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fighting strangers on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by fresh books. Accounting and bookkeeping mistakes destroyed thousands of small businesses every single day. Bookkeeping doesn't have to be hard. Turn to the number one invoicing software for small businesses. Start for free today at serve no master dot com Backslash Fresh books Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. I know that episode have been a little bit sporadic lately, and I'm trying to get back on track, My son. Now, instead of waking up at 6 a.m. like normal, he's been waking up at 5 a.m. which, you know, is what I get up early to record these episodes. So now we're dealing with this brand new challenge. Whenever you have young kids. As I'm sure many of you know, there's always different surprises to come your way. Additionally, there have been loads of additional rain, so going outside to record in the pouring rain, it's a challenge. But this morning my son still asleep, fingers crossed that I'll get to record at least one special episode. It's not pouring rain. It's actually beautiful outside. It's a nice this morning I've been up for in a while, and I'm kind of inspired about this new topic. Yesterday I had to travel to a neighboring island to do some work with the government. You have to go in and kind of fill some foreigner paperwork out every once in a while. I'm still working on my marriage paperwork. We're doing all these things and working on some health insurance stuff for the kids. You kind of get all of our chores done when we go over to this island and we have to take a boat each way and the boats 2.5 to 3 hours, we got really lucky. The boat was less than a 2.5 hours each way. The best it's ever been really, really lucky could. Sometimes you spend more than six, almost seven hours in the boat just to spend two or three hours doing errands. And as a little special treat for the missus, we went by McDonald's on the way back. There's no restaurants like that where I lived, fortunately, because I'd be super fat if I had some like that icky every day. And while we're in line, I'm in line was one of my friends, and something really interesting happened. This girl, this chubby girl, cut me right in line in the back of the line means understanding. They were waiting our turn and this girl just walks have been cuts right in front of us, and our two reactions were very different. Not to say one is right. One is Rob, but it was an interesting experience because it became a whole thing. First I look at it in ago. Well, this person's ridiculous, But if this person is that desperate to get into the front of the line than fight, so what? I don't care. I'm not fighting in line for McDonald's Now. If it was concert tickets, or if it's something finite or something, we're getting there later affects what you're gonna get. That would be different. So I have this decision Calculus, Right? Go. We're not in line for concert. Tickets were not in line for a movie. I'm not gonna get a worst seat because I'm behind this person. I don't care for me. You know, I'm a big believer that what you put in universe is what you get back. You call it karma if you want, but I believe that people who do bad things and getting bad things back to them and my first thought was this lady's cut in the line of McDonald's. It's that important to her. She's gonna have something bad, come back to her from the universe. You don't get rewarded for that type of behavior. It was totally ridiculous. There's also three lines. It wasn't like there's only one line, but the guy with me said something to her and he goes, What do you think you're doing? There's a line right here. Get to the back of it. Act like a human act like a normal person. His response not unreasonable. He didn't hit it with a hammer in a punch in the face you pushed the back line, she wouldn't got in the back of one of the other lines. Now I'm thinking about this at the time. I think, you know, I wouldn't have said anything because to me, who cares? I gotta wait 30 more seconds for my sandwich, Whatever. It's not that important to me. So when I'm making the decision calculus for me, it's about how important is the actual thing. Whereas other people have this idea of its the principle, People shouldn't do bad things. Other people, and when they do, you have to stop them. If you let people cut you in line, then they'll keep doing it. I totally understand that it didn't end there. I get to the front line. I placed my order. My friend is behind me. He's gonna order after me. I ordered for two people that I was ordering for my wife, who's across the street, running there and coming over, and I wanted her food ready when she gets there. As soon as I finish ordering the same girl, the same chubby lady cuts behind me in front of my friends and tries to order in front of him. This is something I've never seen before where someone tries to cut the same line twice for no reason. She could have just stayed in the other line. She could have waited until after he ordered, but for some reason she thought he'll yell at me for cutting ones. But I could get away with cutting twice, which obviously did not happen. So he raised another stink, pushed himself in front of us. What do you think you're doing? It's my turn. Don't act like this. And he orders whatever I think. Okay, we're done. Then, for some reason, another guy, a totally different stranger, is