talking about this new york times article, which was looking at different vaccination strategies. And essentially, they were trying so this is the title of the article, if I let me read it out, when when could the United States reach herd immunity? Well, question question mark. And the answer is, it's complicated. And hey, answer this. So first of all, let's define herd immunity. What is hurting herd immunity for those who don't know it?   Tyler Martin  15:43 Okay, I have to define one more thing before I define herd immunity. Okay, fair enough. Oh, first, there's a reproduction number. So a reproduction number basically just says, If I had the virus, how many people on average, would I pass the virus on to? So say, I have a reproduction number of two, that means me having the virus on average, I pass it on to two more people. So a herd immunity says that our reproduction number is less than less than one. So when we have less than one, then there's no chance of an outbreak or epidemic happening. And this means that there's less risk of the situation getting more serious. So herd immunity, basically just says, um, let me get a good definition that the state of the population where the fraction protected is sufficient to prevent outbreaks. And so herd immunity kind of just is basically what we want to reach from vaccination efforts. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  16:53 vaccination and the fact that people already some people already got and and recovered, right. And supposedly they can't get reinfected.   Tyler Martin  17:00 Exactly. So they're like, we have to take into account or remove population when we're doing these, the removed population is basically people who've gotten it and can't get it again, or people who have tragically passed away from it, or people who have immunity to it COVID. We don't know if it's any immunity to it yet. Like underlying immunity, but there are other diseases with immunity.   Pouya LJ  17:25 Right? Exactly. So so then that, and that, because there's a certain portion of the population whatever that number may be, that is removed, then they are not, which is the reproductive number drops below one which ends up and over time this virus decays, because it cannot. So if I get it, if my r naught is one mean, means that if the average is means that if I get it, I can only give it to one more person, so I'm only replacing myself, I'm not growing. And if it's less than one, on average, it means that I'm not even replacing myself. So over time, this is gonna vanish, because that's exactly okay. So yeah, right. So So in that sense, it's a combination of these, whether you're vaccinated and your immune or your so if I got it, and I come to contact with you, I'm assuming you're vaccinated, then you can't possibly get it. Whereas if you were not vaccinated, I would give it to you. And my Arnott would be at least plus one, because you're not you. You are not vaccinated. You're not Yeah. Yeah, that immune not being immune, or whatever. So either that person has passed. So it doesn't even exist to, you know, contract it, or they already got it. So there they have immunity because they cannot be reinfected. At least for a period of time. We don't know what the period of time is exactly. But let's just say for now, for the purpose of this argument, let's just say it's indefinite, and or persons vaccinated. Again, same idea. Now, now, let's go back to the article, I suppose and you can take the range from there, but I'm going to reiterate the question. So they were trying to researchers were trying to see when, you know, says reaches this herd immunity, meaning that the reproductive number will be less than one. So eventually the virus will die out over a period of time, and it definitely cannot grow. And their conclusion in one sentence was this complicated. So why did they say that on what, what what were they looking at? What they find what happened? Go ahead.   Tyler Martin  19:31 Yeah, it is actually very complicated. I think as a Canadian to looking at what the states is doing is definitely beneficial for us. Because we don't vary a ton from them. Some of the states have a lot more relaxed. laws as in like, they can walk around without masks and stuff, but we're actually fairly the same. So just looking at this is very interesting. One thing they want to look at was They sped up the rate of vaccination. So on average, the US is administering about 1.7 vaccination shots a day. So if they continue to do this, their reach herd immunity by July, and around 100,000 people pass. However, if they sped it up, it would increase to around 13 million shots per day, then they reach herd herd immunity By May, and 90,000 people with pass. And if they increased it even more, which is very improbable to 5 million day, that's kind of insane. They reach herd immunity by enpro. And 80,000, people would pass. I think the more interesting part of this article is looking up is looking how herd immunity and vaccination along with with relaxing social distancing measures comes into effect. So, if you actually keep 1.7 million shots per day, and then look at relaxing your social distancing measures, they return her to me by July, like I said before, 100,000 people would pass. But if you lift restrictions, when 15% of the population is vaccinated, then you reach herd immunity by June, so a little earlier than July and 17. Or say 170,000 people have passed. So that's a big jump from 100,000. And then even more interesting, if they end all restrictions right now. Then they reach herd immunity by May. But in that case, 3200 or 320,000 people who pass so these jumps to me are just like, insane. When you look at how many people would pass if you just relax the restrictions on social distancing?   