#33 - Lawrence Yeo: On Mastery, Philosophy, and Creativity

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:01

You legitimately are one of my favorite modern writers. You were before, you know, we ended up meeting each other and you know, I'm grateful to be able to call your friend at this point, but I followed your work for, for a little bit before I came across you on Twitter or wherever it was. Your website is more to that. And it's been read by, you know, millions and millions of people all over the world, ⁓ has attracted a lot of.

really interesting opportunities for you. But more than anything, it's seems to be an incredible vehicle to share yourself and your ideas with the world. Tell me about the genesis of more to

Lawrence Yeo (: 00:46

So more to that started in March of 2018, but like any creative project, the seeds were planted well before then. And I think that context is kind of important in terms of how I discussed the Genesis. So if you don't mind, I'll venture into that for a little bit. ⁓ Before more to that. So I had a career in finance and I always knew that finance was just my, I call like a patron.

to be able to do what I really wanted to do, which was something creative. Initially, I thought that that was music. So I pursued music full-time for a number of years after finance and realized that as a musician, it's great. The craft is cool, but I felt that it was so gatekeeper driven. And so much of what I had to do in music was not really about the music itself, but how do I...

basically collaborate with the right people so that my music could get heard. And that was where so much of my focus went to. And eventually that led me to fall out of love with music because the craft no longer was prioritized. It was more so the receptivity behind it. And as a result, I went back into finance, trying to figure out what to do next. And it was during this time where I started experimenting with writing.

And I did so because writing was always, it was this thing that I did as a kid. And I really feel like if you are lost in terms of you want to do something, we're not sure what, what you did as a kid naturally is a great, place to start because there were no incentives other than just the act of doing it itself. And I started kind of messing around with that art form just on medium at the time was big. ⁓ but.

had no audience for what I was doing. I was just messing around with it. But I realized that I enjoyed discussing my ideas in this way. And the thing about music, especially as a musician, as a beat maker, like I was, it's hard to express ideas. I could just express feelings through my music. But this was really refreshing. Like, wow, I could actually discuss concrete philosophies and thoughts that I have about certain ways or modalities of thought. And I fell in love with it.

And I knew I wanted to incorporate drawings and illustrations into my writing. And it was when I had this realization, I thought, okay, this just writing on medium thing, I wanted to make it more cohesive and start a new project and call it something like more to that. But the way I'm going to approach it. So I had a job at the time, so I didn't have to worry about this thing making me money.

My whole thought was what if I just focus on the pure craft? Why? Because I know what I do with music. I know that that caused me to eventually burn out and not want to do it anymore. So what if I spent like a hundred hours on a single post, right? I had zero audience. So the external validation piece is at zero.

So this is all going to be intrinsically motivated. So I could test whether or not I actually want to do this and I like to do it, even if no one was listening or reading. And it turned out the answer was yes. I did about three posts, each of which took about 90 to a hundred hours before I published the first one. And I was like, wow, I like doing these drawings. I like doing the writing and this feels really good. So.

d the first piece in March of: 2018

There's downsides to spending that much time on one thing, but ⁓ that whole element of what if I were to be just truly intrinsically motivated to do this? And that's going to eventually let me stay here for the long game.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 05:21

You're not trained as a writer or an illustrator, but the majority of what you do now is around writing and augmenting that with illustrations.

Lawrence Yeo (: 05:32

Correct. Yep.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 05:35

A lot of people either they want to create, meaning they want to share themselves and their ideas with the world or they're early in their journey and they get so caught up in, well, I need to learn a little bit more. Who am I to do this? I'm not an expert. Or if I am actually an expert, I'm not an expert in conveying this information in this new medium. How did you deal with

you know, what a lot of people would maybe consider imposter syndrome early on when you were entering a completely new arena.

Lawrence Yeo (: 06:14

Yeah, I think that imposter syndrome is something that we all naturally have. Right. I mean, when you start something, there's always this element of there's so many other people doing this. That's always going to be the case. And the reason you want to get into anything to begin with is because you have some sort of taste profile. You have people that you're inspired by. And as a result, that makes you think, Hey, what if I gave this a shot? Right.

So that dynamic will always exist where there is someone that is quote unquote better, however you define that, than you are at this. I think the beautiful thing though, is that your mere entry into the space already signifies an element of uniqueness. Because yes, you might discuss similar ideas, but you're going to do it through your own worldview. Right. And I really think ultimately there is this acceptance of the fact

that I have something to contribute and I may not think it's differentiated yet, but the fact that I'm going to continue showing up for it will reveal it in the end. That's this fundamental belief you have to have for anything you venture into. And ultimately it really is an acceptance of the unknown. What feels known is, I'm an imposter, right?

That feels very salient. I'm not as good as that person. That's what I feel. That's what I'm certain about. A lot of times these certainties or what you think are certainties are what hold you back. But ultimately what will create the most benefit in your life is when you look at it and think, ⁓ I don't, okay, look, I'm going to keep showing up. I don't know what that's going to yield, but there is a kind of faith that I put in to this element of consistently showing up where

It will later reveal that, I'm not an imposter after all. And actually I never was. The moment I showed up, I actually already kind of overcame that. The trick is to consistently do it. So you believe it yourself over time.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 08:26

Yeah, for me, you know, one of the questions a lot of people have that rattles around their head is who am I to do this? Right. And instead of treating it like a rhetorical, like, who am I? Who am I actually answer the question? Well, who are you to do this? Because more than likely you're somebody who is very passionate about this topic. You are interested in learning more about it and developing your craft itself. Cause the other piece is like,

If not you, then who, like, if you don't share this idea, if you don't put this out there, who will? Because the very fact that you want to do this implies that there's a void right now that this isn't being addressed in some way. And I think, you know, a lot of people get too caught up in the, the idea of I, I have to have an original thought and original idea. And then they realize that isn't

possible in the traditional sense, right? Like again, coming to like for music, like everything's a remix to some degree, right? Like even if you're creative, even if you're like, you know, strumming a guitar or something, you only have so many like notes or chords to play with. So in that sense, even that is a remix of what has already been available, what has already been kind of codified, right?

Lawrence Yeo (: 09:51

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 09:52

I gave up on trying to find an original idea. Instead, I look at what do I have conviction in? What ideas do I have conviction that are worth diving into digging into sharing? And then how can I make it my own remix? How can I inject my own stories, quirks, observations, personality, you know, little bits? How can I inject those into it to make it my

How do you approach that?

Lawrence Yeo (: 10:25

Yeah, it's funny because I remember for you, um, I remember seeing this thing where someone reached out to you saying that, you use too much profanity in your stuff. And then you're like, but that's kind of me. And, um, like that's the way that you inject yourself into these ideas. Right? So maybe you've heard a similar idea you're discussing, but you not only read it in psychology today or something like that. know you're a contributor there, but like.

But you may not hear it in that way, right? That's not how you're to read it. So you're like, oh, well, I'm going to do it my own way. And I think that everyone has their own way of doing the same thing. So I like to make this analogy towards music. And for example, the topic of love, right? Like how many songs have been created about love? You can't even count them. And how many will continue to be created about love? You just can't count.

And that's because it's a universal thing of the human condition and our own experience of it introduces a new dimension to it. And that same thing applies for anything, anything. And that's why I also like to make the distinction between knowledge and understanding. So knowledge is taught through information.

And I think that when people get caught up in, well, I don't have an original idea. They think too much about the information. Like, this information isn't new. It's been around. I absorbed it from somewhere. Am I just sharing that information back out? And that's when you're too stuck on knowledge is your commodity. But what really is the commodity is understanding and understanding is taught through experience. So that's when you actually take that knowledge.

funnel it through your everyday experience in the hard arena of real life, and then you emerge on the other side with some sort of story to tell, or with some sort of refreshing take on a tired subject. And that is actually what's going to make you seem refreshing as a whole.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 12:36

Well, and you, you brought that, ⁓ you've brought an idea like this up in your article around like the, the last two motes we have against AI, because you talked about, what was it? context and personality, right? These are the last motes we really have at this point because, you know, especially with, you know, prompt engineering is becoming its own skillset, which is, ⁓ whatever I have opinions on it, but

It's like you can, you can engineer prompts that will get a really, really good, from a technical standpoint output. But it's sort of like, I think about it almost like diet pop, like it tastes like, or soda, like it tastes like pop, but it feels empty. You can tell there's not like sugar or substance to it. Like it feels hollow.

Lawrence Yeo (: 13:24

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 13:31

So it's like, can look at it, you know, some of this AI generated and like, you can tell it's AI generated cause it just like you're hitting all the, all the right, you know, technical aspects of it, but there's no life to it. And like you said, you know, the piece, like there's no context, there's no personality because AI doesn't have a childhood, right? AI doesn't, you know, so man, like so much of your stories, you know, you talk about, you know, your family.

or something, you know, growing up and things. And that gives such incredible context to your lessons, right? Cause like, you know, one of the formats you use a lot is you open with a story and then you, you talk about a concept that the story kind of introduces or illustrates, right? That's so, so good because it's like, you know, you'll have an article where you start talking about, you know, watching your kid.

you know, play or, know, watching two children play and then somebody doesn't share. Then somebody starts to cry. And then the adults are like, Hey, you know, you need to share all you need to be grateful. And it's like, well, how does this, you know, relate to the anger economy and how we just, you know, outrage culture? Like, how does this relate? And I'm like, I don't know how it relates, but I have to know now because it was such a good, introductory story. AI doesn't have that context, those experiences, right?

I think fundamentally, most of us deeply want to be authentic and share ourselves and our ideas with the world. But authenticity often feels vulnerable. It feels raw. We feel exposed because these are my ideas. These are things that are precious to me. These are my values spread on the page. So I think

A lot of people put so much effort into avoiding being vulnerable rather than learning to embrace that vulnerability. So we say, ⁓ let me tinker on this piece a little bit more. Well, let me just have AI write this piece over here. Let me just do this over here.

rather than saying, can I get more comfortable with the discomfort of vulnerability and authenticity? How do you think about vulnerability and authenticity when it comes to the creative act?

Lawrence Yeo (: 15:52

Yeah, we could actually delineate those two things and address each one. So I think we could start with authenticity. And what's interesting is that, I mean, we have progressively in any art form as new technologies emerge, move closer and closer to a kind of homogenized ⁓ output, right? Like you're just taking in what has already been done. And that is what creates

current art. And some might say, well, that's exactly what human beings do. the flip side to that is like you're saying, like, we have a rich childhood. We have a rich upbringing. We have these experiences that no one has experienced but us, right? Maybe the lessons you draw from them are timeless, but the experiences themselves are very, very unique to you. And I think

That is where the authenticity element comes from. And sure, maybe easier for you to just use AI and to create a story or whatever. say, hey, I experienced this and put together something. Yeah, sure. That's easy to do. But there's also, and this goes back to faith too, where it's like the faith that your readership or your viewership also craves a similar kind of authenticity. you know, people kind of say, well,

I don't want to write as if my audience were dumb. All right. And I think a lot of like AI stuff could start venturing into there because it's kind of caters to lowest common denominator, especially if you're just trying to build an audience or something. But we could replace that element of intelligence and instead say, Hey, I want to write for people that crave authenticity, that really desire that in the stuff that they consume or read or watch. And.