standing right behind swallow, waiting for our food to come, and I move. By the way, I don't want to be, you know, whatever this guy's up to something weird. I don't want to stand right in front of this guy, but somehow it ends up in a weird confrontation between my friend and they start talking. Nothing comes because the guy's just a weird guy. But you know, you don't want a stranger standing right behind you for no reason. It's a little bit uncomfortable, I told. Understand that, especially. We live you want to be on your guard about your safety. There's not really safety problems, but you don't wanna be stupid so much sitting right behind you. Basically, they put your hand in your pocket. That's being stupid. So you move away, amigos. It's a tentative table. These two incidents are finished. We start talking Thio, another foreigner who lives near where we do, and he starts talking about how he always gets into confrontations people. He always has to remind people of the right way to behave and that his girlfriend is often uncomfortable because he's so confrontational. But it's just then he goes into this field, but that's just who he is. So I had the series of incidents, and that's kind of what got me thinking about the decisions we make and how we decide to handle situations. So each of us, three different people living in a foreign country and we're from three different originating countries. America, Canada, in England. So all three of us are guys from different countries living in the same country, and we all handle this type of situation differently. And I thought that was interesting, that somebody would find it so important to impress their will on a foreign country that they would make their girlfriend uncomfortable. That's what got me really thinking the two things that happened with my friend. They weren't that interesting. If someone cuts me twice, I'm definitely saying something. That's when it gets too ridiculous. I couldn't even believe the second cunning, but the 1st 1 I wouldn't care that much because it's not a line that I care about. It's a question of what is your focus in life. I don't really care about other people's behavior that much. I only care about how it interacts with my life, interacts with my family. Those things matter when people intersect with me. Yes, it matters, but because I'm a big believer that people get what they deserve, that when people do bad things, bad things happen. Then when you act like a jerk, jerky things happen to you. I don't really worry too much. I don't feel it's my responsibility to punish people. My responsibility trade people in the correct way to act in public, my responsibility to enforce social norms. It's the motivation. That's where this gets a little interesting. So the more time you spend enforcing social rules the more time you spend thinking about well, this is how things are and have to stop people on principle or have to interact with strangers on principle. The last time you have to spend thinking about yourself. See, my friend was thinking about the greater good he's thinking about. If I don't stop this girl now, she'll do it to other people and continue to other people. So in a way, he's a hero, right? He's stopping someone from hurting other people. Now, of course, the hurting is cutting in line. It's not the worst crimes, but it's something we're thinking about. It's something interesting. So it first in this story right? You thought I was gonna I was gonna make a story and tell you that I'm the hero because I'm the good person cause I don't care about other people. That's it. But no, it's simply different perspective. As we dig deeper my belief in karmic justice, my belief that people get what they deserve means that I don't feel obligation to enforce social norms, But it could mean that this girl goes out there and cuts thousands of people and thousands of people get their lunches 10 minutes later. Because of this one villain, there is no right or wrong answer to this question. I've been in situations before where I'm the one who's demanding some justice, and the people with me are uncomfortable, and I've been in plenty of situations. Where I'm going is uncomfortable because people here demanding justice. We've all been in this situation what I want you to. I think about day, and this is a critical lesson is why do you choose one side the other? What is your defining motivation? The more we could dig behind our behavior and understand ourselves, the more we can move on the path of improvement because all of these little things they add up to affect how our day goes. For example, if you every time someone does something wrong, feels it's your obligation to right that wrong, your day could go something like this. Get up in the morning. You gotta go to the gym on the way to the gym. Someone cuts you off. Needless to say, you follow that person and continue honking until they end up in their office and you get out, you have a little confrontation with them. in front of their office. You shot back and forth. Person goes, f you, I'm not doing this and eventually they go into work there red faced and upset and comfortable, and you feel like, Hey, I've indicated. But I would have liked to take it a little further. Maybe I would've liked to throw a punch in the face, but no time for that. You head back to the gym day at the gym 30 minutes late. Jim's a little bit more crowded now, so you can't go out on the machines you normally want. And when