Derek Sivers on Embracing 'Weird' as a Compliment

The transcription is, for the most part, AI-transcribed and is currently 85% accurate. We are still weeding out some minor errors.

Jellis Vaes
What is up, everyone? Welcome here to another episode on the podcast of Inner Path Seekers. I’m Jellis Vaes, your host, and I’m also the founder of The IPS Project, which stands for Inner Path Seekers. I created this project some years ago because I found there to be a severe lack of education on life topics. I mean, you don’t learn anything about it. In school, even though it can drastically improve your life if you learn more about mental health, the mind, relationships, the body and brain. Yeah, it can drastically improve your life. It certainly did for me. And therefore, I went out to create this project, this platform providing education on those topics. And one way is through this podcast. And today, I had none other than Derek Sivers on the show. Derek is actually someone that I looked up to for years Sivers. I see him as a role model who has given me a lot of lessons and insights and ideas. So it was quite… I mean, I’m still stunned that I did this interview with him and that Derek said yes to come on the show. Now, who is Derek Sivers, if you’ve never heard of him? In one sentence, I would say that Derek Sivers is a multi-talented creator and a critical thinker.

Now, I will give a bit more of an extensive bio, so you will know a bit more who he is before we dive into the interview. At the age of 14, Derek committed to becoming a successful musician. For the next 15 years, until he was 29, He lived a full-time or he made a full-time income from being a musician. Now, at the age of 29, Derek accidentally created a business called CD Baby. We’re in 1997 now. Derek created CD Baby initially as a solution to sell his own music online. Now, it quickly grew into the largest online distributor of independent music, helping thousands of independent musicians reach a global audience. CD Baby became a significant player in the music industry, and particularly for independent artists who previously had limited distribution channels. After running Cd Baby for 10 years, Derek decided to sell his company and sold it for $22 million in 2008. Now, what’s interesting is that he actually gave all that money away. So the $22 million to a charity for music education. That’s already a little bit of a glimpse into the mind of Derek Sivers that you will soon be exposed to way more.

Now, today, Derek spends his time writing, coding, and working on various other projects that sparks his interest. If you’re actually curious to read what he is currently doing and working on, you can check his What I’m Doing Now page by going to siv.rs/now, so S-I-V-E.rs/now page, and that’s where you can read more in-depth the things that he’s working on and doing right now. Now, just to add, Derek has done TED Talks. He has done several TED Talks. He has also written several books. In total, he has written five books, with his latest book being called UsefulNotTrue. This was released just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve read it. I really, really liked it. You can find those. By the way, we will, of course, talk about his latest book, Useful, Not True, throughout the interview. But you can find his TED Talks, his books, and any other resources that Derek mentions throughout the interview, as there’s quite a lot, in the Show Notes, in the resource tab. You can find the Show Notes located in the description of this episode, or you can also go directly to theipsproject.com/podcast and search for Derek to find them.

Now, with that, I’m not going to make this intro any longer anymore. Let’s jump into this very diverse and interesting interview with the one and only Derek Sivers.

Jellis Vaes
Derek, a warm welcome here to the podcast. This is honestly amazing for me to have you on the show.

Derek Sivers
Thanks, Jellis. We’ve been emailing about this for a long time, so I’m glad it finally happened.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, me too. I have, well, hopefully, a delicious meal or a couple of meals prepared for you during this interview. I’ve created quite a diverse interview with different questions, so there will be some different tastes in the meals. To start maybe with the advertiser by talking first and foremost about your latest book, Useful, Not True. I’ve listened to the audio version, which I always love, and I like it. Let me ask a question about the book. It’s probably a question that you have been asked quite often, but I think it might be very helpful for people right now listening who are not familiar with the book. If you could just give an example of what is something that is useful but not true, that you’ve come to realize after writing the book or during when you were writing the book.

Derek Sivers
Well, since you call this the Appetizer, let’s start easy. For anybody listening, I’ll use an example that we all know, which is if you are driving in traffic, for example, and somebody else on the road is driving like an idiot and being dangerous, being reckless and speeding and weaving in between cars, and your first thought is, What a jerk. What an asshole. But then we’ve heard that it can be wise to think, Wait, maybe that person is driving a sick child to the hospital. Maybe they have their dying mother in the back seat. And that thought makes you go, it makes you relax. It makes you remember that other people have problems that it’s not all about you. That said, it’s probably not true, but it’s very useful to think that way because it made you relax. It made you more empathetic. Trying to argue Whether that’s true or not is not the point. The real point was the effect that that thought had on you. That’s an example that we’ve all heard of. But now you can extrapolate that to other aspects in life. You can believe that, say, if you get invited to an event and you’re feeling social anxiety, you could believe that everybody in that event is waiting for you to break the ice, that they also are nervous and they want to connect with people, which is why they came.

But they’re all too scared to be the first one to say something. So they need you to break the ice. And so if you believe that, you’ll walk into the event and feel that it’s almost like your responsibility or your duty to be the one to walk up to a stranger and say, Hi, I’m Yellis. What do you do? Now, that may not be true. They might not want to meet you. But believing that made you more open or more social, this belief that every stranger is a potential friend. Somebody else could argue against that and say, Well, Yellus, that’s not true. You say, I don’t care if it’s true or not, it’s useful. It’s useful for me to believe this because it makes me take good actions. Then, to really answer your question, that was the main thing I learned while writing this book, is that the whole point of beliefs are the actions that they create. The only purpose of beliefs is the actions they create. There’s really no other reason for them. Even religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs, moral beliefs, the whole point of all of them is to change your actions. That’s it.

Jellis Vaes
As the reader, when you read a book like yours, Useful, Not True, for example, you step on this journey that the writer created for you, where you will grow and learn. How for you as the writer, though, besides what you just shared, maybe now, has this book changed It was this particular book was a learning experience for me.

Derek Sivers
It’s my fifth book. My previous four books, I was speaking about things I already knew about. This was the first time that I set out two years ago to write a book about something that I didn’t know about yet. I knew a little bit. I knew that I had a tendency to choose beliefs because they were useful to me, not because they’re true, but I didn’t look into it deeper than that. Two years ago, I decided, This is an interesting subject. I’m going to write a book about this. I contacted philosophy professors that steered me in the direction of pragmatism and and existentialism and skepticism. I read a lot of books about religion and about beliefs, and I just spent two years diving into this subject of why we choose beliefs. I learned a lot through that process. Wow.

Jellis Vaes
Is there anything that particularly triggered you to want to write? Because writing a book takes a lot of time. To spend so much time on that topic?