Pouya LJ  22:15 Mm hmm. Right. And, yeah, that isn't saying the same thing we were talking about. The initial assumptions can change a lot. And the same thing happens in the vaccination strategies and social distance. So I think so. Now, I don't know if I got it. So with currently with the with, what do you call it, their current rates of vaccination? And the if we don't, if we keep the measures in place, like the social distancing, or at least the basic measures, such as the social distancing and the masks, yeah, now, that number of deaths in the United States until the herd immunity is achieved is 100,000. People. Yeah. Right. So if so let's let's pick this again. So if the same rate of giving vaccine to the US population is continued, not increased, not decreased, which is 1.7 million per day, which is impressive, by the way, is a lot. Yeah. Do they have a lot of big population too? Yeah. Bigger than Canada. I mean, so anyways, so 1.7 million per day until the next foreseeable future, like unless next few months, and then you still do social distancing, you still do wear masks? Maybe not no major parties or anything. And then the estimated number of deaths from COVID until July which is the time that they reach herd immunity is 100,000. But if they don't take the if they ease up the measures, meaning don't wear masks, maybe don't social distance, maybe throw away some parties but not a lot then then that then that number jumps by almost twice and 171 point seven 170 1000 also, which is and and and and now let's say we keep this social distancing measures and hold on a second. Let me see if I get this article. Right. Excuse me. Now if you do increase the supply to 3 million a day, yeah, but that but then they didn't do any investigation as to what happens if you do measures or don't do measures today? No. If you increase the supply, but also keep the measures   Tyler Martin  24:39 Oh, no, they didn't. They didn't do that. Okay,   Pouya LJ  24:41 yeah, okay, okay. Okay. They didn't do that. Okay, but it is very interesting and okay, but if they do increase the however if they do almost double the shots, although they reach herd immunity much sooner, still number of deaths is like 10,000 people. That's 490 Yeah. That doesn't make a lot of sense. How's that? You know,   Tyler Martin  25:03 I'm not too sure. That would also depend on what we're talking about before their underlying assumptions. Right. Right. So   Pouya LJ  25:08 they didn't talk about those assumptions, I suppose.   Tyler Martin  25:12 Right? And yeah, they Yes, they do. Put it in the beginning a little bit, but not too   Pouya LJ  25:19 long. Because,   Tyler Martin  25:20 yeah, they also do cover the different types of variants. Oh, interesting. So with the current variant, like I said before, 100,000 by July. So 100,000, people would pass, and they'd return immediately by July. But for the more contagion, like, very more contagious variants with precautions, and they in the states gets all of those variants, they would have around 200,000 people pass, and they reach herd immunity by July. But if they have the most contagious variants with no precautions at all, they reached an insane number of 530,000 people. And the herd immunity by April.   Pouya LJ  26:16 So more number of people in short amount of time, basically. Mm hmm.   Tyler Martin  26:20 Exactly. Yeah, it's it's quite a number to look at. The death toll at that point would be just insane.   Pouya LJ  26:29 So in a way, the the the immunity due to getting the virus and recovering from it as actually acting much faster than the vaccination process, basically. So that's why they're getting to the herd immunity earlier, because the virus is infecting everybody and whoever survives just as immune. So the immunity increases fast moving, but, but obviously, a lot of people are   Tyler Martin  26:53 doing cost. Yeah,   Pouya LJ  26:54 yeah. Well, that's, that isn't, like these numbers that that is looking at these numbers is actually quite, we will, by the way, I should say this, we will put the link a link to this article in the show notes. So if anybody wants to go and look at these numbers, themselves, feel free to do so. Okay, let's, let's now move move forward. Unless you want to talk about this article more. I don't know if there's anything left? No, no. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So let's move forward a little bit and talk about what are the discussed around the table, if you will, the different strategies of vaccinations? And what is the argument for each of them in terms of who to vaccinate, which areas to vaccinate, why and why not? Etc.   Tyler Martin  27:40 Yeah, there's a couple different methods of vaccination. One very promising one is called a focus method of vaccination. That's where you focus in on a certain group of people. Give them all the vaccination that we have. And then once there are not basically as getting better, then you move out to a little more like diverse, further out rural areas and start vaccinating back. Oh, so   Pouya LJ  28:09 it's mostly thinking geographically, right? Yeah. If you're, if you're in our big, if you're in a big, congested populated city, for example, let's say Toronto, New York, whatever, then you focus on that and leave the rest of the state under province a lot, right? That's the idea. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.   Tyler Martin  28:26 And so like that strategy is actually one of the more promising strategies. So we actually, as Canadians, we see this happening now. Nova Scotia is giving up some of their vaccination to other places in Canada, so that we can actually get to a herd immunity for Canadians as a whole faster. Yeah. Interesting.   Pouya LJ  28:51 And do you know it is now across Canada? One story, but within Ontario, do you know if they're using this strategy or not? Like the focus wrench?   