you're not looking, someone breaks one of the gym rules. Now, some of these a cz Well, we'll say something. You know, they don't wipe down a machine, or sometimes he will cut you in a machine or they jump in or they break one of those kind of social norms rules. You're waiting for machine, and then they jump in before you. And again, you have a little bit of a confrontation. Person said. Hey, sorry. All right, fine. I just didn't know you were waiting line. Whenever it's your turn, you have your work out. But now when you leave the gym. You're 45 minutes late and drop the day every time you have ones in, since you get pushed a little bit back. So the question is, is the time you spend in forcing the social norms? It's forcing these rules, getting justice worth the time lost. That's again, where my decision calculus changes because I'm selfish. I am a pragmatist and I'm a selfish person. I'm a selfish capitalist. I admit that I don't hide that behind other things. I work to make money for me and my family. My loyalty. My alliances are to my family before anyone else. Most people, in fact, almost all people live this way. But in our society, most people want a minute. We feel this obligation to lie about what we care about, because it's almost unacceptable to say that I'm someone who takes care of those closest to me first, other cultures, things, way, different ways and some cultures. Family's so important. That's all. People care about their culture. We tend to mask the reality of how we live. Most of us go to work, to make money, to take care of our family. We don't care about the people at work Perfect with a check. This is if the person next to you worked even friends for 10 years got fired. Would you say a word? Would you keep your head down and keep your job? 99% of people in America keep your head down. Very few people would pull it, Jerry Maguire and go. I'm leaving with you right when someone gets fired. No one does that because we're pragmatists at heart, even if we want to mask it behind acts of charity and some of the other things we doing. So as you're looking at how your day goes as you're looking at, how you before the decisions you make, whether or not you decide to get in confrontations with strangers whether you decide Thio get involved in a bit of road rage or shouted someone for cutting in line think about not just how you're affecting other people but what it costs you in lost time and lost emotional energy. Because after people have these confrontations and I believe this is the reason my friend ended up in a second won back to back because he's already amped up. If you get in an emotional state where the same thing happens over and over again. Now one other interesting thing happened. I'll add it into the story because it was just the same characters. Earlier, me and my friend had run into the same foreigner and another place where we were doing some paperwork from the government, where the government offices. Now this government offices run unbelievably efficiently. I've never been replaced like it before. You have to go in and you have to do some paperwork. It usually takes less than 10 minutes from what I walk in the door when I walk out with all my paperwork updated, unbelievable, and I've been in this government office all over the country have been about five or 10 different ones in different prefectures in different states. This one is run unbelievably well, even though it's on a tropical island, and I really respect that. They do it so so well, and they're always on point there very quick. They're very professional, and they don't request bribes. Everything perfect and one of things, I told my friends. The reason I don't talk to him where I live many forgers is because it always turns into this story. Uh oh, it used to be so much better here. Everything is getting worse. And I said, This is why I don't talk to most of foreigners here. I don't have interest in that conversation. And I told him the story. There's a movie called Human Traffic that's really great movie from England about going to nightclubs. And there's two guys in a nightclub having conversations City a Catholic do. You should have come here 10 years ago. This club was the best back of the day and they flashed back to 10 years earlier. And the guys are having the same conversation 10 years earlier. Guys ago, man, you should have come here 10 years ago. It was amazing. There are people that are always living in the past. It's more common. It's really common in the nightclub scene or going out. See, people say that all the time like you're going to be the now like all you should have been there in 1999. You going 99 like you should be here in 1995 in 1985. People are always saying the past used to be better, and this is exactly what happened within the 1st 10 seconds of meeting This new stranger I'd actually never met before is a friend of my friend. And he goes, Oh, how long you been here? Four years ago. So I've been here for years to use to be so much better. Now it's getting so crowded. I believe that when you pull negative energy into your life and effects what you're doing reason this is on my mind is I'm almost done with 20 k. Dad, I've been saying it for months, but I'm now really deep into the edit. I'm hoping to finish it today or tomorrow. It's about time you here? This episode. It'll then well edited. But one of the things that really thinking about talking about in the book right now I'm in a chapter. I talk