Derek Sivers
Yeah, it was underlying everything else I had been saying for years. For years, even if I was writing about business, and I’d say, business is a place to be generous. Generosity is the whole point of business. And every now and then somebody would come and push back and say, Hey, that’s not true. Business is about profit. I’d say, I don’t care if it’s true or not. I’m not saying it’s true. I’m saying that for me to believe this is useful. And then so then I had to question, Well, what do I mean useful? That’s why I eventually came to the conclusion, Oh, useful means it helps you take the actions. It helps you be who you want to be, do what you need to do, or feel at peace. Feel at peace was one that took a while to realize because, like the first example of driving in traffic with a jerk, the action you want to take is not necessarily motion. It can be an internal makes me feel better. That’s a lot of the ones that we deal with the past, for example. A lot of people have the belief that everything happens for a reason.

It’s a very common belief in many cultures around the world. People say everything happens for a reason, and they say it like it’s a true fact. But it’s not. It’s a belief that you choose or that somebody’s told you. And you adopt that belief because you like the way it makes you feel. It helps you think of the troubling things in your past that might be upsetting, and it makes you go, Well, I just have to trust. It all happens for a reason. And that belief makes you feel better.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, it’s a story that helps you navigate through the chaos that life is. Yeah. Is there actually anything that you think of right now when writing the book, something that you really thought was really well thought out, a concept or an idea that you really liked, but that you, in the end, did not put in the book, that you feel could be interesting to share with me and the listener?

Derek Sivers
Yeah, I’ll tell you a couple. I removed more than I kept in the book. The folder of the final book, the words in the final book, is smaller than the folder containing all the things I took out of it. Yeah, there were a few good ones. I had a cute little story about two aliens that are observing Earth right now. They’re a little spaceship in orbit, observing Earth through two instruments, like two telescopes. One can see everything we do. The other can hear all of our thoughts. But they’re two different instruments, and they’re two different aliens sitting next to each other at these two different instruments, and they only know how to work one of them. So one of them can only hear all of our thoughts. The other one can only see everything we do. And so they coordinate The one that can hear all of our thoughts is scanning and observing Earth. At one point, he hears a human that’s under attack, that’s being attacked by 10 people, viciously and cruelly attacking with just nothing but vengeance and cruel intentions. He quickly gives the coordinates to the other one that can see everything saying, Here, look, go to these coordinates.

What’s going on there? I’m listening to this attack. The other alien looks and just sees a person sitting by themselves in their home just looking sad. They’re confused, and they double-check the coordinates. They verify. Yeah, that’s there. Wow. This person isn’t actually physically under attack, but just feels it. In this person’s head, they’re experiencing an attack that’s not physically happening. I had a couple more examples like that. But in the end, the other examples didn’t quite stand up. I feel like I could have probably worked for a few more weeks on that and made it a keeper in the book. But instead, I had to come to the conclusion that the book is not the final say, that the book introduces the subject and brings it up to say, Hey, this is an interesting thing to think about. Let’s think about this. But I don’t have to make the book be the final answer to everything. I decided that the conversation would continue on the website for free in the open. That’s why the end of the book says, This is not the end. Go to the website. There will be more stories posted, more beliefs that readers can share, beliefs that they find to be useful, not true, and things like that.

It was a nice reminder that the book doesn’t have to be the whole point.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. I think that must be quite hard, actually, to filter out a book and know, Okay, that’s for the book. I will just got that out, maybe use it somewhere else like you do.

Derek Sivers
That’s a hard process. Luckily, there are some people that want to write a big conclusive book. Well, let’s say Tim Ferrace, for example. His books are big, and they try to include everything there is to say on this subject. I think he gets inspired and driven by having a book that is the ultimate book on the 4-Hour Work Week or Mastering Your Health or something like that. He’s almost tormented and driven to make it the best it can be the most comprehensive, conclusive book on the subject. A lot of people are driven by that urge. I’m thankful that I I am not driven by that, but rather I like short books. I think short books are very useful to other people. They’re very easy to give to a friend. You don’t want to give a 900-page book to a friend and say, Here, read this. It’s like a curse. But if you give a little 95-page book to a friend that they can read in an hour or so, that’s a nice gift. And a nice gift to yourself. It’s less of slog and more of a treat. Luckily, as I’m editing, I ruthlessly chop because I’m actually trying to make the shortest book I can.

Jellis Vaes
Right. Yes. You open the journey for the people to continue on by themselves. If it’s a short book and having it open the journey that sets them on their way, that’s nice. For I read a couple of your books, and the main feeling that I have always gained or felt from them while I read them was this feeling of freedom, probably because you opened my mind to new ideas, new insights, new ways of looking at things, questioning things. Is there for yourself a main threat that you can see running through each book that you’ve written that you want to or that you hope readers will gain from them?

Derek Sivers
That’s a deep question.

Jellis Vaes
Take your time.

Derek Sivers
I guess I’m always asking myself, what’s another way to look at this?I try to not put out something into the world unless it’s an angle or a perspective that either hasn’t been considered, hasn’t been talked about publicly, or is underrepresented in the conversation. I try to bring up an alternate point of view that most people are not considering. That was the point of my last book called How to Live that had 27 conflicting answers to It’s really that question of how should I live my life. The whole point was to make you realize that no one way is the answer, that each one can be useful for a purpose. Each one could work. You You should live your life by any one of these, or none of them, or combine them. So anytime somebody’s telling you that, Yellis, this is the answer, this is how to live, that you should take it very lightly because It’s never the only answer.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, see, that’s what I said. Your books are very freeing to me to read.

Derek Sivers
Thank you. Mission accomplished.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, awesome. Like I said in the beginning, I’ve got quite a diverse interview prepared for you, so let me serve you another meal here. Let’s play a game. It’s not a complicated game. You might have played it before. It’s called Overrated, Underrated. Just to explain the not complicated rules, so everyone is on board. I’m going to say a word to you, and I selected some words or concepts out that I thought you had something interesting to share on. You can reply by saying if you feel that’s overrated or underrated, and then also if you could elaborate why. That would be great. Sure.

Derek Sivers
By the way, I love that you’re doing this. No, I have never played this, although it is one of my favorite podcasts is called Conversations with Tyler, and he often plays overrated or underrated on that podcast. I’ve heard it many times, but I I’ve never played it. Lay it on me.

Jellis Vaes
All right, cool. All right, let’s start with luck. Overrated or underrated?