That is going to show up in how you create as well. So the quality of the people that you attract will also mirror that level of authenticity that you desire, right? Not just in your own life, but also from your readership or what have you. Now, how do you get that? Right? So how do you bring out that authenticity? And at that points to that second thing you mentioned, which is vulnerability and vulnerability is supposed to feel scary. It's supposed to feel like

You're revealing too much that that's essentially what vulnerability means. I'm revealing too much. And what's interesting is that one of the clear ways to kind of overcome imposter syndrome is to actually reveal more about yourself because that shows you, dang, I really am kind of different in that sense. Right. And it's so funny too, because, you know, I'm sure you as well, but I've had the privilege of just.

meeting so many great writers at this point and, and talking to them. And one universal theme I hear from them is there are certain pieces they wrote, which they hesitated to hit publish on because they thought it was revealing a little too much. And in the end, they were so happy that they did that. And a lot of time it ended up being some of their most popular work. And this is not a coincidence.

This is not a coincidence.

If you take the vulnerability thing to its extreme and you think, publishing this is going to ruin me, right? Like it's going to ruin my reputation or my friendships. Okay. Then don't publish it. But there's always this spot before that where it's like, ⁓ I don't know. This is a, this is a little much, but I'm hesitating and not saying an outright no, because I think it's actually going to be helpful to reveal in those areas. I would encourage you to move forward with it.

and publish like this hesitation you may have move forward because that is where people will sense your authenticity. If you think it's going to ruin you, don't do it. But hesitation, that's a good sign to move ahead and do it anyway.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 20:04

For sure. And like, there's also a difference between like trauma dumping and what I call tactical vulnerability. I really try to lean hard into tactical vulnerability, meaning how can I be vulnerable in so much as it is serving my audience? Like, how can I use my own, you know, some fucked up thing that happened to me in my childhood specifically to illustrate a point so that my reader doesn't feel so alone? Right? So for example,

Lawrence Yeo (: 20:12

Yes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 20:33

One of my more popular pieces where I, know, unquote bled on the page was I talked about, and I talked about like going through like domestic violence and growing a poor and shit before, which, you know, people always resonate with cause like, I grew up poor too. You know, and I'm, grew up in a totally different country or I went through DV, whatever. But one of my pieces, I talked about how my identity as the quote unquote poor kid held me back from success for a long time.

because growing up, everybody I knew was a poor kid. We were all on like Medicaid, know, public housing. We got the free lunches in school, all that. We were delinquents, a bunch of stuff. And as I got older and I started to pursue success, I was like, fuck if I succeed, I won't be the poor kid anymore. And if I'm not the poor kid, who am I? So like the whole point of the piece was like,

success represents something to each of us. And when success represents a negative, such as losing your identity, that can cause you to self-sabotage your success because success means losing who you are and who you've, who, who the only person you've ever known, the only version of you you've ever known. So of course you can want to succeed yet simultaneously sabotage your success because it represents losing who you are. So it's like, that was the piece of like, Hey, if, you're

If you've experienced something like this, I totally get it. And that was, I didn't have fucking journal prompts and like practical takeaways or like a bunch of like citations and shit. was like, this is just my experience. I hope it helps somebody out there. So that tactical vulnerability, right? I share a lot, but I never share things that I feel either. don't share details about other people because those are their details to share, not mine.

And I never share things that I feel would somehow compromise an aspect of, of, of myself or, you know, safety concerns, you know, whatever, but I'm very tactical in so much as it serves my audience. And I think that's a really, it's a helpful heuristic of, okay, this feels vulnerable, but is it helpful to somebody else? Could it be helpful to somebody else in a way that doesn't compromise something important in your life?

tactical vulnerability.

Lawrence Yeo (: 23:00

I like that. I like that phrase, tactical vulnerability, because yes, I think trauma dumping, just do that with your therapist. And that doesn't need to be an art form necessarily. doesn't, it does your, I mean, this really is kind of the distinction between just event recall and storytelling. Right. I think there are two different modes of thought and

That, and you could find that delineation through all kinds of things too, like even with writing, for example. So in my case, I write every single day, but I don't write to publish every single day. There's a distinction. I write every single day in the form of a journal because that's my way of kind of just event recall. How did I feel? What did I think? I don't have to think about who I'm serving because I don't even know if I'm serving myself. Like I'm not even going to read these entries later. They're so gibberish, but.

I'm just dumping and there's a utility in that. But when I'm writing a post, right. Or when I'm writing a book or something like that, then I'm thinking about, okay, how do I take the context of what I've experienced and then best articulate it? So the recipient, the person on the other side, not only finds this cohesive and coherent, but also finds it useful and also finds it valuable. Right now you could define utility in any number of ways, but

One way is just you thinking to yourself, okay, I experienced this thing and I know I learned a lot from it. If I were to share what I've learned to a past version of myself, how would I put that in a way where he or she would understand it? Right? So you're thinking about it through that lens. And when you do that, you have to show up with intention. And I think that's why vulnerability is also important because when you decide to

Either discuss something that you feel could be a little vulnerable or you're being kind of open. You do it in this kind of tactful way. Right. And, know, like you mentioned, I talk about things that, you know, like talk about family values and things of that nature. And I want to approach these kinds of things where it's like, okay, I know that my family unit, we experienced this together and

The lessons that I drew from it could also be applicable to my whole family, right? Not just me. And I want to communicate it that way. So yes, I think that that way of framing vulnerability is very important. And it also makes it less scary because you're approaching it with more intention. And at the same time, you know what you're aiming to do with it.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 25:44

Agreed. And going back to the, one of the pieces you mentioned as far as, you don't write to your audience, assuming they're dumb. I personally hate the advice to write to a fourth grade reading level, not because it isn't effective one. And it sounds egotistical, but one, I legitimately don't know what a fourth grade reading level is. Cause when I was in fourth grade, I tested at a co at a collegiate reading level.

So I'd never understood what a fourth grade reading level was. Like to me using big words is normal. It's just like using dashes is normal for me, but now it's like a sign of AI, right? Like dude, literally when I was a kid, like there's a certain point where when I would, know, when I was pooping in the bathroom, I grabbed, I evolved from playing with power ranger toys to reading the dictionary. And it's one of the favorite

fun facts. My mom would just randomly tell coworkers and shit anytime like she would visit me at like a job I had back home. She'd be like, yeah, when Corey was little, he'd be in the bathroom poop and read the dictionary. Like that was, that was a fun fact. She wanted to share with my coworkers. But so like, and like I took Latin in high school. So like, I love etymology. It's really weird interest. have, I naturally use bigger words. When I try to specifically write to a fourth grade reading level,

Lawrence Yeo (: 27:00

Hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 27:11

It just fucks me up instead. And I think that that also kind of infantilizes your audience to a degree. What is a more helpful frame for me is right. Like you talk because what that means is you naturally speak at a lower level than you can read, right? We naturally probably go closer to a fourth or fifth grade reading level in our normal just day to day.

you know, parlance or some shit. That's normal, but specifically targeting a fourth year dream level, I think is an injustice to our audience because our audience is more intelligent than that. And I think a lot of our audience appreciates us speaking the way we actually speak day to day, whatever that means to us.

But I think a lot of people get tripped up because when we're sharing things that make us feel vulnerable, it's really easy to fall back on intellectualism and try to use bigger words specifically to just obfuscate the fact that we feel insecure or vulnerable. So the thing I always tell people is like, look, just write like you talk, however you talk, whether it's highfalutin or whatever, just write like you talk.

because man, you are an intellectual person. You are an articulate person and your writing is very easy to read, but I wouldn't consider it a quote unquote fourth grade reading level. How do you reconcile like finding your, your voice and the right, you know, tone to hit when you're approaching writing.

Lawrence Yeo (: 28:55

I approach writing, I think a lot of my music background plays a role in this. And I feel that when it comes to writing, there's a rhythm to writing. Right. ⁓ but I don't really think about it so technically like, ⁓ this sentence has four words and the next sentence, eight words. So the next thing has to be 16, you know, like that one. I forget it's like some, like that, that meme.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 29:21

Like the Hemingway thing

or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The highlighted, yeah.

Lawrence Yeo (: 29:23

Yeah, yeah. You

know, like I'm not really like looking at it like that. And I, and I feel like, you know, you could get as technical as you want with writing, but in the end, it's just not a science. You can't say, this was this many syllables. So if I do this many syllables, now it flows. just, I feel like when you speak kind of what you're saying, like there is also a rhythmic element to speech, right? You naturally pause. You.

keep going at some point, maybe borderline rambling. And then you like, oh, I was rambling. Let me just curtail that a bit. There's, there's this kind of push and pull that happens when you're speaking to somebody, especially when you're trying to be articulate, when you're trying to phrase your ideas in a way where it's not a dump. And I think that same thing could apply with, with writing and you know,

I enjoy using, you know, like a wide vocabulary as well. I think for me, the interesting thing is like, because I add drawings and a lot of what I do, it kind of grounds whatever complexity I may have in the ideas in terms of a very simple kind of childlike way to anchor you. And a lot of people have told me what the illustrations help to do is that they'll read an idea and

I don't think it's the verbiage that's complex, but it's more of the underlying sentiment of what I'm trying to communicate. And then the illustration kind of acts as a little break for them to be like, okay, this is what he's saying in the form of this one drawing. Like it's an aid to what he just said. And I think a lot of times ⁓ when it comes to articulation, you kind of want to have both in there. I mean, even for you,

Like you like using big words and you're really interested in that stuff, but you also use profanity in your writing. Right. So it's this you're mixing in both sides of the spectrum. Right. And, and I do feel like when you could address these kinds of paradoxes in your writing, you're not even thinking about it though, but everyone has these paradoxes in the way that they interact. But if you could kind of codify that into your writing, then it creates this unique style of your own.

So without even me knowing it, when I wanted to make illustrations and I was thinking, ⁓ if I'm going to do drawings, I want this to be a separate project. Cause I was just writing on medium under a personal name at that point. It was mainly just writing. But the moment I thought I want to incorporate drawings, I knew I had to break away and create a separate thing called more to that. Because I understood that introducing drawings introduces like another stylistic element, but

It also kind of reflects me too, because even though I like to operate in this very, you know, kind of like idea space and thinking about things in that way, I also, I don't know, just like listening to dumb shit. like to, you know, just like joke around and laugh about stupid stuff and, and be silly. Like that's, that's part of my character as well. So that finds its way into, into the writing.

so I really do feel like it, are articulating your own ideas. Yes. In your own way, but there's all these kinds of dualities that exist in everybody. And if you could pull away what those are, then, ⁓ you kind of emerge some, some really cool style of your own.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 32:58

Well that and if you, if you think about anybody who has inspired you on some level, you feel connected to that person. You resonate with the person, not just the writing itself. And for me, I think you should be able to read like for writers. I think you should be able to read their writing and hear their voice because it is so aligned. And that doesn't mean like, you know, obviously the

The quality bar for like a 300 word blog post is going to be different than a traditionally published book or a full book for sure. But it should still be that person that comes through the page.