Tyler Martin  29:00 I'm not too sure. From what I know, it's more of just everyone gets to or the most people. important people get a first as in the people who are doctors who are Yeah, doctors, frontline workers, or people who need it, like the elderly need it. So people like that would get it first. So it's more than not focusing on a particular area. They're just trying to get the people who are who   Pouya LJ  29:34 can't think of the word more vulnerable, maybe Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I get I get the I think the doctors and nurses is a bit clear to me because we want them to be healthy to take care of all of us, not just for COVID for everything really. So that's even from a very selfish point of view, not acknowledging their sacrifices, complete selfish point of view. You still want them to get it first. I think the frontline worker Especially doctors and nurses, and the rest of the frontline workers, perhaps to paramedics, police officers, etc. So those are because there's a very important, like they have to be able to function. And at the same time, like very urgently be able to function at the same time, they're much higher at much higher risk. So that I think it makes complete sense. But after that, although there are there really are most vulnerable, but they're not mixing as much. I'm not so convinced that the focus after that prioritizing those people, the focus approach will not be more successful. But they still also, by the way, so they still do these similar modeling, get taking different assumptions, right, for example, assuming that you give it to elderly and assuming that you give it to like a focus strategy to give it to parts of the population that are mixing and mingling more. Maybe there are denser neighborhoods, for example, the basically the places that have the highest numbers, geographical places, right? Yeah. So get them. You know, as soon as they get contained, they can't really move it on either. Right? as much. What do you think on that? That would be your thoughts? personally.   Tyler Martin  31:16 I think mathematical modeling wise, it's a, it's a better way to get down to death toll to vaccinate the elderly first, like if you think about it, our death toll will go down. If we vaccinate the elderly first compared to everyone else, because the elderly are dying the most Sure. So if you're just looking at it, from a mathematical modeling point of view, it's like if we want to get down the death toll, vaccinate the elderly. In general, though, I'm not too sure. I would say the focus strategies, probably the better strategy to go to, but, um, after the frontline workers get their vaccination, I don't know. I'm not too sure. Who should get it after that. Right. Really not. It's a very complicated story, obviously. Yeah. And you don't get on people's feet by saying that you shouldn't get vaccinated. Yeah, so yeah, no, I   Pouya LJ  32:17 mean, I'm definitely not saying that I think focus is the right way to go. I'm just saying it's not really clear which one is? And maybe there is no one right answer or one wrong, and maybe both answers are wrong, or both of them? Yeah. So it's just a slightly better, I think they're actually at the end of the day in the long margins of things, depending on what you're looking at. Yeah, sure. Maybe if you're here, purely looking at death tolls due to COVID specific because on the other hand, look, there have been reports and studies done on the the side effects of this whole COVID thing like not, you know, not just the deaths and despair from the COVID, but also that loss of job economic distress, you know, suicide rates, people who couldn't get their scans and for cancer, etc, their operations. And that all of that is obviously costly as well, we cannot just ignore that, although the forefront is to COVID disaster, but it has, you know, side effect that is rippling through our societies and communities as well. Right. So we definitely would like to, if we do like to look at it comprehensively, I think, at the end of the day that the approaches are not really clear cut. And that is what you were mentioning, like in terms of, if you want to introduce more variables, it just keeps getting more complicated. Exactly, yeah. And perhaps even impossible to to predict anything with any good amount of good measure of accuracy. So yeah, I guess I bought my way complicated. It's not as easy as this is the right way to go. So maybe we can relinquish that arrogance, I suppose to a degree, because it is a complicated problem. So yeah. Is there anything we left on the vaccination fund that you wanted to talk about that we   Tyler Martin  34:14 didn't? I think we pretty much covered it all. By no means am I also a vaccination expert. No, we're just   Pouya LJ  34:22 discussing our own, you know, experience with these articles.   Tyler Martin  34:27 Yeah,   Pouya LJ  34:28 yeah. That's good. Because I think, two to a high degree because you actually did study these matters to a degree. I mean, again, I'm not quite we're not claiming to be experts, neither of us but because you have done specifically the math, math, mathematical modeling. I'm sure you have more understanding than many including myself. So it's good to. We don't need to listen to the greatest experts to increase our knowledge. I think it doesn't. That's as long as you know more than me. I can learn from you. That's it. Yeah.   Tyler Martin  35:00 Yeah, exactly.   