Derek Sivers
Overrated. Hugely overrated. How do I elaborate on that? I’ll just tell a quick story to say why I think this is perhaps overrated is I used to believe it was… God, actually, you know what? I could argue both ways. I generally believe it’s underrated that people attribute to skill what is often just luck. And so when a friend of mine called me a successful entrepreneur, no, he called me a great entrepreneur. And I said, No, I am not a great entrepreneur. I am just lucky. And he said, Bullshit, that’s not… What you did was not luck. I said, Bullshit? Yes, it was. And he said, No, man, I don’t believe in luck. I said, How can you not believe in luck? I said, Look, you were lucky to be born in America, in a prosperous country. He said, Great example. He said, That wasn’t luck. He said, My great grandparents came over from Russia. Like three generations ago, they knew nobody in America. They didn’t speak the language, but they believed that if they endured the hardship in their life, that their kids would have a better life and their grandkids would have an even better life. He said, They invested the hard work and misery to make the future generations happier. That was luck. I went, Oh, good point. Now I often think in terms of the things we do that might even seem like luck, but actually are the culmination of many micro decisions.

Jellis Vaes
So luck for you is overrated?

Derek Sivers
I’m going to argue both sides of this one. Let’s say For now, I’ll pick overrated, sure.

Jellis Vaes
Okay, all right. The next one that I have is one that might not surprise you. Money, overrated or underrated?

Derek Sivers
Sorry, my real answer is in some circles, let’s say in many circles, money is very overrated. Money is never the point. It’s a means to something else. It’s just a neutral trade of value. It’s not that important. A lot of people are chasing more and more and more money when in fact, they really should just spend a little more time looking inward, going, Wait, what do I really want? And go directly for what you really want. Instead of trying to get the money that’s just supposed to be the neutral trade of value to get you what you really want, just go directly for what you really want. That said, in some circles, especially a lot of my old musician friends, money can be underrated because it seems to be the opposite of art. And so they say, Man, money doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about money. But by saying that, they’re being very unwise because because the rest of their life becomes very hard because they’ve dismissed money, which is supposed to be this neutral trade of value. By not putting any attention into making money It’s like they’re not putting any attention into being valuable. I think that can be a disservice. It depends which community you’re in.

Jellis Vaes
I’ve heard you say a few times that you don’t work for money. I think that might confuse some people right now listening, thinking like, What do you mean you don’t work for money? Of course, you work for money. What do you mean with that actually?

Derek Sivers
Money is always the side effect. Money is never the point. If you’re doing something only for the money, well, let’s just say you should aim to never do something only for the money. There should always be another benefit in it for you. Something you’re learning by doing this, making more connections, building your expertise, focusing on that, the learning, the building the expertise, the making new connections, that’s the real point. And yes, money also comes as a side effect. But if you lose your values, or let’s say if you’re valuing money as the point itself, to me, It’s like saying that the point of having a car is to make the odometer go up. And then you get people doing stupid things like propping their car up overnight on a thing and making a machine spin the wheels so that when they wake up in the morning, the odometer is higher. Now you’ve made the numbers go up, but for no benefit for anyone. I think that’s what a lot of people, unfortunately, lose their way and start doing with money, is money is supposed to be It’s a side effect of doing what you want or what excites you. But if they focus on the money itself, then it’s like you’re just spinning your odometer wheels or spinning the wheels to make the odometer go up. It’s not the point. I’ve never worked for money.

Jellis Vaes
Is there maybe something, I don’t know, some insights to anyone listening who might be mainly chasing money?

Derek Sivers
Stop. Just ease out of it. Ask yourself- Because I could… What you want to be doing. Go ahead.

Jellis Vaes
I could imagine some people who grew up poor, who started earning a lot of money because of some business that they created, feel a lot of satisfaction from that and continue just growing and growing money.

Derek Sivers
Okay. If that actually works for them, if that’s actually all they want out of life, well, well, that’s… Lucky you. If that’s all you care about in life is digits, what A Simple Life. What a sad and simple life.

I should elaborate just a tiny bit more on this. Of course, I know friends in situations where you have no money at all. You have to do something just for the money. You could look at that and say, Oh, you privileged asshole. I have to work for money. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is you can take any situation, even when you’re doing something just for the money, you can turn it into a learning situation. Even if you’re just working in a warehouse, moving packages from left to right, you can turn it into a learning situation and learn the systems and learn how the warehouse works and do things so that you could use this learning to advance yourself in life instead of doing it just for the money. I’ve never actually written about this. I should clarify it more if I do, because what I’m not saying is, don’t do any work because it pays. I don’t think that any situation you’re in, you can make it about much more than just the money.

Jellis Vaes
I think this comes down to deep happiness instead of a short-term happiness. Getting some money, your next paycheck or… Well, yeah. Yeah, can help to get some short-term happiness, but that’s not long-term happiness. There has to be something deeper, like learning a skill or doing something meaningful or helping or serving people. I think, yeah. If you want to experience that, go for that.

Okay. Role models/ mentors? Overrated, underrated?

Derek Sivers
Well, role models, maybe underrated. Mentors, definitely overrated. Overrated, if you think that it has to be a real person that knows you very well and works with you and guides you, telling you what to do. Seeking that is like Seeking a spouse and a professor in the same person. For somebody to really commit to you and get to know you that well and also have this magical wisdom that you think that they know better than you, but they know you very well, that’s really hard to find. I know some people have found that. I don’t know if I ever have. Instead, you’ve probably seen I wrote a little I have an article that I’m proud of about how to contact your mentors. The URL is sive.rs/ment, the first four letters of mentor.

Jellis Vaes
I’ll put it in the show notes.

Derek Sivers
Thank you. You’ll see my take on how to ask your mentors for help.

Jellis Vaes
Okay. And role models you see rather underrated?

Derek Sivers
Well, maybe that’s the gist of my recommendation is instead of looking for mentors, look for role models, where you can get to know somebody’s thinking style and imagine what they would say. Instead of needing that person themselves to tell you what to do, you can just get to know all of their public writing and speaking and just imagine what that person would say. That can be as or more useful and definitely more considerate than insisting that that person themselves stop what they’re doing to give you their full attention for many hours.

Jellis Vaes
Do you feel, and I think you said it’s already a bit, that you can only have real role models or mentors in person instead of online, or can they also be online?

