Joe Rogan on Why Losing in Life is Important

retirement is a relatively new concept. It's only for the last like 80, 100 years. You used to work yourself pretty much and then you die. And I do find that a lot of people get lost after they give up the thing. And it's a, you know, it's kind of a rich kid problem, you know, to be able to retire. It is not. It's like a sadness problem. People need a task. And I think when people are just waiting around for death to come knocking on their door, they need to get really morose and they just don't feel good. They don't feel productive. They don't feel, so one thing with old people, they don't feel helpful. Yeah. Well, that's the thing they say the single best, if you're feeling down generally about yourself, the single best thing they say you could they as though there's some quorum of they who all agree on everything. But a lot of people say the single best thing you can do, and this was in our loneliness episode as well as service, helping other people. So do you have you run across anybody that you've interviewed who you thought had a great kind of prescription for how to help other people like doable, sensible, you know, that if people really like, let's say I say, you know, I work hard, I try to love the people around me, but I really want to have some kind of service component, but I don't know what to do. That's a good question. I think first start with the people around you, right? Start telling them you love them hug them, make them enhance the sense of community that you share with your friends and your loved ones, do your best to sort of be the person who steps forward, starts it off, you know, like makes an action, tell someone how much you care and appreciate them, I care about them and appreciate them when you maybe wouldn't have done that ordinarily, you can do that, we can all do that. And we've all had it done to us. And it feels amazing. When someone comes up to you out of nowhere, and goes, Hey, man, I just want to tell you, I really appreciate you. I know, I know, sometimes we don't talk to each other that much. But when I do, I really enjoy it. I just I love you, give me a hug. I just want you to know, yeah, I'm very fortunate that I have a lot of friends that do that kind of stuff. I have a real supportive group of friends. And if you don't, you long for that. And I think that's a big thing, like become that person, reach out and try to try to start that. I can't imagine anybody hearing you say that would disagree. It's like such a obviously good way to be and yet, and yet I find that so many people kind of go out of their way to not just be generous because they're scared. There's a scarcity. They think that they have they have to make it and that if you make it zero sum, they're a loser. Yeah, it's famine thinking. It's real, real, real common. Yeah, our hardware is the same and our software is not. And we can manipulate our hardware, we just have to understand what the patterns are and also have been there. You have to make mistakes. You've been there, you feel it, you understand what it is. And then you have that time to adjust. That's why losing in life is so important, whether it's getting dumped, getting fired, losing a game, loss, those feelings where things didn't work out your way. That's important, because it lets you know this is the bad feeling that comes when it goes wrong, and you improve and then it makes the good feelings of victory all the better. And I mean that, you know, in a relative sense, like even getting good at something, forget about victory, like making a terrible book that gets rejected by every publisher, and then writing a really good one and people accepting like, fuck, I got better. Yes, like that's interesting. Yeah, those feelings of failure are really critical for your motivation. That's interesting. I've always thought of failure, like, like, like, yeah, failure or just like a bad event. I've always thought that they were good, because I'm like a scaredy cat in some ways, right? And then if the very bad thing happens, the very thing you feared happens, right, you survive it. And then you learn to shed more fear in more directions. You know what I mean? Well, so I could look at it that way. Look, there's a lot of ways you could look at bad events, you can say a bad event is just who you are, and you just have bad events, and you're a fucking loser, and life hates you, and God hates you. And look at that happening in the mic again, can't fucking believe it. There's a lot of guys who go through life like that. And you know, they could say that they seek comfort in lowering the standards that they expect out of things. So when things go bad, and they say, well, I fucking knew it for them, it alleviates some concern about what's going to happen in the future, because the future is always dogshit. So by doing that, they've taken away the fear of succeeding, the fear of overcoming, the fear of improving, the fear of getting better as a human being, if you just exhibit the same patterns, you fall into those patterns, whether it's alcoholism, or gambling addiction, or sex addiction, people fall into those because they're accustomed to it, it becomes a normal part of your life. I think that's a scary thing for people to recognize that they're on a bad pattern, and to say, Okay, I have to stop drinking. How do I do this? What steps do I make? And what's the best way? Community. They've shown 12 step programs, you get together with some other guy, and he says, Look, Mike, I used to drink too much too, or we're just people, we can help each other. I'm your sponsor now, and they work together. That's, I think, that solution is a really good solution. You know, I have three brothers, all older, I'm the youngest of eight, and I don't mean to disparage them. And I also know you're younger than me, but I kind of wish you'd been my older brother, you'd have been really good. Maybe I've been sucking up pussy. Come on, man, stop crying. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, no, that would have been a little bit of that would have. I'm sure I have a sister, I don't have a brother, but you know, having conversations with your brothers and sisters, sometimes they're the only people that really know you. Like I have conversations with my sister sometimes. She's the only person that really knows our childhood. Right. So we'll talk about what it was like when we're nine and 10. Do you have the same perception of events? Yeah, my sister's super honest. Right. But I mean, you remember- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she hasn't distorted anything. Right. We both have real similar recollections of our past. So it's, but those people that have experienced those things with you, they're like the only ones who really know you deep at your core. And the more things you can experience with people, the more you're going to share that sort of, the people that make me sad are the people that know friends and know confidants. They have no one they could talk to. They have no one that knows their secrets. They have no one that they could tell a terrible joke to and that you would never say in mixed company. Right. You have no one who, you know, there's especially comedians, we're famous for it. We say things to each other all the time that are the most horrible things. And just to get a rise out of each other, you know, like one of my friends will say something terrible to me. I'm like, about me, like horrible shit about me. And I'll just think it's so funny. I'm like, dude, that is what I look like. We're so accustomed to it. And there's also in our culture, there's a currency of being able to joke around like that. Of course. If somebody makes one of my friends makes fun of me, it's hilarious. It's fun. Like we do it to each other all the time. There's actually like a currency and be able to take it too. Like you can make fun of Andrew. He doesn't give a fuck. It's a good day. That's what people, you know, I mean, you're in the business of making fun of things. If you're mad at someone that makes fun of you, it's not good in our world.