Pouya LJ  35:02 Right. Okay, yeah. So I think it's a good place to stop, like, end that conversation. I'm gonna give you a few moments after this to, you know, gather your thoughts. final words, if you want to save, but before that, I think it's a good point. I think this was a good. Good understand, I think you had this epiphany, I suppose. And I definitely did that it is, in fact, a complicated matter. It's not as easy as 123 go. It's a bit requires in depth contemplation. And at the end of the day, there are going to be mistakes, there are going to be errors, there are going to be things that are not going to get to the right answer. Or what is even the right answer. Right. So all of these are subject to a lot of assumptions. And I think that was that was the some of the most important epiphany of all in this in this journey today. Exactly. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to add to it?   Tyler Martin  36:07 Maybe one last thought, and that is that no mathematical model can accurately predict the future. Like no matter what if we take in the as many complex variables as we can, we can predict the exact amount of people who will die. So take every everything these politicians say about mathematical modeling with a grain of salt when they're saying it, but some of them are actually fairly accurate at the same time.   Pouya LJ  36:34 Yeah. They're the best worst thing we have. Exactly.   Tyler Martin  36:39 Exactly. Okay.   Pouya LJ  36:40 Fair enough. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Tyler. It was a pleasure talking to you today.   Tyler Martin  36:46 It was pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.   Pouya LJ  36:48 No problem. I'm thank you all for tuning in and listening to yet another episode and I hope you enjoyed it. Leave your comments, suggestions, questions below there are there's going to be shownotes as I mentioned, which we're going to include the New York Times article in it and until later episode, have a good one. Take care

The story of the human race is the story of masses selling themselves short. Do you know why you assume many of the goals you would like to achieve to be impossible? The answer lies in the emotional state you habitually find yourself in. In this brief program you will learn how to set yourself up to do what you thought was impossible and end up making it possible! 

One of the biggest drawbacks of the coronavirus pandemic has been the psychological toll of dealing with the uncertainties of this health hazard along with all the social and financial limitations that it could bring about. As a results we are seeing an increase in the number of depressions and suicides during this tough period. On this program Daniel and Pouya discuss the issue of depression and suicide during the pandemic and offer solutions on how to effectively prevent or manage both. The advices given here are not meant to replace the those of mental health professionals and if you are suffering from symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts make sure to seek professional help as soon as possible.   Photo by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS pandemic, people, depression, extroverted, nations, introverted, extroverts, seminar, pressure, harder, problems, psychological toll, active, suicide, airbnb, world, challenge, life, literally, social SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Dan   Pouya LJ  00:09 Hello, and welcome back ladies and gentlemen to yet another episode of the b2b podcast joined as always with Daniel Mulligan, how's it going, buddy?   Dan  00:16 What's up, buddy? How's it going good to be here with you for yet another awesome podcast. Let's talk addition beyond the present here with you man life is great. Fortunately, we're hitting a lot of great news worldwide regarding the progress towards the basically the coronavirus pandemic right now worldwide, particularly with respect to the you know, vaccination because the fact that Pfizer and basically vaccine and a few others were somehow kind of slow to move into to transfer to different countries because of you know, the all the temperature requirements. Now, just today, it was announced that the Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine actually is more than 91% effective. And as you probably know, that was basically made with the older technologies, which means it doesn't require any specific equipment to be transferred, it can just be moved around by a simple refrigerator anywhere around the world. And that is going to make it much faster and supply vaccine to more developing nations or poor nations around the world to accelerate the process of getting out of this goddamn pandemic. So that was a very good news overall, of course, in the same country, we're getting some other bad news about the politics, but then again, politics is rarely a happy place for most people, right. So generally, life is great in terms of business, gradually, the world is somehow coming to terms with the pandemic, we're gradually seeing improvements in terms of employment numbers all around the world, or at least in those nations that I'm currently active in. So overall, it's been great. And the hope that this pandemic is soon going to at least be alleviated and eventually conquered hopefully, by the end of the year, is just probably the best news we've gotten so far and couldn't be any happier.   Pouya LJ  01:51 No, absolutely. That's true. It's it's been it's been devastating here. And it's continues to be and that's great news to hear that there there are being things are being facilitated towards vaccination in a variety of countries, not just to developing the developed countries, but also the developing countries. However, in the meantime, we are still in the midst of the pandemic and to talk which brings us to today's topic, which has people dealing with depression and suicide during this pandemic, because a variety of Yeah, from variety of reasons, from the lack of activity, perhaps to not being able to contact with others, loss of jobs and economic hardships, caused people to retreat mentally, perhaps, to a degree, depressed, and the worst case is, unfortunately, commit suicide. Now, what are your thoughts very broadly on this topic, during this pandemic?   