And a big piece, again, it all honestly, man, like in my, in my perspective, it all comes back to like fear and insecurity and like self doubt and shit. But a lot of us, we, we try to be overly professional or we try to add a bunch of, you know, citations or be overly formal sometimes because we're trying to, to give the air of perfection almost, or we think, well, until this piece is perfect, until this expression of this idea I have is perfect.

I can't really share it, but people aren't perfect, which means we don't connect to perfection. We connect to imperfection. We connect to the shared imperfection we all have. So like for me to quote unquote talk, you know, talk about my imperfect childhood that resonates with people who also maybe either had an imperfect childhood or appreciate me tack, you know, my tactical vulnerability of sharing those pieces of myself or me cussing.

or sometimes using bigger words. Like I literally somebody email with the other, she's like, Hey, I really appreciate that you write with the assumption that your audience is smart. And I'm like, in my head, was like, I wrote this just like I talk. Like I didn't give a shit if he were smart or not. This is just legitimately how I talk. And I think really not performative imperfection, but just embracing imperfection. Cause I,

Even for example, like your illustrations. I love your illustrations.

but you use like what, 1 % of illustrators capabilities. If, if that use like a couple settings or features in illustrator to do your stuff, you could, it could be so much quote unquote better if you wanted it to be.

Lawrence Yeo (: 35:30

Yeah.

Right. But that's not the point. think, you know, and it's just not the point. I think like, you know, perfection is one of those things to where it's not only is it paralyzing in terms of trying to pursue it, but imagine if you actually achieved perfection, what you thought was perfection and how paralyzed you would be to make the next thing. Right. You would always be comparing it to what you thought you made that was already perfect.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 35:38

Exactly.

Lawrence Yeo (: 36:04

And you see instances of this a lot of people, ⁓ you know, like thinking, it's like, I, the first thing I put out was amazing. And it just like paralyzes them and prevents them from making stuff. And, and they actually resent that thing that they made after a while. So if you know that perfection is just not even a desirable thing and yes, imperfection is what unites us.

Then you can also approach your craft in a similar way. And it's, I think that's also an advantage we have over AI too. mean, I think some people will actually prompt AI to include imperfections in some of their stuff now, which, you know, is another way of going about it. those imperfections come about as you it's really through your own lived experience. Like there's no other way to put it. The imperfections are so uniquely you as well. And.

You know, I wrote about love before and I kind of wrote about how I think, you know, if there was a platonic ideal of love, it would be that the person's imperfections are things that you grow to love as well. Like, I think if you feel that about somebody, then that's like actual love, like true love. ⁓ so. When it comes to writing or anything like that, I really feel that.

Not only you have to be okay with imperfection, you have to just, you have to embrace it. And then also when you finish whatever you've created, know that there's always another opportunity. There's always another opportunity to address the same topic, the same idea, but the next time you open up your word processor, it's going to come out different. It really, it really is. You could talk about the same thing, the same thing again.

And it will come out different. So that's, that's the, that's the nature of iteration. And what's beautiful about it is that you're working towards something, but each attempt is going to be different. And that's beautiful.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 38:13

I agree. Yeah. I try to make a habit to write about the concept of momentum. More at least every year, at least once a year, I just like not even trying to like judge it up. Like momentum, more. Here's what I think about it. Here's how it applies to life. And every piece is completely different than the ones that came before it.

Lawrence Yeo (: 38:32

Yeah. And it's always going to come out that way. and, you know, when it comes to me, mental Mori or death, mean, I've written about death so many times, but I've written about it in different contexts, right? Like I have a piece called the nothingness of money, which was, ⁓ very, very well read. And ultimately that, that, that piece was just a reflection on death, right? Like we know we're going to die and we all hear about this deathbed clarity, especially when it comes to money.

but how come we can't embody that while we're alive? And ultimately it's a reflection on death. I have another piece where I explicitly talk about death. Like I call it death, the roommate of life. And that's just about death. But I talk about that same idea, but through a different lens, whether it's the money or whether it's the meaning or things that nature, there's always different approaches. And, you know, one thing that I just thought about now when comes to writing is that your writing is also going to keep evolving.

And so maybe the easy thing to do to start off with is just like, all right, yeah, write like how you talk, because that's the most natural. But then I also feel like at some point too, your writing will evolve and you'll also be like its own voice too. So it may not, it's not going to mimic how you talk anymore. Like it's going to be your, its own thing and it's going to evolve. But if you need a place to start and you feel so encumbered by all these expectations, then just, yeah.

Right? Like how you feel like you talk and then let that repetition guide you to its own style. I think that's what happened for me is that it kind of just guided me to its own thing. My earlier pieces, I think read different than how they read now.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 40:10

Well, and you also, one of the pieces I read before this episode also on death is the finality of everything. That's another piece. Right? So again, like you, you, it's almost like that quote about, you know, um, the man never steps in the same river twice because he's not the same man or whatever. Like it's that right? Like every time you revisit an idea, you have so many lived experiences.

between the first, the last time you revisited it and today, and each of those experiences, not only are they new, but they will connect and compound with all the other experiences you've already had. You get more context, right? And even, know, things that, you know, I thought were important, but I was 20, very different than 30, very different than now at 36, right? Like just life happens and you're constantly evolving and

updating your context and your values and your understanding of things, your conceptualization. That's really in my mind, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, right? Knowledge is just facts. Wisdom is like actual understanding and in the context of those facts and things.

Lawrence Yeo (: 41:24

Yeah, that's why I like, I like to say I read a lot, but I don't take those words too seriously. I mean, they act as a good kind of place to look, but in the end you have to test it with your own reality and you have to live it for yourself. And then I kind of, ironically enough, what you learn from that becomes knowledge for somebody else. And the cycle continues, but to take in knowledge and then believe that that's understanding is.

kind of ridiculous. also another thing that I have to say about people saying, well, why do we have to read anymore if AI could summarize everything? Well, that's just like another way of saying, there's something about the act of sitting with words and digesting them in their original interpretation, the way they're originally meant to be. Like that leads to a different form of knowledge acquisition that gets you a little closer to understanding before you actually test it out in the real world.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 42:23

that and like reading a book, there may be a single story or a single sentence from a book that sticks with you and completely changes how you approach life and asking for a summary, whether it's like a human generated summary or an AI one, most of the time that story or that sentence won't be in there because it could have just been a super, super just, you know, innocuous statement.

or quote or you know, whatever observation that wasn't big enough for somebody who does summaries to pick up on like, you know, Ryan holiday is one of my favorite, authors, ⁓ cause he helped me kind of get into stoicism early on. And I think it's the obstacles away in that book. He, one of the stories he shares is he's talking about like the banana King or some shit.

And the story is basically there was this plot of land for like banana trees or something that two people were trying to get the deed to that land. One guy was the underdog. He had limited means. He, you know, he, couldn't spend a whole lot of money to acquire the deed to the land. And then there was this company, this big massive company that had endless resources. The issue was that two people claimed to have the deed to the land.

So the company was like, well, we're going to spend a shit ton of money doing all this research, hiring a bunch of people to figure out who is the rightful owner of the deed versus who's the one who has the fake one. The underdog guy, he was like, I can't hire a team and spend six to eight months figuring all the shit out. What is my actual goal here? My goal isn't to figure out who owns the land. My goal is to own the land.

So rather than trying to research which deed was, was, you know, authentic, he just bought the deed from both people to guarantee he had the right one. And it was just like the, the whole concept of like, what the fuck is your actual goal here? The goal wasn't to be right. The goal was to own the deed. And that story, that example has stuck with me for years and I have never seen any AI summary, any

Lawrence Yeo (: 44:30

Mm-hmm.

you

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 44:49

human generated summary, any real talk about that specific story. And that story changed how I approach so many things.

Lawrence Yeo (: 45:00

Yeah. And I would argue that the time in which you read that story and also all the compounding of you reading about stoicism, like I don't think that was your first encounter with stoicism, right? You were probably already into it. And then you had this baseline understanding of the, of the philosophical foundation for it. And then this story came to you or you arrived at it, which is why it resonated. But

If that, if you heard this story before all that legwork, I don't think it would have hit you in a similar way. And like for me personally, so there's a line that's, ⁓ literally seven words long. And this line I think was so impactful for me and it continues to be impactful for me today. And it probably like indirectly led me to writing the inner compass, my book and this line, was from Krishna Murthy.

who was a speaker and he also, he was a writer to some extent, but mostly a speaker. And the line that, that he said, which was written down in this book was whatever I am that I want to understand. Whatever I am that I want to understand. It's such a simple sentence. If I just read it on its own or someone put it on Twitter as just that, I would have been like, whatever. But.

It was in the context of him talking about the problem of envy and, basically like, yeah, I'm envious because I want the high position that somebody has or the house or whatever. And he was saying, but if I wanted to understand my dissatisfaction and its cause, then I would have no room to want what that person has. So he's setting it up that way. And then he says, but if I say whatever I am,

that I want to understand, then envy is gone. And that line, that single line that struck me was so profound. It had to be mixed in with everything though. And all the things that I was feeling at the time had to be at that moment for me to say, that really is the answer to a lot of this external pressure and feeling like you have to do something, something you don't want to do or being so envious of what others, other people have. It's like,

If I wanted to understand myself better and directed my attention to that pursuit, then all this stuff kind of dissipates. And it was so impactful for me, but I had to read it in the context of that book. I had to read it in the context of that passage. I had to read that in the context of my life experience at that time for that seven word sentence to hit me that hard. All these things have to coalesce.

in order for what you read to become potentially life-changing.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 47:59

It's actually a great segue because I was going to bring up Krishnamurti because I have never read anything by Krishnamurti, but you constantly talk about them.

And you know, one of the most compelling things about your own writing man is, I mean, there's a lot of shit that makes compelling, but one like really subtle, I think piece to it is fundamentally you share philosophy. Like you write about philosophy in a way that doesn't feel like traditional philosophy feels right. Like in undergrad, I had a required philosophy course.

And it was miserable because it was like, it was that kind of like, how do you know if a chair is a chair? What does it mean to know? And I'm like, Jesus Christ, like this is not like this is without a solid foundation or an appreciation of this form of thought. This is so far above my head. Like it's too abstract for me to appreciate at this particular moment as a 19 year old with very little life experience and shit. ⁓ and again, just, we didn't have it the right.

enough context for it. And like the only reason most of us passed that class literally is because the professor had a heart attack the day of the final and just gave everybody a B. That was how, but like legitimately.