Derek Sivers
Well, I’m actually highly recommending they be in your head. Yeah, they could also be online. But what I’m saying is don’t even insist that you need to get Bill Gates to email you personally to tell you what to do. I’m just saying you could just imagine to yourself, What would Bill Gates do? But this goes at any level, even if it’s a podcaster, even if it’s somebody that listens to your show a lot saying, Yellis, I need your help. What should I do? It’s like, Well, come on. You’ve listened to all of my podcasts. I think you can imagine what I would say. You imagining what I would say is actually much more efficient for both of us. Ultimately, it gives you a sense of pride that that solution came from you. It would mean more if you asking yourself, what would Yellis say? Sorry, I’m saying you to somebody in the audience right now. If you’re asking yourself, what would Yellus say? Ultimately, that’s more useful to you than insisting that Yellus himself tell you what to do.

Jellis Vaes
You’re actively thinking about what to do, which is more powerful.

Derek Sivers
Also, with every single little idea, you get to, say, if you think of 10 things… Sorry, I’m just going to keep picking on If you, audience, were to think of 10 things that Yellus would tell you to do and say eight of those 10 make you right away go, No, not that. No, not that. But then one of them makes you go, That’s a good idea. And then one of them makes you go, Oh, that’s a great idea. In fact, I want to take action on that right away. Well, there. Now you’ve had a quick feedback loop between your giant hairball of internal factors now bringing in Yilas’s influence of what you think he would say. That’s a much faster processing loop than trying to get Yellus on the phone or meet up for coffee in person in Belgium. Where in Belgium are you?

Jellis Vaes
Right now, I am in my hometown, so it’s a tiny town, but mostly I’m in Antwerp. Okay. You know Antwerp? It’s basically, the Flemish city.

Derek Sivers
I lived in it for a little while. I was a legal resident of Belgium, and I lived in Place Flagey in XL, Brussels.

Jellis Vaes
No kidding.

Derek Sivers
Brussels is ugly, but it’s the peg that holds the two halves together. But my favorite… Bruges is gorgeous, but my favorite city in Belgium was Ghent because it was that nice balance of the beauty of Bruges, but yet this lively student scene. It just had a creative vibrancy to it, but yet perfect small… I really like Ghent. I would love to live in Ghent.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Well, if you’re ever moving to Ghent, let me know.

Derek Sivers
I will. Sorry, I’ll do Ghentt, underrated. There you go. I’ll just add one to the quiz.

Jellis Vaes
Totally underrated. Let me ask a last one. I got a few more for a bit later in the interview, but last one for now. Passion, overrated, underrated?

Derek Sivers
Way overrated. I love the take on it from Cal Newport’s book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You, where he deep dove into the subject and came to the conclusion that passion is what we call the excitement that we get from a field of our expertise, but it tends to come after it’s our expertise that first we get to know something and get good at it, and then it starts this feedback loop of getting more interesting, doing better work. Because you’re doing better work, you get more rewarded, and then you start to meet more interesting people in the field because you’re getting better at this, and then it turns into a passion. The common problem people make is sitting Sitting at home saying, I need to find my passion. Yeah. As if just sitting there and thinking for a long time will suddenly find a lightning bolt to shoot through their veins and charges them full of passion. I think that’s a huge It’s a huge mistake. I think you just start doing whatever you can. Then as you build expertise, your passion for that subject will grow.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah… I’m just thinking… Why were you in Brussels, actually?

Derek Sivers
Real answer? I will admit now, 10 years later, I was just trying to get a passport for my kid. I want… Yeah, present tense. I’ll still say that. I want my kid to have an EU passport. I think it would increase his options in life. Belgium was, at least 10 years ago, a pretty quick path to becoming a a legal resident first. If you just incorporate a company in Belgium, then they will make you a legal resident. Then if you have to hire a couple of people and have a real company where you’re increasing the local economy and providing a couple of jobs. But if you do that for a number of years to keep your resident status active, you can apply for citizenship after just a few years and probably get it. That’s what I was trying to do. But then, unfortunately, my immigration lawyer forgot to tell me to file one form, and poof, a couple of years of work and maybe €100,000 all disappeared, which was really sad at the time, but that was 10 years ago and I’m over it. But that’s what I was doing.

Jellis Vaes
I wonder if it’s still the easiest country in Europe to become…

Derek Sivers
There are always easier ways. I think it’s like if you really wanted to run a company anyway that needed a couple of employees with a physical office in Belgium, it’s a good path. If you have savings that you could invest, then Portugal had a thing called the Golden Visa where you could just buy an investment property, and that was quite easy. If you have way too much money and you don’t mind just throwing away a million euro, You can contact Malta, and Malta will make you a pretty instant citizen if you want to just give them a million euro. There are ways. It depends what you consider being easy. It’s a fun subject I about. Of course, I learned about it because I wanted my boy to have an EU passport just to increase his options in life. It was just rational.

Jellis Vaes
Wow. Okay, cool. Okay, thank you. Just maybe a bit off track now.

Derek Sivers
Totally off track, but that’s what we’re doing here. It’s fun.

Jellis Vaes
Totally off track. Yes. Okay, I have a personal question for you that I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, so now is my chance. Now, I will say, of course, I think this is a question that, not alone in a way, will help me, but I think it’s quite a common one. Our feelings are not so unusual. This is something that I used to struggle with way more in the past, way less now, but I will say that it can sometimes still bite at me. I don’t have a 9:00 to 5:00 job. Most Most of my life, basically when I was 23, I started on this path of just being self-employed and doing my own thing. I’ve had people in my hometown, my grandpa, or other people that I’ve heard of, call me weird for doing what I do. Now, I could imagine that there are quite a lot of people that are held back because they’re afraid of internal or external judgment of being called weird because as humans, we’re social creatures. It really hurts, actually, when someone calls you weird and in a way, cast you out of their circle.

My question is, I could imagine, this is an assumption, that there might have been people in your life who might have said it directly or indirectly to you as well, that what you do or what you do in life is weird. Have you always, if people have said that to you, been okay with just dealing with that? If yes, Can you see why? If no, how have you become better at that? Maybe I’m making the question now super long. But if there’s anyone listening right now who might be held back from internal or external judgment of doing something that they want to do, do you have any suggestions or insights to them?

Derek Sivers
Okay, fun subject. I’m going to try to be succinct, otherwise I could talk about this thing for hours. First, I have to say, you have to know yourself enough to know whether you want to walk the weird path or not. Some of us do, some of us don’t. One of my best friends does not. She moved from Korea to the US when she was nine years old, and all she’s ever wanted to do is to fit in. She felt like such an outcast at nine that she just decided at nine years old, I’m going to fit in. That’s all she’s wanted in her life, and she’s one of my best friends. Following the path of not being weird is not wrong. You have to just decide for yourself whether that’s what you want. Often these can be norms. Sorry. Often, norms can be good guidelines. When in doubt, follow the norms. It’s the well-proven path to a good life is to follow the suggestions, whether it’s your religion or your community morals or just what your parents say. Doing what a lot of people suggest can be a good recipe. But for some of us, it can be the anti-recipe.