Dan  02:50 First of all, what a great topic you pick Pooja x for this show, I agree with you completely. And the reasons are multitude when it comes to the reasons why we are seeing higher numbers of depression and extremely higher numbers of suicide, which is just unprecedented, basically. But then again, as you put it out yourself, it definitely does make sense. I mean, you would definitely expect such things to happen in this current situation, given the fact that the pandemic has pretty much made it impossible to be human. I mean, what makes us human, I was watching a speech by Chancellor Merkel. And despite the fact that she has been quite harsh, basically, with the restrictions, which I think she made the right decision, because Germany was getting out of control. And she made a lot of basically new sweeping rules to make sure that people are staying at home. And she was in one of her speeches actually was saying that, oh, all the things that we have done, is actually making us less human. So she admitted it openly. And I really admire her courage for that, too, as a global leader to come and say that, she said that all the things we say we should not be doing are the things that we should technically be doing to be healthy and happy. I mean, physical contact with those around us getting close, being social, communicating frequently, leaving the house being physically active, moving around, eating well, and above all, not always panicking and being anxious. Oh my gosh, I'm going to talk I'm going to tell you this right now, how to get the virus. Literally, I was in a seminar yesterday. Of course, we conduct this seminar, under the strict rules of the basically health guidelines to make sure that first of all, the number of attendants were kept limited. And secondly, maintenance major, everybody wears masks and have the distance. And in that seminar, we actually talked about a similar topic. And ultimately, a lot of our attendance set like I am just my biggest problem isn't the goddamn virus. It's the psychological toll that it has had on my life. Now, in the same seminar we took, we took a survey and we realized, generally this pandemic has hurt the extroverted population far more severely than the introverted ones. I mean, like, we were just we ask people, so which ones in this class for example, or this environment are more likely to be introverted? We collect You know the results, who is going to be like extroverted, we've got the results. And realize the ones who reported to be more extroverted are the ones ironically, who find it almost impossible to deal with one of our tenants, they're like, you know what I've been doing this for like, I'm when I wouldn't when it first happened, I told my husband, this is going to be like, oh, a couple of months, maximum, maybe two, three months. And I just can't go any further. I'm just literally done with this. And obviously, that pressure and that psychological toll isn't just on that lady within our center. But it's basically describes perfectly what is happening to billions of people around the world right now. It's the same level of pressure and anxiety. So I guess the biggest tool that it had on us, other than the fact that we can't really do a lot of things we normally have always taken for granted. But it's more about that sense of, you know, presence, always worrying if I'm going to get infected or not always having to watch any one of our attendance. Like, look at my hands. I've been watching this every friggin 1015 minutes, and I'm done. So all of these things are going to create problems. And this is definitely going to affect us negatively in terms of our mental health and psychological well being. So obviously, as you pointed out, basically, this issue is tremendous. It has affected all of us, some of us more than the others. I mean, those of our listeners right now who tend to self report themselves as extroverts probably have been hurt, hit hit the hardest. And ironically, we've had a couple of introverts in our audience who said, Hey, I love the pandemic, it's the best time ever, I don't have to leave the house, I can work in my pajamas. And I can simply read books all the time, I don't see anyone's faces Oh, normal. So it really depends, I guess, on the person you're talking to. Right. So definitely, this pandemic has not been as harsh on certain people, especially, I guess, on those who come from wealthier backgrounds. I mean, those who are are basically wealthy in general, who have had assets before the pandemic. Now, most of them are richer in most nations that I'm currently active. And actually, whether it's those who work in real estate, those who have, you know, a couple of stocks. Now, you remember that games, basically stopped stocks, guys, I mean, that was incredible, basically. But what I'm saying is, those who have been wealthier headed much better off. Unfortunately, those who were middle class or lower middle class, they are the ones who are hit the hardest, because not only they have to face with all of the natural psychological impacts of the pandemic, they have even lost their jobs, many of them and they don't have even money. So on top of all of that, now, they have financial problems, too. And as you probably know, in the field management, we say, no crisis ever occurs alone, and always is followed by other crises, because one thing leads to another and this continues, right. So because of all of this, now, we are seeing a tremendous impact on the psychological well being of people around the world. And of course, it is a mental health crisis. And we need to help people to find their way around and to hopefully make it to the end of the pandemic, basically intact.   