Lawrence Yeo (: 49:27

Dude, but if you were gonna

already get an A, you got shafted, dude.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 49:33

Well, okay. There was one kid that got an a, but he was the kid that like really liked philosophy. ⁓ and like him and the professor were like, make jokes about it and things that kid did get an a, but like the rest of us fucking normies, we all got like blanket. Everybody got a B, which was great. But, but, so I didn't have a good introduction to philosophy. And I think a lot of people don't.

get a good introduction to philosophy. But fundamentally, like, again, go back to etymology. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, right? Not the love of pontificating about the universe or some shit. You do a great job of writing about philosophy in a way that doesn't feel like full that I'm reading philosophy. You obviously draw a lot of inspiration from people like Christian Marty. He's probably the most cited person I see you talk about anyway.

Why is his work so compelling for you, first off?

Lawrence Yeo (: 50:39

One thing is he never called himself a philosopher. He didn't think of himself as a philosopher. He didn't think of himself as a guru or anything like that. And I share your sentiment on philosophy in general. actually wrote a piece called philosophy has lost its way where, you know, like a lot of philosophy, think a big part of why it lost his way is that people started treating it as a science and it's like, whoa, if a equals B, B equals C and then like the, the, but then they try to do that with wisdom and it just doesn't work.

⁓ so I've shied away from, especially like the continental tradition of philosophy and things like that, where it's just too heady and almost mathematical. And, I like Krishnamurti because he.

I think if I were to put it simply, he just speaks to the inner world so well and how we are able to maintain integrity in ourselves throughout an arguably difficult life, right? I mean, life is hard. There's a lot of things that we navigate and experience that are very difficult.

And a big part of it is because we are trying to be of this world. We, we want to do what we feel compelled or called to do, but we have to function within the world. And that creates odds a lot of time. And I think he represents this commitment to like kind of staying, staying true to that, that inner sense of who you are, but without all the highfalutin, I am greater than you, that kind of, ⁓ that kind of sentiment.

And I also like him because I don't agree with him on everything. I feel like he got a lot of things wrong as well, but I liked how he still tried to put together the argument and he put together the argument in a way that doesn't make you feel dumb. So for example, one thing is he thinks ambition is an extremely, ⁓ like fatal force and, and a world with ambition will always be a world with misery. ⁓ I disagree with that. think that ambition is actually critical.

to the development of a healthy mind, you just have to have ⁓ direction behind your ambition and to anchor that with integrity so that you don't go off the rails. So I disagree with him on that. I mean, there's many things that I do not have complete alignment with, but I think I like that. And I more so like his approach to sharing his arguments. And whenever I read him though, like it does remind me that, hey,

Yes, the tension that I feel with the world, this tension that I feel in terms of how I want to do things, but I feel held back by external forces and so forth. He kind of reminds me to have conviction. He reminds me to have conviction and he does it in a way where it hits home and it's not complicated. It's simple for me to understand. And I love that about his work.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:47

Is there a, uh, for people who would be interested, is there a specific work you recommend people start with?

Lawrence Yeo (: 53:52

Yes, ⁓ it's Krishna Burdi's Think On These Things. It is probably the book that I have recommended most to people. And the reason why I love this book so much is that there are transcriptions of his talks. So most books you'll see on him are just transcriptions of talks that he gave, but the talks were given to students and teachers. So young students and teachers. So he could tell he was trying his best to

distill what he was trying to say in really simple form. And what's beautiful is at the end of every chapter, there's like a Q and a section and the questions are so innocent. Like you could tell, ⁓ like a seven, eight year old asked it. So like, for example, one of the questions, was like, who is your master? Right. And then Krishna Murthy will just like give his account of like, yeah, well, people he he'll tie this into this.

desire we all have for wanting an authority figure, right? To, make us validate our thoughts. Like if you see someone that seems articulate or what have you, like you had to have some sort of mentor or someone that brought you there. And he's like, you don't really need all like the whole element of needing authority. You don't need that. And he kind of gives this long, nice answer. And the next question is, but you haven't said who your master is. Why not? So, so it's this nice little like innocent play question, but.

You could, those, that's a reminder that yeah, kids ask the straightest questions and without like, I'm trying to sound smart and all that stuff. Right. So it's a great opportunity to get the best out of someone when you ask very honest, unfiltered questions. And you see that throughout the book, which is why it's such a joy to read these really young kids asking him these questions that he then has to try to distill simply for them.

It's beautiful. It's great. And that passage I described earlier is also from that book, The Whatever I Am, that I want to understand one.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 55:54

I really liked that. And I just, for me, I think the most, the philosophy that has always resonated the most with me is applicable. It is again, it isn't just like endless abstract pontification about some bullshit. Like one of the books I recommend the most, especially for people who are interested in like meditation, mindfulness, like some low key Buddhism stuff is the miracle of mindfulness by tick not hon. And the reason, one reason,

is it, it isn't a book that he just kind of wrote on a mountain top for the benefit of mankind. Right. He wrote it as like a letter or a series of letters, I think during like maybe like the Vietnam war or something, some somewhere around that, that time where a lot of Vietnamese monks and things were getting like kidnapped, beaten, raped, murdered, all these other things. And he wrote it.

to the fellow and I'm sure I'm to fuck up all the terms, but like basically like the head monk over there, it was like, Hey, I know y'all are going through some real shit right now. Here's how to cut to recent or to come back to the core pieces of our spiritual practice so that you can weather the storm and move through it and not come out full of hatred and resentment and revenge and all these other things. So like again, with that context, when he's then like, you know, one of the pieces he talks about is like,

When you're doing the dishes, do the dishes like when you're doing the dishes, your mind should be on the dishes, not what you're going to be eating later or what happened yesterday or what could happen tomorrow. And again, we talked about, know, like, like a quick, like Twitter post or something. If I just said like, Hey, here's a quick way to practice mindfulness. Okay, fine. But the context really, really matters. And I have never done dishes the same.

since I read the miracle of mindfulness because I had that context. And like, again, it wasn't this high fluid thing. It was like, look, you're going through real shit. Here's how to practice mindfulness to stay sane. And I love that aspect. And obviously there are differences, differences between like, you know, lay philosophy versus like monastic philosophy and things. But cause you know, back in the day, like, you know, Plato or Aristotle, all these people, like that was their job today. You can't,

with rare exceptions, society doesn't support you to have a career as a philosopher purely. Right, that isn't a vocation in modern society like it was in other historical periods necessarily. Now we call it a thought leader. again, that's a whole can of worms, right? But,

Lawrence Yeo (: 58:41

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 58:48

We don't have, we don't have that, that same level of like monastic philosophy, meaning your job 24 seven is to just philosophize. It is much now it's like you are a lay philosopher at best. Cool. How can you incorporate aspects of philosophy in your day to day life? Knowing you will never achieve guru, you know, Buddha nature necessarily.

You're always going to be imperfect. You're going to get frustrated. You're going to snap at a loved one because you were pissy or your blood sugar was low because you didn't eat or some shit that's going to happen.

But with that context, how can you recover? How can you re center realign moving forward? And for most of us, that is what philosophy represents is that return to center, to alignment, to the person we know we are capable of being. How do we become that person more frequently rather than, you know, succumbing to our baser instincts sort of deal.

Lawrence Yeo (: 59:55

Absolutely. I think that that's what the ultimate goal of philosophy is. And it's not this incredible thought exercise where you have to think through mathematical riddles and puzzles so you could arrive at is a whole, really a whole. And that's an actual paper, by the way. And I I feel that

The beauty of it though is that yes, there's a timelessness around it and also philosophy can extend into any other discipline, any other discipline that will actually support a career or you can build a career in. mean, you look at coaching, for example, coaching is ultimately an embodiment of philosophy. If your philosophy, your way of life, your way of thinking about it, which people find resonant and they gravitate towards.

And they want to know how they could be regularly reminded of that. I don't think anyone approaches these kinds of things with the thought that, after I do this, then my life will be perfect. Right? No, it's more of, I'm just equipped with more reminders and more tools to be aware of when the half life of whatever stress I'm experiencing is longer than it should be or longer than I want it to be. And, and that's really important, right? It's like,

If you're angry or upset, and I think it was Sam Harris who says something to this effect where it's like, there's a huge difference between, you know, you're angry for like a second versus a minute versus an hour versus a day versus a year. Right? Like what you're ultimately trying to do with mindfulness or any practices, decreasing the half-life of that emotion. And I think that philosophy is ultimately about that because

we are, as the anthropologist Ernest Becker put it, we are gods with anuses, which is another banger of a line. And what he was referring to is that we as human beings have, we're equipped with these godlike imaginations and minds. We could like literally send rockets into space. We could build towering skyscrapers. We could compose beautiful music, but at the same time, this mind,

is housed in this container that we inherited from our monkey ancestors, right? I ⁓ think he actually writes that it's a God who shits, right? We defecate, we secrete, we excrete until the day we die. This tension, the tension of what we've inherited and what we're capable of is the core struggle of the human condition. That is the core struggle. So we are always...

battling between those two things. The purpose of philosophy is to help us walk that balance better. It is ever present, is always going to be there. Philosophy is the thing that helps us navigate that fine.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:02:56

I like that. And you know, I've kind of touched on some of my writing, the idea of like, you are a finite being navigating an infinite universe. And it's like, that's why you feel angsty because it's like, there's no rules. There's no guidance as far as like, there's no like guidebook on here's how to win life. Here's how to like always be perfect and always do everything a hundred percent and never have any regrets, never have any mistakes. It's like, that's just not a thing.

philosophy, you know, some people describe philosophy as like an operating system because it helps you or like a user manual almost of like how to live a better life.

And I think that that phrasing works for people who are a little more techie or, you know, tech bro-y, but the sentiment holds true. Like philosophy is, is a guide, not a guarantee. It doesn't guarantee success. doesn't guarantee a perfect record, but it is a guide to help you weather the storm, to navigate all this uncertainty and to learn to grow not despite your mistakes, but sometimes even

cause of your mistakes. Right? Like he wasn't Nietzsche. He talks about like a more faulty, like the love of fate. Like it isn't just tolerating shit that happens, but learning to be appreciative and grateful that it happened. Nowadays in some circles of like clinical psychology, they're starting to call it traumatic growth. Like how do you, in my phrasing, how do you turn shit into fertilizer and grow from it? Like how do you take these things that most people would deem unsavory or scars?