I look at most normal people and think, That is the opposite of what I want. I don’t want that life. If you want to put me on the shrink’s couch for a minute to ask why I’m this way, it might just be DNA, but it might be the fact that When I was aged 2 to 6, my family moved around a lot. So everywhere I lived, I felt I’m not from here. I’m not one of you people. Because we moved to different countries, too. So wherever I went, people would say, You’re weird. You’re not like us. I’d say, Yeah, I’m not one of you people. Your norms don’t apply to me. I’m not from here. And then we’d move to somewhere else. And I’d say, Well, I’m not from here either. And then we moved to Chicago when I was six. I said, Well, I’m not from here, but that’s where we ended up staying. But I just kept that feeling with me the whole time. I’m not from here. Your norms don’t apply to me. It’s like if you were to suddenly go to Sri Lanka, right now, assuming you’re not from Sri Lanka, that the community and society’s norms in Sri Lanka wouldn’t apply to you.

You’re an outsider. I just feel like that everywhere. I feel that no matter what group of people I’m in, this is not my culture. Their norms don’t apply to me. Anything they say I should be or should be doing doesn’t apply to me because I’m not from here. That’s my take on it. I taught my kid early on, starting when he was, I don’t know, four, that weird is a compliment. When somebody says you’re weird, that’s a great compliment, and you should say, Thank you. I just instilled that to him earlier. I said, Because it means that you are not just doing what everybody else is doing, that you’re creative and surprising, that you’re looking at things through your own formula, not just adopting theirs. I said, Yeah, weird. It’s a great compliment. It can just be easily reframed, and you could choose to reframe that for yourself if you want to walk that weird path in life.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, because unfortunately, in general, you don’t call someone weird It’s not meant as a compliment. It’s mostly meant as something negative. It should have some maybe rebranding. Is that what you wanted to say?

Derek Sivers
Yeah, There’s a TV show called Rick and Morty, a cartoon show that I watched. There was a line that people often quote from that, whereas I think he’s performing in front of an audience and everybody goes, Boo. He says something like, Your boos mean nothing to me because I’ve seen what makes you cheer. That’s the idea, that it’s like, If you disapprove of my actions, I’m going to take that as a sign that I’m doing the right thing.

Jellis Vaes
For someone listening who is afraid of being called weird, and is held back from pursuing what they actually want to do, is there something that you would say to them still?

Derek Sivers
I still wrestle with that myself, even though I have proudly embraced the weird path for my whole life, and I’m 54 now, I still have to catch myself and even more wholeheartedly embrace doing things the way that I want to do, even if most people I know are against it. One example is a lot of my ex-girlfriends I have been upset that I really love working. I don’t mean… I mean, you know my definition of work is not like I’m just not just trying to make money here, but doing what I love. I wake up at 5:00 in the morning excited about the book I’m writing or excited about a program I’m working on, programming, coding, or excited about a book I’m reading, and I stay excited about what I’m doing from 5:00 AM to midnight. I don’t I don’t want to sit around watching TV. I don’t want to just sit on couches wasting my life away. I love my work. I love… I say my work, but it’s like my life’s work. It’s like doing what I love best. I’m really excited about life. I don’t want to just sit there and stare at screens.

This has been very, very disappointing to a lot of my exes that might seem exciting and interesting at first, but ultimately just want to sit around for a third of their life staring at a screen. I would just say, No, I won’t do that. I won’t just sit on a couch and stare at a screen, even with you. Sorry, I value my life and my brain and my thoughts and my interests too much. I find that I’m constantly having to re-support that decision internally.

Jellis Vaes
You still struggle with that, with taking this path of being weird? Yeah.

Derek Sivers
I can just give you one example of not wanting to watch TV. By the way, it’s one of the few things I know how to say in Mandarin Chinese.. I don’t want to watch TV now. Anyway, How coincidental that that just came up in conversation then. But it comes up with things like my technology choices. I like ultra-simplicity when it comes to programming in tech. I’m not quite retro because I’m not nostalgic, but I dismiss unnecessary complexities that people choose because they’re hoping to get a job at Google or Facebook or something when you need giant complex technologies. But I’m just running a little personal website on a $5 a month web server. I like to constantly make things as simple as possible, even if it’s more work up front. I find that I’m having to constantly defend those kinds of choices. So, yeah, point is, I do still have to catch myself. No, not catch myself. I have to strengthen to strengthen my logic to explain why I’m doing what I’m doing. And maybe that’s the eventual answer to your question, which is, I think even if you have a grandpa telling you you’re weird and you care about your grandpa a lot, you just have to put in more time to logically explain to somebody who has a different value system why this choice makes sense for you.

I’ll give one more example. Somebody just asked me a week ago why I gave away all my money and why I don’t want any more money. I said, sorry, I didn’t give away all my money. I basically just refused new money coming in. I say, I’ve got enough. He said, That’s very unusual. That’s very, why are you so weird? Essentially. I said, Look, it’s as if I had 1,000 cans of beans in my basement. I have beans for life. I don’t need any more beans. And so if you show up at my door saying, Hey, I’ve got a shipment of 2,000 more cans of beans, I’ll say, Please don’t give those to me. Just there are plenty of people in the world that need beans. I don’t need any more beans. Send them to Belgium. Yeah, send them to Belgium. I’ve got plenty of beans, please. I don’t want any more. And somehow, When I said that, the guy went, Wow, that was very rationally explained. He said, You’re not being altruistic. It’s just a logical choice. I said, Yes, it’s just a logical rational choice. There’s probably a way that if somebody’s saying that your life decisions are weird in a critical way, you might just want to put in a little more time to think of how to explain it in a rational way to a stranger.

The IPS Academy
Hey, I’m just going to interrupt the conversation for just a short moment. If you want to spend more one-on-one time learning from guests that have been here on the show, then check out The IPS Academy, as that’s where I’ve created together with guests that have been, again, here on the show, online courses covering the topics that you don’t learn in school. That’s really what The IPS Project is about, to offer that education. Life Education. We have an archive of online courses already covering the topics of mental health, relationships, the body and brain, the mind. And in the description, you can find a link to The IPS Academy. You can also go directly to theipsproject.com/academy to find the same page. We’re currently working on more really exciting courses that I can’t wait to release in the nearby future. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. There’s preview lessons. There’s reviews from other students, so you can have an idea and a feeling what the course is about and if you will like it or not. Go again directly to theipsproject.com/academy or check the description to find the same link to that page. All right, let’s return back now to the interview with Derek Sivers.