Pouya LJ  08:09 I couldn't agree more. Yeah. So that there's There are multitudes of why somebody would face challenges mentally, perhaps, you mentioned a lot of them, of course, economics. pressures could be another, you know, potential problems that people are facing. And sometimes that takes a toll. Now, to a degree, especially, so it's really, I guess, it really depends on the causes of the mental pressure and depression, perhaps, but to a degree, it might really not be avoidable for for some people under some circumstances, or it might be for others, perhaps to a degree. But either way, I think there should be then there are ways to, you know, minimize this pressure, just mental pressure. And I want to put a disclaimer here, neither myself or Daniel are not, you know, experts in this subjects. We're not licensed   Dan  09:04 or not certified healthcare professionals. These are meant purely to inform you, and it's not going to replace the advice of a professional psychiatrists.   Pouya LJ  09:13 Perfect. Yeah, that's what I was going with this. So just if you do have problems, please seek professional help. But we're merely here to give our own proper advice based on our expertise. But no licenses here. So I just had to put that disclaimer out there. But from your perspective, what are the things people especially extroverted people, you like yourself, because you're one of them? who's dealing fairly with this challenge? Oh, and people who have, you know, financial difficulties, what would you How would you, you know, advise the people of these two categories mainly, for sure,   Dan  09:49 but I'm actually I'm gonna give you both answers in a moment because I know my answer, but you on the other hand, I'm sure also all of our listeners know about this that you are at slightly more on the introverted sign and I'm more on the shorter side. So I'm actually curious first about you. Did you really feel that toll and pressure on you there in this basically, period? I mean, how do you feel as somebody who's more introverted than extroverted?   Pouya LJ  10:13 Right? So, this is actually a funny question you ask because especially being around somebody like yourself, yes, I'm definitely much more introverted than your. So I always consider myself more like, Yeah, probably in the middle, but edging towards the introverted side. But actually, this when they make happen, and I did, then I realize how much I in fact, am extroverted. Because I started missing people. I   Dan  10:37 was like, No, I just want to see people.   Pouya LJ  10:40 And phone calls. Don't just introverts   Dan  10:42 feel a pain, man, can you believe that even those, of course you are not a hardcore introvert, obviously, because you're more on the ambivert side. So you have both sides to your character and personality. But of course, I talked to a few really hardcore introverts who didn't have much problem, but I'm pretty sure even like a very standard introvert would still feel a lot of things is missing in his or her life.   Pouya LJ  11:04 Absolutely, because as humans, this is just those human interactions. And you know, personal touches are essential to our existence. I mean, again, yes, there are always exceptions to these, quote unquote, rules. But typically, we as humans do crave that, you know, interaction. So it was it was, I just realized how extroverted I actually am. And, yeah, so I mean, of course, you can do phone calls, you can do video calls, group, video calls, etc, all of that good stuff. But at the end of the day, there's something that is about, you know, physically being in the same place at the same time, that has a, a, you know, a comforting feeling that is always missing in these interactions. Yeah, but I still don't definitely have the hardest of times, I'm sure. Probably compared to people like yourself, but it did hit me a little bit, especially deep into after months have passed the pandemic, it definitely did hit me.   Dan  12:06 Especially you living in Canada, and and you guys are all, you know, law abiding citizens and nice guys, like you never, never, like violate anything. So I'm guessing it was much harder for you guys as well, are those nations who really followed all the health protocols? Because in some nations that I've worked in, pretty much nothing I mean, right now, for example, if you go to countries like Russia, dude, these guys have opened their strip clubs as well. So I mean, that's it's very hard to wear a mask when you're getting strict, basically dancing right there. But overall, it's, what I'm saying is it hasn't affected people equally in different nations, for sure. And since this issue really is an international issue, you see major and measurable differences between nations among their citizens, based on the rules, conventions, and how well the people follow those rules. They seem, I think that's incredibly important, basically. So as expected, of course, for us extroverts, the pressure has been much harder. Although I personally have done my very best to make sure that my social life is not going to be affected so much. Now, in addition to having basically meetings, online, from morning to night, pretty much I felt my entire schedule, make sure I'm always working. And I'm always in touch, especially communicating. And for me, that's very important. I also managed to whenever we could to actually create, you know, events and seminars as much as possible to fill up that gap if you will, even though because nowadays, it's much harder to attend, for example, like a full on party, because obviously limitations and there's no possibility of dancing. But seminars, it's a lot more feasible given that you can actually create social distancing on the audience, and so on and so forth. So I tried my very best to remain as social as possible. And be really that when it comes to extroverts, they reading to do their best to get out of the house, whatever way they can. Now, for me