Shaan Puri

Modern Wisdom · 9 Harsh Truths No One Wants To Admit - Shaan Puri - #1163

• How Does Shaan Puri Pick Projects With Friends?

  Shaan Puri says his happy place is the boys, the people he wants to spend a bunch of time with and find excuses to be around. He picks work by three questions: which projects bring the best out of the group, which bring something new out of them, and which have some meaning in the world.

  On meaning, he draws two paths. One is making people have a lot of joy. The other he leaves unsure, saying maybe have them be great in a way they were not otherwise, like pushing people. Shaan Puri thinks people aim far too low. If he can help people aim a little higher, toward going for it and whatever their version of going for it is, he would feel really happy.

  He says he does not know the next step for

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• How Does Shaan Puri Take the Edge Off a Fight?

  Shaan Puri says a trainer told him, in the middle of an argument, to ask what they are trying to do here. The question is about the relationship, separate from the disagreement that started the fight. Even if the surface fight is Mexican food versus Italian food, he means I love you, you love me, a great time, and an awesome relationship.

  The sooner Shaan brings his own awareness to whether he loves the other person, whether he wants the relationship to be amazing, and that they are on the same team, and away from the wrongs of the situation, the edge goes off. It is never really the situation. It is how people are reacting in the situation. He says the difference between a reaction and a r

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• Why Do Founders Feel Lost After They Win?

  Shaan Puri says that as guys get a little older and touch some success, the promise was that fears, insufficiencies, and the need for validation would be sated if the castle got big enough or the mountain climbed high enough. A lot of people arrive and find the win did not fix the problem. Something was achieved, and a much bigger challenge is waiting. The fuel source has been spent and the destination has been reached. What follows is the founder's existential crisis: where to go now, and how to get there.

  He says he is pretty sure Andrew Wilkinson told him about a men's group made up exclusively of nine and 10 figure founder exit people, living in the most salubrious version of PTSD imagi

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• How Does Iron John Become a Great King?

  Shaan Puri says the move from wild man to great king happens when a king stops serving only his own needs and takes on a kingdom. He wants the people in the kingdom happy and thriving. The kingdom can be a family, friends, a neighbor, strangers on the internet, a community, or people with a rare disease he decided to serve. Fierce wild energy goes toward something worth more, in meaning, than comfort and lifestyle.

  A baby cares only about milk, a diaper, and a nap, and cries without them. Shaan says care might later reach appearance or grades, then more of life. Each new care forces growth to meet the new need. He applies the idea to getting bullied and deciding to build a self: the person

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• Why Does a Laugh Track Make People Laugh More?

  Shaan Puri says the thick and meaty version does not have to be that serious. Change the music behind a video and people feel totally differently. Put a laugh track behind the piece and people think it is funny and start laughing more. People are not as sophisticated as they hope to believe.

  People picture themselves as intellectual creatures, then the music still moves the feeling and the laugh track still gets the laugh. Accepting the limit hands over new tools, so the piece can be played other ways. Heavy work and deep work stay available, and sometimes the move is to sit down and grind, but neither mode can run all the time.

  Life is not supposed to be a grind. Shaan Puri says the other

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• Why Is Balanced Success Closer to Art Than Science?

  Chris Williamson says plain success is low skill because a formula can get you there, while success kept connected to the rest of life is much closer to art than to science.

  Chris Williamson is much more impressed by success done with balance and fun. Success is hard, and it is nowhere near as difficult as doing it while having a good time, being a good person, feeling good, staying in a community, helping family, and not using people in a transactional way. No formula shows how to build a good business and keep a good marriage, how to avoid denying parts of yourself, or how to turn past pain into anything other than a chip on the shoulder that becomes an identity. The vacancy after achieve

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• What Did Charles Bronson Tell Tom Hardy to Cut Off?

  Tom Hardy says Charles Bronson told him to cut a little piece of himself off, no matter how much it hurts, in order to grow and move on. While Tom Hardy was training for the movie Bronson, the first time he spoke to Charles Bronson he laid out a pattern with women he could not break. Tom Hardy says he probably had a relationship with his mother that had infiltrated all his relationships with women.

  Charles Bronson used to leave message after message, going back about three years, right through message 18. Tom Hardy finally picked up at six o'clock, just after he split up with his girlfriend. He said he was not in a good space. He could not be with a woman and he could not be without one. He

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• Why Is Iron John's Key Under the Mother's Pillow?

  Shaan Puri retells the opening of Robert Bly's Iron John story. The prince is a good boy headed for the throne: he dresses properly for court, says please and thank you, and listens to his parents. A golden ball, a gift from his father and his favorite toy, stands for the boy's vitality and life energy. The ball rolls into Iron John's cage. Iron John will give it back only if the boy lets him out.

  The boy has no key. Iron John says the key to the cage is under the mother's pillow. Robert Bly says that for every good boy, the key to the wild man sits where the mother rests her head at night, among her hopes and dreams for him. Mothers do not dream of a young boy becoming a pirate or a wild m

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• What Did Shaan Puri Tell His Scared Son?

  Shaan Puri says courage is feeling fear and then going through with the action anyway. People assume motivation means wanting to act or knowing it will go well, and they assume courage means no fear, uncertainty, or doubt. He says both are the same move: feel it, then go through it anyway. Nobody calls a person courageous for taking a sip when nothing is on the line. The same sip looks brave only when that person is actually afraid.

  Shaan Puri's son would not walk into jujitsu, tennis, or basketball. The boy was born during COVID and froze at the door: let go of a parent's hand, meet a stranger, join a bunch of kids. Shaan Puri had driven him, paid, and gone inside the last three times. A t

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• Why Was Shaan Puri's Singing Teacher Afraid to Sing?

  Shaan Puri's singing teacher did not sing until high school. He was afraid to sing and thought he could not. He grew up a black guy in a city where black guys like him played football, and singing was treated as gay, something you do not do. He got made fun of, assumed he must be bad, and felt even worse for liking singing than for being bad at it, so he shut it down.

  After he moved schools, he waited for his ride in an empty practice room while talent show auditions went on. He liked the song and sang along. The choir teacher poked her head in and asked if it was him. He asked her to be honest about whether he could sing, and she asked who told him he could not. He has been on American Ido

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