Jellis Vaes
This next question builds a little bit further on that previous question. You strike me as someone who’s really fluid in their identity. You don’t hold on to something that used to be a part of you, you don’t hold on to that forever. Correct me if I’m wrong with anything that I’m saying.

Derek Sivers
My gender stays pretty constant.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, okay. Yeah. But I would say that that’s very hard for quite some people, I think. Many people hold on to something being a part of them. Even if it doesn’t make sense anymore, 10 years later, they still hold on to it. But you seem to be very good at letting that go. Have you always been good at that in life? Why do you feel it’s important to be fluid in life and not hold on to your identity so much?

Derek Sivers
Okay, well, first, the weird question. I’ll say that I’m not recommending that everybody needs to be more fluid. A lot of people get a lot of deep happiness from saying, This is who I am, this is where I live. This is what I do. This is what I value. That’s that. And that makes them really happy. And in fact, it can make them really productive and effective and flourishing because it’s almost like a solid foundation, no earthquakes. Then they can flourish up at the higher levels because the foundation is solid. Please don’t think that I’m saying that everybody should be so fluid and live on a marsh. But it doesn’t come naturally to me, or maybe I should say it didn’t, to challenge the deeper set stuff. But because I value personal growth so much, when I would catch myself feeling really attached to a certain identity, like I am a musician, I can’t do something that’s not music because I’m a musician, and that’s that. I would catch myself saying or thinking that and go, Whoa, hold on. Really? Is that really all I am? I can’t do anything else because this is what I am.

Derek Sivers
I’d stop and deliberately challenge that. When I say challenge, I mean through actions, I would try to disprove that. I’d say, Well, let’s see what it feels like to actively pursue something interesting that is not music because I feel that I can’t do anything else. Let me try to disprove that. Selling my company was like that. When I started Seedy Baby in 1997, ’97, ’98, I felt that I was going to do this thing forever. I felt this is it. I’m going to do this for my whole life. And then 10 years later, I was really feeling done. I was just over it. I felt I had said everything I had to say, done everything I wanted to do. But that was really messing with my identity because I had decided early on, I’m doing this thing for life. So once again, I had to challenge, go, Wait, really? Am I really going to block the personal growth that would come from doing something new? I’m like, Oh, okay. Maybe let me… I’m going to sell the company because I don’t want to. It’s because I feel that I can’t. Now I must in order to challenge that limiting belief.

Even if it’s the wrong answer, it will It could guide me towards more personal growth. I could have made more money by staying, but I had to personally challenge myself to grow my self-identity to be somebody that would leave the thing I thought I would never leave.

I still do that.

Again, earlier, I mentioned a programming language or programming. I really enjoy computer programming, and I caught myself feeling like, Well, this is the way I do things. I use Ruby, I use PostgreSQL, that’s me. I go, Wait, hold on. Why am I so stuck on those two things? Ten days ago, erased my computer and reinstalled a new operating system on it that I had never used before. That was a fun challenge because I felt like, Well, I use OpenBSD. That’s my operating system. It’s like, I’m pretty stuck on that, aren’t I? All right, well, let me challenge that. Let me try this I have a version of Linux called Void Linux. Wiped my hard drive, installed from scratch, pulled my files back over, and I’m loving it lately. It’s like, All right, I just expanded my self-definition a little bit. I am now a guy who uses OpenBSD and Void Linux. It’s minute, but I think we can all relate to our own version. There are these ways of doing things that we get stuck on. I think it’s healthy to challenge yourself to get unstuck from your preferences.

Jellis Vaes
The people that you’ve met in your life, maybe to use them, would you say most have trouble with being fluid? In life and attaching too much to things being a part of their identity?

Derek Sivers
I think most people don’t care about this subject as much as I do. I think it’s a Particular interest of mine. I think I nerd out on the subject of self-expansion, expansion of self-identity. Most people I know, whether it’s acquaintances or even my best friends, are really just more interested in doing good work, finding a romantic partner, being happy, just that stuff. I’m their friend that nerds out on the subject expanding my self-identity.

Jellis Vaes
Because the reason why I said that this question builds a little bit on the previous one is because the previous one, what can stop people often is this fear of internal or external judgments. But I also think here, what can stop people from actually pursuing what they really want to do is that they’re stuck with an identity that’s not serving them anymore.

Derek Sivers
Right. Yeah. There are plenty of role models, if you want them, in the music world where musicians like Bob Dylan, Madonna, Paul Simon, David Bowie, would constantly reinvent themselves and change their musical genre. Miles Davis did this great. Change their musical genre. Every time they did, fans of their previous on or would get upset. They’d say, That’s okay. I know a lot of you will be upset by this, but I need to keep learning and growing and trying new things. I need to keep trying different musical styles. I need to never get stuck in a rut. I mean, even painters that have changed their style over the years, like Picasso, most drastically, I see it as the artistic challenge to yourself to keep moving on past your expertise.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah.

Derek Sivers
Fuck, that’s a good line. I got to remember that. I like that a lot. Keep moving on past your expertise. I love doing interviews like this where every now and then when you challenge me with a question that I haven’t considered before, and I hear improvising on the spot, it’s really fun for me because I also have to be succinct and not boring because I know people are tuning in for a limited time. They don’t have an unlimited attention. I need to think of how to say this thing and communicate it well from my head, but also in an accurate and succinct way. That’s a fun challenge. Every now and then, it’s really rewarding for me to come up with an idea I hadn’t before.Thanks for that.Cool..

Jellis Vaes
Well, yeah, awesome. That’s awesome to hear. Let me give or throw a few last overrated, underrated questions at you, and then I have one final end question, the dessert for you. Responsibility, overrated, underrated?

Derek Sivers
Overrated. Let’s put it in the category of useful, not true. When somebody says If something is your responsibility, that’s not a physical fact. That’s their moral value system that they are telling you that you should also subscribe to this thought process that exists in their head, and it’s not an observable absolute reality. You should challenge it, question it. But if agreeing to that responsibility if that responsibility helps you do what you want to do, be who you want to be or feel at peace, then great. Adopt that responsibility because you like the way it affects your actions, but never thinking that it’s absolutely an absolute reality, truth.

Jellis Vaes
I have to ask, romantic relationships, overrated, underrated?