personally, I also have always taken my basically, sports seriously taking my fitness seriously and my workout very seriously. So during the pandemic, my actually my record has actually increased in almost all the things I do. And nowadays I exercise three times per day, so morning before going to work and basically in the afternoon when I hit the gym and at nights just for you know, relaxing walks. So I actually ended up exercising more during the pandemic, you know, than before. Ironically, it was pretty interesting. And now, fortunately, in my case, I did not have to deal with the financial aspect of the pandemic because all of our businesses, except for the ones regarding real estate, with respect to Airbnb business model, were not affected that much. So pretty much all of our businesses remains active because we managed to link them all online, except for the ones regarding the tourism because we have basically the as it proposed, Previously, on one of our posts about this Airbnb model, we actually had an episode about this completely discuss the details. So that sector because it's linked to tourism I was heavily influenced until a while back when the borders gradually got open in certain countries like Dubai, for example. But still outside of tourism, and Airbnb, Reynolds, pretty much all of our other businesses were active during the summon, in some cases actually became more profitable than before. However, and I know that in this case, I am not representing the majority of people around the world. What is instead, the case is that most people around the world unfortunately suffered financially, they lost their jobs, they tap into all of their savings. And they started, you know, accumulating credit debts for consumer basically products. And this is a very, very bad and very grainy view of the future for most of these people, because now they have to work for years just to get out of the debts they accumulate during the pandemic. So for that reason, I believe that we need to create a plan a game plan to approach both our social lives and our financial lives. Many of those so called depressions that you mentioned, or even suicides have to do with their finances. I mean, let's be honest, if you really lose your job, and then you have no income, and you have no job and no work for two years, you're, something's gonna, you know, click in your head, like, Man, I'm done with this, I'm, where's my shotgun? And you're going to have some problems, obviously, right? So for that reason, I believe we need to have a game plan to address both issues. Because our depression, in most cases has to do either with our basically emotional problems or our financial problems, because both are equally challenging to our basically psyche. And we have to find a way to address both. And obviously, I think the key here is how we can address both separately, depending on the nation culture and their lifestyles.   Pouya LJ  16:45 That's very comprehensive, I think you hit it right on, it's, it's definitely a challenge. So what I can say to those people is that you're not alone, you know, Bear Bear that in mind, and notice that this is a challenge for a lot of people. Some are luckier, of course, than others, perhaps, or more prepared, perhaps. But at the end of the day, this is this is a, this is a collective challenge. That should be a hopeful view, meaning that you're not alone. Because a lot of times these mental pressures, or more pressured by the fact that you feel like you're left out, you're alone, nobody's there with you. But at least even if it's challenge, it's a collective challenge. And I'm sure we'll get past in one way or another. Okay, so we're coming to the end portion of the show, and I want to give you the time to, you know, give it like a bring everything together if we didn't say something, do so. But before that I just have a news, which is just   17:51 what is it?   Pouya LJ  17:52 Now, the BTB podcast is also available on iHeartRadio. And iOS for the website.   Dan  18:00 I Heart Radio. That's right. We're now on radio, baby. Come on.   Pouya LJ  18:06 Yeah, so so this is this is another good news. I just received the confirmation. So congratulations to us. And   Dan  18:12 first of all, I want to congratulate you, you are the world's literally the best producer, at least for me, you're the world's best Podcast Producer, good job for you know, making the progress really, you put a lot of effort into this arranging, everything's using AI to generate, you know, the transcript of our conversations, creating new ways to publish it. And really amazing man, I congratulate you for the hard work. And yet I Heart Radio, beyond the present podcast. Oh, yeah.   Pouya LJ  18:40 It was much appreciated. And anybody who already is on the platform, I'm sure you're gonna get a kick out of it. If not deco, take a look at the platform. It's actually quite quite nice for, you know, podcasting. And they also have live live radio. So they should do that. Anyways. So getting back to our subject. Now, the time is yours, the platform is yours. if we missed anything that you wanted to add, or you want to bring everything together, please do. So   Dan  19:07 let's write very well. So we discussed in detail today about the issue of depression and suicide. We brought about the causes, but we haven't fully offered solutions of like in the last part, give a few solutions for those of us who are suffering from depression right now as we speak, or are perhaps, goodness forbid, are contemplating perhaps suicide. When it comes to depression. Of course, that's a far more prevalent issue than suicide right now. And if you all listen to us right now, and you feel depressed, you feel like your life makes no sense and that you're losing that sense of pleasure. First of all, know whether or not you have those symptoms. Pretty