How do you take that and actually learn to grow from it? And I'll speak for myself, you know, again, coming from like, you know, growing up with some domestic violence to share for a couple of years, ⁓ that fucked me up for a minute because I didn't like the person never abused me physically, but I had to watch it a lot, like with my mom. and, and, and like, you know, for a couple of years,

So every night in like through some of middle school and like high school, I would go to sleep every night, fantasizing about beating the shit out of him or killing him or like, Oh, now that I'm bigger, cause I'm not a child anymore. Now I would kick your ass. It's like, I'm still like 15 thinking about kicking like a 40 yields ass, which you know, probably not going to happen until I came across things like stoicism and Buddhism. And it's like, Hey, you can't change what happened.

but you can change the story you tell yourself about what happened. You can learn to grow from and like, what are you going to do moving forward rather than keep using this as an excuse as to why you're moody and why you pick fights and shit. So I chose to say, okay, how can, what about this? Can I choose to learn how to grow from? I was like, well, one piece I learned was the importance of emotional regulation. One thing I learned was when you are a bigger guy,

you have a responsibility to protect the people around you rather than take out your frustrations on them. And, know, and a bunch of other lessons, but that was because of philosophy. Like philosophy gave me that guidance of, man, you went through some shit. How are you going to choose to move forward rather than letting this anchor you in place for the rest of your life and like live in this victim mindset? Right. That was philosophy for me.

And, you know, even like with psychology, like I remember in early undergrad, I had a professor, he was like, look, psychology should actually be called psychosophy because ology is science and psychology isn't actually science. Like psychology's roots are in philosophy. And then we, you we learned about the history of the ship, which is, which is true. I was like, that's why I gravitate toward philosophy. That's why gravity towards psychology. Now,

because it's all about how do we better understand ourselves, our place in the world, the things that hold us back, which is usually just ourselves. We are our biggest fucking problem most of the time. How do we use this to move forward? And that's why I'm a forever a proponent of philosophy and things. How has philosophy enriched your life throughout your life?

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:07:29

So many ways, man. mean, it's incredible. It's such an incredible discipline. I I call it discipline because it is that. And even in the story you just shared, if I could just tack onto that, because I think it informs my answer. You know, like this thought of, I'm going to beat them up when I'm able, right? And that's like the OS that you're operating on.

And then you come across philosophy and it gives you another perspective to that angle. One way someone could view it is that like, that's defeatist, you know, like, you're going to, means you're letting that guy win. Right. Like, fuck just like letting him do that and meditating or something and calming yourself down. Like, no, you gotta, you gotta beat the shit out of them. ⁓ that's one way you could view it. The thing is though, if that's the way that you view it.

then you just perpetuate the cycle and that's not gonna be good for whatever future generations may come after you, right? Now, with that philosophy in there, like it's actually a more empowering mindset where you don't go through your base impulse. It's like you're able to look towards the future, right? And it gives you that little ray of what might the future look like.

If you took this approach, which requires a little more observation of what the consequences are, right? And if you actually choose to accept that and see that as empowering rather than defeatist, then it's amazing. Like life, the way in which that changes your life is absolutely incredible. And I think for me, what it has done is that it's given me these little peaks.

Into what life can be if you have small shifts in your mentality and, you also follow that up with actual concrete action in a certain sense. ⁓ I, I, I, I really do think that my desire to delve deeper into philosophy and not just the head in the cloud stuff, but what I find.

to be more concrete reflections on things like meaning and death and what does it mean to create meaning in your life? ⁓ Like this was so, so critical for me because, you know, I was in a dark spot in my, in my twenties. I struggled in my twenties with mental health ⁓ pretty deeply. And it was only when I started to venture more into the realm of ideas and into the realm of

what it means to have a meaningful life and, and how to deploy more agency over your life through these various thinkers that it got me understanding, Hey, I could actually do something about my circumstance and that it doesn't have to just be me being completely reactive to my surroundings and me doing whatever the impulse tells me to do, which may just be to lay in bed and not do anything or what have you.

And it really empowered me. It really empowered me and it made me feel less alone. And I think oftentimes people have this misconception that loneliness is the lack of people around you. But I think it's the lack of people who understand you, who you feel like understand you. And interestingly enough, like I think reading philosophy made me feel less alone. It made me feel like there are people out there that understand things that I would like to either one day understand or I feel like I have the inkling I'm understanding now.

And it gave me a lot of hope. It gave me hope and it gave me a brighter way forward. ⁓ Yeah, it's really given me so much. And it also gave me an avenue to create. It led me to the path of wanting to make stuff that touched the human condition, the timelessness of it. And I think that's why I'm so drawn into timelessness in the end. And I feel that...

All these things that are hot or so forth, these things that people are talking about constantly on the news or what have you, like these are all just threads that come out or come and go, but I'm really drawn to the general human condition. And I think my love for philosophy has really emphasized that and led me to like create more to that and stuff.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:12:09

Love it. Um, the, I believe the line or the like insight from Buddhism that shifted a lot of that, like anger for me, uh, when I was a teenager was, it was like holding onto anger is like holding onto a hot coal with the intention to throw it at someone else. And it's like, even if you hit that person and you do damage to them, you do so much more damage to yourself holding onto that.

And that was the moment. Cause like, you know, I grew up, I was raised Christian, hell or not Christian now as a lot of people from where I'm from are, ⁓ core tennis are great details, aren't my thing. ⁓ but I had a lot of negative connotations around the concept of forgiveness because of a very rigid upbringing around, ⁓ more conservative Christianity. So I was like,

this guy doesn't deserve forgiveness. Therefore I must hold on to resentment. But then it's like that becomes a habit, a skill you practice. So then you get really good at holding onto resentment for everything in your life. So that quote from, from Buddhism really helped cause I was like, it doesn't matter if he quote unquote deserves forgiveness. I deserve peace. And the way I give myself peace is by letting go of this hot coal of resentment and anger.

no matter how justified my anger may be. And that just that piece for me has really helped me throughout my life of like, it doesn't matter if my anger is justified. What matters is what it is doing to me.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:13:47

Yeah. Yes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:13:48

It doesn't matter if another person, quote unquote, deserves forgiveness. You deserve peace. What are the consequences? No matter how justifiable, what are the consequences of you continuing to hold onto this? And for me, philosophy gave me that guidance.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:14:03

And you also have to believe that you deserve peace, right? I think holding onto resentment is actually a form of self-harm. It's a form of you telling yourself you don't deserve peace. You don't deserve peace because peace was not bestowed upon you. It was never a value that was heralded in your environment. Serenity was, I'm sure, not even thought of or...

or like how to even get there was never taught or communicated. So you don't even know that this is something that you deserve, right? So your natural impulse is to just hold on to the hate and the resentment and subsequently to pass it down to whoever you ironically may love. You know, it's, that's the fascinating thing is the people that you love become the recipients of your habits and your, and the way that you view the world.

So without any kind of intervention, by intervention doesn't mean that there's someone that has to like just stop you and shake you and stuff like that. a big part of it has to come from your own desire to wonder what else you may deserve. What, what else might there be? And to believe that there is a narrative out there that says you deserve better. You deserve better. And.

A hard thing is to believe that. And I think whether it's works of philosophy or a mentor figure or someone that you trust. And hopefully I think that everyone at some point does come across somebody like that. There's somebody like that that actually is extending the olive branch to you in that way. You may not see it at the time. You may just think, oh, what this cool, this is a cool guy or cool, whatever. But it's actually that kind of person that's

showing you, you deserve better. And ⁓ I think maybe people that create stuff online around this kind of topic, it's like you're regularly kind of stretching out the olive branch in that way of reminding people, hey, you you deserve better. You deserve better. And not to say that what you have now sucks, but at the same time, if you're struggling with this, then perhaps this may help you to reframe that.

holding on to the hate, the anger, stuff like that, it's not going to be a gateway to peace for you and that you deserve peace.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:16:41

agreed. And we've kind of been talking a lot about philosophy and you know, mental baggage and shit. But the reason it all relates is, you know, I, you know, we, we both work to varying degrees with, know, quote unquote creators, right? And if you create something, you are a creator, right? It just mean content creator influencer. If you create things, you are a creator. We both work with creators a lot.

and, and, you our audiences are largely made up of creators. Creators have a lot of mental baggage, like, cause humans have a lot of mental baggage, right? And like, and, the creative act is, is it is an act of vulnerability. It isn't, you know, you're not a blank slate. And then one day you decide to create, you know, hit publish on something. And then all this vulnerability comes up like that is a natural process, but you're not.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:17:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:17:38

doing that, you're not hitting published as a blank slate. You're hitting published as somebody with the past, with previous insecurities, with your own imposter syndrome, your own shyness, your own, you know, big T or little T trauma. Like you have all of this other shit and every single aspect of those can, can tug at you and hold you back from hitting publish, from sharing yourself and your ideas with the world.

either because you don't trust yourself, you don't believe you are worthy of doing these things. You think, who am I to do these things? So we outsource permission. We wait for somebody else to give us permission to do the thing we deeply want to do, or we attach our self-worth to our sense of usefulness or to external metrics and accolades. And we let

The number of likes on a post dictate if the idea was worthwhile or not. We focus on extrinsic motivators rather than intrinsic motivation and trust and respect.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:18:40

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:18:50

What have you seen when it comes to people struggling to trust themself or give themselves permission to do the work they deeply believe in and have high conviction in doing.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:19:07

The biggest thing definitely is the external piece and not just in terms of the receptivity, but the thought that no one cares. Thought that no one cares. ⁓ It's interesting. So I think to set up personal context for this, I have a program called Thinking and Stories, ⁓ which... ⁓

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:19:29

Highly recommend, highly recommend.

I took it. It's fucking great. It fundamentally shifted how I approach my own writing and storytelling. Fully recommend 10 out of 10. Go ahead.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:19:41

I could like turn this into a testimonial to ask you why but then I'm not gonna do that.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:19:46

No, no,

no, no, no, no, no, ⁓ no,

highfalutin, but like literally you can read a book or a story from somebody who died a thousand years ago. And the reason it stood the test of time is because of the storytelling. people don't remember, like statistics don't move people. Stories do storytelling is the most important skill, the most impactful skill you can cultivate as a creator today. Like storytelling,

is the probably the most timeless skill you can learn because the, the, you know, philosophers or storytellers, the people we remember throughout history or storytellers, there were plenty of people who were smarter or who knew more, but couldn't convey that in a way that stuck with people and move them. Storytelling is that skill set. Thinking and stories legitimately, fundamentally.

changed how I approach everything I create, whether I'm writing, whether I'm doing a podcast like this and sharing pieces of myself and my experiences, my stories. It has fundamentally shifted how I approach the creative act itself, because now the first question I always ask myself is what story can I share that illustrates this point? And I learned that in thinking in stories. Proceed.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:21:39

Wow. Dang, man. Cut. Thank you, man. That's so cool that it helped in that way. I mean, the original reason I brought this up to begin with is that there are such a wide array of people that take it given what their intention is for to take it. think on one end, so if you could think of it as, I kind of have this framework of just intrinsic motivation on one end and external validation on the other. And we're like,

constantly kind of going between these two poles. I have people that are like, they want to use it for the external validation piece. It's like, Hey, I want to know how to better convey my ideas. know that I have interesting ideas. just want better ways to articulate it so I could grow an audience and so forth. So we have that side. And then there are other people who take this where it's purely intrinsically motivated. Like a lot of them are retired, for example, and they're like, well, I've always known that I wanted to write a book and.

have this sense of what I want to write about, but I'm not quite sure. And maybe this thing will help. And I just want like two to three people to read this thing. And that's really it. In fact, I already know who I want this to go to. So wide array of people, and at the same time, unified by very, very simple struggles. Like it doesn't matter where you kind of are in this. You're kind of, you kind of,

continue to be here. And for the people on the external piece, the unifying thing is ultimately like, yeah, ⁓ there is a fear of indifference. There is a fear that no one's going to really care. And I'm putting myself out there. I'm actually taking that step. But the step feels like this little quiver. And I don't really know who's watching. And maybe no one is. That actually is scarier than if people were even watching.

on the other side with purely intrinsically motivated people. It's also similarly like, there's this fear of what if like, I just can't do it. So it's, it's, it's external kind of, but it's just them on the external side, right? It's like them looking at themselves saying, Hey, you can't do this, man. You know, like, I don't, I don't care. So it's this kind of battle between, um, how you perceive what

Others may or may not think of what you're doing or if they even care. And, we all feel this. We all feel this. It doesn't matter what heights of success, external success you have achieved. We all feel this. And I think like, this is another element of philosophy of the human condition is that.