Derek Sivers
It depends who you are. For some people, it is their entire reason for living. If that works for them, if they have the deepest meaning in their life by what they give to their partner and get from their partner and grow and all that stuff, great. If that works for you. I spent 35 years of my life finding and minding relationships. I have just recently, in the last 20 months, been extremely invigorated and flourishing because I am not doing that. It feels great to not have and not want a romantic relationship. I love it so much. But then maybe that’s because of my previous 35 years. I don’t know.

Jellis Vaes
Maybe. Or because it gives you so much time for yourself to do the work that you find and play.

Derek Sivers
It’s also my situation where I have a 12-year-old boy who is my best friend, and we are very close, and I put basically all of my non-working time into him. I give him my full attention, and it’s very It’s rewarding for both of us. Maybe that’s all I can do right now.

Jellis Vaes
Let me ask you, what is something that you feel is overrated?

Derek Sivers
It depends on the person. Sorry, dude. I wish I could have a snappy answer for you, but I know too wide of a variety of people. Any word I could say now would be the opposite right here. Sorry.

Jellis Vaes
But is there something? You can elaborate on it, right? It doesn’t have to be the truth for everyone, but just to hear your thought process and insights into why you feel it might be overrealed.

Derek Sivers
I love it. You’re like, Hey, sing us a song. I’m like, well, I don’t really have a song to sing. You’re like, Oh, that’s all right. Sing us a song anyway. Okay. I’m going to pick a good one from two years ago then. Consistency. I had been underrating consistency because maybe I was so focused on personal growth and exploration. I met somebody romantically two years ago that said that her most important value was consistency, and that bowled me over. I went, Whoa, consistency. Of all of the things in life, I’d never tried that. I’ve never tried consistency. That was really interesting. We were together for two years, and for those two years, I was very consistent for her because she told me that’s what she valued. I’d never considered that before. It was all the way underrated for me. It was zero rated. To bring that up to a level of importance felt really new and interesting to me because I think I had learned from maybe watching too many traumas in my teen years that to be tempestuous and unpredictable and wild and dramatic was a good thing. In fact, it just makes for good drama, which makes for good keeping people glued to watch advertisements in between commercial breaks, but it’s not the best in an actual real romantic relationship. That was a new idea to me.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, consistency might sound boring in a way, right? But it’s actually very stable, and that’s not bad at all.

Derek Sivers
It can give a great foundation of security security in a relationship. Yeah, totally. So that you can flourish in other ways. Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
Let me also ask then, what is something that you feel is overrated? Status.

Derek Sivers
I would like to understand why Chinese culture is so focused on status, why that’s the ultimate value or the primary importance. Because to me, I can’t relate. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why people would care so much what other people think. You do your job, you do it well, you’re great at what you do. You give objective, observable results and value to others through your actions. What does it matter what somebody thinks of you and isn’t status in your own swagger and your own confidence, let’s say, not a thing that you could buy? Any idiot can buy a thing. How does buying a thing give anybody status? I don’t get that at all.

Jellis Vaes
Well, it shows, I guess, if you buy something expensive, that you have money, and that’s quite…

Derek Sivers
But it doesn’t even show that. It shows that you put something on your credit card. A lot of people- But on the outside.

Jellis Vaes
On the outside to people, it shows that you have a fancy car, so you must have a lot of money, maybe.

Derek Sivers
Yeah, but you’d think that people would see through that and also realize that some of the most miserable, awful, despicable, disgusting, terrible people on Earth have bought expensive things. It should say nothing of a person’s status. And even then, I love this idea that nobody looks at a a person in an expensive car and says, Wow, what a cool person. At best, what people say is, Wow, I wish I had that car. Really, nobody’s thinking about you. Nobody cares about you. To me, that’s so liberating to know that’s really, ultimately, nobody cares about you. Everybody just cares about themselves. Why would I do a single damn thing to be thought of better by others? It’s the most irrational thing to do.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, I guess because it gives you options where money is valued or status is valued so high in societies like in the Western world or in China, it gives you options and that improves your survival rate.

Derek Sivers
See, I like that you’re arguing against that. I’d like to dive deeper into understanding that mindset.

Jellis Vaes
It’s a super interesting topic, absolutely. But Okay. So you would say that’s overrated status?

Derek Sivers
For me. Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
All right. I have the dessert for you, Derek. Are you ready for it? Sure. As the dessert, I want to talk, I have a question about death. In my relatively young life, I’ve been confronted I wanted a lot with death. I’ve lost my dad when I was four years old. I have been diagnosed with life-threatening heart disease when I was six years old. I struggled for years with suicidal thoughts when I was a teenager. And about three years ago, maybe you don’t know it, but I survived a sudden cardiac arrest. It’s also called a sudden death, where my heart just stopped when I was asleep. Through a chain of luck, I survived that because you got to be just so lucky. I’ve thought a lot about this topic. I find it a very interesting topic. I don’t mean with that that I have the answers about it, but I’ve just thought about it a lot in my life. As the thinker that you are, I also wanted to hear your thoughts on this topic. How do you feel about what about that? What, over these years of being alive, have you come to learn about that that had a profound impact on how you live today?

Derek Sivers
By the way, that was probably the best setup for a question I’ve ever heard.

Jellis Vaes
All right.

Derek Sivers
It’s interesting now thinking about how earlier you were asking me about luck, and then, yeah, the sheer luck of you making it through that night. Yeah. Okay, so I’m going to frame this through the lens of useful, not true beliefs. Not because I’m trying to sell a book, but I already think that way. In the last two years, I’ve been very focused on thinking this way. Here we are in August 2024. You’re going to get Derek’s useful, not true lens on death. Death, which is… Although I’m not saying death is not true. It is very much. But I’m saying that how you look at it, a perspective on death isn’t necessarily true. It’s just one way of looking at it. I find it very encouraging. It works for me wonderfully to keep death right outside my door, to think that it is right on my tail. I’ve got to be smart, be healthy, to keep it away as long as possible. I need to appreciate the few moments I have now before it comes, before it catches me. I I love this idea that a disabled woman said, Don’t forget that we are all temporarily abled.

She explained that by saying that eventually, every single one of us is going to become disabled. No, she said, Unless you die a sudden shocking death in your perfect health, almost every one of us will become disabled in some way, whether it’s mentally disabled with dementia, physically disabled with your joints and arthritis, not able to do the things you used to be able to do. She said, Let’s just appreciate that we are all temporarily abled. And that thought to me makes me go, That gets me out the door running. That gets me lifting weights. That worked for me in a way that other ideas don’t. Same thing with death, to think, I’m assuming now that I’m In the final quarter of my life, I’m 54, and I do have an inherited DNA thing that makes me way more likely to get cancer. I’ve actually had cancer four times in the last four years. Really? Yeah. I’m not going to assume that I’m in the better half of the statistics. Most people die at 72, but I’m going to be 100. No, I’m just assuming that the statistics It’s apply to me, and in fact, I might be on the bottom half of those.