about how the things we do in our live affect our emotions and effects the way we right. For example, right now I'm reading a detective story, a series of detective stories. They're actually British Lake District Police procedurals to be very specific, which means they're boring to most people. But it's a genre that I really like. We followed the detective as he false clue after clue in interviews of witnesses. And it's very slow and methodical. But for some reason this characters always eating everyone kind of creates Kerr definition to the characters. He's a character who's hobbyists fell running, which means you. He does 24 hour races and eating all the time, and it's always in my head and that someone who struggles with my weight, I find that a little bit annoying. But it makes me eat Maur. It's affecting my diet that I'm reading a book about character eats too much, which is why I'm trying to excise twice as much. And as soon as I finish this recording, I'm gonna grab an extra bit of exercise to make up for just reading about him. Eating a bag of donuts makes me nervous. I haven't weighed myself today, but just a little thing. We re defectives when I read a story about a serial killer. It's too scary. I start to get nervous in my house. I'm double checking that all the doors were locked. All of these things that affects us, so it affects a little bit the way I think, and in the past when working on multiple projects. At the same time, researching for one project has affected high right about the other project. This is why since learned that lesson. I'm more careful about how I stagger my projects about a year two years ago, I was doing a research project. I was doing some work on survivalism space at the same time, was writing something else in a dating book for ladies, and I noticed that the dating world was getting too paranoid. And I said this because I'm writing with a space where paranoia is part of the package. So it affected my writing. The things we do fact our behavior. So not only does getting confrontations with strangers, and being out there defending the world cost you a lot of time, they could also all through your emotional state, to the point where affects your writing. I don't know if you've ever tried this one, but if you ever try writing a book while angry, you'll notice them. What? It's hard number two effects. What you're writing about. It affects the story, and number three it affects your ability to write, because if you get frustrated with a little bit of the story. You start to get frustrated. The computer. No, I've never smashed a keyboard over my knees, but you could build up to that point. We all have a certain amount of stress, frustration, anger, negative emotions we can handle before release it in a way that is not productive. I've been there with someone who followed someone they were mad at for a traffic violation, and I've been in the situation where the person we were falling was a UPS truck. Now, normally, I don't name businesses, but I've already managed me. Donald, why don't I mention ups as well? I couldn't believe it. I think this guy's at work. What are we doing? And the UPS truck had basically pulled out. I don't know if he cut us off or not. He pulled out of one in front of one story, made delivery, drove 20 meters and pulled into another driveway of another store where he's making his next delivery. I don't know if he had enough time to realize there was a confrontation with now before the person in the car with me could get out of the car, I said. Are you insane. This is a person who can't have the job unless they're strong enough to lift a box that weighs £150. Maybe it's £75 now, but one of the requirements of strength to work for UPS. Additionally, what's the number one tool for opening boxes? Box cutter now? I don't know. UPS workers travel with one They probably don't. But I do know that fighting a ups man one of his truck is ridiculous. And I shut that one down. There used to be for a while this big trend of road rage where you get mad at someone for cutting off in traffic and then you started fistfight. I've never been there for the full fist, right? The UPS incident was the closest I've ever been, but it's ridiculous to me that's too far. If you're getting into fist fights all the time, you got a real problem. But what it is is the build up of emotional energy as you're more stressed out about one thing that leads to other areas of your life. I'm very aware of stress in my life because when my stress builds up, I start to have other problems. I start to have health problems. I start to be unable to work. I have to be super careful. And as much as I care about stress, you also need to be careful, other negative emotions. So I want you to think about as you go forward, how these little things that we pretend me nothing actually affect your productivity and work. That's what I really care about. Gonna get a fight with some adults and shot them for cutting in line. That's fine, but two hours later it affects your work. Was it worth it? That's what I want you to think about. That's the final thought I want you to have when you're citing today and you got into the world whether or not you're gonna start a fight with the strength. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller, serve no master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening. This episode of the serve No master podcast. Follow me at facebook dot com Backslash serve no master.