⁓ the fear of obscurity, of indifference, of silence. This is pervasive no matter what. So really, I think that when it comes to the external side of things, you want to view that as maybe useful indicators of where you feel like there may be alignment between the ideas you're putting out and what

people feel like are interesting or things to explore, but do not rely on them for the long haul, for the long game. Like in the end, the people that will find their way to you, they're driven by this kind of internal compass that you have, this, this feeling that you are doing it on your own accord and you're trying to master that craft, right?

I really think that the antidote to a lot of this is to cultivate this desire for mastery and it kind of solves both sides of the equation with one pursuit. And what is mastery? Ultimately, my definition is like mastery is the quest to improve yourself as an end in itself. So comparisons are not made with other people, but only with prior versions of yourself. That's what mastery is to me. And

The interesting thing is that mastery has a magnetism to it. Like people can feel when you are doing it for its own sake, but you also are trying to get better. You're trying to get actively better on it based upon what your own barometer is. And if you do that and you do that consistently enough and you have that pursuit at the center, I feel like a lot of these fears kind of dissolve on their own. So for the person who's doing it purely intrinsically.

Oh, that's kind of easy. You're just comparing, like you're just looking at what you did today versus what you may have done a couple of weeks ago, but like, Ooh, I've made some progress here. Great. I'm making some progress here on the pursuit to mastery on people that are mostly extrinsically driven. Well, you are doing it for its own sake. You're getting some signals from the outside world. Like, Hey, you're making a little bit of progress here. Okay. Okay. Keep going here on this idea that. But then.

You ultimately are lowering the volume of that. You're just seeing signals here and there, but you're not relying upon them. They're just little tiny antenna pings, but you're still focused on your own thing. And the magnetism of the outside world kind of carries you through that. I feel like you can pursue that single thing as the antidote to a lot of this conundrum. It's really special what that does.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:27:17

Well, and you have a piece that was called pursue mastery, not status.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:27:21

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. And I think in it, I also kind of write that, you know, status is achieved by collecting attention, whereas mastery is achieved by refining intuition. That's the difference between the two. Status is always an accumulation device. It's always, I need to have more. I need to have more of it because that's what builds my sense of self. Whereas

Mastery is just looking at what you already have, which is your intuition, and then continuing to test that with reality so that you shape it into the form where you know you can trust it. And I think that is a pursuit that is much more worthwhile and will ultimately yield more benefits in the long run.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:28:11

I love that. And, and, you know, approaching your work as a craft, cause like we, we really don't talk enough about craftsmanship, like in modern times, cause like we're not just sitting around, you know, doing woodworking and shit, making chairs or something. So like we think about that as a craft, but we don't necessarily talk about other creative acts as a craft and developing your craftsmanship.

But craftsmanship is where that mastery component really comes in.

Instead we chase metrics and you know, I get it. You have kind of two main options. ⁓ when you're, when you're in the creative arts to some degree, you can either subsidize your creativity, meaning you have, you make money doing something else so that you can create without the pressure to monetize. Then you have the other group who you make, who you monetize through your creativity.

Right. I'm definitely on that end. Like everything I write though, 99 % of my content is free. I do have my own cohorts, my own community. do coaching, you know, whatever. So some of my writing, you know, my CTA is, Hey, buy my shit basically. Like, Hey, if you like this, there's even more over here. Right. Cause I got to pay the bills, but there is a certain pressure when your livelihood depends on your creativity and there are

immediately a lot of misaligned incentives that kick in. Now I recently saw this YouTube video by a handful of like musician type YouTubers, and they were all basically saying how like early on making music videos or covers of various songs and collaborating with each other was super fun. But then as soon as AdSense and brand deals and all this monetization kicked in, it was like, well, fuck.

I don't want to collaborate with a smaller creator anymore because they won't boost my platform. ⁓ I need to do this even bigger thing over here. I can only do covers of these songs because I know they are going to perform well rather than these songs over here. So you have all these incentives, these misaligned incentives and with social media, right? Like you, talked about in like, ⁓ like your anger economy article, like

outrage sells, right? We want to say like sex sells outrage sells so much more than sex in like modern internet things. Algorithms boost outrage. They boost, you know, artificially oversimplified or absolutist takes. So it's like, well, my livelihood depends on my creativity. It depends on what I put out there. Well, when I put this

type of thing out there that gets a boost that gives me all these incentives. Well, I am told as you know, from an entrepreneurial perspective to double down on what works, what works is outrage, rage bait, angry stuff, flaunting screenshots of my stripe notifications, all of the or writing about writing.

or, you know, talking about growth, like here's how to grow on social media, right? Then like everybody becomes a growth guru, even medium back in the day eventually became a bunch of articles on how to grow on media. And we're seeing the same thing on Substack right now, right? And it's like, that's like literally, if you just put the word Substack in a Substack note, it gets a boost. Insane. So you have all of these misaligned incentives.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:31:55

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:32:02

How do you think about staying true to yourself as a creator and navigating all these misaligned incentives while also generating and sharing ideas that you deeply believe will have a positive impact on the world?

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:32:20

A good way to think about this is...

Like what, what, does it mean to make money in this space? Right. And, and, and this is really important because it may seem like a very banal question, but you could think about any job, for example, that you may have had where you don't really really want to be there. You're there because you just want to make money. Right. You're not thinking too much about misaligned as incentives or whatever. Like the social contract is clear.

You're here. You probably don't want to be here, but we're paying you. So you're here. That's it really. So you're like, I'm going to show up. Maybe I'll show up with like 10 % enthusiasm because I'll still get paid a hundred percent of my salary. And like, that is the trade-off for this money that I'm earning. Right. Low enthusiasm, still making the money I need to pay the bills. Okay. So that's kind of like the default there.

All right, and then you have the situation where you have creators ⁓ who have decided to monetize their craft and make it their source of living, right? Well, what is the social contract here that you're making with yourself? Is that, right, well, I'm showing up for this thing that I would do on its own accord anyway. Okay, like that's the reason why I got into this anyway, like those musicians you were talking about. I'm doing it because if I had all the money in the world, I wake up and still do this. Now I don't have all the...

in the world, which is what creates this conundrum. So now I want to use this. Now this is going to be the vehicle to also earn a living. okay. Now what is the money that I make from this going to represent aside from paying the bills? Well, okay. The money I earn from this is that people who appreciate what I'm doing and also find value in what I'm doing saying, Hey, I trust

that what you're making here provides some benefit to my life. And whether it makes me feel good, makes me, I don't know, whatever your promise is, the problem that you're helping to solve in a sense. now you could think about this as, right, well, I already have this thing that I know that I really want to do. And then you look out and you're like, Ooh, outrage, outrage content. Yeah. That's it right there. And you start seeing the dollar signs and stuff. then

Like, okay, well, what if I just layer that onto what I'm doing? Cause I know it works and you could replace outrage with any other thing. That's kind of hot. Put that in there. Okay. First of all, the people that are paying you money for, for this, whatever you're offering, maybe that orbits around this kind of, ⁓ material has those same exact values that you are instilling in, your content. Right. So.

You can play out this thought experiment and be like, all right, the money that I'm receiving from these folks is them telling me, Hey, I trust that this stuff that got me through the door in the first place that, you're going to still keep making more of this stuff. Cause this is, this is what I agree with. And B that you're going to serve that interest that I have this, whatever that I'm angry in or upset in so that I feel better about my life. Okay.

So if that's the case, do you think that you would still want to make money in that way in perpetuity? Maybe your game plan is, I just do this for a bit, make a lot of money, and then I don't have to worry about it. And then I could do what I really want to do. But the thing is, it's really hard to divorce yourself from not only the reputation that you build in a certain place, but also from the habits

that you had to instill to get to that spot. The interest that you had to force yourself to be interested in to get there. It doesn't just go away because you have a magical amount of money that you've made. So it matters how you make your money. It matters where it comes from. It matters who gives it to you because there's a flow to it. There's a flow of expectations that come with money. So

You really have to think about it as a medium of trade-offs that you're kind of making here. So if you, on the flip side, it's like, all right, I know what my values are here and I want to embody my work with those values, but it's not hot. It's going to take work to kind of build that up. The money may not be as ever flowing and I'm going to have to work hard for it. And sometimes I may have to question whether I could keep doing this. Right. But.

What are the kind of people that come through the door? And if there isn't enough level of people that come through the door, wherever you define that to be, where you're like, I can approach my craft with integrity. I love the people that I'm serving and I want to continue doing this. Then like, what more can you really ask for is what I'm saying. But if you can't do that and it becomes really difficult to sustain that, then it's like, well,

I'll approach the question of like, do I get a, you know, do I get a job to kind of help supplement this?

Knowing that that whole rage bait path, just, it's just, it's just going to feel like another job for me anyway to do that. Right. So I feel like all things kind of considered here, it almost makes logical sense for you to just continue leaning into what you're intrinsically interested in and to keep doing that because you.

are bringing in the exact kind of people that you want to help and that you want to serve and that you want to be around for long periods of time. And I really see this like in my own programs. I'm sure you see this in your own programs, your own community where it's like, I would love to meet everybody in real life and like hang out together and just to kick it. And I'm sure we would talk for hours, right? ⁓

And like, that's the beautiful thing about this, right?

Do you wanna trade that away for being around people that you don't think you'll ultimately really like much? And I know this because I dealt with this in music. At a certain point with my music, I looked around, I remember, I was just like, if it weren't for music, I would not wanna be around these people. The only reason I'm here is because I'm trying to leverage this or whatever. And then it hit me like, what am I doing?