much depression is defined as you losing motivation and pleasures of the daily life that you used to have and no longer can feel. At the same time you also feel less motivated. So you feel like life is not as pleasant as it used to be or you don't have as much motivation. These are all right signs of early signs of depression. And you need to take action immediately. Now, what does that mean? remove the mask and start kissing people on the streets. No, don't do that, like, well, I got vaccinated, I want to kiss everybody don't do that as dangerous don't do that. So instead, what you got to do is to try to make your life social, even if you are a hardcore introvert, find ways to get social online, perhaps, or events where it's not online, but you can actually maintain your focus and also social distancing. At the same time, try your very best to remain focused on achieving certain goals, you've lost your job, you're running out of your, you know, savings, it's all okay, you could temporarily use credit, just to you know, make ends meet. But please do know that right now, most governments around the world are offering some sort of financial support to their citizens. Now, if you're living in those nations where that's not possible, still, you could be able to create some form of income. So if you're unemployed, you have no job and just said, like, man, I got no money only wires and no money, get out of the house, or at least search online for ways to generate income or find a new job, trust me in the same economy that we are dealing right now. Now, there's a lot of demand for different types of basically jobs. So it could be a courier, it could be a delivery guy. And so well, I work as an accountant, I don't want to be a delivery guy now friends on, I know, but it's a crisis. And it's much better to be active and doing something than not doing so sitting in your home and think that all the good old days and your work in your office is not going to change it. Yeah, it's not as fun to be a delivery guy or find other means of employment that are now more in demand, perhaps, if you're having it experience to work online with some other companies, but the key is keep yourself active and engaged. Success equals goals. The pandemic, unfortunately, has forced a lot of us to forget about our goals or have simply none. set new goals. Ask yourself, what are the kind of goals I can achieve during the pandemic? You want to go even further? Tell yourself, what are some opportunities that the pandemic will present me that I could never ever, ever have? For me right now, literally, the pandemic is an opportunity. And for me, the end of the pandemic is both very happy and very sad. It's going to be very sad, because I am literally going to run out of time for a very special period of opportunism. On the other hand, for a lot of people just imagine, just imagine, like you feel like Dude, pennies on the end, in seven months, I got only seven months to do all these things. Once you change your perspective, not only you will not suffer through the pandemic, as I haven't, but you will actually benefit from it right? So ask yourself, what unique opportunities does pandemic presented me, perhaps deep thoughts, meditation, self analysis, setting new goals, having deep conversations with your partner you haven't had for a long time, or finding new ways to perhaps, you know, get yourself active to open new hobbies. The pandemic is not all that bad guys, trust me. There's a lot of opportunities. They say, within every obstacle or setback, there is a hidden gift. What is that gift for you? What gift has this pandemic brought for you? Yes, the pandemic can bring you some gifts, guys, trust me. Now that's for your emotional aspect of it. Financially, if you're struggling, the story applies. Do not sit on your sofa, watch the news and say, Oh, my government is not releasing the goddamn you know, relief effort button do something I need the paycheck now. Don't sit on your ass and just wait for the government, you know, handle it, you know, a check. Instead, ask yourself how can I generate money right now. But I'm an accountant, I'm not going to work as a delivery guy. Well, you want to be unemployed, it's much better to do something that not to do something right, and get yourself out of the house or engaged to start generating income. Because the fact of the matter is, if you make very bad or poor financial decisions are in this pandemic, it might take you literally five to 10 years to get out of it. This whole pandemic could last for only two years, and then you can have to pay for it financially in terms of, you know, credit payments and credit card payments for the next seven 810 years. So why do that? Why not, instead, find a way to live below your means and maintain and control your finances. Because by doing both of these things, you first of all, get yourself busy, active and moving, which is the key and antidote to all forms of depression. And secondly, you will make sure that your finances will not basically be left without any care or any attention by doing both. Hopefully you will increase your odds of beating depression leading the pandemic And ideally, hopefully benefiting from the pandemic.   Pouya LJ  24:40 Well said, Well, I couldn't so this this whole change of perspective is really really gold out there. I don't it's a gym. I don't think a lot of people really realize and it's obviously easier said than done. When it's done. It's done, you know? Alright, well okay with our company. To the end of the show, as always, thank you then for joining us. My   Dan  25:03 pleasure, buddy. Glad to be here with you.   Pouya LJ  25:05 Thank you and thank you everybody for tuning in. As always now, you can tune in and iHeartRadio as well as you heard in a few minutes ago, until a later episode. Have a good one.