So I’m assuming that I’m in the last quarter of my life right now, and this belief really works for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. I’ll never know until it’s too late. But I’m going to assume that I’m in the final quarter because that beats procrastination, that stops procrastination, that makes me do things now. If I say that I want to do them someday, it’s like, well, Don’t have many some days left. This is it. Got to do it now. Yeah. And those things that I might be putting on to a list of like, oh, I really want to, I don’t know, learn to become fluent in Hungarian or play drums or something like that, I can say, Well, don’t have much time left. So what’s it going to be? Am I going to actually do this now or am I going to take this off my list? And so for a lot of things, I get to just take them off my list. I’m like, You know what? That’s not going to happen, and that’s all right. That’s how I think about death, and that’s how it’s worked for me. For anybody listening to this, I’m not suggesting you adopt my way of thinking about it, but you should ask yourself, what way of thinking about it works for you?

Which way of thinking about death makes you take the actions that you would like to take or feel more at peace?

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Death can be a super powerful source to do stuff because of rights. It sets a deadline It is the deadline, right? But using that, yeah, that can be super powerful.

Derek Sivers
Wait, by the way, now I’m just curious because I never thought about that word deadline before. What is the literal Dutch translation of deadline? Is it the same?

Jellis Vaes
Deadline. We use that word all the time in Dutch, too. That I’m completely blanking now on what we say But I don’t think we say it like that. No, I don’t think we say it like that. Why?

Derek Sivers
That’s so fun to get into etymology sometimes, where you learn, say, the Chinese word for something, you go, Oh, that’s interesting. So wait, your word for this is that? Oh, wow, what an interesting way to think about that. You just suddenly said deadline when talking about death, and I went, Oh, wow, I never thought about that deadline. You cross this line, you die. This is when you die.

Jellis Vaes
That’s the deadline. That’s even deeper than I imagined. Cool. Hold on, you said that you had cancer before.

Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s fine. There are some chunks cut out of me in four different places.

Jellis Vaes
Okay. All right. Actually, I will add one thing that I… I mean, this is Something that I feel after that experience of my sudden death, my cardiac rest, every day that I go to bed, before I’m closing my eyes because it happened in my sleep, I’m always Where it’s like, All right, am I going to wake up tomorrow? It’s not with fear or something, but it’s more like… It’s a strange feeling, maybe, to exactly put in words. I have an ICD in me, which is an internal defibrillator, so it will give me a shock if it would happen. But still, I have that feeling very strongly. Then if I wake up the next day, I’m actually very excited. I’m very grateful. I’m like, Holy fuck, I woke up. This so far over the last three years has happened almost every day, which I actually like in a way. It makes me, I guess, way more grateful to still have a second chance in life.

Derek Sivers
Dude, have you ever shown your scar on camera?

Jellis Vaes
Oh, now on a podcast? Yeah. No.

Derek Sivers
You should do it. I’ve seen it before. I haven’t seen yours, but I’ve seen others. Can you show? Because it’s really badass.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, let me just see because I can’t completely see myself right now. You see the ICD here, right? And then the scar is… Can you see that? It’s maybe with the lighting that’s not so good.

Derek Sivers
Yeah, you can see. You can see the outline. It’s like a rectangle, right? You see the corner of it, of the skin.

Jellis Vaes
It’s like a little box. They made me in a cyborg… All right, Derek, that was the last question that I had for you. I have one final…

Derek Sivers
I just got an extra dessert out of you. That was cool. Most people have never seen one of those. I’ve seen one before, but that’s really cool to see.

Jellis Vaes
All right. Okay. Yeah. All right. I got a little bit naked here for everyone.

Derek Sivers
Anybody listening, you’re going to have to go search to this one hour mark in the YouTube or one hour and twelve minutes on YouTube and find that.

Jellis Vaes
Exactly. I got one end question that I ask all my guests that I like to ask you as well. But before I do that, what’s the best place for listeners to connect with you, to check out your work, where in general, would you like to send people to?

Derek Sivers
Anybody listening to this should email me. I love meeting people around the world. I have an open inbox. I get emails from people every day. I love it. I like meeting people that have listened an hour into a podcast like this. I think it’s really cool to meet those people. Then when I travel, I end up meeting up with those people in person. Please, anybody listening to this, go to my website, Sive.rs, and you must send me an email and say hello and introduce yourself.

Jellis Vaes
Cool. All right. For everyone listening. I’ll put that in the show notes. Derek, the final end question that I have for you, and you can make it super short, you can make it as extensive as you want. From everything that you’ve seen, experienced, lived, and learned in your life, what’s the one thing you know to be true?

Derek Sivers
There’s always another way to look at anything.

Jellis Vaes
Derek Sivers. Thank you so much for being here on the show.

Derek Sivers
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was a really fun conversation.

Jellis Vaes
All right, all right. That concludes this episode here with the one and only Derek Sivers. I really hope that you I enjoyed it as much as I did talking to Derek. Now, to find any of the resources that Derek mentioned, such as his latest book, Useful Not True, any other things that he mentioned, check out these show notes which are located in the description of this episode, or you can also go directly to theipsproject.com/podcast and search for Derek. With that, thank you so much for joining me and Derek here in this interview. If you liked it, don’t forget to subscribe. If you can take just a couple of seconds of your time to leave a rating or leave a review, that would really mean a lot to me and would help me to have more incredible guests like Derek here on the show. In that sense, you’re also in a way helping yourself to gain more of these amazing insights from people like Derek. All right, with that, thank you again for being here, and I hope that I get the chance to welcome you again soon on another episode. Until then, this is your host, Jellis Vaes, signing off. Bye.

The IPS Academy
One last thing. If you want to learn even more from guests that I had on the show here, want to spend some one-on-one time with them, then check out The IPS Academy by going to theipsproject.com/academy or check the description. I will also place the link there. As that’s where I have an archive of online courses that I created together with guests that have been here on the show. The courses are on the topics that we cover here on the podcast and that this platform, The IPS Project has been created for to provide life education. The things that you don’t learn on school, I want to bring here on this project. There’s courses around mental health, relationships, the body and brain, the mind. Go through the list and see what you might find interesting. Check the description to find the link or go directly to theipsproject.com/academy to find the same page. All right, that’s all now. See you next time. Bye.