What am I doing here? It's, it's like, I left this finance job to do something that I really thought I wanted to do, but I'm back in a space where it just feels like everyone is like my finance colleagues. And if anything, some were even like more ridiculous or more like I didn't want to be around. So not only did it not make sense from a fiscal perspective, it also just didn't make sense from like a just relational standpoint. And

One of the beautiful things, and this is the last thing I'll say here is that I think one of the beautiful things about writing and this path that I've kind of pursued here is that I really liked the people here. It's, so cool. Like I just looked up, we've been talking for almost two hours now and like, we're going to talk more. And it's like, I like that and we could keep talking. And like, this has been the dynamic consistently with people in this space. Like people I consider peers, people I consider to be like in

I don't know, whatever other echelon of success. And they're also like really cool people. And, and that's another indication that I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm on the right path here. I'm on the right path. The people are really cool. Not just the people who pay me for what I do, but also the people that I respect and admire as fellow creators and writers and so forth.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:40:43

I fully agree. Like if you look around and you hate the people you've attracted, that's your fault. Like that's on you because the ideas you're sharing are attracting that type of person. And yeah, like I I've seen that trap of, you know, creators building an audience specifically with the intention to exit. Like it's a startup play of like, I'm going to build some shit. I don't care about attract people out. I actually don't even like

Blow it up big, sell it, cash out, move on.

And that, mean, that is a way, but at what cost, you know, ⁓ you know, I, I'm a big fan of the concept of shallow ideas. Don't attract deep thinkers. If I want to attract thoughtful people, then I need to be sharing thoughtful ideas. So when I share ideas and then I, that I have conviction in, and then I look around and I say, okay, who is coming when I share these ideas, who am I attracting with these ideas?

⁓ these are thoughtful people. Awesome. I was like, I thought this was a thoughtful idea. It is attracting thoughtful people. Fantastic. And just like you said, like when, when, when I see some of the people who have joined my programs, whatever they are 99 times out of a hundred, I'm like, this person seems awesome. Even if they hadn't given me money, they seem like somebody I would like to sit around a campfire at night and just hang out.

right? And I think that's a real, really effective litmus test is like, do you like the people you're surrounding yourself with? Which again, it seems overly simplified, but it's so true. Like you have to, like if you're surrounded by people, you don't want to be around. Why are you doing what you're doing?

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:42:25

Yeah.

Yes. And also to have those folks be continuous reminders that you're on the right path. And, you know, like I could talk about all this stuff, but I definitely still struggle with this for sure. And like, I talked to my wife about this a lot. Like, I am like, I don't know how much longer am I going to do this for? I don't know. Like, can I keep doing this? I don't know. And my wife just tells me, Hey, remember like all those people that have taken your program and

⁓ in my head, I'm like, well, it's not thousands or whatever, but she's like, Hey, the fact that these people here have really resonated with what you're doing and that they've also built connections amongst themselves and also with you through what you're doing. And do you enjoy these people's company? I'm like, yeah, I really enjoy them. She's like, do you like, do you feel like you've made a positive impact on these people's lives? And I'm like, yeah, I do. And then she's like, well, it sounds like you're on the right path. And.

The initial thought that comes up in all the endocrinics heads is like, oh, but for me it's different. All right. You know, that's one thing my friend said the other day. It's like, that's the first thought. Oh, but this is different. And, know, it applies to other folks, but not, not us. Like this, you don't know where this is going to go. All this stuff, but, um, that, that ultimately comes down to that word of conviction and. You know, like not thinking about it too much of like what the future may hold. Like all you can really do is just.

Look at what's in front of you now, know what to appreciate. ⁓ let that be markers of your ability to continue onward. And then, you know, if you hit the question of like the hard limit of money, then you, at least you have a great network. You have a great set of skills that could easily be transferable back. Like I got her to think if you ever went back to.

Being a psychologist or so forth, right? Like you the the person you are when you left that space and who you are now imagine how much of a better Like person you are to be equipped for that role now like you've leveled up so much where it's like a no-brainer for for you to be a Psycho clinical psychologist like and people would want that, you know I'm saying so I think about it in that sense too. It's like all the things that I built and acquired

the last couple of years that are transferable to any domain is really like there's so much there. So that also gives me a sense of, ⁓ I happen to get there, then like, I think I could figure it out.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:45:19

or greeting like I, I like the concept of like rather than waiting to be invited to the table, just build your own table and invite others. And like as creators, we are uniquely positioned to be able to do that. Right. Even like, you know, your newsletter is you building a table and saying, Hey, this is for, you know, Seth Godin talks about people like us do things like this. So it's like people who

value, thoughtful inquiry and learning about, you know, how to live a better life, understanding creativity and storytelling and deeply with intention existing in life. And like, you know, what is your definition of success? What is holding you back from that? Like, how do we, you know, get led astray by misaligned incentives? How do you focus on the moment? All these things like this newsletter is for people like you.

Or if you want to learn actual storytelling rather than a bunch of bullshit hooks and templates and AI prompts, how do you know if you want to tell the story only you can tell thinking and stories is free. This is the table I built for people like you. And that is that's really served me well of like, you know, again, sometimes entrepreneurship is like a feast and famine kind of deal or, know, macro economic conditions make you question your ability to put out good shit where you're like, well,

People aren't buying this. like, people aren't buying anything right now in this space. It's not a you thing. It's a macro economic thing sometimes. Right. But then when you get that, that email, like, Hey, this changed my life or like, Hey, three years later, I still come back to this piece. Right. That is a reminder of like, okay. I am actually helping people. am building a table that I wish was there when I started. Right.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:47:12

Yeah, and that table continues to be built. it's your, it's not just like a table each time. Like you're, you're adding to the strength and durability of your table. And, ⁓ what's great is that you can invite people of any domain over, ⁓ and, and there is great utility in that table for sure.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:47:34

Yeah. And like, ⁓ you know, shout out to Nick. ⁓ Nick is a guy you and I both know he's taken thinking of stories multiple times. You know, he's, he's done some of my stuff. Nick is a, an incredibly thoughtful, kind, compassionate, driven, accomplished guy. Right. ⁓ and even like, you know, on your book, which I'll get to in a second, like I think Nick was one of the first people like give you an Amazon review. Cause like I saw his name and I hit him. I was like, this is you, right? He's like, yeah.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:47:43

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:48:04

And he raves about, you know, you and thinking in stories and the impact you've had in things. ⁓ and he's also said he's appreciative of, you know, some of my stuff as well. And when I, when I, when I look at people like him, I'm like, people like him don't have a tolerance for bullshit. They don't have a tolerance for noise. People like him look for signal. They look for authenticity. So even if I start,

to maybe question myself and my ability to put out worthwhile ideas or my ability to succeed, or if this is even anybody's going to give a shit about. And I look around and like, well, I believe it is, but I'm still, I still had that, that doubt sometimes. And then I look and it's like, well, Nick's here. Nick says it helps him. Right. Or like, well, Nick says he likes some of my stuff.

He also likes Lawrence's stuff. Well, fuck. Okay. Like I'm in good company, I guess. And that's the thing, man. I'm like, you know, and Nick's the kind of guy like, you know, I, I don't, I don't drink alcohol, but like Nick's the kind of guy like I'd love to hang out at a bar with or around, you know, a campfire or just take a walk. Right. And it's like, are you attracting people like Nick? If you are your fucking golden because the world needs more people like Nick. Right. And

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:49:30

Yes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:49:31

And that's, that's my thing, man. It's like, we struggle to trust ourselves. We struggle to do the work only we can do to put ourselves in our ideas out there into the world. Which brings me to your book, the inner compass, right? The inner compass, cultivating the courage to trust yourself. Right? Right here.

Tell me about why you decided one to write this book, but also why you chose to make it a book rather than a long form art.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:50:13

wrote this book last year, I think it was around March when I started. I was in a deep period of doubt, very deep period of doubt as to where exactly is this going? ⁓ So it's kind of fitting that we're having this conversation. And I think it was also last year when I reached out to you and we talked and I was like, I don't know what's going on. I'm trying to figure this out. And yeah, there was a lot.

It's interesting because it wasn't like there were any clear markers for me to be like, okay, things are going downhill and, ⁓ you know, it's time for you to figure out where to get a job and all that stuff. was, it was just more of like this feeling I had that I was feeling really lost and I was writing a bunch of blog posts and so forth. And I just kind of saw how, okay, like.

is social media kind of where everything is at now. I'm not a huge social media guy and so forth. So there was just a lot of doubt around the landscape and so forth. And with, of course, AI and all that. And it was at this time where I read this one book too. the name of the book is Don't Believe Everything You Think. And it's by someone named Joseph Nguyen. It's a short book. And it was...

It's just kind of about like the delineation between like what we think, the thoughts that we have, and then like our tendency to ruminate on it. The thing about that book that stood out to me was that it was a short book. It was a short book, just about a hundred pages long. And it was very to the point, ⁓ kind of economical with its words. And I just kind of thought to myself, hey, this doubt that I'm feeling, okay, where is it coming from? First of all.

And the, whatever the answer to that may be, because it feels so immediate that I'm exploring it now. What if I make it a short book and like, I'll go into why I thought about the book format to begin with, but I was thinking, all right, what if I just make this really short book? the reason why it's a book is that I knew that there would be an exploratory phase here. Like I was going to explore, I was going to use the writing as a way to understand this deeper, but

I also felt like this doubt, the source of this doubt and this, the antidote to it was a lot, it was already in a lot of the blog posts that I've written. Like I've already touched this topic before self doubt and how the solution really is like to kind of trust yourself and your own conviction to figure it out. But I was looking for the unifying narrative, the theme to bring it all together. And it felt like the book was my way of signifying my commitment to do that.

I think when you write a book, when you set out to write a book, you're committing to figuring out a problem and communicating that problem. And then also delivering whatever the takeaway may be there, but doing it in an articulate way. Right. So I just, I just knew at that point, all right. I already know what the problem is. It's hard for me to trust myself and now I'm trying to figure out like, or it's hard for me to trust my ability to figure stuff out.

Okay, where is it coming from? Am I creating this myself? I don't think so. I have a sense that it's coming from the fact that everywhere around me seems like it's telling me I need to go somewhere, I need to do something. This is the right way to do something. And that's making me feel lost. It's this, what I refer to as conditioning that's been layered upon me, which is making me doubt myself.

And when I had that thought, realized that almost all fears that we have come down to some narrative that we told about ourselves. And this narrative is not just from yourself that emerges out. It's something that was communicated to you and that you started to believe in and changed the way that you shaped your outlook or the way you view yourself.

I was like, okay, I think there's something there. And then I got straight to writing it. No outline, there was no proposal, anything like that. I knew I was gonna self-publish this the moment I put down the first word. And I did it in about three months. I wrote the manuscript in about three months, which is pretty short. And I guess it makes sense because it's a short book, but.

I knew that I wanted to make it time bound. I didn't want to have this drag on. actually canceled a thinking and stories cohort. So I was like, Hey, this is actually going to be a business decision as well to, let go of a strong source of revenue for me to do this very uncertain thing. But it kind of made sense for me to do it. And I felt like it was the right time to do it. And the last thing I'll say here is that.

If you're thinking about writing a book or if you're thinking about committing yourself to some sort of project like this, sometimes we get too caught up in like, what do I think I need to write about or what do I have expertise in and what do I feel like I already know and that's going to be the subject of the book. But what's more important actually, I think is what you feel inspired to do at this current moment. What is the problem that you're grappling with at the current moment? Things that seem to really kind of tug on you a lot that you're struggling with.

because that tends to be the area where there's a book and because you really care about that problem at that specific time. And I think if you feel that you don't have to worry too much about, who's going to publish this or whatever. I would just say to get straight to writing the manuscript and you could self publish and you could figure it out. But yeah, that's kind of the genesis of why I started to write this book in the first place.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:56:29

Who is this book for?

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:56:33

Well, I write an introduction that, you know, I wrote it because I think an earlier version of myself would have benefited from its existence. And I think the second thing that I put is kind of like your present self can avoid the pain that my prior self once experienced. And I think that pain is ultimately people that feel like.

People that feel like they intuitively know where life wants to take them, but they're not doing it because they're scared, because they're scared. And that fear, the crux of that fear comes down to external narratives, to external pressures. So it's for people that want to navigate the external world without discounting their inner values. I think that's who it's for.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:57:26

And I think when you were on Paul Millard's podcast, you mentioned sort of the tagline of the book you have in your head is you can read it in a weekend, but revisit it for a lifetime. And I think, and you've shared that you've had at least one reader who's told you they've read it five times already.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:57:38

Yes.

yeah. ⁓ I've had multiple people tell me that they've read it multiple times. in fact, like I'm very surprised to hear that already. The book hasn't even been up for a month yet and I didn't do a pre-order campaign or anything. just, I launched it on the day of. And yeah, it's, I guess I, I knew what I was doing in that sense. I knew that I wanted this to be something you could read in one setting, one sitting.

It's only a hundred pages long. There's 14 chapters. So the chapters are short and it's a small book. Like it's like a five and a half by eight and a half inch trim size. So it's small and yeah, right there. Yep. Just about the size of your head. And yeah. ⁓ it's smaller than your head. All right. It's smaller than your head for sure. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:58:31

I got a big ass head though, so that's not a great comparison, but yes, it's yeah.

Lawrence Yeo (: 1:58:40

So like, wanted definitely for it to have that feel of, I could finish it. And at the same time, once I finish it, it's like, dang, I feel like, I feel like I might've missed something and I want to kind of go back and, and read it. And I think like certain chapters will resonate at certain moments in people's lives. it's interesting. Like I asked Paul, who would you say this book is for? I've asked many people that, and Paul was saying like, I think this book is for creators that are just getting started on their path.

I think that's a, it's a good book for them. was like, interesting. The creativity part really resonated with you. My thoughts on that. Whereas other people really like the chapters on status and relationships and so forth. ⁓ cause one of the thesis of this book is that knowing yourself is not some like isolated contemplative practice. It's about aligning what you know about yourself with your ability to navigate the world. Right. think.

This is where a lot of spiritual and philosophical traditions on, self understanding kind of fall flat to me. It's too focused on you just stay in the inner world. You block out everything and that's how you find peace. I think that peace is ultimately something that you find as you move, as you move and as you navigate with the world, but you do so with this conviction because you know who you are. You understand yourself better. And it's that balance that you have between the two where you ultimately find peace.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:00:11

what I think.

This is one of the, like a piece from Buddhism is like the concept of like Buddha hood and how you don't become a Buddha. You don't achieve Buddha nature so much as you already have that Buddha nature within you, but you have just piled on a bunch of bullshit conditioning, expectations, self doubt, everything else. So one aspect of Buddhism is actually not adding, but removing what doesn't serve you. And you know,

One of my central theses is that we are inherently great.

but we just, we, we, we hold ourselves back from the greatness that we naturally have. Right? Cause it's like, if you didn't have this external self doubt or fear or expectations, waiting for perfectionism, waiting for permission, whatever, if these factors weren't part of your day to day, you would be great. Your natural inclination, your quote unquote true self, true nature, whatever.

is great, but you have piled things on in your words, you know, like conditioning, you've been conditioned to question yourself rather than trust yourself. And so, so much of philosophy comes down to trusting yourself. So much of like my own, coaching practice comes down to helping people learn to trust themselves. And it's like, I'm not necessarily giving you like new insights or like new ways of going about things so much as helping you remind yourself of your values.

helping you get comfortable with who you actually are, you know, internally sorted you.

That is sort of how I see this, this book really fitting in is like, if you feel like, know, you are meant for more or your daydreaming about a better life, whether that is creatively financially, relationally, whatever a big piece that is holding you back is around doubt. And because you doubt yourself, you look for external metrics.

to give you guidance. You're looking for, ⁓ status is self-worth. It's like you don't trust yourself and your own intrinsic worth. So you chase status as a surrogate for that, right? You want to create, but you question your worthiness to create. You question whether or not the ideas you have are worth sharing in the first place. So much of this fundamentally comes down to

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:02:40

you

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:02:55

Trusting yourself, even conviction. Conviction is trusting yourself in what you believe is worth doing. That is what conviction is. Is this worthwhile? Do I believe in this? That's where I see this book fitting in, which is why, like, I think this book should be on like the coffee table or the bedside table in every fucking household because it's, it's one of those types of books. It's like everybody struggles with self doubt. Everybody struggles to trust themselves.

to some degree, everyone is wanting to be a little bit more courageous to do the thing they deeply want to do, but feel something is holding them back from doing it. That's where this book really fits in, in my opinion.

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:03:38

That's so well articulated, man. that's, that's, and I think you made that connection there, which was intriguing to hear about. You don't trust yourself. So then you look towards external things to help you do that. and yeah, it's, it's funny, like even my own behaviors, when I find myself getting too caught up in the metrics, cause I have, I have those moments where I'm just like checking subscriber counts or views and stuff like that. Like it's.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:04:04

or unsubscribes.

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:04:05

or unsubscribed, know, which

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:04:06

⁓

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:04:07

happened within one second of any email blast, almost like half a second or even before I send it. Like, I'm like, how does it have, how did they get to that button that fast? Yeah, dude, like just the ability to get there has to take more than five seconds. So these things, like when I'm so encumbered in it, I realized that that's when I'm actually at the highest periods of my doubt. Like when I spend multiple consecutive.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:04:17

They know it's coming,

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:04:35

days or even hours within a day just checking. It's like actually when I feel the most insecure about what I'm doing, that's how it comes out in my behavior. And yeah, and when I am feeling like high conviction or whatever, like I remember when I was writing this book, I was so focused on just doing this that the question of like, I'm not doing a thinking and stories call or like that was hard to make in the beginning. And then once I did that, I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm just not doing it.

And I'll let the money go for a bit. And then, ⁓ yeah, just like checking, there was no stats to really check or something. Cause I wasn't publishing many blog posts or whatever. And it was this element of just, trust what I'm doing. I trust what I'm doing. I trust that I could make something cool. ⁓ and I'll iterate on that. And like, you feel that doubt dissipate for sure. When you.

just have this belief, this element of courage to proceed onward, to proceed onward. I think one of the things that I address here to make that a little easier is to do something for its own sake, to give that a shot. Try doing something for its own sake. And when you do that, you start to develop not just confidence, but a sense of agency over what you're doing. Like, hey, for this oasis of time, I'm doing exactly

what I want to do for its own sake. All right. This is why this is not a book on how to build a creator business or anything like that. If that's what you want, I don't know. Maybe this book could also help with that in the sense of you having conviction over your idea or so forth. But it really does have a scent of. You are having a hard time doing what you really want to do because of the fear that.

Uncertainty will provide because we've been conditioned to fear uncertainty at all costs. Don't do the thing that doesn't have a clear outcome. That's that society's narrative. And this is my small way of putting something out to push back against that.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:06:48

And the last question you talked about, you know, personal narratives and things, and kind of, you know, being in the throes of self doubt.

How did you?

change your own or more so how does your personal narrative evolve through the process of writing this book?

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:07:13

Yeah, I'm so glad I did this. I'm so glad I did this. ⁓ It's kind of a trip because I will actually find myself going back to what I have written in here at times and be like, yeah, there's the answer. There's the answer right there. And I often say that writing is just a reminder to yourself of what you're capable of thinking. ⁓

That's what kind of writing ultimately does. It shows you what you're capable of. And, ⁓ like, yeah, when I find myself just like being so encumbered, ⁓ with, yeah, like self doubt, or I feel like pings of envy and stuff. mean, I wrote a postscript just on envy and like reading that it really helps again, ⁓ for me to center myself. And as I was writing it too, there was this.

kind of asceticism that came with it. And I think like that's a cool thing about writing a book too, is that you enter this period of asceticism where this thing is what matters most right now. And you're dedicating the requisite time and attention to doing that. So it was also a vote for my own conviction that I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm trusting that it'll be okay, that it'll be okay. ⁓

And I think that sentiment really guided me throughout the whole book. And like, by the time I finished it, that original problem of like the immense doubt I was having, it was not completely silent, you know, but it was definitely faded. It was a lower. And I don't expect to just stay that way, right? But I now have something I wrote for ⁓ myself and for others that could also help that I could revisit.

That's kind of why I have that tagline, you know, read it in a weekend, revisit it for a lifetime. I think that captures what I was trying to do with this book.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:09:18

One, a big theme we've kind of talked about today is, you know, philosophy fundamentally is a guide on how to live a better life. Like whatever the philosophy is, this book is a guide when it comes to how to trust yourself again, how to cultivate as the subtitle implies, right? How to cultivate the courage to trust yourself. This is a guide. Like this is a guide to anybody who reads it, but like very, very few books can claim

This is also a guide for the author who wrote it. And like that, that to me, man, that is the thing that really makes it timeless is this, this is a guide to yourself and you are emblematic of so many people like you. So the fact that it is a guide to yourself means it is a guide to so many others on paths like us, not just creators, but people who want to fully show up in their life.

whatever that means to them who want, they want to be authentic. They want to be aligned. They want to be courageous. All of that fundamentally requires you to trust yourself. This book is a guide to trusting yourself again.

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:10:37

Yes, yes. Thank you.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 2:10:40

Dude, this was fucking great. I love that we could sit down this long and have a conversation that other people can like actually benefit from. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work?

Lawrence Yeo (: 2:10:52

So the place where I dwell online is moretothat.com. That is my abode that I've set up there. There is a landing page for the site, for the book. It's compass.moretothat.com where you can read a little bit more about what this book is about. And yeah, I think those are the two main places. And there's a link there that will take you to the requisite Amazon page where you can order the book and so forth. But yeah, man, dude, I...

I love the fact that we could just chat here for this long period of time and have it just fly by. yeah, ⁓ man, it always feels like a nice dose of clarity to chat. So thanks for inviting me on, man. I really appreciate it.